Heart of the Gods (31 page)

It was astonishingly hot, the sun beating down mercilessly, the air as dry as the dust and sand with which it was laden.

All of them sipped from their canteens now and then as they approached the cliff face. Dehydration was a real problem here, the hot air blew away every scrap of moisture.

They’d spent the night in the desert, unmolested. Pursuit had arrived by late morning after they’d found yet another landmark and was now behind them but closing, as they’d seen the darker shadows of vehicles behind them through the binoculars. It was likely their pursuers had driven through the night in order to gain on them, considering it worth the risk of driving through the deep desert at night.

At best Ky knew they now had only a couple of hours of lead time. Their pursuers had much newer equipment than he’d been able to afford, and that gave them an edge.

They were state of the art desert buggies from what he could see through the binoculars, with blowers to keep the engines clear, thwarting even Raissa’s wind-blown sandstorms.

“There,” Tareq said, pointing.

A great oval rock, slightly tilted, rested against the rock face very much like a random rock fall. It was the only one like it for as far as they could see.

Raissa matched it against her memories and nodded. “Banafrit’s tomb.”

A completely undiscovered tomb, until now.

Ky fought the urge to stop, if only for a few moments, just to see it in a pristine state. He had to remind himself they had a greater objective. A glance at Tareq confirmed his old friend faced the same struggle.

“The question is,” Tareq asked, holding his own curiosity at bay, “will they know that it isn’t the Tomb of the Djinn?”

Nodding, Ky took a breath and considered it.

Ky said, “They’ll have to check it out, they won’t have a choice, especially if we leave one of the jeeps here as a diversion. With luck they’ll think some of us are inside exploring, while the rest go for help.”

It was a logical move.

“The chance of gold will almost certainly tempt some of them,” Raissa said. “Although, if thieves managed to find my tomb they will almost certainly have found Banafrit’s...”

“In any case, it’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Ky said. “If the few minutes it takes for them to check it out buys us a little more time, at least until nightfall, we’ll have a chance to prepare.”

He had no idea what they were up against, except for Zimmer and his remaining mercenaries.

For all he knew, Zimmer had an unlimited supply of them.

In a matter of moments, everything had been moved to one Jeep.

Tareq looked longingly at the entrance to the Tomb, clearly torn.

Understanding, Ky said, “There’s no time, Tareq. We’ll come back once this is over. We know where it is.”

He wanted it nearly as badly, but there was still the Tomb of the Djinn. Irisi’s tomb.

Tareq looked at him. “It won’t be the same. They’ll loot it. It won’t be in the same pristine condition it is now. Now we’ll have at least some idea where some items were. The things that thieves wouldn’t value.”

“I know,” Ky acknowledge. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Slowly, Tareq took a breath, then resolutely turned and swung up into the passenger seat of the truck.

It was a little crowded with Tareq in the passenger seat, Raissa crouched between them and Ryan and Komi wedged in among their gear and supplies, keeping low for the benefit of watchers.

Raissa whispered a short chant and gestured at the rock face. She would leave their pursuers a small surprise. If nothing else, it might make them more cautious. Banafrit, she knew, would have approved.

The abandoned jeep looked forlorn as it fell behind them.

Ky skirted the base of the Gilf Kebir, trying to keep them out of sight of those that pursued as much as possible while they followed the curve of the base of the great plateau.

With a chant and a gesture, Raissa called up the wind to stir up the sand to conceal their progress.

Another sandstorm barely slowed their pursuers, the great blowers over the engines keeping them clear of the sand, but every minute gained was useful.

The setting sun didn’t help them, coming from the wrong direction, nearly blinding them when they looked backward, concealing their hunters in the brightness. The flatness of the light wasn’t much assistance either.

It was Raissa who called out. She’d very nearly missed it herself.

“There,” she called, softly.

‘There’ looked like nothing so much as a great jagged crack angled slightly across the cliff face from top to bottom, nothing more.

Ky glanced at her. “How sure are you?

It didn’t look like much.

She took a breath and nodded. “Sure enough.”

He turned then toward the crack in the face of the plateau.

The closer they got, the more it seemed the cliff face loomed above them and the less it looked like anything, until he saw the talus of sand and crumbled stone pouring out of the mouth of the split. There was an opening behind it.

Unfortunately, the crack was wide but it wasn’t wide enough to accommodate their jeep. That meant they would have to abandon it. He had no choice. All he could do was tuck it behind a tumble of rocks that had split and fallen from the cliff face above and hope they might not see it until they were past it.

He turned to look at Raissa.

Faced into the wind, with it streaming through her golden hair and the skirt of her white linen dress fluttering around her, against the desert and the rough stone of the escarpment she looked like some ancient goddess of old, perhaps a face of Isis herself.

She was beautiful. Ethereal and lovely.

Her face was still, except for a slight frown creasing between her eyebrows and an oddly wistful expression in her lovely blue eyes.

She sighed.

Those lovely eyes turned to him.

Ky went to her, slid an arm around her waist, brushed her hair back.

“Home,” she said, with a small wry smile, “such as it is.”

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“It’s… complicated,” she said, softly.

Her blue eyes lifted to his.

“You said Khai is here,” she said, quietly, a pang of old grief moving through her as she remembered him, looking up into Ky’s dark eyes, seeing the echo of one in the other.

Sometime in the last few days Ky found he’d made his peace with his predecessor.

Certainly he had no doubt now that Raissa cared for him as himself but they would be passing Khai’s tomb. Proof of how much she cared for them both was in her face―although the grave of the man she’d once loved lay within and she’d never been able to truly mourn for him, she was concerned about Ky, too.

This would be difficult for her, of that he also had no doubt.

He couldn’t even imagine what she was facing within.

For himself and for Tareq, the idea of the Djinn was still abstract. It wasn’t real.

Neither of them truly disbelieved but neither truly believed, either. He didn’t know what Ryan and Komi thought. Or if they thought about it at all. There hadn’t been time to ask.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Closing her eyes, Raissa soaked up the gesture. It helped to ease the ache in her heart.

“Let’s go,” he said, turning to the others.

Everyone shouldered packs, sleeping bags and all the weapons they could carry. Everything they might need in the day or days ahead.

Tareq was on his satellite phone, informing the Museum they’d found the likely location of the Tomb of the Djinn, giving latitude and longitude with the promise to contact them with confirmation, once they had it.

It was insurance.

If anything happened to them or if anyone else claimed to have discovered the Tomb of the Djinn they would have to explain what had happened to those that had preceded them. And official recognition for the discovery would go to Ky and Tareq. Not that it might matter to either of them, then.

“Stay close,” Raissa said. “I’m not sure if all the protections have been triggered.”

They stepped into the cool dark shadows of the narrow defile, following Raissa’s bright hair, Ky at her side, slipping his fingers between her now cold ones.

Rock rose above them, towering as high as skyscrapers, only the very tops lit by the light of the setting sun, the frangible rock a danger in and of itself. Pieces and shards littered the sandy floor of the cleft.

They turned a corner and then Khai’s tomb was before them, carved into the curve of the dark inner face of the crack in the stone, polished in places until it was as smooth as glass, pillars sculpted out of the rock supporting a narrow roof over the ornately carved sarcophagus. Thieves had obviously chipped away at the gilt and whatever objects Khai had been expected to carry into the afterlife had either been taken or smashed.

Still, the sarcophagus itself remained.

Raissa winced at the damage, her heart aching at the damage. He’d deserved more respect, more honor than the thieves had given him. No surprise, they were honorless men who stole from those who had moved on into the afterlife.

The features carved into the sarcophagus had been worn, smoothed by sand and time but it was still recognizable as the man Khai had aged to become. Strong, dignified, powerful still in body.

Her breath caught, seeing it.

“Khai,” she said, softly, her fingers going to her lips.

Tears stung her eyes.

It would have taken a blind man not to see the resemblance. And a little odd, certainly, for Ky to see, himself, older.

Briefly Raissa laid her hand over the crossed hands of the sarcophagus where those folded wooden hands lay over his heart, her own heart aching for what she and Khai had had, for what they might have had and for what they’d lost.

A thousand memories fluttered through her mind…

That first day she had seen him standing in his chariot, the white horse in the traces, looking down at her where she stood amidst her dead, so tall and handsome. His lovely dark eyes examining her in cool astonishment… The night they’d first made love. Offering herself to him, a gift for his kindness. Fighting beside him in the King’s Hall and at the Fort, during that first battle. His kindness and his strength, his heart…

She remembered, too, his face as they prepared her for this.

The memories made her heart ache.

She’d loved him so much. She still did. She always would.

As she loved Ky.

Love didn’t end.

Ky watched her lovely mobile face, the others silent behind them.

Her eyes went to him, the blue darkened, stormy.

“Perhaps it is knowing what he and I couldn’t have together, by Kamenwati’s will,” she said, softly, looking at him, “that has made me know how precious you are. Perhaps only loss or the possibility of loss that makes us realize how much we must treasure those we love, for only we know how very much we lose.”

And how much she might lose, again.

Ky saw it in her eyes, the fear, the grief.

He pulled her into his arms, held her tightly as she slid an arm around his neck, her fingers spearing into his hair to cling to him, if only for a moment. His throat was wet where her face was buried against it. Her other hand rested on the sarcophagus, over Khai’s crossed hands.

Tareq cleared his throat a little. He hated to do it but time was getting short.

Nodding, they separated… For a moment Raissa clung to Khai’s carved hands, pressed there, and then she felt the hands of the sarcophagus shift beneath hers.

There was something, a glimmer of magic.

She turned to look.

The carved hands covered a hidden compartment above where Khai’s heart would have been.

Something within her shifted, a shaft of pain, of memory, as she guessed what lay within.

A glint of gold shimmered in the sunlight reflected from the stone above them.

Reaching in, knowing in her heart what it was, Raissa withdrew a gold chain, a lavalier of mixed knotwork depending from it. She held the pendant cradled in her hands as tears gathered in her eyes, nearly blinding her, at the memory of the day she’d given it to him.

Khai had promised he would never remove it, he would wear it always above his heart and so he had. Even in death. She could feel his life force there within it, his ba. Her breath caught as her heart wrenched.

“What is it?” Ky said, looking at it. Carefully, he reached out to cup the pendant in his palm. “It’s beautiful.”

It was.

In fact, he’d never seen anything like it in all his years of study. It was unique. The distinctive pattern of Isis’s knot marked the center of it but the intricate knotwork around the outer edges had a more Celtic feel to it.

The others crowded around to look at the find.

“Thank you,” Raissa said, softly. “It’s a charm against magic. I made it for Khai to protect him from Kamenwati.”

Her eyes went to Ky.

For a moment they just looked at each other.

Raissa said nothing. It was his choice.

Looking into her eyes Ky nodded and then his head.

He understood what she was giving him. It was far more than an amulet.

Nothing could have touched her more than that simple gesture. Raissa’s throat went tight.

She touched his hair, briefly in benediction, as she had the day she’d given the charm to Khai.

Gently, as she’d done millennia before for him, she lowered the chain over Ky’s bent head and then slipped her hands beneath his dark hair to settle the warm gold against his throat. Her fingers traced the chain around his neck, to the pendant below, to where it settled over his heart. She held it there gently, looking up into his dark eyes.

The gold warmed even more as it settled, so light he barely felt it.

Looking down at her, he closed a hand over hers.

Raissa smiled at him, nodded and then turned back to lean over briefly, to kiss the cold lips of the sarcophagus.

“Thank you, love,” she whispered.

She knew Khai would have approved.

Taking a breath, she straightened and said to the others, “Stay close. We aren’t yet there.”

It was clear where one trap had been, as they had to climb over the fall of rock.