"Are there any tracks?" Nicholas thrust his torch into the doorway of the downward ramp.
"No," Vladimir said, padding down the tunnel in a half-crouch. "The smell is getting stronger."
"Right." Nicholas followed, beckoning for the others. Most of the fellaheen followed, though two of them were peering up the other passage. Thyatis, following at the back of the group, scowled at them as she crossed the octagonal room.
"You two," she hissed, "this way!"
At the same moment, one of the Egyptians-head wrapped in an elaborate turban-pointed, whistling in surprise. "Look, my lady, something's there!"
Thyatis was at his side in an instant. The ramp sloped up and turned onto a platform. At the bend, there was some kind of debris glittering bright and golden in the torchlight. In the poor light, it was impossible to tell what it was.
"Leave it," she growled, feeling her hackles rise. There were white shapes in the rubble too, like bones. "We can check it later."
The other fellaheen, making a hasty sign against spirits, hastened to catch up with the others. Thyatis followed, smirking. Someone has an atom of good sense, she thought. Then she stopped, frowning. Where was the first man… Thyatis spun, leaping back towards the ramp. She caught sight of a pair of sandals disappearing up the tunnel and skidded to a halt.
The Egyptian snatched up the shining object-a funerary vase, fluted and golden, footed with lions' paws-and turned it over in his hand. The debris, disturbed, rattled and bits and pieces of wood bounced down the ramp.
"Get down here!" Thyatis kicked a small wooden jackal head away with her sandal.
Her head snapped up-the rattling sound becoming a shockingly loud rumbling-and in the flaring light of a falling torch, she saw the Egyptian turn towards her, then the tomb wall at the top of the ramp came loose. Thyatis leapt back, startled. A rectangular plug of stone rotated down with an enormous dull boom. The Egyptian's scream was cut short as the entire structure slid greasily to a halt. A massive thud punched the air as the stone plug rammed into the lintel of the doorway. Dust cascaded from the ceiling, making Thyatis sneeze. Stunned, she scuttled backwards.
The block shuddered for a moment, then became still. The Roman woman sneezed again, wiping a thick patina of white dust from her face. There was no sign of the man or his golden prize. The newly exposed slab filling the doorway was carved with a relief showing kilted men bowing before the Judges of the Underworld.
"That's very nice," Thyatis muttered to herself. Nicholas and Mithridates appeared at her side, staring in surprise into the dust-filled chamber.
"What happened?" Nicholas' voice was very tense and sharp. Mithridates had a spear-like pry bar in his hands. "Where's Fenuku?"
"Under there." Thyatis turned away, digging grit out of her eye with a thumb. "Let's go."
Vladimir's trail of incense led down into another pillared hall, this one crowded with crumbling wooden crates and wicker hampers filled with rotting, desiccated goods. On edge, the fellaheen and the Romans picked their way through the chamber to an entrance sealed with a heavy slab of raw, unworked stone. The Walach pressed himself against the barrier, snuffling along the join between the floor and the door. After a moment, eyes closed, nose twitching, he rose, nodding. "Through here."
"Huh," Nicholas said, glaring at the unremarkable slab. "How did they get it into the doorway?"
A lip of stone ran around the entire opening, hiding the edges of the stone block. There was nowhere to drive a pry bar into a crevice. The Latin knelt, running his fingers along the edges. The fit between the block and the frame was snug and tight. He looked back at Thyatis, grimacing. "Are we going to have to chip our way through? Do we have chisels and hammers?"
"We do. But I don't think we have a week," she replied, looking around the hall. The plastered walls were covered with decaying paintings-most of them cracked and shattered, leaving piles of untidy plaster chips on the floor and gaping holes in the long, panoramic scenes. "They must have sealed the chamber from the other side. Perhaps there is another entrance in some other passage."
Nicholas' face contorted into a scowl and the man turned back to the door, glaring at the mute stone. "Everyone start looking!"
For himself, he bent to examine the door frame again. The fellaheen, huddled together, began poking dubiously at the piles of debris on the floor. Mithridates stood the sled on end and leaned it against one wall. The weight of the wood broke through a thin plaster crust, causing another cloud of dust to rise and images of men and women bowing down before a beardless pharaoh to collapse into dust and paint-tainted chips.
Thyatis remained alert, keeping an eye on the Walach prowling among the scattered junk. Despite her heart's misgivings, she was beginning to think the barbarian would have to be killed first. Thyatis was confident of her ability to overmaster Nicholas in a duel of arms… but the Walach? A moment later, the barbarian paused sharply and reached down into a clutch of spiderwebbed wicker baskets.
"Nicholas! Look at this. There are two of them." Vladimir held a stout cedarpost in his hands, one end recessed, the other carved to make a point. He smelled it carefully. "There was a rope tied around this and the ends were coated with grease." The Walach's forehead crinkled up in thought. "Fat. Pig fat."
Nicholas took the length of lumber and looked from it to the door, and back again. "A post?"
Thinking, he ran a hand over the recessed cavity. Crushed fragments of wood, dark with ancient oil, bent all in one direction. "How did they close the door… men had to enter the tomb, then leave again, sealing it up behind?" Nicholas turned to Thyatis, nodding to himself, imagining the ancient scene. "They tilted a slab up, just inside the door, balanced by these posts. When the last man departed, they jerked the posts away, letting the slab fall into the doorway, perfectly cut and aligned."
"Could be," Thyatis replied. She took the post from him, examining the ancient wood with pursed lips. "The slab had two cone-shaped bumps, to match holes cut in the floor. So the posts were secure while the block was balanced, and now you can't push the slab back, because bump and cavity make a key in the floor. There might even be a brace cut from the floor at the back end of the slab."
"Curse these builders…" Nicholas bit his thumb. "Clever… using a balance like that… we have to make the slab go back as it came down." Certainty filled his face. "Look, they can't have put anything in the path of the block falling, so we can push it back the same way."
"I suppose." Thyatis raised an eyebrow. "How?"
Nicholas stepped to the door frame again. "This," he said, pointing down at the stone lip around the entrance. "This edge gives us a little leverage. We can chisel slots at the base of the slab for the pry bars, then hammer them in, tip up from the bottom and push on the top at the same time."
Begrudgingly, Thyatis nodded in agreement. The fellaheen were already digging mallets and chisels out of their leather carrying bags and Vladimir and Mithridates gathered up their long iron bars, ready to set muscle against stone. Nicholas looked very pleased with himself, but the Roman woman noticed he stood well back from the slab as the Egyptians crouched down to begin chipping away at the sandstone.
Shirin came to a halt at the base of a ramp and hurriedly pinched out her candle stub. Smoke curled towards the triangular apse of the tunnel roof, vanishing into encompassing darkness. A narrow hall opened out before her, filled with double rows of fluted, acanthus-topped pillars. To her right, fire-yellow lights danced among massive stone sarcophagi, to her left was a wall faced with stone steps depicting a procession of gods and demons, carrying gifts and funerary goods. Halfway down the wall, a shadowy recess led into some other, as yet unseen, room.
Muffled whispers ghosted in the air as the Khazar woman stepped into the chamber.
The motion around the coffins ceased, and Shirin felt a prickling sensation. A cluster of figures draped in desert robes turned towards her, swinging round their lanterns. Shirin was suddenly, horribly, aware of her recklessness-these people
didn't know her. She didn't know them! They might not even be the Daughters of the Archer she thought to follow through the tunnels and corridors. Covered by her cloak, she grasped the hilt of the long knife in her belt, letting the point slide free of the sheath.
"Who are you?" a sharp, female voice whispered in the gloom. Two of the figures glided towards her, metal glinting in hand, swift-assured violence pregnant in their movements.
"Peace, friends," Shirin said softly, backing up the steps. She made the sign of the Archer with her free hand. The hunt to the swift, she realized. Starvation to the slow! Time for judicious truth. "I've come from the Roman temple, following those tomb robbers."
The lead figure paused, tugging a fold of her burnoose down, revealing a hawk-nosed, pox-scarred visage. Dark eyes blazed in the lantern light. "Show me your face."
Shirin matched the woman's movement, drawing aside her veil. The Egyptian sneered, one thin hand darting out to drag the rest of Shirin's scarf aside. Suppressing a sharp desire to strike the invasive hand away, the Khazar woman remained still, gaze adamant and unflinching.
"You're a pretty spy," the woman said after a moment of scrutiny, her jaw tightening. Shirin thought she saw weighed calculation in the glittering eyes. "You followed us?"
"I saw your tracks in the sand," Shirin responded, shaking her head. "They led me to the hidden door…"
"What is your name, Roman?" the Egyptian woman snapped, a grim light in her eyes. "Was the Hunter's door open? I'll flay someone alive if it was!"
"No," Shirin said, uneasy with the woman's careless threat. "It opened for me. Listen, a party of Romans has entered the tomb. I saw them break through the main door. Can they find these chambers by another path? And there are-"
The Egyptian interrupted with a harsh chuckle. She raised a short-bladed sword, hilt up and grinned at Shirin with a mocking smile. "Your Roman looters won't find this chamber. They might not even live to find the false tomb!"
Irritated by the woman's bravado, Shirin recovered her scarf, draping it around her shoulders. "I'm not a Roman," she said in a controlled, even tone. "My name is Shirin. What are you called?"
"Penelope," the woman said dismissively. "Stay out of the way. We have to find this device they seek. Be ready to leave."
Before Shirin could respond, the Egyptian spun on her heel and hurried back to the massive, bulky shapes of the coffins. Her eyes now adjusted to the torchlight, Shirin saw the other Daughters were busily levering slab lids from the sarcophagi, grunting and straining. A faded, three-part mural covered the entire rear wall, showing a sun-disk framed by hawk wings and dozens of protective gods.
Suddenly, as Shirin paced along the facing wall, trying to grasp the size and shape of the chamber, the stones under her feet jumped with a thud. Eyes wide, the Khazar woman shrank against the wall, groping for support. Dust trickled down around her in thin, corkscrew streams. The shock in the earth did not repeat and the Daughters-now sliding one of the coffin lids aside with great care-did not appear to have noticed.
That wasn't an earthquake! It was behind me. Shirin turned, hurried along the ledge, looking for a door, an alcove, anything at all. A dozen steps down, she came to the recessed opening and found, to her surprise, a pinhole of glowing light within deeper shadow. Looking over her shoulder, Shirin saw the Egyptian woman Penelope barking orders for her followers to break into the second coffin. From the puzzled, angry look on the woman's face, Shirin guessed there'd been no "device" in the sarcophagus.
Muffled noise came to her ears and she turned back to the point of light, suddenly worried. Inside the recess, there was a curved wall and a stone ledge. Kneeling down, Shirin put her eye to the tiny opening and found herself looking-through delicately painted gauze-into another funeral chamber. This space too was filled with painted round columns, wall mosaics and two stone coffins.
Sparking orange torchlight flared, momentarily blinding her. Shirin drew back. This close to the wall, she could hear sharp voices calling in the room beyond the spy hole. Roman voices. Feeling a chill on her neck, she swallowed and looked again.
Fellaheen in tan-and-white robes swarmed into the chamber, followed by an enormous Numidian and a familiar-looking Latin soldier. The Romans were busy poking and prodding in every crevice and container in the other tomb. Shirin froze. A shape moved across the pinhole, cutting off the light. From only a foot away, she heard a familiar voice.
"This wall is solid," Thyatis called out, rapping her knuckles across the surface of a drum column protruding from the wall of the tomb chamber. Clouds of painted, sparkling dust fell away from each blow. The air in the room grew hazy as the fellaheen, Mithridates and Vladimir made a rough sweep of the chamber. The dais holding the two coffins was raised on a series of steps, with pillars crowding close on either side. Nicholas stood beside the doorway, examining the triangular shape of the door barrier. As the Latin had posited, the slab was keyed to holes in the floor.
There was nothing in the chamber matching their description of the "device."
"How large is this thing?" Vladimir's accent seemed almost humorous in the thick air. He was crouched atop one of the coffins, long fingers tracing the chiseled outline of a king buried in stone. "Could it be inside one of these jenazah?"
Nicholas turned towards his friend, scratching the line of his jaw as he thought. "Well, the one in Rome is as tall as a man, but the bronze disks might be folded up, or packed together…"
Thyatis paused in her examination of the wall, nose twitching. Her sense of smell might not be a match for the Walach, but there was something in the air. A sweet, warm scent like drying roses. She stiffened, memory tugging at the hem of her cloak. Wait! I remember…
"Here!" one of the fellaheen shouted, distracting her. "Master, I've found a hidden door!"
Thyatis leapt down from the ledge, reaching the man's side in an instant. The Egyptian pointed fearfully. Like the column Thyatis had checked, the roundel seemed to be part and parcel of the stone, but some ancient tremor in the earth had split cunning plaster and paint away, revealing a cavity.
"Stand back," Thyatis barked, as the fellaheen crowded up. Mithridates and Vladimir pushed through the men, each man holding an iron-headed sledge. The Roman woman drew her blade, letting the mirror-bright metal rasp from the sheath. Nicholas took up a position on her left, his blade bare, and-for an instant, in the dim light of the torches-the length of metal seemed to gleam with an inner fire.
Thyatis nodded to Mithridates. "Clear the opening."
The African set his shoulders, muscles bulging under his tunic and the sledge whipped into the plaster lathes, shattering the ancient wood. More dust billowed forth, but Mithridates narrowed his eyes and the opening was entirely clear in three more blows.
Thyatis fanned the air with her straw hat. The light of the torches revealed a short passage and a startlingly normal-looking door. Surprised, she felt a breath of cold air brush her face.
"I'll go first," Nicholas said, eagerly shouldering Thyatis aside.
A loud crash echoed through the hidden tomb and Shirin scrambled out of the watch post. The Daughters had frozen in shock at the sound. They were staring in horror toward a second opening to the Khazar woman's left. Another crash followed, then a third. Shirin raised an eyebrow. Well, she thought, I guess the Romans did live to find us!
"Out!" Penelope hissed, harsh voice cutting through the silence and surprise. "Everyone out through the tunnel. Now!" The older woman drew back, her shortsword aimed at the sound.
The women around the second sarcophagus abandoned their tools and ran for the passage, cloaks flying out behind them. Shirin darted across the chamber to the opened coffins. Penelope was in the tunnel mouth, her face a furious glare, beckoning for the Khazar woman to hurry. Behind Shirin, she heard the clatter of men forcing a door open. Faint streaks of light painted the wall above the sarcophagi, thrown by Roman torches. In the poor light, Shirin paused, gazing curiously down upon the centuries-dead figures in the two co
ffins.
At her left hand, a woman of medium height was fully wrapped in traditional bandages, her hands crossed on her chest, holding a crook and an ankh. A golden mask covered her face and a jeweled, golden sun-disk holding a layered eight-rayed star lay on her breast. The Khazar woman frowned, seeing the star, old memories intruding. How odd… she thought. Why does she bear a crest from old Persepolis? The death masque showed a personage of no great beauty, but even across the centuries Shirin felt a palpable chill to look upon the likeness of Kleopatra, Lord of the Two Lands, Queen and Empress. Small ceramic jars lined the stone bier, wrapped in gold and silver vestments, accompanied by goods of all kinds.
Another crash reverberated through the dusty air. Shirin wrenched her hand away from the star jewel. No time for souvenirs! she thought guiltily. The second coffin held a man-tall, proud, with broad shoulders-though his silver masque revealed a petulant lip and his strength of personality paled in comparison to the Queen. For him, the Khazar woman felt only pity before dismissing him from her mind.
Orange light flared bright against the wall and Shirin faded into deeper shadow. Penelope was already gone, the sound of running feet fading in the tunnel. Halfway up the steps, Shirin paused, looking back into the tomb, wondering if a familiar figure would appear, silhouetted in the light. Instead, a man appeared in the broken door, leading with a long straight sword. The metal flared bright in the darkness and Shirin drew back again.
At her breast, the ruby became suddenly warm and she clasped a hand over the jewel, hiding an unexpected pale red glow. Entirely surprised, Shirin ducked down behind a fallen column, wondering what could possibly have excited such a response in the jewel. Where did Thyatis get this thing?
The Roman soldier crept forward, torch sputtering in one hand. "There are two coffins here," he shouted, "and they've been disturbed!"
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