Albray and myself nodded to second the motion.
‘But it has taken me months to get it open!’ Andre protested. ‘I haven’t even had the chance to look around yet!’
‘Believe me, you don’t want to,’ I advised, accompanying my guardians up the red-gold pathway to the exit.
‘But what about the fame and fortune?’ Andre was reluctant to leave the grand chamber and its walls of glittering gold.
‘The sun is setting,’ Akbar commented to his one-time employer. ‘You could stay here alone for all eternity, if you choose.’
Andre, not finding this a very attractive scenario, hotfooted it up the exit path behind us.
Outside, as the sun set, Andre, Conally and Tusca watched in bemusment while a multitude of Arab warriors buried the gateway in dirt and sand with the aid of Andre’s dormant excavation machinery. When the job was done the site was pretty much as they had probably found it. A few sirocco storms and no one would ever know that this side of the mountain had been excavated. The Melchi, having completed their chore, abandoned the equipment and took to their horses.
‘Just fantastic,’ Andre grumbled. ‘The most promising dig ever, ruined by some backward cult of thieves!’
‘It is you who are the thieves.’ Akbar overheard the comment and took offence. The murder of his two young companions was fuelling his resentment. Still, as the offenders had not been in possession of their sensibilities at the time, Akbar had decided not to seek retribution—he knew well enough the power of the creature that had been controlling them. ‘If you treasure your lives,’ he advised Andre and the others, ‘you will be gone by tomorrow noon and you will never return to the Sinai.’ Akbar looked at me and all his anger melted away as he approached to say farewell. ‘You, on the other hand, doctor…I feel sure we shall meet again.’
I was going to bow politely, or offer him a handshake, but at the risk of offending the man, I embraced him, albeit briefly. ‘No offence, Akbar, but I hope you are wrong about that.’ I pulled back to find him looking stunned but honoured. ‘Thanks for being there to catch my fall.’
‘Your death at this time would have been a great loss for humanity.’ He accepted my gratitude graciously before turning to Albray. ‘Fare thee well, my mysterious friend. I suspect I am more indebted to you than I know.’
‘Likewise.’ Albray returned the Arab warrior’s grin, as they shook hands.
‘Take very good care of this woman,’ Akbar requested, as I slid under Albray’s arm. ‘She has a thing for flinging herself off cliffs in the middle of the night.’
Albray looked at me in confusion—the stone had not been in my possession at that time, so of course my knight knew nothing of my near-death experience whilst trying to save the amulet.
‘Tell you later.’
‘Mia’s wellbeing is my reason for being,’ Albray assured Akbar, who nodded to wish us both well. If the man had questions he wanted to ask Albray, he refrained and mounted his horse instead.
We watched the hordes depart on horse and camel. ‘You do realise that my fee for this job just tripled,’ I said to Andre.
‘You speak as if the job is over, but we are just getting started.’ Andre winked at me ahead of striding off toward camp.
‘The project just got sabotaged by a local religious sect. Claim it on insurance and move on,’ I suggested, going after Andre to prevent him from picking a fight he would never win without starting a war.
‘I am not going to allow months of work to go to waste!’ Andre quickened his pace and waved forth Conally and Miss Resi. ‘I am taking our cocky Arab friend up on his challenge,’ Andre said. ‘I planted a tracking device on him.’
‘That is not really standard excavation equipment,’ I chided, concerned at the development, as I had seen Molier’s high-tech office.
‘Molier was not your standard archaeologist. He had ways and means.’ Andre did remember that much about his recently deceased employer. ‘I also planted the micro-camera from the headset that Molier gave me earlier.’
‘Good for you.’ Conally was inspired into action. ‘I’ll chase up Marty and we’ll follow the thieving bastards in the chopper.’
‘Here we go again.’ I threw up my hands, exasperated. ‘Do you people never learn?’ My colleagues ignored me as they shifted into hunting mode. I looked back to Albray, to find him having a quiet chuckle.
‘How do you expect them to learn from an experience they cannot remember?’
‘There is that,’ I granted, as my knight caught me up.
‘Not to worry, they shall realise their folly presently.’ Albray took up my hand and kissed it. ‘Shall we retire to your tent and leave them to their wild goose chase?’
I wished that I were as confident that Akbar could not be tracked. ‘It is not that I don’t trust you, or that your proposal is not far more inviting—’
‘I know, you just worry that I am a little old-fashioned and naive,’ Albray said, not insulted, but aware.
‘I need closure.’ I backed up to follow Andre and Miss Resi into Molier’s abode.
‘Suit yourself.’ Albray changed course from my tent to follow me.
‘Let me handle Andre.’ I urged my knight against accompanying me. ‘Your presence will probably just aggravate the situation.’
‘Whatever you think is best.’ Albray kissed me, and reluctantly dragged himself away to resume his course to my tent. ‘I shall find some clothes then, shall I?’
‘No, don’t.’ I grinned, wanting desperately to accompany him back to my tent. But I owed it to Ashlee, Lillet and all my foremothers to see those keys delivered beyond the reach of treasure seekers like Tusca, Conally and Andre.
In Molier’s mobile office, Andre had Miss Resi in the computer hot seat and was shooting orders at her in French.
‘I do know what I’m doing,’ she barked back at him, whilst typing at triple the speed of a normal human being. ‘We should have a visual.’ She hit a final key and a window opened on the desktop screen of the overhead monitor—this featured a bouncing view of the desert, as seen from the right-hand saddlebag of Akbar’s horse.
‘What about the transmitter?’ Andre wanted confirmation that they could track the signal hidden on our target.
Tusca resumed typing nineteen to the dozen, whereupon a second window opened on the overhead monitor. This window contained a radar screen that was reading one solitary flashing dot, slightly left of centre. ‘The target is about half a kilometre from us on a westerly bearing.’
‘Merci, Mademoiselle Resi.’ Andre pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt and informed Conally and Marty to head west in the chopper.
‘Even if you do discover where they take the keys, how do you plan on reclaiming them?’ I attempted to reason with my colleagues. ‘Only Allah knows how many of these warriors there are.’
I had never seen Andre truly annoyed at me before, but the dark look on his face told me I was not in favour at present. ‘Well, if you had not given an assassin the keys to our find, I would not have to go looking for them.’
I placed my hands on my hips. After the day I had endured I was not going to become the scapegoat for the failure of this project. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t assume to place blame for this affair on anyone, until I could explain my own whereabouts at the time. You have nearly cost me my life several times—’
Andre’s eyes fell upon the bloodied holes in my shirt. ‘Oh, my goddess, Mia. You’ve been shot!’ Of course the Frenchman did not hesitate to seize the opportunity to rip open my shirt, and gasped when he found nothing but smeared bloodstains on my bare belly. ‘What the…?’
I was at a complete loss for words. The thought of recounting my tale was completely exhausting to me.
‘What happened to us…to Molier?’ Tusca humbly appealed. She was as beat up as Andre, and like him could not remember how she had sustained her injuries. I think she sensed that she’d done something horrible that, like a nightmare she couldn’t remember, had left her w
ith a deep sense of foreboding.
‘You do not want to know.’ I began to shake as the recollection of the day’s events sent shockwaves pulsing through my being. ‘Molier is dead…but as he was ultimately responsible for the murder of Akbar’s two young companions—’
Tusca gasped. Maybe she had a recollection of something.
‘—I’d say that Christian Molier’s demise was karma, and long overdue. I gave the keys to Akbar because the treasures of the gods are dangerous in the hands of ordinary men. Trust me when I warn you that no good will come from pursuing those keys at this time.’
‘Andre, are you there?’ Conally’s voice sounded from the walkie-talkie and startled us all.
Andre fetched up the communicator. ‘Oui.’
‘There is a sirocco headed our way. Our Arab friends are heading straight into a towering cloud of dirt! We cannot take the chopper in there…we’ll have to turn back. Are you tracking them?’
‘Affirmative,’ replied Andre.
‘We’ll resume this pursuit when the storm passes,’ Conally resolved. ‘Over and out.’
‘That’s one big wall of sand, all right,’ Tusca commented, viewing the approaching storm via Akbar’s horse-cam. ‘You would have to be mad not to seek shelter.’
‘Perhaps tracking the band will prove rather fortuitous for them?’ Andre was imagining a rosy outcome, where the Arab gratefully gave the keys back to him in gratitude for saving his life.
Static began to creep into the image that Akbar’s horse-cam was transmitting as his party penetrated the storm. The signal that marked our target on the monitor also began to weaken.
‘Is the storm causing the interference?’ I wondered, suppressing my glee as the disruptions intensified.
Tusca was perplexed. She continued typing in a losing battle to restore the transmissions. ‘The storm shouldn’t affect the signals to this extent.’ Tusca, out of ideas, sat back in her seat. The camera window on the monitor turned to total static and the transmitter signal faded completely.
‘I guess we need an invitation, after all.’ I suppressed my relief at the systems failure.
Andre was staring at the monitor, absolutely devastated. ‘Quel cauchemar,’ he uttered, slouching as he conceded defeat.
‘A nightmare, indeed,’ I echoed. ‘Fortunately for you, you don’t remember any of it. And from this moment on, I plan to have complete memory failure also.’
Andre and Tusca looked at each other, both carrying a heaviness and guilt that they could not explain. Tusca nodded, thinking it was the best solution for all involved. With a sigh, Andre looked at me and smiled. ‘The project was sabotaged by a local religious sect and we barely escaped with our lives. Fin d’histoire.’
‘Merci beaucoup.’ I backed up, wanting to make myself absent before Conally returned. I was more than happy to leave Andre and Tusca to do the explaining. ‘I’m packing for home.’
EPILOGUE
FROM THE POST-SINAI JOURNAL OF MRS ASHLEE DEVERE
En route back to England I collected Nanny Beat, so that she might fulfil her desire to be nurse to my forthcoming child. It would have been lovely to linger with the gypsies, but with my father’s health hanging in the balance I felt the greatest urgency to return home as soon as was humanly possible. I promised to visit the Continent as soon as motherhood and family life allowed, and Devere and I assured Cingar that the Choron clan would always be welcome at the Granville estate in Suffolk.
We made it home by the celebration of Michaelmas. The autumn chill was making itself felt at the Granville manor in Suffolk, where my father had retired to wait out the cold winter months as he did every year now that he was getting older. Since my mother’s death he had lost much of his enthusiasm for taking up invitations to visit with other members of the country gentry.
I do not believe that I have ever known my father to be so happy to see me, nor so proud of me for that matter. For all the grand and amazing tales of travel I had to tell him, it was my conception of a child that impressed him most, as he’d felt sure he’d never see the day. Needless to say, my dear Mr Devere was now very much in my father’s good books.
‘My spirits insist that I am carrying a male child, papa,’ I brazenly informed him, and for the first time in his life my father was prepared to wholeheartedly believe one of my predictions.
The news of his forthcoming grandson improved my father’s health considerably. He had no intention of leaving this earth before he’d had the opportunity to make an impression on his heir.
Before I set foot on English soil I had packed away my green velvet adventuring guise and weapons; my yen for travel had been satisfied for the present and I felt it was time to assume the role of Mrs Devere, wife, dutiful daughter and soon-to-be mother. The green velvet attire would no longer stretch around my expanding form in any case, but in the years ahead I would have need of this clothing again.
I also packed away Lord Hamilton’s journal. I had found the time to finish reading it on my way home. In the empty volume with the secret compartment, I placed what remained of the bottle of flammable foul-smelling fluid from the Star-Fire Temple. Packing away Albray’s stone proved not so easy.
After a long discussion by the fire in my drawing room one evening, having reminisced about our journey together, my knight and I both agreed that if I cherished my marriage, our further association simply wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t that Devere didn’t like Albray. How could he not, when the knight had saved our lives? It was more that my husband wasn’t comfortable with another man, even a dead one, being closer to me than he was.
It was Albray who requested that his stone of summons be packed away in the back of Lord Hamilton’s hollow journal, and that the volumes, along with my journal, be passed down through the female line of my family.
‘But what if I never have a daughter?’ I inquired, as Albray had predicted I was having a boy child.
‘You shall be far too happy within your marriage to Devere, I fear, for I foresee that you shall be blessed with several children.’ The knight’s news shocked me. ‘Teach them all that you know, and that there is a world of many beliefs out there…none of them perfect, but all worthy of consideration and respect.’
My guardian and I conversed until dawn, and with the coming of the first rays of the new day I dismissed Albray from my life.
I was sad that I had not been the one to free Albray from his curse. Still, as I placed the stone inside the secret compartment, I knew that many years from now, one of my great, great grand-daughters would find this stone and free the knight, just as the black-clad female spirit in the temple had assured me.
It was on a visit to the home of Lord Malory, many years later, that I finally discovered the identity of the dark lady. The lord was the proud owner of a magnificent painting depicting Mary Magdalene’s arrival in France, her belly swollen with child. The woman in the painting was the very image of the mysterious dark lady who had spoken with me in the temple. Obviously this painting was a recent creation and not a portrait of the Great Mother herself, but perhaps she had chosen to present herself to me in this image, knowing that one day I would see this painting and recognise her.
Whatever the reason for the striking coincidence, it was her prediction that influenced me to compile this account of Albray, and the quest to secure the treasures entrusted to our family line. On my honour, every word of this account is true.
Dear daughter, if you are reading this journal and have found the treasure stone of my knight, then perhaps you are the one who will free him? If you do, I assure you that you shall find a friend and guardian beyond reproach, whose wise counsel, bravery and devotion will capture your heart, as surely as it did mine. I am forever in this man’s debt, and if you do manage to succeed where I have failed, dear one, then I am forever in your debt also.
Yours, Ashlee Devere
‘The pleasure was all mine, Ashlee.’ I closed the huge old volume and looked at Albray, who had fallen asleep o
n my shoulder—an amazing feat since this was his first experience of air travel.
I didn’t want to take my eyes off my lover in case he vanished again and sleep hardly seemed so inviting now that my knight was part of my reality. But my body was begging me to shut down my questioning mind and heightened emotions.
I leant my head upon Albray’s to get comfortable, when I noted a man, seated across the aisle from us, look away quickly when my gaze fell upon him. Under normal circumstances I would not have thought twice about it, but after reading volumes about secret brotherhoods and manipulating bloodlines and romances, I had become overly paranoid. What if the brothers were still trying to create their superbeing? Surely a match like Albray and myself would be of great interest to them.
Get a grip, Mia. How could anyone possibly know that you are a daughter of Isis, or that Albray is a resurrected Grail prince from the thirteenth century? I comforted myself with the notion that I might look like someone the fellow knows, or he could be a pervert, or perhaps I had food on my face? I checked my face to eliminate the last possibility.
When I observed him for some time and he didn’t give us a second glance, my guard came down along with my eyelids.
I was thinking of Lillet as I began to doze. I did feel a little guilty for stealing the love of her life, but then again the priestess had urged me not to make the same mistakes as she had regarding Albray and I fully intended to follow that advice.
I recognised the lovely garden I was entering, although I had hardly expected that I would have cause to return here.
When I entered through the gate to find Lillet seated beside the fountain where I had found her before, I was a little disappointed. ‘What are you still doing here?’ I came to stand before her. She rose to greet me, her smile broader than ever I had seen it.
‘I have only delayed that I might bid you farewell.’ She took hold of both my hands. ‘I could not ascend from this place until I thanked you for fulfilling your promise to free Albray and myself.’
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