Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [118]
Then followed another humiliating period when he had to depend on the frail arms and small hands of a boy half his age. After they crossed the road at a scuttling run they began to climb again. Ramses soon lost his sense of direction as they wound back and forth across the cliff face; it required every ounce of concentration to find the hand- and footholds. He was short of breath and perspiring, despite the chill of the night air, when his guide reached a narrow ledge.
“We stop here. The boat of the god will soon arise.”
Ramses was glad to lower himself onto the first horizontal stretch of land he had encountered all night. The ledge went back under an overhang, forming a shallow cave. It would help conceal them from sight and provide a little shade during the noonday heat—though probably not enough.
“You do not travel these paths by daylight?” he asked, unfastening his pack and offering the boy the dates and bread his mother had provided.
“Not unless we must.” Pale light washed over the ledge. The sun had risen over the eastern heights above them. As the light strengthened, Ramses got his first good look at his companion. He was a typical member of the rekkit, small and thin, dark-skinned and black-haired. “What is your name?” Ramses asked.
“Khat.”
“Mine is Ramses.”
The boy looked up, his eyes widening.
“No, lord. You are the Great One, the friend, who speaks to the gods.”
“Not all who speak to the gods are answered.” Good Lord, Ramses thought, I’m beginning to talk like Mother. He decided to change the subject before, of all things, he found himself in a theological discussion. A pity his father wasn’t with them.
On second thought, perhaps it was just as well he wasn’t.
“Do we wait here until nightfall, then?” he asked.
“Yes. One will come then to take you onward.”
He curled up at the back of the recess, his head on his own little pack, and promptly dropped off to sleep. Ramses was too keyed up to follow his example. He removed the binoculars from his pack.
The ledge was approximately halfway up the cliff, a hundred feet above the road, and at its far northern end. It offered an excellent vantage point, but he was too far from the temples and palaces of the southern cliffs to distinguish details. He turned his gaze northward. There was certainly a considerable area of land there, but mist veiled the valley floor. He would have to wait until the sun was higher. Philosophically, he retreated into the recess and lay down.
It was late afternoon before he woke, to find Khat sitting cross-legged beside him, unblinking black eyes fixed on his face. As soon as Ramses stirred, the boy whipped out his water bottle and offered it. The sun was a fiery blaze in the western sky; the light struck straight into the niche, and now Ramses made out crude drawings, graffiti, scratched onto the rock.
“They are the gods,” Khat explained. He didn’t seem quite as much in awe of his companion as he had been. Listening to me snore and watching me sweat must have convinced him I was only human, Ramses thought wryly. The names Khat rattled off, indicating each figure in turn, were not the same as the ones the gods bore in Egypt, but Ramses recognized them: Isis with her crown of horns enclosing the disk; hawk-headed Horus; Khepri, the scarab beetle, guardian of the horizon, symbolizing the rising sun.
After the sun had dropped below the western cliff and the valley was bathed in a gentle light, Ramses took out the binoculars and showed Khat how to use them. The boy gasped in wonder.
“It is only a tool,” Ramses said. “A thing of metal and glass, made by men. Show me where to find Tarek.”
A spur of rock cut part of his view, but the air was clear and he was able to make out the side wadi Khat described. The entrance had been fortified with cut masonry and what appeared to be a heavy gate. According to Khat, Tarek held the northern half of the oasis, with its villages and fields and springs, but he had not enough men to retake the city, and the usurper had