Lady of Heaven (35 page)

He shrugged.
“Maybe,” he held out a hand to help her over the seat. “But in your case, it
happens to be true.”

The car hit a
bump and Morgan ended up flipping over the back of the seat and into Fox’s
lap.   She whooped as he grabbed her, holding her tightly so she wouldn’t fall
off.  She put her arms around his big neck as the car lurched over rough road.

“So tell me
about Mt. Nusruq,” she said. “You mentioned that it was a gold mine.”

He pondered her
question. “How technical do you want me to get?”

“As much as you
feel the need for,” she replied. “But remember that science is not my strong
point. You may see me dozing off if you get too technical.”

He snorted. 
“Okay, let’s see,” he thought a moment. “To begin with, this entire area is
largely underlain by late Precambrian meta-sediments, meta-volcanics and
ultramafic rocks intruded by younger to older granitic plutons. The Precambrian
sequences are overlain by Cretaceous Nubian sandstone….”

He was cut off
when Morgan slapped a hand over his mouth. “Oh, dear God,” she groaned. “Are
you serious? I lied. You can’t get as technical as you want. Give it to me in
simple terms.”

He grinned, her
hand still over his mouth.  “Basically,” he said as she removed her hand. “It
just means that this was hotbed for mining from the Pharaonic through Roman
times.  The Romans had a couple of forts out here to protect the gold mines;
one was at Samut, which I mentioned yesterday, and another is at Mt. Nusruq.”

“Are there still
Roman ruins there?” she asked.

He nodded.
“There are but, more importantly, there have been modern mining operations there
in the past few decades.  I’m not sure what’s there now, so we’ll need to be
prepared if there is.”

“What does that
mean?”

“It means we
can’t jump their mining claim. We can’t dig there if there’s already another
operation.”

Morgan didn’t
like that thought at all; they’d come so far and it made her sick to think that
they wouldn’t be able to see their quest through to completion.  But she
remained silent on the matter as Fox shifted her down to the seat beside him
and kept a big arm around her.

“The eastern
desert is actually very rich in history,” he went on, not entirely oblivious to
her sudden melancholy. “There are several rock paintings out here from the Old
Kingdom.  It’s also heavy in Roman history because of the gold mines and
because of the trade routes from the Red Sea.”

“Did you get a
chance to travel out here when you were digging at Edfu?” she asked, trying to
divert her thoughts from the possibility of not being able to dig around at Mt.
Nusruq.

He gave her a
squeeze. “Not really,” he said. “I was focused on Edfu and didn’t take the time
to sight-see. I probably should have, though.”

The car
continued along the desolate dirt road on its trip north to the main Mars Alam
highway.  Morgan eventually fell silent, watching the scenery as the twenty kilometers
passed before she realized it.  Soon, they were at the main highway and Jabeel
took a left turn, heading east.

The road was
smoother and paved, and much more comfortable.  Pushing thoughts of not being
able to explore Mt. Nusruq aside, Morgan settled down against Fox and
eventually dozed off in the mid-morning warmth. 

Fox felt her go
limp against him and he put both arms around her, supporting her so she
wouldn’t slide off.  He knew she was worried about Mt. Nusruq now and the
possibility that there were mining operations going on there.  He wasn’t
concerned, however; he suspected they would be able to walk around and explore
the area and if they happened to sink a hole here and there looking for
anything that might indicate a tunnel or tomb, then so be it. He was willing to
take the heat.

***

After taking a
road off the main highway that took them southeast to Mt. Nusruq, the mountain
range itself appeared around noon.  Fox had his maps and images out and was
able to pinpoint the mountain easily, so the old Land Rover drew close to the
ancient mountain as the desert winds began to kick up.

Morgan stuck her
head from the car, peering up at the mountains that supposedly housed Isis’
tomb.  Coming from Southern California, she was used to big mountains and this
one looked more like a foothill to her than a real mountain.  But she climbed
out of the car, stretching her stiff body and wriggling her sore arms around as
Fox, with a big satellite photo in his hands, began to walk around the area to
get his bearings.  Tired, and feeling car sick to boot, Morgan trailed after
him, kicking up rocks and dust as she went.

They walked for
several hundred feet until Fox suddenly came to a halt.  Morgan walked up
beside him, shielding her eyes from the bright noon sun.

“What is it?”
she asked.

He pointed off
to his left. “The Roman settlement ruins,” he said. “See them?”

Morgan was
suddenly more interested in her surroundings and less car sick as she walked
towards the ancient ruins.   The ground was rocky and uneven as she came upon
the piles of stone that constituted an ancient Roman camp.  She could see what
looked like a puzzle, little squares of rocks adjoining bigger squares of
rocks.  It looked like a giant had walked through and kicked down most of the
walls with the way stones were scattered around. There were hundreds of
adjoining squares, all of which Morgan found it quite fascinating.

“So what are all
of these buildings?” she turned a full circle, looking at all of the piles. “It
looks like there were a lot of people here.”

Fox wiped the
sweat off his brow as he followed her gaze. “Hundreds at the very least,” he
told her. “Roman mining camps not only contained prisoners for the slave labor,
but also soldiers, quartermasters, cooks, commanders, you name it. Over to the
west, right over there, looks like it was a big building. Probably either a
temple or the commander’s quarters. Maybe even a store house.”

Morgan put a
hand up, blocking out the sun as she turned full circle again. “Cool,” she
commented. “So where was the oasis where travelers would rest?”

Fox pointed
toward the south. “There is a cluster of trees to the south end of this range,”
he said. “It was down there.”

“Is there a
spring?”

“There was. I
don’t know if it’s still active.”

Thoughts
lingering on the oasis, Morgan’s attention returned once again to the ruins
across the dirt road so she went over to inspect them. The wind kicked up,
whipping her ponytail around as she stepped inside the ruinous walls. She held
on to her hair as she looked around.

“This is really
cool,” she said, eventually turning so that she faced the southeast.  Her brown
eyes were fixed on something in the distance.  When Fox eventually joined her
inside the ruins, she pointed.

“See that down
there?” she asked softly.

He turned
casually, looking to what she was pointing at. “I saw it,” he said evenly.
“It’s the mining operations.”

“It looks like a
big operation.”

He nodded before
turning to look at her. “Look, love, I know you’re worried about that, but I
don’t think we need to do any digging down where they are.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he
looked back at the image in his hand. “I’ve been thinking about this and it
seems to me that, if I were an ancient Egyptian burying my dead, the last place
I would bury it was in the middle of a gold mine.  The Egyptians liked to do
things secretly, not where people were going to be digging all of the time.”

Morgan nodded.
“That makes sense,” she agreed. “So where would you bury your dead?”

Fox looked up at
the hills to the west of the ruins; they were dark and jagged.  He pointed to
them. “Look at those,” he told her. “What do they remind you of?”

Morgan looked up
at the dark, ragged hills, and cocked her head thoughtfully. “Like a bunch of
knife blades, pointing upwards.”

“Or fingers that
reach to the sky?”

Her eyes widened
and she looked at him. “Yes,” she hissed in agreement. “That’s exactly what
they look like. What did the papyrus say about that again?”

He drew in a
long, thoughtful breath as he recalled. “…
which lies deep to the east in the
arms of the Syene, to the Fingers that Reach to the Sky. May she know grace and
divine protection, our Holy Mistress, foremost Lady of the West, as she Rests
in the Shelter of the Sun.”

Morgan looked
around, pondering the passage. “It uses the Fingers that Reach to the Sky like
a landmark,” she reasoned. “And it says as she rests
in
the Shelter of
the Sun, not on it or beneath it. Is that significant?”

Fox shrugged.
“It could be,” he said. “In could either mean literally inside of it or maybe
in view of it.”

“So if she’s not
buried in the gold mine of Mt. Nusruq, wouldn’t it stand to reason that she’d
be buried in view of it?”

“It would.”

For some reason,
Morgan turned to look at the small hill that the Roman ruins were built
around.  They were spread out all around the small hill but not up the slope or
on top of it.  She wasn’t sure why that hill stuck out to her, but it did.  It
was equidistance between the dark, jagged hills and the gold mine of Mt.
Nusruq, sitting alone in the wilderness.  A thought suddenly occurred to her
and she turned to Fox.

“Look at that
hill,” she pointed at it. “It’s got a great view of not only the gold mine but
also of the Fingers that Reach to the Sky.  See how it’s shaped? Almost like a
pyramid with a flat top. You said that pyramids weren’t built until thousands
of years after Ranthor was supposed to have existed. But what if…?”

He was following
her with interest. “What if what?”

Morgan shook her
head, turning to the hill again. “I don’t know,” she was out of her element but
somehow, what she was thinking made sense. “I’m not an archaeologist, but
aren’t some of the really old monuments and temples all worn down from
thousands of years of erosion and sand?”

He nodded.
“Sure.”

She was growing
more excited about her thoughts. “I’ve seen pictures of them, looking like
lumps and hills,” she pointed at the distant hill. “Looking like that. What if…
what if, five thousand years ago, that was a temple or a tomb that was built by
ancient people? Wouldn’t it look like just another hill or lump of sand after
all of that time exposed to the elements?”

He looked at the
hill and cocked his head. “That’s reasonable,” he said. “But tombs weren’t
built like that back then, love. They were….”

“How do you
know?” she pressed, cutting him off. “You said yourself that pre-dynastic
Egyptians were kind of a mystery.  Since it was so long ago and there’s so much
mystery about how they did things, who says they didn’t build a tomb way back
then that now looks like a hill?  Look at the location of that hill and tell me
if it doesn’t look out of place to you, a lone hill in the middle of a
flat-bottomed sand bed.”

He studied it,
the shape and size. “It does. Slightly. But that doesn’t mean it was a tomb or
a temple.”

She looked over
at it, surrounding by Roman ruins at the base.   Another thought occurred to
her. “Then tell me this,” she said slowly. “Why didn’t the Roman’s build on it?
Is it possible that, two thousand years ago, it looked more like a temple or
tomb than it does now? Maybe they could see that. Maybe that’s why they didn’t
build on it.  They built all around it, but not
on
it. Why?”

He just looked
at her.  After a moment, a grin creased his lips. “For someone who’s not an
archaeologist, that was pretty good.  And I’m almost on-board with you except
for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

He pointed to
the hill. “If the Romans knew that was a temple or a tomb, they would have
plundered the hell out of it.”

She wouldn’t
back down. “Who says they didn’t?” she countered. “We won’t know until we find
out if there’s anything underneath all that sand and rock.”

He thought on
that, shrugging his big shoulders after a moment. “Good point.”

She watched him
as he stared off toward the hill, thinking maybe she was being too pushy about
it. She really didn’t know anything about the ancient Egyptians, certainly not
like Fox knew.  She began to feel foolish and backed down a little.

“Did you have
another place in mind to start digging?” she asked. “You’ve been looking over
those satellite image photos for days. Maybe you’ve already figured it out.”

He shifted on
his big legs, resting his fists on his hips. “I had a few places in mind but
nothing as convincing as what you just pointed out,” he winked at her.  “We can
do a few test holes on that hill tomorrow morning and see if we come up with
anything. It’s as good a place to start as any.”

“Hopefully my
arms will have recovered a little.”

He handed her
the images.  When she took them, he began massaging her arms.  Morgan groaned
and grunted with the pleasure-pain of it.  Buffeted around in his powerful
grip, she ended up off balance and falling into his arms.  She laughed when he
caught her, scooped up, and carried her out of the ruins.