“Strat! You can't mean it!” How had she ever thought that Strat was noble of heart and generous in deed? “That's horrible. Absolutely not! Leaving her there was bad enough. We're not going to be the ones who seal her in!”

“People are going to walk by and find that open hole. They'll explore. They'll find Renifer. She won't be dead because it takes days to starve. Then what? They drag her out? They hand her back to Pharaoh? Will she suffer an even more terrible fate because she circumvented Pharaoh's plan?”

“What could be more terrible than being buried alive?” Annie demanded.

Strat pointed toward the edge of the desert. A hundred yards away, the mutilated corpses of dead men stuck up into the air on tall sharp spikes. Annie had seen that happen; she just hadn't been willing to remember. There was, after all, something worse than running out of air.

“If we close up the shaft, we'll actually be keeping Renifer safe,” said Strat. “When it's dark tonight, and everyone else is gone, we pull away the stone and offer her a second chance.”

Annie's heartbeat returned to normal. He was a gentleman after all; he had saved Katie; he would save Renifer. It was good.

“Too late,” said Strat sadly. “Look. The shaft is already surrounded.”

“I can't see,” whispered Annie, starting to cry. “What's happening?”

“I don't dare get closer,” said Strat. “Quick, up that hill. We can see from there.”

They staggered across the sand, which was first hard and flat and then sinking and ankle-breaking, scrabbled up a ragged hillside of sand and climbed rocks that collapsed under their weight. Some places were so steep they were forced to crawl.

“Be careful at the edges,” said Strat. “The wind chews on the undersides of these hills, leaving crags supported by nothing.”

The crest of the hill was wild and wonderful. Fingers of rock poked out into thin air. The peak of the Pyramid was half a mile away, but eye level. The necropolis stretched on and on. Thousands of distant tomb structures glittered like sugar cubes in the sun.

And where Renifer's open shaft might be, Annie had no idea.

“Let your eye travel down the causeway,” said Strat, “and look for a dozen workers with baskets.”

“Baskets?” said Annie blankly.

“Rock and sand,” said Strat quietly. “That's how they filled in your shaft. Basket after basket. Rock after rock.”

And there it was, a team lifting one basket after another from a series of donkey-drawn carts. Somebody somewhere had known about the second shaft.

Strat and Annie clung to each other. They could not, mercifully, hear the sound of the rocks as they dropped down.

But Renifer would.

Annie prayed to her own God that Renifer would not be scared. That she remained proud of her choice. That the end would come quickly for her.

Strat held her until she had stopped weeping.