Firelight is the best light for drama.
It accentuates everything. Sweat glimmers and gleams, curves are softened and smoothed and eyes are shadowed and soft. Shadows are deep and threatening.
The firelight seemed to dance in time to the rapid beat of the drums and flutes that filled the air. A high, lilting, pulsing beat that danced between curls of incense smoke and through the silken hangings that hid the booths that circled the sandy ring.
In those shadowed recesses sensuous forms lounged at their ease. Here a suggestion of long, slender leg and there the deep curve of a generous bosom. Gems and jewels glittered on delicate fingers and lay against soft skin of every hue. Never a detail, never more than a hint of their true beauty made it through the silken screens,
The treasures of the seraglio were not for the eyes of those who had not earned the vision of their beauty.
The young man had been teased by the promise of it for hours now and as he walked along the hall the sounds of laughter and low voices intertwining with the music from ahead drew him onwards. He pushed aside silken hangings, his nostrils filling with the scent of incense as up ahead he saw his destination. A circle of sand lit by hanging lanterns and surrounded by shadowed, curtained booths.