Page 24

“He should be,” she said, using the edge of her charcoal to shade some of the steps she had added to her drawing. “This pyramid is a result of trial and error?—”

“The first successful straight-walled pyramid,” he finished for her. “Built at a forty-three-degree angle. White limestone veneer, now missing.”

She closed her sketchpad and returned it to her satchel. “Someone was listening,” she teased, helping herself to a piece of flatbread.

Randy pretended offense. “Don’t expect any more information from me. I left before he finished.” He offered her the last kofta , and when she declined, he finished it off in a few bites.

Easily coming to her feet, Diana placed her hands on her hips and regarded the stairs directly in front of her. “I am tempted.” She reached out and offered a hand to Randy, who grunted as he struggled to stand.

“To go inside?” he asked in disbelief. He attempted to brush the red dust from the back of his top coat, wincing when he only managed to smear it on the superfine.

“At least go part way up,” she replied. “For the view,” she claimed, waving to the Bent Pyramid three miles off to their right.

He regarded the fairly shallow stairs followed by the steep stone steps. “I’ll go with you. So we can help each other,” he offered.

She fished a pair of kid-leather gloves from her satchel and pulled them on, and he followed suit with the pair he had stuffed into his top coat pocket when they had started the picnic.

Diana set off climbing the man-made stairs leading up to the pyramid’s exposed building blocks.

Randy followed, admiring her bum as she scrambled up to almost the halfway point of where a dark rectangle indicated the entrance.

When she turned around on a particularly large block, he was still a few steps down, and his gaze was directed at her midsection.

“Have you been staring at my bum?” she accused.

“Yes,” he replied, struggling to catch his breath as he joined her on the same step.

“It’s all that’s kept me climbing.” He panted a couple more times before his breathing seemed to even out.

“I thought you were going to stop when we reached the stones,” he complained. “How is it you’re not winded?”

Diana chuckled. “We’re not that high up,” she countered, tempted to ignore his comment about her breathing.

“Mayhap fifty feet. As for not being particularly winded, I am younger than you,” she added with a prim grin.

She decided not to remind him that she had spent most of her life following her father around on his digs, climbing ancient marble and stone steps into a variety of temples and tombs.

Her gaze swept the horizon to the south. The larger of two dark silhouettes on the horizon appeared to be a pyramid with walls angled in about halfway up. “That is the Bent Pyramid,” she commented.

“Was that one a pyramid?” Randy asked, his gaze directed on what was left of the Black Pyramid. The odd-shaped mound was even darker than the Bent Pyramid, and nothing of its current shape would suggest it had at one time had four walls.

“It was,” she acknowledged.

“What happened to it? And who was buried there?” he asked.

“Amenemhat the Third and his queens,” she replied. “He was supposedly the first pharaoh to have his wives buried with him. The pyramid was once called ‘Amenemhat is Mighty’ because it used to be rather large, but it suffered from structural problems and obviously fell apart.”

“Wrong angle?” he guessed.

Diana lifted a shoulder. “It was built during the Middle Kingdom, so they knew what angle to build it,” she reasoned. “But it likely collapsed because it was too close to the river, and because it was made of mud bricks rather than stone,” she explained.

“The groundwater probably softened the bricks,” Randy reasoned.

“Indeed. Once the limestone veneer was removed, that’s the color that was revealed.”

“Hence the name,” he finished for her. “What a shame.”

Diana nodded. “Well, I rather imagine the rest of our party is going to miss us if they don’t already.”

Randy glanced down the steps and winced. Even though they were only a quarter of the way up the side of the pyramid, it felt rather high. Too high. “How far up did you think we were?” he asked.

“Only about fifty feet, I think,” she replied, her attention on the Bent Pyramid. “The entrance is at about a hundred feet,” she added, her gaze going up the face of the pyramid where a makeshift platform marked the entry.

“Only?” he repeated.

Diana glanced over at him, her brows furrowed. “Is this the highest you’ve ever climbed anything?” she asked.

He swallowed. “Maybe.”

She looked down the face of the pyramid, the steps they had navigated not nearly as evident from this angle. “Let’s be on our way, shall we?”

He lifted his gaze to the horizon. “I, uh, never thought going down might be more difficult than climbing,” he groused as Diana stepped in front of him and began making her way down, bending into almost a sitting position before reaching down with a booted foot to feel for the next step.

Her kid-gloved hands gripped the stones as she went.

“Just follow my bum,” she teased.

Attempting to copy her lead, he stopped on the next step down and took a steadying breath. “Diana,” he called out. “This seems far steeper than forty-three degrees,” he complained.

She turned and glanced up, alarm showing on her face. Immediately understanding his hesitance, she said, “It is rather steep, darling. I think it would be safer if we faced the rocks and went down backwards. Sort of crawl down.”

When he saw her do just that, he followed suit, his moves far more careful than they had been when they were climbing.

Once the steps were less steep, he finally turned around and bounded down the rest of the stairs to discover Omar watching them, which meant the dragoman must have come around the southeast corner when they were both facing the pyramid.

They hadn’t seen him when they were surveying the horizon.

He glanced back up to where they had been and frowned. From the ground, he spied the block upon which they had stopped. “It certainly doesn’t look as if we were fifty feet up,” he murmured.

Diana winced at seeing how the golden-red dust of the desert covered his boots and pantaloons.

“Do not discount your achievement, darling.” She turned and made her way to the guide, wondering how long he had been watching them.

“I did not go inside. I didn’t even make it all the way to the entrance,” she said before Omar could ask.

Randy finally joined them, his face red with exertion.

Or perhaps the sun. His top hat barely provided any shade for his face.

“I am glad you did not go inside. There are bats,” Omar stated, as if he thought the mention of them would be a deterrent for her.

Diana tittered. “I thought you were going to say ‘snakes’,” she replied.

“There could be some of them as well,” the dragoman commented.

He waved for them to join him as he headed back the way he had come.

“The others should be done with their picnic,” he explained.

“I told your captain I would have you at the dock this afternoon to meet the dhahab?yeh . He is probably already there.”

By the time they rejoined the others on the east side of the pyramid, the remains of the picnic had been removed and everyone was heading for their respective hantours.

“Ride with me?” Randy asked.

Diana directed a quick glance in Helen’s direction, and the young lady nodded her understanding.

Especially when Tom helped Helen up and into a hantour.