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“YOU HANDLED THAT EXCEPTIONALLY well,” Nick said.
“From you that’s a great compliment.” The Egyptian rode bareheaded, his long unkempt black locks hanging to his shoulders. With his untrimmed beard he looked like an actor or a prophet. He was leading the three pack donkeys on a rope.
“I still can’t figure out how you put those thieves to sleep like that, but it worked. Must have been the wine. Maybe you drugged it?”
Sharif shook his head. Some people couldn’t accept magic even when it was conjured up right before their eyes. Nick was such a man. A realist. Or maybe he believed in magic, but couldn’t act as if he did.
“Yes, it was the wine.” Sharif didn’t mention that the three of them had had many cups of that same wine. Why confuse the man even more?
Dawn was turning the world golden and rosy. To Nick it was the prettiest one he’d ever seen. Sharif knew where Faye was. They were hurrying toward her.
The two men hadn’t said much to each other on the ride, both weary from their captivity and escape, but Nick felt their luck had changed. They’d survived the mummied cliffs and Afshar and his band of bandits. Nothing could stop them now.
They were miles away from the thieves’ camp; had ridden their animals hard, but not because Sharif had feared they would be followed. He claimed they wouldn’t be. Afshar, like all Egyptians, had a healthy respect for magic and its practitioners. He would never bother Sharif again if he ran across him.
Not that Sharif seemed worried about that, either.
“There are the quarries, up ahead of us,” Sharif announced, pointing.
“Where do we look for her?”
“Of that, I am not sure. The Hatnub quarries cover miles and miles.”
“I thought you said you knew where she was?” Nick had that old ache back in his heart, this time stronger than ever. He’d had a reprieve for the last couple of hours, thinking Faye was still alive, that Sharif knew where she was. Now the situation hit him twice as hard. He couldn’t bear it.
“I did say I knew where she was, but nothing is ever easy, my friend,” Sharif responded gently, turning to look at Nick. “We will find her.”
But will we find her in time? Nick stared at the other man in the dawn’s light and nodded. If anyone could do so, the Egyptian could. He just had to believe.
They searched the quarries for hours as the sun rose high above them. That sultry Egyptian sun. Brighter than Hades. They didn’t stop to eat. Didn’t stop to rest. Sharif said there wasn’t time.
Nick was afraid to ask him what he meant by that.
They heard the hyenas long before they saw them. Yapping in the distance like the churlish scavengers they were. A chorus of vicious barking.
“Those are hyenas, aren’t they?” Nick was listening to the sounds on the air.
“Yes.” Sharif’s gaze swept to the west.
“I thought they were nocturnal?”
“Usually, unless they have something cornered. Then they have been known to wait out their prey as long as they have to, daylight or not. They wear it out, then tear it to pieces.”
“They have something cornered?”
“Seemingly.” Sharif kicked his tired donkey into a wobbly run. Nick was right behind him.
At the top of the next hill they saw the hyenas. Six or seven of them. Dog size with snapping jaws, pointy ears, and scraggly brownish-gray fur. Their teeth razor sharp and bared.
A huddled up sunburnt woman was trying to fight them off with a small stick and a pile of rocks. She was squeezed under an inadequate ledge of rock fighting for her life. A skinny thing. Not screaming. A woman with a scratched face and wild dark hair. She lifted the stick as one of the hyenas launched itself at her.
“Faye!” Nick cried, at the same moment he jumped from the back of his donkey. He stumbled, ran, and rolled down the sandy hill, his knife in hand.
The hyena was on top of Faye by the time Nick got to her, the others closing in close behind it. He dropped into the midst of the carnivores and plunged the knife into the creature on top of her. It squealed in pain and once it got free of his slashing blade, limped away.
By then Nick had knifed two others and Sharif had joined the fray.
Two men with knives were too much for the feral scavengers and they scattered, running off into the rocks like the cowards they were, howling and yapping.
The woman lay face down in the sand. Unmoving.
At first Nick thought she was dead. All those terrifying emotions he’d experienced after her assault at the bar when he’d feared she might die, and when she was in a coma, when she was lost in the desert, returned like long lost, but unwanted, friends.
He knelt down beside her. Afraid to touch her. She was a mess, so sunburnt she could have passed for an Indian. Her nightgown, what was left of it, was torn and filthy. Her skin was peeling. Her cracked lips were trickling blood. Her hair was sprinkled with sand, and tangled. The hyenas had gotten to her. She had vivid claw scratches down one arm and leg.
Sharif hovered behind them. He looked at Nick. Looked down at Faye.
“She’s not dead. Superficial wounds only.”
Tears coursed through the grime of Nick’s sunburnt face as he gently lifted his wife into his arms. Sharif was right, she was breathing.
“She needs a doctor.” Nick’s voice trembled.
“There are no doctors out in the desert, my friend,” Sharif replied.
Nick had heard that before, but Faye looked really terrible.
“We found her. And she’s alive,” he moaned, holding her tightly. He rocked in the sand with Faye in his lap.
Sharif smiled, infinite relief in his expression. “She’ll be fine.
“Let me get her some water. That is what she needs most right now.”
He fetched a canteen from a donkey and handed it to Nick.
****
FAYE OPENED HER EYES as the water touched her lips. Her hands came up to grasp the canteen and her eyes widened in recognition. She tried to smile. There was blood on her teeth.
“Nick.” Barely a sigh.
“Just a little at first,” Sharif cautioned. “She’s been without water and food too long. She will not keep it down if she consumes too much.”
He knelt down beside Nick and Faye, his eyes examining Faye’s condition. He touched her cheek, felt her forehead with tender fingers. He studied the wounds she’d received from the hyenas. “She seems very weak,” he said, “but I think she will be all right after a lot of rest, water, and food. I have some ancient remedies, for sunburn and something for heat exhaustion in my supply packs, a cream for those injuries. I can treat her.”
“Medicine, too? There isn’t anything you can’t do, is there?” Nick turned and looked at Sharif. “Thank you.” Then in a softer voice. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
“Oh, there are some things I’m not proficient at.” He was being modest, accepting the thanks but not making a big deal of them. “I have spent most of my life here on the desert, and I know her ways. Even Egyptians sometimes get sunburn. They sometimes stay out in the heat too long, and get sick.”
Faye drank the water meted out carefully by Nick, her gaze focused on his face. It was no longer young, as it had been in the dreams she’d been having before the hyenas had come. But in that moment, on his lap out in the desert, she saw him as he’d looked that first night at the dance, out in the crowd. A young man. Long silky hair and an accepting smile. The love in his eyes even then.
She felt the same way now about him as she had in the beginning. No, she loved him more. They’d had a lifetime together. Had Josh and raised him. Run the bar together, and he loved her. She could see that.
He’d found her, and now they’d grow old together. Knowing that was the greatest thing in the world.
She gave him a brave smile and her arms went around his neck, pulling him down to her; she was whispering in his ear.
“Love you...knew you’d come....”
Both wept as they embraced.
“Let’s raise a tent and get her out of the sun.” Sharif was standing above them. “Get some more water in her. Some food. Clean her up.”
That night when Faye had regained some of her strength, had rid herself of the excess dirt, and was in a soft robe before a warm crackling fire, she haltingly told them her story and what had happened to her since she’d seen them last.
Of the false Ankhesenaton luring her away into the desert and then abandoning her. The real Amarna. The bloody massacre she’d witnessed in the quarry. The necropolis. How she’d managed to make it alone four days out in the desert.
“Horemheb really did attack Nefertiti’s city. He and his men murdered her and three of her daughters, and her granddaughter, so there’d be no one to contest his rule someday, then butchered the population of their city to cover up the crime and the truth. He destroyed everything they’d ever created. He hated them so much he wanted to wipe them and their offspring from history forever and he almost did.
“But one of them escaped. Ankhesenaton. One of Aye’s followers, a soldier, saved her. She lived the rest of her life hidden in the necropolis that was once located near here. She had more children. And those children had children. And those....”
She looked up at Sharif. “We’re related, you know. Ankhesenaton told me so.”
“I know,” Sharif agreed too easily. “I’ve known from the first time I laid eyes on you. I have been waiting for you all my life to lead me to the truth. That’s why Mamdouh contacted me when he met you at the hotel. He saw it, too, being one of Ankhesenaton’s offspring as well. That’s why I agreed to be your guide.”
“Why am I not surprised?” she chuckled. “You have Aye’s magic, don’t you?”
“Some of it. I inherited the magic, the obsession to set Aye’s soul at peace by releasing the souls of those he’d loved so much in his lifetime—while you inherited Ankhesenaton’s soul, which wanted the same thing. And we have used both as we were supposed to.”
Sharif was absolutely serious. Nick stared at him, then Faye. Nick had told her long ago he’d accepted Sharif as a friend. Wasn’t jealous of him any longer. Sharif had saved their lives. Nick owed him. He even admitted to her that he liked the man.
“Did you see what happened to her and her family?” Sharif’s eyes were on her.
“Yes. It was most horrible.” Sorrow seeped into her voice.
Faye then chronicled the events of the murders in the quarry, telling exactly what she’d seen, while both Sharif and Nick listened.
“Do you think any signs or remains exist after all this time, for proof?” she asked Sharif.
“Possibly. I have deciphered more of the scroll we found in the family’s tomb. If I’m correct, it also describes what happened here—if anyone will believe it, since, as you pointed out once, Aye was supposed to have been long dead when the scroll was written.”
“Now that’s going to be a hard one to explain, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it will.” Sharif smiled.
“Anyway,” Faye went on, wearily. “I’m leaving it up to you, Mr. al-Hakim. I’ve done what Ankhesenaton wanted me to do. Come all the way to Egypt, disrupted my life, and discovered the truth and the place where they were all murdered. I almost died doing it. You’re the Egyptologist, you take it from here. I think I’ve—we’ve— done enough.” She was looking out over the dark sands.
Night birds were chirping somewhere, the wind singing as it always seemed to do in the desert. Faye would remember its music for the rest of her life. Like her memories of this great adventure.
“I want to return to my own life,” she told Nick and Sharif. “I want to go home. Can you do that for me, Sharif. Take over now?”
Her eyes were incredibly red and tired, but no longer haunted. She felt lighter, freer, than she had in years and years. Empty. At last.
“Yes, I can. With the help of the scroll, if it is authentic, and that I don’t doubt, I can get permission and enough backing to start an archaeological dig here. Perhaps we will find proof of what you said happened. Show it to the world. Perhaps not. I will try my best.” He grinned widely, spreading his arms. “For Aye, for Ankhesenaton and her family. For Egypt. I, too, believe, that you’ve done enough.
“Go home. It’s over.”
“Good.” Nick, one arm around her, smiled, his determined face relaxing. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “I was going to take her home no matter what she or you said—or that damn ghost. I’m glad we all agree.”
She was as thin as she’d been after the coma. Fragile again. She bet there were big black circles under her eyes. Her body trembled in his embrace, but she laughed and pulled Nick’s face down to hers so she could kiss him. “Let’s go home, honey,” she said, tears in her eyes. “Let’s go home.”
“Tomorrow.” Sharif sat back in the sand, his hands on his crossed knees. “Now, if you’re feeling up to it, we’ll return to Amarna, and I will journey back to the Nile while you and Nick remain there. Faye needs more time to recover. I’ll send word to Mohammed to pick us up. Have him contact my brother as well, so the plane will be waiting for us at the airport.
“I can always return here to do my work once you two are safely on your way home. Besides, I have something of great importance to take back to the museum first.” He meant the scroll. It couldn’t stay out there. It should be somewhere where it would be safe.
“That sounds like a plan,” Nick murmured.
“Then it’s settled.” The Egyptian stood up, gazing out over the desert as Faye had done a few moments before. “Now you two get some sleep.”
Sharif walked away from them, out into the night, his fiddle in hand, while Nick tucked her into her sleeping bag, then got into his own. Nick fell asleep as Sharif serenaded the desert night but Faye listened for a while to the haunting music.
And all the ghosts slept as well.
****
IT WAS ON THE SECOND day after Sharif had left to arrange their return journey that Faye saw the city of Amarna gleaming in the sun one last time. She’d been feeling much stronger—Sharif’s strange concoctions for sunburn, heat sickness, and her wounds had worked like a charm—and Nick had been walking with her down in the ruins, letting her lean on him a little. The workmen were still digging there. Their voices carried on the wind along with their prayers. Faye had wanted to see everything one last time. Soon she and Nick would head home, and she knew they would never come back.
It’d been a bright sunny morning like all Egyptian mornings, and Faye had wanted to stretch her legs. Get some exercise. Nick had made her rest a lot since he’d found her. She’d been good, had stayed in bed. So he didn’t refuse when she asked him to go with her that morning. He knew she was saying her goodbyes.
They strolled through what had once been the gates to Amarna and suddenly Faye was seeing the ancient long-dead city as it’d once been again.
Not the panicked dark city of that final night, but the city in its heyday. Golden and lovely. Full of happy people and sunshine. The ghosts walked along with her and smiled.
Nick could only stare at her and wonder what was making her smile so. He didn’t see what she was seeing, though Faye wished he could have.
She walked through the royal palace, where she’d run in terror. This time she got to admire its beauty and its timelessness, to see it in all its original splendor.
In the throne room on their glittering thrones were the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his lovely Nefertiti and their court, dressed in glittering finery. Happy. Their children smiling brightly. All of them. Six daughters and granddaughter. Along with all their dead descendants that had joined them over the centuries.
Ankhesenaton was waving goodbye to her, smiling. At Faye. The royals were in the middle of a great feast, dancing girls and musicians putting on an elaborate and festive show.
Fascinated, Faye watched the whirling barefooted dancers in their silks and jewels, watched grinning servants who brought platter after platter of strange and exotic food to the royal princes and princesses, the kings and queens of ancient countries who were presented at court.
She guessed that Nick saw the rainbow of emotions fanning across her face, the delight. Perhaps he even saw the ghosts reflected in her eyes. Even though he wasn’t seeing the spectacle, he knew what she was envisioning now because she was explaining it every step of the way as she held his hand out in the middle of the burning desert, grounded to him so she wouldn’t drift away into eternity.
“I wish you could see this,” she whispered to him.
“The city as it once was over three thousand years ago. They’re all here. The royal family. It’s so breathtakingly beautiful.” She clutched her husband’s arm. There were tears in her eyes.
“I wish I could see it,” Nick said, probably feeling left out as usual, but used to it.
Then the city flickered and Nick’s eyes grew wide with shock and surprise. His face broke into a great smile.
“I can see it, Faye. I can see it, too!” he exclaimed.
She hugged him to her, and for a few minutes the two walked through the palace, gawking at the wonders around them. Nick was like a little boy, delighted with what he was seeing, taking it all in—the scantily clad dancing girls, the pomp and ceremony. The awe of it.
Every once in a while he would gasp and say, “See that, Faye...see him....?” And they’d talk about what was in front of their eyes.
When the mirage faded back into the dust of the desert, back into the ruins, Faye almost wanted to cry. It’d been so beautiful. A time that would never come again.
Nick stood there, still amazed. “I’m never going to forget that. Never.”
Thank you, Ankhesenaton, Faye thought, seeing the wonder still lingering in her husband’s face.
“Let’s go back now, honey,” she said. “We’ve seen what they wanted us to see. The city as it once was.” The happy times, Ankhesenaton had once told her of.
Nick had nodded and led Faye away.
“Goodbye, Ankhesenaton,” Faye whispered as they’d walked across the empty sand.
Nick had taken her back to camp.
A day later Sharif returned, and the three of them left the ruins of Amarna and she and Nick flew home soon after.