The Eye of Ra Read online

We dismounted at the base of the dune-wall, craning our necks at the boiling crests hundreds of feet above. We tied the camels together and began to slog up the slope, myself pulling from the front and Elena driving from the rear, digging our camel-sticks in as we went. Miraculously, I managed to navigate on a firm path all the way up the face. ‘Jamie, how on earth do you do that?’ Elena said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and it was true. I’d never crossed dunes as big as this before, but suddenly I felt confident, as if something inside me just knew. By the time we reached the crest, though, we were drenched in perspiration and the camels were breathing hard. ‘Drink?’ Elena asked.

  ‘I’d love one, but no. We’ve got to save water.’

  We tried to forget our thirst and scanned the landscape instead. More dunes, even higher, lay before us, rippling into the distance in fold upon fold. They seemed insubstantial, like vast heaps of smouldering gold-dust, or mythical whalebacked sea-monsters run aground. ‘Jamie, I see no pattern,’ Elena said, ‘it’s just an endless tangle.’

  She was right; from here the dunes appeared to be a honeycomb of interlocking cells, wave after wave of them without entrance or exit. ‘The camels are going to be exhausted after a couple more climbs like that one,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘but we have to go on.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  All morning we battled the strange physics of the dunes, heaving the camels up slip-slopes and slithering down the windward sides. Each time we thought we might be coming to the end of the labyrinth, some new vast fold reared up in front of us. As the sun climbed and dilated, the purple shadows of dawn dissolved, transforming what had appeared a complex three-dimensional sculpture into a landscape without dimension of any kind. The sand burned with a phosphorescent glare, and sometimes we would stumble into deep pits hidden in what seemed a continuous expanse of flat sand. At other times we would step carefully on to acute inclines to find that they were actually quite gentle slopes. ‘It’s like being in a hall of huge mirrors,’ Elena said breathlessly as we skidded into yet another invisible sand-hole, ‘nothing here is what it seems!’

  By midday we were shattered, and the camels rumbling with fatigue. We flung ourselves into a drift of soft sand, and Elena poured us a gourd of water each from the skin. ‘How the hell did these things get here, anyway?’ she croaked hoarsely.

  ‘River beds,’ I panted.

  ‘Rivers? Here!’

  ‘A long time ago. There was a river system as big as the Amazon under this Sand Sea. It all dried up when the climate changed, and the wind blew the desiccated river beds away until they piled up here as dunes.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Only a couple of million years ago!’

  Reluctantly we roused the camels, and went on. We climbed another slip-face and were sashaying down the windward side when there was a sudden startling crepitation — a noise almost like chalk squeaking on a school blackboard — that set your teeth on edge. I felt Ghazal jerking back on the headrope and turned to see him struggling frantically in deep sand. ‘Drurnsand!’ I yelled, leaning hard on the headrope. Behind him, Dhahabiyya pulled back instinctively with such force that the lead-rope snapped. Ghazal wobbled for a moment, then fell headlong down the steep slope, rolling helplessly over and over, scattering gear after him. There was a nauseating cracking of limbs, and a sudden pop as the water-bag burst like a balloon, leaving a long dark stain along the sand. Finally, the camel lay still beneath us. I slid down to him as fast as I could: he was still breathing, but his eyes were clouded and a trickle of blood ran out of his right nostril. I knew Ghazal would never walk again. The waterbag was in shreds and completely empty.

  Elena brought Dhahabiyya down and hobbled her on the flat. ‘Bring a bowl and the spare waterbag,’ I said, drawing my blade.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m taking his stomach-water,’ I said. ‘That’s all we have now.’

  ‘Do you know how to do it?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, untruthfully, ‘I saw it done often when I was a boy.’

  I hobbled his four legs firmly and he stretched his neck, staring at me with big, liquid eyes. ‘Sorry, old boy,’ I told Ghazal, ‘you don’t deserve this.’ When I slit open his soft belly, he squirmed, groaned once and lay still. Blood splashed across the sand, followed by a spurt of brown liquid that smelt like vomit. Elena retched as she held the bowl to catch it. She filled the bowl, and poured the vile-smelling stuff into the spare skin. For a moment we just stared at it, wondering how long we could last on only four litres of greasy brown gastric juice, even if we could ever force ourselves to drink it.

  ***

  It’s remarkable what thirst will do. At first we could hardly bear the filthy liquid near us, but by sunset we were in such pain that we were glad to drink it. About midnight, we grabbed a few hours of sleep and were on our way again before dawn, when the sands began to quiver with heat. By noon the last of the stinking juice had gone, and within a couple of hours we were walking doubled over in the agony of thirst once again. The dunes were lower, now. ‘I think they’re settling into a pattern,’ I told Elena huskily.

  ‘Too late,’ she croaked, ‘I’m already shot. So is Dhahabiyya.’

  I hauled the camel on, and Elena began to lag further and further behind. I turned into a wide avenue between the dunes and realised with a shock that she was out of sight completely. I hurried back and found her spread full length in a sand-drift moaning softly to herself. I lifted her into a sitting position and she lolled against my arm. ‘Jamie, I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘It hurts. I can’t go on. Just leave me here.’

  I pulled her up and squeezed her to me. ‘I’m not losing you now!’ I said, fighting back tears. ‘You’re going on. We belong, and we’re going to do it together.’

  I couched the camel by her and lifted her into the saddle. She sprawled there only half conscious, and I looped a rope round her waist and tied her on. When I got Dhahabiyya up her legs almost faltered under the extra weight. I tied the headrope around my waist and slogged on through the sand, numb to thirst, numb to pain, soaring above it like a bird, seeing myself a mote on the dunes far below me, no longer feeling myself present in my own tortured body. Hour passed hour, and I stumbled on. A sandstorm began, seething in my face, assaulting my ears, but I was oblivious of that too. Night came, but the sand-dust was too thick to see the stars. I’d long since given up trying to navigate consciously anyway, yet somehow I knew my direction. It was as if some far-away homing-beacon was calling to me across the emptiness, guiding me to it. Often I lost touch with the surroundings all together and felt myself pounding along in the body of my Ancestral Spirit, the jackal Anubis, across a clean white desert. When I closed my eyes I could see that homing signal flashing like fire, brightly, far away in the darkness.

  I was brought back to earth suddenly by a jerk on the headrope, and I turned to see Dhahabiyya sitting down in the sand. I knew instinctively she was finished. Elena was rambling deliriously in the saddle. I untied her, lifted her off and laid her down.

  The storm licked and thrashed around me as I hobbled Dhahabiyya. When I slaughtered her, slashing her belly, seams of sand-dust built up along the open wound at once. I caught the gastric juice in a bowl and tipped it into the waterbag. Then I picked up Elena, slung a saddle-bag over my shoulder, and half-dragged, half-carried her across the sand. I have no idea how long the agony lasted, only that at one point I thought I heard wolves baying far off, or perhaps they were human voices howling at me through the whorls of dust. I saw yellow slits of eyes behind me in the darkness, and dark figures lingering ominously from high places — hollow black demon shapes with burning red eyes. I slithered and fell down a dune-slope, picked Elena up again and saw what looked like the mouth of a great cave looming over me. I dragged Elena inside, out of the storm, and laid her down in the shallow entrance. I put her head on the saddle-bag and covered her with a blanket. Then I poured th
e filthy liquid into a bowl and stood it next to her. I examined her face by torchlight. Her features looked distorted, unfamiliar — transformed into a mask of suffering. ‘I didn’t have the right to bring you here,’ I said softly. I kissed her and her eyelids flickered.

  ‘Jamie,’ she whispered, shivering, ‘Jamie, there’s somebody else here!’ She closed her eyes and lay still.

  I looked around, chilled. She was right. By the door of the cave, just outside, a dark presence lurked. I drew my pistol and cocked the hammer. ‘Come forward!’ I spluttered, coughing. ‘Come for-ward or I’ll shoot!’

  Suddenly, the figure called ‘Omar!’ and I knew it was my mother’s voice. It couldn’t be, I told myself. This wasn’t a dream - it was real, and Maryam was dead. Long suppressed childhood fears began to uncoil like snakes in my mind. A Jinn, was it? What was it Mukhtar had said — ‘if a Jinn calls your name, don’t answer’?

  ‘Omar! Omar!’ — the voice drifted to me again and I looked harder at the dark figure. It was Maryam.

  ‘Mother!’ I cried. ‘You said you’d never leave me.’

  ‘Omar, where are you going?’ she asked, advancing slowly into the cave.

  ‘To Zerzura. Only I don’t know where it is.’

  ‘Come. I’ll show you.’

  ‘How do you know, mother?’

  ‘I went to Zerzura, but failed. My power wasn’t strong enough.’

  ‘Strong enough for what?’

  ‘You’ll see. Come.’

  When I stumbled out into the night after her, the storm hit me with renewed shock. It seemed even more savage than it had been earlier. Maryam was drifting across the sand before me and I struggled on after her for what seemed ages, deafened, disorientated, addled by the sheer noise and weight of the storm. For all I knew I might have been going round in circles — I probably was, but I felt only the blind, unreasoning impulse to follow Maryam. I tripped over in soft sand and fell headlong, rolling over until my body came into contact with something hard and cold. I opened my eyes wide and put out my hand. It was a metal pillar standing about a yard above the surface of the sand, perhaps a foot in diameter. I realised suddenly that I’d found Hilmi’s ‘iron tree’.

  ‘It marks Zerzura.’

  I lit my torch and examined it. On the surface of the pillar, polished shiny by wind-borne sand but still clearly discernible, was etched a sun-disc with rays emanating from it — rays which ended in tiny hands: the Aton sun-disc, symbol of the pharaoh Akhnaton.

  ‘Touch it, Omar,’ Maryam’s voice said, and I looked up to see her, unveiled as she’d always been at home, her eyes sparkling, full of vitality as I remembered her. I touched the Aton symbol gingerly and at once there was a crack, the whirr of machinery, the hiss of hydraulics. I gaped incredulously to see that a part of the desert surface nearby had lifted itself up — a circular mechanical door, some three yards in diameter had simply opened in the sand. In the dark aperture beneath the doorway, I glimpsed stairs - a stairway descending right down under the desert. I lingered there hesitantly.

  ‘This is Zerzura,’ Maryam said. ‘This is what you were meant for. Go on.’

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘I’ll see you there,’ she said. Suddenly she was gone.

  The tunnel was tube-shaped, constructed of some rough metal, its sides scrawled with abstract patterns — whorls, moons, crescents, caducei, scarabs, Aton sunbursts, five-pointed stars. As I entered the noise of the storm disappeared almost at once, as if the whole place was somehow soundproofed. The stairs seemed to go down and down until I must have been scores of feet under the desert surface. Then, abruptly I found myself facing a gnarled and rusted metal door bearing an effigy of the pharaoh Akhnaton bathed in the Aton’s light. Beneath the figure there was a cobra and a vulture — the twin symbols of kingship in ancient Egypt. Suddenly a phrase from the Zerzura legend came into my head: ‘On the door is the effigy of a bird. Take the key in the beak of the bird and open the door of the city...’ I examined the vulture with my torch. There was no key in its beak, so I pressed it instead and the door creaked aside, driven by some unseen mechanism. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with excitement. I sensed rather than saw a huge cavern beyond and smelt the wetness of water-vapour, quite distinct from the moisture-starved air I’d grown used to during the last few days. I took a step through the doorway and there was a sluggish clanking of invisible machinery. Green strips of light began to blink far above me and I gazed upwards to see a ceiling as high as the sandstone stacks in the Jilf. An aircraft could easily have wheeled round inside. I looked down and took in a sight that staggered me. I was not in a cavern or a city, but in the hold of some unimaginably gigantic vehicle, on what appeared to be a walkway passing round the circumference of a circle so vast that I couldn’t see the other side. The space in between was full of floating machinery - at least that’s what I thought it was at first - on the other hand it might equally have been some epic sculpture. There were great complexes of ovoids and cylinders standing on end, festooned with ranks of tubes and pipes like a collection of great church organs. There were clutters of blocks, braces and mountings — all of which might have been hand-carved. None of the surfaces was smooth — each was scored with an intricate pattern of tracing, like an endlessly complicated series of micro-circuits — or was it simply that the surface was deeply pitted, like the Jilf stacks, by the ravages of time? The machinery — if that’s what it was — was completely asymmetrical: no two bits were the same, and there was no matching or balancing arrangement. Though I’d have sworn it was made of metal there were no joins or connections, as though the whole thing had been fused together or moulded in one huge piece. ‘Who the hell made this?’ I found myself wondering. There was a sense of great antiquity about it, as though it’d been here for aeons — the same essential alienness I’d felt when, as a child, I’d first encountered ancient Egyptian artefacts. I stepped over to the edge of the walkway, and glimpsed galaxies of lights winking and flickering down a shaft far below me. Whatever it was, this thing was bigger than the biggest cruise-ship — bigger even than a pyramid, I thought.

  There was an open archway before me between squat, fluted pillars or bulkheads, and I walked through it, finding myself in another chamber in the middle of which stood two large transparent cases, both mounted on plinths. The walls were decorated with thousands, perhaps millions, of hieroglyphs and elliptical cartouches, which seemed, at first glance, to be telling a long and complicated story. As I stepped over to them, a familiar pattern caught my eye: it was the hieroglyph for Sirius, contained in a circle and orbited by an ellipse made up of dots. I realised with a rush of excitement that it was the twin of the Sirian Stela I’d found at Madinat Habu. There were other familiar images, too, human figures with beards and wild hair — the Anaq — receiving gifts from Thoth; these were the counterparts of the engravings we’d seen at Khan al-Anaq and in the water-cavern. There was so much to see and understand that I wandered from stela to stela in a sort of trance. This was a vast museum, yet it had more wonders than any museum ever built — the single most important find, I realised suddenly, in the whole history of archaeology.

  The chamber was confined by galleries of pillars — all subtly different, all intricately decorated with symbols. Further on, there were raised panels showing tableaux of the pharaoh Akhnaton and his wife and daughters — all with their strange, elongated skulls, standing washed by the rays of the Aton sun-disc. The panels were full of winged discs trailing fire, ankh life-symbols, winged sphinxes or griffons and lions, lion-headed women, weird pylons, rows of cobras carrying sun-globes, and a host of other objects I couldn’t even recognise, painted in brilliant colours which didn’t appear to have faded. Around the transparent cases stood gilded boxes, gold-bound chests and alabaster vessels, gold-covered chairs and couches carved with the heads of lions, hippos and crocodiles. Among them were scores upon scores of beauti-fully-made Akhnaton ushabtis. On a stela above the first case was carved a giant sun-disc with
its emanating rays of light. I moved as if hypnotised towards the case and peered in through the glass cover. There was no mummy inside, no wrapped shrouds or ornate gold masks, but a body preserved by some process I’d never encountered before. At first glance I could see that it was Akhnaton — the distorted features, the slitted, tigerish eyes, the hermaphrodite figure were all familiar — but a second look sent me reeling back in shock. This wasn’t the body of a misshapen man, but something else, something completely different. As I steeled myself for another look, a clammy hand seemed to touch me on the shoulder. I jumped almost out of my skin, pivoted backwards and drew my pistol from my waist in a single turning movement. I would have fired if I hadn’t recognised Maryam, standing over me in her dark robes, smiling. ‘You’re not my mother, are you?’ I said.

  ‘No, I’m just a projection of your own mind, given power by the ship.’

  ‘Ship? So it is a ship, then?’

  ‘Yes. A star-ship built thousands of years ago. You’re a very gifted being, Omar, an illuminatus. You were on the right track — head and shoulders above the rest — but as Karlman told you, you weren’t quite there.’

  ‘How do you know what Karlman told me?’

  ‘Because I’m partly a projection of you. I have access to all your memories. I know the whole thing was in your head from the beginning — it was there in your subconscious, but you tried to hide it from yourself by espousing your “Atlantis” theory. Your uncle recognised great psychic power in you as a baby. At least once your prescience saved your father’s life. You could have been a great amnir for your people, a great seer, but you tried to shut out that part of your psyche, because you were terrified of it. That’s why you never felt at ease anywhere — because you were trying to deny the real you. Now it’s time to look at yourself in the mirror, Omar. Your whole life has been leading you to this moment. You were chosen. The idea that the Ancient Ones came from somewhere like Atlantis was preposterous, just as Rifad and everyone said it was. The Ancient Ones came from far, far away, but not from anywhere in your world, and they were not of your kind. Have another look at Akhnaton and see for yourself, Omar; the creature your people call the Fallen One was not a human being at all.’