He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [156]
He looked as he always did in those dreams—his stalwart form that of a man in the prime of life, his handsome, hawklike features framed by a neatly trimmed black beard and mustache. They remained impassive, but his black eyes shone affectionately.
“Finally!” I exclaimed, when I had got my breath back. “Abdullah, I have wanted so much to see you. It has been too long.”
“Long for you, perhaps, Sitt. There is no time here, on the other side of the Portal.”
“I haven’t the patience for your philosophical vagueness tonight, Abdullah. You claim to know everything that happens to me—you must know how frightened I am, how much in need of comfort.”
I held out my hands to him, and he enclosed them in his. “They are well, Sitt Hakim, the two you love best. Soon after you wake you will see them.”
I knew I was dreaming, but that reassurance carried as much conviction as the evidence of my own eyes would have done. “Thank you,” I said, with a long breath of relief. “It is good news you give me, but it is only part of what I want to hear. How will it end, Abdullah? Will they live and be happy?”
“I cannot tell you endings, Sitt.”
“You did before. You said the falcon would fly through the portal of the dawn. Which portal, Abdullah? There are many doorways, and some lead to death.”
“And from it. One may pass in or out of a portal, Sitt.”
“Abdullah!”
I tried to free my hands. He held them more tightly, and he laughed a little. “I cannot tell you endings because I do not know them all. The future can be changed by your actions, Sitt, and you are not careful. You do foolish things.”
“You don’t know?” I repeated. “Even about David? He is your grandson—don’t you care?”
“I care about all of you. And I would like my grandson to live to see his son.” His sober face brightened, and he added smugly, “They will name him after me.”
“Oh, it is to be a boy, is it?”
“That is already determined. As for the rest . . .” His eyes dwelt on my face. “I should not tell you even so much as this, but mark my words well. There will come a time when you must trust the word of one you have doubted, and believe a warning that has no more reality than these dreams of yours. When that time comes, act without hesitation or doubt.”
He rose to his feet, drawing me to mine, and carried the hands he held to his lips. “You may tell Emerson of this kiss,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “But if I were you, Sitt, I would not tell him of those others.”
Instead of vanishing into the depths of sleep, as he and his surroundings had done before, he turned and walked away. He did not stop or look back as he followed the long path that led to the Valley where the kings of Egypt had been laid to rest.
When I opened my eyes, the room was filled with the pearly light of early morning. Seshat sat beside me, holding a fat mouse in her mouth. Sluggish with sleep, I was unable to move in time to prevent her from placing it neatly on my chest.
That got me up in a hurry. Seshat retrieved the mouse from the corner where I had flung it, gave me a look of disgust, and went out the window with it. My inadvertent cry—for even a woman of iron nerve may be taken aback by a dead mouse six inches from her nose—brought Nefret bursting into the room. After I had finished explaining and Nefret had finished laughing, she took me by the shoulders.
“You look much better, Aunt Amelia. You did sleep.”
“I dreamed.”
“Of Abdullah?” Nefret was the only one I had told of those dreams, and of my half-shamed belief in them. “What did he say?”
“Lia’s baby is a boy.”
Nefret’s smile was fond but skeptical. “He has a fifty-percent chance of being right.”
“Emerson and Ramses are safe. He said I would see them soon after I woke. And don’t tell me the same odds apply to that prediction!”
“No. I am certain he was right about that.”
“You needn’t humor me, Nefret, I know there is no truth in such visions.