Prisoner of Shera-Sa Read online

  Minarra tensed in her bonds. “You said this was a sexual ritual.”

  “You think I need only a female opening to come in?” He scorned. “Do you think that is all your sacrifice will entail? No, little one. You will give me blood as well. Every ounce of it. Enough to saturate the city, to give it back its life.”

  She thought of the dreams, of the floods, of the rivers of blood. “Komen-tah, don’t do this.”

  “I do as I will.” He raised the knife overhead, and then lowered it smoothly onto his own arm. He made a single sweep, slicing across his biceps. A line of red appeared. Lifting his head to the vaulted, bricked ceiling of the mammoth chamber, he began to laugh.

  The sound chilled Minarra to the bone. She felt the seconds ticking, her life draining away. She had but one regret. Not being able to see Mac ever again. To touch him or to kiss him. Or even to fight with him.

  Damn, this was going to be harder than she thought…this dying business. Especially with that sense in her mind that Mac was so close to her. Why did her mind have to play such cruel tricks, now of all times.

  Or was it a trick? She focused her internal eyes, trying to see. Could it be he was out there, trying to reach her? Tentatively she sent out feelers. Her mind moved into quick, cold survival mode. If he was there, there was not only a reason, but also a chance to live. A plan formed in her mind, based upon the possibilities latent in the temple. There were weapons on the wall, shields and swords. It was a long shot, but not impossible.

  After all, this place that was Komen-tah’s sanctuary, could yet be his tomb.

  * * * * *

  Mac heard her calling out. Minarra was at the end of the tunnel, somewhere in the golden light. If only it weren’t so damned difficult to get there. It felt like he’d run a mile, but he was no closer. It could go on forever at that rate.

  What he needed was to try and call back to her, to set up a link. Opening his mind, he threw his thoughts, like a beacon in her direction. At first there was nothing. Then, very faintly, he caught a wisp. The sound of her breathing. The smell of her perfume. The trill of her voice, a rising sound. A whisper at first, beckoning, and then, more plaintive. He had to clear the blockage in his mind, to hear. He had to blast free his thought processes, quickening them to lightning.

  There, he had it. Like an internal code, they flashed back and forth. He was able to read her situation—what was going on in the room she was in, and what he needed to do when he got there.

  There’s a spear on the wall, to the left when you enter. You must grab it, and the sword beside it.

  Mac found them and took them down at once, not pausing to survey the rest of his surroundings. He was glad he did because the minute he yanked it off the wall there were a hundred shrieking women all pointing at him. They were wearing silk—harem girls.

  “Seize him,” called a woman from the front of the chamber.

  A half-dozen masked men, priests from the look of them, came charging toward him at once.

  They are eunuchs, came the voice of Minarra. They’ll flee at the wave of the sword. The one you have to kill is the big dude with the knife.

  Mac grumbled his telepathic reply. Why is it always the big dudes with knives you have to kill? Why can’t it ever be the little guys who piss their pants at the sight of you?

  “Who dares intrude on the sacred ritual?” Roared the ugly dude with the knife. “Kill him,” he pointed.

  The eunuchs, as predicted, ran after a few passes of Mac’s sword in the air.

  “Traitors,” roared the big man, who looked like one of those pro wrestlers. “I will kill you all for this.”

  The interesting thing was, Mac had actually nicked one of the eunuchs, or at least he’d passed his sword through what should have been a part of him only to find himself slicing thin air.

  They’re not alive, Mac thought to Minarra. That will make killing any of them a little more difficult. Oh, by the way, thanks for saving my life. I assume that was you?

  It was. Though I shouldn’t have bothered, after the horrid way you treated me in the desert.

  You pick a fine time to start a fight.

  I chat when I’m nervous. I can’t help it.

  In that case, chat to your big friend. See if you can distract him.

  “Komen-tah,” Minarra spoke aloud. “I need you…come and make love to me…you know I have pledged myself to you.”

  “I told you,” he said, already moving toward Mac. “I want your blood, not your sex.”

  “Then take my blood…now…do not risk being killed. This man is a great fighter,” pleaded Minarra.

  The big man bought the reverse psychology. They always did, even the five-thousand-year-old-ghost ones. The only question was how exactly could Mac defeat him, even if he could get in a clean shot?

  You have to aim for the heart.

  He hasn’t any, Min… Mac beamed back to her mind.

  Trust me, Mac, when it’s time…he will.

  The ancient prince was on him now, so there really wasn’t time for further debate. Growling, he slashed full force, to and fro, attempting to rip him immediately to shreds. Mac held him off with the spear, avoiding instant death. The question was, how long could he hold out against a man, a force, this strong?

  At least he’d die in sight of Minarra, defending her. From where he stood, there was nothing else in life that mattered.

  * * * * *

  Minarra hadn’t much time. Komen-tah would slice Mac to ribbons unless she got to him first. There was, however, the little problem of the chains. The only one to help her was Minar-ra. At first look, the priestess would seem the least likely candidate to help her. On the other hand, she was also his first victim, the one he’d first deceived with his lies about being a god.

  Could it be she was tired of him? That she might be made to switch sides? With just a little sisterly influence?

  Minar-ra was standing by, uncertain of what she should do. Minarra touched her mind, using their two-way link. At once the thoughts buzzed back and forth. The priestess wanted to shut her down, but Minarra kept fighting back, beaming her own perceptions of Komen-tah over and over. Let her see this joker for who he really was.

  Minar-ra did not want to hear. “Silence!” she commanded aloud, threatening Minarra with a knife of her own.

  The chained Minarra had no defense but to convince her. “Why do you fear my words? If they are not true? Or could it be you have doubts?”

  “Komen-tah awakened me,” she leaned over putting the blade to Minarra’s throat. “He saved me from oblivion. Just as once before, in our earthly lives, he saved me from ignorance. There is no god but him.”

  “Then why does he need me, Minar-ra? Why can he not make his will happen alone? Unless he is consorting in the black arts—just another evil-hearted magician.”

  “I will kill you,” she swore.

  “Go ahead. But you know the truth. Your precious Komen-tah is a liar. He does not love you. He wants me. Read my memories. The dreams he placed there. He has lust for me and every other woman. He will betray you, when he is done using you.”

  Minar-ra’s mind absorbed the dreams, the impressions. Doubt came bubbling to the surface at once. Her armor was cracking.

  Immediately, Komen-tah turned to see what was going on. “Minar-ra…you are not concentrating…I am not receiving the flow.”

  Min’s assumption was correct. Minar-ra was channeling for him, filtering some form of energy latent in the old city’s ruins. She was keeping this all going, this entire energy and matter flux. And their generated beings, too, in this place of stasis. Without Minar-ra’s function as a transfer agent, Komen-tah’s power would whither. She’d been right in her advice to him—he should have absorbed her soul before facing Mac. Now he would have to do it on his own.

  “Komen-tah, you lied to me!”

  “Minar-ra, stop prattling woman, I command you, restore my power!”

  Minar-ra dropped the knife and backed to the altar. It w
as as if a cloud had been lifted from her face. “What have we been doing?” She touched her cheeks. “We have been…committing sacrilege…again.”

  “It isn’t so!” Cried Komen-tah. “Get hold of yourself!”

  Mac was pushing the prince backward, parrying and thrusting. Twice he jabbed him in the ribs. Komen-tah was bleeding real blood—he was losing his energy form and taking on a physical one.

  “You get hold of yourself,” Mac growled, offering a deep thrust.

  Komen-tah cried out, grabbing his midsection. The spear was halfway through him. His face and legs began to shimmer, like they might blink out, but out of his belly was pouring liquid—water, mixed with blood.

  The flood.

  “Mac,” Minarra called out. “We have to get out of here.”

  Mac ran to her, passing Minar-ra as he did. The priestess knelt beside the fallen Prince Komen-tah, weeping. “I am sorry,” she sobbed over and over.

  He reached up too, calling her his one true love.

  The waters were already filling the chamber, an inch deep. Mac reached Minarra and went to work on the chains. Using the priestess’s knife, he opened the locks, freeing her wrists and ankles. Lifting her, he cradled her, like a newborn.

  “We haven’t much time,” said Min. “We need to take the front way, through the curtain.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Mac.

  “It’s on the map,” she said, surer than she had been of anything in her life. “It’s been in my dreams, too. Now hurry, please.”

  The waters were knee-deep as they reached the sacred curtain. Pulling it aside, Mac exposed a stone wall, intricately carved.

  “Let me,” said Min.

  He let her run her fingers through the grooves, forming an organized pattern. It was an activation signal, to release the wall’s mechanism. Part of the mysterious technology of Shera-Sa. The real one that had existed in the place of this ghost domain.

  “Come on,” she hissed, forced to repeat the pattern a second time.

  The waters were up to Mac’s waist now, blood red, rising fast. He stood silent, patiently waiting for her to finish the job. He didn’t doubt her. She was grateful for that. It meant the world to her.

  At last the wall split apart, a jagged but regular line opening between two sliding halves. An opening was created in the ten-foot-high wall, wide enough for several men to fit through. Mac leaped through, Min still in his arms. The door shut behind them instantaneously.

  “What took you so long?” Grumbled an old, all too familiar voice.

  Minarra gasped. She was staring at a throne of gold, upon which sat the living image of her father. “Daddy?”

  “Who else would it be, young lady?” As always, his patience was short for ignorant questions. “Seth, put her down, boy, let her come to me.”

  Seth, as stunned as she was, let Minarra’s feet touch smoothly on the polished floor.

  Minarra walked, scarcely aware of her feet. This is still a dream, she told herself.

  “Hurry,” he said. “There isn’t much time. This is not a stable dimension.”

  “Daddy?” She touched his face. “Are you real?”

  “I trained you better than that, Minarra. What are the only questions worth asking?”

  “Those with provable, empirical answers,” she recited, tugging playfully at his pointed beard.

  “Correct,” he shooed her off with a scowl. “Whether or not I ‘exist’ only as a figment of your imagination or as some mysterious poltergeist is irrelevant, and cannot be proven. The relevant matter, the interesting matter is whether I have anything to say that might impact your understanding of the world and your place in it.”

  “And do you?” She smiled, recalling at once how charming and exasperating the man could be.

  “I have one thing to say—and you will have the rest of your days to contemplate whether or not you knew this in your heart and were therefore capable of dreaming it, and me, up. Seth did not leave you of his own accord. I forced his hand.”

  Min’s heart skipped a beat. Had she suspected as much? “You, Daddy?”

  “I didn’t want you with someone like him… Someone like me. I thought you ought to do better.”

  “But Daddy. You were the man I admired most.”

  “You were biased, terribly so, by your upbringing. I ought to have raised you to hate me. It would have done you a great service.”

  She laughed at that. “If only you could hear yourself sometimes. But, Daddy, it doesn’t matter. You couldn’t have forced Seth to do anything. He was a grown man.”

  “It’s true.” Mac stepped forward. “Sir, I will not allow you to take that responsibility. You acted in good faith. I, in following your will, however, made a terrible mistake.”

  “We all make mistakes. Our lives are built on them. What is a non-mistake,” expounded Roger, “but the substance of a life unlived, a hand unplayed. Shera-Sa was my mistake…it was the hand I played. But the same man who hunted a dead city his whole life also birthed you, Minarra…”

  “And loved my mother…”

  “You want me to forgive myself?” He smiled.

  “I want us all to forgive,” said Minarra.

  Roger nodded approvingly. “I think you have your answer, then, as to the meaning of seeing me again.”

  “You know there’s more.” Minarra’s eyes filled with tears. Outside, around them, she could hear the roar of the water. The city was flooding. The dream city of Shera-Sa. These walls would hold, but not for long. “Something else I want to hear.”

  “I know that,” nodded Roger. “And I’ll say what you want. But will that really make you happy?”

  Minarra blinked, confused. More than anything she’d wanted to know her father loved her, and here, it seemed was the perfect chance to obtain her proof. But to do so now, by whatever means this was, supernatural or otherwise, felt like a cheat. The only true resolution lay in her heart. For the image of Roger Hunt could say anything at all, but it was up to her to believe.

  “No,” she decided. “That will not make me happy.”

  “What then?”

  “This.” She reached her hand out for Mac. He came forward and took it, grasping her fingers tightly. “Daddy,” she presented herself, side by side with the man she loved. “I know you always meant well. I know your heart. And here, in the person of this man, is my heart.”

  Roger offered a broad smile. “You two had best be on your way,” he chastised. “I won’t be responsible if you drown like a pair of lovesick rats.”

  “Rats don’t fall in love,” Minarra pointed out.

  “That’s because they are too smart for it,” he quipped.

  Minarra gave him a kiss on the cheek. Mac gave him a hug. Daddy loved them both. And the only one who could prove that was her, looking at him, just as she remembered him. Like this. Full of spit and vinegar and cockeyed wisdom.

  “Goodbye, Daddy. See you in the afterlife?”

  He gave a wink. “I told you. No cheating the system. You’ll have to die and find out like everyone else.”

  It was at that point the walls crashed in and the water came rushing over their heads.

  ~~~~~

  Mac and Minarra came to, back in the desert. Mac was right where he’d been all along, with Mahmoud’s hand on his forehead. Minarra was lying on the bedroll. Only seconds had passed and nothing at all seemed to have changed. Except their feelings for one another, born of the harrowing, life and death experience they’d just been through.

  Without a word, they took their places in each other’s arms. Neither had any intention of letting the other go. Ever again.

  “Am I to assume the situation has resolved itself?” Asked Hassan.

  “She’s safe now,” said Mac. “Nothing out there will hurt her anymore.”

  “And the city?”

  “Shera-Sa is gone,” Minarra spoke up. “It has been for five thousand years.”

  Hassan smiled knowingly. “You no longer seek it, then?�
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  “No. I found what I was looking for,” she hugged Mac. “Or should I say, it found me.”

  “So the expedition is called off?” Mahmoud wondered.

  Mac was about to speak, but he deferred to Minarra. “You need to ask our expedition leader. Our rightful leader.”

  “Co-leader,” she grinned, hand on his chest. “And as far as my vote goes, I say we go back home.”

  “Ditto for me,” said Mac.

  A cheer went up from the men.

  “There is the small problem of making it back past the rebels. And from there, gaining safe passage through Porto Sayeed,” pointed out Hassan.

  “That may not be a problem after all,” said Mahmoud. “Look.”

  All eyes turned to the sky. There were helicopters, a large force of them. They bore military markings, but not those of the Alcazaran army.

  Minarra was the first to recognize. “They’re ours,” she said excitedly. “They’re Americans.”

  A pair of military helicopters set down in the nearby sand. A captain explained the situation. The security situation had degenerated and terrorists were threatening vital interests. US troops had been called in to restore order.

  “We have room for all of you,” the officer said. “Minus your gear.”

  “That,” Hassan said, “we will happily surrender.”

  Mac caught up to Minarra, just as she was about to board one of the copters. “You forgot the map,” he said.

  She looked at the attaché case. “Leave it here,” she decided. “With the rest of the relics.”

  Mac tossed it and jumped aboard after her. They sat side by side, holding hands all the way back to the capital. They had one thing on their minds, and it had nothing to do with ghosts or lost cities.

  * * * * *

  Minarra lay reclined in the bed, shortly before midnight. The ceiling fan was clacking louder than ever in their old suite, but it was one of the sweetest sounds she’d ever heard. So was the sound of Mac in the bathroom, whistling as he shaved his face in readiness for a night of passion. She herself was freshly bathed and perfumed, dressed in a light silk robe, nothing underneath.

  What a lucky, romantic break that they’d been able to stay on in the city overnight. The rebels, it seemed, had fled back into the dunes, no longer a threat to the government. This meant they could consummate their love for each other in a familiar setting. Really, they’d been in love all along, though they hadn’t been willing to admit it, at least not to each other—at the same time.