Aya awoke and stared into the darkness. What had she just seen? The tomb was hot, she could barely breathe. Where was Intef? She had to tell him about her vision.
‘Intef?’ Arriving at the foot of his bed mat, she crouched down and reached for him, but discovered only a slack bed sheet.
The false chamber was eerily quiet. She crossed to the ramp and climbed up it. ‘Intef, are you here?’
There was no response. A feeling of dread spread over her. She felt along the ceiling to the lip of the tunnel, crouched down and reached out once again. ‘Intef?’
She felt the hardness of the tip of the chisel beneath her fingers. She pulled the instrument towards her, but it would not come free. She moved her fingers down the cold metal, arriving at the shaft and feeling Intef’s own fingers wrapped around it. They were as cold as the metal itself.
‘Intef!’ she shrieked.
No. This could not be happening. She moved her hands over Intef’s body, pressing and probing and praying he would respond. Nothing. She held her hand over his mouth, trying to determine if he still made breath. She could feel a small movement of air coming from his nose. Blessed Isis!
‘Intef, wake up!’ she shouted. She pushed against his limp body and was rewarded with a low moan.
Aya’s heart raced. He was alive! But what was wrong? Had he fallen and hit his head? She needed to get him out of this cramped, dusty space. ‘Come, Intef,’ she said. She tugged at his arm. No response.
She was going to have to move him, but how? She retrieved his bed sheet and rolled him on to it, then tugged it with all her might down the pile dirt. Finger by finger, hand by hand, she pulled him down the ramp until he was lying atop the tiles of the false chamber.
She needed to see if he was injured. She needed light! She crossed to the sitting area and felt for where Intef kept the striking stones. She fumbled desperately among the objects, finally seizing upon the stones.
This was going to be difficult. She had never made fire herself. She had always allowed Intef to do it. She groped about for the bit of rope he always used to set the flame. There it was, thank the gods, and also the lamp.
Now she had everything she needed to make light except the actual ability to do it. She tried to picture Intef striking the stones. He always seemed very focused on the task, as if he were willing the sparks to appear.
She made a preliminary strike. Nothing.
‘Great Amun-Ra, deliver me strength,’ she implored. She struck the stones together as hard as she could, but still no sparks flew. She tried again, then again. She lifted the striking stone as high as she could, then smashed it down upon her own thumb.
‘Ow!’ she howled. She could feel the blood oozing out of the wound. She thrust her thumb into her mouth and sucked, trying to stop the bleeding.
She needed to calm herself, but she could not seem to catch her breath. Her efforts had made her dizzy. She stood and braced herself against a pillar. Each time she inhaled, she felt a slight stinging in her lungs.
‘The air inside this tomb will not last for ever,’ she remembered Intef saying. ‘Soon it will turn sour. It will draw demons from the Underworld...’
‘And we shall perish among them,’ Aya whispered.
The knowledge of her fate hit her all at once and she froze. The air had turned sour. It was full of demons. Curse the gods—she and Intef had run out of time.
‘No!’ Aya raged. This was her fault. If only she had allowed Intef to begin his tunnel in the high vaulted ceiling of the false chamber, he would have arrived at the surface by now. She had been too worried about despoiling the beautiful ceiling and now he was lying beneath it as a result.
And soon she would be, too.
She buried her face in her hands. Not now—not after all these days, not after everything that had happened. She did not want to die, but her dizziness was getting worse. Soon she would be like Intef. Alive, but sleeping. Feeling nothing. Eventually, even that nothing would slip away.
A quick, merciful death.
She no longer accepted Osiris’s will. ‘Where are you, Pharaoh?’ she sobbed. ‘Is this not your house of eternity? Are you not a god yourself? Help me!’
Aya felt her way along the walls towards the doorway. She would visit the main chamber. She would visit her beloved Pharaoh. It was the only thing she could think of to do. There she could speak her pleas directly to Pharaoh’s ka, for Pharaoh was the only one who could help her now.
She arrived at the doorway and turned into the corridor. If she were being truthful, it was not the main chamber where she felt closest to Tausret, it was just here in the hallway at the junction of the two unfinished chambers, where the crack in the ceiling was most pronounced.
She had felt Pharaoh’s breath here once, she could have sworn it. ‘Tausret? Powerful One? Mistress?’ She paused and breathed in.
Her heart leapt. There it was again. A small movement of air, as if Tausret’s spirit hovered close.
‘Is that you?’ Aya stood as still as she could. Slowly, her dizziness abated. ‘Forgive me, Beloved Tausret.’
The air seemed to speak in Pharaoh’s voice. ‘There is nothing to forgive.’
‘I do not wish to die.’
‘Then live, Aya. Live!’
Aya took one last breath, then crossed the false chamber and rushed back up the ramp. Finding Intef’s tools where he had left them, she climbed up the footrests inside the tunnel. She braced herself atop the final footrest and began to tap.
Not too hard, not too soft. Tap, tap, tap.
She breathed and tapped, breathed and tapped, trying to stay calm, just as Intef had advised, until once again her world was spinning. She made her way down the footrests and went to visit Pharaoh.
‘Powerful One, give me strength,’ she begged, standing in the corridor and breathing deeply. Slowly, her dizziness diminished and she crossed the chamber, stopping to place her hand over Intef’s nostrils. A small, warm wind flowed out of them. Aya tipped her head to the painted stars. ‘Please, keep him alive!’
Tap, tap, tap. She worked for as long as she could, but soon became dizzy again. She returned to speak with Pharaoh, breathed and gathered her strength, then crossed back to the ramp and resumed her chiselling.
* * *
She did not know how many times she repeated this dance. Ten? Twenty? She had no sense of time. Were hours passing, or days? She did not know if the surface was near or far. All she knew was that she had to keep going.
Tap, tap, tap.
Her limbs started to fail her. The trip from the tunnel to the corridor began to feel like the journey of a hundred leagues. Once when she began to grow dizzy, she fell from the footrests. Another time, when she moved to descend the ramp, she collapsed upon the dirt. She breathed in the dust and found that she could not even cough.
She returned to her post. She needed to speak to Pharaoh, but she could no longer remember why. She imagined herself dashing down the ramp and making her way to the corridor. She pictured herself praying to Pharaoh and breathing in her strength. She saw herself bend to Intef and check his breath. There it was still—a tiny thread of breath. All was well. In her vision, she returned to her post. And there she was, working away. Tap, tap, tap.
The world was spinning now and her lids had become too heavy to keep open. She closed her eyes and delivered one last blow to the chisel. And in that tiny sliver of time, she beheld the beginning of her own end.
It was light. A tiny shaft of it—pouring down from above. The darkness was no longer complete.
She had finally passed into the Underworld. There was no other explanation for the sudden, blinding brightness. It was what the Underworld was, after all. Ra’s nighttime sanctuary. The land of the midnight sun.
She inhaled the air—another of the Underworld’s luxuries. She drank it like beer, letting it fill up her lungs. It
was nearly the end. Soon she would begin her journey to the Hall of Judgement where Anubis would weigh her heart and find it too heavy by far. He would wait for Thoth, the god of scribes, to record the results and then Osiris would bow his head in disappointment and the Devourer of Souls would come for her.
She opened her eyes, expecting to take her first glimpse of that beautiful afterlife that she would travel through, but that would never be her home. Instead she saw a shaft of light shining down from above. She inhaled and discovered the air to have become sweeter. It was pouring in with the light, filling her with energy.
She lifted her chisel and landed another series of blows. Another small chunk of the ceiling fell away, allowing more light. More air. More strength.
She began chiselling in earnest, her heart full of suspicion. Surely this was some trick of death. At any moment, the ceiling above her would disappear and she would lift her head to behold a verdant land of swollen rivers and fertile fields and eternal souls: the land of the Underworld.
The ceiling was disappearing before her blows. Its stony chunks were falling like an avalanche. Her head had stopped throbbing and the world had ceased to spin. The opening was now big enough to fit through. She took another long, fortifying breath, then lifted her head above the surface.
There was no river in sight. She seemed to be in a small valley between hills, but there was not a single green plant growing upon their sloping grounds, nor any eternal soul anywhere.
There was noise, however—the soft twitter of invisible birds. Looking closer, she caught sight of them flitting among the boulders all around her, twittering and chattering and whistling their cheerful songs.
If life had a sound, this was surely it: birdsong. A cacophony of soft notes filling the air.
Chirp, chirp. Twitter, twitter. Caw, caw.
The music was so glorious that she paused to listen and did not immediately notice the sky.
The sky! There it was all around her—a miracle! It was pink. No—yellow. No, it was orange with a tinge of white. It was changing, growing more beautiful by the moment. It was...dawn.
If life had an aura, it was this: the quality of dawn. The sun god’s arms were reaching out from beneath the horizon. His light was fragile, but each minute growing stronger, larger.
She felt her spirit growing larger, too. The birds were no longer chirping, they were cheering. Somehow she had done it. Like the sun god himself, she had come forth at dawn. She had made it to the surface. She had fulfilled her promise to Tausret—had refused to die and had been reborn.
She breathed in the fragrant morning air and her eyes filled with tears. They landed on her lips and she tasted them—salt, dust—the taste of life.
Intef.
She rushed to the false chamber and found the place where Intef lay. She splayed her hand before his nostrils and said a small prayer, willing him to be alive.
And if he was not? Her stomach took a plunge. If he was not alive, then the tomb would remain intact...but it would not matter. A gauzy curtain of grief would cloud her vision. She would search for the heir, but be unable to find him or protect him. She would be lost for ever.
The gods would not dare take him from her. They had given him to her as a gift, after all. He was the answer to her prayers. He was the man who had severed her bonds and rescued her from oblivion.
He had shown her how to laugh, how to trust and how to begin to forgive herself. He had steadied her aim and taught her how to slay her demons. He had shown her what it meant to feel the lightness of desire inside her heart.
He had called her beautiful and made her believe it.
He had made his mark on her spirit, had chiselled his name into her hardened heart. Even if their paths were meant to diverge, she did not wish to live in the world without knowing he was in it.
And yet there was no more breath in him. She crouched low and bent her ear to his mouth. Closing her other ear with her hand, she lay completely still and concentrated hard.
There it was! The tiniest of exhales, like the flap of a butterfly’s wing. Thank the gods! He was still alive.
Her strength had returned with the fresh air, but would his? The new air was flowing into the chamber. It just needed to be encouraged. She pulled the sheath off of her back and began to fan him with it.
She had always tried to maintain her modesty around Intef. Now she was standing above him in nothing more than her loincloth! But it did not matter. Nothing mattered but to bring him back to life.
She crouched close to his mouth and listened for his breaths once again. They were coming more quickly now—she was sure of it. She fanned her tunic over him several more times, then dashed back up into the tunnel.
She needed to let in as much air as she could. She hacked away at the ceiling, and soon the opening was as large as the tunnel itself.
She rushed back and crouched at Intef’s side, fanning the air as she went. The light from above cascaded down the ramp and on to Intef’s naked chest.
But it was not moving.
If only she could open his mouth, perhaps she could return his breath to him. What she needed was an adze—that axe-like instrument that priests used to prepare mummies for the afterlife. She felt certain that if she had an adze, she could say the sacred spell and touch the instrument to his lips and he would be restored.
She did not have an adze, so her own humble chisel would have to do. She touched it to his mouth and began the spell: ‘May his mouth be opened. May his mouth be unclosed by Shu with this iron knife... I am the goddess Sekhet and I sit upon my place in the great wind of heaven.’
She paused to see if the spell was working, but there was no movement at all. What cruel trick of the gods was this? That she would live and he would die? It could not be; she would not let it be. ‘Hail, you who tows along the boat of Ra,’ she called up to the ceiling, continuing the spell. ‘The stays of your sails and of your rudder are taut in the wind as you sail up the Pool of Fire. Behold you gather together the charm from every place where it is...’
She stood and waved her sheath over him, fanning so furiously that she seemed to whip the air into a storm. ‘Drink,’ she urged him. ‘Drink the air.’
She bent and placed her lips on his and breathed into him. She watched his chest fill with air, then released his lips and saw him exhale. She repeated the motion, filling him with her breath. Over and over she breathed into him, until she felt as if she had given all of her breath away.
Then—a miracle. He coughed and gulped the air. Her heart leapt as she perceived a slight tremble in his lips. No, it was more than a tremble—his lips were moving, twisting into a mischievous grin. ‘Good morning,’ he said. He opened his eyes and grinned.
‘Intef!’ She collapsed to the floor beside him in a fit of sobs. ‘You returned to me.’
‘Well, of course I did,’ he said, as if he had just returned from a stroll. He sat up and smiled down at her. ‘I seem to have indulged in a particularly deep sleep.’
‘The demons invaded your lungs,’ Aya explained. ‘You were barely breathing.’
His expression sobered. ‘I felt them there. And I felt it when you expelled them.’
She lifted her head and gazed into his eyes. ‘You are crying.’
‘Dust in my eyes,’ he said, ‘though I am rather happy to see you.’
‘I was so afraid I had lost you.’
‘You saved me,’ he said. ‘Do you know what that means?’
‘That we must make an offering to Osiris?’ she asked.
He bowed his head. ‘That I must serve and protect you for ever.’
Chapter Nineteen
She laughed at him, but in his heart he was gravely serious. How could he give her up to General Setnakht? It did not matter that she was the heir to the double crown, or that revealing her identity could prevent a war. What did a man’s duty m
atter at all if he could not protect the ones who mattered most?
‘You saved my life,’ he said.
‘I believe it was you who saved mine,’ she said. ‘You worked yourself to near death on that tunnel.’
‘But you were the one who finished it. You saved us both.’ He pulled himself to his feet and summoned a grin. ‘You must be thirsty after all of that.’
He crossed to his bed mat and reached for an amphora of beer and two cups. He spied a loaf of bread and placed it under his arm, then gathered up his bed mat, as well.
He paused, his thoughts scattering. It appeared as if he were preparing for a picnic, yet somewhere in the world above, the troops of two armies were gathering and would soon be killing one another—Egyptian against Egyptian.
And he was the only man in the world with the ability to stop them.
But in order to stop them, he had to betray the person he cared for most.
He was fooling himself again. It was more than just care he felt for Aya. She was the woman who had captivated him. She had ignited his desire and overwhelmed his thoughts. She had taught him history, bested him with her bow and then challenged him with her own wits. She had resurrected him in every sense of the word. She was the woman that he...
He laughed helplessly.
‘What is so funny?’ she called from behind the shrine.
What was so funny? That every time he looked into her eyes, a feeling of love rushed into his heart.
‘Well?’
‘You are clearly the superior chiseller,’ he offered.
‘Well, of course I am,’ she retorted.
How dare he betray this woman? There should have never been any question in his heart: he needed to keep her as far from General Setnakht as possible. He needed to get her out of this House of Eternity as soon as he could.
Why was there not more time? Just days before, he had been huddled inside his wooden prison practically begging the minutes to pass. Now he was begging them to stand still.
He peered down at his sandal. He could discern five small marks representing five days of chiselling. He was certain more days had passed—possibly six or seven.
Saved by Her Enemy Warrior Page 14
