As Wserkaf lit the last of four torches in the larger room, he turned to see her pushing the thin rectangular slab almost all the way shut, but putting the puzzle tool inside the hole on the other side. Both stood and stared in awe.
“Just like the legends,” he breathed.
The chamber was as free of images as the exterior had been. There were no wall paintings or carved images of gods. Just as they had been described in Hordjedtef’s tale of wonder were the eight stone tombs in two rows, one group of four on the left, and the other four on the right. Characters graced the surface of each of the boxes.
“Priests names?” Khentie reverently whispered.
“No,” Wse whispered. “But, this can’t be,” he recognized the inscription on the first.
“Nun on this one,” he moved to the other box in the pair. “Naunet on this one… Lord and Lady of the formless first ocean.” He didn’t need to look at Khentie’s face to know it had gone as pale as she had become speechless.
“The gods themselves lie here?” her voice became prayerful and reverent. Underneath her words, he heard her begin to speak as if praying: “I belong to the Followers of Re, at the fore of the Cavern of Nun.” Then, she paused. “Wse, we can’t be in here if this really is the Cavern of Nun. We brought no offerings.”
Wserkaf heard her words, but had moved to the next pair of sealed tombs. “Kuk and Kauket of the dark world beyond worlds and the bringer of twilight…” his hand moved forward to smooth the surface of the next pair hesitantly. “Hu and Hauhet of infinity and eternity… Amun and Amaunet the creators.”
“Wse, stop,” Khentie pleaded. “These are the original gods resting places. I can’t believe they are so forgotten. We should go.”
Years before, Wserkaf had paid little attention to anything other than just getting past the door. Now, everything about this journey had a different meaning.
It’s so quiet in here, he reflected, it’s a holy place but us empty-handed doesn’t seem to matter. It’s like home in a way. I feel joy now that I am here. She’s afraid because she thinks the gods are about wrath if they aren’t respected, but… He noticed the chill they experienced when they reached the first room had vanished. By contrast, this room felt warm and welcoming as a memory of his childhood when his mother sang to him. That feeling, not the fear of dissatisfied gods, pushed him to his knees.
“Wse, what?” Khentie was instantly with him when he stumbled.
“Do you feel it, Khentie?” he asked, his eyes trying to make out the expression on her face in the dim light. In one instant, he thought of his mother singing to him as a child, but realized the singer was Khentie, young and vibrant, holding him in her arms in the shade of the trees in the fig groves beyond her father’s palace. They had made love gloriously that day. The sun had come filtering through the leaves where they lay, far from the eyes of any servants or attendants. It brought out the bronze highlights in the black froth of her short curls. She sang to him and it made him want to love her again. She would claim him before her father, because they had fallen deeply in love. He was a rising young acolyte in Hordjedtef’s school, being groomed for a high position, and he was a prince.
“It doesn’t matter, Wse,” she had told him. “My heart bursts with the fullness of you. You are my every desire. If he declines to seal us I will run away to another land. Will you follow? Will you forsake your name for me?” she had asked and he had closed her mouth with kisses.
The woman next to him was older now, but so was he. A lifetime of years with all its joy and tragedy had passed. This early morning, she worried they had profaned a holy place.
“Do you feel it?” he asked her, back in the present time and pulling her into his arms. “How warm it is? I suddenly went back to the fig grove years ago – the feeling,” he whispered, then saw her eyes had closed in the rapture of a memory. He knew she felt it too.
“I remember,” she giggled, but caught herself. “Why are we thinking about this when we are in the presence of greatness?” her own hand moved to touch the smooth stone surface of one of the tombs. “And why so humble?”
“I don’t know. I think they must like it when people love each other,” Wse said. “I do love you, and I always have. The time with Lady Naibe was…”
“No. You don’t need to explain this to me again. You went to her to ease her pain over the death of her beloved one. It cascaded because her grief was so great. I understand that now, and I love you even more for it. Put those thoughts away, Wse. Turn your heart to the reason we are here,” she bowed her head, still reveling in her beloved’s words. “I know my brother wants to protect anything of power from Count Hordjedtef as he departs for Khmenu. That’s why his Highness has shown up here. He suspects us of searching for it too. Now it’s just going to be harder to do.”
“It’s almost impossible,” Wserkaf affirmed. “Maybe we’ve been wrong and Dede was right after all. Maybe there isn’t anything more important than these old tombs that, from the look of them, haven’t even been a target for thieves.”
“The flint box is what everyone wants and we can’t find,” Khentie pushed away from Wserkaf gently, eyes searching in the dim light. “There must be something we’ve missed.”
Wse noticed an alcove cut in the head of the chamber, opposite the door they entered. It was filled with a stack of eight ornate wooden boxes. Looking back at the tombs, Wserkaf noticed small stone bases at the foot of each tomb, built to serve as a platform for each of the stacked boxes. A box to accompany each tomb? Who moved them and stacked them in the alcove? Why?
“Wse! Someone has already disrespected these tombs by stacking the boxes over there,” Khentie noticed their placement, in disgust.
“Disrespected and curse worthy,” Wserkaf took a step toward the boxes, then turned to face Khentie. “I have the oddest feeling no remains lie here, unless they never were gods from another world, but were priests all along. Maybe they were godlike as Marai is, but from earlier times.” he brought the lamp closer. It started to sputter, making Wserkaf wonder if it contained enough oil to stay lit as long as they needed it.
“The legends say that all the gods save one returned to the other realm, that Atum remained and tasked himself with creating men and women. Others say it was Ptah-tenen or Khnum, or Mandulis of Ta-Seti who was the great creator. We’d be able to feel one that great and powerful,” he shook his head. “We’re both sensitive. We’ve both been trained to read energy by the brightest of teachers. So, why can’t either of us sense the presence of a god down here unless there really isn’t one?”
Wserkaf reflected on his own words. He’d felt more reverence in the temples and during prayer, or even in the presence of Marai, Naibe, and the rest, including saucy smart-mouthed Lady Ariennu, than he felt here. Even that morning when the women were brought to Hordjedtef and the box of neter stones was examined, he had sensed more.
He handed Khentie the lamp, then took one of the top two boxes, which had the characters for Amaunet on it. He placed it on the stone at the foot of Amaunet’s tomb and gently opened it.
“See this? I should have been struck dead or crippled if there were protective spells.”
Khentie moved closer with the lamp as the Inspector peered inside and began to lift some of the contents.
Wserkaf took a deep breath, then whispered.
“Do no harm. I approach you with the light of truth and reason. My heart and my motive is pure.”
Clay tablets with writing on them lay inside. There were no great treasures or magical tools. He sensed no heka or spell guarding the contents and beckoned Khentie to bring the lamp closer so he could make out the inscriptions.
“It’s just hymns and praises to her. But…” he quickly replaced the tablet, shut the box, and then looked at one of the other boxes.
“Wse…” Khentie sucked in some air. “Just then, I did feel the tiniest change. I thought I felt something when you were talking about Lady Naibe, but then the feeling went away. Just t
hen, when you opened the box, I felt it again.”
Wserkaf paused, noticing his breath had become labored. When he handled the tablets, he thought it was excitement, but now he doubted it. It was the same feeling that had assailed him on another night.
Destiny. I knew that night it was destiny that I went to check on Marai to make certain he had died and found, instead, that he not only lived but needed me to aid his re-entry into the Land of the Living. Tonight feels like that night.
He envisioned a scene from a dream he had years earlier. The vision had come to him after one of Hordjedtef’s long and disgruntled lectures about the nature of the tools of the gods that were hidden. I’ve seen this before and now that I’m here, the memory of it returns. He thought: been here with her before in a dream.
He trembled and shut his eyes. In the dream, he remembered opening this same ornate wooden box with inscribed slabs inside and laughing to himself that Hordjedtef was a fool to have thought these crude little prayer boxes held unimaginable treasure. Khentie had been with him in that dream, laughing along with him. He had dismissed it when he woke, because she would never have gone exploring with him at that time. She was great with their third child, Khenefer, who would be born in a month but leave them before her second year due to a fever. He woke, but never spoke of it because it had been a dream.
“Destiny,” he repeated aloud. “I know that we were to make this journey and that we were to be together. I suppose that’s why I remembered our first love a little while ago and it felt like a light out of all this chaos. I had to see it again and know how no sadness or misery has been able to pull us apart. Maybe we had to be standing in the places of the Ancient Ones to hear them speak it to us,” he paused, realizing something else.
“If this is all there is, just a message of love enduring to us, that’s treasure enough. The flint box must be a myth,” his shoulders sagged. “There’s just coffins, likely empty, and these wooden prayer cases.”
Khentie paced for a moment, lost in thought as if she had only half-heard him.
“We’d better be going,” Wse sighed, disheartened.
“Wait,” she held up her hand, “there’s another chamber behind the boxes. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”
Wse quickly moved the rest of the boxes to their proper places by the tombs, then took the lamp and moved it closer to the back of the chamber. When he and Khentie were both facing the back wall in the emptied niche, he saw the seam along each side of the stone that ran up and then along the ceiling too high for either of them to reach it. The surface of the stone was plain and smooth, except for four dimples in a trapezoidal pattern on the surface. There were no brass pulls and no lever bar lurking to one side.
“Nothing,” his shoulders sagged. “It’s a door, but it’ll take six strong men and pry bars to move it without heka. If Hordjedtef said he opened it, his men did it or he lied. There isn’t as much as a scratch on the edges. Let’s just go. We’ll have to come back maybe after the coronation and bring men with us. Once he’s gone to Nekhen there won’t be a chance he’ll be lurking out there and waiting for his prize.” Wserkaf noticed the lamp light made a brilliant circle on the flat surface of the stone wall. Khentie held her hands up in a gesture that mimicked the wooden hook priests used in the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony. The shadows her hands created showed against the lit backdrop.
“I will open it, Wse,” she giggled. “Maybe the Daughter of the God…” she smiled. “Your mouth, silent door, is opened by Ptah… Go on, say it with me Wse.”
“Are you mad?” he watched her hands move as if they were tapping the flat face of the wrapped kha of the dead.
It is funny though, he thought. Maybe we’re just too serious. She’s Hethara and she channels the merriment and joy of the goddess. I do feel as if I’m a little drunk, even though I’ve had nothing to drink.
“A game?” he asked, “are you sure?”
“I feel so much joy and happiness coming through me…just now like spirits laughing at the way my hands make the shadows.” She flapped her hands in the light again, adding a hopping side-to-side dance step.
“Of course, you’re mad! So am I because I follow you!” he grinned and began to paraphrase the prayer so it worked with a slab instead of someone who had departed. “Your mouth’s bonds, silent door, are loosed by Ra, god of Per-A-At.”
As he spoke the giddy feeling increased. He paused, becoming worried.
“Khen. Something’s happening,” he started.
She gestured for him to continue paraphrasing and mimicked the tap-tap of the shadowy neterdjowey on the surface of the slab.
“Knock, knock. Be open stone. I command you,” she grinned and added: “I think whatever spirit is here really likes us doing this. I keep thinking I hear children laughing, like when the boys used to play tricks with that silly monkey we had. Make up some more verses with me.”
“Djehuti had brought all his spells to loosen your bonds from the grip of Sutek, oh mystic door. The Atum has given me hands…” Wserkaf looked at the lamp in his hand and set it on the coffin for the Atum. “There you go.”
In the dim light, he saw Khentie drop her pose and then move to line her back up against the flat slab. Her chest heaved with her excited breathing and her eyes closed as if she expected him to kiss her.
Gods, she is as beautiful as the day in the grove and the day I made a home for her, he thought. I’m trying to rescue this flint box and now down here in the low light all I can think of is how much I want to raise her skirt. Madness.
“Go on,” she giggled, a rapturous enchantment in her voice. “Say it. I know what you’re thinking. I had the same thought.”
“My hands are placed as guardians,” he started then added: “Woman, we are so dead if this is a sacrilege.”
She laughed aloud. “No. It’s alright. I feel so happy; drunk, and you know I never drink or get drunk outside Hethara festivals.”
“I was just thinking that myself,” he noticed, then intoned gently: “my hands are placed as guardians.” He impishly touched her breasts and felt her sigh. “My mouth is opened,” he drew close to her, pecked her gasping lips once, reflected, and then kissed her more heartily. “My mouth is given to me and wants your mouth.”
“That’s not how it goes,” she laughed.
“My mouth is opened by Ptah like he opened the mouth of the gods.”
Her hands guided his, pulling him close.
And here we are. Dawn is approaching and Hordjedtef will be down the tunnel with armed men on hot feet and all I can think of is… he caressed the soft roundness of Kentie’s breast and watched in the dim light for the fire to erupt in her expression. Her hands released him and dropped to her sides, spreading out slightly to the two lower depressions in the wall at the side of her hips.
“Oh,” her shocked voice sounded, ending in another licentious giggle. “Wse, my hands fit these places perfectly, and when I put them here there’s a trembling. See?” she took one of his hands and pressed it on the flat surface. “Did you feel that?” her whisper was less filled with wonder than it was of seduction.
He did feel it; humming.
“I did. It’s not loud, but it almost beats like a heart or swells and eases like breathing. Maybe whatever is doing this likes our touch.” He set the lamp aside, eyeing the one torch affixed to the entry of the chamber where the puzzle door was. It still burned brightly.
“Try the places over my head,” Khentie’s eyes rolled up, reminding him that there were four depressions in the surface.
His glance followed hers. The two depressions did seem the right size for human hands. When she lay back against the slab they were a forearm and hands length above the top of her head. When he reached for them, he couldn’t avoid lying against her body. He was already aroused because of the dizzy and slightly drunk feeling that permeated the chamber. The buzzing sensation only added to the feeling coursing through him and filling his hands to the fingertips.
This is a distraction. Maybe if I create a sequence, something else will happen, he lifted his hands and replaced them right then left and again left followed by right. Then, he heard exactly what Khentie mentioned:
“Do you hear it, Wse?” Khentie’s eyes lit like a child confronted with a new toy.
The buzzing had slowly become a throbbing that further transitioned into catlike purring in a series of tuneful pitches.
“I hear hissing and tones that become a melody,” he noticed a pattern and began to listen. “I hadn’t thought of it as music, but now I do.”
“The sistra. It sounds like our temple rattles far in the distance, all pitched in different tones! Lovely,” she corrected. “If it’s calling to us like sacred sound, then that box everyone’s been seeking is behind this wall after all. Quick. Put your hands up above and I will hold mine below,” she urged. “Maybe the sound will create the heka to open it when we get into position.”
Wserkaf placed his hands and the purring grew stronger, but nothing happened.
Sequence, Wse thought back over the directional measurements he had been taught when the new temples were designed. If the dips in the stone were one high two wide and one low they would be north point the east to west and the south point, but they aren’t. Then, he realized one more thing. He was here, recognizing his love for his wife, wanting her to the point that he no longer cared about the treasure or the flint box they were salvaging for the king. This has happened before, he realized, but I was not the player.
“Dede was here. That part was true, but it was long ago.” Wserkaf bowed his head to Khentie’s shoulder, suddenly absent of romantic feelings. “I think he probably got no further than we are now. I can see an image of his younger self in my thoughts as clearly as if I have launched myself back in time and am witnessing it, Khen. He is the one who committed the sacrilege and damned his own future access. We were called here to heal this place, just as much as we were supposed to find things here,” he looked up into her eyes. “He had a woman with him and broke her down when she refused him. I know now it was Neferhetepes, my mother,” Wserkaf moved his arms because they had begun to numb from being held over head. When he let them come down, he noticed the purring had continued.
Heart of the Lotus Page 16