THE HATHOR HOLOCAUST

by Roy Lester Pond

  How many hidden cashes lay like veins of molten gold in the rock after the blasting furnace of the sun-ball had rolled by?

  He felt as if he were walking through an inner landscape too, a personal underworld turned outwards. This was how he had felt all of his life, parched, thirsting for some golden spill of significance into his life. He had looked for it in shadows, but perhaps it was here in the light.

  He glanced back to see a figure on the stony road twisting in the heat haze. A local after baksheesh? A valley security guard?

  The figure solidified in the heat.

  Not a local. A young man behind dark glasses and under a baseball cap.

  Boy Wonder?

  Following me again. Doesn’t he ever stop?

  But something was different. Nothing awkward and shambling about his walk this time. There was an intensity of purpose in the follower’s stride and now a tingle of warning found its way under the humidity of Anson’s shirt. What if Boy Wonder, Scott, were more than he suspected? Or less? Less of a credulous dreamer than he portrayed himself to be.

  He gave the approaching figure a small wave, half expecting to elicit in return a friendly, even sheepish acknowledgement, but the young man came on, unsmiling, grim faced.

  Had the credulous Scott turned into a stalker with something on his mind?

  Could he be the one who, hidden behind a baseball cap and dark glasses, had attacked him outside the UN building? Was he the same unknown assailant who had struck against Alexia and two of her comrades?

  Anson was getting a bad feeling.

  He came to a decision.

  If Boy Wonder wants to follow, let’s make him work.

  Anson left the road and went, bent almost double against the angle, climbing up a steep incline of rock towards a cliff face. He met a narrow strip of clearing like a path and toiled up it, rising swiftly. He dislodged a rock, which clattered down towards the road, telling him how quickly he was rising. He did not want to turn around, but a half turn was enough to show him Scott was following.

  He reached a pile of loose stone scree like a slag-heap that sat at the foot of the cliff face and went up it. It shifted and kicked out fragments under his heels, seeming to pull him down with every step gained. He went onto his hands and felt hot sharp stone under his palms, picking his way with the help of larger pieces.

  The rock wall edged closer.

  There ahead spread a solid shelf of rock. A few more scrambles and he had made it.

  If this were just an innocent game of tag, why hadn’t Boy Wonder called out? A worrying sign.

  He quickened his pace across the shelf of rock. A hot breeze stirred around his head and he felt reflected heat from the cliff face press against his body. The rock looked smoking hot.

  He made for a gap between panpipes of stone and climbed into shadow.

  He must have passed out of sight, he thought. Time for a glance back?

  Maybe he should stop, wait here in ambush?

  Not if Boy Wonder really is carrying a handgun. Keep going.

  Anson steeled himself for a stiffer ascent. A weathered rock face offered a few footholds and handholds and he began some serious rock climbing.

  How wise was this choice, if the younger man intended to keep coming?

  Am I betting that I’m a better climber and fitter than a man more than a decade younger? Not a sound bet.

  Too late to stop now.

  Friable stone, cracked by millions of years of sun, gave way under his feet and he slid, slamming into the stone. He felt stone bite into his chest and cheek and blood wash into his mouth. He scrabbled for a new foothold, hands sweating on the stone and felt the reassuring solidity of a ridge under his sneaker. Close.

  He couldn’t help throwing a look down. The scariest sight was not the figure of the young man climbing smoothly and capably behind him, but the distance he would fall once his tumbling body had gained momentum.

  He reached a new shelf and allowed himself a brief respite in shadow.

  The next climb revealed a narrow vertical crack like snake’s body… and a horned viper’s head on top.

  The snake spat.

  A bullet whined off the rock face.

  But Anson’s mind was on something even more galvanizing than a gunshot.

  “Herihor?” he heard himself say as he gaped at the viper symbol in the rock.

  Here in this hot valley of death, after all.

  He straightened.

  It was time he called off his flight. He had hit a wall, not of defeat, but of discovery.

  “Find what are you looking for here?” the young man in the baseball cap said in a low voice, a gun in the left hand and a backpack over one shoulder.

  That voice.

  He looked more closely. The rocky walls turned around his head in surprise.

  “I’ve made two discoveries.”

  He remembered the first time they’d met at the shattered globe sculpture in front of the United Nations Building and recalled the moment when the young stranger, hidden behind a baseball cap and dark glasses, reached left-handedly into his pants to produce a handgun.

  “Neith? Now I understand the need for a change of clothes. But this is a change I didn’t expect. Shall I call you Germaine now? Or Gerry?”

  There was no toleration in the face now.

  He remembered the night of their intense and physical coupling aboard the dahabiyya.

  Afterwards, he’d noticed a smudge of a bruise on her arm and smoothed a hand across it as if to wipe it away.

  “Hope I didn’t give that to you.”

  “This? An old bump. I think you’re the one whose just been bruised.”

  He also remembered swinging the briefcase at his attacker outside the United Nations building, hitting the arm so hard that the blow went to the bone and the handgun scuttled away under the metal sphere.

  “We have caught your nosey blonde friend whose been tagging us like a puppy dog all over Egypt. Now it’s time that I reeled you in too. You’ve run out of usefulness, Anson, and helpfulness. I’ll ask you one more time before we finish this. Do you know where the sun disc is hidden?”

  They had caught Scrumptious Girl.

  He could see how that could have happened. The Intelligence girl would have been looking out for a shiny-headed industrialist and a leonine girl, not a young man in a Mets jacket and baseball cap.

  He felt as if the snake on the rock had struck at him. Then this was over.

  “There’s a snake behind you,” he said.

  “It’s not going to work this time,” the androgyne said.

  Once before he had warned her about two cops coming up behind her in the sculpture’s reflection outside the UN building in New York, and how he had used the moment to swing his brief case. “No, really,” he said. “There’s an image of a serpent on the rock behind you and I think it’s a secret marker of Herihor’s tomb. This time you can believe me.”

  “What happens now?”

  “We have a vehicle coming to pick us up. Then, when it’s dark, we’ll be back. You may still prove useful to us.”

  Chapter 43

  THEY WERE BACK in the same spot in the remote reaches of the West Valley, at night with workmen armed with picks, hoes and shovels.

  The Intelligence girl was with him, unharmed. The story she murmured to him on the way confirmed his guess. The androgynous Neith had surprised her.

  A wind plucked at the galabeas of the workmen who toiled at the base of the rock.

  Kraft ran a torch beam over the length of a crack in the rock, beginning with horned head and travelling down to the tail that pointed to a growing hole appearing under the workmen’s tools. Loose scree. It was a perfect cover for a tomb, falling down over the centuries and hiding tell-tale tomb chippings that betrayed the concealed the locations of so many Houses of Eternity.

  A cheer went up from the men when they came across a stone door, the hope of every tomb raider - the discovery of an intact tomb.

&n
bsp; They entered a corridor decorated with scene after scene of Herihor being led into the presence of the gods, worshipping Amun-re and being adorned with golden collars by bowing servants.

  The parvenu high priest had left a boastful record of his lifetime and achievements, Anson thought, but it paled next to the chamber that followed.

  They walked into an entire cache of god kings, crowding the chamber, mute pharaohs stolen from their tombs to act as guardians for a jumped-up generalissimo, high priest and pretender pharaoh.

  As Anson led the way they walked through the company of kings, he felt his skin crawl at the shameful hi-jacking. A statue here of Rameses the Great, there Thuthmosis the Third in his war crown, Seti, Amenhotep. His shoulder brushed against Rameses the Third, Defeater of the Sea People and the saviour of Egypt.

  Here was evidence of how Egypt had fallen into decay with the rise of Amun-Ra and the priest kings such as Herihor.

  Was the high priest using these golden hostages as some kind of magical shield of protection? Instead of hiding behind a shield of living hostages, Herihor was protecting himself with dead god-kings of Egypt’s history, hoping some of their power might protect his withered corpse.

  They reached a dead end, a blank wall.

  He turned around to see Kraft holding the barrel of a handgun at Gemma’s head.

  “Better think of an answer quick, before I send your inquisitive friend into eternity ahead of you to find out the truth.”

  “Knock a hole through,” Anson said. “I’ve got no scruples about Herihor.”

  Their torches probed thick darkness as they moved through the jagged hole. They reached a deep row of hallways and chambers whose rectilinear walls seemed to converge into shadowy infinity. On the jamb of each entranceway stood paintings of tall, slender female figures dressed in different coloured and patterned sheath dresses, five-pointed stars on their heads.

  Anson stopped.

  “Keep moving,” Space Invader said.

  “Not advisable. These are Halls of Hindering and I think I know these ladies. They’re rather special ladies of the night.”

  “Are you worried about a bit of skirt?”

  “It’s not their revealing dress I’m thinking about. It’s what these ladies may be hiding,” Anson said.

  “Who are they, Anson?” Gemma said in a whisper. “They’re beautiful.”

  “They’re protective goddesses of the hours of the night and they represent twelve regions or zones.”

  “So?” Kraft said.

  “So they’re very fatal females and they’ re not here to welcome us. This is a gauntlet. There is an order to the hours and a particular goddess in each zone. Knowing which one is crucial if we are to get through in one piece. Anybody here happen to know the names and order of the goddesses of the night hours? No? Didn’t think so.”

  “But you do, right?”

  “Let’s see. The first lady goes by the name of “Splitter of the heads of Ra's Enemies”’. Or is she “The Slicer of Souls”? No, I’ll go with” Splitter of the heads of Ra's Enemies.”

  “Who are Ra’s enemies?”

  “That would be us.”

  “Head splitter? How’s she going to do that?”

  “Let me guess. I am being volunteered to go and find out, right?”

  “Wrong,” Neith spoke up. “We don’t want to lose you yet. Send the girl in.”

  “But she doesn’t know what to do.”

  “Then I suggest you direct her footsteps very carefully,” Kraft said.

  Intruding into these halls would be fraught with danger, but Anson felt an extra layer of anxiety tighten his fears. He would have to guide Gemma, one step removed, but would live through every step she took knowing that her survival was in his hands. One miscalculation or misdirection…

  “I trust you,” Gemma said.

  “Give me a torch to shine around.”

  They passed Anson a torch and he went to the entranceway, his light revealing the first goddess on the jamb. He splashed light into her trademark, slyly beautiful Egyptian face, pausing on her single painted eye like a sun in eclipse, and tracked down the furled-umbrella slenderness of her red dress, the golden anklets down to the bare feet. The sheath dress revealed everything, but the goddess revealed nothing.

  Splitter of Heads.

  He knelt at the entrance to the chamber and shone his light around.

  Painted scenes, in registers on the walls, sprang into life in his torch beam.

  The scenes showed Amun-Ra as a ram with a red disc of the dying sun on his head, entering the realm of the dead. The dead raised their arms to greet the god. He travelled in a barque along with his entourage led by a knife-wielding guardian. Divinities with snake-shaped sceptres rejoice at Amun-Ra’s arrival. This first hour was an entrance hall to the netherworld, called the Valley of Ra, yet there were already hints of the terrors and punishment that lay ahead for the unworthy. Two ominous stakes reared, one on each side of the hall, the right stake carried a ram’s head and on the left was a sharp-eared jackal’s head. Reward and punishment.

  Back to the snaky goddess. What surprise attack could she trigger? “Hurry up,” Kraft said. “This isn’t a study tour.” Think. He shone his beam at the ceiling, a sky painted with green five-pointed stars on a black background, badly cracked. Kraft gave Gemma a shove forward. “Send in the test canary.” Decision time. What do I tell her? Head splitter. A big headache. Was that it? Was the sky going to fall on her head? Those cracks. He inspected them again. Something odd about them. Were they cracks? They were not rivers, branching irregularly like cracks, but ran in parallel, like striations or slits

  How could he test it? “Neith, can you part with your bag of spare clothes? I don’t think you’ll be needing a costume change now.” “What do you want it for?” “Just a test.” She unhooked the bag from her shoulder and gave it to him. The ram-headed stake on the right, a jackal head one on the left. Reward and punishment. He gave the bag a swing by a handle then threw it skidding across the floor to the left. Metal flashed like lightning as a razor sharp metal disc dropped. It sliced the bag and hit the stone with a metal clang. The bag lay split in two.

  “Omigod, that could have been my head,” Gemma said, giving a gasp and clutching her head.

  “Go in, but walk against the other wall,” Anson said. “Carefully… but it should be safe.”

  She stepped into the hall.

  “I don’t know whether to look up. Or just run.”

  “Just walk smoothly.”

  He shone a light ahead of her as she stepped forward and took one careful step and then another. Anson was there with her, in her shadow, willing the starry sky not to release another shiny blade like a spinning circular saw.

  “Thanks for wrecking my bag,” Neith said.

  “Now you’ve got two.”

  Gemma kept walking.

  This was the First Hour, but it seemed like two before she made it safely to the far side of the hall.

  They followed in her footsteps.

  A snaky goddess in a green dress barred their way to the next hour.

  “This is the goddess of the Second Hour. She goes by the innocuous name of ‘The Wise Guardian of Her Lord.’ It’s often the bland ones you’ve got to worry about.”

  A flash of his beam around the second hall showed Amun-Ra and his barque encountering the gods of the entrance and entering a fertile, watery landscape of the netherworld where the dead were blessed. A foretaste of heaven. In contrast, sinister intimations of punishment loomed. He saw the god Atum rebuking the damned dead.

  His light moved on, pausing on figures on the so-called ‘Weary Ones, sinister silhouettes of black coffins. Human, bearded faces on the coffins, the coffins themselves deep cut in relief, spaced around the room. He could see one on the far jamb, and facing ones on the left and right walls. Then came the enemies of Ra standing in a line, awaiting their fate.

  Anson’s light paused on the shadowy coffins.

 
“What now?” Gemma said.

  “Those guys worry me.”

  “What guys?”

  “The ones in the coffins. They’re called ‘The Weary Ones.” “We’re getting weary, too,” Kraft said. “Hurry, or I send her in.” “Why is the guardian described as wise?” Anson said to himself, ignoring the bulky figure invading his space. The wise guardian. What did a wise goddess do? Or know? He looked at the goddess again and noticed she held a reed pen in her hand. She wrote, and knew books. What books? The books of the afterlife, he assumed.

  What does she know that I don’t know?

  Some useful piece of minutiae I’m missing.

  He looked at the Weary Ones.

  Dead ones?

  The benefit of spending your life cramming useless information in your head was that sometimes, just sometimes, it could save your life, or someone else’s.

  Like mummies stirring in their coffins, the dead silhouettes came to life in his mind in an idea.

  The Weary Ones represented more than the dead. They stood for the cardinal points, North, South, East and West. Showing them in this inert and lifeless state meant that in this second hour even the cardinal points were weary and exhausted and needed to be lifted up.

  Raised.

  “Let’s try this,” he said, flashing a beam over the coffins. “Step inside gingerly and go to the Weary Ones. There’ll be four of them and the first one should be right behind here.” He knelt and leaned into the chamber, craned around, angling his flashlight to reveal the rear of the jamb. “Yes, there it is. Begin with the first coffin here. It’s deep cut. Slide your fingers in underneath the base of the coffin then pull up as if you’re trying to raise the coffin and we’ll see what happens.”

  “You’re sure about this.”

  “Reasonably.

  “And if it doesn’t work? What’s going to happen this time?”

  “I won’t weary you or our friends with the details. Just try to do what I’m telling you. Carefully now.”

  But he could guess what might happen to Gemma if his solution failed. She too might become a weary one, sealed in a coffin as stone doors rumbled and slammed down, trapping her inside.