The Mummy (Ramses the Damned 1)

And no Ramses.

"I fear for you, my dear," he said. And then he left her.

The night, the silent empty night, with only the thinnest echo of the music below, lay before her. And all her past countless nights of good and dreamless sleep seemed like the lost comforts and delusions of childhood.

AWN. THE great endless rosy sky spread out beyond the dim shadows of the pyramids and the roughened, disfigured Sphinx, with his paws sprawled on the yellow sand before him.

The dim shape of the Mena House lay still and quiet with only a few tiny lights in its rear rooms.

Only a solitary man, draped in black, rode his ugly camel across the horizon. Somewhere a steam train gave its deep, throbbing whistle.

Ramses walked through the sand, his garments blown back by the cold wind, until he came to the giant Sphinx and stood between its feet looking up at the ruined face, which in his time had been beautiful still, covered over in a fine casing of shining limestone.

"But you stand here still," he whispered in the ancient tongue, surveying this ruin.

In the cool still morning, he let himself remember a time when all answers had seemed to him to be so simple; when he the brave King had taken life with a swift blow of his sword or his cudgel. When he'd struck down the priestess in her cave so no one else would possess the great secret.

A thousand times he'd wondered if that had not been his first and most terrible sin--to kill the innocent crone whose laughter still echoed in his ears.

I am not fool enough to drink it.

Was he truly damned for that? A wanderer on the face of the earth like the biblical Cain, marked by this great eternal vigour which separated him from all humankind forever?

He did not know. He knew only that he could not bear to be the only one any longer. He had blundered, he would blunder again. It was a certainty now.

Yet what if his isolation was meant? And every attempt would end in such disaster?

He laid his hand on the hard rough stone of the Sphinx's paw. The sand was deep and soft here, and the wind stirred it as it ruffled his robes, and tore at his eyes cruelly.

Again he looked up at the disfigured face. He thought back to the age when he had come here in pilgrimage and in procession. He heard the flutes, the drums. He smelled the incense again and heard the soft, rhythmic incantations.

He made his own prayer now, but it was in the language and the manner of those times which gave him some sweet childish comfort.

"God of my fathers; of my land. Look down on me with forgiveness. Teach me the way; teach me what I must do to give back to nature what I have taken. Or do I walk away in all humility, crying that I have blundered enough? I am no god. I know nothing of creation. And little of justice.

"But one thing is certain. Those who made us all know little of justice either. Or what they do know, great Sphinx, is like your wisdom. A very great secret."

The great grey shadow of Shepheard's Hotel grew darker and ever more solid in the rising light as Samir and Ramses approached it--two robed figures moving swiftly and silently together.

A cumbersome black truck, rocking on its four wheels, pulled into the front drive before they reached it. Newspapers in tightly bound bundles were thrown down upon the pavement.

Samir removed one quickly from the first bundle as the bellboys came out to collect the others. He felt in his pocket for a coin and gave it to one of the boys, who took little heed of it.

ROBBERY AND MURDER IN DRESS SHOP

Ramses read the headline over his shoulder.

The two men looked at each other.

Then they walked away from the sleeping hotel, in search of some early morning cafe where they might sit and think and read this evil news, and ponder what to do about it.

Her eyes were open when the first rays of the sun pierced the thin curtains. How beautiful it looked to her, the great arms of the god, reaching out to touch her.

How stupid the Greeks had been to think the mighty disk the chariot of a deity, driven wildly over the horizon.

Her ancestors had known: the sun was the god Ra. The giver of life. The one and only god before all gods, without whom all gods were nothing.

The sun struck the mirror; and a great golden glare filled the room, blinding her for an instant. She sat up in the bed, her hand resting lightly on the shoulder of her lover. A dizziness overcame her. It seemed her head was teeming suddenly.