The Companion (44 page)

They took their readings from the sextant and the chronometer for position at about eleven o’clock the next night, then calculated the seasonal difference between where it would be on the full moon of the half solstice and where it was now. That differential would put it almost exactly between the twin peaks of the tallest mountains in Atlas el Kabhir, the spine of the earth. Beth pored over the scrolls and checked the reference once again by lamplight.

“We are very close now.” Beth rolled the papers on which she had recorded their position each night and tied them with a ribbon. Her breeches and boots had become as familiar as the sand and wind to Ian. Indeed, her small form
seemed even more feminine in shirt and waistcoat and breeches than in her woman’s robes. Ian heard a camel bray behind them. “Watch each ravine opening for one that looks familiar,” Beth said.

“They all look familiar,” he muttered, dubious.

“We’ll take our position frequently,” she assured him.

“Let’s hope we made the proper conversion for the difference in seasons.”

“You confirmed our mathematics with the sailing master of the cutter. I think we’re fine.”

“Do we have enough water to hold out if it takes some time to search?” Ian asked.

She turned and gazed in the bright light of a moon nearly full to the waiting camels and the men. “I think we can make it back to Haasi Fokra if we find Kivala tonight or tomorrow. It will not be pleasant, but it can be done.” She chewed her lip. “I would send one or two back now, but it would be a death sentence if they were set upon by roaming Bedouin or Berbers. There is safety in numbers.” She turned and smiled at him. A warm breeze ruffled her disobedient strands of hair. It occurred to him that Beth belonged here, in the desert, as Asharti could never belong with her white skin, no matter that the vampire made herself up to look like an Egyptian goddess. Once he had hated the desert. But one could not hate Beth’s place.

He returned Beth’s smile and took her arm as they trudged back to the caravan. He found himself seeking her touch, even with its consequences. “We move,” he ordered in Arabic.

Beth climbed up to her camel’s back, one foot on the beast’s knee, turned onto the saddle, her own knee hooked over the horn. Ian mounted his beast in a bound. The camels lurched to their feet, protesting with honking brays all along the line. The men ululated and flicked their sticks. The caravan wound into the desert once again.

For Ian time seemed to have stopped. Day had followed day in such monotony that they were like insects suspended in amber, caught between the need that drove them on and
the fear of what lay ahead in a blue-black night above a gray sand. It was almost morning when Ian’s new night vision saw a black spot appear along a dune to the east, and then another. He stared. The spots elongated as they rose over the dune and were joined by others. Raiders!

“Run!” he yelled in Arabic. “We’re under attack!” He laid his crop across his camel’s flank. Cries echoed along the line. He saw Beth glance to the horizon and kick her camel forward. The caravan lumbered out toward the northeast along the sandstone cliffs they had been following, but the animals soon outstripped the men who ran beside them.

They would not outrun their attackers. There were a dozen of them, Berbers by their dress. The swift, small horses skidded recklessly down the dune and galloped out. Ian thumped his heels against his camel and wielded his crop without compunction to catch up to Beth, who had the lead. “We’ll never outrun them. Head for that ravine!” He pointed ahead and to the left.

She spotted it and turned her camel’s head, yelling in Arabic, “Drivers! The ravine!”

Ian pulled his mount around and saw a straggler lose his head to a curved sword. Ian pulled his pistol from the belt fastened around his burnoose and felled the lead rider. A dozen would be enough to decimate their little caravan. Another driver fell. Camels skittered away. The Berbers yelled in triumph. Ian let fly his second shot. One of the riders jerked back; his horse rocked on its haunches and fell, dumping the rider. Ian threw away the pistol and reached for his other. Two more shots. His blood began to hum.

The remaining four camel drivers and the guide had turned and were trying to make some defense with short swords. But they were no match for the thundering black-robed horsemen.

Ian missed with his next shot or the man just kept coming. Two drivers were down. He shot the leader of the raiders in the head at almost point-blank range. Already dead, the rider jerked at his horse, who stumbled into Ian’s camel. Ian went down, scrambling to reach his sword before the others
could overtake him. He glanced away to see Beth disappearing toward the sandstone walls. They would not protect her if the Berbers got by him.

Sword out, he scrambled up in time to slash at a rider. The returning slash cut his shoulder. It did not matter. He had to keep these barbarians from Beth. The song in his blood ramped up. He spared only a glance to the falling man, who clutched his side. They might be Asharti’s, but they were not vampire, or they would be stronger. Six leaped from their horses, swords drawn. Ian hefted the sword Beth had given him. The black robes and turbans circled him in the waxing light. Six? Only six? He grinned as his Companion surged along his veins. Two more Berbers joined the circle. Very well, eight. He let his eyes go red.

The next moments were a blur. Slashing on both sides. A head rolled and another. His sword found a belly and withdrew. He felt a stabbing pain in his groin. Another stroke he parried. He switched his sword to his left hand and struck out, while his right hand squeezed a throat until his fingers found bone. There were three now. He could see the fear in their eyes. A growl in his throat grew into a roar. He lunged at one and put his sword clear through the man’s chest. One of the remaining men shrieked. Both turned and ran. Ian did not run after them. His Companion rose in him. The pain shot through him. Then he was in front of them, turning to face them. They trembled, gibbering. Two strokes and it was done.

He stood in a circle of bloody sand and body parts as the power eased back down his veins. The singing sank to a hum and was gone. Ian blinked.

What had he done? Of twelve, not one was left alive. Most were not whole. He breathed out slowly and dropped the sword. The sound as it hit the sand was loud in the silence of death around him. Twelve Berbers, six drivers . . . Beth!

He looked around him and started for the black slash of the ravine at a run. But again his Companion rushed up through his veins. His surroundings blurred. The pain
slashed for a single instant. He was at the ravine. It loomed above him. Beth stepped out of the shadows.

“Ian!” She stumbled to meet him. “Ian, are you hurt?” She touched him, examining him in the dim predawn that she could not see in as well as he could.

He looked down at his own body, realizing his wounds for the first time. His burnoose was splashed with blood, his hands covered in gore to the elbows, but only his shoulder and his groin shrieked and told him he was hurt. “I’ll be fine. It won’t last long, you know.”

“Sit,” she ordered. “I’ll gather up the camels.”

He started to protest. “We need you whole,” she said, annoyed. “Be sensible.”

He sighed. “Yes, O Sensible One.” He slid down against the rock wall as he watched her stand still and cluck to the frightened beasts. To his amazement, not only the camels but also several horses came slowly up to her outstretched hand. She tethered the camels to one another and led one horse. Two others followed meekly. Her air of calm acceptance attracted them. Was that acceptance born of her practical connection to the world? He wished he felt connected. Ever since he had become . . . say it, a vampire, connection to the world of men and animals and living had been growing more tenuous. Now he felt most alive when the Companion was surging through his veins. He didn’t like to think about that.

As he watched Beth approach, he could feel his sinews knitting themselves. He was healing faster than he had before. If he concentrated, he could feel the split ligaments in his groin reaching for each other, the blood vessels reuniting. His body was making itself whole—a useful talent, to be sure. His soul wanted wholeness, too. Would that that were as easy.

He leaned back against the rock wall of the ravine, cool now with night. He rolled his head and stared into the darkness as the narrow rift disappeared into the high rock walls. Then he sat straight and looked at the opposite wall, the sand floor, the view out across the desert. A premonition cascaded
over him. Uncertainty warred with recognition. He peered into the dark cleft again with sight that now penetrated where human eyes could not have seen. There! He pushed himself erect and took a few steps into the darkness.

A giant’s stair was cut into the rock wall with steps impossibly high. The night he had been here with Asharti came flooding back: his exhaustion, despair. His only glimmer of hope had been that he would die, no matter how horrible the death.

The hand on his shoulder made him jump. He swung around and only just stopped himself from striking out at Beth. “For God’s sake!” he swore. “You almost got yourself killed.”

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I called. You did not hear.”

He glanced behind her to where she had hobbled one camel and one horse and tied the rest together. His senses sifted the air. Just faintly, he smelled cinnamon and the coming dawn.

Beth studied his face. “Is this . . . ?”

He nodded and strode to the pack animals. “If we hurry, we can make it, if not to the temple itself, then to shelter in one of the tombs before the sun rises very far.” He untied two leather water bags, slung them both upon his shoulder, and strode past Beth. He did not wait to see if she followed. Beth would not falter now.

She did not, though she sometimes had to run to keep up. But she did not complain. They passed the great pillars of the entrance to the city. Beth craned to see their capitals as they hurried by. The ornately carved doors to the occasional tombs made her hesitate, but he called her on. He knew how much she wanted to study these most wonderful proofs of her father’s dream. But somewhere the sun was already over the horizon.

Once she touched his arm. “What were Berbers doing this far south?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he said shortly, intent on gaining shelter.

She nodded thoughtfully. “Just wondering.”

They had walked for more than an hour before they came
to the ruined square, with its toppled columns and desecrated statues. Ian paused to get his bearings. Which way?

Beth wandered over to one huge stone head, chipped and shattered by its fall, and stood staring at it. Ian was drawn to her side. “What is it?”

“You tell me,” she said softly.

Ian cocked his head to examine the face. The eyes slanted; the lips were tiny and straight, the nose inhumanly long, the diminutive chin pointed. “A likeness of the Old One? He Who Waits.”

Beth gave a shudder, as well she might. Ian wondered for the thousandth time if there was some way he could have avoided bringing her to this godforsaken place. She glanced to another statue, still standing. This one clearly had the head of a sphinx, like the one in Cairo, even down to the fact that the head was a little too small for the body. But the two statues had originally matched, being two sides of an arch. She chewed her lip, speculating. “If they had finished revising both figures, their presence might have been hidden forever.” She glanced up at Ian and managed a smile. “Now we know who built the Sphinx so long ago that it could erode from rainfall. Whatever happens, I shall be grateful for that knowledge.”

A breath of dawn brought a stronger scent of cinnamon, now tinged with ambergris. Ian shook himself. “Over there.” He led the way among the ruins as he felt the sun peek over the wall behind him. He was taking her into a place of unthinkable danger. He must send her back to the surface once she had decoded the entry to the chamber of the Old One. But the camel drivers were dead. What if the Old One killed him? It was not only a possible but also a likely outcome. She had water enough to get back to Haasi Fokra, but she would be alone in a desert that had Berber raiders in it. That had never been the plan.

Berbers. What had Beth said? “What were Berbers doing this far south?” Air hissed in through Ian’s teeth. Because they were part of an army that belonged to Asharti? Asharti had every reason to be here in the place that was the source
of her strength. The attackers were not vampires. But only a hundred or so of her vast hordes would be vampires.

It could be. Suddenly the scent of cinnamon hanging in the air might have two meanings. Ian grabbed Beth’s hand and broke into a run.

They slid through the archway into the rift on the far side of the great square just as the rays of the sun stabbed over the far walls. Ian felt a wash of burning discomfort on the back of his bare head, and then he reached the protective shadows of the rift. It was not long before they stood before the great temple facade. The rosy limestone cut into a thousand fanciful gargoyles and a parade of scenes in bas-relief all brought back the horrid night when he had lost his humanity. The enormous columns rising to support the wonderful pediment framed a gaping black doorway four men high that led to the inner chambers where the Old One waited. Inside lay death, perhaps. Ian stood, the stillness of the dead city seeping into his soul. Once death was all he had wanted. That was no longer true. He glanced to Beth. He wanted life, and he must conquer Asharti to get it.

Beth held her breath in front of the temple. It was beautiful, just like Petra, and menacing when she remembered what must lay within. She shuddered, not because she was afraid of the temple, though she should be, but because she might be about to fail Ian. Ian looked back at her, his eyes filled with determination rather than that old helpless pain. No matter what the obstacles, he must prevail here if he was ever to be whole in spirit. She
had
to do her part.

She swallowed and followed him into the darkness. They were weaponless, but no human weapons could best what lay inside this temple. What would happen if she did open the door? What would the Old One, whose broken image she had seen in the square, do when Ian confronted him? But she had faith in Ian. He would know what to do.