Ramses the Damned Page 23

  “The man,” Ramses said. “The drunken one who attacked her. Where is he?”

  Bektaten walked to the open window and stared out at the sea. “You know this man?”

  “I believe so,” he answered. “I believe he is a doctor named Theodore Dreycliff.”

  “A doctor,” she whispered. Surely she did not find the word unfamiliar, but she exercised care in whispering it, as if she found it exotic. “And how did you come to know him?”

  When neither Ramses nor Julie answered, she turned and gave them a long, steady look. “I see,” she finally said. “And so we have yet to establish trust.”

  “Is that not what we have come here to do?” Ramses said. “Establish trust?”

  “Let us begin to do it, then,” Bektaten said. “I killed this man. The blow you saw me give him, he did not survive it. It was not my intention to end his life. I believe it was not your intention either, for the blows you threw at him were cautious and reserved. Am I correct in this?”

  “You are,” he answered. “I wanted only to prevent him from harming the woman—”

  “Sibyl Parker,” Julie whispered.

  “How do you know her name?” Ramses asked.

  “She’s an American, a novelist,” Julie said. “She writes popular romances.” Julie eyed Bektaten warily. “My father thought her very clever and clipped an article written about her in the Daily Herald. It’s still in his study.” Again, Julie looked uneasily at the queen.

  Another long, uncomfortable silence passed, filled only by the pounding of the surf against the cliffs outside.

  “This will not serve us,” Bektaten finally said. “This suspicion, this concealment of our histories.”

  “I agree,” said Ramses. “May you take the lead here just as you have taken the lead in so much of what has occurred today.”

  “Ramses, please,” Julie whispered, caution in her tone.

  “You fear me, Julie Stratford,” Bektaten said.

  “I fear your poison,” Julie answered quietly.

  “This was not my intention, to fill you with this fear,” she answered. “The plot that I disrupted today, Julie Stratford, was to have seen you placed in a pit with trained fighting dogs who had been given a version of the elixir. They were to be starved, these dogs, so that they would set upon you again and again with ravenous hunger and terrible strength.”

  Ramses felt his heart beating silently in his head. Who would do this to his beloved Julie? He felt a tremor pass through his body, a mounting rage.

  “To what end?” Julie asked innocently. “What have I done to make enemies such as these?”

  “It was to force your beloved king to reveal the formula for the pure elixir, the one that has made us all what we are, and what we forever shall be.”

  “Of whose design was this plot?” Ramses could keep silent no more. “Who are these possessors of a corrupted elixir?”

  “Come,” Bektaten said quietly. “To the tower. To my library. Allow me to once again take the lead, as you so put it.”

  28

  She was being chased and giving chase.

  The labyrinth through which she ran was occasionally pierced by great shafts of sunlight that came from odd angles. She pursued the raven-haired woman from her dreams; she chased the woman as she rounded corners and slipped down alleyways.

  Then she became the raven-haired woman.

  She was no longer Sibyl.

  She was being chased by Sibyl.

  It repeated again and again, this pattern, with sinuous regularity, a continuous dance of pursuing and being pursued. And all of it was far more vivid than a dream, and much more substantial than the fleeting visions that had plagued her since she’d started her journey.

  A child called out to her now.

  She didn’t recognize the voice, couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. Mitera, Mitera, Mitera, the child called. Distant, but urgent. Echoing through the strange and endless alleyways and tunnels through which she ran. There were glimpses of blue sky overhead.

  She was not deep beneath the earth. She was in a city.

  Alexandria, a woman’s voice said.

  Suddenly she stood at the edge of a slender canal that cut between great sandstone walls. Its banks were paved. Sunlight poured down through the break overhead, washing the rippling water in gold. And there she was, the raven-haired woman she had only caught glimpses of before now. Perfectly clear, practically an arm’s length away on the other side of the canal. She wore a modern dress, deep blue, a lustrous shade, and she gazed back at Sibyl with as much astonishment as Sibyl felt.

  Are you the one who took me? The woman’s voice echoed. Her lips did not move, but the pain in these words swam in her expression, in her blazing blue eyes.

  It was she. It had to be. The woman who called herself Cleopatra. And they were together now, for the first time, but in some place that was neither dream nor hallucination. But was it truly Alexandria, or some vague recollection of it, sanded free of detail, rendered immutable and stark?

  No, I did not take you. I would never mistreat you.

  Then leave me. Then leave my mind.

  I cannot. You have entered my mind just as I have entered yours.

  The voice. The voice again. The child’s voice calling. The raven-haired woman turned and looked over her shoulder. But Sibyl felt as if the voice was coming from behind her as well. Mitera, Mitera, Mitera. It was Greek, this word. Mother, the child’s voice called over and over again. Mother.

  Where do you hide him? Where do you hide my memories of him?

  I don’t understand. I seek to find you. From you, I would hide nothing.

  The woman spun to face her, as if astonished by these words.

  Something in the rippling water caught her attention.

  She let out a terrible scream.

  When Sibyl looked down, she saw that her reflection was not her own but that of the woman at whom she’d been staring only seconds before.

  29

  When Sibyl jerked awake, a tall handsome man with black skin rose from the chair next to her bed. He had an elegance about him. He extended one graceful hand as if he thought she might leap from the covers.

  She felt no such urge. The bed in which she found herself was a small sea of luxury. Soft sheets kissed her bare legs. Her head rested on a veritable field of soft pillows. All of it was so soothing she had no desire to sit upright. Not yet.

  But when she realized that someone had undressed her down to her undergarments, she stiffened. Even the corset had been removed, all without waking her. Had this strange seductive man done this?

  The thought embarrassed her into a deeper silence.

  “It was a woman who prepared you for bed,” the man said, his voice a low, comforting rumble. He was incredibly tall, black skinned, with a sweet, boyish face. “A woman, I assure you. Your modesty was protected.”

  She could only nod in response to this.

  Gone was the dream. The strange vision of Alexandria. The sight of her reflection replaced with that of another.

  Now there was just this bedroom, with its high stone walls and iron chandelier filled with flickering candles. No, they were electric, these candles. And for some reason this comforted her, to still be connected to the modern world even amidst these austere walls and the thundering surf outside and the roaring fireplace across from the foot of the bed.

  It was a windswept coastline she’d been brought to.

  How far was this place from Yorkshire?

  She didn’t know the map of England well enough to even guess. But it was a warm place and it had been cared for and the man near to her showed no malice or aggression. All of these things calmed her.

  “A man,” she said. “A man tried to kill me.”

  “You are safe. This man, you need not think of him now. He died due to his own rash behavior. He cannot harm you ever again.”

  From a crystal pitcher on the nightstand he poured her a glass of water, gestured for her to d
rink. Of course, it could be poison. Of course, this man could be an abductor far more fearsome than the mad drunk who had attacked her at the party. But she was not confined or restrained, and he was kind, this man. Very gentle and kind and possessed of a quiet strength for which she did not have a name.

  “I am Aktamu,” the man said.

  Such a strange name. She had never come upon this name in all of her dreams or studies.

  He held her gaze in the silence that followed, and she realized he was asking for her name without demanding it of her.

  “My name is Sibyl Parker,” she said. “And I would like very much to know where I am.”

  “I will tell them you are awake,” he said. “I’m sure you will all have much to tell each other.”

  She nodded, even though it wasn’t possible for her to know what this meant, who they were, or how she had come to be in this place.

  At least it was beautiful, she thought.

  At least she could hear the sea.

  She felt movement on the blanket next to her and cried out. But then she found herself staring into the watchful gaze of a slinky gray cat. The gentle creature approached with careful steps and then sprawled out across her chest as if to comfort her.

  This was no ordinary creature, she was sure. Sibyl began to stroke its fur anyway, and watched as it gently closed its blue eyes with a drowsiness that appeared almost human.

  30

  Havilland Park

  Her scream was loud enough to awaken a pack of dogs nearby.

  She could hear them howling, somewhere out there, somewhere beyond where she was now confined. Her reflection in the canal’s water had vanished and been replaced by another. By Sibyl Parker. But were the woman’s words true? Did she truly seek to hide nothing, to steal nothing? Was she as tortured by their connection as Cleopatra was?

  A confusing jumble, these thoughts, none of them strong enough to distract her from the cold stone under her back, the pebbles and rocks digging into her flesh, and the damp, earthy smell of the cell in which she now found herself.

  Her eyes needed no time to adjust to the darkness. For that she could thank Ramses and his elixir.

  The grooves in the stone floor were clear, as was the outline of a formidable door made of some kind of metal. Also in this dark place, the lingering stink of some animal. Had the creatures howling somewhere nearby been housed inside this cell at some point?

  A curse in this moment, these heightened senses. She would have savored a second or two of disorientation. Another few minutes of feeling as if her dream of Alexandria and the woman named Sibyl Parker were slowly falling from her like a shroud.

  Gone was Alexandria. The sense of pursuing and being pursued through a vague impression of its backstreets and canals. Gone was the terrifying sight of Sibyl Parker’s reflection where her own should have been. Gone was the sound of a young boy’s voice calling out to her again and again in Greek. Mother, Mother, Mother.

  And now…

  There was a terrible scraping sound. Similar to the sound her captors had made when they closed the lid over the coffin that brought her here.

  Dim orange light fell in a small rectangle across the floor at her bare feet.

  Through the sudden opening in the metal door, she saw three faces. She did not recognize a one. The man in the middle had cascades of black curls and exquisitely balanced features. To his left, a man who looked much older, with a pinched, sour expression and two wings of wiry gray and white hair with which one might scrub pots. To his right, a woman with a great mane of blonde hair who bore no resemblance to the other two. Immortals, all of them, and they studied her coldly, as a scientist might a failed experiment.

  “It is not her,” the man in the middle said, a quiver of rage in his voice.

  “Master,” the older one began. “I am so very sorry, but you—”

  “Go,” the man in the middle said.

  “In the tunnel, they acted too soon and now with everything that’s—”

  “Go!” the handsome man roared.

  The servant, or whoever he was, complied, and the woman went with him.

  In the tunnel, they acted too soon. She repeated these words in her mind. And so the trap into which she’d fallen had not been meant for her. But still they had confined her. Unwanted yet imprisoned. It is not her, the man had said. So the trap had been set for a woman.

  As she had fallen, she’d been sure it was Julie who had done it, who made the floor in the temple vanish from underfoot. That all of it had been a terrible ruse; Julie Stratford’s sweetness, her repeated statements that she desired only to help. But she remembered now the startled look on Julie’s face, the way she’d flung her arm out to stop Cleopatra from teetering and then falling through the hole.

  It is not her…

  Julie Stratford hadn’t set the trap. These immortals had set the trap for Julie Stratford.

  But why?

  And more important, would she herself now be released?

  Whoever these immortals were, better were her chances of escape if they didn’t learn her identity.

  The slat closed with a terrible grinding sound.

  The darkness closed around her. She blessed it. It gave her time to think and breathe.

  Her heightened senses couldn’t detect departing footsteps. And so the door was incredibly thick, incredibly heavy. Designed to hold back the strength of one like herself.

  But did they know she was immortal? Had they peeled back her eyelids while she’d been lost in her dream?

  No telling…

  The slat opened again. She jumped.

  “Look at me,” the man said.

  She turned her face to the wall.

  “Look at me!”

  She refused.

  “Did you hear those hounds? Do you hear the dogs, still barking at the sound of how you cried out? Obey me or I will set them loose upon you, right here in this cell.”

  “Then I will tear them limb from limb with my bare hands,” she cried. It was the contempt in the man’s voice that caused her to snap. And in doing so, she’d turned her face to the light and given him a perfect look at her blue eyes. A terrible mistake. For now he gazed at her with a wondrous expression. His smile looked triumphant.

  Too late, she turned her face to the wall again.

  “And so our trap may yield the wrong woman, but it has snared another immortal,” the man said. “This is interesting. This is most interesting.”

  “Bring me your dogs and I shall do what I can to deepen their interest in me as well.”

  “They are as strong as you are. It should make for quite a spectacle. Do you fancy yourself a Roman gladiator? I watched many of them work in the Colosseum. You lack their build.”

  “They lacked my sharp eye.”

  He laughed.

  But still, the thought of immortal, powerfully strong hounds descending upon her in this cell, it chilled her. But she couldn’t display this feeling. Not to this strange being. This strange male who had sought to place Julie Stratford in this very cell, perhaps so he could menace her in just this way.

  But he has the elixir! He must!

  And how awful the choice seemed now. How impossible. To charm the cure to her ailment from this reluctant, vile captor, or to seek her escape so she might confront Ramses once more.

  If she could get free, would Julie take pity on her as she had in that temple turned trap? Would this be enough to convince Ramses to give her another dose?

  Mustn’t show any evidence of this struggle to her captor. But once she’d done it, she realized turning her face back to the wall did that very thing.

  “I must say,” the man said, “even though your arrival here is most unexpected, you do look remarkably familiar. Yours is a face I’ve seen before, long before….”

  And then, as if to torture her with these words, he closed the slat with a great scrape she could feel in her bones. And outside, somewhere on the grounds of this place, his dogs continued to howl.


  31

  Cornwall

  Shaktanu…

  Ramses had heard the name before. In the time when he had ruled as king, a name that conjured legends and fantasy and a naïve belief in a more perfect, golden age. A time free of warfare and strife, brought down by the inexplicable fury of remote gods. Shaktanu, an African kingdom, a fantasy connected with remote jungles now covering innumerable rumors, jungles from which ivory and gold and jewels and slaves had once come.

  Not so naïve, this belief, he now realized.

  As Bektaten spoke of its lands, of its networks of ships that had sailed the world, of temples whose ruins had yet to be discovered and might never be, of a world lost to the plague and tribal warfare that succeeded its fall, it was clear she told only the truth. Indeed, she had settled into her role as historian, archivist, and storyteller with absolute ease, and Ramses now found himself entirely under her spell. If her wide-eyed gaze was any indication, Julie had fallen under the queen’s spell as well.

  Shaktanu.

  When he had first awakened in this century, he hadn’t noted the absence of this kingdom’s name from any of the history books he’d devoured, even the popular mythologies of ancient lost kingdoms. But he was keenly aware of it now.

  And this woman before him had been queen of Shaktanu; and the man who had sought to abduct Julie that afternoon, its prime minister.

  He should have known.

  This thought returned to him again and again as she spoke, as she showed them her leather-bound journals written entirely in ancient, unrecognizable script. Like no language he had ever seen, this script. Pre-scribal. Closer to the Roman alphabet than hieroglyphs, but with symbols interspersed that seemed almost like pictograms. She called these journals the Shaktanis, even though they also chronicled her life in the thousands of years since that kingdom’s fall.

  I should have known, he thought again.

  He should have known that something as magical and momentous as the elixir could not have been dashed together by a madwoman living in a cave. Had this been naïve of him or just reckless? But by Bektaten’s own admission, the elixir’s discovery had, in fact, been an accident. She had not even been searching for the secret to eternal life, but for tonics and cures for everyday ailments. And so perhaps he should forgive himself his blindness, just as she sought to forgive herself for not seeing his immortal wisdom as it had guided so many rulers of Egypt.