“Roel!” called Celeste. “Are you well?”
“Oui,” came a faint cry. “There is water herein. . and scorpions.”
Celeste took in a deep breath and muttered, “Oh, my love, take care.”
Finally, Roel emerged. “A deep pool, not a spring.
Likely from rain.”
“Rain?”
“Oui, Celeste. Mayhap monsoons bring it, or perhaps the winter. The rocks protect the mere from the sun.” He gestured back the way they had come. “Out there the water is sucked up by the sand, but here in this basin I think there must be a good layer of stone below, forming a wide catchment.” Roel smiled and said, “There are some boulders in the pool, and that is where the birds roost, protected as if by a moat from the scorpions.”
“Can we safely water the horses?”
“I believe so. Those poisonous creatures scuttled away from my footfalls. We cannot camp here, though, for sleeping among scorpions would be most painful if not fatal.”
Celeste glanced at the sun, now on the verge of setting. Dismounting, she said, “Then let us water the animals and go, for I would find a camp ere the light completely fails.”
Leading the mares, the geldings following, into the crevice they went, the horses balking somewhat at the narrow confines, but eventually the smell of water overcame their fears.
That night Roel and Celeste camped on the rim of the basin, a safe distance from the scorpion den.
The next morning, once more they let the horses drink their fill, and they made certain that their waterskins were full to the stoppers, and then they set out, again riding due duskwise.
Across barren ground and past clusters of sere vegetation they fared, and now and then they crossed down and through rock-laden wadis, ancient tracks of fierce water flow, now dry under the desert sun. On they rode and on, and in early morn a warm breeze began to blow at their backs, growing hotter with every league, and they cast their cloak hoods over their heads against the glare of the day. And once again they came to long, rolling dunes, and into the sand they passed.
With a now-torrid wind from behind and as the sun reached halfway to the zenith, they topped a dune and a league or so distant down a long slope of sand and across a flat lay a walled city, with tall pylons standing beside a wide gateway, past which a long row of massive columns led into the metropolis beyond. The buildings within were made of stone, or so it seemed, and some bore flat roofs with massive cornices, though others seemed to have collapsed.
Roel shaded his eyes and above the lash of wind he called, “I see no movement.”
Celeste frowned. “Perhaps it is abandoned,” she said, raising her voice to be heard.
“Oui, so it seems.”
“Mayhap this is where we’ll find the gray arrow,” said Celeste.
“We can only hope,” replied Roel, “as well as hope we find water therein. Come, let us ride.” With their cloaks whipping about, they started down the long run of sand, and Celeste said, “Think you this is the place marked Spx on the chart?” Roel grunted and shrugged, and on they fared.
They had covered perhaps half the distance when the day about them darkened. “What th-?” Roel looked up toward the sun and then back. “Celeste, we must fly!”
The princess glanced ’round; behind and hurtling toward them came a great dark roiling wall looming miles up into the sky and blotting out the very sun.
“Ride, Celeste, ride!” cried Roel, spurring forward.
Celeste whipped her mare into a gallop, the gelding running after, and down the slope and toward the city she and Roel and the horses fled. And rushing after roared a boiling wall of sand that would flay them alive should it catch them.
“Yah! Yah!” cried Celeste, driving her mare to even greater speed, and over the barren ground they now flew. Yet the storm was even faster, and for every stride they took it gained three.
Celeste drew even with Roel, and he called out,
“Shelter behind the stone ramparts.” And on they careered, the horses now running flat out, and Celeste, with her lighter weight, slowly drew ahead of Roel.
Oh, Mithras, I can’t leave him.
But Roel, as if he were reading her thoughts, cried,
“Ride on, Celeste, ride on!”
And so on she rode, as the great black wall of the storm hurtled after, now but mere heartbeats arear, now but mere moments ere it would roar o’er all.
Before her lay the gateway, flanked by two tall stone statues, a king and a queen, perhaps, their feet buried in drift, sitting on stone thrones beside the massive pylons; and as she flashed past and through the opening, she thought she saw the figures turn their heads toward her, but in that moment the stygian wall slammed into the gateway even as she veered leftward out of the slot to take refuge behind the high rampart; and the blast of sand screamed past and above and shrieked in rage at missing her, or so it seemed.
Celeste sprang down from her mare, and pulling the horses after, she headed for the base of the wall for better shelter. Finally she reached the stone bulwark, and there she stopped.
In the darkness she looked about.
Of Roel there was no sign.
Celeste called out, but the black storm ripped her words to shreds and flung the remnants away.
Oh, Mithras, Mithras, please let him be safe.
But only the howl of the tearing wind came in answer to her prayer.
33
Abulhol
The storm roared among the pillars and buildings and steles and pylons and statues and ruins, sand hammering against stone as if to obliterate this anomaly within the pristine desert. And behind the protection of the wall where Celeste had taken shelter, dust swirled and tried to choke these interlopers, woman and horses both. Celeste tied a cloth across her mouth and nose, and she put a ration of oats into two feed bags and, with difficulty, she slipped them onto her mare and gelding, for they were affrighted, agitated by the ceaseless howl.
And she soothed them, and food seemed to help. And when they settled somewhat, she loosely draped cloth
’round the brims of the feed bags to fend dust from their breathing as well. She tethered them to one of the slender pillars bracing an overhanging walkway; she unladed the gelding and unsaddled the mare, and then she sat down, her back to the stone of the wall, and waited.
Oh, my Roel, are you safe? Out of the wind, out of the storm? Or are you trapped within its clutches? Please, Mithras, let him not be in harm’s way.
And the furious storm raved, the shrieking wind clawing at anything and everything in its path, yet in spite of the thundering blow, Celeste fell into slumber.
And she dreamed. .
. . At one and the same time she sat on a cushion and watched herself dance, and she was naked, but for a small strip of cloth about her loins and the garlands of blue lotuses gracing her form. Her skin was dusky, and her hair raven black, and her eyes a brown so deep as to seem ebon. A man sat beside her and watched her dance as well, his enormous erection jutting out from his loincloth. And she was jealous of herself and enraged, and she felt exhilaration that as she spun and gyred she provoked such desire in this powerful man.
He would be hers, he would be hers, and as she whirled the lotus blossoms lifted up from her breasts and the gauzy strip twirled out from her loins, each revealing and then concealing, and she knew he would build a city for her, and it would be a funeral monument as soon as she crushed the lethal juice from the deadly flowers and contrived a way to poison this little scheming, spinning slut with her kohl-painted eyes and red-ochre lips and her lithe, myrrh-scented body, who thought to take her place, for she would have no one become First Wife over her. .
. . A jackal-headed man presided over the three-moons-long preparations as her envenomed organs were removed from her body and treated with sea salt and linen-wrapped and preserved in canopic jars; and her corpse was also treated with salt and then scented oils and fragrant spices and bestowed with gold and gems and rings and bracelets a
nd necklaces, and then linen-wrapped to be sent on her way. A portrait mask was put over her face so that the gods would recognize her, and, along with the canopic jars, she was laid in a rosewood coffin, and that in turn was placed in her lapis-lazuli-decorated, gilded sarcophagus. .
. . And the funeral was delicious, and the great man wept, and he turned to her for solace, even as she watched as she was solemnly entombed with her jewelry and wine and servants and provisions and trinkets and couches and divans and clothing and gold and food and other such goods she would need in the afterlife.
And as she took the great man to bed, she looked out from her vault as the boatman came to ferry her and her servants across to Duat and-
— Celeste jerked awake.
What th-? What was that sound?
She peered ’round. The horses stood adoze, their feed bags yet in place, and all was still, and stars glittered overhead.
The storm. It’s gone. It’s blown itself out. -Roel!
Celeste scrambled up and pulled the dusty cloth away from her equally dusty face and called out, “Roel!” There was no answer.
Keeping next to the wall, to the gateway she stepped and out, and she peered through the starlight and the glow of the half-risen half-moon and into the desert beyond.
No one was there: all was emptiness.
Back in through the gateway she trod, and she looked to her right, and in the distant shadows she saw large forms-horses-and Roel sat with his back to the wall, his sword unsheathed and lying at hand, and he was sound asleep.
“Oh, my love, my love,” she cried, and she ran to him and dropped to her knees.
He opened his eyes, and he reached out and took her in his arms and pulled her into his lap.
Fiercely she embraced him, as tears of relief and the release of tension ran down her dust-laden cheeks, leaving tracks of mud behind.
“Oh, Roel, I thought you lost.”
“Non, love, I galloped right behind, but I deemed you had turned dextral, not sinister. I should have known: left is right, but right a mistake, and it seems I made that mistake.”
Celeste laughed through her tears, but she did not loosen her clutch.
“Your horses?” asked Roel.
“They are well. I put feed bags over their noses to save them from the grit.”
Roel laughed and said, “As did I.”
He kissed her and said, “I had the strangest dream.”
“You did?”
“Oui. I was a king of some sort, in love with a young maiden, but she-”
”-She died of poison,” said Celeste. “And all of this, all of this city, it is her funeral monument.”
“Why, yes,” said Roel, his eyes wide in amaze. “But how did you-?”
“I had the same dream, my love, but I was that dancing girl as well as the king’s first wife. I was insanely jealous of me, and so I, the wife, poisoned myself, the dancer.”
“How can we have the same dream?” asked Roel.
“I think it is much like the mansion Lokar savaged, only in this case it is the stone itself recalling a terrible tragedy and somehow showing it to us as we slept. After all, this entire city is a shrine to she who danced, and what better place to hold those memories?” Roel smiled down at Celeste and said, “Given your predilections as First Wife, remind me to never look at another woman.”
Celeste laughed and said, “Oh, you need not worry, my love, for, First Wife or no, I will always be your dancing girl.” Again Roel kissed her, and then he said, “Speaking of the city, let us see what we have here. Mayhap we’ll find the gray arrow.”
Celeste disengaged and stood, Roel gaining his feet as well. He stepped to his horses and removed the cloth and feed bags, and then he saddled his mare and laded the gelding and led them after.
They retrieved Celeste’s horses and made them ready for travel, and they watered the animals and took deep draughts of their own, and then they set out to explore the ruins.
“What language is this?” asked Celeste, examining the carvings on the part of the stele jutting up from the encroaching sand. “I see birds and fish, cattle, beetles, flowers, and shepherds’ crooks all mixed in with these strange glyphs.”
Roel held up the lantern and peered at the blend of pictograms and characters. “I know not the tongue, and though I had not seen such writing ere now, I had heard of it from those who fought in the desert during the war.
They say no one knows how to read it.” He stepped to an adjacent side of the obelisk to find more of the same.
Celeste frowned, and in the moonlight she touched a carving and said, “Look here, Roel. Several symbols are collected together and enclosed in this oblong oval, while most other glyphs are not. Perhaps it’s somehow important enough to be encircled. What think you this encasement means?”
Roel stepped back ’round and looked at the carving.
“I do not know,” he replied, running his finger along the outline. “Perhaps this is what one of the knights called a cartouche. Here is an ibis-he spoke of them-carrion eaters, and here I think is a jackal, rather like a fox of the desert-or so the knight said-but these other symbols I do not know. Oui, mayhap a cartouche is important, but as to what it signifies, that I cannot say.” They looked at the markings on the stele a moment more, and then turned away, and leading their horses, among the plinths and obelisks and columns and pillars and buildings of the abandoned city they went. And sand ramped up against walls and monuments, and some ruins but barely showed. At every structure where they could, they stepped inside and searched, but no gray arrow did they find.
Nor did they find a well or other source of water.
From the mid of night onward they trod among the stones of the shrine, neither Roel nor Celeste needing slumber, for they had slept through the full of the storm.
And it took the rest of the darktide for them to explore each of the buildings and ruins, all to no end.
Yet throughout their sweep, there was something of a puzzle, for in every part of the city they had found widely scattered human bones-skulls, leg and arm bones, ribs, pelvises, spines, and the bones of feet and hands-some broken, others not, some with shreds of cloth yet clinging, most half-buried, some out in the open, but all sunbaked, sun bleached, and long dead, and seldom was any bone properly attached to its rightful mate. “It’s as if someone or something has ripped people asunder,” had said Roel upon coming across yet another skull, and he had loosened Coeur d’Acier in its sheath and on they had gone, finding nought of what they wanted, though more bones did they see.
It was as the sky began to lighten with the onset of dawn that they came to the far gateway through the opposite wall.
Celeste gazed back at the memorial city and sighed and said, “Roel, we must go on, for-”
“Cherie, look.”
Celeste’s gaze followed Roel’s outstretched arm, and in the shadows of dawn loomed a great stone figure of some sort. Roel began leading his horses toward the monument, Celeste following.
As the sky lightened even more, they could see that the statue was some form of creature resting in the sand and facing dawnward, facing into the city. Enormous it was and lionlike it seemed, and they walked in between the outstretched forelegs and toward its uplifted head. “Mithras, but it’s huge,” said Roel, gazing upward as they came to a stop. And now they could see that although it had the body of a lion, it had the features of a man.
“Ha!” exclaimed Roel. “Here we have what the caravan scout called an ‘Abulhol,’ yet I know it as a Sphinx.” And as the first rays of the sun shone through the far gateway and down the wide avenue and out the near gateway to illuminate the stone creature’s face, Celeste frowned and said, “Sphinx, oui, but why was the scout so frightened?”
In that moment the Abulhol bent its head downward and fixed them with its stone gaze and grated, “Tomb robbers deserve nought but my fury,” and it unsheathed its great claws to deal death.
34
Sphinx
Roel stepped in front of Celeste and wrenched Coeur d’Acier from its sheath and flashed it on high, and the silvered steel blade blazed like argent fire in the rays of the morning sun. But ere Roel could bring the weapon to bear against the monstrous creature of stone, Celeste cried out, “My Lord Sphinx, we are not tomb robbers nor did we come to steal ought.” Even as the Abulhol raised his massive paw to strike, he roared, “That is what they all say!” The horses reared and belled in fright, and Celeste and Roel, yet holding their leads, were dragged hindward. And even as she fought for control of her mare, Celeste cried, “In our case, it is true, my lord. No tomb robbers are we, but instead are on a quest.” The Sphinx stayed his strike, and one of his stone eyebrows rose. “Quest?” He lowered his huge foreleg.
“Oui, my lord,” said Celeste, yet struggling with her mare. “A mission of rescue.”
Although Roel sheathed his sword, the Sphinx did not sheathe its claws, but instead interlaced them to close the way back out so that Celeste and Roel and the horses were trapped in its encirclement. And as the two gained control of the horses, the monster glared down at them. “Hmm. .,” it rumbled, and then inhaled through its nose a great breath. As a creature of solid stone how it could do so, neither Celeste nor Roel could say, yet inhale it did. “I smell gold, yet it is not gold from the tomb, nor do you have gems or other treasures from there.” Celeste spread her arms wide, her hands open and empty, and she said, “We have none, Lord Abulhol.”
“Abulhol, Abulhol? Ah, yes, the nomads call me that, they who are descended from those created by Lord Atum known as Amun known as Ptah, and though the nomads no longer speak the true tongue of the pharaohs, still it is one of my many names.”
“Many names, my lord?”
“I am the Sphinx, the Abulhol, sometimes mistakenly called Kheperi and Re and Atum; I am the Guardian of the Horizon, the Protector of the Dawn; I am the Seeker of Knowledge, the Asker of Riddles, the Enigma; I am set here by Osiris, Lord of the Underworld; I ward this shrine, and any who would violate it feels my wrath.”
Once upon a Spring morn ou-2 Page 24
