by D. S. Murphy
“How is that different from the cockroaches at the hotel?” I asked.
“Because this is pretty. And it doesn’t move.”
Sitri bought a pair of antique daggers. We’d brought a small arsenal with us, but had left most of the heavy stuff at the hotel. I saw Puriel eyeing a long curved sword. Sitri handed him a short dagger instead and showed him how to conceal it under his jacket.
It wasn’t hard to find a guide. We picked out camels and the animals rose up grunting on shaky knees. The keepers had colorful strings tied to a piercing on their nostrils and tugged at them mercilessly.
“Careful,” I said, putting my hand against the soft flesh of the creature’s nose. “Be gentle.”
Sitri helped me up into the saddle. Puriel looked unsteady, frowning at his beast. But the camels were well trained and easy to ride, creating a train that walked slowly onto the immense stretch of white sand. A boy ran up to my camel with a can of orange Fanta, offering it up to me.
“Free!” He shouted. “Yes, Free! Already paid.” My brow was starting to sweat in the heat, so I reached down towards the can.
“It’s a trick,” the guide said. “After you drink it, he’ll charge you $10 for it.” He shouted at the boy, cracking his whip, then handed me a leather flask full of water instead. It was sour, but quenched my thirst.
The guide told us about the history as we passed by the pyramids. The size of the stones was unbelievable, some weighed hundreds of tons and were fit together so tightly you couldn’t fit a pin between them. At one time, they’d been covered in smooth white limestone and capped with a crown of pure gold.
“How do you get inside them?” Jessie asked.
“In classical times, the geographer Strabo visited and wrote, the entrance is concealed by a hidden stone that can be raised up. There was some kind of swinging stone mechanism that could be lifted easily. But then in the 9th century, Caliph Ma’mun forced his way through, burrowing straight through the rock.”
The guide pointed up to a rough hole in the rock. Not far away was the actual entrance, with a triangular shaped archway.
“Why tunnel through the rock, when the entrance was right there?”
“Rumor has it, he didn’t tunnel in, he tunneled out. The official story is, when he opened the pyramid for the first time, it was already empty. Others suspect he found something that he couldn’t remove through the passageway, so he tunneled through the limestone instead so he could remove his treasure.”
“There’s magic here,” I said suddenly, noticing the hairs on my arm rise. I narrowed my eyes at the structure, and could make out a diffuse white glow against the blue sky.
“Old magic,” I said.
“Can we go inside?” Sitri asked the guide.
“Tourists are not allowed.”
“Even with a hefty donation?” Sitri asked again, counting out hundred dollar bills.
“It is forbidden,” the guide said again, sadly this time as he watched Sitri put away the money.
I nodded at Puriel and Jessie. We’d just have to come back later and break in, though something told me Maddie’s lockpicking trick wasn’t going to cut it this time. It looked like the entrance was sealed with iron bars and heavy padlocks.
A man dressed in a full colorful tunic and turban was taking pictures with tourists. He caught my eye and abandoned the tourists to chase after me.
“Madame!” he said, making a heroic pose in the sand. “You take picture, yes? Picture together?”
“Sorry,” I said, “we’re not here for pictures.”
“Private tour?” he asked. “Where you want to go? Aziz knows everything. Best price.”
“Get lost,” Sitri growled at the man. He was persistent though, still walking at my side with one hand on my saddle. He combed his thin mustache with his fingers before trying again. This time he lowered his voice and leaned in like we were sharing a secret.
“You like history? New tomb, just discovered. Brand new, no tourists. Not yet excavated.”
I bit my lip. It had to be a trick. There was no way there was an unexplored spot at one of the biggest tourist traps in the world. On the other hand... from the research I’d done I knew only a fraction of the Giza complex had been excavated, and the Egyptian government actually refused to let foreign archaeologists explore newly discovered areas.
I made the mistake of looking down and making eye contact, and Aziz knew he had me.
“What is this tomb?” I asked. “Can you tell me more about it?”
“Temple of Khentkawes,” he said. “Oldest site in Giza. Older than the pyramids.”
“Is it far?”
“Close, very close, this way!” he said. “Follow Aziz, I will show you.”
He put his arm around our guide and I saw money changing hands.
My guide frowned, but took the money and shrugged.
“I think we’ve just been bought,” Puriel said.
“This guy must be confident he can get money out of us later.”
“You sure about this?” Sitri asked.
“Why not,” I asked. “We’re here already.”
Jessie beamed at me, excitement in her eyes. Exploring a lost tomb in Egypt was exactly the kind of adventure she’d been hoping for. We walked back towards the entrance, stopping to see the Great Sphinx.
“It’s smaller than I thought,” Jessie said, running her hand against the ancient stones making up its paw. It was the size of four buses end to end, but I knew what she meant. Compared to the massive pyramids, which were at one time the largest manmade structures in the world, the Sphinx didn’t seem quite as impressive.
We followed Aziz to a smaller temple not far away. From the outside, it looked like a step-pyramid, partially collapsed on one side. The base had been carved out of the bedrock, so it had a tight alley behind it, making a narrow chasm. The walls showed heavy erosion and rain damage. At the bottom, half buried in sand, and a few small portions at the top, were symbols that didn’t look like hieroglyphs.
“Yes,” Aziz said, pointing out the damage. “Very, very old.”
“Did Egypt used to get a lot of rain?”
“Yes,” Puriel said. “Years ago, it was a verdant valley.”
There was a light in Puriel’s eyes, and I realized suddenly he was speaking from personal experience. Puriel could have actually been here, ages ago. I shivered when I realized he would have been hunting roots and heirs.
Aziz pointed out a tall stone marker in Egyptian.
“What’s it say?” I asked.
“Mother of the king of north and south Egypt,” Sitri said. “That’s weird, it doesn’t have any specific name. Usually a monument like this would have the name of the ruler who funded it, and most of the Egyptian pharaohs were male.”
I raised my eyebrows. Was this what we were looking for? It seemed too easy. We followed Aziz around the corner and froze when I saw half a dozen large men holding crowbars. Like Aziz, they were wearing long tan tunics, with dark gray turbans and a thin white scarf. My pulse raced, thinking we were being led into an ambush, and I felt Sitri tense next to me.
But Aziz spoke quickly to them in Arabic and they turned towards the structure, prying out a large slab of stone from midway up the wall. It was only a few feet wide, unlike the massive stones at the base, but it still took four men to push and slide it out far enough to reveal the dark hold behind it. Aziz went in first, lowering himself down to a ledge, then turned back and stuck his face and hand through the hole. Sitri could just barely fit through the narrow entranceway, and had to wriggle his shoulders to squeeze inside. I followed him through, then stepped carefully into the darkness to make way for Puriel and Jessie. The inner chamber was pitch black, and even when Aziz lit a torch I could only see a few paces ahead of me.
He led us across the small room to a square hole in the floor, carved straight down into the limestone bedrock. A simple rope ladder hung down into the darkness.
“Is anyone else having second thoug
hts about this?” Jessie asked, biting her lip. I squeezed her arm. I thought she’d grown out of her fear of the dark, but then I guess we’re rarely presented with a true absence of light. This darkness was palpable. A thin beam of blue light cut through the chamber from the hole in the wall, and a small orange glow emanated from Aziz’s torch, but down in the pit the inky blackness was suffocating.
Halfway down the shaft, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face and had to feel around for the next rung in the shaky rope ladder. I let out a relieved breath when my feet finally touched stone again. The relief was short-lived however, when I saw Aziz cross the small room and disappear down another hole.
“Seriously?” Jessie asked. The air was cooler down here, but stale, which made me light-headed. But the light disappeared quickly with our guide, which made the vertical shaft glow with light. We descended into the second vertical shaft, going at least a hundred feet underground.
My skin tingled the deeper we got, but I didn’t know if it was because of the sudden damp and coolness, or the complete absence of natural light, or just the experience – this tunnel, like the sphinx above it, had been carved straight out of the bedrock, with perfectly straight, sharp edges. And it had been here, untouched, for thousands of years.
At the bottom, I stepped to the side and waited for the others. Aziz lit multiple torches around the room, and I exhaled slowly once my eyes adjusted to the light.
“Wow,” Jessie said beside me. “Totally worth it.”
A thin moat filled with crystal clear water surrounded a raised platform in the middle of the large room. Four large pillars framed the center area, erected from each corner, covered with symbols and hieroglyphs. In the middle of the platform was a massive black sarcophagus, nearly twelve feet long. It was carved from one piece of black granite with laser-like precision, and was much wider than the narrow chambers we’d just descended.
“Where did it even come from?” Jessie asked. “How did they even get it in here?”
“They certainly didn’t want anyone to get in,” Puriel said.
“Or out,” Sitri added. He stepped across the moat, running his hand along the side of the black box. His movements kicked pebbles into the clear water, and the ripples distorted our reflections in the torchlight.
“Careful,” Jessie said. “It could be booby-trapped.”
“This isn’t Indian Jones,” he said with a smirk.
“Can we open it?” I asked.
Aziz chuckled. “The lid itself is at least ten tons.”
“Is that a lot?” Jessie asked.
“It’s about 20,000 pounds,” Sitri said. “The average human can lift about 150 pounds.”
“So...” Jessie said. “We need about 200 more people?”
“Or a couple of unnaturally strong gentlemen,” I said. “Know any?”
Able told me some torches were as strong as twenty men... but Puriel was a leech now, and I’d seen Sitri fight off several hunters at the same time. Sitri shrugged and nodded at Puriel, who joined him on the other end of the platform.
“You can’t open it,” Aziz said suddenly, stepping back and looking at us with a terrified expression. Sitri and Puriel each grabbed one end of the lid and adjusted their stance.
“You’re right,” Sitri said. “At least, we can’t lift it. But I think we can slide it open. Ready?”
Puriel and Sitri gritted their teeth and pushed, their muscles tense and bulging. Hair appeared on Sitri’s neck and chest, and I knew he was half-shifting to increase his upper body mass. I covered my ears as a loud screeching noise filled the chamber. The grinding stones sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and I held my breath as the lid slid open slowly.
The sarcophagus belched a foul-smelling odor. Jessie plugged her nose and stepped backward, making a face. My stomach turned over, and I thought I was going to be sick. Sitri and Puriel twisted the lid to reveal what was inside. Aziz was the first to look. He leaned forward with his torch, no doubt expecting the riches and buried treasures the tombs of pharaohs were known for. Instead, a thin skeletal hand reached out and snapped his head from his neck.
***
There wasn’t even time to scream, just a silent snap like a branch breaking, followed by complete silence. Aziz’s head disappeared into the sarcophagus and I heard muffled chewing and slurping sounds.
Sitri shoved me behind him and pulled out the twin daggers he’d bought at the market. Puriel stepped in front of us, brandishing his short sword. Aziz’s torch had fallen to the ground and sputtered, plunging the room in darkness. Jessie grabbed it before it went out completely, just as Aziz’s half-devoured head popped out of the black box and bounced against the far wall. It floated in the water for a moment, and I could see the man’s cheek had been torn out and one eyeball was missing.
Slowly a dark shape crawled out of the hole, or slithered, more like – it had legs, but it was mostly skeleton and only a few bits of ragged flesh. The whole thing was black, the bones, the flesh, everything, like it had been boiled alive and then covered in tar. A dark essence drifted around it like an invisible cloak, gathering solidity until it was roughly humanoid.
A single eye in the creature’s ghastly eye-socket rotated to stare at us.
“I don’t think that’s Isis,” Jessie said.
“It’s a leech,” Puriel said, almost in awe. “It must be a thousand years old.”
The creature’s jaws were still moving, chewing the remains of our former tour guide. He swallowed and the bloody flesh fell through his ribs and disappeared into the sarcophagus.
“Not magic,” it hissed, spitting out the rest of Aziz and wiping its mouth.
“Feed me magic!” It reached towards me with its bony fingers, faster than I expected. Sitri jumped in front of me, but it tossed him against the far wall like a sack of potatoes. Puriel launched himself at the creature, gripping it by the shoulders.
“Mmmm, still some on you,” the leech said, licking Puriel’s cheek with a long, forked tongue. I searched for the leech’s thread, and my pulse spiked when I realized I couldn’t see it. The tomb was so dark it was hard to see anything, and the brightness of the torch left spots in my vision. I squinted my eyes until they were almost shut. There was Sitri’s, a bright yellow. And Puriel’s, gray but easily distinguishable against the midnight black. Even Jessie’s thread stood out clearly, much fainter but easy enough to see this deep underground, with no other humans. I could even see the remains of Aziz’s thread – I stared at it for a second, startled. The frayed ends looked like they had been torn roughly in half. The jagged edges floated in opposite directions, out of my field of vision.
Sitri was back up, and he slammed his fist against the creature’s jaw, knocking it off. It flew across the room and shattered against the far wall, spraying loose teeth that bounced around the room before plopping into the water. The creature’s one eye blazed with fury, as it flew out of its stone prison and pinned both Sitri and Puriel against the stone wall, squeezing their throats with its long, bony claws.
That’s when I saw it. Coal black, so dark it disappeared into the void surrounding us, but I could see it in relief, from the light around it. I grabbed the leech’s thread and yanked backward. It gasped in surprise, turning towards me. I looped the thread around its neck, pulling it back against the sarcophagus and pinning it there.
“That’s enough of that,” I said, holding the thread tightly. I could feel him resisting, it felt like I’d just caught a shark on a fishing line. I wished I was wearing my glove, but I hadn’t had time to pull it out of my bag.
“Finish him,” Puriel said, his voice raspy.
“Wait,” the leech growled. “You seek Isis. Spare me and I will show you where she is.”
“He lies,” Sitri said, “he must have overheard us coming in.”
The tension ceased, as the leech stopped struggling. I squared my shoulders, making sure I had a firm grip on his thread, and took a step forward.
“Tell us,” I s
aid. “And I’ll think about it.”
“She was here,” the leech said. “Isis and the Fallen, we lived in harmony. She used our strength to build the wonders. We served her willingly, fallen goddess, like us. Free, but scorned, like us. Heartbroken. She stole the magic, she shared the magic. Power, glory.”
“Stole it, from who?” Jessie asked. The leech ignored her, distracted by his memories.
“The thirst, the thirst grew great. Not even she could control us. Eventually, she retreated, she built up a new society. Order, restraint, honor.” He scoffed, spitting dark phlegm into the water, it sank like poison, unfurling into a black cloud. “She left us. Buried in the desert. Buried alive.”
I looked back into the sarcophagus. For the first time I realized there were deep scratches on the inside of the sarcophagus. I felt a stab of pity for the creature.
“But where did she go?” Sitri asked.
“Answer him!” I tugged again at the creature’s string. He pulled back, making me stumble forward. I braced my feet and wrapped his thread around the back of my hand for leverage.
“Alexandria,” the leech grunted finally. “The shining city.”
“It’s mostly a ruin now,” Sitri said. “How do we know she’s still there?”
“She was there when I was here,” the leech said.
“Which was when exactly?” Jessie asked. “A thousand years ago?”
“Longer,” the leech said, and I was sure I saw him grin, even with his lower jaw removed. Maybe it was the crinkle of humor around his one eye. My stomach soured, as I realized – not for the first time – that this was Puriel’s fate. He’d fallen, not once, but twice. First by refusing Zeus’s direct command to kill me, then again by allowing himself to feed on magic, igniting the unquenchable bloodthirst. I’d been telling myself that Puriel was different, that he was stronger... but what if he ended up like this. Immortal, but too dangerous to be set free. Centuries from now, he could be rotting bones in a stone box, an animated corpse buried in darkness.
The leech used my distraction to launch itself at me. It got halfway before Sitri stabbed a dagger through its one good eye. The creature screamed and reeled backward, stumbling in the water with a knife in its face. Puriel swiped his sword, severing the head from the body, then kicked it so hard the legs disconnected from its hip and spine. The pieces of the leech sank to the bottom of the water and lay still.