The Fatal Tree (10 page)

B
lasted by the icy wind and blinded by sleet,Wilhelmina threw her arms around her chest and tried to work out what had gone wrong. The portal had saved her life, probably, but had deposited her on a glacier in the middle of a blizzard in some place known only to God alone, and in a condition for which she was wholly unprepared.The wild gale ripped through her clothes; she had only minutes to figure out a survival plan before the cold began to steal the life from her warm body.

Then she heard a muffled growl. She turned warily. Baby had made the leap with her. Her stomach tightened at the sight of the cave lion crouched in the snow behind her, ready to spring.

Outrunning the creature would be pointless, and fighting it was out of the question: the enormous cat weighed four times as much as she did. What was not muscle was teeth and claws. Mina had no weapons… What now? Shivering, she stared at the cave cat, and the cave cat stared back with baleful yellow eyes. However, something about the young lion’s posture – its feet under its body and oversized head tucked back against its massive shoulders – gave Wilhelmina a glimmer of hope.

“Oh, Baby,” she said, keeping her voice low. “What’s the matter, old thing? Are you cold?”

The cat continued to stare.

“I’m cold too.” Mina took a slow, deliberate step closer to the crouching cat. “Maybe we can keep each other warm.” She took another step and extended an open hand. “What do you think? Shall we keep each other warm?”

The lion’s ears flattened to its head and it spat a savage hiss, just like a threatened tabby that knows it has wandered into the wrong garden.

“No need to get stroppy. Everything’s going to be all right.” The big cat hissed and then spun in place and leapt away. “Then again, maybe not,” sighed Wilhelmina.

She watched the frightened animal streak away over the snowdriven ice, its chain trailing along behind, clinking as it went. The creature was soon lost in the snow haze kicked up by the blizzard. Oddly, Mina felt more vulnerable than ever; she definitely felt more alone. The shriek of the wind howling through icy heights mocked the hopelessness of her situation. Tears of cold and desperation welled in her eyes and froze on her cheeks.

“Get a grip, Mina,” she muttered, mostly just to hear the sound of her own voice above the howling gale. “You can panic later. Right now you’ve got work to do.”

She cast a quick look around. The mountains in the distance presented an extremely familiar profile; she had the distinct impression that she had seen them before… maybe many times before, though, half obscured by blowing snow and freezing fog, she could not say where. There was no time to wonder about this; likely she would freeze to death before solving the mystery. Continuing her survey, she examined the surface of the glacier, looking for any signs of ley activity. She circled the area, spiralling out in an ever-widening radius, keeping her eyes on the windscoured ice. The surface of the glacier was glare ice – deep blue with flecks of green and grey. Snow drifted here and there in restless streams, unable to find purchase on the surface of ice and hardpack.

Mina saw a crevice that looked promising, but it was merely a crack, not a ley line, and it petered out after a few dozen paces. Colder now, shaking uncontrollably, she resumed her circling, growing more desperate with every step.

Time was running out. She could not feel her toes or fingers anymore, ice stuck to her hair and eyelashes, and she was shivering so ferociously that standing upright was becoming difficult. Even if there was a ley line nearby, she concluded gloomily, she would not be able to see it.

The thought jolted her. She did not
have
to see it; she might be able to feel it. Returning quickly to where she had started, she stretched out her hands. They were so numb and shaking so violently, she despaired of feeling anything at all, not least the subtle tingle of ley energy.

“Oh, please,” she gasped, “don’t let me die like this. Please, God.”

With that prayer on her lips, she crisscrossed the area where she had landed and saw a small pool of water in a slight, bowlshaped indentation in the ice. The pool, little more than a large puddle, was quickly scumming over, turning to slush, but that it was there at all was, Mina decided, remarkable given the subzero temperature.
This has got to be it
, she concluded.
Please, God, let this be the spot.

Extending a frozen hand over the slushy pool, she felt nothing to indicate ley activity. Her slender hope vanished in the scream of the wind. She stared at the dull water and wondered if this would be the last sight she saw. Doubled over in a futile effort to conserve the little warmth she had left, she stared at the pool.

Something was keeping that puddle from freezing…

With difficulty, Mina straightened and stepped into the puddle. As cold as she was, the water was even colder – but not as cold as it should have been. She felt like a prize idiot. Was it not enough to be stranded on a glacier freezing to death, now she had to go and jump in a puddle?

The thought brought a smile to her face. She put back her head and laughed, but it was not a happy sound. It was the sound of someone beginning to become muddled and punchy with the cold – a sure sign of hypothermia. She had read that somewhere… in a magazine? Or was it a book? It seemed very important to recall the source… but…
What am I doing?

Wilhelmina dragged her raddled thoughts together and, standing in ice water up to her shins, she raised a shaking fist into the air. At first nothing happened, but since she had no better plan, she decided she would persist until her last breath – which would not be long in coming.

Quaking with killing cold, her eyelids almost frozen shut, Wilhelmina stood in the icy pool and held herself upright. The grey-white world around her grew muzzy and indistinct. The numbness in her feet had moved steadily up her legs and thighs. Consciousness slipped away, and yet somehow she still stood. The world around her faded, and she sank into the ice water and down.

But she did not stop. She continued sinking – down and down, through the ice, deeper and deeper still. In her confused state, Wilhelmina imagined that a crevasse had opened up and swallowed her, taking her down to a cave of ice that would be her tomb.

That she did not feel the glacial walls sliding past, bumping her, jostling her, failed to register in her awareness at all. It was not until her stiff and unfeeling feet struck bottom that she felt even the least sensation – though for one brief moment everything went black – and then she thumped down with a shock strong enough to rouse her faltering brain from its stupor.

She landed at the bottom of her descent in a heap and lay where she had fallen. Curiously, it seemed brighter here… and warmer. No doubt everyone who froze to death imagined what they craved as their internal organs shut down. Past caring, she simply lay for a time, luxuriating in the light and warmth. Some little time later, it occurred to Mina that the sunlight burning her skin was real and not a hallucination conjured by a dying brain.

Opening her eye, she looked up and saw a long and familiar double row of sphinxes lining an avenue of broken stone: Egypt.

The momentary shock was swiftly swallowed in a rush of relief. She rolled onto her back and gazed up at the bright, empty blue sky and breathed a heartfelt thanks. “I owe You one,” she said. “And I won’t forget.”

Exhausted, she lay until she finally felt strong enough to get up and confront her new environment. She was not out of the woods yet by any means. The Nile was still some distance away, and she had a barren rocky spine of hills to cross. With a smidge of luck, however, she might just reach the little riverside village by dusk. Gathering her strength, she climbed to her feet and, with slightly faltering steps, started down the avenue. As she was passing beneath the vacant stare of the crouching sphinxes on their pedestals, an idea occurred to her: since she was in Egypt, maybe she could find Thomas Young. He had helped her before, and she could definitely do with some help right now.

Just thinking about making contact with the good doctor put Wilhelmina in a better frame of mind – more hopeful than at any time since fleeing Damascus. Her more buoyant mood carried her up and over the arid hills. The climb made her desperately thirsty, but the sight of the green Nile in the distance promised all the water she could want if she just kept putting one foot in front of the other. Finally, just after dusk, she reached the thin, beaten earth trail leading to the village. She had just started down the track when she heard a whistle behind her and, turning around, saw a man in a donkey cart about to overtake her. She smiled and waved, but remained standing in the middle of the track.

“
Sala’am alaykum
,” she called, still smiling.

The driver gave her a quick once-over and flicked the donkey with the lash. The donkey picked up its pace and the wagon creaked by without stopping. Wilhelmina sighed and resumed her walk, albeit with a slightly slower pace. It was dark by the time she reached the village; the last light had long since faded in the west and her mouth was so dry she could not spit. She made straight for the well in the wide space that served as the village square, pushed off the wicker cover, and dropped in the leather bucket. She was filling the gourd attached by a cord to the rim of the well when three men and most of the village dogs and a few of its children approached. She called a greeting and, lifting the gourd to her lips, let the cool water pour down her throat. She drank it all and then refilled the gourd. The men watched her, muttering among themselves, and the children, emboldened by their elders’ presence, crept near to touch her. Her thirst satisfied, she emptied the bucket back into the well and, replacing the cover, put her hands together, bowed to the men, and said, “
Shukran
.”

Then, accompanied by four or five of the town’s scruffy dogs, she made her way down to the river. Hungry and bone-weary, she was happy to plop down on the riverbank. Later, when she had rested, she would stir herself and go in search of food. Stone steps led from the top of the bank to the water’s edge. Removing her boots, she sat on a lower step and put her feet in the water. Little by little, twilight spilled across the deep Egyptian sky. Bats appeared, dive-bombing the river to skim up insects. The scent of jasmine wafted on the breeze, along with the smell of fried spices – coriander, cumin, and garlic. A feeling of deep gratitude and contentment stole over her as she sat and watched the water sliding silently away.

Wilhelmina was summoned from her reverie by the sound of music.

Who would be playing the radio?
she wondered, then remembered that in this remote place a radio was unlikely. A record player? Equally unlikely; there was no electricity. The music persisted, growing louder.
Where is that coming from?
Mina looked around for the source of the sound. Oddly, there were lights on in some of the houses on the square behind her – and not the dull, flickering glow of oil lamps, candles, and rushlights she was used to seeing in this place.

Determined to get to the bottom of this conundrum, she put on her shoes and stood, and as she turned she saw lights out on the river – big lights and lots of them. What was more, the music seemed to be coming from the river itself. As the lights on the water drifted closer, she realised they belonged to a boat, and a large one; and the music emanated from the boat.

The boat cruised slowly closer until it seemed to fill the river. Wilhelmina stood aghast as a river cruiser the size of a small hotel churned past, dance music blaring. People in dinner dress lined the rails, some with cocktails in their hands; they waved and raised toasts to her as they passed.
Mina, this is not the Egypt you thought it was
, she thought as she read the banner on the side of the boat:
Suntours Nile Cruises
.

Her hopes of finding Thomas Young deflated like a worn-out tyre.
Girl, you’ve got to go back and start all over again.

W
iping grit from her eyes,Wilhelmina watched as the dust devils raised by the gust that accompanied her arrival swept down the Avenue of Sphinxes. Tired as she was, the prospect of spending the night alone in the desert suited her down to the ground. So long as there were no jackals around, she reckoned she would be all right. With that in mind, she shouldered her simple cloth pack and strode off toward the now-familiar hills. “Once more into the breach,” she sighed, and after a swig from the waterskin hanging from a strap on her shoulder, she started for the eastern hills.

Her return to Egypt had necessitated a return to Black Mixen Tump first, and Wilhelmina had taken the opportunity to acquire a few provisions before setting off again. This time, at least, there were no Burley Men on her tail to make life difficult; it had become, she reflected gloomily, plenty difficult enough already.

The sun had set by the time she reached the foot of the trail. Halfway up, she spied a sheltered hollow and decided that was as good a place as any to spend the night. As the fast-fading sunset shaded off into a crystalline desert twilight, Mina picked her way among the ragged boulders and fallen rocks to the place she had spied from below. After kicking over loose stones to check for scorpions and spiders, she pulled off her pack and dug out a little food and water and her blue pashmina to serve as a blanket; a desert night would be chilly, but her stony nook would hold heat for a long time and she would be on the move again at dawn. Thus, curled into her rocky nook, she spread her pashmina and made herself cosy for the night.

For a time she just sat and watched the last light ebb as darkness flowed over the flatlands west of the Nile. The early stars shone with pinpoint brightness and clarity and were soon followed by legions of other, lesser lights, until the entire sky was awash in a spray of pale blue light. The land seemed to sink beneath a soothing balm; harsh desert angles eased, the hard edges softened in the gentle light. After the trauma of the last few days, the quiet of the desert hills calmed Wilhelmina’s troubled spirit. Lying back, watching the slow-wheeling motion of the glowing heavens, she felt the ageless peace of the unchanging land seep into her soul.
This is how it has been forever
, she thought and, staring up at the glowing heavens, wondered,
Can it really be ending?

If Tony and Gianni were right, those heavenly lamps shining so brightly would soon begin to wink out, extinguished in the greatest cataclysm of destruction this world or any other had ever witnessed. Somewhere out there – beyond the edge of vision, or even comprehension – the ever-expanding frontier of the universe was grinding to a halt, and soon the contraction would begin. The end result would be an all-consuming darkness, an insatiable void devouring space and time, destroying all light, energy, and matter, and the annihilation of the entire created order… the End of Everything.

Against that, what could she or anyone else do?

Night gathered in around her, and Wilhelmina ate a little from her supplies and drank some water. The bone-weary fatigue she had been fighting overpowered her then, and pulling the pashmina under her chin, she lay back against the powdery stone and gave herself up to a strange sleep of peculiar dreams populated by people from her past, but involving absurd and irrational chores. In one sequence, she was still at work in Giovanni’s Rustic Italian Bakery; she had just opened the kitchen and seen a stack of orders for the day. The first order called for cream of onion soup. Thinking someone had made a mistake, she went on to the next, which called for two boxes of mackerel and a crate of lobsters. The next order called for a dozen sympathy wreaths. As she was standing there with the orders in her hand, her boss walked in and demanded why she was not baking. “We have all these orders to fill,” he told her. “Get busy!”

“I can’t,” she complained. “It’s impossible!”

Whereupon the dream morphed into a sequence in which she was being chased by a pack of large black dogs over a beach of glass beads beside a raging sea; she was wearing an old-fashioned bathing suit that had a frilly skirt and matching cap, and the wind kept blowing foam from the agitated sea into her face so that she could not see where she was going. She could hear the dogs getting closer and then felt a sharp pain in her feet. Looking down, she saw that the glass beads had become broken shards and her bare feet were being ripped to bloody shreds. But she knew that if she stopped running, the dogs would kill her.

Whereupon the dream changed again; this time she was asleep in bed in her old London apartment and was awakened by voices in the room with her. She could not make out what they were saying, but somehow knew that they were talking about her. The voices belonged to at least three people, and she realised that they were standing over her. She knew she had to get up and run away, but did not dare move a muscle or the people would know she was awake. So she pretended to be asleep and hoped they would go away…

But they did not go away. Wilhelmina opened her eyes and, with a shock, saw that she was lying in a hollow in the Egyptian desert and the people were real. Starting up, it took her a moment to understand that the voices were not near at all; the sound was drifting up the hillside from out on the plain below. Looking down, she saw men with camels and donkeys outlined in the pale moonlight. They were, she decided, either farmers heading to market or Bedouin tribesmen travelling by night to avoid the heat of the day. Hunkered down in her hiding place, she did not think they would see her if she remained very still. She watched until they vanished into the night once more, then closed her eyes and slept fitfully until morning.

When she woke again, the sun was just rising, a great disc of muddy red, lighting a hazy eastern sky. She took a swig of water and ate a handful of nuts and dried apricots, then climbed down from her roost and made her way once more over the white hills and into the verdant valley and the tiny riverside village, itching with anxiety over what she would find when she arrived. Would she again be very far off the mark in a village with modern conveniences and a Nile River awash in tour boats? Owing to the increasingly traumatic difficulty of ley navigation, the prospect of seeing a shipload of tourists filled Wilhelmina with horror.
Please let me be right this once
, she prayed.

Happily, that prayer seemed to have been answered. She entered the village and was greeted by the usual gaggle of children and dogs – with nary a tourist or electrical appliance in sight. She stopped for a drink at the well and a refill of her waterskin, and arranged passage across the river with some boys in a tippy fishing boat. Then, as the day was getting on, she proceeded directly to the fold in the hills and the hidden gorge, passing quickly around the tumbled rock at the foot of the hill and into a cool, dim passage now much in shadow. High walls of water-sculpted stone closed in on either hand, looming over her, but the path along the wadi floor remained level and easy underfoot.

Deeper into the gorge, the motionless air was damp with a whiff of minerals and wet sand. The only sound to be heard was the light crunching of her boots in the loose gravel of the wadi floor. The shadows deepened as the sun lost strength and altitude. The shifting light gave greater definition to the all-surrounding stone; the individual colour bands of layered rock glowed in subtle shades of red and orange and bone. Every now and then she heard the single call of an unseen bird high up in the rocks; otherwise she was completely alone.

Or at least she thought she had the place to herself, until she heard the stuttering rattle of a tired, old gas-fired engine pinging along the sinuous corridor of undulating stone. She stopped to listen: whatever was making that sound was coming her way. Unwilling to be seen without knowing whom she might encounter, Mina scanned the wadi round about, searching for someplace to hide. A few dozen yards up ahead she saw what appeared to be a narrow cleft in the smooth rock walls.

She made a run for it, reached the crevice, and wormed her way into it just as a rackety old flatbed truck hove into view. The vehicle drew closer. Wilhelmina pressed herself as deep into the crevice as she could and held her breath, praying she would not be seen. A moment later the truck rumbled past her hiding place. As it passed, she caught sight of the driver and passenger in the front seat. The glimpse was quick, but it was enough. The man sitting in the front passenger seat was Archelaeus Burleigh.

A fleeting glimpse of the rogue was enough to cause her heart to skip a beat. She stifled a gasp and pulled her head back, pressing herself into the rock crevice as far as she could go. She closed her eyes and held perfectly still until she could no longer hear the rattle of the truck. Only then did she dare to risk another look. She poked her head from her hiding place and saw nothing but a fine haze of dust to mark his passing.

Mina breathed a sigh of relief and started down the wadi again. She took but four steps and halted. If Burleigh was in a truck, she reasoned, then clearly she had failed to hit her time target yet again. If not half-stuck in the embrace of stone, she might have collapsed into the gravel and dust and wept at the utter futility of it. As it was, a few frustrated tears welled up and spilled over her lids.
Why is this so hard?

In the arid desert air, the tears dried on her cheeks almost instantly. Damp-eyed, she turned around and, already aching with exhaustion, started back the way she had come, intending to return to the river village and the Avenue of Sphinxes and start over yet again. Then she had a thought that brought her up short: the vile creep Burleigh was up to something. His presence in the same place she was searching was no coincidence. Mina decided she had to know what he and his goon squad were doing there. Her rendezvous with Kit and Cass would have to wait a little longer.

She started down the winding ravine once more and soon came to the first of a long series of niches carved into the soft stone of the canyon wall. Shrines, she thought; they were too small to be tombs or burial sites. Some were more elaborate than others, featuring plinths and pedestals, lintels decorated with vines or flowers carved into the rock; many had words chiselled on them, but most were too weather-worn to make out, and those she could read were in a language she did not know. All the niches were empty – whether plundered or simply awaiting the next offering, she could not say.

The lesser niches gave way to larger ones and then, dead ahead, she saw a great temple-like façade carved into the ruddy stone of a facing wall. A few dozen paces later, Wilhelmina stepped out into a wide, natural bowl formed by the conjunction of two smaller channels joining the main branch. The place was eerily familiar; and it was not merely Kit’s repeated description that made it so. There was an intangible something else, something almost dreamlike. Wilhelmina glanced quickly around, looking both ways up and down the connecting channels. Nothing but rock walls and rubble met her gaze. But in the wider channel there were signs of recent activity: tracks and wheel marks and whatnot in the gravel, a discarded water can, empty tins, scraps of this and that, a bit of frayed rope – the leavings of Burleigh and his crew, no doubt.

“Hello?” she called, and heard her voice pinging off the rocks round about. “Anybody here?”

She crossed to the imposing red stone temple and put her head in through the door. It was dark and cool inside, but empty; the sand that had drifted over the threshold had not been disturbed. She turned around and called again, “Is anybody here?… Anybody?”

Silence. The airy, empty hush of the desert was the only reply.

Retreating from the temple entrance, she turned and saw an opening at the base of the curtain wall a little way down the connecting channel. She walked to it and discovered a rectangular hole with steps leading down to an underground chamber. “Well, well, well,” she murmured. “What have we here?”

Without a second thought, she started down and reached a small vestibule leading onto a much larger room beyond. These chambers were hollowed out of the living rock of the wadi, and upon stepping through the hand-hewn arch, Mina was overcome with an uncanny sense of déjà vu – more powerful and more vivid than she had ever experienced. The feeling made her almost dizzy, and she reached out to steady herself against the stone lintel. Her hand brushed against something cold: a large steel key hanging on a nail driven into the stone. Without quite knowing why, she took the key and then paused, waiting for the queasiness to pass. As she stood there, it occurred to her that in a way she really had been here before. Kit had told her about it. They had been sitting outside Gianni’s observatory taking in the sun and talking about adventures in ley leaping. Kit had described being rescued by her – an act she did not remember having performed. Yet here she was now, key in hand…

Mina took a step into the second, larger chamber; it was dark, but enough light slanted down from the steps and glanced off the floor to faintly illuminate the walls, revealing faded murals depicting Egyptian life. The room, so far as she could tell, was empty. She moved to the far end of the chamber toward what she felt certain she would find there: a rusty iron grate covering another, smaller rectangular opening knocked through the back wall of the tomb… and there it was.

A few steps from this barred grate, a voice called out, “Burleigh! Let us out. Killing us makes no sense. This is madness! Let us out.”

Mina halted. The voice was Kit’s, no mistake. But she hesitated. Was it the same Kit she knew, or another one? Did it matter?
This is doing my head in
, she decided. Anyway, there was nothing for it now but to play out whatever drama was taking place. She fixed a smile firmly to her face and moved closer to the grate.

“Burleigh!” shouted Kit again. “Do you hear me?”

“Kit? Are you in there?”

Silence.

“Kit? You there?”

“Wilhelmina!”

She moved nearer the iron door. “Had enough of Burleigh’s hospitality?” she asked.

“Mina, I can’t believe it,” said Kit, almost breathless with relief. “What are you doing here?”