"The women I saw leave the city ," Valerie said. "Those were his wives, then. Are there statues of them?"

He averted his eyes. "Alas, no. But this one is also of your bloodline." He held up a mounted fi gure, a slender redheaded man atop a white camel. "Do you know the name Sharif al Kitab?"

Valerie stared into the air for a moment, summoning up memory .

"Yeeesss. I think that was the name. I hid one night in his tomb, in the mortuary of Husaam al Noori. With his head under my arm. I had no idea-"

* 236 *

Vulture's Kiss "Sharif al Kitab." Najya repeated the name. "I know it too. I'm certain it's the historian that my brother translated. He wrote a chronicle of the Fall of Jerusalem. I have a copy of it at home."

"Oh, I want to read it. So many connections, so much I still don't know."

"Then you will want to know this too." The image keeper reached past her again into the wooden chest and handed her another fi gure. It was a Frankish knight, fully armored. Over his painted chain mail he wore a pale tabard with a crimson cross running the length and width of it. Only his helmet was missing, so that his hair was visible, long and yellow.

Valerie held it up close to scrutinize it.

Najya laughed nervously. "He looks familiar. It's the eyes, I think.

A little like Harry's. Or even, come to think about it, like yours. Is this another one of your ancestors, you suppose?"

Valerie looked toward the image keeper and spoke in a monotone.

"It's the knight who killed the infant, isn' t it?" Without awaiting an answer, she laid the statue back in his hand. "My father 's eyes. They haunt me in nightmares."

"You don't have to let them, dear ," Najya comforted her . "He's dead. All of them are long dead. There's only the living to take care of now, Auset and Nefi , and the kas. That's what we should be thinking about now."

The image keeper seemed to agree, and he placed the knight fi gurine back in its chest. "Y es, and now that you know the story , we will go back. I must fi nish the work you have given me." He tried to step past her.

Valerie blocked his way . "No," she said quietly . "You've been lying to us."

* 237 *

55.

Auto da Fe The image keeper was affronted. "I have shown you what you wanted to see. There is nothing more. Now, please, let us go out and fi nish our business."

Valerie held her ground. "This can't be all. It can't be all so bleak that we few are the only believers who sustain an entire underworld of gods. There have got to be more kas some place."

"There are no more kas," he insisted. "Only the ones that you create. All the others are gone."

"No kas? No kas at all?" she repeated. "Y ou for get, I'm an Egyptologist, not some gullible tourist. You took me for a fool. If you'd told a little lie and said you didn' t know, I'd have believed you. But I know the names of all the pharaohs. And even if their mummies are crumbling or lost or no longer hold their ka, hundreds of them have likenesses."

He backed up a step, and she pressed on. "Where for example is Hatchepsut? I've seen her statues. I've seen statues of the whole nineteenth dynasty, and of the Ptolemies. Where are Khephren and Menkaure, the pyramid builders, who stand unbroken in the Cairo Museum, and Ramses the Great, who sits gigantic at Abu Simbel?

Their kas must all abide some place, and if they do, why not a thousand others?"

Agitated now, she came to the point. "Where are they? Two years into this prophecy and I'm still having to fi ght to fi nd out things I should have known at the beginning."

The lantern in his hand wavered. "If you take this knowledge upon yourself, you do it at great risk, to yourself and to many others."

"Risk? I've just lost two family members to murder , and Najya and I came within a hair of being shot ourselves a few days ago. So don't tell me about risk. We've earned the right to know the rest of the story."He laid his hand to the side of his turban, as if he was getting a headache. "May the gods for give me. I know your lineage and your * 238 *

Vulture's Kiss sacrifi ces. I will take you to the ones for whom you have made them."

He raised his hand to indicate she should move aside to let him get to the door.

Confused, she and Najya stepped back, expecting him to lead them out. Instead he laid another hasp across the inside of the door and hooked a second padlock on it, locking all of them in. Now , the only way to gain entrance from outside was to smash the door.

He raised his hand a second time and brushed them to both sides of the tiny room while he knelt down and set aside the lantern. He rolled back the tattered carpet, exposing an iron ring on a trap door .

With a single heave he hauled it up with both hands, and the lantern at his feet revealed a passageway.

Valerie shook her head. "Y et another stone staircase descending into darkness," she sighed. "Why does nothing in this religion go up?"

She followed him as he took the lantern and led the way down the steps. "But then they'd have to call it the 'overworld,' wouldn't they?"

Najya remarked behind her , pulling the trap door shut over their heads.A stone tunnel, as in the tomb she had uncovered two years before, though a bit narrower , descended at a gentle incline for some twenty paces to another door with another padlock. He worked clumsily with the lock for several minutes, thwarted by rust or ineptitude. Finally he yanked the door open toward them and stood back to let them enter.

A vault was laid out like the closet they had just left, but extended signifi cantly farther out in front of them. Here too, ka-dolls and statues, hundreds of them, stood in rows on shelves that reached above the height of a man. But the air was fi lled with an electricity that had been absent in the other room. And there was something even more unnerving. She saw it fi rst in the closest fi gures, then realized it was in every one of them. Life shone in their eyes-the unmistakable glow of consciousness in each one.

"I've wandered so often through the souq. I thought I knew every inch of it," Valerie said as she glanced over the colorful display . "But all that time, this chamber was underneath my feet."

"This vault is older than the souq," the image keeper announced succinctly. "When the Anubis priests were gone, the ones who knew the magic of embalming, our ancestors, built this one last tomb- * 239 *

for all generations. Centuries later the market came, assuring its concealment."

"Are there other vaults like this one? Other places where the ka-souls rest?" Valerie asked.

"No. This is all that is in the Duat, all that is left of our believers,"

he said. "These sustain the voices of the gods."

"May I?" she asked.

He nodded and she touched the nearest fi gure. It was warm, as she knew it would be. An Egyptian, Ptolemaic in dress, as were most of the fi gures around it. "You'll put Yussif and Derek here?"

He nodded. "With the others of your line."

"My line, the line of Rekemheb?" The words felt strange coming from her mouth. What had been an abstract concept had become tangible, something she could see. She glanced around again at the collection of dolls and statues. No, not a collection, for they lived. It was an assembly, rank upon rank of beings who had consciousness as she did. Did they despair, she wondered, or did they set their hopes on her? "Can you show them to us?" Najya spoke Valerie's next thought.

"The children of Rekemheb?"

The image maker looked resigned to controlling the damage that already had been done. He handed Najya the lantern and reached up to the highest shelf. With some effort, he lifted down an alabaster box, half the size of the wooden one that held the knight and the emir . He polished it fi rst with his sleeve and squinted, seemingly annoyed at the layer of gray wax that covered its hasp. "I had forgotten it was sealed,"

he grumbled. "But I suppose it is correct for you to break it." He handed it to Valerie.

She scraped at the wax imbedded in the bronze hasp with a fi ngernail for several minutes. Finally it came loose and she opened the lid.

Najya held the lantern over it, illuminating its contents.

Inside the box lay two female fi gures of exquisite workmanship.

They were more dolls than statues, for they had real hair and were clothed in carefully stitched costumes.

Delicately, Valerie lifted out the fi rst of the two.

The image maker took the doll from her and handed it to Najya.

"This one is the mother of your lineage," he said.

Though made of * 240 *

Vulture's Kiss painted wood, the statue seemed soft, its edges rounded. The real hair that covered the head was thick and black like Najya' s and fell to the middle of the doll' s back. The fi gure was swathed in a dark abaya.

Slung over one shoulder and laid diagonally across her chest was a brightly colored shawl or infant's sling. It was empty.

"She's lovely, almost sensual." Najya scrutinized the fi gure under the light.

"And that is the mother of your line," he said as Valerie lifted the second one, red-haired and boyish, from the chest.

She smiled and fi ngered the androgynous clothing. "I can believe it." She chuckled. "This would be my wardrobe choice too."

Najya held the dark doll next to the red-haired one. "Sister wives, together for centuries in this tiny casket. Do you suppose-?"

"Oh, I'm sure of it. Look at the short hair, the boy's clothing, even the facial expression on this one. And why weren't they put in the same box as their husband instead of only with each other?"

The image keeper cleared his throat and took the fi gures gently from their hands. "Let us put them back in their chosen place," he said and laid them back in their common bed.

As he slid the alabaster casket back onto its shelf above his head, Valerie looked around again at the multitude of other fi gures with their softly glowing eyes. "Can they see me?"

"Only if the ka is present," he said. "But they return here only to seek refuge, when the world is inhospitable." He reached overhead again, to a place right next to the chest he had just replaced. "But while we are here, there is one last likeness you will want to see," he said, handing yet another fi gure to Valerie.

She stared at it as if hypnotized. "So this is what she looked like,"

she murmured. "I can' t remember." She held it closer to the light and ran her fi nger along the side of the painted face. She touched the tip of the nose, the lips, the hairline. "There isn' t a lot of resemblance," she murmured. "Just the hair color and maybe the nose."

"Who is it?" Najya asked.

"My mother." She touched the head of the doll to her lips, feeling its warmth.

"You didn't know her?"

"She died when I was six. I remember her presence, someone strong and warm who held me. But I know her face only from photos." She * 241 *

brooded for a moment. "I wonder why she never came to visit me."

Najya put her arm around Valerie's back. "She might still. You have years ahead of you to look for her."

"That's another story," the image maker said, and Valerie watched as he wrapped the fi gure in a cloth and set it near the alabaster casket.

She felt a sort of comfort knowing her mother was with the others.

Then she stepped as far back as she could against the door to take in the whole collection, motley and multiracial. "Look at them, Najya. Our roots. Our Umma. The precious few hundred who've been in hiding, some of them for twenty centuries, while the Aton owns the world."

"If He owns it, He' s not taking very good care of it, is He? 'His right hand smites His left,' you said. It can' t be what He intended."

Najya returned the lantern to their guide.

"You're right. The power struggles, the cycle of martyrdom and vengeance. It's enough to mess up even God."

The image maker looked up suddenly , alarmed. The tomblike room, which was dim beyond the sphere of the lantern light, seemed to come alive. Ka-eyes in groups here and there, to the left and to the right of them, began to glow a shade brighter than before, like coals that had been fanned. The effect was disorienting, as one section pulsed while the other stayed dull, then began to radiate in turn. Soon every shelf was lit, and the mass of eyes glowed in waves.

"Something is wrong. They have all come back." His hand began to shake so that the sphere of light around them trembled.

"What is it?"

"We have got to leave here. The kas must be protected, above all else." The image maker ur ged them briskly from the vault and sealed the door behind them. Without speaking, he brushed past and hurried ahead of them along the tunnel.

They followed, perturbed at their abrupt dismissal. "Protected from what?" Najya asked him, although he was soon at a distance from them. "Who's going to want to harm a collection of dolls? And how is anyone going to fi nd them?"

The image maker waited at the foot of the stone steps. "I do not know what it is, but the kas only return this way when the One God stirs everywhere at once. They are that way, like the birds startling at an earthquake." He turned and struggled up the steps in his long galabaya, * 242 *

Vulture's Kiss then lifted the trap door over his head.

"What could it be? Do you mean a real earthquake? What could stir the whole world at the same time?" Alarmed now, Valerie scrambled out of the tunnel right behind him, pulling Najya after her.

The image maker dropped the wooden trap swiftly back into place and covered it once again with the carpet. He stood up and jabbed his key at the padlock until it fi nally slid in and the lock clicked open.

The three of them stepped out into the shop. It was quiet, just as it had been when they left it. Outside, the street was empty, as it had been when they arrived.

"False alarm." Najya shoved her hands into her pockets, as if to show there was nothing they needed to do. "Looks like we got excited about nothing."

The image maker ventured outside and peered in both directions along the empty alley while they waited in the shop. "I bet it was a ploy to get us out of there," Najya grumbled. "Nothing' s going on. It looks just the same as when we arrived."

"You mean the kas all came back for nothing?"

"Maybe it was for something good. We just saved Auset and Nefi , after all. What if word spread around the underworld of what had happened, and they all came to acknowledge us."

"You mean like a little ka party, only we didn't recognize it?"

"Why not? I mean we've just been through a lot, but we did win this round. So maybe things really are improving. It could be that science, nature, rationality are beginning to have more power than faith."