Reckless

by Shannon Drake

  The pyramids were no longer gleaming. They were just…there.

  But she was determined not to complain. So her throat was as dry as a rusty razor. So she might never walk again. So she was parboiled, inside and out.

  “Brian! Hunter!”

  Thank God! It was Camille, several horses ahead of her, who cried out.

  “We must stop…we must break for just a minute, I beg you!”

  “Camille, there’s a little watering hole, not even a true oasis, but it’s just ahead. Can you hang on for five minutes?”

  “Five minutes! Indeed.”

  Of course, five minutes was really half an hour. As she rode up to the small spot of water in the ground, surrounded by a few scraggly date palms, Kat feared that she would not be able to get off her horse without falling. Hunter was up front with the guide Abdul and Brian, studying a sheet. She realized with some trepidation that it was the sketch she had made of Camille’s missing map.

  “May I help you dismount?”

  She looked down. David was there.

  She doubted she could make it on her own. “Yes, thank you,” she said.

  He was circumspect, gripping her by the waist, giving her a chance for balance, then releasing her. He offered her one of his smiles.

  “Thank you,” she told him.

  He offered her his canteen. Again, she thanked him. At the first touch of the water on her lips, she longed to drink until the canteen was drained.

  “Slow, steady!” he warned softly.

  “I’m so sorry!” she said, and returned it.

  He grinned. “I can refill it here. You just have to be careful. You can get very sick, gulping water out here!”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  She wobbled slightly as she made her way to the water hole, anxious to douse her face in it. Camille was there, perched on the trunk of a fallen palm. She had her hat in her hand and was waving it to cool her face. She offered Kat a sheepish smile. “It is very hot.”

  “And it’s winter,” Kat added.

  “It won’t be so bad once we make camp,” Camille said, and Kat had to laugh, wondering which of them she was trying to assure.

  “Camille, are we looking for a location on the basis of what I drew?” Kat asked worriedly.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What exactly?”

  “We knew approximately where we were digging. But that map gave clues that we could find nowhere else. Look. Look over the sand. What do you see?”

  “Sand.”

  Camille shook her head. “See how it undulates?”

  “I believe that is heat rising.”

  “No, no, the waves of sand itself. When you see those rises, no matter how slight, it means that something is probably buried beneath. Take the Sphinx—they don’t really know yet just how deep it actually goes. Desert sands are merciless. They can cover whole cities, rises, cliffs, all but the greatest of buildings. You see, there is an area, this we know, where there were cliff formations. Not true cliffs, but formations caused by changes over thousands of years. They made a natural cover for certain graves, just as the Valley of Kings was a natural site, due to the terrain. What we’re seeking is completely covered, but once discovered, it should be a complex, with rooms leading to shafts leading to more rooms.”

  “I see. And we can find it by looking at the land.”

  “Well…that’s where the map comes in. There were clues due to angles of the pyramids and more natural boundaries. That’s where your sketches come in.”

  “Mount up!” Brian called. “Time to move on!”

  Kat wasn’t certain she could so easily mount this second time. She was in far too much pain.

  She looked at the mare, then felt that she was being watched. She turned around. Abdul, the handsome guide, his dark eyes gleaming, was there. He nodded to her, then the horse, then, in one smooth motion, picked her up and sat her on the horse. She thanked him and he nodded.

  Off they rode. Sand flew, and a minute later, she saw that Professor Atworthy had come to her side.

  He rode with his sketchbook in hand.

  “Kat, you should be capturing these images.”

  “Professor, I’m sorry. I am catching nothing but sand at the moment. I swear, tomorrow.”

  He shook his head, tsking. “Ah, there is so much, so much!” He rode on ahead.

  Somewhere along the line, they stopped for lunch—sweet cheese, bread and more water.

  She stood by her mare, Alya, staring at her that third time. She knew there was no way she could leap atop her.

  But once again, when she turned, Abdul was there. She offered him a rueful grimace. He nodded and set her on the saddle. Once again, she thanked him.

  It began to grow dark. Amazingly, she was no longer hot. She was chilled. That morning, she hadn’t begun to see how she was going to need the canvas jacket Hunter had insisted she carry in her pack. Now she was most grateful for it.

  At last, Abdul cried something to Brian and Hunter, and they came to a halt. The workers began to hurriedly dismount. Shouts rang in the dark, and the pack animals went down on their knees.

  She sat on the mare, unable to do anything.

  This time, Hunter came to her. He grinned up at her, but it was a gentle grin. “I did tell you that you needed the riding lessons,” he reminded her.

  She nodded. “You did.”

  “Don’t you want to get down?”

  “I can’t!”

  He laughed, reaching up for her. He steadied her against his own hard form. He started to move, and she clutched him again.

  “Just…just one more moment!” she pleaded. “Hunter…I’m sorry! I’m in such wretched shape. I won’t be able to help with the tents, with unpacking, with preparations, with—”

  He caught her chin, moving her face, directing her vision. Her eyes widened. She had never seen such efficiency!

  They had come to something like the small oasis they had stopped at that morning. Here, there were more trees. And there was a strange rising slope in the sand, something that almost formed a natural barrier. A dozen tents were already pitched, sheltered by the wall, and around the tiny spring of water.

  “Oh!” she said.

  “We’ll just get something to eat, and then to bed,” he said.

  “Lovely! Which is our tent?”

  He pointed to the far end, where two larger tents were pitched. They were connected by a stretch of canvas on the ground and another above, which formed a roof. No walls. It was like a porch or a garden, in a way, a spot shared by tenants of a town house.

  She started to stumble away from him, wanting nothing but to lie down and sleep. He pulled her back.

  “No. Supper first.”

  There were fires lit, and soon, the smell of something delicious cooking. She hadn’t realized just how hungry she was. One of their workers was trying to turn meat over a spit and stir a pot at the same time.

  She approached the man. “May I?” She wasn’t sure that he understood her, and so she reached for the spoon. The man frowned. “Please, I’m hungry,” she said. “Let me help!”

  She offered him a broad smile and took the spoon. He frowned, but allowed her to do so and gave his attention to the spit.

  Abdul crossed to them and began speaking heatedly to the man, who in turn lifted his shoulders. “Abdul! I want to help. We’re all out here together,” she said, not knowing if he understood.

  She heard laughter, then a few words in Arabic. She turned. Hunter was there, talking to Abdul. He looked at Kat and shrugged. Abdul looked at Kat and shrugged.

  She shrugged and kept stirring. Again, Abdul shrugged to Hunter, then moved on, apparently looking for the serving utensils.

  “What was that all about?” Kat asked Hunter.

  “They aren’t used to help, that’s all.”

  “Is it all right? Am I offending anyone?”

  Hunter laughed. “Not so long as you keep your help to stirring! But come on, Camille wants t
o see if you can add anything to the map at all.”

  He helped Kat to her feet. Another of the Arabs came forward, having finished with whatever his last task had been, and took over the stirring. A fire burned by the tents. Chairs had been set out on the stretch of canvas.

  Camille had the sketchbook, and she was studying it. Seeing Kat, she thrust it toward her. “Do what you can.”

  “All right,” Kat murmured. She sat, and suddenly realized what she had seen on the lost map, something she hadn’t understood till today.

  The little watering holes. Such as they were at now. Such as they had stopped at earlier.

  “Ah!” she said, filling them in and remembering others. She thought of what Camille had told her earlier about the undulating sand, and she sketched in the ripples.

  “My God,” Camille said. “Better and better.”

  “Uncanny,” Brian said, shaking his head.

  Kat added a few finishing touches, seeing the original in her mind’s eye almost as if it were directly before her.

  She gazed up. Over her head, Hunter was looking at Brian.

  “A hundred yards dead east!” Hunter said.

  “A hundred yards dead east,” Brian agreed.

  Kat never knew exactly what was in the pot she’d been stirring. She didn’t care. It was delicious, as was the lamb cooked on the spit and the bread she was given. She drank water and a cup of wine, and when she was done, she didn’t care about anything else.

  Not the lack of facilities, not a long hot bath, not fresh, crisp sheets.

  She went into the tent she shared with Hunter, climbed beneath the blankets fully clothed, and was asleep in a matter of minutes.

  Nothing evil touched her dreams. They weren’t even about the endless sand in the desert, or the sound the camels made, or the way they smelled.

  She dreamed that she was at the restaurant again, under the stars, with the view of the pyramids. And Arthur Conan Doyle was there. He was smiling, yet looking very grave at once.

  Eliminate the impossible.

  And then the possible, however improbable, is what is left.

  So…just what were the actual possibilities?

  KAT AWOKE TO MUCH CLANKING and commotion. The sound seemed far away, and she didn’t really want to be bothered by it.

  “Up! Up!” A firm shake on her shoulder. She grudgingly opened her eyes.

  Hunter was there. He seemed refreshed, had changed and, bizarrely, was smelling quite nicely. She felt the grit of the day before covering every inch of her.

  “We’re moving,” he said.

  “Moving?”

  “The first bit of uncovering we did led to a structure below. It will make excellent housing.”

  “A tomb!” she said, amazed.

  He laughed, his eyes excited. “No, but, surely, once a storeroom of some kind. It’s perfect. And it means that we are on the right track! Come, come, up. One must on expedition.”

  She rose, dusting herself off, tasting the sand and wishing, for that moment, that she were back at Shepheard’s Hotel.

  He noted her discomfort and smiled. “It’s not so horrible, really. We’re fairly well set. There is the very small pool just beyond, and Abdul has managed to rig something of an enclosure. Go, take your leisure. You’ll see that the new circumstances are better.”

  Their guides were magicians, it seemed. A series of canvas flaps had been arranged around a very small section of their precious little pool of fresh water. Camille was just emerging when Kat arrived on the scene, her face bright and clean, her hair loose and down her shoulders. She was in a pair of trousers and a simple shirt, ready to become thoroughly involved in the dig.

  “Good morning!” she cried jubilantly. “We’re to start. Well, actually, they’ve started, as you can see. We’ll become involved in a bit of the lighter work, right away.” She frowned. “Trousers. You need plain and simple trousers. I have plenty. Wait, and I will get them for you.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Kat was refreshed and redressed. Again, she was amazed at the speed with which the workers could move. The canvas tents had disappeared. Not far from where they had been was a deep, newly dug crevice in the desert floor. Ageand sand-worn steps led down to an opening.

  Following Camille, Kat looked around skeptically. “How do they know what this was?” she asked. “And that it wasn’t a tomb?”

  “There are no paintings on the wall, no record of a great and glorious life or the afterlife to come,” Camille said. She pointed to symbols, vague and fading above the door. “That is the sign of the worker, the digger, the builder. Supplies were kept here. But, you see, supplies must be kept for something, so I believe that we are really just right where we should be!”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “Come along now, let’s get up to the work zone!”

  Before she could follow Camille to the area where the men were working, Hunter appeared, Thomas Atworthy at his side. The instructor pressed a sketchbook into her hands. “We record every step we take,” he said.

  “Kat,” Hunter said, “if you will please work on the opening here, the entrance to the building we have found? Pay special attention to the symbols above the door.”

  She nodded, then Atworthy spoke again. “Come, come. There’s a slight ledge where they were digging, a perfect place to sit!”

  And so, her first morning was spent sketching, and with Atworthy at her side, making suggestions, she found that she was very pleased with all that she did. She became so involved that she forgot time and place until the professor at last tapped her on the shoulder. “They are breaking for tea,” he told her. He passed her a canteen and she thanked him, realizing that she was very thirsty. The sun had risen high. Thankfully, Hunter had insisted on the hat.

  It was so much cooler down in the ancient storeroom, away from the sun. Cots, bedding and canvas tents had all been arranged within; it was almost as if they had separate rooms, for the area was expansive.

  “There might even be a series of tunnels down here,” Hunter remarked as they gathered below, taking up camp chairs, passing out teacups, bread and cheese, and amazingly fresh and very English scones. But then, of course, they hadn’t been gone that long, nor had they gone that far; it just seemed as if they had traveled forever. “Definitely something we need to explore,” he said to Brian.

  David came down the steps, removing his hat, wiping sweat from his brow, followed by Alfred Daws. “Good God!” Alfred exclaimed. “I must say, I’m impressed, Sir Hunter, Lord Carlyle, that you have done this so very often! It’s quite exhausting.”

  “It’s just the sun, the heat. We’re not accustomed to it,” David said, offering a sheepish smile.

  “Where are Robert and Allan?” Camille asked.

  “Ah, coming. Robert is convinced that he need dig just a little farther and he’ll come upon something.”

  “We could dig for days, weeks…months,” Brian warned softly.

  “And once we make a discovery, we must dig even more slowly,” Hunter said.

  “And we’re looking for the tomb of this priest…this Hathsheth?” Kat said.

  “Exactly,” Hunter said.

  “Aren’t we in a strange place for such a burial?” she asked.

  “No.” Camille rose and went over to the little camp desk set up just inside the entry. She found the translation Kat had done back at the museum. “‘He who will sit among them.’ I believe that refers to the pharaohs who lie in the great pyramids, because it continues with ‘he will lie in the gentle shade of those who built the kingdom.’”

  “And then, you see, we had the map,” Brian said. He looked around as he spoke, his tone casual. Kat had the feeling that he wasn’t really quite so casual, and she was certain that he and Hunter exchanged glances.

  She remembered their conversation with Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife. Eliminate the impossible.

  But…where did it really all start?

  Had someone tried to push David off the sai
lboat that day, hoping that he would die?

  And then…

  None of it made sense. The only ones aboard the sailboat had been Robert, Allan, Alfred and David. They were all students and the best of friends! They might well seek to seduce a young woman and aid in such indiscretions for one another, but that was a long way from attempted murder!

  “Goodness!” Alfred Daws said suddenly, looking at the sketches that had been done that morning. He looked at the professor and then at Kat. “These—”

  “Ah, my protégée’s work!” Atworthy said with pride.

  Alfred Daws gave Kat a sharp look and shook his head with admiration and surprise. “It’s so lifelike!”

  “It’s exactly what your father captures, Kat,” Hunter said. “Something of another dimension. Life.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “And you managed to create a map that you’d seen…but a few times?” David asked.

  “Sometimes, I remember exactly what I’ve seen. Not always, I’m afraid.”

  “Still!”

  Robert and Allan came in then, arguing lightly. “I told you that you’d not find a door waiting for you if you did just a few more feet!” Allan said, sighing. “Now they’ll all be done with tea and we’ll get no break!”

  “You didn’t have to stay! You were just afraid that I was right!” Robert argued back.

  “You may have a good fifteen minutes, lads,” Brian said, laughing. “And you are missing the point of the expedition. We are a team.”

  “Exactly!” Allan said.

  Robert shook his head, laughing. “Can’t help it. I want to make the great discovery!”

  “Well, then, there’s opening the tomb, and then discovering what’s in it, isn’t there?” David asked. He looked at Kat. “I think I will it expedient to follow Sir Hunter’s lovely new bride. She seems to have powers that none of the rest of us possess.”

  Kat couldn’t help but cast a quick glance Hunter’s way. His face was cast in shadow. “Kat, I believe, will be sketching as we go. Not digging.”

  He set down his cup and headed for the stairs.

  Later that day, when much of the work was ending, Kat went over to the area where the horses and camels were kept, not far from their small pool, or oasis. She found her mare and was stroking the animal’s nose, when she saw Ali not far away.