CHAPTER SIX

Sand Dune, three hour walk south of Wau en Namus, Southern Libya, September 16, 1940, near dusk...


Wind. How he hated the sere desert wind: blowing, hot, gritty. And sand. Sand was everywhere, marching up to the stony mountains in the distance. His very bones were weary of the blowing sand and digging in the hot Saharan sands to unearth the ruins of the Temple of Nuit did nothing to change his opinion about the sand.

The sole benefit of the eternal sand was a beauteous one: the sand dunes hummed. The humming was a source of wonder for Ardeth and he never tired of hearing the humming when the sand cascaded down the side of the dunes in sand avalanches.

Although he was a desert man, Ardeth admitted freely to himself that he could learn to love the ocean were he ever given the opportunity to live along the shores of the Mediterranean. He'd even go for the rainy inland weather of London.

Ardeth gave careful consideration to his current situation. Bit by bit, his eyes took in the geography of the desert vista he stood in, and he compared his current location with the vistas and peoples of the desert that he remembered from his youth. What Ardeth needed to know was where he and Martin were located so he could figure out if, and where, various nomadic tribes passed through the area.

For he and Martin needed water, and soon. A person could survive in the Sahara only one day without water and the abayor he carried would not provide enough water for two men.

Some confederations of the Tuareg, like the Kel Ewey Confederation, run the salt caravans--the tarhalamt--across the varied vistas of the Sahara. The Sahara was not all beige sand--red, rocky sandstone cliffs would rise from the desert floor, and groundwater would feed sky blue lakes.

These vistas Ardeth had seen for himself as a young boy: the rocky rims of the Djado plateau where the sands of the Tenere brush up against the stony Djado; he'd ridden the white riding camels through the searing flat sands of the Tenere to the ancient volcanoes rising from the Tibesti Mountains in Chad.

And he'd seen the beauteous Blue Mountains--the Marble Mountains--in the Tenere. The mountains were made of marble which glowed blue depending on the angle of the sunlight. He'd also travelled the beautiful Red Desert in Libya, to the south of Tripoli, where the sands were a deep blood red and the wind and temperature carved the rock into arches.

His own branch of the Tuareg tribe tended to roam the Sahara to either side of the Nile; the plentiful water that could be siphoned off and keep the Medjai in the vast beige deserts and five oases of Egypt.

The vista which stretched before him was mostly stony desert, with the ever present sand. Ardeth's soul despaired as he realized few nomadic tribes travelled or lived in the area.

Ardeth's thoughts now turned towards the tools they would need for desert survival. The tagelmust he wore on his head and face would provide him, but not Martin, with protection from the sun and sand. The other tool Ardeth carried for desert survival was his abayor to carry water.

Aside from the goat cheese and the sack of onions that Ardeth carried, he and Martin had no source of food. And they had no fire to protect them from nighttime temperature dips of up to 100 degrees from the daytime temperature.

Set had stranded Ardeth and Martin in the desert, with no food, no visible water sources, no protection for the light-skinned Martin from the searing sun, and no protection from a sudden windstorm, should Set be in a capricious mood as the God of Wind and Storms.

The grit had parched Ardeth's throat and he worked his tongue around his mouth to work up moisture. Finding water was encroaching more on Ardeth's thoughts--and with good reason.

Nomads are a resourceful people, and would sometimes leave clay cisterns of water buried under the desert sands as they travelled. Digging the cisterns from the sands reminded Ardeth of the way elephants sometimes dug for water in wadis.

He recalled that along the Skeleton Coast, in Namibia, the temperatures soared over 100 degrees and the khamsin winds blew for weeks on end. Ancient rock drawings attested to the fact that in antiquity, elephants indeed lived along the southwestern desert shore of the African continent. A very young Ardeth had been astounded to see the tracks of the elephants, fresh and recent.

And then he saw the desert elephants: big and beauteous, they were climbing down a sand dune to reach a permanent watering hole. The baby elephant reached the water hole first and dipped up a trunk full of water and sprayed its mother. The sounds of the trumpeting elephants had filled his ears.

There were times when Ardeth had wished those elephants could be transported out of Namibia to Egypt and placed in the Saharan desert. The elephants would dig holes in wadis--dry riverbeds, and hopefully the holes would fill with water.

"Perhaps the elephants would find more accessible watering holes. They will travel for miles to reach the next oasis in the Namibian desert," he thought bitterly as he looked out over sand towards the stony mountains in the distance. He adjusted his tagelmust, and listened as the sand dunes hummed. He continued to scan the horizon carefully.

But even as his soul despaired, Ardeth's dark eyes picked out a long but faint strip of green far to the northwest. Desert people are attracted to any color that is not the color of the sand on which they are travelling--for a line of color in the desert usually means a source of water is nearby--or perhaps a desert settlement. Perhaps the strip of green signified a wadi--a dry riverbed.

Hope flared in his eyes. Although the savannah had dried up six thousand years ago, the riverbeds and underground streams were left behind. Some underground streams fed desert lakes, like the Mandara Lakes in Libya. There, desert palms grow out of the reddish sand dunes, and some trunks of the desert palm are half buried by the ever shifting sands. But the desert palms still live half buried in the sand--their roots are fed by the groundwater.

If there was no human settlement--it was too early in the year for the Kel Ewey Confederation to begin their annual tarhalamt; they started the salt caravan in winter--Ardeth and Martin could replenish their water supply and walk northwards to the sea, and along the way dig into the dry riverbed and hopefully, like the elephants in Namibia, they would find a small supply of water.

But Ardeth's real wish was to find desert succulent plants--the desert water plants with the thick, long, water-filled roots or leaves that the Tuaregs and other nomadic peoples used in times of drought. These plants had evolved to store water in their leaves and roots.

The faint strip of green in the distance could very well be a stand of succulent plants. Ardeth didn't think they should take the time to dig into the wadi to find water.

And in any event, the two men didn't have the necessary tools to dig into the wadi.

Ardeth silently cursed the Dark One but he could only guess by the desert where he was, and where the next city would be located. Ardeth thought they were probably in Libya, judging from the stony desert vista which stretched out before him, and their only hope was that Nuit would be able to overpower her wayward son and send the rains which were so infrequent to the Sahara.

Unlike the Cholistan Desert in Pakistan, which had monsoon rains most years, the rains came to the Sahara only a few times every hundred years. The Sahara is a tropical desert and the scant Saharan rains simultaneously caused devastation and created miracles. The rains poured from Nuit's belly with such force that anything living that was walking in the dry riverbeds would be killed in the churning flood as the water wended its way to the sea.

But even as the rains caused death, birth was inevitable. Seeds which had lain dormant for decades would bloom within a few days of the rains. Vast fields of yellow ericas, blue gladiolus and scarlet lillies would greet tired eyes. Soft green grasses would grow alongside the dry riverbanks, waving their green tendrils in the softened breeze.

For a while, a small part of the desert would be transformed into the grassy savannah of six thousand years ago.

And then, as always, the relentless Saharan heat and sun would take their toll and once again the desert would be littered with the dried stalks of flowers, the carapaces of insects and here and there the bleaching skeleton of an unfortunate four legged animal--or man--which had both strayed from its brethren and had stayed too long in the brief respite from the blowing sand.

Ardeth would not be able to see the desert bloom, for he and Martin would have to be in the wadi, waiting for the rains Ardeth hoped Nuit would send--and send soon.

Their journey down the suddenly full wadi to the sea would be brief, and wet. Hopefully, both of the men would live, but if push came to shove, Ardeth gave a prayer that if the Gods had to choose one to die, that it would be Martin. There was no malice in this thought, but Ardeth was needed in London, to help repel the Nazi bomber planes which he knew were even now bombing London--and the O'Connell's--day and night.

In his dreams, Ardeth could hear the anguished cries of the dead as they were taken by the Gods, and he could also hear their gasps when the souls entered the Crossroads of Time. His relief came from knowing that each soul taken in the daily bombing of London was granted eternal life.

It was their cries as each person was killed by the bombs and taken by the Gods which rent Ardeth's own soul to shreds. He knew he had to hurry.

Ardeth walked slowly down the side of the sand dune. When he was near the bottom, he deliberately twisted his ankle and created a small sand avalanche. Obediently, the dune he was walking down began to hum. Ardeth smiled despite himself.

The sun was just setting and the desert sky was ablaze with brilliant reds and oranges. Soon, the colors would fade to indigo blue and Nuit's Daughters would appear.

He walked back to the downed plane.

"So? Where are we?" Martin inquired.

"We are probably near the Djado Plateau, on the southern border of Libya and the northern border of Niger. The desert around Djado is stony and sand meets the stone. We will have to leave the plane. It can be replaced."

"What do we do now?" Martin now asked. He wasn't concerned about leaving the plane and it showed in his face.

"We walk," Ardeth said as he took up the small sack of onions, the water canteen and the hunk of cheese still wrapped in linen.

The two men set off across the deepening twilight of the desert, towards the wadi where Ardeth hoped to find water--and a passage to the sea.




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Three hours later, a tired and thirsty pair of men reached the shores of the wadi that Ardeth had noted earlier.

Except it was not only a wadi that Ardeth had noted earlier--they were at Wau en Namus, an ancient volcano which erupted and in its crater a younger volcano had formed. Groundwater formed the lakes which glimmered in the moonlight. Half buried desert palms swayed their fronds in the gentle night wind.

"Wau en Namus," Ardeth said. "We are in southern Libya, just north of the Tibesti mountains. Amongst his other titles, Set is the God of Foreign Lands and placing us in Libya would be his idea of a joke."

"Up to his old tricks again. He already gave us the sandstorm as was his right as the God of Wind and Storms," Martin observed. "Tripoli. We go north to Tripoli?" Martin asked, hoping his geography was correct.

"Northwest, yes," Ardeth said. "We start following the wadi." He indicated the way with his hand. The two men walked to the edge of the freshwater lake, Ardeth removing his tagelmust as he walked. The two men knelt at the edge of the lake, and cupping their hands, drank deeply of the fresh water.

During the trek to Wau en Namus, Ardeth remembered the terrible dream in which the pyramids had exploded, and hot bile had risen repeatedly in his throat as he recalled the sounds of the millions of souls who would enter the Afterlife unwillingly at the hands of Set's follower.

Ardeth drank long and deep.

After slaking his thirst, Martin asked, "Um, do we walk all the way?"

Ardeth considered his answer. Martin had a right to know, and he was Keeper of the Bracelet of Lostris. And Lostris was a Daughter of the Waters. He hoped Martin would be able to call upon Lostris's power and have her help them with safe passage down the wadi.

"I am hoping Nuit will send a rainstorm which will fill the wadi and give us passage to the sea," he replied as he continued to drink the water. "So fresh, so good!" he told himself.

"I will call on Lostris to assist us," Martin said without hesitation and without a hint of fear in his voice. "She will grant us safe passage down the temporary river."

"I am hoping so," Ardeth replied. He stood up and he fell silent as he walked towards the vegetation.

The Daughters of Nuit were shining tonight and the light of the moon helped Ardeth to recognize the shape of the scraggly line of green plants. The date palms swayed in the light breeze.

"Succulent plants. The Gods have been kind. Even with the lake water, we would need to have a supply of water for the trek north," Ardeth said as he gently pulled up one of the desert succulents, making sure he didn't tear the roots. Shaking off the sand, Ardeth bit down on the succulent root, and was rewarded with the sweet taste of water.

"We have all the water we need here," Martin said. Ardeth looked at him. In response, Martin blinked. "I was a city dweller in my past life, and in this one," he said.

"We need succulent plants to get water for the trek to the sea," Ardeth replied as he gently pulled up more of the desert plants.

Understanding dawned in Martin's eyes. "I wasn't thinking. Are there any nomads in the area?" he asked as he began to gently pull up the succulent plants.

"Wau en Namus is just north of the Tibesti Mountains. We are north of Chad and the Toubou who inhabit the Tibesti. We are also too far north for the Kel Ewey Confederation, for they cross the Tenere, not the mountains."

"So we are stranded, more or less?"

"Yes. Until Nuit sends the rains. But we must continue our journey by walking in the wadi," Ardeth replied.

The chilly evening spoke of autumn in the desert and Nuit's Daughters gazed down upon their Brother and his friend pulling up plants from along the shores of the volcanic desert lake. Wind ruffled Ardeth's hair.

When they were done collecting the plants, Ardeth placed them in his tagelmust until the fabric strained. He twisted the top of the tagelmust and knotted it closed. He left his tagelmust on the ground.

He next took out a leather pouch from beneath his black robe. He walked over to a date palm and proceeded to collect as many dates as the pouch would hold. Seeing Ardeth eating, Martin walked over and the two men ate their fill of dates.

Martin swallowed his mouthful and asked, "What else are we going to be able to eat in the desert?"

"Fig trees grow wild in Libya and rattlesnake makes a good meal when cooked over an open fire," Ardeth replied.

"My Son. Hurry!" Nuit's voice echoed in Ardeth's mind. "We must leave now," he told Martin, who was stuffing a handful of dates into his mouth.

"Pmmmmppf!" Martin responded, bits of chewed date spewing from the corners of his stuffed mouth.

Ardeth walked back to where he'd lain his tagelmust down, picked it up and slung it over his shoulder. He motioned to Martin and the two men started walking in the wadi, headed northwest.

Neither noticed the dark clouds gathering in the shape of an angry face in the sky behind them as soon as they turned their backs and headed northwest to the Mediterranean