at the wall, increasing the height of a ramp up which the next course of stones would be hauled and placed. Prisoners they were, but they chattered constantly as all men do who toil together day after day. An overseer watched, barking out orders, while a guard sat dozing in a slice of shade beside the wall. A sledge containing two large sandstone blocks stood idle on the chamber floor and seven or eight additional blocks lay ready to load. Bak guessed they had been cut the previous season and left for the new crew to place.
“Where’s that overseer, the one called Teti?” User grum bled. “I’ve no desire to spend the night up here.”
The hill on which they stood sloped from south to north, allowing them to look beyond the new chamber and the open court to what had been, many generations ago, another struc ture, now partially destroyed. Kaha had joined Wensu and the pair were walking among a dozen or so monolithic me morial tablets that rose into the sky or lay in the sand at either end of the fallen building, reminders of past kings and long ago expeditions to the mines. Now and again they stopped so
Wensu could read an inscription to the Medjay.
Beyond the building, the irregular surface of the plateau sloped toward the north until suddenly it dropped away. The high, steep cliff overlooked a deep wadi cut through the sandstone by raging waters many generations ago.
The mansion of the Lady of Turquoise, built of the reddish stone taken from the mountain, looked a part of the land around it. It was not large, four or five rooms, Bak guessed, and angled off to the south at the rear of the open court. Lieutenant Huy had told him the goddess’s shrine and that of the lord Sopdu, patron god of the eastern frontier, were cut into the rock be neath the high ground behind the structure. An impressive stand of bushes somehow managed to survive in front of the building, adding life to the hot, dry, and otherwise lifeless land.
Other than the prisoners toiling on the building and the soldiers and prisoners resting from their ordeal of carrying water and supplies up the trail, few men were visible on the tableland atop the mountain. Bak guessed that its uneven reddish surface concealed the mines and those who dug the turquoise from within. A young man wearing the long kilt of a scribe was talking with Sergeant Suemnut, and four men were approaching up a slope farther to the west.
“I thought this place would be busier,” User said, as if reading his thoughts, “an ant hill.”
“According to Huy, too large a number of men would be impossible to supply. Necessity limits the population to about a hundred and twenty.”
“Thirty prisoners came with us from the port to help build the mansion of the goddess, and I count ten men raising the ramp in the new chamber. Do you suppose our sovereign knows her generous offering to the Lady of Turquoise is be ing carried on at the expense of her mining operation?”
“Someone will have told her. From what I’ve heard, she keeps a close eye on the amount of precious minerals and stones received at the treasury. She’d question a shortage.”
User grinned. “You speak as if you don’t know her person ally, Lieutenant.”
“The earthly daughter of the lord Amon? You jest.”
Bak wondered if Amonmose had heard of his exile to
Buhen and had told the explorer. He probably had. Such tales were the stuff of legend, far more interesting than talk of skirmishes in the desert or the arrival at a garrison of a beau tiful young woman.
Sergeant Suemnut called out and one man of the four turned aside to join him. The sergeant pointed toward Bak and User. Words were exchanged, not all of them agreeable if the intensity of their gestures told true. The sergeant snapped out a final order and the man strode across the sand.
“I’m Teti,” he said. “Which of you is Lieutenant Bak?”
The overseer of the mines was a few years older than Bak, of medium height, and well muscled. He wore a dirty knee length kilt and carried a short baton. His snapping black eyes and the angry set of his mouth promised an interesting tour if not a pleasant one.
“This is one of our bigger mines, and at present our most productive.” Teti stopped beside a large square hole in the ground. At the bottom, a horizontal tunnel led off to the right.
“Do any of you want to go down?”
Bak knelt to look. The sound of voices could be heard is suing from the tunnel, along with the tapping of mallets on chisels. “I’m going.” He had made his expectations clear to the sergeant, and felt sure the message had been passed on.
Evidently Teti had not wished to hear.
“As are we,” Psuro said, signaling Nebre and Kaha to come forward.
“And I,” User said.
“After coming so far?” Ani rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Nor would I,” Nebenkemet said, kneeling beside Bak and looking down the shaft.
Amonmose knelt beside the carpenter. “How do we get down?”
“Are you well enough?” User asked Ani.
The jeweler, whose face remained flushed from his ardu ous climb, formed a resolute smile, took a waterbag from the
Medjay sergeant, and raised it to his lips. “Psuro was right.
The more water I drink, the better I feel.”
Openly irritated by the growing number of men who wished to accompany him, Teti frowned at Wensu. “You’re not coming, too, are you?”
The young man stared into the hole, which looked to be less than the height of two men. “Are all the mines so deep?”
“If we could find turquoise on the surface, do you think we’d be burrowing in the ground like sand rats?”
Wensu swallowed hard but refused to back off. “I wish to go down this mine, not wait until we reach the next one.”
Teti swung around, eyes blazing, but before he could argue
Bak raised a hand to silence him. “Yes, Teti. The next and the next and the next. As many as we must. The sooner we learn what we came for, the sooner you’ll be free of us.”
“I thought you wanted to know about Minnakht, not spend your time watching other men labor.”
“I want to use this day to its greatest advantage. Shall we go?”
Teti took them down what proved to be one of three shafts sunk through the reddish stone from the top of the hill to the mine below. They followed him along the short horizontal tunnel to a gallery about twenty-five paces wide and half as deep. Its floor was irregular, made uneven and treacherous by earlier excavations never filled in. The mine was better lit than most and had plenty of air. In addition to the shafts to the surface, the gallery had been cut all the way through the ridge, leaving a large opening at one end that overlooked a valley.
Nine miners were chiseling away the rock face, five within subsidiary chambers separated by walls or pillars of stone left intact to support the roof. Each chamber was taller than a man and wider, allowing plenty of space in which to search for stones embedded in the matrix. Fine dust hung in the hot air, and the miners smelled strongly of sweat. To a man, they turned around, curious to see who had come. Spotting Teti, they quickly returned to their task.
Staying well out of the way, Bak and his companions watched the men chiseling out small, careful bites of stone and letting them drop around their feet. Any turquoise they found, they cut free of the matrix and threw into pottery bowls placed nearby. At irregular intervals, ordinary work men-nomads who dwelt in the surrounding mountains,
Lieutenant Huy had said-loaded the waste into baskets and carried it away.
The miners’ task was hot, filthy, and laborious, and could be dangerous. Sweat poured from them. Their knuckles were barked, their legs and feet scabbed. These men were not pris oners. A few had come from the surrounding villages, the rest from lands much farther afield. They would receive payment in kind at the end of the mining season and would return to their homes and families wealthier men. Bak would not have exchanged places with them for any number of riches.
Amonmose caught Bak’s eye and grimaced. Psuro looked on with distaste, and Nebre muttered a few words in his own tongue, a prayer no doubt. Of them all, User, Nebenkemet, and Ani appeared the least troubled. The explorer had seen other mines and quarries, and if this offered any surprises, he gave no sign. The burly carpenter wandered around the gallery, peering closely at the walls, examining tools dulled by use and thrown aside to be
