“Someone tried to slay me last night.” Bak looked at each of the men scattered around User’s camp, registering their reac tions. “When I unrolled my sleeping mat, a viper fell out. An angry viper bent on avenging its captivity.”
User, honing the edges of his spear point, showed no sur prise at this new attack on a member of the caravan, but his usual grim expression turned grimmer still. Nebenkemet looked up from the cooking bowl he was cleaning with sand and muttered a curse. Ani, who was tucking a dirty square of linen into his belt with the expectation of collecting a few samples of turquoise, looked appalled. Wensu, seated on the ground, the last to finish his morning meal, glanced quickly at the sand around him and scrambled to his feet.
Amonmose slipped his arms into the sleeves of his filthy tunic and pulled it over his head. “I thought we’d left that vile criminal behind when we crossed the sea.”
“Could not the snake have crawled inside to escape the heat?” Wensu asked.
As far as Bak could tell, each of the men had reacted in a predictable manner. “The mat was rolled too tight. Only be cause the lord Amon chose to smile upon Psuro did he avoid being struck by its deadly fangs.”
“And because you were quick with the dagger, sir.” The sergeant stood with the other Medjays at the edge of the camp, watching the men in User’s party as closely as Bak studied them.
About thirty paces away, Lieutenant Nebamon stood with
Sergeant Suemnut, a hard-muscled man of medium height, in front of the hut in which the supplies had been kept safe until they could be transported to the mines atop the moun tain of turquoise. They watched the soldiers who had come from the port with the caravan scurrying around, placing yokes on the prisoner’s shoulders and checking for balance the baskets and bundles of supplies and the water jars sus pended from either side. When they finished that task, more than half the soldiers, grumbling among themselves, as sumed identical burdens. The remaining men stood off to the side, fully armed and awaiting Suemnut’s signal to depart.
“I know several attempts have been made to slay you, but were they true attempts on your life?” User asked. “All who’ve vanished or have died were men familiar with the
Eastern Desert. As I am. You’d think I’d be the next target, not you.” He raised his hands to stave off comment and bared his teeth in a sham grin. “Don’t get me wrong, Lieutenant.
I’m grateful. But I’m also puzzled.”
Bak gave him a sharp look. “You knew the man we found dead at the well north of Kaine?”
“If I knew him, I’d have said so.” User scowled, irritated.
“You’re not the sole man in this caravan who’s capable of reaching the vast sum of two after adding one and one to gether. No sane man would travel the desert alone if he didn’t know it well.”
Bak ignored the sarcasm. “You’re right. To keep to his pat tern, he’d wish you dead instead of me. Unless he’s more afraid of me than you.”
“If it’s wealth he’s after, he has no reason to fear me. I’m no closer to finding gold today than I was twenty years ago.”
User’s laugh was humorless, directed at himself. “As for you,
Lieutenant: If I planned some vile deed abhorrent to the gods, I’d want you out of the way. You may not know this land, but you’re tenacious. And you’re a soldier free of the burdens of official duty, the nearest thing in this godforsaken land to a policeman.”
“I am a policeman.”
Bak glanced at Amonmose, the sole man among them who had known who he was. The trader smiled, relieved at the disclosure. Ani looked startled, while Wensu appeared an noyed. Nebenkemet’s expression shut down, a man refusing to reveal himself.
User burst out laughing. “I should’ve guessed. The ques tions you’ve asked, the way you examined the men we found dead, and most of all, the Medjays. Not many ordinary offi cers command a troop of Medjays.”
“How could you not tell us?” Wensu demanded. “We had a right to know. Men have been slain beneath our very noses, yet you sat back and did nothing. Said nothing. We needed protection, reassur…”
“Silence!” User snarled. “If the lieutenant and his men hadn’t joined our caravan, we might all be dead by now. His
Medjays have walked ten times the number of steps the rest of us have taken, scouting ahead, searching for him when he was abducted, following suspicious footprints. I’ve not seen you put forth one-tenth the effort.”
Thoroughly chastised, Wensu swallowed whatever else he thought to say.
“I came not as a policeman,” Bak said, “but as a soldier given a task by his commandant. If we’d not found the man dead at the well, I’d have revealed myself sooner. But men an swer questions more readily when asked by a friend or ac quaintance, so I decided to keep secret the fact that we’re policemen.”
“You thought one of us slew the stranger,” Ani said, clearly surprised.
“My men found no sign of an intruder.”
User eyed him thoughtfully. “You’ve been watching us ever since, saying nothing, hoping to pounce on the rat among us.”
“The night Dedu walked away to be slain, we found the footprint of an unknown party in your camp, a man whose print Kaha first spotted between Kaine and our initial camp site, the man who’s been watching us ever since. That print cleared no one of suspicion, but it suggested that someone other than any of you might’ve slain the first man.”
“What of Senna and Rona?” Amonmose asked.
“The floor of the gorge was too rocky, the patches of sand too disturbed to reveal footprints.”
“Do you continue to believe one of us is the guilty man?”
Ani asked. “Is that why you’ve come to us this morning?”
“I don’t know the name of the slayer,” Bak admitted, “nor am I convinced he’s among you. Whether or not he is, wher ever he is, I intend to snare him. If one of you has been help ing him, you’ll suffer a like fate. Make no mistake about that.” He scanned the faces of the men before him. “I keep no secrets. I share with my men all I know and suspect. I’ve re ported to the captain of the ship on which we crossed the
Eastern Sea and to Lieutenant Puemre at the port. Any at tempt to silence me or to stop my investigation will be in vain.”
“I can’t believe any of them is a slayer.” Psuro, walking behind Bak up the narrow trail that led to the mines atop the mountain of turquoise, hoisted his quiver higher onto his shoulder. “Wensu’s all talk, too weak to face a man with a dagger. Ani wouldn’t know what to do with a weapon. As for the others…”
“You don’t think User could slay a man?”
“I do-for a good reason or in the heat of battle. I doubt he’d slay several men, one after the other, or creep up behind a man and stab him in the back.” Psuro glanced down the long, steep slope to their right, which was covered with bro ken chunks of reddish sandstone. “I believe the same to be true of Amonmose.”
Bak nodded, in full agreement. “What of Nebenkemet?”
“I’ve no doubt that he could slay a man, but would he?”
They walked on, following Sergeant Suemnut and four armed soldiers who led the supply train. Not a sound could be heard in the still air except the crunch of sandals on rock, a muttered curse now and then, and the faint call of a falcon soaring overhead. At the end of a long traverse around the curve of the mountain, they scrambled up a vertical section of reddish sandstone, split by erosion into thick, flat plates lying one on top of another.
Bak turned to watch the row of men ascending the path behind them. Nebre and Kaha were first in line. A dozen paces back, User led the men in his party, checking often to be sure Ani and Wensu were keeping pace. Next plodded the soldiers and prisoners laden with water jars and supplies.
Armed soldiers were spread along the line, maintaining the pace, preventing gaps, and watching for raiders. Attempts to steal supplies were rare, Lieutenant Huy had said, but not un known.
The trail, which had been heavily trodden through the years, was not difficult for a man accustomed to strenuous activity, but the heat was pervasive, with not a breath of air to offer relief. Bak feared for Ani, the most likely among them to suffer from the climb.
He examined the barren landscape around them. The deep defiles, the steep slopes, a total absence of vegetation. A land endowed by the gods with turquoise and then abandoned to the lord Set. The sandstone was a different shade of red than that of the granite peaks in the Eastern Desert. Where those had had a pinkish cast, the stone here was tinted with gold, as if burned by a fire from within as well as by the sun without.
Psuro, following Bak on up the trail, continued their con versation as if it had not been interrupted. “Do you think one of them the guilty man, sir? You haven’t said.”
“I believe the man who’s been watching us the most likely slayer. Whether someone among us is his ally, I can’t say.”
“You speak of the man you and Nebre followed into the mountains.”
“The one who led us into the mountains, you mean.” Bak grimaced, unhappy with the memory.
“The man I should’ve slain,” growled Nebre, walking close enough to hear.
“Would he have followed us across the sea?” Psuro asked.
“A good question, Sergeant. One for which the answer eludes me.”
“I pray to the lord Amon never to have to toil in a place such as this.”
Bak smiled at the intensity in Psuro’s voice, though he agreed wholeheartedly. The mountain of turquoise was not a place where he wished to spend many hours. “You’d best check on Ani, Sergeant. He looks ill. I think the climb was too difficult for him.”
“He must drink more water, sir. He’s not taken in enough to make up for what he’s lost.”
“I’ve seen all manner of men enter the mansion of the
Lady of Turquoise,” User said, joining them. He handed the
Medjay a waterbag. “Get him inside, into the shade. If any one complains, send him to me.”
Psuro strode down a slope of coarse, hard-packed sand as red as the rocks around them. He said a few words to Kaha, standing with the weapons and goatskin waterbags they had brought from the valley camp. Together they approached the plump jeweler, who sat hunched over, his forehead on his knees, and offered him a drink. After Ani took a few careful sips, Psuro took his arm, helped him to his feet, and led him across the grit. Kaha, taking the waterbags and weapons with him, followed them around a chamber being built against the southern wall of an open court. They vanished through a side door into the mansion of the Lady of Turquoise.
Like Bak, User watched to be sure an overly officious priest did not turn the men out. “Amonmose told me of how highly regarded you were in Wawat, Lieutenant. I’m suitably impressed.”
He did not sound the least bit impressed, Bak thought.
“I’m not sure why. Since we left Kaine, three men, including one of my own, have died beneath my very nose.”
“What was your intent this morning? To make us all suspi cious of one another?”
“Any man with good sense would’ve been looking over his shoulder long ago. I believe you to be a man of good sense.”
User’s laugh held not a shred of humor. “Why do you think I agreed to bring Ani and Wensu with me into the desert? To let Amonmose and Nebenkemet come along?”
“You told me you needed additional wealth to pay for physicians,” Bak reminded him.
“I do, yes, but I much prefer traveling alone with a nomad guide. So I intended this time.” User flung Bak one of his hu morless smiles. “I must admit to a certain relief when Ani and Wensu approached me, wishing to come with me. I’d heard, as I told you before, that Ahmose had vanished. Then
Minnakht failed to reappear. Both of them explorers. It set me to thinking.”
He obviously thought himself guilty of a weakness, but
Bak called his concern commonsense. “Amonmose and
Nebenkemet must’ve been easier to accept.”
“The merchant at least knew something of the desert.”
Bak saw Kaha leaving the goddess’s mansion empty handed. He must have found a safe place to leave the weapons and waterbags out of the sun. “You seemed none too happy when we came along.”
“I didn’t know if you were friend or foe. You outnumbered us and you were better armed. If Amonmose had told me who you were…” User shrugged. “He didn’t. He kept the knowledge to himself.”
“I asked that he do so.”
The two men stood on a rise of rock-strewn red sand south of the goddess’s mansion, looking across the low walls that would one day form a large chamber being added to the building by Maatkare Hatshepsut. Ten men toiled 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 resharpened, and watching the way the miners performed their task.
Ani looked around with avid interest. “How much turquoise do you get each day?”
Scowling, the overseer walked along the row of miners, picking up the bowls behind them. He brought them back and displayed their contents. Each held three or four blue green stones from the size of a pea to as big as a man’s thumbnail. “We’ve been working the mines since daybreak, three hours at most. When the workmen sort through the waste, they may find a few more nodules, but this looks to be a typical day.”
Ani looked disappointed. “Are the stones always so small?”
“Most, yes, but now and again…” Teti glared at him be neath lowered brows. “I suppose next you’ll want to see all we’ve recovered since our last delivery to the port.”
Ani’s already flushed face turned even redder. “I mean no disrespect, sir, but I earn my daily bread by making jewelry, toiling in the workshop at the royal house. I’ve seen a few large stones, yes, but I longed to see them here, in the place where they…” His voice tailed off, his expression wistful.
“You make jewelry for our sovereign?” Teti eyed the chunky little man with interest-and a new respect. “I never thought to meet such a man. Certainly not out here in this des olate land.” A smile blossomed and he ushered Ani to a shal low chamber near the deepest end of the gallery, “You must see this, sir. It’s the most promising vein we’re following.”
User winked at Bak and they hurried after the pair. Teti tapped the miner on the shoulder and issued an order in an unfamiliar tongue. The man stepped out of the way and the overseer motioned Ani into the chamber. Bak and the others gathered around.
Teti pointed to several blue-green lumps about the size of chickpeas, all more than a hand’s length apart, embedded in a diagonal line down the wall. “It doesn’t look like much, I know, but I’ve a feeling about this vein. I think we’ll get some good pieces out of here.”
“Could I have one of these?” Ani asked, running his fin gers along the row of stones.
Teti looked taken aback. “I’m sorry, sir. If I gave away bits of turquoise to everyone who asked…” He paused, laughed.
“Why not? They’re neither large nor especially precious.” He turned to the miner, hesitated, asked Ani, “Would you not prefer a bigger and more perfect stone? We can pick one out from among those we mined earlier this week.”
“I want this piece, one I’ve seen in its natural state. In fact…” Ani’s plea faltered, then took on a new strength.
“Could I have the sandstone around it, with the turquoise en closed within?”
They visited a dozen other mines. One was more than twenty paces across, lined with small galleries in which men were chippping away the stone. Another was thirty paces wide and half as deep, cut on two levels, with the men fol lowing layers of reddish sandstone sandwiched between bands of yellow stone. They descended a sloping shaft barely large enough to admit a man bent over, where they found a solitary miner. A couple of mines were shallow, gaping mouths whose rough stone faces occupied men fortunate enough to toil in the open air. Much of the roof had recently fallen in an older mine, making access impossible, and a cloud of squeaking bats forced retreat from a small but deep shaft.
All the while, Nebenkemet hovered close to their guide.
His first few questions verified Bak’s initial impression that he was more interested in the mining process than in the turquoise. Teti, who must have reached the same conclusion, began to divide his attention between the craftsman and Ani.
Bak watched with interest this man who seldom spoke but sometimes revealed hidden depths.
As they walked from one mine to another, they passed sev 238
Lauren Haney eral tall memorial tablets left by long-dead kings whose de sire for the blue-green stone was as great if not greater than that of Maatkare Hatshepsut. Teti pointed out the small quar ries from which sandstone was taken for the mansion of the
Lady of Turquoise and a multitude of open-air shrines where the men bent a knee to their gods.
They peeked into long-abandoned mines, some shallow, others deeper and more heavily shadowed, which had been converted to rough dwellings by the miners and prisoners.
Stones outside, etched with unfamiliar symbols, identified the team of men who had laid claim to each shelter and dwelt within. Similar stones identified old mines converted to stor age magazines and the shaft the scribe had taken as his own.
The whole formed a small village of poor dwellings and storehouses better identified and therefore easier to find than those in the capital city of Waset.
They shared a brief, inadequate midday meal of bread and beer in the shaded opening of a storage magazine. By that time, the supplies and water had been safely stowed away, so Suem nut ate with them. Lieutenant Nebamon had told him to remain atop the mountain until Bak was satisfied he had seen enough, but the sergeant urged them to hurry. They would descend by way of a different trail, one too dangerous to risk in poor light.
“As you can see, this place of worship is small,” Teti said, leading them through the open court in front of the mansion of the Lady of Turquoise. “Our sovereign has plans to en large it further, but I see no need. You saw the many shrines scattered over the mountaintop.”
He led them around a square column lying on the ground.
A workman was smoothing the stone face of the Lady of
Turquoise carved at the top. The goddess had the ears of a cow, as she did in her true form of the lady Hathor. “Our scribe serves as priest, making offerings to the Lady of
Turquoise. One of the miners, a wretched foreigner, makes offerings for his people. Rather than the lady Hathor, they think of our goddess as their own lady Ashtoreth.”
Passing through a doorway in a high wall, they walked into a court partly roofed to form a portico. An open doorway led into the sanctuary. Bak was surprised when Teti said they could look inside. In the land of Kemet, none but priests dared tread so close to the dwelling place of the deity.
The rockcut chamber was small and illuminated solely by the light falling through the doorway. Its walls had originally been smoothed as had the surface of the single pillar that supported the ceiling. Prayers for officials who had long ago led expeditions to the mountain of turquoise covered the walls. Many had faded or were flaking away. Recesses held sacred symbols of the goddess: a sistrum, a thick, beaded menat necklace, and a fist-sized chunk of turquoise. A squar ish altar supporting the enclosed shrine in which the statue of the Lady of Turquoise dwelt stood in one corner. Thick smoke, reeking of incense, drifted from the tops of several cone-shaped altars placed around the room.
Bak felt exceedingly uncomfortable. The paintings of ordi nary men, noble though they may have been, on the walls. The heavy scent of incense. The oddly shaped altars. The very fact that he stood so near the deity’s dwelling place. All seemed too much of a compromise with a world he did not know.
He swung away from the sanctuary and, motioning Teti to follow, hurried through the building, not stopping until he reached the open court with its bright sunshine and air free of the cloying scent.
Sitting on the edge of a stone libation tank, he asked,
“Where do you store the turquoise you mine?”
“In the goddess’s mansion, where the stones will be safe.”
Teti sat on a large block of sandstone, shaped for placement in a wall of Maatkare Hatshepsut’s new chamber. “We send them down the mountain each time the supply caravan re turns to the port.”
Bak nodded his understanding. The fewer the number of stones kept on the mountain, the less tempting they would be.
“Have you seen what you came to see?” Teti asked.
“I’ve seen everything and more. You’ve outdone yourself in showing us this place. I thank you.”
Teti failed to hide how pleased he was. “I resented your in trusion, I freely admit, but Ani and Nebenkemet made the day a pleasure.” He laughed. “I couldn’t resist the jeweler’s enthusiasm, and as for the other… I assume you saw him point out the direction he believed a vein to go.”
“Do you think his guess right?”
Teti gave him a sharp look. “He knows mines and mining,
Lieutenant. He never said?”
“He came across the Eastern Desert with Amonmose, who has a fishing camp on the sea. He claimed to be a carpenter, planning to build a fishing boat and huts in which the men will dwell.”
“What a waste. I’d wager a chunk of turquoise the size of a goose egg that he knows as much as I about taking minerals and stones from the depths of the earth.”
This man’s approval, Bak thought, was praise indeed. He vowed to speak with Nebenkemet, to press for the truth. “Tell me of Minnakht’s visit. What was his mission when he came?”
A harsh yell drew Teti’s eyes to the wall and the prisoners building Maatkare Hatshepsut’s new chamber. The ramp was finished and they were pulling, with difficulty, the heavily laden sledge up the slope. “He wished to learn about the way we mine turquoise. I answered his questions and he had more. I finally sent him to a man from Retenu, one with many more years’ experience than I.”
“Did that miner by chance return this year? I’d like to speak with him.”
“He bade me goodbye when he left, saying he’d never come back-and he didn’t.” Teti spotted a waterbag someone had left on the wall and went to get it. “This new season has barely begun and I miss him already. He could accomplish twice in a day what these younger men barely manage to do in two days’ time.”
“Do you have any idea what he told Minnakht?”
“We were closing down the mines, so I hadn’t much time to speak with him before he departed.” Teti took a deep drink and handed the waterbag to Bak. “According to what he told me, I made a wise choice in sending Minnakht to him.
Through the years, he’d dug in the earth for minerals as well as stones at many different sites. From what he said, Min nakht questioned him about the mining at each of them.”
Bak sipped from the bag, thinking of the man rumored to have found gold, the man who denied that he had. “Tell me of
Minnakht’s appearance.”
“You’ve never met him?”
“His father asked me to find him long after he vanished.”
“Let me think.” Teti took the waterbag, plugged it, and laid it on the stone beside him. “He was tall and slender, his face and body as well formed as the statue of a god. He walked stiff and straight and he had a way of raising his chin as if he thought himself better than any other man. I believe that the pride he took in himself, not a display of superiority.”
The description was similar to others Bak had heard but unadulterated by admiration. “He had no marks on his body?
No special way of talking?”
Teti shook his head. “Other than his good humor and a readiness to speak of his adventures, I can think of nothing more.”
Later, as they trod an easy trail across the top of the plateau to the place where they would descend the mountain, Bak had the leisure to think of all he had learned. He was a long way from discovering the truth, he knew, but at last he felt as if a ray of light had penetrated the darkness within his heart.