Guardian of the Horizon (24 page)

more or less at random, with winding paths leading off from the wider street that ended in a central space with a stone-rimmed well and a few spindly trees. Some of the houses were built of mud brick, some of reeds and sticks like the Nubian tukhuls. The air was humid and hot; the sun reached these sunken depths only at midday, and deep springs moistened the air. The place had changed, though, since our last visit. Drainage ditches and low embankments controlled the water that had formerly turned the paths into mud. They were relatively clear of rotting vegetation and human trash. One could not say that the air was pure and odor-free, not with so many people living in so confined a space, but the improvement was impressive. There was another difference. Few people had the temerity to show themselves when we had been there before. Now faces appeared at window apertures; some persons lifted the mats that hung over the doorways and fixed wondering eyes upon us. By the time we reached the village square, a small group of the bolder spirits had gathered, keeping a safe distance from our escort. They were all women and children, except for a few aged men. Emerson inspected them with a pleased smile and cleared his throat. "Emerson, no. Don't make a speech," I begged. "But, Peabody, don't you understand what an astonishing thing this is?" His sapphirine orbs blazed with excitement. "Tarek didn't simply give these people better living conditions, he gave them the will and the ambition to live better! He has been out of power for months, yet the streets are still clean and the drainage ditches maintained. They are doing it themselves! They have gained the courage to defy their oppressors, to venture forth in order to ... Here, now, none of that!" Turning with pantherlike quickness, he snatched the spear fromone of the guards. The others lowered their weapons and backed off, staring at Emerson. "Time for a little subversion," said Emerson. His arm went back, balancing the spear. It was aimed at the captain, whose face had gone as white as the shade of his complexion allowed. "Emerson," I murmured. "You wouldn't . . . Would you?" "They've all heard the stories," said Emerson. "Look at them. Ramses, translate if you please." It was one of Emerson's more eloquent speeches, and Ramses did it justice, pitching his voice into a fair imitation of Emerson's basso. "The Father of Curses has returned! The curse of the gods will fall on any who do not obey him. He could drive this weapon through your body, but he spares your life because he is merciful as well as all-powerful. On your knees before him!" A positive drumbeat of knees hit the ground. Ramses let out his breath. "Congratulations, Father. May I suggest that we leave, before one of them has time to think it over." "Have you any objection to my smiling and waving?" Emerson inquired. "Not at all, sir. Smile and wave all you like--as we walk away, slowly and with dignity." Most of the audience had fled into nearby houses and shops when the scuffle broke out, the women pulling their children with them, the old gentlemen tottering as fast as they could. One woman had retreated only as far as the doorway of her house, where she stood holding the matting aside. She was a little person, like most of the rekkit, dark-skinned and thin. Her black hair was liberally streaked with gray and her coarse brown garment barely covered limbs that showed the swollen joints of rheumatism. Her arms were folded across her breast. Her black eyes moved from me to Ramses, and then to Emerson; he directed one of his broadest smiles at her, and she dropped to her knees, raising her hands in salute. "We serve the king," she cried. "The king who is our friend." She had, by chance or intent, used simple words. Emerson's eyes flashed. "We too serve him," he said loudly. "Ahem. Ramses, tell her--" "Not now, Father, please. Let us go." Emerson allowed himself to be led away. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the woman was still on her knees, watching us. "Did you learn what you hoped to learn?" I inquired of my son. "It was a useful encounter." He took my arm to help me up the stairs. "There is one more piece of information I would like to verify, but I'm pretty sure I already know the answer." "What is that?" I inquired. We had reached the top of the stairs. Ramses turned and looked down into the village. "There are paths leading north from the village, into the fields and beyond. The rekkit once had free access to the northern valley and their kin in villages there. As we saw, the pass is now blocked and guarded. I suspect the paths are guarded too, with the equivalent of roadblocks at strategic intervals. Shall we go back to our rooms now? We've a lot of planning to do." "Do you still mean to leave tonight?" I asked, refraining with some difficulty from trying to dissuade him. "Yes. I have a strange foreboding," said Ramses, smiling at me, "that from now on your movements are going to be even more circumscribed." I noted the pronoun. His foreboding, which I shared, was correct. We were at dinner--roast goose, bread, and onions--when we had a visitor. Poor chubby Count Amenislo entered with dragging steps and the expression of one who wished himself anywhere but there. He got his message out in a rush of words. We were summoned to the king next morning. In the meantime we were forbidden to leave our rooms. His attempt to beat a hasty retreat was forestalled by Emerson, for no reason that I could see except my husband's delight in tormenting the fellow. Lifting Amenislo onto tiptoe, he began shoutingindignantly. We were as anxious to see the king as he was to see us. He had deceived us, whereas we had done only what we had been told we might do. We would go now, this instant, to complain. "Not now," Amenislo gurgled. "The king rests. The king is with his women. The king dines. The king--" "Oh, bah," said Emerson, tiring of the game. "Go away, you miserable little traitor." He gave him a shove that sent him staggering out the door. "Apparently you were right," I said to Ramses. "I wonder precisely what it was we did today that annoyed His Majesty." It took us several hours to make our arrangements, such as they were. We went through our baggage looking for anything that might be useful to Ramses. It made a pitifully small bundle. As I was beginning to expect of him, Daoud contributed the most useful items--one of the hooded cloaks worn by the camel riders and a coil of rope. He tried to make Ramses take the weapons, but was refused. "I have my knife," Ramses said, clapping him on the back. "And you may need them more than I. Thank you, Daoud. The rope is a godsend. Whatever made you think of bringing it?" "The Sitt Hakim carries rope, to tie up prisoners," Daoud explained. "I thought on such a long, dangerous journey we might have to tie up many prisoners." The hour was late, the lamps burning low by the time we had finished discussing contingency plans. Obviously we could not anticipate everything, but we had at least arranged for a possible means of communication. Ramses had inspected the gully below the garden wall and thought he detected a way of descending into it from the far side. The vines that covered the wall and hung down on either side were not strong enough to bear his weight, but he might be able to leave a message. When Ramses came out of his room, wearing only a knee-length kilt and buckling a knife belt around his narrow waist, my breath caught. At least he looked the part; I had trimmed his hair into a fair imitation of the short curled wig, and in the shadows he bore an unnerving--and reassuring--resemblance to the men ofthe Holy Mountain. He came straight to me and, after a moment of hesitation, gave me a quick, awkward hug. "Don't worry, Mother. It's all right, you know." Selim and Daoud embraced him in the Arab style, and then he turned to his father and held out his hand. "Good-bye, Father." "Not good-bye," said Emerson hoarsely. "A bientot. Good luck, my boy." Ramses strapped his bundle onto his back and put on the long robe, pulling the hood over his head. "Ready," he said. "Go ahead, Father." Emerson nodded brusquely and went to the door. As we had already ascertained, it was barred from the outside. We had rehearsed our movements in advance, and Ramses had coached Emerson in what he was to say. He proceeded to say it, at the top of his lungs, as he pounded on the portal. "Help! Help! Murder! Thieves! Attack! Hurry! Murder!" We heard the bar being lifted and cries of alarm. Daoud, Selim, and I began running back and forth, shouting. The door was flung back, and a half dozen men rushed into the room. We converged upon them, waving our arms in seeming agitation (and, in Daoud's case, in calculated assault). Out of the corner of my eye I saw a lithe, dark form slip from behind the hanging into the corridor beyond.

As Ramses moved noiselessly along the passageway, his father's furious voice, amplified by echoes, followed him. "My daughter and now my son! Anubis take you; what have you done with my son?" It had been his mother's idea to pretend he had gone missing, as mysteriously as Nefret. She was a great believer in taking the offensive. Ramses stepped into a niche beside a statue of the lion-headedgod Apomatek as several more soldiers ran toward the disturbance, which had not abated. When the uncertain light of the torches they carried had faded, he went on his way. Yes, it had been one of his mother's better schemes. The king might even believe the fabrication if Tarek's people had managed to pull off a few acts of sabotage in the city. He didn't doubt Tarek had sympathizers everywhere--and now he was pretty sure he knew where to find one of them. Keeping to the shadows, he moved through the antechambers onto the terrace, observing with satisfaction that the family had got the entire group of guards out of his way. He could still hear his father, and he grinned as piercing soprano shrieks blended with Emerson's bass bellowing. The night air was cool, the stars were bright, and he felt an enormous sense of relief at being on his own, able to act without interference from the king's men and--to be honest--from his parents. The moon was a slender crescent. He knew what he had to do, but it was hard to turn away from the little shrine of Isis, glimmering like mother-of-pearl in the starlight. Anxiety about Nefret gnawed at his mind. However, common sense--and his mother's forceful arguments--had told him that his initial plan of scaling the wall to what might or might not be her window was as impractical as a fairy tale, for the time being, at any rate. His parents had a better chance of communicating with her, and he had other things to do. He hitched up the long skirts of his robe, tucking them into his belt, and felt his way down the steep stairs to the village. The darkness was opaque. If he hadn't counted the steps earlier he would not have known when he was nearing the bottom. He stopped before he reached it and strained his eyes and ears. Hearing rather than sight told him that the guard he had expected was there, huddled on the ground to the right of the stairs, sound asleep and snoring. Obviously the fellow didn't expect trouble-- or a visit from an officer. He stirred, muttering, when Ramses ran light fingers along an outflung arm, up to his exposed neck. Leaving him in an even sounder sleep, Ramses went on along the narrow street. He felt his way with bare feet, following the mental map he had memorized, not daring to use his torch or light a candle. The houses were dark and silent. Then he went round a sharp curve in the street and saw ahead the sign he had hardly dared hope for-- only a narrow strip of light along the edge of a curtained window--but it was long past the hour when a poor villager would have extinguished a lamp, and the house was the one he had noted. He scratched lightly at the window frame, ready to turn and run for it if he had been mistaken. The ragged curtain was drawn aside, exposing a single apprehensive eye and a tangle of gray-streaked black hair. Ramses pushed the hood back from his face. "Friend," he whispered. She extinguished the lamp before she let him in the house and made sure the cloth over the window fit tightly before she lighted it again. It was a single room, with a few pots and a few mats on the bare floor and in one dim corner a pile of what appeared to be rags or decayed matting. There were three other people present--a boy who might have been ten or eleven, a pregnant girl, and a man who rose from the mat on which he was lying. As he limped toward Ramses, supporting himself with a crude crutch, Ramses saw that his face was horribly scarred and that one foot was missing. "Friend," he said, and his ruined face twisted into a travesty of a smile. "You came." He tried awkwardly to kneel, as the others were doing. Ramses caught him by his shoulders. "Friends do not kneel to friends. Sit, rest. What happened to you?" "I lifted a weapon against the usurper. It should have been my hand they took off, but I am a skillful potter." "Dear God," Ramses murmured. "You kept the lamp burning. What if I hadn't come tonight?" "She said you would come." The object he had taken to be a pile of rags stirred. A face protruded--a brown, dry face, carved into a thousand wrinkles. In spite of himself Ramses took a step back. In the dim, shifting light the effect was that of a mummy rising up out of its wrappings. Ramses hastened to offer the support of his arm. A clawed hand closed over it and a pair of clouded eyes stared up at him. He didn't need to ask who, or rather what, she was: the village wise woman. There were always such women, healers and seers, intermediaries with the supernatural for people too humble to approach the great gods directly. In medieval Europe they had been called witches. "Sit here, Mother," he said, hoping the title was acceptable. "You foresaw my coming?" Her cackle of laughter was like the scrape of rusty metal, but her voice was stronger than he had expected, with an unmistakable ring of authority. "You do not believe. It does not matter. Believe this, then. I am trusted by Tarek, his representative in this village. Will the other Great Ones come?" Ramses resisted the temptation to point out that she shouldn't have had to ask. "They can't. Not yet. But I promise you, we will not leave the Holy Mountain until the rekkit are free and Tarek is on his throne again." "Will you stay here tonight?" the father of the family asked. "Will you eat?" "He must not stay," the wisewoman said. "They will look for him in the village. In the morning they will come." It didn't require clairvoyance to figure that one out, Ramses thought. He nodded agreement. "All I want is information. Where is Tarek? How can I reach him?" "The boy will take you," the woman of the house said. "Your son?" The quick desperate look she gave the boy confirmed it. "No. It would be too dangerous for him." "I am not afraid," the boy said, squaring his shoulders. "I can see you are brave," Ramses said, putting his hand on the boy's bony shoulder. "But you are the only son, is it not so? Stay here. Tell me where to go." "He will take you part of the way," the wise woman said. "Past the guards and into the hills. There you will find another guide, one of the men of Tarek who keep watch." "The king knows you are here," the father said. "We sent word, and he sent word back to us, by the paths known only to us. Steep, dangerous little paths, suitable for rats." His mouth twisted as he repeated the word the contemptuous nobles had used for their slaves. "Then they will suit me," Ramses said. The mother had put together a little bundle containing food and a water jar. The boy slung it over his shoulder. His eyes shone with excitement and pride. Ramses was burning with curiosity about a number of things--how long Tarek had been out of power, the circumstances surrounding his fall, the extent and effectiveness of the network that worked for his return--but time was passing and they must be in concealment by morning. He tried to think of something to say. There was no word for luck in the language of the Holy Mountain. The old wisewoman had withdrawn into her wrappings. Only her eyes showed. "The gods be with you," she mumbled. "And with you." "Tell the king we will be ready when he sends word." "Ready," Ramses repeated. "Ready for what?" But he knew what she meant. Revolution, an armed uprising. Armed with sticks and stones. "The king will know," she said. "Go now, the hour is late." The following hours dealt Ramses's self-esteem quite a blow. He prided himself on his skill at rock-climbing, but the terrain was unfamiliar and the night was dark. Meekly he let the boy guide his feet and hands from one hold to another as, avoiding the stairs, they ascended the rocky wall to the level of the road. When he peered over the low parapet he saw that they had crossed the valley and were on the eastern side, below the abandoned villa he and his parents hadoccupied before. None too soon, either. Looking back, he saw the lights of torches spreading out across the floor of the valley. Most of them were clustered in the village. "Your family. Will they be all right?" he whispered. "Yes. Come. Hurry." There were more moving lights near the Great Temple and the palace, but the road above them was dark and unguarded. Then followed another humiliating period when he had to depend on the frail arms and small hands of a boy half his age. After they crossed the road at a scuttling run they began to climb again. Ramses soon lost his sense of direction as they wound back and forth across the cliff face; it required every ounce of concentration to find the hand- and footholds. He was short of breath and perspiring, despite the chill of the night air, when his guide reached a narrow ledge. "We stop here. The boat of the god will soon arise." Ramses was glad to lower himself onto the first horizontal stretch of land he had encountered all night. The ledge went back under an overhang, forming a shallow cave. It would help conceal them from sight and provide a little shade during the noonday heat--though probably not enough. "You do not travel these paths by daylight?" he asked, unfastening his pack and offering the boy the dates and bread his mother had provided. "Not unless we must." Pale light washed over the ledge. The sun had risen over the eastern heights above them. As the light strengthened, Ramses got his first good look at his companion. He was a typical member of the rekkit, small and thin, dark-skinned and black-haired. "What is your name?" Ramses asked. "Khat." "Mine is Ramses." The boy looked up, his eyes widening. "No, lord. You are the Great One, the friend, who speaks to the gods." "Not all who speak to the gods are answered." Good Lord, Ramses thought, I'm beginning to talk like Mother. He decided tochange the subject before, of all things, he found himself in a theological discussion. A pity his father wasn't with them. On second thought, perhaps it was just as well he wasn't. "Do we wait here until nightfall, then?" he asked. "Yes. One will come then to take you onward." He curled up at the back of the recess, his head on his own little pack, and promptly dropped off to sleep. Ramses was too keyed up to follow his example. He removed the binoculars from his pack. The ledge was approximately halfway up the cliff, a hundred feet above the road, and at its far northern end. It offered an excellent vantage point, but he was too far from the temples and palaces of the southern cliffs to distinguish details. He turned his gaze northward. There was certainly a considerable area of land there, but mist veiled the valley floor. He would have to wait until the sun was higher. Philosophically, he retreated into the recess and lay down. It was late afternoon before he woke, to find Khat sitting cross-legged beside him, unblinking black eyes fixed on his face. As soon as Ramses stirred, the boy whipped out his water bottle and offered it. The sun was a fiery blaze in the western sky; the light struck straight into the niche, and now Ramses made out crude drawings, graffiti, scratched onto the rock. "They are the gods," Khat explained. He didn't seem quite as much in awe of his companion as he had been. Listening to me snore and watching me sweat must have convinced him I was only human, Ramses thought wryly. The names Khat rattled off, indicating each figure in turn, were not the same as the ones the gods bore in Egypt, but Ramses recognized them: Isis with her crown of horns enclosing the disk; hawk-headed Horus; Khepri, the scarab beetle, guardian of the horizon, symbolizing the rising sun. After the sun had dropped below the western cliff and the valley was bathed in a gentle light, Ramses took out the binoculars and showed Khat how to use them. The boy gasped in wonder. "It is only a tool," Ramses said. "A thing of metal and glass, made by men. Show me where to find Tarek." A spur of rock cut part of his view, but the air was clear and he was able to make out the side wadi Khat described. The entrance had been fortified with cut masonry and what appeared to be a heavy gate. According to Khat, Tarek held the northern half of the oasis, with its villages and fields and springs, but he had not enough men to retake the city, and the usurper had not enough to overcome him. Modern weapons would make the difference, Ramses thought. But even if they could get such weapons to Tarek, had they the right to bring the curse of modern warfare to this place? Did the end justify the means? There had to be another, better way--one that did not involve a band of peasants armed only with sticks and stones. "I can find my way from here," he said. "Go back to your parents." The boy let out a hiss of alarm. "I see them, through the--the tool. Climbing, searching. Lie flat and be still." Ramses snatched the binoculars and focused them. The pursuers were some distance away and still far below, but they seemed to be following a path of some sort. Had someone in the village told them of the secret ways? The rekkit were loyal to Tarek, but there were potential traitors in any group, susceptible to threats or bribes. He shoved the binoculars into his pack and slung it on his back. "We must move on," he said urgently. "Go back. Do you know another way?" "Oh, yes," the boy said calmly. "But I will not go until one comes for you." Ramses was about to reply when he heard the rattle of rock overhead. He turned, pushing the boy behind him, as a man dropped down onto the ledge. His head was bare, but he carried a soldier's weapons, bow and quiver and short sword. He was as tall as Ramses, lean as a panther, and his dark face wore a broad grin of pleasure. Ramses drew his knife, knowing he had only a split second in which to prevent a cry of discovery. Then he saw what the man held in his outstretched hand. His arm fell.