Luxor Lost and Found

by Graham Warren

  “We know that the ancients called them Pebble Men,” Alex shouted.

  All eyes looked up to the waving figure protruding from a hole, high up in the wall to their left.

  “Alex!” called out Kate.

  “I’m so pleased to see you,” shouted David.

  “We are all pleased to see you,” shouted Emmy, who then thought, “We have our miracle.”

  “I here too,” called out Cairo from the tunnel directly above them.

  After a period of general euphoria came the realisation that they were not yet safe, though Alex had a plan. He and Cairo left, though it was not long before they were back. Alex threw small pieces of very bloody meat towards the far end of the room. These he had ‘borrowed’ from a pile of offcuts beside a street butcher. Anybody would have thought it was a whole hippopotamus from the reaction of the crocodiles.

  Cairo dropped down tied together galabeyas, which he had ‘borrowed’ from several washing lines. Emmy went first, as she was the lightest. She then helped Cairo pull Kate up, after which all three of them pulled David up. There were several heart-stopping moments as knots slipped slightly before tightening. In reality, the rescue was much easier than anyone could have expected it to be. Upon reaching the safety of the grain store, thanks to Alex’s sense of direction, there were hugs, tears and some rather manic laughter.

  “I think I had better change,” said Alex, as he looked down at his bloodied galabeya and hands; dry blood thanks to the heat. He went to the back of the grain store to wash where the bakers would wash, and David went with him.

  Kate and Emmy decided, along with Cairo, to lay on the grain and soak up the heat. Just a little wriggle, and the grain moulded to their shape.

  “Do you think that is where we could get our hands on the six sacred scuta from a single Nile crocodile?” asked Alex, as he scrubbed his hands.

  “Those crocodiles are far too old to still have their sacred scuta.” David removed a plastic bag from his pocket, opening it, then the one inside and then the one inside that. “We need a crocodile breeding ground, or better still a sacred breeding ground, such as Crocodilopolis.” He tipped the inner bag to one side and then the other, as he inspected its contents. “The sand of the Sun is fine.”

  “Henuttawy got out with her ‘sand’.”

  “Oh God, I hadn’t even missed her. That’s great news. Someone should tell Emmy, she will be worried.”

  “I already did. So, do tell me more about this Croco … whatsit.”

  “Crocodilopolis. I will tell you more, but we need to get out of here first.”

  “Yes, you are right. Dr Margretti told us that these ‘windows’ from our time to the time we find ourselves in only occur at times of extreme emotion. I can’t see any extreme emotions here.”

  “Apart from the warlock arriving, neither can I.”

  “Do you think that could be it, the warlock is that extreme emotion?”

  “No,” said David firmly, “it has to be something from this time, the ancient time we are in. The warlock is an opportunist.”

  “He is also many other things, none of which are nice.”

  “I can’t disagree with that. The only reason he is here, is because your button told him you were here.”

  “Yes, sorry about that,” said Alex, as he slipped on one of the bakers’ white galabeyas.

  “How were you to know? It could have happened to any of us.”

  “I should have seen it.”

  “You are too hard on yourself, Alex.”

  “Perhaps! So, how do we get out of here?” He knew he was too hard on himself, but his failure to work out so many things that he thought he should have worked out, since this adventure had started, did not boost his confidence.

  “I pop in and out of here fairly regularly. Moving from our time to various times in the past is no big deal once you know what you are doing. It can be a bit hairy sometimes. That’s how I have managed to make so many discoveries. I visit something in the past, and when I am back in our time, I rediscover it. Amazingly, I work out what it was as well as what it was used for. It is cheating, but it keeps me occupied.”

  “My dad thought you were working with another archaeologist.”

  “No, it’s just me. I do put papers in in two different names when I need to get a find out there quickly.”

  “Such as securing the name of Henuttawy in the afterlife.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I liked your change of name. David Black to David Wool.”

  “Well, I am the black sheep of the family. I originally had the idea of calling myself Dai Wool, you get it, dye wool!” Alex nodded. “However, my Welsh accent is so awful I had to stick with David.” He gave an example of his Welsh accent, after which Alex agreed it was indeed a wise choice to stick with David.

  Chapter 30

  -

  Magic and Mayhem

  Alex and David were heading away from the wash bowl when a sudden noise from behind caused them to spin around. They saw nothing except ripples on the water. Plunging his hand in, Alex pulled out a piece of masonry the size of a large orange. Looking directly up, he saw cracks that were anything except minor, along with one small area of daylight. David had followed Alex’s eyes. Quite independently they decided it was time to run. Before their brains could send panic messages to their limbs, screams came from the grain store as the floor started to vibrate.

  “Where are they?” asked David in panic, as he looked at nothing more than a massive pile of grain, whilst raising his arms to protect his head from falling masonry.

  Alex was just about to suggest that Kate, Emmy and Cairo had already fled the building, when he heard a muffled scream come from within the vibrating pile of grain. Everything was vibrating. A flash of a hand appeared which Alex leaned forward and grabbed. It was Cairo. He coughed and spluttered as he spat out grain. David grabbed a galabeya from a peg on the wall. He held one end whilst Alex held on to the other with one hand. Reaching as far as he could into the grain with his free hand, he managed to drag Emmy out. She also coughed and spluttered.

  As hard as he tried, he could not feel anything except grain. Cairo tugged at Alex’s shoulder, then took hold of his hand as he turned. He disappeared into the grain, totally disappeared. Alex was at full stretch with one hand wrapped around the end of the galabeya, whilst the other gripped tightly onto Cairo’s hand. As he pulled Alex into the grain, David had to follow. He was unable to stretch out any further until Emmy took the end of the line.

  Suddenly it became much harder for Alex to hold Cairo, for David to hold Alex and for Emmy to hold David. They all leaned back as they pulled.

  “Is she okay?” asked a concerned Emmy over Kate’s coughing.

  “It took you long enough to get me out of there,” Kate bellowed between coughs.

  “Yes, she will be just fine,” replied Alex.

  “Well, we will not be fine unless we move quickly,” said David over a roar which was in the air, as he opened the large door to the street. “This whole building is very likely to come down soon.” The ground was shaking, more like vibrating.

  They looked out to see the warlock, flanked by two very large, very heavily muscled men. Behind him stood two rows of soldiers. Nobody bothered to count how many there were, but there were more than enough for the job at hand. Inwardly frightened, they burst into laughter. They were looking out on a group of men who were all jiggling up and down as though they were each using an invisible pneumatic hammer. It was a social media flash mob.

  “Very soon you will not think this to be so funny,” said an angry warlock, whose voice vibrated as he spoke, though it was no less sexless than before. “You might as well give yourselves up. I have an equal number of soldiers behind the building, so you have nowhere to run to.”

  The rumbling and the vibrating stopped just as quickly as it had started. An unnatural silence came over the city. Though this had nothing to do with the warlock, this was a frightening, eerie silence.
A rumbling started, which turned out to be nothing more than Cairo’s ever hungry stomach.

  “Are you coming out, or do my soldiers have to come in and hurt you as they bring you out?”

  “They are your soldiers now, are they?” said Kate in her not to be messed about tone, though Alex was able to detect a very small amount of fear in her voice. “I wonder how Nefertiti would feel if she heard you saying that.”

  “Nefertiti is more interested in how she will repay you and …” The warlock stopped speaking as his eyes scanned the room. “Where is Henuttawy, where is she hiding?”

  “She is not here,” answered Alex.

  “No, she got out with the sand.” Alex wished that Cairo had not said this, but he did derive some satisfaction, they all did, from the fleeting look of panic on the face of the warlock.

  “Get them, hurt them, then bring them to me,” the warlock shouted as angrily as he could. What the warlock could do with magic struck fear into the hearts of many, whilst actually hearing him give orders was quite another thing. His non-male, non-female nondescript voice would have been better used to advertise toilet rolls.

  “I’m not going easily,” said Kate.

  “No way,” said Alex.

  “He must need us alive,” said David. “I have seen him in action. He doesn’t talk, he kills!”

  “Yes, but he kills with magic,” said Kate, “magic he does not have with him, because once he had escaped, he raced here expecting Nefertiti to kill us for him. Hence all the soldiers.”

  “He had magic, that big green thing,” Cairo said as he edged a little further back into the grain store.

  “Yes, he did have magic. Gadeem said they always carry a favourite spell or two,” said Alex as he scanned the room with his eyes looking for something, anything that he could use as a weapon. “I agree with Kate, he hasn’t got any magic left.”

  “It’s great that you two agree,” said Emmy. “I’m pleased for you, but does he really need magic when he has this many soldiers?”

  “We may not have to do anything except run.” David was looking into the sky as the soldiers opened the second large door. Everything that could fly was flying, a sure sign that the earlier tremors were now going to turn into a full-blown earthquake. “Hey, Alex, you wanted to know what extreme emotions opened the window to this time. I think we are all about to find out.”

  They edged away from the approaching soldiers who appeared to be rather nervous of them. As it turned out the soldiers should have been more nervous of the roof over their head. The full force of the earthquake lasted for less than fifteen seconds. The floor under the soldiers bubbled up as the roof fell, they did not stand a chance as the whole of the front of the building collapsed. The rest of the building creaked and groaned. By the time Kate, Alex, Cairo, Emmy and David had scrambled out to where the warlock had been standing, there was no sign of him.

  The city was anything except quiet now. Everywhere people were screaming. Buildings which had been heavily damaged by the earthquake did their best to remain standing, though one by one they were overpowered by gravity. Every now and then as they looked through the swirling clouds of dust, they were offered a glimpse of a flattened Amarna.

  Kate saw it first, but soon they were all running towards a desert which was free from clouds of dust. They had escaped ancient Amarna, and much against the odds, they had all survived.

  “Yes, Alex, it was nature that destroyed the single sun god, the Aton,” said David as he shaved in the shower. “The people blamed the devastation on the anger of the ancient gods for turning away from them, so when Amarna was rebuilt, the old gods were once again worshiped. I knew of the Amarna earthquake, though I had never been back when it actually took place. It is somewhat frustrating that I cannot publish what I know.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Find a skull and you can carbon-date it, that proves people lived here at a certain time. Find a ruin and you can confidently say you have a human settlement. How can you prove a ruin is a ruin because of an ancient earthquake?”

  “You can’t.”

  “That is exactly my problem. I cannot tell the academic world this because I cannot prove it. It’s really frustrating.”

  “I bet it is.”

  “Are you two coming out of there today? We are all waiting to eat.”

  “Yes, Kate, we won’t be long,” said Alex.

  “Coming … just as soon as I can stop my chin from bleeding. You really should not make people jump when they are shaving.”

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  Dr Margretti and Joe had been waiting by the Nile for them to return. A large portable shower had been set up, which the girls had used first. There was also an extremely large tent which Alex and David now entered, dressed in their new clean clothes. Alex was over the moon with his proper shirt, rather than one of his father’s T-shirts.

  It was an emotionally charged time as they met up with Henuttawy, Ramses, Nakhtifi, Gadeem and Rose. Thoth R and Thoth N stood together on one side of the tent, whilst Sobek and Ra-Horakhty sat on the opposite side. There was a glint of mischief in Sobek’s eye as he used an ibis beak as a toothpick. Not just a tip this time, a whole beak! No wonder the Thoths were looking nervous.

  After all the pleasantries and the excitement of now only needing the final ingredient, the reality of their situation set in.

  “Are we safe from the warlock here?” asked Alex of Gadeem.

  It was Kate who replied. “Of course we are, as he has no magic left. I don’t understand why we don’t go back in and finish him off, as without his magic he is nothing more than an ordinary person.” She stood, then took a step away from the table. “Who is with me?”

  Dr Margretti leant over to Alex, he spoke softly. “With irrational reasoning like that, I am seriously surprised you are all still alive. Do not get me wrong, I am very pleased that you are, but I am still surprised.”

  “Nobody is with you,” said Gadeem loudly, “because nobody wants to die.”

  “He escaped. He is here without magic. We need to get back in there and finish him once and for all.” Kate had been trying to impress her father … she failed.

  “He didn’t escape,” said Gadeem as he stood and placed both hands palm down on the table in front of him, “I let him out.”

  “You what!” said a very angry Kate. David calmed her and did eventually get her to sit down beside him.

  Gadeem was now the only person standing. Everyone turned their chairs slightly towards him.

  “Sorry I am late. Did I miss anything?” Bast was told she had not as she took the seat next to Rose.

  “We are at a critical juncture.” Kate went to speak, but Gadeem was having none of it. “If you say so much as a word,” he pointed directly at her, “I will have you gagged.” Everyone knew from his tone that this was no idle threat. “As I was saying, we are at a critical juncture. I am now going to tell you all exactly what I have been up to. None of you knows the full story. Now you all need to.” Gadeem looked at everyone in turn. He received a slight nod from each and every one of them. “Firstly, let me deal with Kate’s overeagerness. Never, and I do mean never, not even for one moment, think that a warlock would not have any magic on him. Of course he has magic on him. If nothing else, he will have magic of last resort. Magic so strong that even he will be afraid of using it, but have no doubt, if the need arises, he would use it.”

  Kate felt chastised as her face flushed. David placed a visible hand of reassurance on her shoulder.

  Upon seeing this, Gadeem considered he had been overly hard on her. “I admire your determination, Kate. After what you have all been through, I for one would not be eager to go back into Amarna, even if the warlock was not in the city. I have had several run-ins with Nefertiti over the centuries. None have been nice.”

  “How do you think I feel?” asked Dr Margretti, who then proceeded to answer his own question. “She personifies beauty and evil at the same time. All I wanted was a�
��”

  “If you do not mind, Doctor, I would like to get back to the subject at hand.”

  “Oh, of course, Gadeem, of course, please do.”

  “Now I want to explain my actions. I need you all to understand why I set the warlock free.”

  From the general mumbling and shaking of heads it was clear that nobody understood why Gadeem had done so. It did not take a genius to realise that not one person in the room agreed with his decision. Even Ramses, who knew him better than anyone, looked angry.

  “Please hear me out, as I am sure you will see that I had no other course of action.”

  “You exiled an innocent Henuttawy,” screamed Emmy, who stood as she jabbed a finger in his direction, “and now you have let the killer of my parents go free. What kind of a man are you?” This had all been too much too quickly for her. Both Alex and Henuttawy stood and tried to calm her, though Alex soon slumped back into his chair.

  “Well, whilst everyone hates me, let’s add you to the list, Alex. The warlock killed your parents as well as Emmy’s and on the same day. We were this close to defeating the him.” Gadeem held up a hand with his thumb and forefinger almost touching. “We lost because we took the fight to him and he knew we were coming. David, you were there,” he nodded, “so have you forgotten just how bad it was?”

  “I will never forget. It haunts me to this day and I know it will haunt me until the day I die.”

  There was crying, mumbling and shock, but when Gadeem smashed his fists down on the table, there was silence. “We had a traitor in our midst last time and we have a traitor in our midst this time. This is why I had to work alone. My plan, yes, I know some of you do not like my plans or consider them to be unfair, but my plans work. It is the one thing I am really good at.” Ramses nodded in agreement.

  “If your plans are so flipping wonderful, then why are both my parents dead?” shouted Emmy as Henuttawy tried in vain to quiet her.