Valley of Kings

by Michael Northrop

  Tut raised the blade and rushed toward Akhenotra, who raised his mace and closed the last few steps between them. The weapons came together with a loud clang.

  It. Was. On.

  Alex released his amulet and tried to push himself to his feet. He made it halfway before gasping with pain and beginning to fall back. A small hand stopped his fall, grabbing his right forearm. Ren. And then a strong arm slid under his back from the other side. Luke. Together, they raised him to his feet.

  “Are you okay?” said Ren, eyeing his red-and-oozy wound with concern.

  “It really hurts,” he admitted. “But I think it’s just on the surface.”

  “There’s not much surface left there, bro,” said Luke.

  PORRanngg!

  KLANG!

  The weapons continued to clash in the center of the chamber.

  “We have to help Tut!” said Ren, shifting her gaze from Alex’s shoulder to his eyes.

  “We have to get out of here!” said Luke.

  Ren was right. “First Tut,” Alex said. “If he can take out Akhenotra, we’re safe from The Order in here.” But Alex had no idea what to do. He reached for his amulet again, so that he could at least know what Tut was saying.

  “Where is it?” Tut shouted, bringing his sword down hard only to have it blocked by the thick handle of the mace. He brought his sword up and down four more times in quick succession, each blow blocked but each accompanied by a word.

  “Where …” Klong!

  “Is …” Plonk!

  “My …” Pring!

  “Heart!” Swanhkk!

  Akhenotra spun away deftly and delivered a sweeping blow of his own. “I took it with me,” he said as Tut stepped back and the mace head ripped at the front of his robes. “A peace offering to the god you betrayed.”

  “His heart,” whispered Alex, his head reeling as old, familiar facts clicked into place. The Ancient Egyptians always left the heart in the body during mummification; Tut was the only pharaoh ever discovered without one. “Akhenotra took his heart.”

  Without the heart, Tut couldn’t go through the weighing of the heart ceremony to gain entrance into the afterlife. He would be forever between worlds. Alex looked at the boy king, betrayed in both life and death. Now he understood what Tut had been searching for out in the desert — and the force behind those blows.

  “He must be so mad,” said Ren.

  As if in answer, Tut brought the sword down one more time. “Where is it?” he shouted.

  “It is my greatest offering,” said Akhenotra, raising his mace to block the blow. “And I will —”

  The force of the swing was too great. The heavy curved blade of Tut’s khopesh cut clean through the handle of the mace and sunk deep into the Death Walker’s chest. Both halves of the mace thunked to the floor.

  Akhenotra finished his sentence with a weak, distracted voice: “… offer it up along with you.”

  For a few moments, the two combatants just stood there looking at the spot where the blade had sunk in. Then Akhenotra stumbled backward. Tut released the sword, and it went with him.

  “Yes!” said Ren.

  But the Death Walker didn’t fall.

  “Why are you still standing?” said Tut.

  Akhenotra finally pulled his eyes away from his wound and looked up. “You can’t kill me,” he said, his tone more of realization than defiance. “I am already dead.”

  Alex dropped his head. The pain in his shoulder, the heat in the room, the hopelessness of the situation … It all washed over him at once, swamping his defenses. His knees felt wobbly. “The Book of the Dead,” he mumbled, glancing over at the pile of ash and charred wood on the floor. “I can’t believe I got it fried.”

  “Yes,” said the priest. “You made that so easy for me.” Then he reached out and wrapped his hand around the hilt of the sword and slowly — and with a deeply disgusting sound — pulled it free of his own chest. He smiled triumphantly. “I am invincible,” he crowed, admiring his new weapon.

  But when he looked up, Tut was smiling, too. “I hope this isn’t indelicate of me,” he said. “But if it’s the Book of the Dead we need …”

  He raised his hands to his neck and peeled his burned and torn robes to the side. “… then there’s something you should know,” he continued.

  His robes fell to the ground with a soft thud. The body beneath was covered in linen, and the linen was covered in rows of precise hieroglyphic writing and tiny, colorful paintings. “I am wrapped in it.”

  Ren stared at the tiny symbols covering Tut’s tightly wrapped frame. She’d seen the Book of the Dead printed on mummy wrappings before, but those had been covering dried-out husks in glass cases or on scraps of linen that had been flattened out and framed — not wrapped around moving legs and muscular shoulders. But there was a problem. A big one: “We still don’t know what spell,” she said.

  “You have to use the ibis!” Alex said.

  Ren scanned the room: the brilliant, unnatural sunlight; the heat so intense she felt like she was being microwaved; Tut unarmed and dressed only in bandages; Luke near the door in a wide sports stance but with nowhere to run; Alex badly injured; and the Death Walker stepping forward.

  Akhenotra’s first step was hesitant and unsure. The sword strike had taken something out of him. But by his second step he was already recovering.

  Ren’s first move was hesitant and unsure, too. She reached slowly for the ibis, dreading the flood of images. It had both helped them and hurt them. She still remembered stepping forward and confidently waving the Walker over in the desert. How was she supposed to know that image had been a warning? It’s not like the thing had an answer key.

  Akhenotra advanced on Tut, who took a step back.

  She had no choice. She closed her hand around the ibis and felt the warm, white stone against her palm.

  Ren had never been as smart as she’d wanted to be — not as brilliant as her dad or as effortlessly gifted as her brightest classmates — but she’d always closed the gap with effort. She did the extra work to prepare and attacked the extra credit. She always crushed those questions, because they could only help and not hurt, so she could relax.

  There’d be no relaxing now. This test could hurt; this test could kill. She held her breath, closed her eyes, and tried her absolute hardest to grab each image as it passed.

  A stone ram, eyes open, curled horns forward …

  A simple but elegant boat, two painted oars at the back …

  A gold and blue falcon, at rest, as if nesting …

  A circle of fire …

  Her eyes snapped open — she’d seen too much fire already. The amulet fell from her hand. “What am I looking for?” said Alex. “Something to do with fire, maybe?”

  She blinked over at him, refocusing her eyes. He’d taken a few steps toward Tut and was already scanning the wrappings. “I …” she began. “I’m not …”

  Why couldn’t the amulet just show me Tut’s stomach or armpit or wherever the right spell was? she thought. What did a boat have to do with it?

  “Hurry!” said Alex.

  Akhenotra took another step forward, much surer on his feet now, and raised the sword.

  Ren saw Alex wince as he grasped his amulet and pointed his hand at the approaching enemy. Wind shot forth and knocked Akhenotra back a few steps.

  Alex tried another blast, but this time the Walker leaned into it. Alex was weakening, and she watched in horror as the wind died down and the blade of the sword suddenly burst into flame. The sun priest slashed the air with the fiery blade, admiring his work. He had made the weapon his own.

  She parsed the images again. A ram? A falcon? A boat? Fire? Were these clues, she wondered, or warnings? Was the answer in there … somewhere?

  “Which spell?” called Alex.

  “There’s a ram and a bird — a falcon, I think,” she called, “a boat, some fire …”

  “Which one?” shouted Alex. “What exactly am I looking
for?”

  Her pulse pounding in her ears, her head full of too much information and too little context, she finally called out the horrible truth: “I don’t know!”

  Alex stared at Ren in disbelief. It seemed so strange to see a straight-A student straight up fail, but there was no denying it: Plus Ten Ren was minus ten in magic.

  If they were going to live, it was up to him. He quickly scanned Tut’s wrappings. Falcon, she’d said, but that was useless. The falcon symbol was part of half a dozen common hieroglyphs — there was a flock of them scattered over Tut’s wrappings. What was the other thing, a ram?

  Before Alex could get a good look, Tut backed up quickly and nearly shoulder checked him. Alex wasn’t used to his books moving. He ducked his head around the undead monarch and saw the Death Walker raise his flaming sword for another chop. The first one had missed, but …

  “We need to buy some time!” Alex shouted to his friends.

  “With what?” said Luke. “There’s nothing in here.”

  But that wasn’t exactly true.

  “I got your jar, Mister Blister!” called Ren.

  She had circled around the fighting and was once again standing behind the stone altar in the center of the chamber. This time she was holding up the single, ancient jar that had rested atop it. It was one of the few artifacts in the room and located in a position of honor. Alex figured it was worth a shot — but he didn’t expect it to provoke such a strong reaction.

  Akhenotra whirled around, the curved sword still raised above his head in wood-chopping position. “Put that down, girl!” he shouted, extending the sword toward her menacingly as he began striding toward the altar. “That is for the Aten!”

  Ren’s eyes grew huge, and Alex knew she hadn’t expected quite so strong a reaction, either. “Uh,” she said.

  “End around!” shouted Luke. With his sprinter’s speed, he crossed the chamber in no time flat and cut behind Ren with his hands out.

  Ren had seen enough football games to know what to do. She turned and executed a perfect handoff into Luke’s gut. Luke took the jar and sped toward the far side of the chamber. The Death Walker followed, breaking into a run of his own. Whatever was in that jar was important, but Alex had no time to wonder why that was.

  He got to work. Ram, falcon, boat, fire: He saw all of those things, as hieroglyphs or in the paintings. Too many choices. He looked for them all in the same spell, but it was hard — Tut wouldn’t stop moving. As Akhenotra traced a sandal-slapping circle around the room in pursuit of Luke, Tut turned to watch. He had developed a sudden interest in the jar himself.

  “Uh, Tut?” said Alex. No response. “Your, um, majesty?” he ventured. Still nothing. He gave up and started turning along with the text, trying to keep up despite the heat and pain. But then he saw something he hadn’t expected among the symbols.

  Is that … an Aten? he wondered. His brain told him it was, but his amulet told him something else. It was a sun disk, but not the Aten. It was a symbol of Amun-Re, the sun god that reigned before and after the short-lived cult. Amun-Re was “one of the biggies,” as his mom liked to say, and Alex knew plenty about him. He knew that Tut had changed his own name from Tut-Ankh-Aten to Tut-Ankh-Amun in the sun god’s honor. He also knew that the symbols for Amun-Re included both the falcon and the ram.

  He quickly read the title of the prayer: “For sailing in the Great Boat of Amun-Re and passing safely over …”

  “Uh, your majesty-ness,” he said to Tut, tapping one shoulder. “Could you raise your arm?”

  “Hmmm?” said Tut. “Oh, certainly.”

  Tut raised his right arm and Alex read the rest: “… the circle of flame.”

  Fire. This is it, thought Alex. It has to be … And Amun-Re will definitely want a word with this dude.

  Alex risked a quick glance up and saw Akhenotra barely a sword-length behind Luke, who was red-faced and gasping in the intense heat. Alex filled his lungs with overheated air and began to recite the words:

  “For this is the flame which burns behind Re …”

  The words hit Akhenotra like a cramp in the side, and his steady stride faltered. Luke pulled away. Akhenotra called out to him, a note of desperation slipping into his voice, “Give me the offering, child.”

  Luke looked back: “Yeah, right!”

  The anger rushed back into the Death Walker’s blister-scarred visage: “Give me the heart!” he bellowed.

  Tut turned again, and Alex barely managed to keep his place. The boy king uttered an ancient expression that loosely translated to: “Say what, now?”

  Alex wanted to plead with him to hold still, but he couldn’t break his chant or he’d have to start over. And there’d be no time for that. The Walker had identified the threat now, and was striding straight back toward them. Alex grabbed Tut’s shoulder with his free hand, holding him in place, and surrendered himself to the ancient text. “A path is laid for me …”

  His chant gained strength and a phantom chorus rose up to whisper along. “My protection is that of Re …”

  As he neared the end, the text shook, nearly jarring him out of his trance. Instead, he gripped Tut’s shoulder tighter and sang the next word louder. He was too close now. Another sudden shudder, faint voices screaming at him from another world, but he dared not look away.

  He completed the spell. “… For I am He who travels, the Greater God.”

  He blinked his eyes, the color returning to them. He released Tut and stepped back as the world of the living slowly came into focus.

  Tut was standing with his own bronze sword buried deep in his chest, the blade no longer aflame but still sizzling slightly. Now Alex understood why the text had shaken so much. And Akhenotra — Alex gazed at the space in front of Tut — Akhenotra wasn’t standing at all.

  The Death Walker was on his back, his knees and hands pulling up and back above him as his carcass aged hundreds of years with each second, the skin drying and shriveling into the dark, taut leather of a mummy.

  Alex stepped around to get a better look at Tut, and the others rushed over to join him. He grasped his amulet once more, despite the pounding headache that using it for so long was beginning to cause him. “Are you okay?” he asked doubtfully, staring at the sword embedded in Tut’s chest and a second large gash next to it. Sliced and burned wrappings peeled away from either side.

  “I’m not sure,” said Tut, his voice soft. He tried to take a small step and his knees buckled slightly. “But it doesn’t matter now. Let me see the jar.”

  Huffing and puffing and gaping openly at the sword-wound, Luke handed it over.

  “Thank you,” said Tut, the imperious teen surprising them all by bowing slightly. “You have a strange name, Duuuuude, but fast feet.”

  Luke couldn’t understand a word of it, but Ren answered for him. “And you’ve got …” she began. She paused as Tut lifted the ancient lid, and then completed her sentence: “… a lot of heart.”

  A broad smile blossomed on Tut’s face as he replaced the lid. He stepped forward, touched Alex lightly on his injured shoulder, and said, “I am sorry for your pain.”

  To Alex’s surprise the touch didn’t hurt his scorched shoulder at all. As he looked down, he saw why: The black-edged hole burned into his shirt now framed healthy skin, no tanner — or redder — than usual.

  “How —” he began but was cut off by a soft, metallic clang.

  He looked up and saw that the sword had fallen to the ground.

  There was nothing left to hold it up.

  King Tutankhamun was gone.

  A moment later, the room went dark.

  In the pitch-dark of the underground chamber, Luke couldn’t remember where he’d dropped his backpack. He knew it had come off when the dead dude was chasing him, but he had no idea where or when. The others were searching for their discarded packs, too, and for a few minutes he just stood there in the dark and let them.

  Luke had a lot on his mind, and he was in no huge hurry t
o leave the chamber. Down here, they were all on the same team, all playing a part. Down here, they were safe. Plus, it was already cooling down.

  “I think I found yours, Ren!” Alex called from somewhere near the back wall. “Wait, never mind — it’s mine!”

  A moment later, Alex’s flashlight clicked on. Luke got busy pretending to get busy finding his pack. It was easier now with some light, and pretty soon, they all had their packs on and their flashlights pointed at the section of wall where the door had been.

  Luke’s fingertips were still raw from desperately clawing the stone for the slightest opening. But then he saw Alex’s flashlight click off, and he knew he was getting ready to use his amulet. He was confident his cousin would get them out; he was good with that magic bug. Sure enough, a few moments later, a narrow gap yawned open under the flashlight beams. Luke stepped forward and got a hand on it. He pushed until the strange doorway was open the rest of the way.

  “Should we stay here for a while?” he said once they were in the tunnel.

  “No,” said Ren. “I’ve been thinking …”

  Figures, thought Luke.

  “We rushed in here like a herd of elephants. If they pick up our trail, they could find this door — or just leave people here. I think we need to get out before we’re trapped.”

  That was good enough for Alex, but Luke had a bad feeling as they headed toward Tut’s tomb. Part of that was thirst and exhaustion and peeling skin. But there was something else, something bigger.

  He considered the other two as he walked. His flashlight beam danced off Ren’s back. She was barely as tall as a batting tee, but she’d come through again. Alex was just ahead of her. Luke glanced up at him. The little dude had straight up been barbecued and still taken care of business. It seemed amazing to him that just a few weeks ago, he’d thought of both of them as little twerps. But then, a lot of the things he’d thought and done over that time seemed unbelievable.

  They reached the doorway at the top of the tunnel and paused while Alex opened it. “It’s like picking a lock,” he said. “I just have to find the weak point.”