‘Okay, so what do you suggest?’ he demanded. ‘We can’t just walk into the bloody thing and think light thoughts so we don’t set it off.’
‘We don’t walk,’ said Macy, looking more closely at the hieroglyphs. ‘I think we’re supposed to run. This text here’s another warning that horrible death awaits, yadda yadda, but it finishes with something like “hurry to Osiris”. Or “hasten”, maybe. “Hasten to Osiris.” ’
‘They left a clue?’ Nina said, surprised. ‘None of the other arits had them.’
‘It’s only a few extra characters.’ Macy pointed them out at the bottom of a block of text. ‘Everything else is the same as we’ve been seeing all the way down. Easy to miss. There might have been others, but we just didn’t notice them.’
‘So we’re meant to peg it down the corridor, then?’ Eddie said, illuminating the passage again. ‘Bit of a risk - we don’t know what’s round that corner.’
‘The Cutter-off of Heads, probably.’
‘Yeah, that’s reassuring.’ He returned the mallet to his pack, steeling himself. ‘All right. So we have to run like an Egyptian.’ He looked at Nina. ‘Ready?’
‘Let’s do it,’ she said.
‘If I get chopped into Oxo cubes I’m going to kick your arse in the afterlife. Macy?’ Macy nodded at him. ‘Okay. Three, two, one . . . go!’
They ran across the threshold.
The blades remained stationary.
Nina’s light swept along one side of the passage, Eddie’s the other, as they ran with Macy just behind. Ten feet along, twenty, their clattering footsteps echoing. Thirty, the corner coming up fast—
A dusty crunch as a block shifted beneath Nina’s foot.
Her heart clenched with fear - but there was still no movement from the walls.
There was a sound behind them, though. A hollow clonking, some mechanism turning and repeatedly knocking metal against metal.
Counting down.
‘Definitely run,’ Eddie gasped, slowing at the corner to let the women get ahead of him. Torch raised, he glanced back—
Kshang!
Ranks of rusty blades shot out from the slots at the entrance, some swinging forward and others back to dice anyone unlucky enough to be caught between them. Corrosion and time had taken their toll, some swords snapping or wrenching themselves from their hinges to clash against the opposite wall - but the result was still as lethal as its creators had intended.
And it was getting closer.
‘Shiiiiit!’ Eddie burst back into a sprint after Nina and Macy as more blades sprang out one after the other, a wave of death chasing them down the tunnel. ‘Runrunrun!’
Nina didn’t need to see what was happening to be spurred on; the rapidly approaching sound was terrifying enough. In her torch beam she saw what she at first thought was the end of the passage - before realising the ornate columns marked the entrance to the next arit.
The Cutter-off of Heads.
Out of the frying pan—
The advancing blades reached the corner, rounded it, continued after the running trio without pause. Gaining.
Nina saw something on the walls beyond the columns. More slots - but only one on each side, at about neck height.
And they were running straight at them.
She didn’t even have time to shout a warning to Eddie and Macy - they were almost at the columns, and the iron wave was upon them—
She swept up her arms to grab the surprised pair round their shoulders - and yanked her feet off the floor. The extra weight made Macy trip, Nina in turn dragging Eddie down as they tumbled through the next entrance - just as two large spinning discs burst from the walls ahead of them, swinging back and barely clearing their heads as they fell.
‘Son of a bitch!’ Nina spluttered, scrambling out from under the whirling serrated blades. ‘They weren’t kidding about the name!’
Eddie waited for the two discs to grind to a halt before rising and returning to the entrance, experimentally pushing one of the swords. He expected resistance, but it moved freely, if noisily, on its rusted hinge; the force of its release after six millennia had broken the mechanism. ‘Least we’ll be able to get back out.’
‘We made it,’ Macy said, panting. ‘We got through - that was the last trap!’ She hesitated. ‘Right?’
‘If the hieroglyphics were telling the truth, then yeah,’ Nina assured her. Even so, she still stood with a degree of caution. Ahead was another bend, the passage angling downwards.
She looked round the corner. Steps led down a short distance to another set of columns.
But these were not the kind that marked each arit. These were something altogether different.
And magnificent.
‘Oh, you’ve got to see this,’ she said softly, barely breathing despite her recent exertion.
Macy gasped at the sight, and even Eddie was impressed. ‘Pretty flash.’
The columns were carved in the form of an Egyptian god, mirror-images facing each other. But they were not any of the figures that had watched their descent into the heart of the pyramid. This was another, a man in a tall headdress, bearing a crook in one hand and a flail in the other. His body was encased in tight bindings, like those of a mummy, but his face was exposed, skin an oxidised copper-green. Both figures were liberally adorned with gold and silver leaf.
Osiris.
Between the twin statues was the entrance to a dark chamber. Nina raised her flashlight. More gold and silver glinted within, treasures stacked round the walls, but her gaze was fixed on what lay at the centre of the large room: a bulky, rounded-off object, its skin pure silver.
A sarcophagus.
Nina slowly advanced, checking the two figures for any sign of some last, sneaky trap. There was none. They had reached their goal, the final chamber.
‘We found it,’ she said, looking at Eddie and Macy in wonderment. ‘We found the tomb of Osiris.’
25
They entered the chamber, a match to the Osireion in dimensions and form, torch beams flashing over the artefacts and treasures inside. They ranged from the astounding to the prosaic - gleaming statues of pure gold beside simple wooden chairs; a full-sized boat bearing a silver and gold mask of Osiris upon its prow against which had been propped bundles of spears. It was a find to exceed even the tomb of Tutankhamun. The famed pharaoh had been a relatively unimportant ruler of the New Kingdom, less than three and a half thousand years ago, but Osiris was a myth given flesh, a foundation stone of Egyptian civilisation dating back almost twice as far.
And they were the first to reach him.
Nina examined the sarcophagus. The lid was a larger than life representation of the man within. The sculpted silver face gazed serenely at the ceiling, kohl-lined eyes wide.
‘The craftsmanship’s absolutely incredible,’ she whispered. ‘All of this is.’ She gestured at the objects surrounding them. ‘I never imagined the pre-dynastic Egyptians were this advanced.’
‘It’s just like Atlantis,’ said Macy. ‘They were really advanced for their time too, but nobody knew about them. Until you found them.’
Nina smiled at her. ‘Y’know, this is really more of a joint discovery, Macy.’
Macy beamed. ‘Not bad for a C-student, huh?’
Eddie took a closer look at a set of painted wooden figurines, symbolic representations of the servants who would attend their king in the afterlife, then eyed a cruder statuette carved from an odd purple stone before moving to the other side of the sarcophagus. ‘All right, so what do we do now we’ve found all this?’
‘Normally I’d say photograph, catalogue, then examine,’ said Nina, ‘but this isn’t exactly a normal case. First thing we need to do is secure it. We’ll have to contact the Egyptian government, go to Dr Assad at the SCA.’
‘So what about this bread Osir was after?’ He looked for anything resembling food. On a small wooden table was what might once have been loaves, but they had long been reduced to mouldering dust. ‘Do
n’t think he’ll get any sarnies out of them. Is there anything else?’
‘Look down.’ Eddie did, seeing a recess set into the coffin’s base, a pottery jar about ten inches high inside it. ‘Canopic jars. The Egyptians used them to store the body’s vital organs after they were removed during mummification. Osir thinks there’ll be yeast spores in his digestive system.’
Macy saw another jar on the floor by Nina, then went to the head of the sarcophagus to find a third. ‘There’s one here, too - and there should be another down by his feet.’ Eddie checked, and nodded. ‘One for each compass point. This one’s got a monkey head, a baboon - it’s the god Hapi. That means it’s got Osiris’s lungs in it.’ She was about to pick up the jar when she realised what she had just said and flinched away. ‘Gross.’
‘Which jars are which?’ Nina asked.
‘Hapi represented the north, so . . .’ She worked out the compass directions. ‘The one on your side should be a jackal - that’s Duamutef.’
Nina shone her light on the jar, revealing that the painted cap was indeed in the long-eared shape of a jackal’s head. ‘Yep.’
‘So that’ll be the stomach. The one opposite’ll be a falcon, that’s Qebehsenuf. Or is it Qebehsunef? That’s what you get for having a language with no vowels, I guess. Anyway, that’ll have his intestines inside.’
‘Lovely,’ said Eddie. ‘A jar full of guts.’
‘And the one at the south end, under his feet, that should look like just some guy because Imseti was a human god. That’ll be Osiris’s liver.’
He smacked his lips. ‘That’s more like it. Anyone got any fava beans?’
‘It’s six thousand years old, Eddie,’ Nina warned with a grin. ‘And we didn’t bring any Pepto-Bismol.’
‘I’ll give it a miss, then. So if Osir’s after these jars, what should we do with them? Smash ’em?’
‘I’d really rather you didn’t,’ said Osir from the entrance.
Nina jumped in shock, and Macy yelped as they spun to see him leaning almost casually against one of the Osiris figures. Beside him, Shaban’s stance was anything but casual as he covered them with a gun.
Osir stepped forward, revealing that more people, Diamondback and Hamdi among them, had crept down the steps. ‘It’s more incredible than I imagined,’ he said, taking in the chamber’s contents. ‘And now, it all belongs to me.’
‘No, it absolutely does not,’ snapped Nina.
‘We were here first,’ said Eddie. ‘Finders keepers.’
Shaban gestured for them to move away from the sarcophagus. ‘I have something else you can keep. A bullet.’
Osir went to the silver coffin, picking up the canopic jar from its foot. ‘And the organs of Osiris himself are here. Just as I said, Dr Wilde.’
Nina was about to reply when someone else entered. ‘Logan?’ she gasped. ‘Oh, you son of a bitch. You’re working for these clowns now?’
Berkeley regarded her coldly. ‘This is a habit of yours that’s starting to piss me off, Nina. I make a big find, but you’ve beaten me to it. At least this time you’re not making me look like a complete jackass on live TV.’
‘Oh, boo hoo,’ Nina sneered, pretending to wipe away a tear. ‘Poor little Logan, someone stole his thunder - so he’s going to go against everything I thought he believed in and sell out to a bunch of wack-jobs from some stupid bogus religion.’
Shaban’s scarred face twisted angrily and he aimed the gun at Nina, but Osir shook his head. ‘Not in here. I don’t want the tomb despoiled.’ He put down the jar and slowly circled the sarcophagus. ‘Four jars - the liver, intestines, lungs . . . and stomach.’ Almost reverentially, he raised the jackal-headed jar. ‘This holds the key to eternal life, Dr Wilde. In this jar are spores of the yeast used to make the bread of Osiris. All I need is one sample, and the secret will be mine. I will cultivate it, I will own it, and I will control it.’
‘That’s assuming there are actually any spores in there,’ said Nina. ‘Maybe Osiris hadn’t eaten any bread before he died. Maybe it was overcooked and the yeast cells were killed. You might have gone through all this for nothing.’
‘Not nothing,’ said Osir, shrugging. ‘I’ll still have the tomb, no matter what. But that’s why I brought Dr Kralj.’ He waved for a bearded man to join him. It took Nina a moment to identify him: one of the scientists working with the yeast cultures in the Swiss laboratory. ‘There are two canopic jars that can say which of us is right, Dr Wilde - the jar of Duamutef,’ he held up the jackal-headed container, ‘and the jar of Qebehsenuf. I’m willing to sacrifice one to learn what is in the other. Dr Kralj, which would be better for your test? The intestines, or the stomach?’
‘Anything in the intestines would have been through the digestive process,’ said the Serbian scientist. ‘If there are spores present which survived that, there are likely to be more in the stomach. So the intestines, yes.’
‘Then do it.’
Kralj collected the falcon-headed jar. ‘No, wait,’ pleaded Nina. ‘That jar’s an incredibly valuable artefact. If you open it, you might as well be destroying it.’ She looked at Berkeley. ‘Logan, you’ve got to have some feelings about this.’ She knew she had struck a nerve - he couldn’t keep a conflicted expression off his face - but he said nothing. ‘Is however much he’s paying you worth this?’
‘Dr Berkeley knows a good deal when he is offered one,’ said Osir, as Kralj set up a small folding table and placed the jar on it, taking more equipment from a case. ‘It’s a shame you didn’t. If you hadn’t betrayed me, we would still have been in this room together - only you would be in charge, not a prisoner.’
Shaban kept Nina, Eddie and Macy at gunpoint, two of his troopers joining him with their MP7s raised. Everyone else watched as Kralj worked on the jar. After laying out a line of small bottles containing colourless liquids, some test tubes and a portable microscope, he examined the carved lid, then used a metal pick to peel away the black resin sealing it. Once it was clear, he looked up at Osir, who nodded.
He carefully turned the lid. The two pieces of ancient pottery scraped against each other . . . then, with a faint crackle as the last remnants of the seal broke, they separated.
‘Whoa, shit,’ said Eddie, as the stench of something awful permeated the chamber. ‘Literally. Smells like his last meal was a kebab!’
Nina suppressed her revulsion. ‘It means the seal held, though. The contents were preserved for all this time.’
Kralj used a penlight to examine the jar’s interior. Something glistened inside. He tipped three of the bottles into it, swilling the mixture round, then used a large pipette to draw out a sample of the resulting dark slurry. He squirted it into a test tube, then added the last bottle’s contents.
‘This will take several minutes,’ he told Osir as he sealed the tube. ‘If there are any spores, the test will show them.’
‘Then we’ll make use of the time,’ Osir replied. He signalled to one of the troopers. ‘Open the sarcophagus.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Nina, appalled. ‘This just gets worse. What are you going to do, autopsy the mummy?’
‘That’s what you’re most worried about?’ Macy said, eyeing the guns.
Like the canopic jars, the coffin had been sealed with a thick black mixture of resin and bitumen. One of Osir’s men carried a small circular saw, which he used to slice into the protective layer as he made his way round the sarcophagus. Another man followed, using a power tool with an abrasive head to grind open the seal along the cut.
It took them a few minutes to complete their circuit. ‘Open it,’ Osir ordered. Another two men came to the sarcophagus, the group assembling jacks on each side and inserting chrome-steel forks into the now exposed gap beneath the lid.
‘Ready, sir,’ said one man.
Osir gave Nina a satisfied look, then nodded. ‘Do it.’
The four men worked the jacks. Metal creaked, the seal cracking and splintering. One of the forks slipped slightly and gou
ged the metal, making Nina cringe at the damage.
‘Come on!’ Shaban barked impatiently. ‘Harder!’
The men increased their efforts, straining to lift the heavy lid. A deeper grind came from inside the sarcophagus, then with a jolt it opened. Grunting, they raised the silver figure of Osiris to the full height of the jacks . . . revealing another figure inside.
But this was not a sculpture. This was Osiris himself.
Or what was left of him. The body was mummified, tightly wrapped in a discoloured shroud, arms folded over its chest. The head was covered by a death mask, silver and gold shaped to match the face beneath. Unlike the famous burial masks of pharaohs like Tutankhamun and Psusennes, this was surprisingly modest, lacking their elaborate headdresses. If the mask were an accurate representation of the dead ruler, Osiris had possessed a surprisingly youthful appearance for one so powerful and revered.
Everyone leaned closer to look, even Kralj glancing up from his work. The recess in which the body lay had been matched almost perfectly to its shape, less than a centimetre to spare all round it. The lid had its own precisely shaped indentation set into the solid metal.
Osir gazed down at the man from whom he had taken his name. ‘Osiris,’ he whispered. ‘The god-king, granter of eternal life . . .’
‘You almost sound like you believe it,’ Nina scoffed.
‘A month ago, would you have believed Osiris was not just a myth?’ he countered. ‘Perhaps there’s more truth here than either of us thought.’
‘Not your version of the truth. You know, the skip-the-awkward-parts one you push on your followers.’
‘Who is to say that my interpretation of the story of Osiris is any less valid than another?’ said Osir smugly. ‘In fact, I’d say that this,’ he indicated the mummy, ‘makes it more valid. I found the tomb of Osiris because I was destined to find it. It proves I really do possess the spirit of Osiris. Wouldn’t you say?’
‘No, and nor would you if you were actually being honest with the dopes who hand you their money.’ Osir merely chuckled, but she noticed Shaban’s face tensing once more.
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