Page 84

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 naive 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 naive, 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 naive 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.

But her discovery of him had been no accident.

And she had spared his life, even though she had the power to destroy him.

Before the expanse of her history, he felt a great humility. And with this humility came relief, for he was no longer the lone ancient among newly made immortals.

But had she brought him here to stand trial?

If so, why was she being so generous with her story?

Why was she taking great pains to care for this Sibyl Parker?

Perhaps, for now, she sought only to educate him and be educated in return.

But would all that change when she learned he had used her creation to awaken Cleopatra?

Footsteps startled all three of them. It was the one she called Aktamu, the one with the young face.

"She is awake," he said. "Sibyl Parker is awake."

"Then we will go to her," Bektaten said.

*

In a great four-poster bed, Sibyl Parker lay propped up on a mountain of pillows. As Ramses approached, her face seemed to dance in the flickering light from the fire. He was relieved to see her pale neck free of wounds. Curled next to the twin lumps of her feet was a slender gray cat who watched his approach with unnerving intensity.