Heart of the Gods

by Valerie Douglas

  Across the way was one of those Ky didn’t trust. Heinrich Zimmer, a part of a group excavating the north tower.

  Tall, with thinning sandy hair and a fleshy face, his black eyes always seemed to be at odds with the rest of him, too dark for his fair coloring.

  A number of their colleagues were wary of Zimmer and with reason. He had a reputation within the archeology world―unsubstantiated legally―of stealing the work of others. From the interactions Ky had had with the man, he didn’t find the rumors difficult to believe. Although Zimmer could be charming enough there was something about him Ky just didn’t like.

  That charm was part of it. Although some found him personable enough, Ky had always felt that Zimmer’s charisma was a carefully crafted act. The one or two who dared talk about it had remarked bitterly how easily they’d fallen for it, how Zimmer had worked his way into their good graces then turned on them.

  Zimmer’s presence hadn’t been Ky’s choice.

  It was difficult these days for any one organization to fund a dig of this size. More so for Ky since he had an even greater project in mind in the future―if he found what he hoped to find here.

  Allowing other partners in on this dig, spreading the wealth as it were, would hopefully give him a little more leverage in keeping the tomb site to himself.

  It was also good politics.

  And so other universities and organizations had been invited to take part in opening this site.

  Unfortunately, he hadn’t anticipated those partners would include Zimmer.

  In light of that Ky was taking extra precautions and being very careful around the man.

  Then there were the thieves.

  Where had they found the stolen fragments that Raissa brought him?

  He was still waiting on Tareq’s response to what he’d sent.

  The tombs existed. If he could get that funding…

  Working in this section wasn’t a waste of time, though, it was necessary. The more he knew, the better his chance of finding what he sought. It was sometimes surprising what you would find. They’d no way of knowing, for example, why this fort had been abandoned all those millennia ago and another built in a location not that far away but slightly closer to the flood plain of the Nile. Perhaps it had been the proximity for supplies but it seemed a waste.

  Zimmer, Ky noted with a frown, seemed to have his mind on something or someone else.

  The man nudged one of the other workers, tipped his head in the direction of his gaze, spoke.

  Following his look, Ky saw where his eyes settled, although he already guessed.

  Raissa.

  A thread of uneasiness moved through him watching Zimmer’s avaricious eyes on her.

  She seemed oblivious as she examined the site.

  The air blew hot, lined with a fine coating of sand, and the sun beat down on her shoulders but Raissa was long used to it. She looked across the great square hollow of what had once been the fort with its carefully mapped borders of twine wrapped around sticks. If she hadn’t known what it was, she wouldn’t have recognized it, although clearly those who worked here did, each section had been labeled with what they thought the area had once been. There was so little left. Only the outlines of the towering walls remained, the remnants of mud bricks showing where the thick inner and outer walls would have been, the rooms for the officers, the common rooms and barracks for the soldiers, the areas where they would have drilled.

  In her mind’s eyes she could see it as it had been, the great walls surrounding them on all sides.

  Once it would have towered far above the desert…

  Above her a falcon cried out as it circled, looking for prey. For a moment she watched it, its wings flared as it floated high above.

  She could see Professor Farrar working off to one side, his dark hair lifting in the breeze, just curling over his collar a little.

  With a sigh, she mentally shook her head.

  She hadn’t expected to like them. She didn’t want to like them, it complicated things. They were so foreign and this was something she had to do.

  But she did like them, she liked all of them.

  For all his joking around, Ryan was no fool, when he spoke it was to the point, anything else he kept to himself. She respected that.

  John was harder to know and like, he was a man of strong opinions but his competence with equipment was undeniable.

  Quiet Komi, with his halting manner and his gentle wit had won her over swiftly.

  And then there was Ky. Professor Farrar. She had to remember to think of him that way.

  She looked across the dig site, watched him at work, his dark head bent, intent, focused.

  She refused to consider his resemblance to the Khai of old as a sign of any kind.

  Both had been/were handsome men, that was undeniable, with strong features that reflected a strength of personality, in the firm jaw, the intelligent dark eyes, that firm, full mouth.

  The attraction was there, though, she couldn’t deny it.

  A burst of warmth went through her to watch him. No matter how many times she looked at him he made her heart jump. She wished she could see his eyes, though, hidden behind the sunglasses. Sweat had dampened his t-shirt so that it clung to his firmly muscled chest. An academic should not be so finely muscled.

  Her breath hitched a little as he glanced up to catch her looking at him.

  Smiling, she turned away, amused and embarrassed he’d caught her.

  It was so hard not to look, even harder not to want to touch. She knew it was far better if she didn’t. He wasn’t for her. That wasn’t something she could even consider.

  There was his policy against fraternization, she would respect that, and it was for the best. Or so she tried to tell herself.

  They’d left both Komi and John back at the hotel. Neither was an archaeologist. John was the fix-it/muscle and driver and Komi’s translation skills weren’t necessary out here, where Raissa’s translation skills were or might be, depending on what Professor Farrar or Ryan found, if anything.

  Professor Farrar had also made it very clear he wasn’t sharing her skills with anyone, here or elsewhere.

  That was fine with her as that had been her intention anyway.

  She turned her face up to the sky to feel the sun on it for a moment. It felt wonderful after so long cooped up inside.

  Some of the other groups were packing up against the heat of midday, retiring to their air conditioned tents and vehicles to let the worst of the heat pass. They were in no hurry, after all. This place had waited for millennia, its secrets would wait a day or two more.

  In the distance Ky heard the sound of a generator being fired up―not surprisingly, it was the other group of Americans.

  Jumping in and out of air conditioning, he knew, only made it more difficult to adapt to the heat. Having grown up in this kind of environment, he was used to it. It seemed Raissa also had no difficulty with it.

  John, on the other hand, was always clamoring for air conditioning.

  With a nod to Ryan, Ky waited until the others were out of sight.

  He looked for Raissa and was caught by the sight of her standing with her face tilted up to the sun, appearing as contented as a cat in a window, loose tendrils of her hair blowing in the breeze. Something tugged low and deep inside him. He couldn’t help smiling.

  With an effort, he pulled his thoughts back from where they wandered.

  “Raissa,” he called, quietly.

  When he beckoned to her, she smiled and came to join him, meeting him at the gap where one of the fort’s small side gates would have been. He liked watching her walk, the graceful swing of her hips, her stride loose, open, as if she was used to walking long distances, and long for her height.

  Following him curiously, she stayed silent until they reached the far side of the rise and saw what he’d hidden there.

  Very few of the archaeologists roamed beyond the walls, there were scorpions and snakes and what the
y wanted was within the ancient walls, not outside of them.

  Unlike Ky.

  “I’m trusting you to keep this between us,” Ky said, looking at her.

  She met his gaze evenly, a little puzzled, but nodded.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he said, and pointed. “Sit there.”

  Obediently, she sat, or rather, settled down on her heels, her hands on her knees, her blue eyes watching him curiously but intently. He had the impression she could kneel like that for hours.

  “Ryan and I found this on our last dig out here,” Ky said. “Every site where people have been has a garbage dump called a midden, a place where they throw their trash. We knew there had to be one. Where there are people there is always trash, bones, offal, worn clothing or tools, and garbage. Most are away from living spaces but fairly close at hand, whether it’s the midden of a medieval castle, or as here, outside the walls of a fort. They wouldn’t use the main gate, having visitors pass your trash heap wouldn’t be very welcoming, so they were more likely to use one of the small side gates. They also wouldn’t want to dump their garbage too close as it would attract vermin and predators. Being human they also wouldn’t want to walk too far, so we began probing outward in a radius from the gate. We weren’t the only ones looking but we got lucky and found it.”

  Luckily it had been on the other side of a small rise, where the wind had been especially helpful, scouring away much of the loose sand and making it much easier to find.

  “You’re trusting me a great deal,” she said, eyeing him.

  Pulling his sunglasses down a little so she could see his eyes, see the look in them, he met her gaze.

  “I am.”

  Carefully, with small fans to blow away the sand, tweezers to delicately pick through what he found and assorted other small tools, he began to probe through the mass of detritus that had been hidden beneath the sand.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” Raissa asked, curiously, “if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Ky didn’t know if he was ready to tell her the whole truth―he was taking a huge risk showing her this much―but he could tell her some of it. He wanted to trust her completely but he couldn’t quite take that last step, that final chance. He’d been searching for the Tomb or Tombs for too long, almost all of his life. It was too great a chance to take when he was so close to his goal.

  “Clues to a myth,” he said finally with a quiet laugh, most of his attention on what he was doing. “Over the course of my studies I came across some references here and there to indicate that the tombs of the priests and priestesses of some of the earliest eras of Egypt were hidden out here somewhere. Just hints, random references, myths and stories. We have very little from that time, if we could find just one of them it would be a major discovery.”

  That was the least of it, of course.

  Very carefully, he teased a fragment of pottery from the sand and dirt with satisfaction. There was still writing etched into the clay that hadn’t been sanded away by time.

  He’d had a sense that something was there when he’d been here last but then some of the others had begun to return and he’d had to abandon it for fear they would discover his secret.

  No one knew he was actually looking for the tombs and for one tomb in particular. Many didn’t believe it or they existed.

  The Tomb of the Djinn.

  In an area as big as the Gilf Kebbir, a region the size of Switzerland and made primarily of a plateau split with chasms and caves, secrets could still be hidden.

  He was gambling that they had.

  Watching him, Raissa asked, “If you don’t mind my asking, why do you do this?”

  He looked at her. “What this?”

  “Search for old forts, graves…archaeology…”

  “Why did you learn ancient languages?”

  Laughing, she shook her head and said, “It’s not the same. I’m not so sure it was so much of a choice, it was more survival but I believe I asked you first.”

  “Perhaps because I grew up in this world, going back and forth between the Middle East and the U.S.,” he said. “There is a fascination with being so close to history here, especially such ancient history. This region was the birthplace of so much. Ancient Egypt has fascinated me since I was a boy and my first visit to the Egyptian Museum. I used to imagine what it had been like to live in those times. Times change and yet so much here is unchanged.”

  Stopping for a moment, he paused to look around him and waved.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  Tilting her head a little, smiling softly, Raissa said, “Sun, sand, sky.”

  “And what do you hear?”

  Her mouth twitched, a small smile curved her lips.

  It was peaceful, serene, silent save for the brush of the sand blowing in the breeze.

  “Only the wind…” she said, with a sigh.

  She understood what he was saying. It was much quieter out here, without the constant cacophony that assaulted her ears in town, the cars, people and animals. Music blared from a window, voices called or shouted.

  “It was a purer time back then,” he said, “with fewer things and gadgets, fewer distractions, people actually knew each other, depended on each other in ways we don’t anymore. It was life or death for them and both life and death were closer to them than they are for us, I think. They talked to each other, spent time with each other, it was their only form of entertainment. They interacted in ways we no longer do.”

  Raissa watched his face, the high cheekbones, that full mouth, his dark eyes distant but not unreadable. Some part of him yearned, wanted something he couldn’t quite define… For him it wasn’t merely facts and figures. It was all of it. And that mattered.

  “Do you think this time is so very different?” she asked. “Don’t people know how to live, laugh and love now?”

  There was an interesting note to her voice, a curious look in her eyes.

  Something went through him at the sound and he looked up at her, to see her lovely blue eyes watching him intently, a small frown marring her brow.

  “They do but now there are other things to get in the way. Television, radio, the computer…”

  Ky looked out over the desert and smiled, remembering how he’d started out on this path, the voice booming in the darkness…

  “Then there are the stories. Isis searching for Osiris after Set trapped him, seeking him so desperately she went into the underworld after him. When Set cut Osiris up and scattered him along the Nile, she searched for him and picked up all the pieces she could find, using magic to return him to her. It’s one of the greatest love stories of all time. And there are the real people, the Pharaohs, both good and bad, the peoples and civilizations they created, the ones they interacted with. Learning how they lived, how they succeeded and how they failed, teaches us more about who and what we are, where we came from, how we became what we are, so perhaps we can figure out where we are going.”

  “You’re a romantic,” she teased gently.

  Looking into her lovely blue eyes, feeling his heart catch when he did, he couldn’t disagree.

  With a sigh of amused resignation, seeing the sparkle in her eyes, he said, smiling, “I suppose I am. See what you make of this… Gloves?”

  Obediently she drew on the clean cotton gloves.

  He handed her the fragment of pottery. It was flat, like a tablet would be.

  Studying the writing on it, Raissa shook her head. “I’m afraid that you’ll have to get me more than this.”

  There were clearly hieroglyphs on it but only fragments of what might have been words.

  “Let’s see what I can find,” he said, teasing another fragment loose. “And then there is this, putting together the pieces of a puzzle.”

  He handed it to her.

  Carefully, she tried to fit the two pieces together in a way that made sense, after all, they were likely from the same piece of tablet. With a laugh of triumph, she did.

 
Laughing, too, Ky said, “See. That’s another reason why I do it, that moment of discovery. Not so much aha, but…isn’t that amazing?”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “It’s time to go back,” he said.

  She stood and offered him a hand out of the pit.

  With a smile, he took it, let her pull him up.

  Heinrich Zimmer watched them all morning but particularly the girl―Farrar’s new translator. With all that shining hair, those pretty eyes and that body, she was beautiful. He went hot just at the thought of touching her.

  And she hadn’t looked at him twice although he’d seen her glance surreptitiously at Farrar from time to time.

  If he’d been Farrar he’d have been all over that but Farrar had scruples, principles, and judging by the surreptitious looks Farrar gave the girl in return, he hadn’t touched her yet.

  He was a fool. What a waste.

  Of course, a girl like her wouldn’t give someone like Heinrich Zimmer the time of day and he knew it. He wasn’t pretty like Farrar with his thick dark hair. He was big, bluff, his hair was receding and he was not pretty. Yet he knew himself to be ten times the man Farrar was. He knew it. A woman like that wouldn’t see it, though.

  In the back of his mind a small voice whispered, as it did nearly constantly these days.

  He’d grown accustomed to it, to that voice in the back of his mind, had even listened to its counsel now and then while trying hard not to think too hard about the source of it.

  He wasn’t insane. Only the mad heard voices.

  ‘You could have her,’ it sighed, whispered. ‘We can help you. Let us in…’

  It was tempting, so tempting.

  He watched her hair flag in the winds, the long strong muscles of her legs and envisioned them wrapped around him.

  The dig had been going on for weeks as they carefully excavated down through the accumulated layers, sifting through sand that had built up over millennia, preserving what lay beneath and within it as the blowing sand above had scoured away the walls. It was tedious, meticulous work but it had to be done carefully or risk damaging what might lie beneath it.