of a serial killer.'
'I love all things Egyptian, but I don't think I can even imagine a
craving that intense.'
'You must remember that these are not ordinary men whom we are
considering. Their wealth allows'them to pander to any appetite'. All
the normal, natural human appetites soon become jaded and satiated. They
can have anything they want. Any man or any woman. Any thing, any
perversion, whether legal or not. In the end they have to find something
that no one else can ever have. It's the only thing that can still give
them the old thrill.'
'So in whoever is behind Pegasus we are dealing with a madman?' she
asked softly.
'Much more than that,' he corrected her. 'We are enormously wealthy and
powerful dealing with an maniac, who in his disease will stop at
nothing.'
They picked the cold carcasses of the roasted pigeons for their
breakfast. Then, while the other one tactfully went to the back of the
cavern an averted his or her gaze, they took turns to strip naked and
bathe under the waterfall.
After the heat of the gorge the water was icy cold. It battered them
with the force of a fire hose. Royan hopped on her good leg, gasping and
whimpering under the torrent, and emerged covered in goose-pimples and
shuddering blue with cold. However, it refreshed her, and even in her
filthy, sweat-stinking clothes it gave her heart to start out on the
last bitter climb to the summit.
Before leaving the cavern they examined each other's injuries again.
Nicholas's scalp wound was heating cleanly, but Royan's knee was no
better than the previous day. The bruises were starting to turn a
virulent puce, the colour of decomposing liver, and the swelling was
unabated. There was very little he could do for it, other than strapping
it again with the bandana.
At last Nicholas admitted defeat, and abandoned his burn-bag and the
roll of dik'dik skin. He knew that he was reaching the limit of his
physical reserves, and he realized that, light as these items were,
every extra pound that he carried today might mean the difference
between reaching the summit or breaking down on the trail. He retained
only the three rolls of undeveloped film, each in its plastic capsule.
These were their only record of the hieroglyphics' on the stele in
Tanus's tomb. He dared not risk losing them, so he buttoned them into
the breast pocket of his khaki shirt. He tucked both the bag and the
skin into a crack in the wall at the back of the cavern, determined to
retrieve them at some later date.
And so they started out on the last but most onerous leg of the trail.
To begin with Royan was on her own two feet, but leaning heavily on his
shoulder. However, before the first hour was over her knee could no
longer take the strain, and she subsided on to a rock on the edge of the
pathway.
'I am being an awful nuisance, aren't I?
'Come on board, lady. Always room for a small one.' With Royan perched
on Nicholas's back, her injured leg sticking out stiffly in front of
