Tomb of the Sun King, page 39
part #2 of Raiders of the Arcana Series
Not there, he had thought automatically. An irresistible tug had pulled at him from thirty meters to the southwest, where he could picture pylons and painted walls rising from the sand. There.
There, something whispered at him again as he gazed out over the still, moonlight-washed landscape. It felt like a flicker of movement—the soft slap of sandaled feet on sun-dry stone. Skin brushed with dust. Exhaustion mingling with purpose.
Neil followed it without quite realizing that he was moving.
“Where are you going?” Ellie demanded behind him.
“I just…” Neil trailed off distractedly—and then kept walking.
Sayyid’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He cast Ellie a questioning look, and she frowned, but the pair fell into step behind Neil as he picked his way across the hollow.
He stopped in front of a large, flat boulder that hung suspended over the ground, the opening beneath it taking the form of a thin black gap. The shiny carapace of the scarab glittered against the surface of the rock. The bug wiggled its antennae at his approach before skittering over the stone and disappearing beneath it.
“Neil?” Ellie asked in a low and fairly urgent whisper. “What are we doing here?”
The sound of her voice pulled Neil out of a fog. He realized where he had come to stand—just below the natural wall that separated the hollow from Julian Forster-Mowbray’s dig site. He was close enough that he could see where the yellow glare of Julian’s lanterns painted the top of the stones. Individual voices emerged from the murmuring clamor of activity—Dawson’s peevish complaints distinguishing themselves from the laughter of a pair of Al-Saboors.
Neil startled, coming back to himself sharply. This was the last place he wanted to be. Should anyone from Julian’s excavation wander uphill, he would be immediately visible to them, spotlit like a bug under a looming shoe.
“I… I don’t…” He trailed off as something about the boulder beside him tugged irresistibly at the back of his mind—then blurted out the rest, both embarrassed by the words and utterly certain that they were true. “There’s something here.”
Sayyid’s gaze was quietly thoughtful.
Ellie raised a skeptical eyebrow. “There’s no rubble here that could conceal a tomb entrance.”
She was right. Constructing a tomb was a massive undertaking. Any entrance would have needed to be large and accessible enough for transporting hundreds of tons of spoil carved from the core of the mountain, never mind the myriad grave goods that would accompany a royal burial.
His mind still rang quietly with the sound of sandaled footsteps.
With a burst of irrational determination, Neil crawled beneath the boulder.
The ground sloped softly downward, forming a little cave just high enough for Neil to move from wriggling on his stomach to a crouch. The space was black as pitch.
“Does anyone have a light?” he asked awkwardly, whispering back at the pale line of the gap he had crawled through.
He heard rustling cloth and quick, soft footsteps. A moment later, Ellie’s hand thrust into the opening, holding one of Zeinab’s shuttered lanterns. She lowered her face down to peer in at him.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Neil’s first instinct was to brush her off, but the careful concern in her tone held him back. He realized what she must be seeing—her rational, cautious brother crouching in a claustrophobic hole for no apparent reason.
Was he fine?
“I just… want to take a look,” he returned awkwardly.
He carefully slid open the shutter on the lamp.
Golden light flooded the space around him, revealing the jagged underbelly of the boulder… and a small army of shining black scarabs.
“Oh bugger,” Neil bit out, then threw himself down as the insects took flight, whizzing furiously around the tight space.
They shot around him in a hissing storm… and then spilled into a dark, ragged crack in the ground nearby.
“What was that?” Sayyid demanded nervously from outside.
“Er… nothing?” Neil offered back unconvincingly.
He crawled to his knees, moving over to the edge of the fissure. The dark opening zigzagged across the stone like a bolt of black lightning, widening to perhaps eighteen inches before thinning to a jagged line.
A lingering black scarab crawled over the side of the gap and disappeared.
Neil had never been particularly bothered by bugs, unlike his foreman. He still found that he had to steel himself against an instinctive sense of horror in order to carefully lower the lantern into the hole.
A beetle flew out of the fractured stone, buzzing at Neil’s face. He shooed at it furiously with his free hand, biting out a curse. Then he brought the lantern lower and the flickering light washed over what lay inside the ragged fissure.
He was only vaguely aware of rustling of cloth behind him. A moment later, Ellie slid into place at his side.
“What is it?” she asked.
Neil stared into a cavity that went down, down, down into the heart of the mountain, its lamplight-washed walls peppered here and there with the iridescent bodies of lingering scarabs.
“We need to go in there,” he declared, his voice tight with both certainty and unease.
𓇶
Thirty-Three
The space under the boulder had grown crowded. Zeinab had arrived a few moments before, immediately taking charge. She crouched over the fissure in her black abaya, carefully withdrawing the lantern.
Neil was squished in between her and Ellie. The others hovered outside—all except for Sayyid, who had displayed no interest in getting a turn under the rock.
“I have no desire to crawl into a scarab nest,” he declared firmly.
A coil of rope spilled through the gap, sliding to a stop near Neil’s boots. Adam lowered his face into view behind it. “We’ve tied it off,” he reported. “You should be all set.”
“Dr. Fairfax?” Zeinab prompted impatiently.
Neil quailed—but he was the one who had found the opening in the rocks and insisted on investigating it. Who else did he expect would squeeze into the fissure to see where it led?
“Shouldn’t Bates do it?” he blurted out hopefully.
“I’ve got about thirty pounds on you, buddy,” Adam replied from outside.
“Maybe I should go,” Constance eagerly suggested, dropping down beside him to peer in at Neil and the others. “I’m the smallest of us, and if there are any wild animals down there, I have a better chance of overcoming them than he does.”
“How’s that?” Neil returned with a note of panic. “Why would you be better at dealing with wild animals than I would?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Constance returned.
“Dr. Fairfax goes,” Zeinab ordered. “Preferably quickly, before someone from that dig hears all of the talking you are doing.”
She punctuated the remark with a glare at the rest of the party, who quickly clammed up.
Neil stared down at the dark mouth of the fissure. The opening looked barely wide enough for him to squeeze into, which begged unpleasant thoughts of what might happen to him if he got stuck.
“Dr. Fairfax goes,” Neil echoed in a wretched whisper. “And why wouldn’t he? Who else is qualified to descend into a pit full of beetles?”
But even as he loathed the notion of lowering himself into an unknown scarab-lined hole in the mountain, another part of him was drawn toward the fissure like a moth to the moon.
Yes, his instincts urged. This is right.
He faced the descent with a new sense of determination. “Pass me the lamp.”
“You are not taking the lamp,” Zeinab replied.
“What?!” Neil exclaimed.
“You cannot climb down a rope while you are carrying it. I will lower it down to you once you are inside.”
Neil imagined climbing forever until the rope simply ran out. Or perhaps he might get caught in the increasingly tight space until he was no longer able to move.
Or the gap in the floor might open into a labyrinthine and inescapable cave system where Neil would slowly die of thirst.
“Couldn’t you drop the light down there first?” he suggested hopefully.
“Who would untie it so that we could bring the rope back up for you?” Zeinab returned. “And what if you kicked it over when you landed? We only have two lanterns. We cannot risk one getting broken.”
“I’m not going to kick it over!” Neil protested.
Zeinab answered him with a raised eyebrow.
With a resigned lurch in his gut, Neil took off his spectacles, tucking them carefully into the pocket of his waistcoat. He shuffled awkwardly around the two women until he was positioned above the fissure.
He slid his legs into the opening, then took the rope in both hands, pulling to test it. It held firm against whatever Adam had tied it to.
In all probability, there was very little chance that it would come loose and plummet him into an impenetrable abyss from which he would never escape.
“Get on with it already!” Constance hissed through the entrance slightly above him. “Some of us would like to know what’s down there before we die of old age!”
Neil flushed with embarrassment and lowered himself into the gap.
The space was tight. Stone scraped at the back of his waistcoat as he slid inside. He struggled to find footholds, as there was barely any room to maneuver his legs. He tried to brace himself with his back and his knees instead, quickly earning a few new scrapes.
A scarab took flight near his ear, buzzing an inch from his nose as it dove past him. The surprise of it nearly made him lose his grip on the rope.
He fell, skidding down the fissure. The fibers of the rope rasped against his palms as he tightened his grip and lurched to a stop.
A spill of dust showered down on him from above. The back of his waistcoat snagged against the rock.
He sneezed.
“Keep quiet!” Zeinab hissed.
She glared down at Neil from above, her sharp features lit by the soft glow of the lantern he had left behind. Constance joined her, her face framed by tendrils of dark hair that had come loose from her Gibson.
She frowned. “All I can see is Stuffy!”
“He’ll get out of the way in a minute,” Zeinab replied.
Little stones peppered his face as Neil dropped himself lower—and swung his boot out into nothing. It waved there helplessly, his efforts to find a foothold utterly failing.
He nearly let go of the rope in shock and dismay. He managed to stop himself after another short slide, his palms burning.
Neil’s other foot reached the nothingness. He flailed until he caught the rope between his boots, which took some of the weight from his aching shoulders.
Thick, silent darkness surrounded him.
His arms made another fiery protest, and he forced himself to climb, sliding awkwardly down until his soles struck the ground.
Neil planted them there, terrified to move lest he step over the edge of some hidden abyss and plummet to his doom.
“What is happening?” Zeinab demanded impatiently.
Neil could just make out her face overhead. “I think I found the bottom.”
“Then will you release the rope?” she pressed dryly.
Neil realized that he had been clinging to it like a lifeline. He hurriedly let go, and the rope slithered up in front of him like a quick-moving snake.
His eyes began to adjust. Just enough distant light filtered down through the fractured stone to let him make out the vaguest form of the space around him. He instinctively fumbled at his pocket for his spectacles and slid them on… which made absolutely no difference at all. He was left with only the dim impression of a still, silent space that had more in common with a grave than anywhere else.
He brushed his burning palms on his trousers and waited, trying not to feel utterly abandoned in the dark.
A soft glow rose from above him. Neil breathed a shuddering sigh of relief as he looked up to see the lantern bobbing down through the fissure.
As it reached the bottom, illumination spilled over the space that surrounded him. It burst into startling color—blue, green, and gold leaping out at Neil from the walls.
Palm trees bent over stands of papyrus flowers. Courtiers rode on barges rowed by lines of slaves with glossy, curling hair. Spears flashed over charging chariots while leopards lunged toward waiting prey.
A mother held a child to her breast. Worshipers piled up offerings under a golden sun.
Neil wasn’t in a cave. He was standing in a gallery—a long hallway painted in rich color from floor to ceiling.
“Well?” Ellie’s urgent tones echoed down to him from above. “What do you see?”
“Everything,” Neil replied, his voice thick with wonder.
The images were bold and pristine as if someone had just paused working on them to step out to lunch—as if Neil might turn and find a paintbrush discarded on the floor, its tip still wet with rich red ocher.
His gaze stopped on an image of the sun. Some of the plaster below had broken away with the weight of time, taking part of the artwork with it, but Neil could still see the myriad rays that fell down from the golden disk, ending in delicately cupped hands. One of them caressed the remains of a linen-clad shoulder. Another brushed against the distinct curve of a crown—the white hedjet of Upper Egypt.
“It’s a tomb,” Neil forced out through the shock and awe that had paralyzed him, his voice hoarse. “An Amarna period tomb.”
A whispered, excited consultation sounded from atop the fissure, and Sayyid’s wife called down again.
“Does it look as though it is about to fall in on you?”
Neil tore his attention from the paintings to answer her question. He skimmed past the art to look at the walls themselves, picking out the fine lines in the plaster before he raised his gaze to the ceiling.
It was covered in glittering golden stars. The sight of them stole his voice.
“There are hairline fractures,” he reported when he was able to speak again. “I can see two places where some of the plaster has broken away. And the fissure in the ceiling goes another several yards down the hall.”
He thought nervously of just how much stone must be pressing down on that crack from above. Neil swallowed thickly. “But nothing appears to be actively unstable.”
Neil startled as a pair of sandaled feet slipped through the gap above him, and Zeinab slithered down the rope like a gymnast.
A small pile of rubble lay by Neil’s boots, fragments of the ceiling that had crumbled to the ground with whatever minor seismic activity had opened the crack in the first place. Neil skipped around it to make way as Zeinab landed.
She automatically stepped aside, the line of her mouth tightening with worry as she studied the murals.
Ellie descended behind her. Her eyes went wide as soon as she dropped past the ceiling. “I see archers!” she exclaimed. “And wine makers! And a temple dancer!”
The rope spun her in a lazy circle as she craned her neck to try not to lose her view.
“Bet you can see it better from the ground, Princess,” Adam called down wryly.
Ellie slid the rest of the way down and hurried over to a portrait of nobly dressed hunters pursuing a diverse array of water birds. She gazed at it with an expression of pure joy, raising her hand to where a heron swept up from the clustered reeds, each feather depicted in perfect detail. Her fingers hovered above the ancient pigments as she drew in a careful, uneven breath, her eyes glistening.
“Aw hell,” came the sound of Adam’s voice from above.
Ellie forced her attention away from the paintings to call up to him. “Are you stuck?”
“Just… a little… tight…” Adam grunted, and a scattering of stones came loose to join the rubble under the fissure. “Got it. Guess I should’ve laid off the extra kofta.”
He dropped from the opening, his battered boots landing solidly on the ground. As he straightened, his broad shoulders took up most of the span of the hallway.
“I don’t think the kofta are the problem,” Neil commented a little weakly.
Adam’s expression sobered as he took in the wonder around them. He crossed over to where Ellie lingered, her eyes shimmering with joyful tears as she studied the vivid artwork.
“It’s… I…” she began, helpless to find the words.
Adam slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Yeah,” he agreed softly.
Neil was feeling shaky himself. The images that lined the hall were beautifully rendered snapshots of life in Egypt three thousand years ago, from the farmers in their fields to warriors flying into battle.
One figure in particular began to leap out at him from the murals—a woman with high cheekbones, fine almond-shaped eyes, and generous lips. The gold-wrapped cylinder of a false beard extended from her chin, a masculine kilt wrapping her curved hips. Her elegant head carried the weight of all the various crowns of Egypt—the double pschent, the striped and cobra-topped nemes headdress, and even the broad blue kephresh, worn when the pharaoh marched to war.
She was everywhere—holding her hands out over ripe fields of wheat as the rays of the Aten brushed her shoulders. Riding into battle with a lance in her hand, feet braced on the floor of her chariot. Raising up offerings to her god or playing with infants on her knee. She stood over every aspect of life in Egypt, from the pressing of grapes to the raising of monuments, her slender hands outstretched to offer bounty or serve justice.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Ellie breathed from beside him as Neil stared at an image of the woman scattering seeds while washed by the compassionate rays of her sun. “It’s Nefertiti.”
“Neferneferuaten,” Neil countered, his voice still numb with awe. “She isn’t a queen here. She’s pharaoh.” His gaze drifted along the hall, every inch of which was rich with color. “This is Neferneferuaten’s story.”
“She must have been extraordinary,” Ellie softly said with a reverent look at the noble figure on the wall.
