was so awed by the discovery that he could find no words to express
himself. He stood just inside the entrance, his head slowly turning from
side to side as he tried to take it all in.
Tamre had led Royan to the centre of the quarry where one large slab lay
on its own. It was obvious that the ancients had been on the point -of
removing it and transporting it up the valley, for it was finished and
dressed into a perfect rectangle.
"The Jesus stone!" Tamre chanted, kneeling before the slab and pulling
Royan down beside him. "Jesus led me here. The first time I came here I
saw him standing on the stone. He had a long white beard and eyes that
were kind and sad." He crossed himself and began to recite one of the
psalms, swaying and bobbing to the rhythm.
As Nicholas moved up quietly behind them he saw the evidence that Tamre
had visited this sacred place of his regularly. The Jesus stone was his
own private altar, and his pathetic little offerings were lying where he
had laid them. There were old tej flasks and baked clay pots, most of
them cracked and broken. In them stood bunches of wild flowers that had
long ago wilted and dried out. There were other treasures that he had
gathered and placed upon his altar - tortoise shells and porcupine
quills, a cross that had been hand-carved from wood and decorated with
scraps of coloured cloth, necklaces of lucky beans, and models of
animals and birds moulded from blue river clay.
Nicholas stood and watched the two of them kneeling and praying together
in front of the primitive altar. He felt deeply moved by this evidence
of the boy's faith, and by his childlike trust in bringing them to this
place.
At last Royan stood up and came to join him. Together she and Nicholas
began to make a slow circuit of the quarry floor. They spoke little, and
then only in whispers as though they were in a cathedral or some holy
place. She touched his arm and pointed. A number of the square blocks
still lay in their original positions in the quarry walls. They had not
been completely freed from the mother rock, like a foetus attached by an
umbilical cord which had never been severed by the ancient masons.
It was a perfect illustration of the quarrying methods used by the
ancients. Work could be seen in progress in all the various stages, from
the marking out of the blocks by the master craftsman, the drilling of
the tap holes, the wedging of the cleavage lines, right up to the
finished product lifted out of the wall and ready for transport to the
dam site.
The sun had set and it was almost dark by the time they came round to
the entrance of the quarry again. They sat together on one of the
finished blocks, with Tamre sitting at their feet like a puppy, looking
up at Royan's face.
"If he had a tail he would wag it,'Nicholas smiled.
"We can never betray his trust, and desecrate this place in any way. He
has made it his own temple. I don't think he has ever brought another
living soul here. Will you promise me that we will always respect it, no
matter what?"
"That is the very least I can do," he agreed. Then, turning to Tamre, he
said, "You have done a very good thing by bringing us here to your Jesus
stone. I am very pleased with you. The lady is very pleased with you."
"We should start back to camp now," Royan suggested, looking up at the
patch of sky above them. Already it was purple and indigo, shot through
with the last rays of the sunset.
"I don't think that would be very wise," he disagreed.
"Because it is a moonless night one of us could very easily break a leg
in the dark. That is something not to be recommended out here. It might
take a week to get back to any adequate medical attention."
"You plan to sleep here?" she asked, with surprise.
"Why not? I can whip up a fire in no time and I also have a pack of
survival rations for dinner - I have done this kind of thing before, you
know! And you have your chaperon with you, so your honour is safe. So
why not?"
"Why not, indeed?" she laughed. "We will be able to make a more detailed
inspection of the quarry tomorrow early."
He stood up to start gathering firewood, but then stopped and looked up
at the sky. She heard it too, that now familiar fluttering whistle in
the air.
"The Pegasus helicopter once again," he said unnecessarily. "I wonder
what the hell they are up to at this time of day?"
They both stared up into the gathering darkness and watched the
navigational lights of the aircraft pass a thousand feet overhead,
flashing red and green and white as it headed southwards in the
direction of the monastery.
Nicholas built a small fire in the corner of the quarry nearest the
entrance, and as they sat around it he divided the pack of dry survival
rations into three parts. They nibbled them, and washed down the sweet
and sticky concentrated tablets with water from his bottle.
The fire threw ghostly reflections up the side of the ed the moving
shadows. When a quarry wall, and enhanc.
nightjar uttered it warbling cry from a niche high up the wall, it was
so eerie and evocative that Royan shivered and moved a little closer to
Nicholas.
"I wonder if somewhere on the other side Taita is aware of our
progress," she said. "I get the feeling that we have him a little
worried by now. We have untangled the first part of the conundrum that
he set for us, and I'll bet he never expected anybody to do that well."
"The next step will be to get to the bottom of his pool.
That will be really one up on the old devil. What do you hope we might
find down there?"
"I hesitate to put it into words," she replied. "I might talk it away,
and put a jinx on us."
"I am not superstitious. Well, not much anyway. Shall I say it for you?"
he offered, and she laughed and nodded.
He went on, "We hope to find the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.
No more hints and riddles and red herrings. The veritable tomb."
She crossed her fingers. "From your lips to God's ear!" Then she grew
serious. "What do you think of our chances?
I mean of finding the tomb intact?"
He shrugged. "I will answer that once we get to the bottom of the pool."
"How are we going to do that? You have ruled out the use of an
aqualung."
"I don't know," he confessed. "At this stage I just don't know. Perhaps
we might be able to get in there with fullhelmeted diving suits."
She was silent as she considered the seeming imposs' ability of the task
ahead.
"Cheer up!" He put his arm around her shoulders, and she made no move to
pull away from him. "There is one consolation. If Taita has made it so
tough for us, he has also made it tough for anyone else to have got in
there ahead of us. I think that if the tomb is really down there, no
other grave robbers have beaten us to it."
"If the entrance to the tomb is at the bottom of the pool, then his
descriptions in the scrolls are deliberately misleading. The information
that has come down to us has been garbled by Taita, then by Duraid, and
finally by Wilbur Smith. We are faced with the task of finding our way
through this labyrinth of deliberate misinformation."
They were silent again for a while and then Royan smiled in the
firelight, her face lighting up with anticipation.
"Oh, icky! It is such an exciting challenge." Then her voice descended
an octave. "But is there a way? Is it possible to get in there?"
"We will find out."
"When?"
"In due course. I haven't thought it out fully as yet. All I am certain