Lauren Haney - Path of Shadows

Silver, copper, some kind of beautiful and unusual stone.” He shrugged. “Who knows? Anyway, I thought to take a look. To see if I could find what he’d found. If anything.”

So User had also heard the rumor, Bak thought, and had believed it credible enough to follow Minnakht into the desert. Was the tale no more than hopeful thinking, as Senna had indicated, or had User’s years of exploring the desert given him a greater insight? Could the young explorer have spotted something of value that he wished to keep secret?

Could that be the reason he had left Senna behind? “You thought to ease your search by following in his tracks.”

“All the world knows he’s confined his interest to a slab of desert between the southern caravan route and the high mountains, between the wadi we traveled up yesterday and the Eastern Sea. This path we’re taking runs diagonally be tween the southwestern limit of his range and the northeast ern limit.”

Bak could not fault User’s logic. It followed his own.

“Why bring along Wensu and Ani? They seem unlikely trav eling companions to a man bent on searching for treasure.”

“Treasure! I should be so fortunate.” User laughed, at him self this time. “They’d both met Minnakht at one time or an other-I don’t know where or when. Nor do I know what promises he made, if any. All I know is that they assumed he’d take them on his next expedition. Then he turned up missing. They heard of me and asked to come along.”

“I’m surprised you agreed.”

User’s expression clouded. “My wife is ailing, has been for a long time. Physicians are costly. They were both willing to pay a fair sum.”

The man’s pain was obvious and Bak preferred not to probe an open wound. “How well do you know Minnakht?”

“I’ve seldom crossed his path. Other than a knowledge of the Eastern Desert, we’ve had no reason to seek each other’s company. He’s younger than I am, the son of wealth. I grew

to manhood in Gebtu, my father a drover. I first crossed this desert at the age of thirteen, leading a string of donkeys in a caravan transporting turquoise and copper along the southern trail. He came in search of adventure.”

A sensitive subject, Bak could see. “He gets along well with the nomads, I’ve been told.”

“They’re as brothers to him and this desert is his home.”

User scowled, grudgingly admitted, “He grew to love it as I do, and since he’s learned the tongue of the nomads, he knows its ways better. That’s why his disappearance is so mystifying, why many blame Senna.”

“His father said he’s never found anything of value, but here you are, retracing his path on the strength of a rumor.”

“Minnakht knows minerals and stones.” User glanced across the sloping banks of the main flow of the wadi to scan the gray limestone ridges on either side. “He’s wrong if he believes he’ll find gold this far north. The only gold-bearing quartz I’ve come upon that wasn’t long ago exhausted has been some distance to the south. But these desert mountains are full of other valuable minerals and stones. The trick is to find rock of sufficient quality in a quantity worth mining.

“For example…” He picked up several small black and gray chunks of rock and held them out so Bak could see.

Their facets glittered in the bright sunlight. “These are gran ite washed down from the mountains of the central range.

The stone’s beautiful and of value to sculptors, but with so much fine granite available at Abu, where it need be dragged but a short distance for transport downriver, this is worth nothing.”

“Where might Minnakht have vanished?”

User dropped the stones and brushed his hands together to wipe away the dust. “He could be anywhere. Look at the land around you. What you see is barren and rough, but blessed by the gods when compared to the land through which we’ll pass in the next few days. The deeper one travels into this desert, the wilder and more forbidding the land becomes. I myself have journeyed into innumerable places where no man had ever trod before me.”

Bak eyed the barren wadi up which they were trudging and the craggy stone ramparts fading into the haze ahead. How could he hope to find one man in so vast and rugged a land?

Bak stepped off to the side of the track to wait for Wensu to come even with him. The portion of the wadi they had traveled thus far was broad and straight, a long slope drop ping down to the well where they had spent the night. As if solely to provide a background, the escarpment beyond the well, partially cloaked in a pinkish haze, rose as a series of high, steep steps in shades of gray from dark to light.

User had given him much to think about. If he was to be believed, he had not come into the desert in search of great wealth, yet he must have planned this journey as soon as he heard of Minnakht’s disappearance and rumors of gold.

Could anything less than riches have drawn him from a sick wife for whom he clearly cared? A passing donkey brayed, as if jeering at his puzzlement.

“Lieutenant Bak.” Wensu raised a scornful eyebrow. “I thought you were firmly ensconced at the head of this cara van, free of the soft sand that marks this trail.”

Bak fell in beside the young man, who walked alone in front of the drover leading User’s string of donkeys and about twenty paces behind the explorer. Each time his right foot led the left, he tapped the leg with his fly whisk, betray ing an impatience with the monotony. “Commander Inebny,

Minnakht’s father, requested that I search for his son. I need your help.”

“Me? Help you?” Wensu asked, immediately on the de fense. “I know nothing of his disappearance.”

“How did you come to know him?” Bak pretended not to notice the adolescent break in the youth’s voice. Was he younger than the eighteen years he had initially believed him to be?

“How can I be sure his father sent you?”

Bak made his laugh as cynical as he could. “Why else would I come into this godforsaken land?”

Wensu flushed. “You might’ve come for the gold Min nakht found.”

This spoiled young man, it seemed, had also heard the ru mors. “I’m here solely because Commander Inebny and my commandant have known each other for years and are as close as brothers. If not for that, I’d be taking a long, soothing swim in the river at this very moment.” A movement caught

Bak’s eye far up the wadi, the golden-tan coat of a gazelle.

The graceful creature bounded out of sight as fast as it had entered his line of vision. “Tell me, how did you come to know Minnakht?”

“I met him a few months ago. In a house of pleasure in

Waset.” As memory surfaced, Wensu’s misgivings slipped away and a smile spread across his face. “He was surrounded by young women who were listening to his tales of the desert, accounts of the many wonderful and exciting adven tures he’s had. They sat as silent and still as stones, utterly enthralled.” No less absorbed in his own tale, Wensu forgot the flywhisk he carried and waved off an insect with his free hand. “As was I.”

Bak could picture the youth sitting in the shadows, awed by the more mature man, his way with words and women.

Drawn in by tales of bold and stalwart behavior, of what he interpreted as being a romantic and heroic way of life. “Did you approach him then and there?”

“Oh, no! He went off with one of the women.” Wensu flushed scarlet. “I waited outside in the lane, and when he ap peared later that night, I spoke to him.”

“And…?”

Wensu flung a distracted look Bak’s way. “I told him how much I admired him, of course. How much I’d like to be come a man of the desert as he was. An explorer. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and…” The young man looked away, bit his lip. “He told me I must wait. I must not simply gain in maturity, but I must come to hunger for the desert as a man hungers for a woman.”