Egyptian Tahtib: Morning

A bird singing in a nearby bush awoke Rose, and she opened her eyes to find the dawn, confused to be under the open sky. A moment later, memory came rushing back. She lifted her head, then struggled to sit up, groaning at muscles made sore by a night on the hard ground. She quickly looked all around her, and then sagged, wilting. There was no change at all from the night before. No sign of Jared.

"So much for five and a half hours." She'd have been angry if she weren't so afraid.

Tock got up from where he'd lain all night beside her, stretching, then sat and gazed at his mistress. Rose reached out and took the pot with the remains of last night's supper from the edge of the now-dead fire, took off the lid and set it down for the dog. "Here you go, buddy." She wasn't hungry, but she forced herself to rummage in the food pack for a couple of dates and managed to swallow them, washing them down with a few swigs of water from the skins.

She looked around at the two camels, still on the ground, and they turned their heads to gaze calmly back. "I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to feed you," she confessed. "But I think you're supposed to be able to go a couple of days without food, and you don't exactly look like you're starving. I'll take you over to graze on that brush later on." There was a bushy area a dozen yards away outside the caravanserai walls.

Then she picked herself up, copying Tock's stretch, then folded the two blankets up and put them on top of the packs she'd removed from the camels the night before and stored by the wall. She gazed at the dog while he finished licking the pot, gathering the courage to face the facts, then heaved a heavy sigh and made herself stand up straight.

"Well, I guess it's up to me, then. I'll wait here till Napoleon comes – should only be a day or two – and then lure him into exploring the pyramid – "

She stopped dead, gasping. As she was talking to herself, she'd turned to the north to gaze at the object in question...

… and saw nothing but sand. The pyramid had disappeared.

"No... no, no, NO!" All else forgotten, Rose scrambled over the waist-high mud wall and ran out into the desert. She stumbled to a stop at the top of a low rise and stood hugging herself and gasping, as she did a slow 360, making sure she wasn't just looking in the wrong direction.

She wasn't. There was no sign of the pyramid. And she was absolutely certain that she'd come to the exact same spot where Jared had stood the day before to buzz it into existence with his sonic. Looking down at the sand, she slowly paced north until she spied their footprints. There it was, marked with several of his bootprints, and her smaller ones a couple of feet away. But the sand in front of the spot was utterly empty, as blank as it had been then. There was still no marks in the sand that signaled where it had sat, no trails around it. No indication of any sort that a pyramid had been there – not even the few scraggly plants in the middle were crushed.

"I am not. Going. Crazy," she told herself firmly. "It was Right. Here."

Her eyes sank closed, and she pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from sobbing. I'm not the crying type, dammit! Standing there with her eyes closed, she had an idea. She kept them tightly shut, held both hands out before her, and started inching forward, trying to find the marble monument by touch. Maybe it was only eyes that were fooled? She concentrated as hard as she could on her palms and fingertips, willing them to feel something.

Several long minutes later, she stopped dead, her hands dropping uselessly to her sides. She was fooling herself. She turned and looked back, knowing what she'd see: she'd come a good twenty yards past where the thing had stood.

She slowly trudged back to where she'd started, remembering how Jared had whistled it up with his sonic. Her face twisted. "All right, that's it," she growled. "When we get back home, Mister Wolfe, you are making me my own sonic screwdriver and teaching me how to use it." She blinked back tears, ruthlessly squashing the fear that she might never... She didn't even finish the sentence in her mind.

She thought back to Selim in the town. "I wonder if the locals know how to make it appear?" What little she remembered didn't sound like they did, but it was worth a shot. "Or know how often it does on its own?" She turned back towards the spring, thinking about whether she dared make the trip back, since she didn't know what day Napoleon would be coming out.

Just then, the sound that had been slowly growing in the distance finally claimed her attention: the sound of a camel caravan on the move, with jingling bells, grumbling animals, and sharp commands coming from human throats. Coming in from the south were a line of the desert beasts, about twenty of them, each with a rider or a large pack, and about a dozen men walking along on foot.

"Shiiiiit." It suddenly struck her that she was all alone in the desert, in an extremely male-dominated culture, practically defenseless. All she had was the knife at her belt – and her canine protector. She glanced at Tock now, checking his reaction. He was alert, looking at the caravan and sniffing at the wind, but he didn't seem to be radiating danger.

They had seen both her camels and, a moment later, herself out on the sands. (Her bright clothing had not exactly made her inconspicuous.) Walking swiftly, but trying to look not overly concerned, she went back down to the caravanserai and sat on the pack next to the wall, watching warily.

They were definitely stopping over. The camels cooshed outside the walls to be unloaded, then were led inside and hobbled in the far corner from her own, about fifty feet away, and all the while the men kept glancing at her – there didn't seem to be any women in the group. Meanwhile, a large tent was magically extracted from the packs and erected on the far side of the spring.

A short time later, she noticed a delegation of two men approaching. They walked slowly – almost regally – giving her time to get a good look. Their grey beards flowed several inches over long black robes, and they each had a black pillbox hat on their head.

She stood up as they neared, and the duo stopped a few feet away, staring at her curiously and tilting their heads in a gracious little bow. One of them spoke a few words, ending in a question? - but of course, it meant nothing. The TARDIS hadn't given her any languages; she hadn't asked her to (and only now did she really regret that oversight).

"I'm sorry," she smiled apologetically, shaking her head. "I don't understand."

They glanced at each other, puzzled. A few more sentences, each incomprehensible. Then, conferring again, the two of them half-turned and invited her back towards the tent with friendly smiles and gracious gestures.

Now what should she do? Could she trust them? She glanced down at Tock, standing beside her. "What do you think, buddy? Is it safe?" He looked back up at her curiously, then walked up to one of the men to sniff at him. The sniffee smiled and let the dog smell his fingers, then patted Tock on the head. The dog sat on his haunches, relaxed, and grinned back at his mistress, tongue lolling.

Rose laughed. "Well, I guess that's as good as a guarantee." The two men in black chuckled, apparently understanding the sentiment if not the words, and repeated the inviting gesture. This time she smiled back and went with them.

She was escorted to the front of the tent, whose wide door flaps had been drawn and tied back, and then shown inside. Amazingly, chairs and a low table had somehow been contrived from the camel's packs. Sitting majestically in one of the chairs was an even older man, also dressed in black, but his robes were even more elaborate, and he wore a long headdress that reminded her of a nun's habit. Then, as her escort spoke with him, she spied the medallion on his chest: a palm-sized, diamond-shaped flat golden disk with what looked like the portrait of a woman painted on it – and it all fell into place.

"Oh! You're the monks from St Catherine's!" The single line in the book about Napoleon's trip to Ayun Musa had said he would meet this delegation from the monastery at the foot of Mt Sinai here.

All three men looked at her curiously, and she smiled and bowed her head briefly, indicating her respect for the peaceful religious men. Then the seated man motioned her into the chair opposite him, and she sat, gratefully. Tock went to sniff his hand as he had done the other, received the same beatific smile and head scratch, and then returned to sit at Rose's feet. The monk asked her several questions, in what sounded like different languages, but each time she shook her head. Communication, it looked like, would not be possible. "I'm sorry," she kept repeating.

He waved his hands at her, patting the air reassuringly. Then another man dressed in white, perhaps a servant, entered the tent carrying, incongruously, a delicate china tea service. He set it on the low table, poured two cups of fragrant tea, handed one to the monk and one to Rose, bowed, and left again, all without a word.

Rose inhaled the inviting aroma and smiled. It wasn't Earl Grey, but it sure smelled good. Looking up again, she caught the monk's eye and smiled. "Thank you." He bowed his head again, then took a sip, so she copied him, enjoying the delicious brew. The monk then turned his head and began conversing with the men who had escorted her in, but it didn't seem rude to Rose – it didn't seem like they were discussing her, particularly. She merely sat for a while and enjoyed the tea, which slowly seeped through her body, relaxing her for the first time since... well, since her kidnapping, basically. She gazed at the table, slowly following the delicate inlaid patterns, not thinking of much of anything, just for a while...

Her cup of tea was almost gone when a clatter from outside the tent aroused her from her contemplation. The monk rose from his seat, giving her an almost absent smile, then walked outside, so she carefully put her cup down on the table and followed, peering out into the sunshine.

Riding fast towards the oasis was a group of horsemen, the sun flashing off gaudy, dark blue, European style military uniforms full of epaulets, braid, buttons and medals. And in the lead, as they swept into the new camp and pulled to a flashy, rearing stop before the tent, was a handsome, arrogant man whom Rose recognized instantly from the dozens of drawings and paintings reproduced in Jack's paperback.

General Napoleon Bonaparte had arrived.