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By Root 1447 0

risk the road or lose valuable time—and chance broken bones—trying to find a path along the cliffs. He had to wait, though; there were a good many lights showing across the way: the braziers burning before the temple, the torches carried by pedestrians, candle- and lamp-lit windows in various buildings. He passed the time by inspecting the scene through the binoculars and was intrigued to see that, to judge by the number of torchbearers and litters leaving the area, his parents had been entertaining that evening. The departing visitors were too muffled in mantles and cloaks to be recognizable, but for some not-so-obscure reason his spirits lifted. He ought to have known his mother and father wouldn’t sit with folded hands waiting to hear from him. What on earth were they up to now?

The lights went out one by one. The leaping flames before the temple died into a red glow. Mist curdled in the valley floor, but the sky above was clear and the stars were bright. With a final glance at the horned moon, he descended to the road.

Resisting the temptation to skulk in the shadows, Ramses set out at a brisk walk, with the assurance of a man on an important errand. The few others he encountered were dressed as he was, with robes or mantles to protect them from the cooling night air. The only positive aspect was that he didn’t have to pass the entrance to the palace. It was heavily guarded and brightly lit. Until that moment he hadn’t dared think about what he intended to do or decided how to go about it. Concealed behind one of the pylons, he edged slowly forward until the little shrine of Isis came into view; and some internal organ (his mother would have said it was his heart) contracted when he saw a single square of light high above the temple roof. They had managed to see her, then, and pass on his request. That settled the question of how to go about it. He had never supposed he had a prayer of getting to her rooms through the temple.

He had plotted a possible route the day they visited the shrine. The first part wasn’t difficult. There were other, smaller shrines and a few dwellings, probably belonging to temple personnel, all on different levels, and he got onto the flat temple roof without difficulty. From there the climb was up a sheer rock face; but as he had told his father, the surface that looked smooth from a distance offered a number of hand- and footholds. He took off the robe and the clumsy sandals, put them in his pack, removed the rope, and paid it out between his hands. It was thin and strong and a good forty feet in length, longer than he had realized. Daoud had chosen well. He slung the newly coiled strands over one shoulder and under the other arm, knowing he might have to retreat in a hurry and clinging to the wild and improbable hope that he would find Nefret awake and alone. I must be out of my mind, he thought, gazing up at the lighted window. She won’t be alone, the bloody damned handmaidens never leave the High Priestess unattended, and I’m not sure I could bring myself to knock out a bunch of defenseless girls, even supposing one of them didn’t start screeching for help before I got round to her.

He started to climb.

The ascent wasn’t much more difficult than many he had made in Egypt—except that this one was made in darkness and with the need for silence. Cautiously though he moved, he wasn’t able to prevent an occasional bit of rock from snapping off and falling. The clatter of them on the temple roof sounded like a blast of dynamite to him, but there was no reaction from the guards in front of the temple. By the time he reached the level of the window he was sweating with nerves and his hands were bleeding. He grabbed hold of the flat sill, his toes wedged into a crack.

One look at the window told him the defenseless maidens were safe from him. The aperture was barred by two columns, part of the rock itself, carved into the shape of papyrus stems. He had seen this from below, but hadn’t realized how narrow the spaces between the columns were. A child or a very slender woman might squeeze through.