"Don't get comfortable here, dear; you're not staying," said Miss Fritton, in a cold tone I couldn't remember her using before. "We don't serve your kind. Oh yes, I can see right through you; don't think I can't."
The girl pouted prettily and batted her heavy eye-lashes at me. "I can stay, can't I, sweetie?"
"Of course," I said.
Miss Fritton sniffed loudly. "None so blind," she said. "It'll all end in tears, but no-one ever listens to me." She gave the girl a stern look. "No trouble on the premises, young lady, or I'll set the dogs on you."
She moved off to the other end of the bar. I was a little put-out. I'd never known Miss Fritton to turn anyone away while they still had some of her money in their pockets.
"Does she actually have dogs?" said the girl.
"Only metaphorically," I said.
"Hi!" the girl said brightly to me, dismissing Miss Fritton with a careless shrug. "You're Larry Oblivion, I'm Polly Perkins, and you're very pleased to see me! Because I am about to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams."
"Ah," I said. "It's a business deal, is it?"
My disappointment must have showed in my face because she giggled delightfully and squeezed my left thigh with a surprisingly powerful grip.
"Business first, pleasure later. That's how the world works, sweetie."
"Exactly how are you going to make me rich?" I said, trying hard to sound tough and experienced.
"You're a treasure-hunter," Polly said briskly. "Everyone knows that. And I know the location of a treasure so splendid that just breathing its name in your ear will bring tears of joy to your eyes and a definite bulge in the trouser department."
"What do you think you've found?" I said politely. "Has someone sold you an ancient map, perhaps, or a book with a sealed section? You can't believe everything you buy in the Nightside. Some of these cons go way back. Oh, all right, go on, astound me. What have you found, Polly?"
"Word is, you have a special interest in Arthurian artefacts," said Polly.
I brightened up, despite myself. "What is it, the sword in the stone?"
"Even better," she said. "The sword's original owner. Ah, I thought that would make you sit up and take notice. I know where we can find the Lady of the Lake, frozen for centuries in a block of ice. Preserved against the ravages of Time, since the days of King Arthur. Frozen in her own lake, after Excalibur was returned to her, after the fall of Camelot. Imagine the possibilities if she could be released from her icy tomb! The things she could tell us, of the Age of Arthur. Think of our place in History!"
"Think of how much money we could make!" I said.
"That, too!"
"How did you…?"
"Please," said Polly. "Allow a girl a few secrets. The point is, I don't feel entirely… safe, going after this on my own. I need a partner. And I chose you! Say you're grateful."
"I'm grateful," I said. "Really. But why me? There are any number of other treasure-hunters, far more experienced, who'd be only too happy to help you out."
"I want a partner, sweetie, not someone who'd cut me out first chance he got, or fob me off with a percentage," said Polly. "Besides, I like a man with a lean and hungry look. A man who'll go the distance in pursuit of the big prize. You provide the brawn, and I'll provide the brains. Do we have a deal?"
"You want someone to hide behind when the bullets start flying," I said.
"Exactly!" She clapped her little hands together and gave me a smouldering glance. "We're going to have such fun together… So, are you in? Or do I have to go looking for someone with bigger… dreams?"
I wasn't entirely stupid, or completely besotted by her charms. Like all good cons, this was just too good to be true. I knew there was a real chance she wanted someone to do all the hard work, then hang around to take all the blame while she disappeared with the prize. But she was pretty, and I was young, and I thought I could hold my own when it came to treachery and back-stabbing. Part of me… wanted it to be true. Wanted her to be true.
And I was so very keen to make my name with a really major find.
"To get to the Lady of the Lake," said Polly Perkins, as we left the Bar Humbug and tripped lightly through the dark and sleazy streets, "we need to open a very old, and very specialised, dimensional gate. And for that we need several specific, and very rare, items. Think of them as tumblers in a lock."
"A dimensional gate?" I said, trying not to sound too appalled. "No wonder you didn't want to do this alone. Make even one mistake in opening that kind of gate, and we could end up staring into other dimensions, other realities… even Heaven or Hell. If half the old stories are true, and you'd be surprised how many are."
"I'm not an amateur," said Polly, a bit frostily. "I have done this kind of thing before. Present the gate with the right items, in the right order, and it'll roll over and play nice like a dog having its tummy tickled. So, ready for a little scavenger hunt? Jolly good! First, we need a magic wand. An elven wand, to be exact."
"Oh, this is getting better and better," I said. "An elf weapon? You are seriously loop the loop! The elves never sell, barter, or give up any of their weapons, so they only ever turn up as lost, stolen, or strayed. They are incredibly dangerous, insanely powerful, and nearly always booby-trapped. You can usually tell when someone's found one because bits of him are flying through the air. There are those who say the best way to rid yourself of a troublesome rival is to make him a gift of an elven weapon."
"If you've quite finished hyperventilating, can I point out that you're not telling me anything I don't already know? You wanted into the big league, Larry, and it doesn't get much bigger than this. You have to risk some to get some. Or is my big bold treasure-hunter afraid of a little fairy magic?"
"Too right I am! So is anyone with two working brain-cells to bang together! I do not want to end up transformed into something small and squishy with eye-balls floating in it. But I said I'm in, so I'm in. Where's the wand?"
She grinned, and batted her eye-lashes coyly at me. "How do you feel about a little tomb robbing?"
"Just call me Indy," I said resignedly. Some rides you have to follow all the way to the end.
She took me to the Street of the Gods, and we strolled down the middle of the Street, giving all the churches and temples, their Beings and their supporters, plenty of room. There was a light rain of fish, a brief outbreak of spontaneous combustion among the gargoyles, and ball-lightning rolled down the street like tumble-weeds. Typical weather for the Street of the Gods. An evicted god sat miserably on the pavement outside what used to be his church, clutching at his few possessions. The laws of the Street are strict; if you can't raise enough worshippers, make way for a Being who can. So the grey little man with the flickering halo would now have to make his own way in the world, as something else. A god no more. A lot of his kind end up doing the rounds on chat shows, selling their sob stories. And even more end up sleeping in cardboard boxes in Rats' Alley, begging for spare change on street-corners. And it's a wise man who'll stop to drop a little something into their outstretched hand, because the wheel of karma turns for us all, and cosmic payback can be a real bitch.
"I don't recognise him," said Polly, as we walked past. "I don't even know his name. Isn't that sad?"
"Half the Beings on this Street are celestial con men, fakes, and posers," I said, with youthful certainty and arrogance. "There's more preying than praying here."
"They can't all be deceivers," said Polly. "Some of them must be the real thing."
"Those are the ones you give plenty of room. Just in case."
She laughed. "Am I to take it that you're not in any way religious?"
"I deal in facts, not faith," I said. "I hunt for treasure, not miracles. There's enough in this world to keep me interested without bothering about the next. Where are we going, exactly?"
"Egyptian royalty had themselves buried in pyramids, to be sure their remains would be protected and revered for all the years to come," Polly said briskly. "We
all know how that worked out. But one particular Pharaoh went that little bit further, and used ancient Egyptian magic to send his Tomb through Space and Time, to a place where it would be safe for all eternity. It ended up here, on the Street of the Gods, its original protections boosted sky-high by centuries of accumulated faith from all those who worshipped the God within the Pyramid. This being the Nightside, a lot of people have tried to break in, down the centuries, including a few Beings who fancied its preferred position on the Street. No-one has ever found a way in."
"Hold it," I said. "What has all this to do with an elven wand?"
She looked at me pityingly.
"Where do you think the Pharaoh found a magic powerful enough to do all this? The elves got around, in the old days."
"Cool," I said. "I've always wanted to meet a mummy. And rob it of everything but its underwear."
"The Tomb stands alone these days, unworshipped and uncared for, almost forgotten. Taken for granted, as one of the sights. Tourists take photos, and then move on to more interesting things. And no-one has noticed that the Tomb's magical protections have slowly faded away, along with the worship. We can get in now, provided we're very, very careful."
"How do you know all this?" I said bluntly.
"You're not the only one who likes to do research in libraries. I found this information while looking for something else, which is often the way. And then I found a Looking Glass in Strange Harald's Junkshop." She gestured fluidly, and the Looking Glass was suddenly in her hand. It looked like an ordinary everyday magnifying glass, but I had enough sense not to say that. Polly favoured me with a brilliant smile for my tact, and continued. "He didn't know what this was, or he'd never have let it go so cheaply. This is an ancient Egyptian artefact, and it can lead us right to the centre of the Tomb."
"How are we supposed to get in?" I said. "Just walk up and knock?"
"There's a side-door," said Polly. "And I know where it is."
"Of course you do," I said.
The Tomb of the forgotten Pharaoh turned out to be a surprisingly modest affair, barely twenty feet tall and ten wide. The pyramid's orange-red bricks were dull and shabby, even crumbling away in places, and yet… there was something about it. Set between an ornate church in the old Viking Orthodox style, and a Mother Earth Temple covered in twitching ivy, the pyramid still had its own dark and brooding presence. It wasn't there to be liked or appreciated; it was a stark, functional thing of simple style and brutal lines. It had a job to do, and it was still doing it after thousands of years, while any number of neighbouring churches had been ground to dust under the heels of history. The Tomb had been constructed to outlast Eternity; and powered by the magic of an elven weapon, it just might.
I stood before thousands of years of history and felt very small and insignificant in its shadow. But, of course, I couldn't let Polly Perkins see that. So I looked it over and sniffed loudly, as though I'd seen better before and hadn't been impressed then.
"Bit small," I said. "Maybe it's a bonsai pyramid."
"Don't show your ignorance," Polly said kindly. "This is just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the pyramid descends under the Street, so far down that no-one's ever been able to see the bottom of it."
"Then there'd better be an elevator," I said. "I hate stairs." Polly ignored me, studying the pyramid carefully through her Looking Glass. She smiled suddenly, and passed the Glass to me. I took it carefully, and held the lens up to my eye. Through it I saw a huge and intricate labyrinth of narrow stone tunnels, criss-crossing the whole structure of the pyramid, going down and down and down. The pattern was so complex it made my head hurt, and I quickly handed the Glass back to Polly. She made it disappear with another sharp gesture, and I looked after her thoughtfully as I followed her round the side of the pyramid. It was finally dawning on me that there was a lot more to Polly Perkins than met the eye.
She led me along the side of the pyramid, down a dingy alleyway half-full of garbage, some of which was still moving. Stepping carefully around and over things, we finally stopped before a section of the pyramid wall that seemed no different from anywhere else. Polly leaned forward and counted off the levels before pushing a series of bricks in swift succession, in a pattern too complicated to be easily grasped. I looked at her sharply, but she only had eyes for the small section of wall swinging slowly back before her. A side-door, indeed. Beyond the opening there was only darkness, and silence.
"Hang about," I said. "I've got a torch here somewhere."
"Boys and their toys," Polly said airily. "Look and learn."
The Looking Glass was back in her hand again. She held it up before her, and a beam of dazzling bright light blasted out, pushing back the darkness like a spotlight. Polly followed the beam of light into the Tomb, and I moved quickly in behind her. We hadn't managed three steps down the narrow stone tunnel before the side-door closed behind us, with only the faintest of grinding noises.
Polly held the Glass up high, but even its light couldn't penetrate far into the heavy dark before us. She still strode confidently forward, taking left and right turns with breath-taking confidence, according to what the Glass showed her. Hopefully it was also warning her about the inevitable booby-traps and deadfalls. The ancient Egyptians were notorious for their appalling sense of humour in that regard.
The tunnels gave me the creeps. I'd been in worse places as a treasure-hunter, nastier and slimier and even more dangerous places, waded thigh-deep in mud and crawled through earth tunnels barely big enough to take me; but this was different. This was a place of the dead. The air was dry and dusty, and I had to breathe in deeply to get enough oxygen out of it. The ceiling was so low I walked slightly stooped, and the walls to either side of me were covered with lines and lines of hieroglyphics, none of which I could read. I had never bothered to learn, never expecting to end up in a genuine Egyptian pyramid. Well, you don't.
The air grew steadily colder as we descended deeper and deeper, leaving the Street of the Gods behind. The silence was oppressive-no sound anywhere except for my harsh breathing and the soft slap of our feet against the bare stone floor. I was actually shivering from the cold, but it didn't seem to affect Polly at all. Being inside the Tomb didn't seem to bother her either; her grip on the Glass was steady as a rock. I really should have asked her more questions.
We went down and down, and around and around, following the light from the Looking Glass as it blazed our way like a searchlight. The hieroglyphics seemed to stir and writhe as the light moved over them, as though desperate to warn us of something, and our footsteps echoed longer than they should have on the still air. Polly was really hurrying by then, striding confidently through one stone passage after another, and I had to struggle to keep up with her. My lungs were straining, and I hugged myself against the bitter cold. But a part of me was starting to get excited. This was how Tombs were supposed to feel.
And finally, finally, we came to the main chamber. No warning, no intimations; we just rounded a corner like any other, and there it was. Polly stopped so suddenly I almost ran over her. She moved the Looking Glass back and forth, the brilliant light flashing up every detail, clear and distinct. The chamber itself wasn't much to look at. Just a square stone box, deep in the heart of the pyramid. The hieroglyphics covered the floor and the ceiling here, as well as all four walls, and surely it was just my imagination that read dire warnings in the deeply etched figures. Polly knelt to examine some of the markings on the floor, frowning with concentration and tracing them with the tip of one long, slender finger. There was no sign in her face of the girlish adventurer who'd picked me up in the Bar Humbug. She looked… older, more experienced. And not in a good way.
She straightened up suddenly and shot me a quick smile. "Nothing to worry about. Only the usual generic warnings and curses. Real amateur night. Magic's come a long way since ancient Egypt. Any one of the half a dozen protective amulets I'm wearing could ward off this stuff."
"Let's not get cocky,"
I said carefully. "Who knows how much power the wand could have soaked up after all these years on the Street of the Gods."
"Oh, hush, you big baby. We're perfectly safe. Look at you, actually shaking at the thought of the mummy's curse."
"It's cold," I said, with some dignity.
"Is it? I hadn't noticed. Hot on the trail, and all that. Still, better safe than sorry, I suppose."
She took a bone amulet out of her jeans, and waved it around vigorously. We both waited, but nothing happened. The silence remained unbroken, and nothing nasty emerged from the shadows lurking outside the Looking Glass's light. Polly gave me a condescending look.
"Did it work?" I said, wanting to be sure about this.
"Well, the amulet didn't explode, and neither did we, and that's usually a good sign, so… Of course it worked! Trust me, sweetie. I know what I'm doing."
"Yes," I said. "I trust you to know what you're doing."
"There's a good boy," she said absently, peering through her Looking Glass again. The beam of light moved steadily across the wall before us, then stopped abruptly. "There!" said Polly, her voice breathy with anticipation. "That's it. The entrance to the burial chamber is on the other side of this wall. We are about to see things no-one has seen for thousands of years… And steal them! Help me with the lock mechanisms."
"You think they'll still be working, after those thousands of years?"
"Of course, sweetie. They're as much magical as mechanical, and probably still drawing power from the elven wand. The Pharaoh expected to be revived someday, and walk out of his Tomb into the afterlife. They all did."
We worked together, examining the wall inch by inch, and the right places to press and turn and manipulate seemed to flare up before us in the light from the Glass, as though we were being guided through the workings of some intricate combination lock. I found it increasingly hard to concentrate. It felt like we were being watched by unseen and unfriendly eyes. As though we weren't alone in the stone chamber, that some third person was there with us. Only iron discipline and self-control kept me from constantly breaking off to look behind me. That, and the knowledge that Polly would be sure to say something cutting and sarcastic.
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