Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [106]
“We must have photographs,” Selim exclaimed, jumping up. “And drawings. Wallahi, but we miss David.”
“We’ll do the best we can, Selim,” Ramses said. Even if they could never display the drawings and photographs, they would make a wonderful addition to the family archives. “But not now. Father, why don’t we divide up? You and Mother go on, to the end of the roadway if it isn’t too long a walk. We’ve none of us ever been past the temple. I’ll go back the other way.”
“For a sentimental look at our former home?” his father inquired. “Excellent idea, my boy. We can cover more ground that way. Don’t do anything impetuous.”
“Ha,” said Ramses’s mother pointedly. “Selim, you go with Ramses. We will meet back at our house in…shall we say an hour?”
The little people were gone when Ramses and Selim passed the place where they had been working. Followed by half the original escort—the other four had accompanied his parents and Daoud—they walked on around the southern curve of the cliffs. A good deal of new construction was underway: temples and shrines, by the look of them. Workmen swarmed over the face of a half-built pylon and others dragged cut blocks of stone from a quarry below the road. The whips of the overseers rose and fell.
A spacious villa high above them was the one Tarek had occupied as crown prince. Someone else was living there now; a pair of guards lounged by the steps. Their former dwelling, a little farther on, had obviously been abandoned. Ramses recognized it by the statues along the terrace, though Bastet had lost her head and Sobek had fallen over. The potted plants were dead.
He climbed the broken stairs, with Selim beside him and the guards close on his heels. The entrance gaped open. Blown sand and withered palm leaves littered the floor of the antechamber and a curtain hung in tatters from the doorway beyond.
He turned and addressed the nearest guard. “No one lives here now?”
“No, Great One. As you see.”
“It is not guarded.”
“What need to guard an empty house?”
Ramses gave him a closer look. The insolent tone reminded him of Merasen. There was a physical resemblance too. That didn’t necessarily mean they were close kin; the upper classes were so interbred, it was a wonder they could still reproduce, and to judge by the capful of feathers and the width of his gold armband, this fellow was a high-ranking officer. Nothing but the best for us, Ramses thought. Aloud he said harshly, “When I ask a question you will answer only yes or no.”
The man’s faint smile faded. “I…Yes, Great One.”
“Will we go in?” Selim asked. “There is no light, and I did not bring a torch.”
“Neither did I. It isn’t necessary.”
They continued along the road for another mile or so. There were fewer houses on this stretch, all unoccupied, and the road surface began to deteriorate. They were heading almost due west now as the road curved and descended. The men preceding them slowed and then came to a stop—and so did the road. It ended abruptly in a ragged break.
They had reached the pass. Straight ahead, across a gap of forty feet, was the other end of the road. Selim let out an exclamation. “Once the road stretched straight across, Ramses, do you see? Below are the ruins of buttresses that supported a great arch of stone. What engineers they were! But no longer. The break is not fresh and they have not repaired it.”
“I doubt they have the manpower or the initiative.” Ramses got out the binoculars. “You’re right, Selim, as usual. Most of the pass is filled with enormous cut stones, the ruins of the bridge and the buttresses.” He scanned the rubble, awed by the size of the blocks of stone. At one time the workmen of the Lost Oasis had almost equaled the pyramid builders. “There’s a break—barely ten feet wide—which has been filled in with rougher, smaller boulders. If Tarek is there, it’s no wonder the usurper hasn’t been able to get at him.”
“But he cannot get out,” said Selim shrewdly. “There are soldiers below. Many soldiers.”
And a guardhouse, solidly built, that stretched