10. Wonders
Coins - what a wonderful thing they are. Acquiring more is so easy; Aro just visits a few wealthy looking houses at night, whiles their owners rest. The next morning, just before sunrise, he simply gives the money to their landlord as payment for guiding service. A few minutes later, Athenodora, her brother Chrysantos and their neighbor, who has actually been to the former capital, leave the port.
Their trip takes much more time than if Aro and Cai would have traveled alone, because they cannot run without risking revealing their secret; and since an immortal's presence is enough to scare horses to death, they must walk. It's a warm, but cloudy winter day; the sun stays hidden behind the clouds. Good, there is no need to explain why their skin sparkles in the sunlight.
Their actual guide, Bion, is used to walking long distances. However, both Dora and her brother get tired very quickly and soon their journey turns nightmarish. Cai refuses to leave the siblings on the way and come back for them during their return trip, but Aro is anxious the boy will be out of the labyrinth long before they reach Knossos.
Traveling with humans changes their journey into a sight-seeing trip. Dora shows them the eagles and falcons, tries to find a cicada for almost thirty minutes, not really listening to Aro's complaints that he had seen thousands of them and that they are probably asleep or dead at this time of the year. Then her brother gets bitten by a scorpion. It takes another fifteen minutes for the rest of the group to manage to explain to him this kind isn't dangerous and he will be fine.
They reach Knossos in the middle of the night, and Aro is sure even Cai regrets taking humans with them. It is far too late to go to the palace now, which gives them only one more day and one more night to discover the mystery of the boy inside. Right now, they have to talk Bion out of helping them with the tent, so they can finish building it as fast as possible. Dora offers them some bread and meat slices; she is observant so they continue with human façade and pretend to eat. Cai is going to pay for it, once they are both done with coughing the food out of their stomachs.
Fortunately for them, their human friends are extremely tired and fall asleep very quickly. The two immortals leave them then, running quickly to the remains of the former palace. The sun begins to rise behind the clouds, though its rays cannot break through the heavy clouds. Another gloomy winter day. Good, this is exactly what they need.
The labyrinth looks like it did two days before. The can hear the boy breathing inside, and nothing else.
"Do you want to go inside now?" Cai asks.
"Yes. We have at least a few hours till the others wake up," Aro disappears into the dark passage. Nothing has changed inside except for the smell. The whole palace reeks, and none of the new scents are familiar. It reminds Aro of the smell of large predators, like lions or bears, mixed with the scent of the human. The boy is in another corridor than where he was before; he looks extremely tired and seems to be preparing himself for sleep. His clothes are gone, as is the blanket. They can smell his food still lying in the place where they had seen him last time.
This is getting really interesting. Aro cannot think of a reason why a human would wander alone in the maze, leaving all food and water. It could even be dangerous - this place is hot and airless, there is a great chance the boy will suffer from dehydration. Of course, they could help by bringing him water, but it would ruin the mystery. Instead, he makes plans to keep an eye on the boy and visit the labyrinth every hour.
"Let's go," he whispers, but Cai simply shakes his head no.
"Do you want to stay here?"
"No, but I want to visit the place we saw him last."
Finding the right corridor is more difficult than they would expect. Of course, they finally get there, using their perfect recall. They cannot follow the scent of the boy, because it disappears. It is present in the corridor where he is right now, and it still lingers in the place where he has been two days ago, but they cannot find his trail connecting both corridors. It is almost like he disappeared from one place and then suddenly reappeared in the other part of the labyrinth. The place he left looks different – like the boy was attacked; his clothes are torn to pieces, so is the blanket. The vase with wine was destroyed, the food rests are everywhere, even smeared on the walls.
"Do you think something attacked him?" Aro asks.
"I don't think so. He didn't look frightened."
"So what happened here?"
Cai simply shrugs, obviously having no answer to this.
The next few hours pass slowly. Every sixty minutes, one of them checks on the boy, but he is simply sleeping. Whatever was in the labyrinth at night, is probably gone or asleep during day time as well. At noon, Aro and Cai decide to see if their guide and the siblings are already awake, but they hadn't woken either.
Neither Didyme nor Marce had ever seen a city as big as Gebel Barkal. One side of the river seems to be a burial ground – they can see a few pyramids and graves there. The pyramids are much smaller and more pointed than those in Kemet; they are also painted with bright colors, so this place looks strangely cheerful for the large cemetery it is.
The other side of the Nile is inhabited by the living and crowded even at night. They find thirteen working temples, and it looks like there is even more of them. Each one has large painted scenes on the walls. The palaces are smaller than those they passed on their way south, but there are at least three of them. The river is crowded, full of boats - small ones which enter the city from the south, caring ebony wood, fruits and ivory, and much larger ships taking those goods to Kemet or even somewhere beyond the sea. Marce notices how a few soldiers check the cargo on one of such ships – they seem not to mind the wood and even the priceless ivory; what catches their attention are a few beautifully painted bows. It confirms his suspicions. If the Nubians are eager to confiscate even decorative weapons, that are unlikely to ever be used in a battle, than they're readying for a war. Watching this place, full of goods from distant, tropical lands and teeming with life in the middle of the night, and having in mind how lazy and sleepy Kemet looked, he has a good idea who the winner might be. Yes, they will have to find another way back to Rasenna once they finish their trip.
The air in the city smells of spices, rotten fruits and fragrance. It is very hot - there are no traces of winter here. He wonders if the weather ever changes that far south; Didyme once told him Peret and the next two winter months were slightly colder than the rest of the year in Kemet, though the temperature difference was very little in Nebit and quite large on the northern coast. It looks like the cold refuses to visit the country of Kush even in the middle of winter.
It would probably be wiser to leave such a large city as soon as they can, but his wife enjoys their sight-seeing, and he doesn't want to ruin her mood. Once, they pass scent of an immortal, but it seems to be a lonely female; the trail is more than a week old. Whoever was here, she left long before they entered the city.
"Do you want to stay here for few days? he finally asks.
"Are we allowed to?" Marce is not sure if she is simply teasing or testing his relationship with Aro.
"Yes. We are free to do whatever we want to," he smiles at her.
"I was wondering if we could travel by boat from now on. I guess there would be a greater chance someone working on one of those ships had seen a large expedition traveling south eighteen years ago."
"Can you handle being so close to humans for a long time?"
"Will there be a problem if I can't?" she winks at him.
"Not at all."
In the morning, they leave the city on one of the few bigger boats going south. It has a small canopy, which allows them to avoid direct sunlight. Marce is sure it won't be enough to fool the humans for long, but it's the only compromise between Aro's rules and the fact their only chance of finding Net and Mshai is asking people who might have seen them on their way. He doubts humans would be very talkative if they saw two sparkling creatures emerging from the river and asking questions in a foreign language. Even though Didyme's linguistic skills will probably help her to learn whatever language she needs to in just a few days.
Traveling by boat is slower and much more boring than swimming, but it allows them to play a game trying to recognize different animal species they pass by only the sound of their heartbeats, before they become visible.
"Hippo!" Didyme laughs, pointing at the shadow moving underwater. "You know, hippos are very dangerous. They probably kill much more people than both crocodiles and lions."
He nods, already concentrating on the sound of a few hearts he can hear behind a meander. Whatever creatures are there, they belong to one species, they are slightly shorter than humans and walk on four legs, though he can hear one heart slightly higher than the others, like one of them was standing erect.
"Baboons!" Didyme guesses immediately. "Oh, baboons are great! They often visit humans and steal all their food. If you try to protect something, they can even maul you! I always loved when the baboons visited Nebit!" she explains happily.
"Listen, there is a buffalo on the shore," she shouts after a few minutes. "Buffalos often attack without any cause, and they chase people and stab them with their horns till their victim is dead. They are even known to destroy trees and houses!"
Marce fails to see what is so wonderful in being bitten by a hippo, mauled by a baboon or stabbed by a buffalo, but as long as Didyme has fun, he is satisfied. At night, she shows him a few wildcats, which came to drink water from the river. Of course, the wonderful thing about them is there is no way to outrun them or hide from them - if you are a human. So, if they choose you for dinner, you get eaten.
And speaking of food, he decides they will have to get rid of the captain and the two crew members traveling with them on the boat. Didyme doesn't bother to stay under the canopy in the daylight, and those few must have noticed their passengers don't sleep or feed like other humans.
The landscape doesn't really change much during the first ten days. Sure, they know they are in the middle of the desert, but both shores of the river are green, full of trees and flowers.
They turn right on the river forks, just like Net and Mshai; after a few days the desert ends, and the travelers enter the jungle. Both immortals are more active now; at nights, when the whole crew is asleep, they leave the boat and enter villages close to shore to ask the locals about an expedition that took that way exactly eighteen years ago. The people they meet are in general nice and trying to be helpful, but the fact that they all speak different dialects - even Didyme has problems with learning a language during one night - and that the tribes rarely keep track of a timeline makes learning something from them almost impossible.
Once they get deeper into the jungle, the crew starts trading, and the two immortals decide it is time to leave them and travel farther alone. They are both quite thirsty, and soon a small ghost ship starts its journey back up the Nile, carrying the drained captain, the crew and one unfortunate witness, who visited hoping to make the biggest trade in his life. Didyme doubts it will sink; it has a big chance of reaching Kush and starting a legend about the dangers of the jungle. She chuckles happily, licks the blood off her lips and follows Marce into the rain forest.
Now that they have more time in each village, Marce and Didyme start actually learning things about Mshai's expedition. Rumors say eleven out of fourteen people who left Kemet, entered the jungle, and the young master and his wife were unharmed and well. One of the servants was attacked and killed by a leopard, but the rest of the group continued their journey South and stopped in a village close to the waterfall for more supplies and to decide where to go next. The couple decide to stay close to the shore, not wanting to miss the cascade.
The waterfall is almost impossible to miss. It is not a particularly large one, but it is definitely the loudest. It looks like the whole majestic river squeezed through a narrow gorge, no wider than seven meters, before plunging almost fifty meters below. The view from below is not very spectacular, only the roaring sound is a hint of how powerful the Nile really is and the force of the water it carries. Didyme even jumps up, to see if she would be able to stand on the upper ledge. The water feels nice, slightly colder and somehow cleaner than up the river, but the current is too strong even for an immortal. She falls and dives in the water below.
"You should try it!" she shouts, back on the surface.
"Maybe later. Lets look for the village first."
Didyme nods, closes her eyes and concentrated on the sounds other than the roar of the waterfall. She can hear some fruits falling on the ground, a few heartbeats, the sound of somebody climbing a tree with great agility. Whoever it is, it is smaller than a regular human; either a kid, an ape or a large monkey. She can hear the creature letting the branch loose and jumping to the ground. It lands on four feet, stands up to eat a fruit and moves further, close to the ground. A baboon, not a human.
On further she can hear a small stream meandering through the jungle. The sound of this water is completely different than the thundering cascade nearby. The stream sounds lazy as it flows, trying to find its way to the bigger river. She can sense a few small mammals drinking from it, but suddenly they leave, as if something scared them off. Something approaches the stream moving on two feet - either a big and agitated baboon, a chimpanzee or a human. The creature puts something into the water; the thing is large enough to be a bucket. Animals don't use tools. Whoever is by the stream is human. She looks at her husband, just to see he has noticed exactly the same thing.
"He will lead us to the village," Marce whispers, even though there is no chance a normal man could hear them from such a distance.
They follow him for at least twenty minutes. Soon, they are both able to smell humans.
"How do we approach them?" Didyme asks, when it is obvious the village is not far away.
"It is too far from the river to pretend we were following it and heard the people. We will simply approach them and ask about your sister's expedition. Do you understand them?"
She nods. "It's the same language I've heard in the last two towns. Let's go."
After a few more seconds they enter the clearing and see the whole village. It is small, only sixteen tiny, round houses made of bent hay. Each one of them has a pointed top. Other than that, this area looks like dozens other small towns they have visited. Children run around the houses, completely ignoring the overwhelming heat; some adults snore inside their homes, others sit outside and constantly chase the trees' shadow that refuse to linger in the same place for longer than a few minutes. The undead arrived just after the noon. It must be time when people here rest.
One of the children spots them, still standing and watching the humans from the jungle, and shouts for his father to wake up. Marce and his wife approach them moving with speed that would be slow even for humans. A tiny girl playing with a wooden elephant raises her head and smiles at Didyme. The immortal grins back, concentrating on her aura.
Suddenly, an elder woman walks out of the biggest house in the middle of the village. For a moment, she watches the newcomers with quizzical look, searching for some kind of a weapon. She finds none, but it doesn't seem to make her feel more relaxed. She whispers to one of the men to search the forest for more people. Then, when she is sure her visitors are not a threat to her people, she starts paying more attention to their features. Marce's face holds no interest to her, but she keeps staring at Didyme.
"How old are you?" she asks finally.
"Fifteen?" The girl is too surprised to make it sound like a statement. "Why?"
Her answer startles the woman, who seems not to be sure if she is being lied to or simply mistaken. Didyme can see her counting something fast on her fingers. Ten fingers, then ten fingers again, and one thumb. Twenty one! She freezes, and after a few seconds exhales, and nods gently.
"What are you doing here?"
This question sends Didyme on a territory she feels much safer on.
"We are following my sister's expedition. She and her husband traveled this way eighteen years ago…"
"…trying to the find the source of the great river," the woman smiles finally. "Your sister's name is Net, but you don't look much like she did because you have different mothers."
"Yes." Didyme can't help but wonder why her sister decided to tell these people the whole family story of Nebit.
"You have never met me, but I'm glad you finally found your way home, granddaughter!"