Submerge (The Bound Ones Book 2)

by Tricia Barr

  They bought simple backpacks, snacks and several bottles of water, then headed to the ferry. Once they were on the Nile, Karnak’s ancient beauty came into view. The west bank was mostly vacant save for a few small houses here and there. The palm trees that stood sentinel along the bank hung lazily to one side, as if to say their duties were not required. And just past the trees were miles and miles of hills and cliffs. The late afternoon sun was cuddling up between them in the distance, painting them with a gold and sherbet glow. The peril that had been filling Phoenyx’s heart had been replaced by a sort of home-sweet-home warmth, and an excitement for visiting her old treasury once again. It was hard to feel anything but calm looking at this gorgeous Egyptian sunset. The air was warm and thick with the scents of honey and jasmine and dirt. She wanted to absorb this smell, embed it so deep into her soul that she would never smell anything else.

  Sebastian was standing next to her, no doubt enjoying the nostalgia right along with her. Skylar, on the other hand, was keeping his distance, staring off quietly into the river, his hand characteristically cupping his chin.

  She was about to go talk to him when the boat came to a stop at a small wooden pier; the Nile at this point wasn’t very wide and only took about fifteen minutes to cross. They got off the ferry and walked up the pier onto the west bank.

  “We will proceed on foot from here,” Ayanna said. “It’s too late to rent a vehicle, and there are guards all over the desert. They mostly keep to the area around the Valley of the Kings, but they have been known to wander. It’s best if we keep a low profile.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Sebastian said.

  Phoenyx waited for a quip from Skylar about Sebastian keeping a low profile, but he stayed quiet.

  “We have reached the end of my knowledge base,” Ayanna said. “It’s your turn to lead.” She looked at Phoenyx and Sebastian. “Do you remember the way from here?”

  Phoenyx gazed at her cliffs as the sun hid behind them. “Despite all the time that’s passed, the desert seems to have hardly changed. And if that’s the case, then I know the way like the back of my hand. It will take us a few hours to get there on foot, let’s just hope the sky holds light until we get there, because I don’t remember buying flashlights at the market.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Sebastian said. “If we run out of daylight, I’m sure we can find some way to make a fire to guide our path.” He winked at her.

  She smiled and said, “Alright, let’s get moving.”

  The sky above them held the faintest blue glow, slowly being swallowed by the darkness from the east. The shadows in the cliffs widened and broadened, until there were no shadows at all. Phoenyx tripped and slipped repeatedly; her soul may remember the exact path, but her current body lacked the muscle memory to tread these craggy hills gracefully. As they drew nearer their destination, Phoenyx stopped watching her step, her excitement overruling her frustrated feet.

  “It’s just up this last cliff,” Phoenyx panted happily. She raced ahead of the group and found the rock face she knew so well. She took a moment to assess it, barely able to make out the hidden slab halfway up in the thickening night. “It’s a steep climb, so be careful.”

  Without waiting for them to catch up, she clawed at the cliff face, scaling it like a professional rock climber. When she had reached the long crevice, she squeezed between the rock walls and into the antechamber of the treasury.

  Standing before her, monolithic and ancient, was the ingenious trick door. Looking at it now, it was rather like the door to a modern-day vault. Nothing like this had existed in its time of creation. It was a thick slab of stone, standing eight feet tall and five feet wide. In the middle on the right side, there was an intricate keyhole that looked like dominos randomly assembled on their sides. On either side of the door, there was a long tube made of rainbow-tinted glass scaling the full length of the door, sprouting from stone bowls at the bottom and disappearing into the wall above. The glass tubes were now aged and covered with dust, and the bowls were empty. No one had been here in ages. For all appearances, this place had been undisturbed since her last visit, save for the critters that had long ago drunk the water that once stood in the stone bowls.

  Sebastian, Skylar and Ayanna entered the anteroom behind her. For a long moment, the four of them just stood in silence, staring at this wonder of ancient ingenuity.

  “I’ve never seen this with my own eyes,” Ayanna said in awe. “I think I see the trick.”

  “How does it work?” Skylar asked. “I see a keyhole, but you all seem quite confident about getting in without one.”

  “The keyhole is a trap,” Phoenyx said. “It’s such an odd shape that any honest intruder would waste an eternity searching for the key to fit it.”

  “And, for any dishonest intruders, there’s a small fragile vial hidden inside the keyhole,” Sebastian said. “If someone tried to pick it, they would break the vial and release a highly hallucinagenic vapor. One good thing about being in with the priesthood is access to things like that; they used it to manipulate worshippers.”

  Skylar nodded thoughtfully. “Alright, so how do you get in?”

  “I’m guessing it has something to do with steam?” Ayanna postulated.

  “Exactly,” Phoenyx said excitedly. “You heat water in the bowls under the tubes, which then fill with steam. The pressure from the steam pushes up and through here”--she pointed to where the tube disappeared into the rock ceiling--“and slides long slabs of stone into place, unlocking the door. Then when we leave, the force of the door closing slides the slabs back, locking the door once more.”

  “Brilliant!” Skylar said. “I had no idea the Egyptians knew about steam power.”

  “Another benefit of being raised by the priesthood,” Sebastian said. “They had been using steam power to make statues of gods move for centuries. One of their best-kept and most profitable secrets, as the gods decided whether or not someone was guilty of a crime.”

  “Ironically, that’s what killed us a few lifetimes before building this door,” Phoenyx said, recalling the memory and finding the irony of it amusing now. “Okay, Ayanna hand me two bottles of water.”

  Ayanna took two bottles out of her bag and handed them to Phoenyx, who then proceeded to pour their contents into the two stone bowls.

  “There wasn’t the technology in those times to easily heat water outside of a kitchen, so if anyone had gotten past the trap keyhole and figured out the trick, it would have been hard for them to get enough steam in both tubes at the same time to produce the pressure needed to unlock the door.”

  Phoenyx stood back and extended her hands in the directions of the two bowls. She felt a warmth simmering in her gut, flooding her extremities and ready to overflow. She was amazed by the control she commanded over her element now that she had her memories back. Only yesterday she was struggling to ignite a piece of paper. Now that lifetimes of experience had been returned to her, she was no longer a young scorpion unable to control the amount of venom it released. She could regulate her fire with such precision, it was almost too easy to create just enough heat to boil the water in the bowls—never had something so trivial as boiling water been so exhilarating.

  In only a few seconds, the surface of the water went from flat to turbulent, exhaling clouds of steam into the glass tubes. The glass was too iridescent and imperfect to truly see through, so they couldn’t watch the steam rise and fill the tube. They could only wait for the sound of the door unlocking, which came after about a minute as a deep, guttural groan within the rock ceiling. Then the thick stone door slid open into the treasury about two feet and grated loudly to a stop.

  As soon as the room beyond was visible, a spark ignited and an orange glow filled the darkness beyond the door. Phoenyx led them through the opening and into the next room. This room was another sort of antechamber, about six feet by six feet, with the door behind them, a rock wall on either side of them, and—the part that had Skylar and Ayanna stumped—a ra
ging wall of flames in front of them, blocking their path.

  “Another booby trap?” Skylar asked.

  “When the door opens, it grates over a fuse which lights this threshold on fire,” Sebastian said. “Any intruder at that time wouldn’t have been able to carry enough water to extinguish the fire and move forward, so they would have either risked burns and ran through, or given up.”

  “But the two of you can pass because Phoenyx is Fire, and you could probably use the water from the previous trap to shield yourself from burn,” Skylar deduced.

  “Exactly,” Phoenyx said. “I’m sure it would be an easy thing for Air to blow out these flames, as well.” She winked. “Wanna give it a shot?”

  Skylar shrugged and stepped forward. In seconds, a strong gust rushed into the room from behind them, whipping Phoenyx’s hair and clothes, and crashed into the flame wall. The fire flickered and danced back and forth until finally sputtering out.

  Sebastian laughed and nodded in approval. “Now that I think about it, Skylar could have also easily opened the door for us too. His ability to unlock things telekinetically has gotten us out of so much trouble over the years.”

  “Yes, but the locks we faced had barrels smaller than my pinky nail,” Skylar said. “That fancy door back there had slabs that I’m sure weighed a ton each. A bit out of my league.”

  “Maybe before, but that big wind you just whipped up was no parlor trick,” Sebastian said. “We’re in a whole other league now.”

  Skylar nodded and raised his brow, considering this.

  Without the light of the fire wall, and with the last of the day’s light fading to night, all that stood before them was a thick darkness.

  Phoenyx stirred the fire inside her and willed that there be light. Torches on either side of the room in front of them ignited, and then another pair after that, and another, until the entirety of the tomb was illuminated.

  “Woah,” Skylar breathed.

  A veritable museum of ancient wonders radiated out before them. The main hall, which they were now stepping into, was packed with statues of all shapes and colors: a golden Isis with her wings spread, a silver Horus stepping forward, and countless stone effigies of pharaohs past. The walls just visible behind them were covered in carvings and paintings describing the great life of Heri Hor and offering prayers for his eternal life. She gawked whole-heartedly at her long lost collection. All of this had been smuggled here so long ago, she had long forgotten most of what was here.

  The narrow walkway through the main hall split toward two opposite doorways at the end, which she knew opened to a maze of sorts. This tomb was not built like ordinary Egyptian tombs. The average tomb comprised of an antechamber, a main hall, a burial chamber and an annex. Knowing that they would be storing funerary treasures from hundreds of pharaohs, they had designed this tomb to be so much larger; that would also make it that much harder for any intruders to find their most valuable trinket.

  Phoenyx proceeded down the path and to the right, zigging and zagging through chambers and hallways, until she made it to the burial chamber. This room, too, was crowded with mortuary fineries, all surrounding the sarcophagus in the center. She slid through the maze of treasures to the back of the chamber. She had only used the compartment once, when she had finally found the stone and needed to stash it, so she couldn’t be entirely sure where it was hidden in the back wall. She ran her fingers over the surface of the wall, feeling for the slightest of seams concealed by the painted scenery.

  Her hand ran over Sebastian’s hand. She was so invested in her search that she hadn’t even heard him and the others enter behind her. She looked at him.

  “It’s here,” he said, taking her hand and guiding it to the image of the throne on which his painted likeness sat. The outline of the square throne was painted so thick that identifying the seam in the wall under it was impossible.

  Together, they lightly pushed the top of the throne depiction. The bottom lifted up and outward, revealing a small compartment in the wall. Phoenyx and Sebastian shared a look of anticipation. This was the item they had spent centuries in Egypt striving to find, lifetime after lifetime, death after death. Finally, Phoenyx reached in, wrapped her fingers around the small object and withdrew it.

  She turned around to face Ayanna and Skylar, then opened her hand.

  Phoenyx had only laid eyes on this stone once in all her long existence, so the beauty of it struck her like lightning. It was a jagged stone, not at all smooth or symmetrical, but its flaws only amplified its majesty. In the flickering light of the torches, every color of the color spectrum twinkled from within the many angles of the stone. It was as if some omniscient being had crumpled a rainbow in its mighty hands and dropped it into hers. To think, this was only one fraction of the entire stone.

  “It’s so pretty,” Skylar said, staring at it. “Can I?” He extended his hand and she gently placed the stone in his palm. He brought it closer to his face to examine it. “Hard to believe that this stone can give immortal life.”

  “Only in tandem with the dagger,” Ayanna corrected.

  “And the other two pieces of the stone,” Sebastian added.

  “One day, I would love to study this and find out just how it works,” Skylar said, still staring at it.

  “That will only happen if we are still alive four days from now,” Phoenyx said. “Let’s get moving.”

  “Phoenyx, it’s way past curfew, we can’t go back to town now,” Ayanna said. “And we all need some rest. The best we can do is wait out the night here and leave at first light.”

  “But we can’t waste that kind of time,” Phoenyx protested. “We have to find the rest of the stone pieces. We only have four days left.”

  “And we don’t even know where the other two pieces are,” Sebastian said. “We should take the night to rest and figure out what our next move is.”

  Again, the pressure to remember the location of the other pieces was maddeningly overwhelming, and her mind was so frazzled that she couldn’t focus on anything.

  “The more you stress about trying to remember, the more evasive the memories will be,” Skylar advised. “The best thing you can do is relax. Often times the thing you want to remember comes to you when you stop trying.”

  “And I know just the lubricant to get our minds flowing,” Sebastian said happily before skipping out of the chamber.

  He disappeared from the burial chamber for a few minutes, then returned with a large dust-covered jug in his hands.

  “Really?” Phoenyx asked, knowing full well what was in the jar. “There’s no way that’s good after all this time.”

  “Sure it is,” Sebastian said. “We tested some that we took from one of the really old tombs when we raided, and it was fine.”

  “Yes, but that was only a few hundred years old at the time,” Phoenyx argued. “This is several thousand years old.”

  “When alcohol is properly preserved, it only gets better with time,” Sebastian said, unrelenting.

  “What is it?” Skylar asked, peering over at the jug in curiosity.

  “It’s called nedjem,” Sebastian said. “It’s a sort of fermented honey, super sweet and very smooth. It probably has about the same proof as your average wine.”

  “I’m definitely in,” Ayanna said. “I haven’t had this stuff in so long.” She took the jug from Sebastian and struggled to remove the cork.

  “That’s not exactly reassuring,” Phoenyx carped. “You’re immortal, so even if it is bad, it won’t hurt you.”

  “Not necessarily,” Ayanna rebutted. “Just because I can’t die doesn’t mean I can’t get sick.” She got the cork out and took a swig of its contents. “I never told you guys this, but during the Black Plague, I got sick for the first time since being stabbed by the dagger.”

  “Wow, really?” Sebastian asked.

  Ayanna nodded, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and passed him the jug. “I started developing symptoms of the plague, and it laste
d for weeks. It was so severe I actually thought I was going to die. Then, after I had finally accepted that it was the end, suddenly the symptoms got lighter and lighter until the sickness passed. So, make no mistake, the dagger will make you immortal, but not invincible.”

  “Geez,” Phoenyx said. “I had no idea. That’s horrible that you had to go through that.”

  “Don’t pity me,” Ayanna said. “I have had an extremely long life with only one near-death experience, whereas the three of you have died repeatedly for thousands of years. I count myself lucky for only having to face death once.”

  “Let’s go into the main room, so we can all have a place to sit,” Sebastian suggested.

  They followed him into the main hall with all the statues and sat in a circle in the cleared path. Sebastian offered the jug of nedjem to Skylar.

  “Sure, it seems only fitting to try a four-thousand year old liquor whilst sitting in a hidden ancient Egyptian tomb built by my two best friends in a past life several millennia ago,” Skylar joked, accepting the jug. He peered inside with one eye, sniffed it curiously, then shrugged and took a drink.

  He pulled it away and made a strange face as he swallowed. “Ugh, it is disgusting how good that is!” He was still grimacing when he took another drink. The others laughed.

  Phoenyx sighed. “I see my friends jumping off the bridge, I might as well do it, too.” She took the jug from Skylar and drank. The smooth, slightly thick liquid hit her tongue and glazed the inside of her mouth. The taste was decadent. It was as sweet as it could possibly be without being sickening, and accompanied by a slight savory flavor that gave it the perfect balance. When swallowed, its thickness masked the characteristic alcohol burn. It was even more delicious than she remembered. She almost didn’t care that it might have spoiled.