the malign spirit had vanished with the night.
“I’m not sure,” Bak admitted. “Five hundred or more, I suppose.”
The young Medjay whistled. “No wonder so much damage has been done.”
Hori pointed to a gang of men struggling with a broken architrave that would be reworked for use in the new temple.
“Our sovereign’s need for stone isn’t improving its appearance.”
“Why shouldn’t she take material from here?” Kasaya asked. “It saves the effort of quarrying. Just think how much grain and supplies will remain in the royal storehouses that would otherwise have been handed out to workmen.”
“Savings isn’t everything. Should not Maatkare Hatshepsut have some respect for the past? For the long ago dead?”
“One of the workmen told me Nebhepetre Montuhotep isn’t even her ancestor.”
“What difference does that make? He was someone’s ancestor, wasn’t he?”
Followed closely by the squabbling pair, Bak walked among the fallen stones, looking for a breach in the ruined wall. He soon found a place low enough to climb over and they entered what had once been the huge enclosed main court. They looked around, awed by what they saw. Stones were strewn everywhere, as if the edifice had been struck by the wrath of the gods.
Small stones and rubble lay scattered around a squarish structure in the center, its original height and exact shape impossible to deduce. Broken roof slabs and architraves lay among this lesser debris and among dozens of eight-sided columns, about half of which stood whole or in part. The remainder lay broken where they had fallen on the sandstone pavement around the center structure. Bak could not begin to guess how many columns and slabs had been removed for reuse. A small rock slide had spilled over the rear wall.
“Do you suppose Djeser Djeseru will one day look like this?” Hori asked in a voice humbled by the destruction.
“Five hundred years into the future?” Bak shrugged. “If the king of that time has no more respect for our sovereign than she does for her worthy predecessor, it might well be torn asunder.”
Kasaya stared, his eyes wide with amazement. “No wonder the malign spirit treads this pavement.”
“Watch your feet,” Bak said, refusing to point out once again the exact nature of the malign spirit.
The walking was difficult. He was glad he had refused to be enticed into the temple the previous night. Someone could easily have broken an ankle. Not the malign spirit, who knew the structure well, but he or his men.
An opening through the ruined wall at the back of the main court took them into an open court surrounded by a colonnade. Above, soaring high in a deep blue sky, Bak saw a falcon making a sweeping circle over the valley, searching for its evening meal. At the far end of this colonnade court, a veritable forest of eight-sided columns had once graced the temple. Here, the cliff face closed in on the structure. The wall of the building, instead of standing free, became a retaining wall, holding back the slope at the base of the cliff, where a huge chunk had been cut out to provide space for these rear chambers.
The front portion of the colonnade court had weathered the years fairly well, while the southwest corner of the outer wall had been felled by a rock slide and the eight-sided columns toppled and broken. The hall of columns beyond had not been so fortunate. Many of the columns still stood and a portion of the roof was in place, but these had suffered a battering from above. For over five hundred years, rocks had fallen from the towering cliff, racing down the slope at a frenzied speed and with immense force. As a result, the back of the building was a chaotic landscape of standing and fallen columns, architraves, and roof slabs, of broken stone, fallen rock, and sand. A rough hole, about as wide as Bak’s arm was long from closed fist to shoulder, marred the pavement near the damaged end of the colonnade court. Pashed had warned of the opening, the tomb robbers’ hole.
Bak and Kasaya explored the columned hall as best they could and managed to enter the sanctuary, cut into the living rock behind the temple. They found nothing but chaos, no recent footprints on the dusty floor.
Returning to the colonnade court, Bak glanced at the long shadows cast by the standing columns. “Tonight we’ll return to this temple. The workmen are no less likely to lay down their tools and flee than they were when the rock slide felled the northern retaining wall. We must once and for all convince them that the malign spirit is a man and not an apparition.” Hands on hips, he surveyed the tumbled stones around him. “First we must learn our way around. We’ve another hour of daylight, plenty of time. I want no broken limbs because we stumbled over a fallen stone we should’ve known was in our path.”
“You know what you’re to do,” Bak said.
Pashed gave him a wry smile. “The moment we spot you, Ramose, Ani, and I will direct the men’s attention to the old temple. They’ll be certain they’re seeing the malign spirit.
We’ll give them some time to work themselves into a state, then Ani will climb onto the roof of our hut with a torch.
When you see his signal, you’ll light your torches and let the men see who you are.”
“If that doesn’t convince them they’ve been duped, nothing will.”
As darkness settled on the valley, Bak, Hori, and Kasaya slipped through a gateway in the stone wall that enclosed a vast expanse of sand in front of the ruined temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. They loped across the low dunes that filled the space, passed through another gateway near the southeast corner of the structure, and hurried alongside the platform on which the temple had been built. With the workmen’s huts on the opposite side of the building, they had no fear of being seen.
They had discovered, during their daytime visit, a pile of rocks they could use to climb up to the temple. The steps were so regular that Bak wondered if the mound had been built by the malign spirit to ease his path onto the platform.
They stopped there to prepare for the night’s excursion.
Hori set down the basket he carried and took from it two baked clay oil lamps sized to fit in the palm of a hand. Using a hot bit of charcoal stored in a small pottery container, he set the wicks alight and handed one to each of his companions. Bak handed to the scribe the three torches he carried, each soaked in oil and ready to fire. With great reluctance, Kasaya left his spear and shield with the basket Hori hid in a dark space at the base of the platform. By the time they were ready to move on, the quarter moon had risen as if on command and the stars shone as bright as tiny suns, reborn mor-tals emulating the lord Re. The night could not have been more ideal for the malign spirit to show himself.
“Shouldn’t Kasaya bring along his spear?” A slight tremor of Hori’s tongue, the question itself, betrayed his nervousness.
“Are you certain we’re doing the right thing?” the Medjay fretted. “What if the malign spirit takes offense?”
Bak gave no answer. If he could not convince Kasaya, who had seen with his own eyes several proofs of the truth, dare he hope this charade would convince the workmen?
Shielding the small flames with their hands so they wouldn’t be seen from afar, they climbed onto the platform.
They stepped over fallen columns and walked around piles of rubble, and soon they reached the north colonnade, which faced the workmen’s huts. There they turned west and walked slowly toward the rear of the temple. Clinging to the shadows, Bak and Kasaya wove a path among the twin rows of partly fallen columns, giving the men at the workmen’s huts glimpses of their lights, sporadically shielding them so they would seem from a distance to vanish and reappear.
Hori remained close to the wall, seeking its security.
Kasaya’s heavy breathing betrayed his uneasiness.
The moon aided their journey, but also hindered them.
The shadows were deceptive, hinting at foreshortened distances and deeper depths. Bak prayed the effect looked equally dramatic from afar. Either the lights had struck the workmen dumb or the breeze was carrying their words in another direction.
They reached the low spot in the wall where they had crossed into the main court during the day. Bak, expecting at any time to see Ani’s signal, stopped to shield his lamp before turning back. Murmuring voices teased his ear, voices carried over the wall behind him by the slight breeze. The malign spirit, he thought, and cold fingers of fear crawled up his spine.
