from the sinkhole in the other. Nicholas worked at the rock-fall with
the gang of Buffaloes, led by Hansith. It was hard, messy and dangerous
work, for each piece of rubble had to be doused with water before it
could be levered out of the pack and passed down the chain. The
staircase was soon running with muddy water and the steps were
treacherous underfoot. The fallen rock was loose and unstable, and there
was always the danger of a secondary collapse.
So many men working in the confined spaces of the gallery and tunnel
taxed the ability of the little blower fan to recirculate the air, and
it was hot and oppressive. The men stripped to loincloths and their
bodies glistened with sweat. The rubble passed back down the tunnel was
dumped into the sinkholes Even that large volume of material made no
difference to the level of the black waters. It was simply swallowed up
into the depths without trace.
Nicholas found the crowded workings so humid and claustrophobic that at
the change of the first shift he had to escape into the open air, if
only for a few minutes. Even the dark and forbidding chasm of Taita's
pool was a relief after the close confines of the underground workings.
Mek Nimmur was waiting for him when he climbed out over the wall of the
coffer dam on to the ledge beside the pool.
'Nicholas!' Mek's handsome dark face was grave. 'Has Tessay returned
from Debra Maryam yet? She should have been back yesterday.'
'I have not seen her, Mek. I thought she'was with you.' Mek shook his
head. 'I wanted to make certain that she had not returned without my men
seeing her, before I send a patrol up the trail to search for her.'
'I am sorry, Mek. I did not anticipate any danger in sending her up the
escarpment.' Nicholas felt a stab of guilt.
'If I had thought there was any danger, I would not have allowed her to
go,' Mek agreed. 'I have sent men to search for her.'
But Tessay's absence was another worry for Nicholas.
It I urked at the edge of his mind during the days that followed, as the
clearing of the long funeral gallery proceeded too slowly for his
satisfaction.
Royan spent as much time at the face as Nicholas did, and both of them
were as filthy with mud and dirt as the Buffaloes who were labouring
there beside them. She mourned over each fragment of the shattered
murals.
Before they were carried away to be thrown into the sinkhole, she tried
to retrieve those on which significant portions of the paintings were
still intact. There was one jagged piece of plaster on which the lovely
head of Isis was still in one piece, and another on which the entire
figure of Thoth, the god of writing, was preserved. However, most of the
paintings were destroyed beyond any hope of ever restoring them, and
sadly they were consigned to the pit.
There was no sense of time in the long gallery, and they could not tell
night from day. It was always a surprise to leave the precincts of the
tomb and find that the stars were shining in the narrow strip of sky
that showed above Taita's pool, or to find the bright African sun
burning hotly down out of the cloudless blue. They ate and slept only
when their bodies demanded it, not according to the passage of the
