Chapter 30

CHAPTER THIRTY

"I can't believe we're doing this."

Ben's ‘idea' was to strap ourselves to the underbelly of the beast and ride it over to what we hoped was the excavation site. So here I found myself underneath the large animal with Ben beside me holding a stick with berries shish kabobed onto the end.

Our new friend flicked out his tongue and pulled the berries off one by one. In that way, Ben managed to keep the dakhma on a relatively straight path toward the light.

His soft purr rumbled through my body and tickled me. The cool scent of water and leaves wafted off the beast and surrounded us. It was like being attached to our own personal and portable oasis.

"When we near the light be ready for anything," Ben instructed me as his red eyes focused on the way ahead of us. "The residents may not appreciate visitors of any kind."

The dakhma sauntered within twenty yards of the light and I now saw that canvases covered the ground. A breeze flapped one up and revealed a hole in the ground. The light we had seen was a single small lantern placed in the center of the canvases.

All was quiet and tense as our ride walked into the empty camp. My heart pounded in my chest as I waited for something to leap out at us.

And leap out they did as one of the canvas flaps was flung aside and two men with spears appeared. They wore head coverings and even gloves to hide their hands. The pair stopped in their tracks and stared with confused eyes at our ride.

One of the men clapped the bottom of his spear on the ground and punched the other in the arm. "You dragged me out of the diggings for this?"

"I could see nothing more than a dark shape approaching!" his companion shot back.

"Your eyes are as useless as your digging," the other countered as he turned and trotted back down what I took to be stairs.

His befuddled companion twisted around to face him as he stabbed a finger at the dakhma. "But what about the beast?"

"Just scare it away," came the echoed reply.

The lone guard shrugged before he turned to us. He grasped the spear in both hands and marched toward the beast. "Shoo, dakhma! Leave here at once!"

The dakhma let out a low, mournful cry as it shied away from his flailing spear. One of the swings cracked the side of the beast's ribs and Ben's hand shot out. He grabbed the bottom of the staff and gave a hard yank, stealing the stick from the stranger. The guard was thrown off his balance and landed face-first into the sand. He came up sputtering and his eyes bulged out of his head as he beheld us. Ben thwacked the staff against the top of the man's head and he dropped back into the dust, but this time he didn't get up.

We dropped off the belly of our beast and scrambled out from beneath the creature. I set the berry stick in front of the creature as Ben got to work dragging the unconscious man over to one of the large canvases. He tucked the man beneath one of the grounded corners and made sure to put plenty of sand over most of his body.

Ben crept over to the open canvas the man had exited and peeked into the hole. I joined him and saw that there was indeed a makeshift wooden staircase that led down into the earth. Torches illuminated the space and I beheld large flagstones at the bottom along with a crumbled stone wall on the left. The right was occupied by shifting sand that was held back by boards and supports.

I yelped when something nudged me, and turned around to find our bus. The dakhma nuzzled me with his long nose. I pressed my hands on either side of its face and shook my head. "You can't come with us. It's too dangerous. You need to get out of here." The dakhma gave a mournful cry but seemed to understand me as it turned and shuffled off back into the desert.

My heart fell but there were other things to focus on. Ben eased himself down the stairs a few steps before he looked up at me. "Complete silence," he spoke in my mind.

I nodded and followed behind him. The torches lit a long corridor that branches off in dozens of directions. The time and effort it must have taken to excavate that much sand and put up the dozens of wall and ceiling supports astounded me. Some of the corridors, however, were only partially dug out and ended only a few yards away. Others had rubble that blocked their entrances wholly or partially.

The wall that had led us inside disappeared and was replaced by other walls, all of different sizes and conditions. The flagstones changed places with simple stones or even plain dirt, and the bottom ruins of walls also interspersed with the rest of the ruins. Slowly a picture was presented to us of a hodgepodge of a city buried under several feet of sand.

Ben and I crept along with our ears wide open. Faraway voices floated out of the maze, but I couldn't pinpoint their location. We passed several intersections before a sensation struck me so hard that I let out a gasp and stumbled against the wall. Ben spun around and hurried to my side where he grabbed my arms to keep me from falling over.

"What's wrong?" he asked in my mind.

I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. "Ghasl waters," I whispered. The same chill I'd felt in those waters had wafted over me.

He kept his eyes on me. "Which way is it coming from?" I studied the three directions presented to us and nodded at the left one. "Can you keep going?"

I nodded, but Ben made sure to walk by my side as we slipped down the hall which I indicated. The chill air grew stronger and stronger as the tunnel meandered its way beneath the desert. The corridor seemed to stretch on forever and the ‘scent' didn't travel in a straight line so that we were forced to zigzag through the excavation.

The voices grew louder and the torches more numerous. We slowed our steps which was fine by me because the cold in my bones made me stiff. The path opened ahead and we pressed close to the wall as we neared the opening.

We were presented with a huge room that had once been a city square. Broken bits of pillars littered the ground, kept where they had fallen due to the sheer size and weight of the pieces. Ruined walls of elegant houses and shops lined the exterior, and in the very center were the remains of a fountain. A statue had once stood atop the three levels, but the figure now lay on the cracked flagstones. The lifeless eyes of the female figure stared in our direction as if accusing us of intruding on its eternal slumber.

We weren't the only ones. Dozens of people were positioned along the walls chipping away at stone and sand. Piles of sand behind them revealed the amount of their labor.

Diana Cobb stood in the very center of the work with an ancient map in her hands. She studied the map and the layout around her, and her pursed lips told me she wasn't happy. Amin came up to her covered in dirt and sweat. "There is no sign of the temple."

A low growl escaped her as she flung down the map on the table in front of her. "Damn it! It can't be too far from here!"

"Unless the map is wrong," Amin suggested.

Diana slammed her palms against the table and glared at him. "Then that priestess will be meeting her god sooner than she thinks." Her shoulders slumped and she ran a hand down her face. "Stuck with nothing more than an old map and a prayer. What a fool I am to trust that snake."

Ben drew us back away from the opening and his troubled expression told me all I needed to know. "It seems Maram is doing more than just supplying magic to the Thaqiba."

I didn't dare reply, but I could do something else. The chill air had led us this far, but that wasn't the direction it came from. I tugged on Ben and nodded at a passage to our left that seemed to pass along the southern half of the courtyard and lead deeper into the sands.

He lifted an eyebrow, but I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered before I pointed down the corridor. His eyes widened and he swept a hand in that direction. "Lead on."