The Buried Pyramid

by Jane Lindskold

  “Just about, at least for water,” Eddie admitted. “If Stephen keeps needing liquid at the same rate, we’re definitely there before to-night—and I won’t hide that Jenny has been drinking more, too. She doesn’t know it, but I’ve filled her canteen when she hasn’t been looking.”

  Neville raised his eyebrows.

  “It was that or have her collapse on us,” Eddie said, as if confessing a fault. “She’s kept her peace and sucked on a pebble, and dosed that kitten from her own share, but she’s no camel. For that matter, neither are you. Head hurting? Muscles stiff?”

  Neville nodded. “Nothing I can’t take.”

  “I’m sure, but I know I don’t much like trying to get all of you back by myself.”

  “Fair.”

  Neville took one more longing look toward the rocky outline.

  “We’d better tell the others.”

  But those others had plans of their own.

  Stephen licked his swollen lips, then seemed to regret the gesture as a sign of weakness.

  “We’ve seen the statues,” he said, his voice croaking. “We can’t turn around now.”

  He lurched to his feet, an act that if meant to demonstrate his strength failed to do so, but one that left no doubt as to his determination.

  “We could go back to the Hawk Rock,” Neville suggested. “Let you recover, let your sunburn heal. Then we could try again.”

  He didn’t think they’d do any such thing, but he owed Stephen a chance to save face.

  Stephen wasn’t fooled.

  “Chad Spice’s journal said he found both water and food,” he reminded them. “Tame goats.”

  “That ‘tame’ is one of the things that worries me,” Eddie put in. “Spice seemed to think that the goats were tame because they were unaccustomed to human contact, but the reverse is more likely.”

  “Bedouin?” Jenny asked.

  “Likely,” Eddie said.

  “I don’t care,” Stephen protested. “I want to go on. One more day, that’s all it’s going to take. I know it.”

  “There’s no promise of either food or water,” Neville reminded him gently.

  “I know, and I don’t care.”

  Eddie shrugged, and they went on.

  They were setting up the pavilion as shelter from the mid-day sun, when Stephen gave a croaking shout and pointed to the sky. A single hawk, every feather delineated against the cruel blue, was riding lazy circles on some wind unfelt this close to the ground.

  “A hawk!” Stephen cried. “A hawk. ‘Under the watching eye of the hawk, the homecoming is joyous.’ ”

  It amazed Neville how heartening that one glimpse of something alive and moving could be. The hawk remained above all the while they waited out the worst of the sun’s intensity, then when they broke camp split off to the northwest.

  “Is it leading us?” Jenny asked in quiet amazement.

  These were the first words she’d spoken other than to ask Stephen how he felt. Neville was shocked when he noticed the dark circles that had formed, bruise-like, under her eyes, and the hollows under her cheekbones.

  No one said anything, but they knew that at least some of them had passed the point of returning even to the relative safety of the Hawk Rock. The desert, even in its comparative winter mildness, was sucking moisture from them, leaching it away even in the gentle breeze that created an illusion of comfort.

  Eddie readied the patient camels and they struggled on. Neville tried to sense whether his mount was aware of water nearby, but he felt none of the eagerness that had quickened its step when they had neared the Hawk Rock. Did that mean there was no water, or merely that the camel knew enough to husband its strength?

  Gradually Neville’s field glasses showed him something at the base of the stone outcrop, not a pedestal or building, but a hill or rise washed with sand about its base. As they came closer, he saw they had come to the base of a rocky rise, steep, and slick with accumulated sand. It extended as far as they could see in either direction, curving away so that they could not tell whether they faced a ridge or a circular barrier.

  One thing was clear. The camels weren’t going up that. Even a human was going to find it a hard climb.

  They arrived near dusk. Stephen was no more than semi-conscious, but his camel continued to carry him as if he was any other burden. Jenny was looking feverish, her eyes unnaturally bright. Neville knelt his camel and walked stiffly over to the rock barrier.

  “If there’s water,” he said, “it’s beyond that.”

  “We’ve enough for to-night,” Eddie said.

  “And tomorrow?” Neville asked.

  “We’ll have nothing but camel blood.”

  16

  Four Watchers

  Jenny couldn’t help herself. She wanted to stay awake, wanted to help treat Stephen’s heat exhaustion, but she was too tired. She sat down for just a moment, and awoke only to the cool of the night and restful darkness.

  Someone, Eddie, she thought, was leaning against one of the poles to which they had secured the pavilion, just visible in the moonlight. She caught a whiff of his cigarette and was sure.

  Rising to her feet, noticing as she did so that someone had removed her boots, hat, and gun belt, then stacked them neatly at hand, Jenny teetered slightly, her head spinning. For the first time since waking she noticed how dry her mouth and lips were. Somewhere during that day’s horrible ride she’d stopped noticing. It must be an improvement that she could notice, though it didn’t much seem like one right now.

  She didn’t see her canteen, so she walked over to Eddie. He turned at the sound of her approach, and she saw he was holding Mozelle. The tawny kitten sat upright on the hand he held cradled against his chest, looking more like an ornament on a shelf than a living creature.

  Eddie ground out his cigarette beneath a boot toe, and gestured with his head toward a water bag hanging from one of the tent posts.

  “Careful with how you pour it,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “That’s all we have.”

  Jenny tried not to show how appalled she was, but something must have come through.

  “Had to give it to Stephen—and Neville—or lose one of ’em,” Eddie answered her unvoiced question.

  “Uncle Neville?” Jenny asked, keeping her own voice soft with an effort.

  “Gimpy idiot, him with that injury barely healed, decided to try climbing the rocks when I was busy with the gear,” Eddie said, fond irritation in his voice. “Ankle’s sprained badly. Might be a break. Had to wrap it in wet cloths to cool it. Hope you don’t mind. I borrowed some opium from your kit.”

  Jenny’s hand shook, but she remembered the water and steadied it.

  “Probably just a sprain,” Eddie said. “Didn’t feel the bones grating.”

  “And I slept through that?”

  “You and Stephen both,” Eddie said. “Don’t blame you. This has been harder than it should have been. We’ve had plenty of water. You’re pretty tough for a city girl. Stephen’s game. I don’t know… Ever since we left the Hawk Rock, something’s been off.”

  The water, warm as it was and tasting of goat leather, refreshed Jenny. She crossed to where Eddie stood, and realized he was studying the rocky ridge. The moonlight was hitting it just right, illuminating it, making all the shadows twice as dark and twice as sharp as seemed natural.

  “That where Uncle Neville sprained his ankle?”

  “No, he tried over there.” Eddie paused a long while, his free hand scratching between Mozelle’s ears. “I took a camel out once I was sure you all weren’t coming around for a while, rode around the edges of the curve. Can’t say for sure, but I don’t think there’s a break in this. I think it goes all the way around.”

  “Like the crater of a volcano,” Jenny said. “Can’t be, though. This is sandstone.”

  Eddie nodded. Jenny felt a sudden rush of excitement.

  “I should try to climb it now,” she said. “While it’s lit by the moon but the rocks are
cool. They’ll heat up pretty fast come sunrise.”

  Eddie nodded.

  “One of us should,” he agreed.

  Jenny looked at him levelly.

  “I’d better. If I get hurt, you might just manage to get one or two of us out. If you get hurt, there’s no way I can do the same.”

  Eddie didn’t even attempt to disagree.

  “True. Why not wait until morning?”

  “There’s light enough now, if I’m careful, and I promise I will be careful. Besides, if there isn’t water somewhere up there, you’re going to need to start us back to the Hawk Rock right quick. We’ll need what cool there is if we’re to have a chance. Then I figure one of us will stay with Uncle Neville and Stephen when they can’t go on, and the other will press on for the Hawk Rock and try to bring back water. That about right?”

  Eddie nodded again. He seemed like an oracular statue standing there, Mozelle a carved figure in his hands. Jenny realized that he was fighting a gallant impulse to refuse her, because he knew they both were right, and if there wasn’t water up there, or if she got hurt, he was the only one who had a chance of saving them.

  She didn’t press him to speak, just crossed back to her gear. Gloves, boots, a couple bandannas, an empty canteen, a length of line twined around her waist, just in case there was something worth lowering. She paused at the gun belt, then lifted it, checked that the weapons were clear of sand, and strapped it on.

  “Never know,” she said, meeting Eddie’s silently questioning gaze. “Goats might not be so friendly this time. Hold onto Mozelle for me. Don’t want to step on her.”

  Jenny started her climb without further comment, positioning herself so her shadow wouldn’t block the moonlight. Immediately as she began trying to find reliable foot and hand holds, it seemed darker, so much so that she glanced up to see if some vagrant cloud had covered the moon. The sky remained as remorselessly clear as ever.

  She knew it was her own nervousness, the thought of Uncle Neville’s sprained—hopefully only sprained!—ankle that was making it seem darker than it was. She cast her memory back to her mother teaching her rockclimbing in the New Mexico Territory on rocks not too different from these.

  “Test every hold before you trust it, Jenny. Don’t forget you can use your knees to bridge a gap. On a slant, let your weight help you secure your hold, don’t fight it. Don’t ever reach blind into a hole or crevice. You don’t know who might be sleeping there.”

  Jenny wondered if Uncle Neville had the least idea what kind of woman his sister had become when she’d transformed herself from English lady to American doctor’s wife—American nurse—American mother—American rancher.

  She didn’t think he had the least idea, and resolved to tell him, little bits over time so he wouldn’t think she was trying to teach him how to be her guardian. He’d really been trying, poor dear.

  I wonder if suddenly finding himself almost a parent of a grown woman is what made him so susceptible to that conniving bitch Audrey Cheshire?

  Jenny had to dismiss this immediately as unfair. Lady Cheshire wasn’t exactly young, but she wasn’t old either, and she had ways that made youthfulness seem a disadvantage.

  The rock ridge seemed to go on forever. The rocks started getting larger, so Jenny realized that their assessment of the ridge’s height had been all wrong. They’d been judging as if the rocks at the top were just about the size of the ones at the bottom, while actually some were so big she had to go around them rather than over. That meant squeezing through some tight gaps and hoping the cobras were sleeping elsewhere.

  I never realized what a polite snake a rattler is, she mused. At least they give warning—at least most of the time, they do.

  She hardly realized when she had dragged herself to the top. Her hands were reaching for the next rock, anticipating the next challenge. She stumbled forward, her feet surprised to find themselves on relatively level ground.

  Moonlight illuminated a sandstone ridge bordering a sandy plain. Again she was reminded of a volcano, but here the crater was filled with sand instead of fire—or as had been the case with a mountain lake she’d once seen—with water.

  The memory reminded herself of what she was seeking. At first glance, the crater was featureless, but then she noticed that scrubby grass grew near the edges. More patiently than she would have thought possible, Jenny scanned the rim, unwilling to waste energy trudging through the sand.

  There. There was an area where the grass seemed a trace thicker. She trudged over, aware of sand trickling into her boot. She must have cut open the leather during her climb. She’d need to mend it or she’d have blisters to end all blisters.

  She distracted herself from hope, thinking about the need to mend her boot. Eddie wouldn’t have forgotten something as basic as heavy needles and thread, but if he had she might manage with something from her doctor’s bag. There was a probe in there that might work as an awl.

  There was grass under her feet, not soft like the groomed lawn at Madame’s academy, but uneven and coarse. Then, like a miracle, she scented dampness. The patch was in shadow, but she found matches in her pocket. Striking one, she confirmed what her nose had told her. There was a spring here, hardly more than a damp trickle against the rock, but definitely water.

  Removing her glove she touched her hand to the dampest spot, and when it came away wet, licked the water. It tasted of her own sweat, of leather, and of sand, but it was definitely fresh. She dug with her hand, making a catch basin for the water, moving a rock or two so the spring flowed as a trickle rather than spreading its wealth along the rock.

  Jenny set her canteen to fill. Then she hurried back to where she’d topped the ridge. Squeezing between two boulders she located Eddie, standing just as she’d left him. Even Mozelle hadn’t moved.

  “Eddie! I’ve found it. There’s water! Not much, but at least one spring.”

  She saw the flash of Eddie’s teeth as he raised his face and smiled.

  “Lower your line,” he said. “I’ll get the buckets.”

  At that moment, that practical command meant more to her than medals.

  Neville felt many things when he awoke: pain from his ankle, lassitude warring against expectation, a numbness where he’d lain too long on one shoulder. However, it was what he did not feel that first caught his attention. Licking his lips in a motion he’d repeated so many times throughout that last hot ride that it had become reflex, he realized that he did not feel thirsty.

  He opened his eyes to early morning light against the golden-brown of the woven camel-hair pavilion and tried again. His lips were dry, but neither swollen nor cracked, and his throat was moist. He decided to try speaking, and though his words sounded rather distant to his ears, they came without the hoarse croaking of a parched throat.

  “Eddie? Jenny? Stephen?”

  Eddie appeared at his side almost instantly. He held a canteen in his hand and without speaking offered it to Neville. His mischievous grin said more than any words. Neville drank and tasted water, heavily tainted with minerals, but fresh and even cool.

  “Jenny climbed up last night,” Eddie said. “She found a spring. This morning, when there was more light, she went around and found a second, even better than the first. I’ve been nursing water into you and Stephen since she sent down the first batch. You’ve been too dopey to notice, but Stephen’s doing well enough to complain alternately about how his head hurts, and how we’re keeping him from going up to help Jenny—and to get a firsthand look at what she’s found.”

  Neville felt his heart beating so unbearably hard that it actually hurt.

  “Then we have…”

  “Found the Valley of Dust? Seems like it, unless there are two such places. Seems like we have.”

  Eddie looked less than delighted, but Neville had grown so accustomed to his friend’s mixed feelings about the venture that he didn’t even comment.

  “Tell me,” he ordered, muscling himself upright with the strength of
his arms alone. He’d had much practice with this when his broken leg was mending, years before, that he could do this almost without thinking.

  “Better,” Eddie said. “Do you think you can stay on a camel? Good. Jenny’s located a path that—with a little work on our part—will let us bring the camels and gear up into the Valley. It’ll save a lot of hauling, and then you can see for yourself.”

  Neville insisted on rising, though his ankle throbbed beneath the bandages. Using a crutch Eddie put together from materials in their supplies, he took charge of getting their gear ready. Stephen, still red and peeling from exposure to the sun, pitched in with enthusiasm. Between them, suffering only a few mishaps that would be comic later but were insufferably annoying now, they packed and loaded the camels, freeing Eddie to help Jenny clear the promised trail.

  With more than the usual amount of spitting—and complete rebellion on the part of one of the camels, who refused to rise even when she saw the rest of her train leaving, but who finally joined them, as if a queen gracing them with her presence—the pack train climbed the narrow, rocky trail.

  Neville bit deeply into the side of his mouth lest he show how much the jolting progress hurt his injured ankle. He knew that if any of the others suspected how much pain he was in, they would bar him from exploration.

  And I have not come this far and waited these ten years, he thought stubbornly, to be tucked into bed with bread and milk.

  However, when his muttering and protesting mount topped the rise and descended into the Valley of Dust, Neville forgot even his pain in the intense joy of seeing the place at last.

  Jenny had compared it to the interior of a volcanic crater, and Neville fully understood why. The entire of the valley stood higher than the surrounding desert, cradled from sight within ringing walls of sandstone. These rose twenty feet or more in height, cupping them within a peculiar quiet.

  Although they could not be seen from the inside, Neville understood that without the valley, built from the same sandstone that walled the valley, stood four monuments. Chad Spice had described them as statues, but Stephen reported they were more like columns or pillars.