Twenty date palms rise in parallel lines like an honour guard inside the enclosure of an angular sandstone palace. The day's heat is not yet at its zenith, but it is beginning its approach under the harsh, pitiless sun. The young man dressed in black who walks across the courtyard to where a hooded gardener ladles water over the roots of a palm is not dressed for this weather, but it doesn't seem to overly trouble him.

In a half-buried chamber, a cluster of pilgrims herald his approach with cries of Lisan Al Gaib!, but the boy ignores them with a faint crease of discomfort touching the corner of his mouth.

"Hello," he says, forthright and polite, to the labouring palm-tender.

The young heir and the gardener converse briefly over the trees and their water-cost.

"Old dream," the gardener concludes, and the boy stands in contemplation a while longer before he turns to head back towards the palace, as he did when this memory was first lived. But that is where he deviates, because this is the point at which he turns to the man shadowing him who looks more at ease in on this desert world than Paul does.

"This wasn't one of the memories I expected to see," Paul says, adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves. "I apologize for it not being more engrossing."