Lord of the Desert

by Nina Bruhns

  Gillian’s task was to find Lieutenant Kilpatrick’s grave marker or other solid evidence and, once and for all, quell the malicious whispers that had persisted longer than a century.

  “Really, sweetie, you do look all in,” Gemma persisted stubbornly. “If the grave is there today, it will certainly still be there tomorrow.”

  Gillian grabbed a fresh bottle of water from the cooler. “Oh, it’s there, all right. I’ve recognized some of the unexcavated tombs Father sketched in his notebook. And he mentions this very temple.” She gestured to the ruins behind them.

  “Egypt is littered with unexcavated tombs and crumbling temples,” Joss reminded her. “And Father was notorious for muddling locations because he didn’t always keep his notes up-to-date.”

  “Besides,” Gemma said, “I don’t see how that fuzzy reference to a mysterious Kilpatrick inscription in Father’s diary even refers to your lieutenant’s grave. He was supposed to have died in the Sudan, two hundred miles south of here!”

  “Which is why no one’s ever found it,” Gillian said, undaunted. She gave them a cheerful wave and went off to fetch Dawar and Mehmet.

  Mehmet, her guide-slash-assistant, was a skinny kid of indeterminate preadolescent years with a winning grin and extremely light fingers. Handily, he seemed to know every soul both honest and shady living in the Nile Valley, from Luxor to the Sudan. And probably beyond. Gillian figured if she ended up having to sneak over the border into forbidden territory to complete her job, the kid would be invaluable.

  “Y’alla, Mehmet,” she called, rousting him from where he sat on his haunches under the sheltering ledge of a large boulder. “Let’s go.”

  He didn’t budge.

  Puzzled, she looked over at him. And saw he was staring up at the gebel, a strange expression on his face.

  Ah.

  “You saw him, too?” Thank goodness, she hadn’t been hallucinating after all. She smiled. “Don’t even think about it, kid. That stallion’s not for you. He’d have you for breakfast.”

  Without moving his eyes, Mehmet slowly shook his head. “La’. No, miss. This one, he is for you.”

  “Me?” Her brows flickered, torn between a frown and laughter. “I don’t think so.”

  Mehmet’s soulful brown eyes finally met hers. There wasn’t a speck of his usual adolescent mischief or humor in them. “It is al Fahl,” he said.

  The frown finally won out. The boy had the street smarts of a grown man and spoke English almost flawlessly, so she had to remind herself he was a simple villager, uneducated beyond the fourth grade at the most, his head filled with primitive local superstitions. That was why Gemma came here to do her anthropological research. The whole area was rife with the stuff. Ghost stallions, shape-shifters and vampires, oh, my.

  Mehmet reached for the amulet he always wore on a leather thong around his neck. A wedjat, or Eye of Horus. Except it was the right eye instead of the usual left-facing one. She’d always attributed that oddity to the fact that he hailed from Qurna, a village on the West Bank, usually associated with the land of the dead. The right eye was the one that Set-Sutekh, god of the hot winds, chaos and darkness—and the West Bank—had torn in jealous hatred from his brother Horus-Ra. The left eye—some sort of cult symbol, she thought.

  “Mehmet, surely you don’t believe in such things,” she said, careful not to sound disrespectful, just in case. “Al Fahl isn’t real.”

  For a split second, his gaze held an emotion that might have been pity as he looked at her. Then it vanished just as quickly. His eyes cleared and he bounced up, his usual energetic self.

  “This is Egypt, miss,” he said with a grin, in his distinctive clipped and rolled accent. “Very mysterious. Who can say what is real and what is mirage?”

  Chapter 2

  I enter to see him.

  —Opening of the Mouth Ceremony

  Lord Rhys Kilpatrick slipped quietly through the stately silver portal to the luxurious temple within Khepesh Palace and made his way through the hushed darkness toward the inner sanctum, the holy of holies where the Opening of the Mouth and Eyes ceremony was taking place.

  He was late.

  “Oh, Seth-Aziz, hear us!” a trio of dulcet female voices chanted. Their sweet tones echoed softly off the gleaming silver pillars and walls of the inner sanctum.

  Damn. The ritual was almost over. Seth’s inner mummy case had already been raised to stand upright before the priestess Nephtys. The precious metal and lapis lazuli adorning the elaborately carved obsidian sarcophagus from which it had been lifted winked and shone from the light of a hundred fragrant altar candles, reflecting the glittering starlight of ten thousand diamonds that radiated down from the midnight-blue curved ceiling overhead. The ritual never ceased to impress him, nor did the splendid setting. Whatever else, Seth-Aziz had exquisite taste. His five-thousand-year-old tomb—now expanded into the sumptuous underground palace called Khepesh where they all lived—was amazing in every aspect.

  “Your purification is the purification of the great god Set-Sutekh,” the priestess Nephtys murmured, swinging a censer, walking around the mummy case four times, smudging it with smoking ambergris and myrrh.

  Luckily, Rhys’s attendance was not critical. Or even needed, really. The monthly ceremony to awaken the demigod from his full-moon slumber depended only upon the priestess and her two shemats, or acolytes. Nephtys was the one who possessed the power to raise the dead, not Rhys.

  “May the god open the mouth and eyes of his loyal follower, Seth-Aziz, so he may walk and speak with his body before the great nine gods in the magnificent Palace of Khepesh, and drink the blood of his humble servants,” they chanted.

  Nevertheless, Rhys made it a habit to be there when Seth awoke each month upon the second setting of the sun after the full moon, on the chance his services were required. One never knew what his friend would be in need of upon awakening. A special food. A particular book. A beautiful woman. A willing sacrifice for his bloodlust…which thankfully happened but once a year anymore.

  Rhys halted a respectful distance from the altar that overflowed with lotus flowers surrounding a goblet of wine. Nephtys sent him a smile, then held up a snakelike implement topped by a ram’s head, and with the tip touched first the mouth, then the eyes of Seth’s man-shaped coffin.

  “I have opened your mouth and your eyes with this blade of iron that came from Set-Sutekh, with which the mouths and eyes of all the demigods are made to taste and see. May your ka arise, my brother, and reawaken to life!”

  The priestess and her shemats leaned in, raising their arms in supplication. This was Rhys’s favorite part. The real magic.

  From beneath the lid of the mummy case a misty shape began to materialize, taking on form and solidity as it stepped free of the trappings of death. The shape slowly resolved into a tall, handsome, black-haired man, regal of bearing and stern of aspect. Rhys’s lord and master, and best friend for the past hundred and twenty-five years.

  The vampire demigod, the High Priest Seth-Aziz, come back to life.

  Or at least his ka. In Egypt, a man had three souls, the ka, the ba and the akh, each with a different function. Few believed the whole of the man-god’s being still lived, but rather that it was only his solid soul, his ka body double, that was called back from the land of the dead to feed upon the blood of the living. Seth-Aziz was like no other who dwelled in Khepesh. Just two of his kind remained in the whole of Egypt. The last of a dying breed…

  It was all a mystery to Rhys, but the spell had worked every month now for nearly five thousand years. Nevertheless, all in attendance let out a sigh of relief mingled with awe when Seth’s eyes fluttered open and focused softly on the priestess.

  “Sister,” Seth greeted her, his voice strong and sure. “Ever the loveliest of sights to chase off dreams of the underworld.”

  Nephtys leaned forward and gave Seth an affectionate kiss on his smooth, perfect cheek. “Dreams or nightmares, hadu?”

  The Guardi
an of Darkness shrugged noncommittally. “It is what it is.” He turned to Rhys, stepping forward to put his hand on his shoulder, his flesh now as firm as Rhys’s own. “And my loyal Englishman, here to welcome me back as always.”

  “I am your humble servant, my lord.”

  Seth chuckled. “You are neither servant nor particularly humble, Lord Kilpatrick, yet it pleases me to hear you say so.” He returned Nephtys’s kiss on the cheek, then turned to usher Rhys away between the rows of silver, papyrus-shaped pillars. “How are things up in the mortal world, my friend? Anything urgent to deal with?”

  Rhys bowed his head in parting to Nephtys and winked at the two pretty shemats, then matched his stride to Seth’s, heading out through the courtyards of the temple compound and into the grand hall beyond the temple portal.

  “Things are quiet, but simmering,” he reported.

  “So you think the war with Haru-Re is heating up again,” Seth observed with neither excitement nor anger.

  “Yes. I suppose we’re overdue,” Rhys said philosophically. “Ray likes to rattle his chains every century or two.”

  The animosity between Seth-Aziz and his perpetual enemy, Haru-Re—or Ray, as he liked to call himself these days in what he thought was a clever pun—had been going strong for five millennia, an extension of the original war for supremacy between their leaders, the powerful rival gods Set-Sutehk and Re-Horakhti, begun at the dawn of Egyptian civilization. After the fall of the ancient gods, their immortal followers—or shemsu netru as they were called—remained on earth, still locked in the ebb and flow of battle. Although immortal was a bit of a misnomer. Under certain circumstances it was possible for even a demigod to succumb to death permanently. In fact, through battle and magic, and the one secret, fatal weakness of vampires, nearly all the demigods who had once flourished had been destroyed. And as the leaders had died, so had their shemsu. Today, only two cults, or per netjer as they preferred to be called, still remained—those led by Seth and Haru-Re.

  “There is a rumor Ray may be lurking somewhere nearby,” Rhys said. “Shahin’s spies are due back tonight with a report.”

  Sheikh Shahin Aswadi was captain of Seth’s cadre of guards, and a good friend to both Rhys and Seth.

  Seth’s face went stony. “Have him shore up our defenses. Nephtys must be protected at all costs.”

  Originally one of Haru-Re’s captive slaves, a princess from a far northern island, Nephtys had been rescued from the enemy and adopted by Seth’s father in the days when they were still young and mortal. From her lowly beginnings, she had risen to become a powerful priestess. Today she was the only one alive with the knowledge to transform mortal to immortal.

  Haru-Re was obsessively determined to get her back.

  “We must prepare ourselves for the battle. And increase our number,” Seth ordered as the two of them strode into the Great Council Chamber.

  Rhys reluctantly agreed. It was a well-traveled, if dangerous, road. After the untimely death of Haru-Re’s priestess, he now had no means of converting either shemsu or the menial his own human servants called shabti, and had taken to stealing Seth’s. Thank goodness the enemy had not yet resorted to capturing the shape-shifters of Khepesh. But it was a concern, making it necessary for them to step up recruitment of initiates.

  If it were up to Rhys, there would be no shabti at all in Khepesh. They were the unlucky ones, robbed of all mind and will. It was a cruel and unnecessary fate to impose on anyone. But unlike Rhys, not every mortal wished to serve the Lord of the Night Sky, nor willingly paid the price of immortality….

  “Our number may be increasing sooner than you think,” Rhys said, reminded of the situation that was currently causing him worry. “A mortal is getting dangerously close to discovering the eastern portal of Khepesh, in your old tomb.”

  Seth halted in front of the enormous ebony council table, now empty. “Just what we need. Who is this mortal? Grave robber or archaeologist?”

  “Neither. I am told it is an historian seeking to document a more recent grave.”

  “A grave? Whose?”

  “My own.”

  Seth’s brows shot up. “Yours? By Osiris’s member, why would they be looking for that?”

  Rhys sighed. He’d been fearing this very thing since he’d made his original fateful decision in 1885. “Apparently, the Kilpatrick family wishes to put an end to certain persistent rumors regarding my desertion from the British army.”

  Seth’s lip curled. “Your unsavory past catches up with you at last, my friend. Well, then. This meddlesome mortal must disappear, mustn’t he? Who is this man destined to be my newest initiate?”

  “He,” Rhys answered with a calculating smile, “is no man. It is a woman.”

  What Mehmet said was true, Gillian thought, taking a last lingering glance up at the gebel where they were headed. The whole country was a cipher, impossible to puzzle out. One of its many charms, she silently ventured as she gathered her pack together.

  Mehmet whistled loudly as he hurried to fetch Dawar, and by the time she’d swung into the saddle, his own small donkey had trotted up and he’d mounted, ready to lead on.

  It was the hottest part of the day, so they took it slow and easy on their climb back to the foot of the towering ochre-and-beige-striped formations of the gebel. The old expression, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun,” had originated in places like this, and for good reason. The sun and heat could literally kill anyone who didn’t take ample precautions. Unfortunately, all three sisters’ university schedules precluded doing research anytime other than summer break. Normally, Gillian would have heeded Gemma’s advice to wait until the relative cool of late afternoon to continue her search. But today she was too anxious, certain that the Kilpatrick inscription her father had mentioned in his survey notebook was close by. Very close by.

  Excitement bubbled within her at the prospect of finding it and completing her mission with a good result for her client. Historians didn’t have a lot of exciting job options. Teaching was about it. Which was fine. She loved history, and that was part and parcel of the profession. But success here could lead to other fascinating historical detective work during future summer holidays.

  “Miss,” Mehmet called over his shoulder as he pulled his donkey to a stop. The donkey didn’t have a name. Mehmet claimed it would be silly. “You didn’t name your car, did you?” he’d cheerfully argued. Actually, she had; but she’d prudently decided not to get into that debate. “While we rested,” he continued, “I saw a shadow in the rock face. There.” He pointed up. “I think it’s an opening.”

  Gillian had learned on the first day working with Mehmet always to trust his instincts. She suspected he often knew much more than he let on, and was in his own way leading her to a tomb, ruin or other site he thought she might find interesting, without prompting sticky questions he’d rather not answer about the origins of that information. Egypt’s most lucrative export had always been illegally obtained antiquities. Tomb robbing was a mainstay for many West Bank locals. The whole subject could bring Josslyn to a frothing frenzy of outrage over the loss of valuable archaeological data due to thieves’ complete disregard for anything other than saleable goods. Mehmet was undoubtedly connected in a big way to the trade. But unlike her sister, Gillian believed in quietly educating those involved. Hiring them for jobs such as this was a strategy far more likely to succeed in the long run than yelling at them or calling the corrupt antiquities cops, who would slap one hand while taking bakshish from the other.

  “An opening? In the rock?” she asked. “You think it’s a tomb?”

  “Maybe yes,” he said, nodding as he glanced back at the gebel, avoiding her eyes.

  She cocked her head. “Then let’s check it out.”

  “Yes. Good.” He looked almost nervous as he spurred his donkey forward up the increasing slope.

  She wondered why. Maybe this was a rival village’s territory and he was worried about repercussions. Usu
ally such animosity was set aside when foreigners hired locals as guides. It was in everyone’s interest to keep the tourists happy. And since she wasn’t an archaeologist, she’d be considered a tourist. In other words, not a threat to business.

  She gave a mental shrug. Maybe the heat was getting to her after all, and she really was imagining things. Why would he take her there if he thought he’d get into any real trouble for it? She wasn’t naive enough to think he’d shown her every secret these cliffs were hiding. She just had to trust him enough to believe he would not let her down in her mission to find this one inscription.

  And she did trust him. As far as it went.

  She reined Dawar to follow the donkey along the skinny path at the foot of the gebel. After a few hundred yards they came to a stop. She looked up at the colorful sandstone crenulations of the cliffs, searching out the shadow he had spoken of.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  His eyes met hers, then quickly slid away. Unconsciously, he touched his amulet. “I must have been wrong.” He definitely seemed nervous. “Come. Let’s cont—”

  “No, we may as well have a quick look around,” she said, and dismounted. She’d never seen him like this before. Something was hidden around here, and she had every intention of finding out what. And why he seemed so jumpy.