Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [104]
“He won’t waver when I’m through with him,” said Emerson complacently. “But we still have a way to go. What do you say we take a little stroll? Show ourselves to our admiring public and incidentally get a better idea of the terrain.”
“What else did they say?” Selim asked. “Will they give Nur Misur back to us?”
“We didn’t get round to that,” Ramses said. “There are still a number of ambiguities. We stopped a riot this morning, but there is obviously a great deal of discontent among the populace at large. He wants us to make a formal commitment—a great public festival, with ceremonies and sacrifices and God knows what else.”
“Yes, I understood that,” Emerson said. “When?”
“He didn’t say.”
“All the more reason to get out and about,” Emerson declared. “I am willing to be accommodating up to a point, but I draw the line at crowning the bastard.”
The front door yielded at once to Emerson’s hard shove. The soldiers on guard in the corridor stepped back to let them pass and then fell in behind them. Another foursome awaited them in the antechamber. Led by Emerson, the procession, which included Daoud and Selim, emerged into a larger room open on one side, like the mandarah of Moslem houses. A blaze of sunlight dazzled their eyes.
At his father’s suggestion Ramses had brought a sketch pad and pencils. Leaning over the balustrade, he began a rough plan of the surrounding area—not an easy task, since the City of the Holy Mountain was in part perpendicular. The stony flanks of the interior mountains had been cut back on different levels to allow for the building of temples and houses. It had been a monumental undertaking, which must have taken centuries—almost thirty of them, since the first emigrés had come during the breakdown of Egyptian society in the tenth century B.C. Paths and staircases crossed the slopes, many of them leading down to the great roadway that circled this end of the valley—an engineering feat of no small magnitude, cut into the solid rock of the cliffs and bridging the smaller ravines. They were across the valley from where they had stayed before; Ramses thought he made out a familiar roofline. If he could get into that house he knew a way into the subterranean passages that honeycombed the cliffs. The visible city was like the top of an iceberg, much of it underground.
“I thought so,” Emerson said in a satisfied voice. “This section is only part of the area enclosed by the mountain heights. The valley stretches farther to the north. Can you make out anything, Ramses?”
“Not much, the sun is too bright.” Ramses shaded his eyes with his hand. “The cliffs close in, and then—yes, they open out again. It’s too far away to make out details; there is open water, and a stretch of green beyond the pass, and what appear to be side valleys or wide ravines. No signs of dwellings that I can see.”
“They are clustered at this end, I think,” said Emerson. “Around the royal palace and the temple. Do you suppose Tarek could be holed up somewhere in that area? A rhetorical question,” he added, before Ramses could reply. “We’ll have to have a closer look with binoculars. Should have brought them with us.”
Selim offered to go back and get the binoculars. At Emerson’s suggestion he gave one pair to Ramses, who announced his intention of going farther along the road before using them.
Wide, rather steep steps led down to the road. Four of the guardsmen scrambled to get ahead of Emerson; the other four followed the party. When they reached the bottom of the staircase, Emerson inquired, “Well, Peabody, which way? Right or left? Or shall we see if we will be allowed to descend into the village?”
“Left” was the immediate reply. “We have never been north of the Great Temple, and,” she added with a smile, “Selim will enjoy seeing it.”
It was the warmest part of the day, the time when sensible people in hot climates rest in the