Of Roel there was no sign.
Celeste called out, but the black storm ripped her words to shreds and flung the remnants away.
But only the howl of the tearing wind came in answer to her prayer.
33
Abulhol
The storm roared among the pillars and buildings and steles and pylons and statues and ruins, sand hammering against stone as if to obliterate this anomaly within the pristine desert. And behind the protection of the wall where Celeste had taken shelter, dust swirled and tried to choke these interlopers, woman and horses both. Celeste tied a cloth across her mouth and nose, and she put a ration of oats into two feed bags and, with difficulty, she slipped them onto her mare and gelding, for they were affrighted, agitated by the ceaseless howl.
And she soothed them, and food seemed to help. And when they settled somewhat, she loosely draped cloth
’round the brims of the feed bags to fend dust from their breathing as well. She tethered them to one of the slender pillars bracing an overhanging walkway; she unladed the gelding and unsaddled the mare, and then she sat down, her back to the stone of the wall, and waited.
And the furious storm raved, the shrieking wind clawing at anything and everything in its path, yet in spite of the thundering blow, Celeste fell into slumber.
And she dreamed. .
. . At one and the same time she sat on a cushion and watched herself dance, and she was naked, but for a small strip of cloth about her loins and the garlands of blue lotuses gracing her form. Her skin was dusky, and her hair raven black, and her eyes a brown so deep as to seem ebon. A man sat beside her and watched her dance as well, his enormous erection jutting out from his loincloth. And she was jealous of herself and enraged, and she felt exhilaration that as she spun and gyred she provoked such desire in this powerful man.
He would be hers, he would be hers, and as she whirled the lotus blossoms lifted up from her breasts and the gauzy strip twirled out from her loins, each revealing and then concealing, and she knew he would build a city for her, and it would be a funeral monument as soon as she crushed the lethal juice from the deadly flowers and contrived a way to poison this little scheming, spinning slut with her kohl-painted eyes and red-ochre lips and her lithe, myrrh-scented body, who thought to take her place, for she would have no one become First Wife over her. .
. . A jackal-headed man presided over the three-moons-long preparations as her envenomed organs were removed from her body and treated with sea salt and linen-wrapped and preserved in canopic jars; and her corpse was also treated with salt and then scented oils and fragrant spices and bestowed with gold and gems and rings and bracelets and necklaces, and then linen-wrapped to be sent on her way. A portrait mask was put over her face so that the gods would recognize her, and, along with the canopic jars, she was laid in a rosewood coffin, and that in turn was placed in her lapis-lazuli-decorated, gilded sarcophagus. .
. . And the funeral was delicious, and the great man wept, and he turned to her for solace, even as she watched as she was solemnly entombed with her jewelry and wine and servants and provisions and trinkets and couches and divans and clothing and gold and food and other such goods she would need in the afterlife.
And as she took the great man to bed, she looked out from her vault as the boatman came to ferry her and her servants across to Duat and-
— Celeste jerked awake.
She peered ’round. The horses stood adoze, their feed bags yet in place, and all was still, and stars glittered overhead.
Celeste scrambled up and pulled the dusty cloth away from her equally dusty face and called out, “Roel!” There was no answer.
Keeping next to the wall, to the gateway she stepped and out, and she peered through the starlight and the glow of the half-risen half-moon and into the desert beyond.
No one was there: all was emptiness.
Back in through the gateway she trod, and she looked to her right, and in the distant shadows she saw large forms-horses-and Roel sat with his back to the wall, his sword unsheathed and lying at hand, and he was sound asleep.
“Oh, my love, my love,” she cried, and she ran to him and dropped to her knees.
He opened his eyes, and he reached out and took her in his arms and pulled her into his lap.
Fiercely she embraced him, as tears of relief and the release of tension ran down her dust-laden cheeks, leaving tracks of mud behind.
“Oh, Roel, I thought you lost.”
“Non, love, I galloped right behind, but I deemed you had turned dextral, not sinister. I should have known: left is right, but right a mistake, and it seems I made that mistake.”
Celeste laughed through her tears, but she did not loosen her clutch.
“Your horses?” asked Roel.
“They are well. I put feed bags over their noses to save them from the grit.”
Roel laughed and said, “As did I.”
He kissed her and said, “I had the strangest dream.”
“You did?”
“Oui. I was a king of some sort, in love with a young maiden, but she-”
”-She died of poison,” said Celeste. “And all of this, all of this city, it is her funeral monument.”
“Why, yes,” said Roel, his eyes wide in amaze. “But how did you-?”
“I had the same dream, my love, but I was that dancing girl as well as the king’s first wife. I was insanely jealous of me, and so I, the wife, poisoned myself, the dancer.”
“How can we have the same dream?” asked Roel.
“I think it is much like the mansion Lokar savaged, only in this case it is the stone itself recalling a terrible tragedy and somehow showing it to us as we slept. After all, this entire city is a shrine to she who danced, and what better place to hold those memories?” Roel smiled down at Celeste and said, “Given your predilections as First Wife, remind me to never look at another woman.”
Celeste laughed and said, “Oh, you need not worry, my love, for, First Wife or no, I will always be your dancing girl.” Again Roel kissed her, and then he said, “Speaking of the city, let us see what we have here. Mayhap we’ll find the gray arrow.”
Celeste disengaged and stood, Roel gaining his feet as well. He stepped to his horses and removed the cloth and feed bags, and then he saddled his mare and laded the gelding and led them after.
They retrieved Celeste’s horses and made them ready for travel, and they watered the animals and took deep draughts of their own, and then they set out to explore the ruins.
“What language is this?” asked Celeste, examining the carvings on the part of the stele jutting up from the encroaching sand. “I see birds and fish, cattle, beetles, flowers, and shepherds’ crooks all mixed in with these strange glyphs.”
Roel held up the lantern and peered at the blend of pictograms and characters. “I know not the tongue, and though I had not seen such writing ere now, I had heard of it from those who fought in the desert during the war.
They say no one knows how to read it.” He stepped to an adjacent side of the obelisk to find more of the same.
Celeste frowned, and in the moonlight she touched a carving and said, “Look here, Roel. Several symbols are
