The Tower (21 page)

The sheikh stared into Desmond’s eyes. ‘It’s very difficult. Impossible, really. But if she agreed to see you, do you know what that means, Desmond
sahib
? Do you know? The Fateh can make you look your own death in the eye.’

‘I am pursuing a mystery even greater than death . . . I’m looking for the man of the seven tombs.’

The tribal chief paled and his lean face turned to stone. He continued to stare into Desmond’s eyes, as if he sought to explore forces in him which his words could not communicate, which his expression could not reveal. Then he said calmly, ‘I have a premonition. I pray to Allah that I may be mistaken, but I fear for our friend Enos ben Gad.’

‘What makes you say that?’ asked Desmond. ‘Have you received a message you haven’t told me about?’

‘No. I’ve received no message. I feel it. I feel that what you are seeking was the cause of it. I didn’t realize what you were looking for.’

Desmond lowered his head without answering, but he was clearly distressed as an ominous certainty crept into his mind. He couldn’t say another word, because he suddenly felt unbearably alone in an unequal struggle. A struggle to the death.

They walked out of the tent and looked towards Kalaat al Amm. The gloomy bulwark with its crumbling walls loomed before them, still touched with the last light of the vanished day.

‘I wasn’t told the true reason for your coming . . . I could not have imagined. But if what you say is true, if you are truly pursuing the man of the seven tombs, then go ahead,’ said the sheikh. ‘She surely knows that you are here. She is certainly speaking with your thoughts at this very moment.’

Desmond left him, mounted his horse and urged it in the direction of the mountain. He crossed the ruins at a gallop, riding swiftly along the grandiose colonnade that still shone in the darkness as if it had absorbed the last energy of the sunset and could radiate light of its own.

He rode between the tombs of the necropolis, half-sunken into the sand, and started up towards the castle. He soon had to leave his horse and continue on foot up to the ruins of the gate. He crossed the threshold and advanced among the rubble, looking around cautiously. He felt followed by a fierce, predatory gaze, intent on his every movement.

He heard the sound of gravel scattering and a bristly black dog appeared at a breach in the wall, growling and baring his teeth. He paid the dog no heed and walked right past him as the animal continued to bark furiously, barely centimetres from his knee. Could he be the Fateh?

Just beyond, Desmond heard the hissing of a horned viper but did not turn, letting the reptile slither away between the stones and undergrowth to find its prey before the chill of the night numbed its belly. Then he saw a ruddy glow behind a wall and approached. There was a old woman sitting next to a fire, her face wrinkled and her hair long and white. Her eyes were closed and ringed with dark circles. Thus he imagined the sorceress that had called Samuel’s shade up from the underworld for Saul.

The woman opened cataract-misted eyes. ‘I’ve been expecting you, Garrett. Enos told me you would come.’

‘Isn’t Enos dead? Isn’t that true, then?’

‘Not for me,’ she said, impassively. ‘I can still hear his voice. What do you want from me?’

Desmond felt a weight crushing his heart but he answered in the same tone, ‘For you to guide me to the sixth tomb. So that I may destroy it and embark on the last leg of my journey.’

‘No one has ever succeeded. Who are you to dare so much?’

‘I found the key for reading “The Book of Amon” and the Stone of the Constellations. I will find the seventh tomb as well and I will destroy Him.’

‘But do you know who sleeps in that tomb?’ At these words, the fire flared up with a sudden roar, flames rising stronger, higher, lighter.

Desmond shook his head. ‘No. Enos never told me. Perhaps he didn’t know.’

‘Enos didn’t know. Now he does.’

‘Then you tell me.’

‘No. You’ll have to understand for yourself, because only when you have understood can you decide. I can guide you to the sixth tomb and no further.’

‘What must I do?’

‘You must journey along the dead waters and descend to the valley of Sodom and Gomorrah. Leave the pillars of salt behind you, then cross the Arava Valley and the Paran Desert, until you reach Wadi Musa. Go up the wadi, following the sign of the Scorpion. It will take you to the City of Tombs. There you will do what you must do.’

‘The City of Tombs? But how will I be able to recognize the tomb of “He-who-must not-die” amid all the others?’

The Fateh widened her white eyes and held out her wrinkled palms towards the crackling flames, trying to absorb its warmth into her decrepit body. ‘You will be guided by the most terrible secret hidden in the bottom of your soul. The beast in you will sniff him out. Farewell. I must sleep now . . . sleep.’

She let out a deep sigh, almost a rattle, closed her eyes and pulled up the dark veil covering her shoulders so that her head was completely hidden. She looked like a grotesque idol animated only by the dancing flames. The fire seemed to die down as well, creeping low amid the glowing embers like a snake.

Desmond turned and walked off. As he descended the hillside, the whining of the dog, which had never stopped while he was consulting the Fateh, turned into a long howl that rose towards the star-filled sky that covered Palmyra like a gem-encrusted cloak gracing the shoulders of a queen.

He reached Abu el Abd’s tent. The sheikh awaited him sitting cross-legged, with the palms of his hands resting on his knees. His limbs, under his light-blue linen djellaba, were as taut as a drawn bow in which all the forces of his spirit were concentrated.

‘I will leave immediately,’ said Desmond. ‘I may be the only hunter left . . . if your presentiment is true.’

‘No,’ said Abu el Abd. ‘Victory will not depend on a few hours more or a few hours less. The temperature is not high enough to force you to travel by night. Eat, drink and rest. I will have a bed prepared for you and a meal. You will leave tomorrow in the light of the sun. It will be a good omen for you and your spirit will be refreshed.’

Desmond thanked him. He bathed in the clear waters of the pool and then sat down to dinner, wearing a clean djellaba over his naked, purified body. Abu el Abd broke bread, dipped it into salt and handed it to his guest, then called to his servants, who entered with roasted mutton and couscous. Desmond ate and drank and in his heart continued to hope that Enos was still alive. Perhaps what the sheikh and the Fateh had perceived was some earthly suffering and not the agony of one who is leaving his life. But as they were finishing their meal the sound of galloping could be heard outside the tent, followed by a neighing and the stamping of hooves. A man was announced and soon entered. He bowed, greeting them with ‘
Salam alekhum
’, then drew close to the sheikh, whispered something in his ear and left.

Abu el Abd raised his eyes to Desmond’s face and the tragic solemnity of his look foretold the sadness of his announcement. ‘You are the last hunter,’ he said. ‘Enos ben Gad is dead. Murdered. By Selznick.’

Desmond left the tent and bellowed out all his fury and impotent rage. ‘Damned wolf!’ he shouted. ‘Rabid dog! May you die unburied, Selznick, and be devoured by vultures. May you die screaming in pain!’ He dropped to his knees, his forehead in the dust, and remained thus at length, trembling in the silence and chill of the night.

Abu el Abd’s hand shook him. ‘Enos ben Gad has fallen like a warrior on the battlefield, overwhelmed by enemy forces. He fought like a lion surrounded by packs of dogs, goaded on by their masters in the hunt. Let us pay our last respects to him with foreheads high. God is great!’

Desmond got to his feet and raised his eyes to the immense starry vault that seemed to be held up, from one end of the horizon to the other, by the columns of Palmyra.

‘God is great,’ he said, and when he turned towards Sheikh Abu el Abd, his eyes were dry and unblinking and shone with an agonized pain that had neither words, nor laments, nor tears.

D
ESMOND
G
ARRETT RODE FOR
days and days. He reached Bosra, and from there, Gerash and Mount Nebo. He crossed the immense valley where Moses was said to be buried and he thought of the unclaimed bones of the great leader of men buried in the sand of some unknown cave, waiting for the trumpet of God to announce the last day.

He continued from there to the valley of the Dead Sea. He looked out over that dark expanse of still water which filled the deepest wound of the planet: the wasteland where five legendary cities had once stood before they were destroyed by the hand of God and their peoples slaughtered. Which among these many pinnacles of salt – mute ghosts standing guard over nothing – imprisoned Lot’s wife, with her restless spirit and her cursed nostalgia for her lost homeland?

He advanced at the foot of the mountains of salt until he reached the inlet to the Arava Valley, which stretched out before him as black as flint and completely desolate as far as the eye could see. It looked as if a hurricane of fire had ravaged it, leaving a sea of dead coals behind.

The heat was unbearable in that vast flatland, even this late in the season, so Desmond tried to save his strength and that of his horse by slowing his pace during the hours around midday. He proceeded on foot, leading the horse by its halter and wetting its nose now and then with a rag soaked in a little water from his flask. Only as dusk fell did he get back into the saddle and push on to reach a well so he could pitch camp for the night. He would stop at times, attracted by some small sign of man’s presence: rock carvings or tombs marked with inscriptions corroded by wind and sand. He’d sometimes find the figure of a scorpion cut into the black surface of the flint and, in the immense silence of that valley, the image seemed animated with malevolent energy, with a wild, evil vitality.

One day, just before morning had broken, he came across a wadi which descended from an imposing calcareous massif to his left. He started to make his way up the dry river bed, which soon narrowed to become a deep gully that sliced through the mountainside from top to bottom in a nearly vertical course. Its fast-flowing waters had lain bare layer upon layer of rock which had composed it over millennia. Desmond was amazed at the infinite streaks of red, green, ochre and yellow that marked both sides of the river’s passage. The wind which found its way into that narrow gully was sucked in by the play of constantly changing surfaces, and its voice altered as it moved along, like a breath whistling through the pipes of an organ one by one.

All at once, Desmond saw the City of Tombs open before him like an amphitheatre. The fabled Petra, hidden for centuries inside a hollow mountain, this narrow gully the only means of approach. It had been discovered by Johann Ludwig Burckhardt only the century before and had stirred up excitement and admiration in scholars all over the world, although very few of them had ever had the opportunity of seeing it.

Desmond unstrapped his pack and let it drop to the ground, then spurred on his horse at a gallop across the immense basin, passing in front of the monumental tombs carved into the mountainside. Their impressive façades were ornamented by sculpted columns and tympanums in the myriad colours of the rock. The soft undulations in the polychrome layers made them look as though they were immersed in ocean waves. As Desmond’s horse flew over the sand which covered the enormous crater, he tried to glimpse what might be inside each one of those empty mausoleums. He listened hard for a sign of life, a breath, coming from one of those silent, yawning stone mouths, but the only sounds to reach his ears were the panting of his steed and its rolling gallop on the sand and stone, echoes bouncing from rock to rock.

He pulled on the reins and stopped, jumping from the saddle. The wind was the only voice now in that millennia-long silence, the high flight of an eagle the only hint of life in the empty, blinding sky. He climbed up onto a rock that rose from the ground like a cliff from the sea and looked slowly all around, while his horse wandered off in search of dry grass to graze on.

‘It’s here that you last slept, man of the seven tombs, in this secret valley. You were carried off before the valley was discovered, before human voices had the chance to echo between these cliffs. But I shall find the mark you left. I’ll sniff out your trail. Enos ben Gad won’t have died for nothing.’

Desmond took the saddle from his horse and settled into one of the rock tombs. He laid his blanket on the floor and found a niche for his mess tin, with the silver cutlery that he’d never done without and the silver cup which collapsed into a little round box. He placed his leather haversack with its biscuits, dried meat, dates and water flask where it would be safe from parasites and mice. He took out his pickaxe, shovel and the trowel with its beechwood handle that he’d had crafted especially for him at the hardware shop near the British Museum. He had food, he had his weapons and he was entrenched behind a stone wall: he was ready for action.

That night his campfire blazed at the centre of the wide valley under the vault of the heavens and the white strip of the Milky Way, which crossed the mouth of the crater from side to side. The realization that the Being he was searching for had slept in that place for centuries was enough to keep his body tense and his mind vigilant, but in the end the infinite peace of that marvellous site prevailed. Desmond Garrett did not enter the mausoleum that he had chosen as a shelter, but slept wrapped in the quiet of the universe, under the mantle of the starry night.

P
HILIP LEFT
D
URA
E
UROPOS
the next morning at dawn after preparing his horse and filling his flask with water from the Euphrates, which he’d boiled in his field pot over the campfire. He left by the western gate, called the Palmyra Gate, heading for the oasis of Tedmor, a journey of four days, he figured. The terrain he would be crossing was completely flat and barren, a hard, yellow wasteland with a few dried shrubs scattered here and there. He decided to avoid the Deir ez Zor road, which was too heavily used. He knew he couldn’t trust the bedouin tribes and he wanted his route to remain as secret as possible.