Tomb of the sun king, p.48
Tomb of the Sun King, page 48
part #2 of Raiders of the Arcana Series
The two bronzes in the cubit box were covered in etched rows of tiny hieroglyphs. The carved eyes of the Set beast were blankly serene.
A lingering part of Neil’s brain wanted to protest—to muster a thousand reasons why the object before him must be simply another artifact. A misplaced relic no different from the hundreds of others that surrounded him.
His gaze rose to the roughly etched graffito on the wall—to the long-eared rod in the hands of the solemn-faced figure leading his people toward the benevolent rays of the rising sun.
The excuses and pleas fell away like sand. Neil knew what he was looking at. He knew it with a feeling in his bones like music.
The Staff of Moses. The instrument of one of the world’s greatest prophets. The manifestation of holy power that had guided a people out of slavery and into history.
And Neil had known exactly where to find it.
His thoughts flew back to the moment when he had stood beside Sayyid on a sprawl of rubble-strewn ground at Saqqara. He had felt the wrongness of the place already marked off by stakes and lines.
He thought of the other little leaps of intuition that had come to him like a tingling electricity in his brain. The change in the size of the sun court altar. The identity of the sculptures in the tomb where he and Constance had sheltered after escaping Julian’s boat. His haunted sense of some lone traveler approaching the boulder above that had led them to Neferneferuaten’s tomb.
Over the years before that, there had been myriad little leaps of what he had always thought of as intuition, which came to him as he turned the pages of journal articles and excavation reports.
But that’s not quite right, is it? Neil would think mildly and scribble a correction into the margins.
And finally, Akhetaten—living and breathing around him in the rattle of a sistrum and the tang of incense in the evening air.
All of it was linked by the past, whether through Neil’s presence in the places where history had happened or a vaguer tugging sense of wrongness as he poured through his books and papers.
“I’m a scholar,” he protested weakly. “I’m an academic. I can’t be a…”
He trailed off, utterly at a loss for the right word.
“Wali?” Sayyid offered awkwardly.
“What’s a wali?” Neil asked.
Sayyid winced, flashing him a sympathetic look. “It is more or less a saint.”
Neil absorbed this with a groan—and thought once more of his sister and their friends, dealing with who-knew-what danger out on the ridge. “But the staff is in pieces! What are we supposed to do—just add them to any stick we like?”
“Assuming it is the right size, I suppose,” Sayyid replied uneasily. He glanced around the room and picked up a long, straight rod from among a pile of walking sticks and bows. “Tamarisk. It’s more likely to have resisted decay. Here—hold it.”
Neil grasped the stick more or less because Sayyid thrust it at him.
With careful reverence, Sayyid gently lifted the headpiece from the cubit box. He turned it in his hands to line the hollow end up with the top of the tamarisk rod.
He drew in a breath, closing his eyes. “La ilâha illa Allah,” he prayed—and pressed the bronze into place.
Sayyid snatched his hands away, eyeing Neil warily. “Do you feel anything?”
“Like what?” Neil replied. “You mean—does it feel like it’s about to fall off?” He gave the staff a very careful wiggle. “Doesn’t seem loose.”
“Let’s try the other bit,” Sayyid prompted nervously.
Neil turned the rod, presenting him with the bottom end.
Sayyid delicately lifted the forked tail from the box. He carefully lined it up with the other end of the tamarisk stick, then pushed it on with a neat twist of his wrist.
A quick pain buzzed through Neil’s palms, stinging like a hive of bees.
“Ow!” he shouted, bouncing the staff in his hands. “It bit me!”
“What do you mean, it bit you?” Sayyid took a hurried step back.
“I don’t know!” Neil juggled the wood, torn between his protesting nerves and his terror of dropping the instrument of God on the floor.
“Is it still biting you?” Sayyid pressed.
Neil forced himself to hold the thing long enough to find out. “It’s more a… highly unpleasant tingle.”
“Well, you should be able to manage that,” Sayyid concluded. “How does it work?”
“How should I know?” Neil protested, still wincing at the subtle sting against his palms.
Sayyid cocked an eloquent eyebrow.
“What?!” Neil quailed. “You can’t seriously expect that I’ll just… magic the answer out of it!”
“You magicked learning where it was hidden,” Sayyid returned easily.
“That’s different!”
“See?” Sayyid shot back triumphantly. “You are admitting it was magic!”
“I haven’t admitted anything!” Neil burst out.
“Hmph,” Sayyid countered skeptically. “Well, the carving on Mutnedjmet’s jewelry box referred to it as the Was-Scepter of Khemenu,” he continued blithely. “Khemenu was the center of the cult of Thoth. I am sure that means it must be blessed by one of the god’s priests before it can work.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Neil retorted crossly.
Sayyid’s lip curled into a smirk, and Neil clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Perhaps it has something to do with language, then,” Sayyid suggested cannily. “As Thoth was the scribe of the old Egyptian gods.”
A sense of rightness hummed in the back of Neil’s mind. It felt like moving his hand closer to the top of a stove with his eyes closed.
“Maybe?” he returned weakly.
Sayyid’s brown eyes flashed with satisfaction. “But it would not be just any language. In the Book of the Dead, the incantations used to protect and guide the deceased through the afterlife are described as being gifted to priests by the gods themselves.”
“Like… spells?” Neil rallied himself with a burst of desperate rebellion. “What are you getting at—that we’re supposed to wave the staff around while we say the magic words?”
The sense of heat—of rightness—flared through his brain like an igniting match, and Neil’s jaw dropped with dismay.
Sayyid clamped a sympathetic hand down on his shoulder. “It cannot be that bad to be a wali. I am sure we can sort it out later, after we save our people.”
He glanced from his iron crowbar to the discarded scimitar by the sarcophagus. With a grimace of distaste, Sayyid picked up the sword—and promptly hurried through the exit.
Neil panicked.
The staff’s power hummed through his arms, burning across his chest like a warning. Neil sensed its potential. The truth of it whispered through the same part of his mind that had made the cubit box itch at his awareness like a bite he couldn’t scratch. He knew in a space beyond doubt that the staff in his hands was capable of both miracles and nightmares—that the potential for both hummed inside of it, buzzing like a horde of insects hidden just beneath the earth.
All it waited for was the key—for a whisper that would unleash it on the world.
The realization that he had been left holding it slammed into Neil like a pile of bricks.
He raced after Sayyid, catching up to him on the stairs. “Hold on! You can’t run off! You’re the one who has to use it!”
“Me?” Sayyid reared back from him in horror. “Absolutely not! You’re the one who found it! You use it!”
“I can’t!” Neil called back as they reached the hall.
“Why not?” Sayyid dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper as he cast a nervous glance at the fissure in the ceiling.
The answer washed over Neil with a strange and impossible certainty.
He started to laugh. The laugh was wheezing and slightly tortured, which at least kept it relatively quiet.
“What’s going on?” Sayyid pleaded. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because it has to be in Egyptian,” Neil replied, his voice still strangled with hysteria. “The spells. You have to say them in Egyptian.”
“How can you possibly know that?!” Sayyid burst out.
“How do you think?” Neil choked back, wiping at the helpless tears escaping the corners of his eyes.
Sayyid’s face collapsed into lines of dismay. “I could tell you what to say!” he pushed back desperately. “You could just repeat it after me!”
“I can’t repeat it after you!” Neil wheezed, holding his aching gut. “I can’t say your bloody khaa!”
“But you could…” Sayyid started. “If you tried a little…”
“Kaaaagch,” Neil demonstrated. “Aaeercgh.”
Sayyid grimaced. “That isn’t even close.”
“Awrrrchghk,” Neil offered.
“Just stop,” Sayyid pleaded, wincing.
“I’ll stop when you take the bloody thing from me!” Neil pushed the staff at him. “Krraaguuuff!”
Sayyid stumbled back from the arcanum and jabbed an accusing finger. “Wielding it would be a violation of the sacred tenets of my faith that forbid the use of magic!”
“It’s not magical—it’s holy!” Neil threw back. “It belonged to one of your prophets! Rauuuuch!” he added for emphasis, his throat gurgling. “Haaacghhtk!”
“Khalas!” Sayyid burst out—incidentally providing a perfect demonstration of the proper vocal fricative. He snatched the staff from Neil’s hand. “Just stop butchering my consonant!”
“Thank you,” Neil said with obvious relief, shoulders slumping as he shook out his tingling hand.
Sayyid awkwardly fumbled the staff, bouncing it from arm to arm while still wrangling the bronze scimitar. “It stings! Why didn’t you tell me it stings?”
“I did!” Neil protested.
“Well, does it ever stop?”
“Maybe?” Neil hedged awkwardly.
“What am I supposed to say?” Sweat beaded Sayyid’s forehead. “I can’t just shout anything and expect it to work—not if you are right about needing ritual words! Something from the Coffin Texts, perhaps? Or one of the prayers to Anubis? Or what about—”
“Just use the bloody curse from over there!” Neil pointed down the hall to the alabaster doors, which still hung ajar.
“The bug curse?” Sayyid protested with obvious horror.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Anything would be better than bugs!” Sayyid insisted.
“Well, you work on that, then,” Neil growled.
“Fine. But you take this.” Sayyid shoved the scimitar at him. “If I must wield the power of Allah while muttering in Middle Egyptian, then you will keep the villains off me.”
“Me?” Neil squawked, awkwardly clutching the ancient blade.
Sayyid had already turned, stalking toward the ropes at the fissure with the Staff of Moses in his hand. “Hurry up!”
Neil made a noise of dismay in the back of his throat that sounded remarkably like an accurately pronounced ‘khaa’—and ran after him.
𓇶
Forty-One
Shock blanked Adam’s mind as explosions lit up the ridge like a volley of artillery, the stone heights blazing with fire.
It was impossible, but that hardly mattered. It was happening—which meant that Ellie was in danger.
“Get down!” Adam shouted, tackling her to the stone.
They weren’t the only ones diving for cover. Half the Al-Saboors had hit the ground as well—except for Hobbles and Scarface, the two cousins assigned to guard the prisoners, who had been watching Ellie’s tête-à-tête with Jacobs like a music hall show. They gaped at the fireworks with their cigarettes hanging from their lips, guns limp in their hands.
Jacobs skidded into the lee of a boulder.
“Take cover, you idiots!” he screamed out at the other men. “Inzil!”
Hobbles and Scarface finally hit the dirt. A cluster of men from the boat, gathered near the edge of the drop to the canyon, flinched down, and bolted for the path off the ridge.
Jacobs sprinted from his hiding place, darting through the shadows toward the heights where pale streams of smoke now ghosted up into the sky.
Adam wrenched at his hands, trying to break the ropes that bound his wrists by sheer force of desperation. “Get me out of these!”
Zeinab skidded into place behind him, her scalpel glittering in her hand. She sliced through his bindings and Adam threw them aside.
“Yalla,” a rough voice grumbled from behind him.
He whirled, fists ready, and barely held back from throwing a punch at the stout, sun-wrinkled figure who stepped from the shadows.
Adam recognized the smuggler, Umm Waseem. Her clever eyes glittered above the black fall of her niqab.
Zeinab had moved to Ellie, who yanked her hands free of her own ropes with a groan—and a spark of delighted interest.
“You were carrying explosives in your bag!” she declared triumphantly. “I knew it! But what was it? Dynamite? Black powder? TNT, perhaps? You made it look exactly as though someone had put a half-dozen Howitzers on the ridge!”
“I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it later.” Adam hauled Ellie to her feet. “After we get the hell out of here.”
Umm Waseem and Zeinab held a quick exchange before the midwife turned back to the rest of them, her green eyes sharp with urgency.
“She has set more charges on the cliffs,” Zeinab reported. “Enough to bring them down and bury this place.”
Adam’s gaze shot to the forty-foot high crown of stone that framed the depression where they sheltered.
“Definitely TNT,” Ellie concluded in an awed voice.
“That’d bury us,” Adam pointed out flatly.
“Why do you think she hasn’t blown it yet?” Zeinab snapped.
Adam’s ears were still ringing from Umm Waseem’s first round of explosions as he turned to take in their situation.
Julian and Dawson cowered behind a boulder not far from the entrance to the tomb. The Al-Saboors, on the other hand, seemed to have realized they weren’t actually being shot at. Hobbles and Scarface had staggered back to their feet—and were now looking over at their clearly unbound and conspiring prisoners with alarm.
George Bates had berated Adam for his failure to make plans or think through the consequences of his actions. He had done everything he could to burn those words—reckless and ill-considered—into Adam’s heart.
But if there was one bright side to being reckless, it was that it never took Adam long to make a decision when it mattered.
“Go,” he ordered. “All of you—get the hell out of here.”
“All of us?” Ellie pushed back sharply. “What about you?”
Adam met her gaze. “I’m going to buy you some time.”
Her eyes widened with horrified understanding—and then narrowed with angry determination.
Adam knew what that look meant.
He took hold of her, one hand grabbing her back while the other slid into her hair, forcing her to face him. “No, Ellie,” he said firmly. “Not this time. This time, you let me be the hero.”
There was too much more he wanted to say—needed to say. He didn’t have time for any of it.
All he could do was show her.
Knowing the consequences—and not giving a damn about them—Adam kissed her. He did it hard and fast, catching her to him and aching with how much she meant… how much he needed her.
Then he pushed her back into Constance, who caught her instinctively.
“Take her and get clear of the ridge,” Adam barked.
Ellie opened her mouth to protest, even as Constance stared at him with wide-eyed understanding.
Adam didn’t wait for her to speak. He wasn’t going to listen anyway. Instead, he launched himself at the Al-Saboors.
Scarface hesitated, still thrown by the shock of the explosion and clearly unsure how to react to Adam’s drive at them in the absence of any clear orders from the men supposed to be in charge. Hobbles took an instinctive—and pained—step back, still flinching from his last encounter with Adam at Deir al-Bahari.
That was all the opportunity Adam needed.
Hobbles went down like a cut tree, dropping his rifle to grab the leg Adam had already injured as he howled. Adam whirled to Scarface, driving a fist into his gut. The mercenary fumbled his rifle as the wind came out of him, falling to his knees.
Adam made a grab for the gun, then toppled as someone barreled into him from the side. He rolled to find a thick black beard tickling his nose.
Adam sneezed, and Beardy whipped a dagger from his sleeve. Adam caught his arm as he drove the knife down, grunting with the effort of holding it at bay.
He snapped his head forward, driving it into Beardy’s face.
The Al-Saboor lurched back, clutching his bleeding nose. Adam took the opportunity to shove him off.
Beardy landed on Scarface, who was just staggering to his feet.
Adam scrambled upright. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Umm Waseem’s stout black-cloaked figure dashing across the ridge with the speed of a house cat. She blew past Ears and Lefty, who both ignored her, busy gaping at Adam instead.
Not that those two bruised Al-Saboors showed any sign of jumping in to help the cousins that he was currently pummeling. They were obviously feeling a little hesitant to join the fray while still nursing the damage from the last couple rounds.
A battle cry sounded from across the ledge. Ralph raced toward Adam, holding a familiar blade up over his head.
That’s my damned machete, Adam thought with a burst of indignation.
Zeinab was halfway across the ridge with Jemmahor in tow. The apprentice skidded to halt, then snatched a rock from the ground and whipped it at the charging Al-Saboor.
Ralph ducked with a yelp, fumbling his knife.
Zeinab grabbed Jemmahor’s arm and hauled her back into a sprint.
Adam lashed out at Scarface with a kick, and he went back down. Then Ralph was on him.
Adam dove under a blow from his own damned blade, taking Ralph in the ribs with his shoulder instead. He swung an arm around the man’s legs, catching them and flipping the skinny thug over his back.
