Rats scampered ahead of me, the skittering sound of their nails scraping stone. Their menacing shadows with long tails danced around the walls of the narrow passage in the lamplight.
I could hardly breathe. The space seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. The walls and ceiling were closing in on me. Pressing the air out of my lungs. Pressing in from all sides. Suffocating me.
I stumbled down some stone stairs and propped Tuthmosis against a wall so I could catch my breath and listen for the sound of my father’s footsteps. But the silence was broken only by the squeak of rats.
What if he didn’t follow? What if I could never find my way out?
Tuthmosis began murmuring.
“Are you awake?” His head lolled against my shoulder as I pushed him upright. “I can’t carry you any longer. Do you hear me? Wake up!” I shook him urgently and then, without thinking, I slapped him. A sharp slap on both cheeks.
What? Had I lost my senses? He was the crown prince—son of King Amenhotep and Queen Tiy of Egypt. I should’ve been bowing to him. Yet here I was, slapping him. I could be put to death for much less than this!
I held the lamp up to his face to see if I’d left a mark. Both cheeks were red. His eyelids were fluttering. What if he knew?
For a brief moment he opened his eyes and then closed them again.
“No! I beg you! Please, please, wake up!”
He finally looked back at me. I held the lamp closer. Beneath the dark lashes and the rims of black kohl, his eyes were a strange shade of . . . blue? “Tuthmosis, can you see anything? Have you been blinded? Your eyes are odd. They’re blue!”
He nodded with his lids half-closed. “I know.”
“Impossible! Egyptians don’t have blue eyes.”
He rested his head against the wall and sighed. His breathing became deep and even.
I shook him firmly. “Don’t you dare go back to sleep again. We have to find a way out of here.”
He shivered and started to grumble about something, then demanded, “Are you one of the palace slaves? It’s cold here. Fetch my cloak. Where have you put it?”
“I’m not a slave! Listen! Wosret tried to poison you.”
He shook his head like a dog trying to shake off water and then turned and looked at me as if he were emerging from a thick mist.
“Do you hear me? Wosret tried to poison you.”
“Wosret?” His eyes opened wide. “Don’t be ridiculous! Wosret is the highest of high priests. He’s my royal mentor.”
“Don’t you remember anything?”
Tuthmosis frowned. “A ritual. It had to do with my mother’s death. Yes. Now I remember. I was attending her embalming. Wosret offered me a chalice to drink for comfort.”
“Comfort? He wanted you to drink poison. Listen . . .” I told him quickly about my father’s replacing the poison with another potion and replacing him with the dead boy’s body.
He shook his head. “Impossible! You’ve made it up. Where are my servants? Who are you? Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m trying to help you. If it wasn’t for my father, I wouldn’t be bothered with you!”
The prince lifted his head sharply and glared back at me. “I could have you put to death for treason.”
“Treason?” I hissed back at him. “I’m trying to help! You don’t seem to understand the danger. Look around at where you are. Why do you think you’re here? Wosret wants you dead. But stay here, then, if you don’t believe me. I can’t waste any more time. I’ll find my own way out.”
He gave me an icy look. I bowed my head and went on hurriedly. “I implore you. They’ll be coming after us soon. And my father ordered me to do this.”
“How do I know you speak the truth?”
“By the white feather of Maat, every word is true. You must believe me.” I glanced back quickly at the dark passageway. “My father is supposed to follow. But he hasn’t. We have to escape before the high priests come after us. Our lives depend on it. But I can’t see an exit.”
As I swung the lamp higher, my heart jumped. Wosret suddenly lurched up through the flickering shadows in front of me in his sneering jackal mask. Then I laughed as I realized I was staring into the eyes of a painted Anubis on the wall.
We were in a small vault.
“This must lead to a burial chamber,” I muttered.
“How do you know?”
I pointed at the ceiling. “There’s a painting of Nut, goddess of the sky, lighting the darkness. And here on the wall is Anubis touching the mouth of a mummy with an adze. This is the antechamber before a burial chamber . . . before the final journey to Ra. There has to be a hidden door. A mouth to the afterlife.”
Tuthmosis seemed distracted. He pointed at the floor. “Those turquoise tiles . . . look at the way they’re arranged. Three rows of ten. Like the thirty squares in a game of Senet.”
“Senet?” I reached into my girdle pouch and brought out the board my father had given me. “My father said this would help. He said to be mindful of its messages.”
The cedar-wood box was long and narrow with a turquoise and ivory inlay. On one side was a drawer. I slid it open. Inside were carved agate pieces. Tuthmosis picked up one and rubbed it between his fingers. Then he started to arrange the pieces across the board.
“We’re wasting time . . .”
“No, I’m trying to remember something. Senet is a game of passage. Your father must’ve given it to you for a reason.” He looked up suddenly. “That’s it! A game of passage—a journey! The game follows a journey along the thirty squares. Some squares are more important than others. Look.”
I held the lamp above the box. Drawings were incised into the turquoise squares and inlaid with ebony. Each drawing was precise and perfect. In one square was the ibis-headed Thoth, in another a figure of a man in a boat with his head turned backward. A frog. A scarab beetle. A symbol for a maze or labyrinth. A symbol of water. In the last square, an image of Ra.
“It makes no sense. It’s just a game. We haven’t time—”
“Games have a beginning and an end.”
“What’s that got to do with the tiles on the floor?”
“The floor is a Senet board. See, there are thirty tiles in three rows of ten. We have to find the end square.”
“Why?”
“That’s where your pieces leave the board. Where you escape to meet Ra. It’s marked with the image of Ra. If we find the end tile, we’ve found our escape.”
I brushed aside the dirt and rat droppings with my sandal and bent down and peered at the squares. “Nothing. Not even the tiniest mark or pattern. This isn’t a Senet board. They’re ordinary tiles. And I was wrong. This doesn’t lead to a burial chamber. We’re in a dead end. We’ve missed a turn. We need to retrace our steps.”
“No! Find the Ra square. There are only two possibilities for it. Facing from either end, it’ll be the bottom left square.”
I gave him a hard look as I traced my fingers around the edges of the left tile in the bottom row nearest me. He was good at giving orders. “See! Nothing, except rat droppings!”
“Try the other side.”
I went to the opposite end and held the lamp high. The turquoise color of the left tile was worn. My eyes flew to the narrow, shadowed gap around the tile’s edges. Then I caught Tuthmosis’s knowing look and was forced to admit, “You’re right. This has to be it!”
5
THE COBRA
GODDESS
The tile was heavy. Eventually I managed to loosen it and ease it aside. Below was a gap. I held up the lamp and followed rough steps that led into a dark, narrow space. They sloped downward and ended against a stone wall.
“What’s there?” Tuthmosis groped his way down the steps toward me. I could see by the way his foot turned in that the bone had set badly.
“Another dead end. The passage is sealed with a stone wall.”
He traced his fingertips across the stones and stopped on one particular
rock. “There’s a pattern here. Lines crosshatched. Like a web. It’s a symbol for a labyrinth. It could be a sign. What did he mean?”
I frowned at him.
“Your father. When he gave you the Senet board, he said to be mindful of its messages.”
“Oh, that!” I shrugged. “Maybe this is the entrance to a labyrinth.” I began to claw at the edges of the stone that was marked, searching for a place to loosen it. “It’s useless. My fingertips are bleeding.”
“We need something sharp. What do you have?”
My hand felt for my girdle pouch. There was my throw-stick that Katep had carved, but I didn’t want it damaged, and my mother’s bronze mirror. I’d snatched it up before leaving the Temple of Sobek. The reflecting disk was a large moon held up by Hathor, so that when I looked into it, Hathor’s face showed directly below my own. She gave me courage.
“There’s this.” I drew it out from my pouch.
“You took a mirror to my mother’s embalming?”
“I meant no disrespect.”
He laughed. “My mother would’ve been delighted. She spent hours in front of her mirror every day while her attendants arranged her face and finery. Now, hurry. Dig!”
I gave him a look. He spoke like someone used to giving orders and having them obeyed. I’m not your servant is what I wanted to snap in reply. Instead, I jabbed Hathor’s feet at the stone’s edge and sent her a silent prayer to ask for help in holding my tongue.
My hands were raw and scraped by the time the stone eventually loosened. I wiped them against my tunic and rubbed the mirror clean.
He shrugged as he saw me do it. “Not quite as perfect as before, but the face that looks into it will still be perfect.”
I bit my tongue. He’d given no thought to asking my name but felt free to give me orders and pass comments about my face.
He put his shoulder to the stone and shoved. Then he edged his body halfway through the opening.
I held up the lamp. “What do you see?”
He was silent.
“Tuthmosis . . . ?”
“My father’s tomb.”
“It can’t be.”
He turned toward me. “It is! I played here while it was being built. I came when he inspected it with his chief vizier. I watched the vaults being carved into the mountain, the walls being smoothed, the sculptors at work, the artists as they painted, and the scribes writing holy spells on the walls. It took more than ten years. It’s his tomb!”
I squinted through the lamplight at him. “How can you be so sure? It could be any king’s tomb. They all look the same.”
He gave me a look. “Do you think I don’t know the exact details of my own father’s tomb? His sarcophagus is carved of red granite.”
I shook my head. “A sarcophagus is always carved from graphite.”
“His wasn’t!”
“Let me see.” I pushed him aside and began squeezing through the narrow opening.
He grabbed hold of my tunic. “Stop! Don’t dare enter.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll destroy the tomb’s sanctity. My father won’t reach the afterlife.”
I turned fiercely. “It’s our only escape. From the tomb there’ll be a passageway back to Thebes, surely. We have to enter.”
Tuthmosis stared back. In the lamplight his blue eyes reflected like cold moonstones. For a moment I hesitated. Then I tossed my head. “You have to trust me,” I said, and as an afterthought I added, “And you might ask my name.”
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “What is it?”
“Isikara. And you should know—just because you’re the son of a king doesn’t make me your slave.”
Our eyes stayed locked. Then he said my name slowly. “Isikara . . . we both have to learn to trust each other.” He turned and went ahead.
I followed him through the opening, edging my way into the darkness, keeping one hand on the wall, feeling the sharp stone under my fingertips.
There in the lamplight stood the silent sarcophagus. My breath caught. The prince had been right. It was red. Red as oxblood.
I shuddered, thinking of what lay inside. The golden mummy case, and within it another golden case, and another and another until in the final one, the mummy of King Amenhotep, wrapped in the finest of linens, decked with jewels, his arms across his chest holding the golden pharaoh’s crook, his face covered with a golden mask, on his forehead the cobra ready to strike.
We were standing in the very heart of the burial vaults of Thebes. Beyond our tiny pool of light, the darkness stretched upward to a ceiling painted deep blue and scattered with stars. Around us, other vast, empty spaces disappeared into thick blackness.
Tuthmosis turned abruptly. His footsteps echoed against some stone steps that led between two huge square pillars into an area with more pillars. I jumped back as King Amenhotep loomed in front of us, staring straight into my eyes. He wore a magnificent girdle belt set with real lapis lazuli and turquoise. A shining gold and obsidian pectoral plate hung against his chest. On his brow was the striking cobra. Written above were these words:
Beware the cobra goddess who guards the royal king and his treasures. The cobra goddess anoints his head with her flames. Through her, the terror that he inspires is made more. Such is her power!
She sat on the pharaoh’s brow with her hood flaring, ready to spit poison at all his enemies. Ready to burn them with her fiery glare. But she was a fickle goddess. Not just the defender of the pharaoh. She could be against him as well. Her bite could cause the pharaoh’s death.
As I stood there, I felt I was calling up her anger. I clasped my arms quickly across my chest and held my hands to my throat for protection against her deadly bite.
“Hurry, Isikara!”
On another wall Hathor was drawing Amenhotep along, wearing an exquisite dress of turquoise beads clinging in a cloudlike net to the curves of her body, carrying the moon on her head, a turquoise broad collar around her neck, flaring cobras with burning carnelian eyes dangling dangerously from her ears. I begged her for protection as I passed.
Beyond her, my eye caught a glimmer and sparkle of things in great heaps in some side chambers.
Tuthmosis saw my glance. “It’s my father’s treasure. His gold chariot for his ride across the heavens. His gold bark to carry him along the river of the Underworld. His throne embellished with ivory, bloodstones, and lapis lazuli. His gilded cheetah bed. His servants are all there, too, sculpted in terra-cotta, and his gold hunting bow, along with a gold statue of his favorite hunting dog embedded with emerald eyes.”
“So much?” My whisper echoed into the dark spaces.
“Even more. Rolls of fine linen, leopard-skin cloaks, gold-bladed jewel-encrusted daggers, headrests made of glass, chests filled with golden goblets, scarabs, amulets, necklaces, bracelets, breastplates, rings set with stones of every shade of the rainbow, alabaster jars filled with the best wine and olive oil and caskets of ox and goose meat. Not just his favorite chariot. More than six chariots. All has been catered for.” Tuthmosis nodded toward some paintings of men bearing gifts. “The princes of Syria, Palestine, Babylon, and Nubia lavished him with turquoise, amethysts, perfumed oils, gold, ivory, and skins. And here it all is!” He swept his arm around the darkness.
We entered into a passageway and were prevented from going farther by a well shaft carved into a sharp right turn. The shaft was flush with the walls and wide enough to prevent anyone from jumping across it. Its sides fell straight down into the heart of the mountain. Deep below, I caught an oily black reflection of water. There were no footholds to give access to the opposite side.
“How’ll we cross?”
“Stone slabs originally bridged the gap. They’ve been removed to prevent anyone from reaching my father’s treasure. But there’s another secret way out. My father sculpted a series of vaults, with sliding doors and secret passageways meant only for his trusted vizier so he could enter and inspect the well and ensure it c
ollected and prevented water from running down the passages into the burial chamber.”
“It can’t be so secret if workmen knew of it.”
“Each team of builders worked on only a section of the secret labyrinth. No one but my father’s vizier knew the final plan.”
“No one but the vizier and you!”
Tuthmosis ducked behind a small pillar. A statue of Anubis glared at us from a niche. A metal collar around Anubis’s neck was linked by a heavy chain to a metal ring in the stone floor. The prince pushed against the niche and it swung open.
“A secret door?”
He nodded. “It swings back to rest in place again.” He was about to allow it to shut behind us.
“Wait! What about my father? How’ll he know it’s a secret door?”
Tuthmosis pulled off one of his sandals and wedged it in place so that a small gap showed.
I’d lost track of time. It was hard to tell how long we’d been in the passageways. Perhaps more than a day, even. “My father should’ve caught up with us by now.”
But Tuthmosis was already hurrying ahead. We were in a cavern of chambers with crypts and niches and winding passages leading into darkness in every direction. Our lamp had no way of casting light in such a vast space. Vaults and stairs and images of gods and statues receded into the gloom. Nothing moved. Just deathly silence.
I knew about labyrinths. They were complicated spaces planned to protect burial chambers. Passageways wound backward and forward in bewildering patterns meant to confuse. Doorways showed the way ahead and at the same time tricked a thief to go back along the same passage. Once, Katep and I had secretly entered one but hadn’t dared to go beyond the first chamber.
“Which way?” I whispered.
“Here.” Tuthmosis guided my hand across a stone wall. I felt three indentations on the corner of the wall.
“I carved these at every point where a decision has to be made. The passageway goes all the way to the Great River so my father’s ka can escape into the afterlife.”
Tuthmosis edged forward and I followed close behind him, my heart thumping in my ears. It wasn’t as easy as he made out. I had a moment of doubt each time he felt for the three marks. This wasn’t the game he’d played as a child, where he could call out and his father’s vizier would come. In the twists and turns of the labyrinth, we could be lost forever.
Eye of the Moon Page 4