Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [179]
Ramses didn’t doubt that he would. Tarek was still a bloody romantic, and the look of appeal on his handsome face seemed genuine.
“Do not wake the sleeper,” the old woman droned. “The spell is cast. It cannot be broken now.”
“Goddamn it,” Ramses said helplessly. It was grisly, ghoulish, and horrible—Nefret’s bright head resting against the hard stone coffin that held her father’s bones, her eyes empty.
The worst was yet to come. The old woman began talking in a crooning mumble. And Nefret answered her. Nefret’s face had changed; it looked rounder, softer. Her voice was a child’s voice, high and sweet and quick. Tarek moved closer, his head bent as if listening. Nefret spoke in a mixture of English and Meroitic, interspersed with giggles. Her features altered from moment to moment, from laughter to solemnity to grief, from those of a very young child to those of a girl on the threshold of womanhood. Tears filled her eyes and overflowed, and then she was laughing again, a high childish giggle, while her cheeks were still wet. Ramses did not understand everything she said, but it became increasingly clear that she was responding, not to the old woman’s voice, but to that of someone else—a voice only she could hear. She turned her head, pressing her cheek to the cold stone. In the recess of the false door, a shadow darkened.
“Stop it,” Ramses gasped. He twisted his hands, trying to loosen the ropes. “Stop it!”
“It is almost done,” the wisewoman said calmly. “Have you heard, my prince?”
Tarek nodded dumbly. The old woman took Nefret’s face between her withered hands and looked directly into her eyes, whispering. In a flicker of time Nefret’s face took on its former blank stare. Then her eyes closed and her head fell back, cradled in the old woman’s hands.
“She sleeps now. Take her back to her own place before she wakes. She will remember nothing of this.”
Ramses wrenched his hands free and sprang to his feet. “Don’t touch her, Tarek. I’ll carry her.”
Tarek stepped back and Ramses lifted Nefret into his arms. She was asleep, breathing lightly, smiling a little.
“Did you understand what she said?” Tarek asked.
“Not all of it. What the hell were you trying to do? If she isn’t perfectly normal when she wakes—”
“Then my life is at your disposal.” Tarek followed him up the narrow stairs from darkness into daylight. “Ramses, my friend—”
“Don’t call me that.” He held Nefret closer, shifting her weight so that her head lay against his breast.
“You are my friend, my dear friend, even if I am not yours. Listen to me. She was speaking to her father, answering his words of love, promising to obey his commands. He knew many would seek her in marriage. She swore never to lose her maidenhood.”
Ramses came to a dead stop. “That’s insane.”
“But it is true. We do not force women into marriage here. But she was warm and loving, and she…she cared for me. I could have won her, Ramses.”
Not if Forth could help it, Ramses thought. Despite the Englishman’s affection for the people of the Holy City, he had not overcome all the prejudices of his class and nation. It was unthinkable for his daughter to marry a “native.” Forth hadn’t meant to condition her against marriage with what he would have called “one of her own kind.” Or had he? God only knew what had been in the man’s tormented mind. In any case, the “spell” had succeeded only too well.
“But you didn’t try,” Ramses said. “You helped us to bring her back to England.”
“I obeyed the orders of my father Forth,” Tarek said simply. “I was young and I believed what he had taught me—that she was not for me, that I would win honor by giving her up.”
“So he got at you too,” Ramses murmured. “Am I to assume that you’ve had time to think it over and decide you made a mistake?”
“I would not have brought her back,” Tarek said. “By force or trickery. But when she came, through no act of mine, I thought perhaps it was a sign. This—today—was a way of finding out. I know now she