The Buried Pyramid (Imhotep Book 2)

by Jerry Dubs

  The student, a young girl, her black hair pulled back in a short ponytail, had dusky skin, a broad face, typical of native Egyptians, but a smaller mouth with thin lips set below lively green eyes. Smiling at Akila, the girl had said, “Hi, my name is Brianna.”

  Swirling across the space between Brianna and Akila the sound waves seemed to curl in on themselves, nesting within like the spiral curls of a conch and drawing Akila into a strange, unlikely world.

  Suddenly it was not just possible, but probable that Tim was telling the truth. His story of traversing time and living in the distant past was no less likely than his having the ability to see into the future with detailed clarity.

  Sitting, staring into space and into her own mind, Akila didn’t hear the door open behind Brianna. Unconsciously she sensed motion, she heard noise, she saw more motion and suddenly Ahmes was kneeling by her chair.

  “Akila, are you harmed?” he asked, his worry leading him to revert to ancient Egyptian.

  As his question settled over her, Akila thought that she should ask him to speak in Arabic. But before Akila could speak, Brianna put her hands on the desk and facing Ahmes said, “I came in and greeted her. She stopped moving.”

  He nodded and then froze. She had spoken in the language of the Two Lands.

  Brianna

  “What?” Brianna asked in English.

  Akila, still seated, and Ahmes, kneeling beside her, looked up at Brianna from the other side of Akila’s desk.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Ahmes recovered before Akila, who was still thinking about Tim knowing about the desk a year before it was possible. Standing Ahmes smiled and shrugged. “The language you were using,” he said calmly, evenly, “where did you learn it?”

  “My mom,” Brianna said, suddenly defensive. “She said it was our secret language and we couldn’t use it in front of anyone. Then I heard you use it just now, and I didn’t think … ” Brianna looked down at the floor and then looked back at Ahmes. “Actually, I didn’t think it was a real language.”

  The tone of her voice and the way she stood, reminded Ahmes of his little sister when she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have done, usually rooting through Imhotep’s bag of medicines and bandages and notes.

  Smiling reassuringly, Ahmes came around the desk and offered his hand to Brianna. “My name is Ahmes,” he said in English.

  “I’m Brianna,” she said, taking his hand.

  Twenty-seven-years old, Ahmes was older than the friends he had made at Helwan University. Although he was handsome in a working man’s way, his features strong and blunt, his most irresistible quality was his sincerity. Friendly and unjaded, he was animated by irrepressible enthusiasm and empathy.

  His sure hand, his eye for color and composition, his understanding of movement and energy, his memory for scenes and his confidence to change them to suit his eye all combined to make him an unparalleled artist. Yet he was playful and accessible, not a brooding, pretentious prima donna.

  The girls loved him. They wanted to be seen with him. They wanted to be with him. They wanted to be his.

  However, Ahmes found the girls he had met to be grasping and hungry. They were eager to be entertained, keen to follow fashion. Searching for their own identity in others, they were uncomfortable in their own skins.

  And so, unfailingly polite and sensitive, Ahmes had remained unentangled.

  But the unconscious barriers he had erected around himself evaporated when he touched Brianna’s hand. The warmth of her skin, the pressure of her grip, the long moment that held them in thrall until they reluctantly withdrew from each other created an immediate intimacy that made them both blush.

  They stood silently, looking at each other, each wondering if the other had felt the same ethereal connection.

  “I should get Tim,” Akila said.

  ***

  Instead, Akila drove them all to the Blue Lotus where they found Bakr kneeling beside Tim, pinning the hem of a galabia.

  “There’s a group coming in from the U.K. They’re evaluating different sites for grants. I thought I’d go native and pour on the charm,” Tim explained over his shoulder as Akila entered the lobby. He was standing on a short stool, his back to the door, but he had recognized the sound of Akila’s Sonic.

  “What a minute,” he said over his shoulder. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  “Stop moving,” Bakr mumbled.

  Then, twisting his neck to look at the legs and feet approaching him, Bakr saw an unfamiliar, third pair of legs. Spitting pins into his hand he got to his feet.

  “What a pleasant surprise, Akila. Ahmes,” he said, nodding at them but looking at the stranger. He started to brush his hands, discovered the nest of straight pins and frowned briefly. Then he bowed to Brianna and said, “Welcome to the Blue Lotus Guest House, my name is Bakr.”

  “Hi, I’m Brianna,” she answered, returning a polite nod.

  His back to the group as he stepped from the low stool Tim paused at the sound of Brianna’s voice. Smiling to himself, his back still toward her, he said in ancient Egyptian, “Welcome and long life, Brianna.”

  “Long life and prosperity to you,” she gave the ritual answer without thought.

  Turning now, Tim clapped his hands in pleasure and smiled at Akila and then at Brianna. He stepped toward her, the back of his galabia trailing on the floor.

  “Hello, I’m Tim Hope,” he said.

  Brianna stared at him for a moment and then said, “Oh, my god, oh, my god, you’re real!” Then she covered her face and began to cry.

  Moving instinctively to protect Brianna, Ahmes wrapped an arm around her and pressed her head against his chest.

  Akila looked from them to Tim, questions in her eyes. Tim blinked, confused by Brianna’s response. Bakr started to step toward Brianna and Ahmes, then stopped. He turned toward Akila, then swirled to look questioningly at Tim. When no one offered any suggestions, he said, “I’ll make coffee.”

  As Bakr hurried away, Tim walked over to Brianna and laid a hand on her back. “I’m sorry if I frightened you,” he said in English.

  She shook her head against Ahmes’ shoulder. “No, it isn’t that” she said, her voice muffled. Then she pulled away from Ahmes.

  Looking up at Tim through her tears she said, “My mother told me all of these stories.” She stopped to wipe her eyes. “I guess I never really, really believed them. But here you are and you speak that language and your name is Tim Hope and you look like she said you look and … ” she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Tim.

  “You saved my mother’s life.”

  ***

  They sat around one end of the dining room table, a rectangular tray with sweet rolls and coffee at the far end of it. Bakr hovered over them until Tim patted the back of the empty chair beside him.

  “Sit down, Bakr,” Tim said.

  “No, no, I shouldn’t,” Bakr said as he pulled out the chair and sat, leaning forward so he wouldn’t miss anything.

  “Your mother?” Tim asked Brianna. She was seated across the table beside Ahmes.

  Sitting at the end of the table, Akila felt a bewildering mix of happiness at the thought that Tim hadn’t been lying or delusional and fear that her understanding of reality was being shattered.

  “Yes, Diane Maclaine,” Brianna said.

  Tim closed his eyes and bowed his head. So Diane survived, he thought. She isn’t the skeletal remains they found in Brian’s tomb. Brian ... Brianna!

  “And you’re named for Brian,” Tim said.

  Brianna nodded. “Mom said you and Brian saved her life.”

  “I don’t know what Diane told you about Brian, but he was magnificent. He is the one who saved Diane’s life. I just helped her get back to this time.”

  Silent tears began to run down Brianna’s cheeks. Bakr pushed himself away from the table and, returning a moment later, he offered a towel to Brianna. Ahmes took it and gently p
atted the tears from Brianna’s face.

  Tim thought back to his previous visit to the modern world. Brianna and Akila had been so secretive. They had known so much about him and yet told him nothing. He wondered if the three of them had decided to keep their entangled relationships secret so that the future wouldn’t be contaminated by the past, or the past by the future.

  “I often thought about Diane,” Tim said. “I worried about how the, uh, things that happened to her would affect her. I hoped that she would be OK once she got back to her family and to her own time.”

  Thinking about the pain and abuse Diane had suffered from Siamun, Tim was suddenly struck by the way Ahmes leaned protectively toward Brianna and he recognized again that her face held echoes of the past in it.

  She was conceived when Siamun raped Diane, he realized.

  “She’s better, I mean, she’s fine,” Brianna said, sniffing and wiping her eyes. “She had a very hard time.” She looked across the table at Tim. “I can’t believe that you are real. That you are really here. I mean, Mom said that you became Imhotep.”

  “I did. I am Imhotep.” He looked at Akila. “And I am Tim Hope.”

  “And you really traveled into the past, like Mom said?”

  Tim nodded. “I lived there for seventeen years.”

  “And my mother really, really was in ancient Egypt?”

  As Tim nodded again, a small shadow of worry began to crowd into his thoughts.

  “Brianna,” he said, “what happened to Diane?”

  Imhotep Returns

  Her legs wobbling from fear and weakness, Diane leaned against the false doorway that had just closed behind her. Swirls of dust curled up from the floor where the doorway had slid across the stone floor.

  Holding her breath, she listened. On the other side of the stone wall Tim Hope, or Imhotep as he was now called, would be painting over the hieroglyphs above the doorway’s lintel. She listened for the sound of his voice or the bristle of brush against stone.

  She closed her eyes, felt them flood with tears and stood there shaking as her body began to purge itself of the horror of the last week. She had been taken captive, beaten and raped. She had watched Brian sacrifice his life to save her. And she had killed a man. Now she had pushed through a stone doorway into the black tomb where her horrible misadventure had begun.

  Turning to her left she saw that the hallway that wound back around to the tomb entrance was littered now with fallen stone. She raised the match she had lit and saw that the tomb paintings here were faded, and in front of her lay a large stone sarcophagus. The stone coffin lid was raised from the floor supported by stacked cement blocks.

  She looked down into the empty cavity beneath the lid.

  Brian’s mummified remains were gone.

  The match burned close to her finger and she dropped it. She had two more matches.

  Shaking her head she looked away. This isn’t real, she told herself. But the ache in her heart, the pain in her body, the bruises on her face and back all told her that it was.

  She struck the second of her three matches and worked her away around the empty sarcophagus toward the doorway that led to the treasure storeroom and, she hoped, to an iron spiral staircase that led back to her life.

  ***

  “She found her way to the embassy and told them what had happened,” Brianna said. “They didn’t believe her. I mean, of course they didn’t believe her. No one did,” she added quietly.

  “They believed that she had been attacked. Her face was bruised, her lips were cut and swollen and one eye was swollen shut. They brought a doctor to her – she was terrified of leaving the embassy – and she told him a different story. She said that she had been kidnapped and beaten when she tried to escape. She told them that Brian had been killed by the kidnappers.

  “They brought in the police. She told them that when she and Brian had been kidnapped they had had hoods tied over their heads and so she didn’t know where they had been taken. The police didn’t believe the kidnapping story. They thought that Mom and Brian had had a falling out. They didn’t come right out and accuse her of killing Brian, but that was the direction their investigation took.

  “Pap, her dad, came over and helped her get out of Egypt. She got home and then things completely fell apart for her.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tim said.

  Brianna nodded, swallowing tears. “She started seeing a therapist, but then I was born and,” she looked down at her hands, “it was obvious that I wasn’t Brian’s child.”

  Everyone stared into their coffee cups for a moment and then Brianna said, “Mom kept a journal. Her therapist told her to write everything down. If she saw the words, if she processed them by writing them, then she would see that the story they told wasn’t real.

  “That’s what the therapist told her. But it didn’t work. She broke down and was institutionalized for a while. She had periods where she told them that she knew that she hadn’t really traveled back in time and then, when she seemed ‘normal’ they reduced her meds and she would start to think about it. And then talk about it. And then ... ”

  Akila squeezed Brianna’s hand. “You don’t have to … ”

  “No, it’s OK” Brianna said. She looked at Tim, “I found her journal the last time she was put away. I read it. If she really did go back in time ... ”

  “She did,” Tim said firmly.

  “No one believed her.” Brianna repeated quietly. “None of us. I mean it’s impossible.”

  “She did,” Tim repeated. “I did.

  “I remember the first time I saw Diane. She and Brian were walking across the sand near the Step Pyramid. She was wearing a T-shirt with Sylvester the Cat on it. I remember worrying about her skin because she had red hair. Then she and Brian disappeared into the Tomb of Kanakht and didn’t come back.

  “The next time I saw her was in the time of King Djoser at the Feast of Re in His Barge at Iunu. She was being held captive by Djefi, the priest of Sobek. I spoke to her, but,” he remembered that she had been drunk, dealing with an impossible situation by escaping into alcohol, “but I couldn’t get her away.” He closed his eyes remembering how close he had come to being captured by Djefi.

  “Does this match what she had written?”

  Brianna nodded.

  “I ran into Brian later,” Tim said, “at To-She, but we couldn’t get to Diane. She was always guarded by someone. Eventually I joined the king’s retinue and traveled with him. Diane was kept hidden from everyone. It wasn’t until much later that I saw her again.

  “It was in the wadi outside the entrance to the Tomb of Kanakht.”

  Brianna nodded. “She wrote about what happened there over and over again.”

  Tim hesitated, uncertain what to say about the murderous scene.

  “Tell me about it,” Brianna said. “I want to hear if what you say matches what she wrote.”

  “I was there, too,” Ahmes said softly

  ***

  Siamun had a disfigured ear and he stank of sweat and onions. His loincloth was dirty and stained, his face and head unshaven and he gripped Ahmes' arm with a hand that felt to the eight-year-old boy like the claws of a vulture.

  They were standing in the wadi in front of the tomb that was being built for Kanakht, vizier to King Djoser. Ahmes’ father, Paneb, was standing a few feet away, beside Djefi, the ponderously fat prophet of the great crocodile god Sobek.

  “Show me how they got here,” Djefi commanded in his high-pitched voice.

  Paneb pointed to the tomb entrance. “Through there.”

  Suddenly, Siamun slapped Ahmes on the back of his head. The man’s hand felt like a tree limb, hard and unyielding. Ahmes cried out in pain and surprise. He tried to jerk away from the man, but the talon-grasp was too strong.

  After his father and Djefi entered the tomb Siamun dragged Ahmes to the palm shelter where he and his father used to rest in the shade to eat their lunches.

  ***

  “Your
mother was there, Brianna,” Ahmes said softly. “There were four guards, but they were not hard men like Siamun. They let her rest in the shade. I sat with her.

  “I remembered the first time, the only other time I had seen her, it was just after she and Brian had arrived in the Two Lands. Brian was large, full of life. Your mother was beautiful. Her skin was so white, her hair the color of a dying fire. My father and I were sure that she and Brian were gods.

  “That day in the wadi, she was exhausted and beaten. But she was still kind to me, telling me that everything would be OK. Then Siamun returned, Djefi had sent him and my father back into town to find drawings of the tomb hieroglyphs. He returned with Lord Imhotep, a rope around his neck and a knife at his back.

  “Lord Imhotep had stayed with my family when he had first arrived in the Two Lands. Then he had started to travel with Hetephernebti, the king’s sister and priestess to Re. We heard stories about him.

  “I had seen him save my sister from a scorpion’s sting and we heard that he had rescued a wbt-priestess from the wasting disease and later that he had healed prince Teti’s arm. There were constant rumors of Lord Imhotep working miracles.

  “That day in the wadi he was a prisoner of Siamun and Djefi, yet he was calm.” Ahmes looked across the table at Tim, awe and respect in his eyes.

  “I remember being very, very frightened, Ahmes,” Tim said.

  Ahmes shook his head. “Siamun was nervous, looking over his shoulder constantly. Djefi was shaking, his voice wavering. My father could barely stand from fright. But you were calm. I remember taking heart in your courage. You were a god, I was sure of it. I know, I know,” Ahmes said raising his hand.

  He looked down at Brianna. “You mother, too, I thought she was a goddess. So caring about me, so gentle, even in her distress. Then Djefi took Lord Imhotep into the tomb and Brian appeared. He came as Horus, descending from the sky on silent wings. He attacked Siamun and would have defeated him, but one of the guards tripped him. Siamun was quickly atop him, a knife in his hands.