The Skin Map be-1 Read online

  A few moments passed, and then the two physicians bent over the body and began to unfold a linen cloth to cover the corpse.

  “No,” murmured Arthur. “Leave her be.”

  Khepri nodded to his father, who extended his palm in a gesture of respect and backed from the room. “I am sorry,” Khepri said. “It was the will of the gods. There was nothing to be done.”

  “What?” Arthur roused himself. “What did you say?”

  “We were powerless before the mighty will of the gods.” He glanced with sadness at the still body. “If you wish, I will begin making the arrangements for her embalming. It is best done quickly.”

  “No,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “Thank you, Khepri, but no. I will make my own arrangements.”

  “As you will, master.”

  Anen came in then and, seeing what he had already been told had taken place, he embraced his friend and expressed his sorrow. Then, spreading his hands over the body, he intoned a chant for the dead. Arthur listened, unable to make anything of it. When the priest finished, he turned and asked, “If you wish, I will have the body prepared for its journey into the afterlife.”

  “How long until the sun rises?” asked Arthur.

  “Not long. The night is almost gone.”

  Arthur turned and rushed into the courtyard. Cupping his hands to his eyes to shut out the glare of the torches, he quickly scanned the heavens. From among the billions of bright pinpricks of light, he located the one he hoped to see: a star of piercing intensity, easily the brightest light in the heavens.

  “Then we must hurry. There is not much time,” he said, rushing back into the guesthouse. Bending over the pallet, he gathered the still-warm body of Xian-Li into his arms.

  “What will you do?” asked the priest.

  “I’m taking her to reclaim her life.”

  Anen opened his mouth to protest. “But-”

  “Please,” said Arthur, cutting him off, “I must be at the ley before sunrise.”

  Anen saw from the set of Arthur’s jaw that it was no use arguing. “What do you require?”

  “Your chariot-is it still here?”

  “I will order another.”

  While the priest went to fetch the vehicle, Arthur wrapped his wife in the linen cloth Khepri had left for him. Then, when he heard the sound of the horses in the courtyard, he gathered up Xian-Li’s body and walked out. Together, they laid the corpse on the floor of the chariot, and Arthur started to climb up.

  “Have you ever commanded such as this?”

  Arthur admitted that he had not.

  “Then allow me,” said Anen, taking the reins from his friend’s hands. “Stand behind me and hold tight.”

  Arthur took his place in the chariot, and they rolled out into the darkened street and were soon on the road leading out of the city. By the time they reached their destination, the sky was pearling in the east. Wasting not a moment, they lifted Xian-Li’s body and arranged it so that Arthur could carry it more easily.

  As the first golden rays of the newborn sun struck the unnaturally straight path, Arthur started walking.

  “Where will you go?” Anen called after him.

  “There is a place beyond that star,” Arthur replied, indicating the solitary star still ablaze in the fast-fading sky. “If Xian-Li can be healed anywhere, it will be there-at the Well of Souls.”

  CHAPTER 34

  In Which a Tour Guide Is Engaged

  It has happened!” cried Lady Fayth. “We have made-”

  The nausea overtook her before she could finish. Turning away quickly, she bent over and vomited politely. Though he felt sorry for her, Kit did admire her form. Giles was also affected; the sturdy coachman swayed on his feet and then crumpled onto hands and knees, emptying the contents of his stomach into the dust at the side of the road.

  “Don’t try to fight it,” said Kit, sounding like a veteran of the wars. “Just breathe deep through your nose and let it wash over you.”

  This well-meant advice met with a cool reception from Lady Fayth. “You knave!” she muttered as soon as she could speak again. She dabbed her mouth with the back of her hand. “You knew full well it would make us sick.”

  “Well, yes, unfortunately it does rather-”

  “You might have warned us.”

  “I thought I did,” replied Kit lamely. “Did I not?”

  “You most certainly did not,” she fumed. “I would have remembered such a salient fact.”

  “Then I do most heartily apologise, my lady,” replied Kit stiffly. “It is in the nature of the leap, I’m afraid. It does monkey with your internal navigation system.”

  She glared at him. “What are you babbling about?”

  “It makes one feel seasick,” he explained. “But the feeling passes quickly, and one does seem to get used to it eventually. I feel quite normal, see?”

  “How pleasant for you.” She sniffed. Turning her eyes away from Kit, whom she held to be the source of her discomfort, she took in the sight of the sphinxes. “Heavens!” she gasped. “Where are we?”

  “Egypt somewhere, I reckon,” answered Kit. He looked to Giles, who was still kneeling in the dust. “How are you feeling?”

  The servant nodded and rose unsteadily to his feet, his skin a pale, waxy hue. “Better,” he said without conviction.

  Kit quickly scanned their surroundings. A more desolate landscape he could not have imagined: not a blade or twig of anything green to be seen; nothing but empty sky above and dusty, barren, rock-crusted hills all around. There was no one about, nor any human habitation-except, at the end of the sphinx-lined avenue, the immense black rectangle of a doorway carved into the side of the dun-coloured hill.

  “It looks like a temple or necropolis or something,” observed Kit. “If Cosimo and Sir Henry also landed here, they might have taken shelter there. I say we go investigate-see if we can find out anything.”

  Shouldering the bundles containing their provisions and weapons, the three started toward the temple, walking between the paws of the crouched sphinxes whose stone faces gazed on with remote and imperturbable dignity. Some of the statues had hieroglyphs on their pedestals, and some had clearly suffered wear and tear from sandstorms and the simple ravages of time-cracks and fissures in the stone, damaged feet or faces-but most were in fairly good condition.

  They proceeded along the broken road, alert to any sound or movement around them. The early morning breeze, though still cool, held the threat of heat to come. From somewhere high above, the lonely cry of a scavenging buzzard drifted down. Closer, they saw that the temple entrance rose on tiered platforms that formed low steps leading up to a massive door guarded by two enormous statues-one of a man in a tall plumed headdress holding an ankh in his hand, the other of a man in the striped headdress and heavily ornamented kilt of a pharaoh. Daunted by the yawning emptiness of the entrance and its giant guardians, they paused at the foot of the steps. “Shall we?” said Kit.

  “I think it only right that you go in first,” suggested Lady Fayth.

  “Sure.” He mounted the steps to the doorway and tried to peer into the dark interior of the temple. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone there?”

  No reply.

  “Hello?” he called again. “Anyone?”

  His voice reverberated through the empty interior and died away in the dark recesses of the rock-hewn edifice.

  “It’s safe,” he said, motioning for the others to join him. “There’s no one here. We have the place to ourselves.”

  Kit entered the temple. The air was dry and cool, the light dim. The roof had been pierced in places, allowing shafts of sunlight to penetrate the interior darkness and illuminate a veritable forest of stone pillars. In one of these rectangular pools of light a crude table had been erected, using bricks from the temple and a piece of old planking. Dusty rugs lay in a heap beside the table. The base of the nearest pillar was black with soot where fires had been lit. “Somebody has been here.”

&nb
sp; “More than one somebody, I would say,” Giles added, pointing to an array of footprints in the dust on the floor. “And perhaps not all that long ago.”

  “There are all sizes here.” Kit bent down for a closer look. Most prints bore the marks of a simple shoe without heels-a sandal, most likely-and some were barefoot. Many were scuffed and overtrod, suggesting people milling about. He straightened again and looked around. “Sir Henry and Cosimo might have been here as well, but there’s no way to tell for sure.”

  “Whether they were here or not is irrelevant,” Lady Fayth pointed out. “They are not here now.” She turned in a slow circle, letting her eyes sweep the dim, cavernous interior. “And there is nothing else of interest.”

  “Then we continue the search.” Kit turned and walked back to the doorway and out onto the steps. “Maybe we should leave the bags here while we have a look around.” He glanced at Giles, who was shaking his head. “No?”

  Kit followed the coachman’s gaze and saw, coming towards them along the avenue of sphinxes, a travelling company made up of at least eight camels surrounded by a small army of people on donkeys and on foot. “Oh,” said Kit. “It looks like we’ve got company.”

  “A genuine Egyptian caravan!” gushed Lady Fayth. “How truly exciting!”

  They waited and watched as the parade drew closer, and it became clear that the group was coming to the temple and that it was, to Lady Fayth’s disappointment, not an exotic desert caravan at all, but a passel of tourists; the Egyptians among them were guides and beggars. The lead camel stopped a few dozen yards from the entrance, and the camel jockeys made their beasts kneel so that the visitors could dismount. The newcomers were outfitted for a day’s adventure: dressed in elaborate khaki desert gear with multipocket jackets and loose trousers stuffed into tall boots. The men wore pith helmets and carried riding crops, and the ladies wore wide-brimmed hats held in place by gauzy scarves, and carried flyswatters. The Egyptians wore simple white robes and double-strapped sandals; a few sported chequered turbans.

  “By Jove!” shouted one of the men, throwing his leg over the crown of the saddle and sliding to the ground. “It is magnificent! Someone get a photo of me at the doorway, what!”

  “Tourists all right,” said Kit. At Lady Fayth’s uncomprehending glance, he added, “Travellers-they have come to see the temple.”

  “Whoever they are,” she observed, “they speak something very like English.”

  “True,” replied Kit. “Wait here, both of you. I’m going to talk to them.” He started toward the man who seemed to be the leader of the group. “Hello!” he called, giving the fellow a wave. “Hello! May I ask where you are coming from?”

  The man turned and saw the three travellers for the first time. “Upon my word!” he exclaimed. “You’re here awfully early. I say! They told us we’d have the place to ourselves.”

  “Yes, well, we wanted to get here before-before it got too hot, you see.”

  “Yes, quite,” replied the man, squinting up at the sun. “We’ve come from the Queen Hatshepsut.” Seeing Kit’s puzzled frown, he added, “It’s a boat. On the Nile? Just over those hills back there.” The man gestured vaguely behind him. “And you? I didn’t see any other boats at the mooring last night.”

  “No, we’re on foot.” Kit regarded the tatterlings beginning to swarm around them.

  “Ah! Roughing it, what?”

  “Something like that,” Kit admitted. “We were hoping-”

  Before Kit could finish, he was mobbed by a gang of urchins-barefoot, half-naked beggar children, all of them clamouring to be heard above the others, grabbing at his shirtsleeves and shouting, “Mister! Mister! You English, mister? You English? You have shillings, mister? Shillings!”

  “Sorry, no,” said Kit. “No-no shillings. Sorry.”

  “Shillings, mister! You have shillings! Give, mister. Give.”

  “I don’t have any shillings,” Kit said, more forcefully this time. “No shillings.” A dozen small hands snatched at his sleeves and trousers; small fingers wormed into his pockets. He raised his arms out of their reach and stepped back. “Look, I don’t have any money, see? No money. No shillings!”

  “Give, please. Mister, give!”

  “Looks like you’ve had it, old man!” called the tour leader. Chuckling, he walked back to join his group members, who had dismounted and were moving towards the temple. “You’ll have to give them something to get rid of them.”

  “Thanks for your help,” called Kit, still trying to extricate himself from the clutches of the insistent young vagabonds. His efforts aroused the attention of some older boys with donkeys; they rode their diminutive animals into the besieging horde, clicking their tongues and swatting their rivals with switches made from palm branches. “Mister! You ride donkey! We take you! Ride, mister!”

  “No! I don’t want a donkey ride,” said Kit, backing away.

  “What are you doing?” asked Lady Fayth, stepping up beside him.

  “I got a little tangled up here,” he said. “But I’m working on it.”

  “Pray, do not farce about. Ask them if they have seen Cosimo and Uncle Henry,” she suggested.

  “I was just about to do that,” replied Kit. “There probably isn’t much that happens around here that they don’t know about.”

  “Well?” she demanded, swatting away the hands that were trying to find their way into her pockets.

  “Excuse me!” shouted Kit. “Excuse me! We are looking for two Englishmen. Two English-big men. Has anyone seen Englishmen?”

  Though his repeated inquiries appeared to have no effect on the bawling horde, one of the donkey boys left the pack and returned a moment later with one of the camel drivers. “You English?” called the driver. “You look for men?”

  “Yes,” Kit answered, hurrying to meet him. His noisy entourage moved with him. “Two Englishmen. They came here a few days ago. Did you see them?”

  The camel driver waded into the throng and, with a word and a flick of his camel whip here and there, instantly scattered the begging children. They ran to catch up with the tour group just now entering the temple. “Old men,” said the Egyptian.

  “Yes,” confirmed Kit. “Old men-two of them. One was a big man, tall, with wavy white hair.” He rippled his fingers over his head to demonstrate. “The other had reddish hair and a pointed beard.” His fingers stroked an imaginary goatee on his chin. “They were wearing dark clothes-black coats.” He patted his own shirt and breeches. “Did you see them?”

  “Yes. Them I see.”

  “Do you know where they went? Can you show us where they went?”

  “Why you want knowing this?”

  “They are our friends. We were meant to meet them here.”

  “They are bad men,” said the camel driver, and spat.

  “No,” countered Kit quickly. “No, please-they are good men. But they may be in trouble. Bad men were following them. We have come to help.”

  The Egyptian considered this, his crinkled eyes examining Kit and his companions. “I take you.”

  Turning to Lady Fayth and Giles, Kit shouted, “He has seen them. He says he’ll take us to them.”

  “Fifty dirhams,” added the driver.

  “Ah, yes,” said Kit. “Wait here.” Returning to his companions, he said, “I need some coins-a few crowns should do it.”

  “Sir Henry and Cosimo-the fellow knows where they are?” said Giles as he stooped to remove a satchel from the bundle he carried. “He has seen them?”

  “And he’ll take us to them?” questioned Lady Fayth.

  “That’s what he says,” replied Kit. Taking the purse from Giles’s hand, he opened it and poured out a handful of coins, took up two of the larger silver ones, and passed back the rest. “This should do it.”

  He crossed to the camel driver and held up the two coins. “This one to take us to find our friends,” said Kit, handing the coin to the driver. “And this one when we have found them.” He returned the
second coin to his pocket. “Agreed?”

  The Egyptian whipped the coin out of sight and made a little bow. “I am Yusuf,” he said. “We go now.” He turned and started toward the line of kneeling camels.

  Kit called to the others, “Come on! He’s taking us now.”

  They shouldered their bundles and hurried to join their guide and were soon clambering up onto the awkwardly sloping backs of three camels. Yusuf commandeered a donkey from one of the lads and without so much as a backward glance, they were soon jolting off along the avenue of sphinxes and into the desert. Of the three travellers, Giles most quickly mastered the odd swinging, lurching gait of their long-legged mounts, and Lady Fayth soon caught the knack; Kit, however, could not quite adjust to the jerky, undulating sway and resigned himself to an uncomfortable-and very smelly-ride. The camels, all but silent on their flat, padded feet, passed along a low rise of dust-coloured hills; away to the west, tawny dunes of sand undulated like the waves of a stationary sea.

  The sun rose higher, growing steadily hotter beneath a cloudless sky. The line of hills stretched into the distance, disappearing into the silver shimmer of the burgeoning heat haze. It was not long before Kit began wishing he had thought to bring a hat-and a canteen filled with something cool and refreshing. It was an unfortunate thought, because once it had entered his head, it quickly passed from idle fancy into fixation. The more he thought about it, the more it grew to occupy his mind, filling it and driving out all other thoughts. He began to feel as if his mouth were stuffed with cotton and his throat made of tree bark; his vision became rimmed and distorted as if he were peering through cheap binoculars.

  “Sir?” Kit became aware of someone calling him. “Kit, sir?”

  He turned his head to see that Giles had reined up beside him. “Hmm?”

  “Are you well, sir?”