The Cult of Osiris nwaec-5

by Andy McDermott

‘It’s about fifteen miles from here, and the terrain’s not too bad. We can drive out there, if we’re careful.’

  Nina gazed at the expanse of emptiness on the map. It didn’t seem likely that an unknown pyramid could possibly be out there, but she had discovered other incredible sites in equally barren environments. ‘We’ll check out the canyon first - and if it seems to be the right place, we’ll follow it and see if it really leads to the Pyramid of Osiris.’

  ‘It must do,’ Macy said excitedly, standing up. ‘Everything fits. It’s got to be there!’

  ‘Let’s actually find the bloody thing before we start celebrating,’ Eddie cautioned.

  ‘We will, I know it! Oh, my God! We’ll be famous! Okay, you’re already famous, but I’ll be famous too!’ She hurried outside, pausing to collect the scattered pages with a slightly embarrassed look back at Nina. ‘If the canyon’s only fifteen miles away we’ll be there in no time!’

  ‘She’s never driven in the desert, has she?’ said Eddie as Macy splashed back across the hall. He noticed Nina staring after the younger woman with an expression somewhere between wistful and jealous. ‘What?’

  ‘I used to be that enthusiastic once,’ she said. ‘I kinda miss it.’

  ‘You are still that enthusiastic,’ he told her, folding the map. ‘Christ, once you start on about something I can’t shut you up.’

  ‘No, I mean . . .’ She sighed again. ‘I’m only twelve years older than her, but it feels like a lot more. Where the hell did the time go?’

  ‘You’re not going to get all depressed again, are you?’ said Eddie, mock-chiding. ‘I’ve had enough of that recently.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for the sympathy.’

  ‘No, really, if anybody should be getting depressed, it’s me. I’ll be forty in a couple of years. Forty! That’s all old and grown up and stuff.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be growing up any time soon.’

  ‘Tchah!’ They followed Macy out of the chamber.

  Their battered Land Rover Defender picked its way across the sun-seared desolation. Even with the windows open and the blower on at full blast, the cabin was sickeningly hot, the elderly 4×4 lacking air-con. Eddie, at the wheel of the right-hand-drive vehicle, dealt with the heat with frequent sips from his water bottle, while Nina tried to move as little as possible.

  Macy, between them on the centre seat, seemed unaffected by the temperature, almost bouncing with anticipation. ‘Are we there yet?’ she asked, peering at the GPS unit on the dash.

  ‘Another mile,’ said Eddie. ‘And if you say that one more time, you’re walking the rest of the bloody way.’

  Through the shimmering air ahead, something took on form - a cliff stretching from one horizon to the other, cut by Nile floods over millions of years. But as they drew closer, Nina picked out a dark slash gouged into it, something shadowed from the pitiless sun. ‘Eddie, you see that? Could be our canyon.’

  ‘Could be,’ he agreed, heading for it.

  They stopped at the canyon mouth. Nina exited and donned a baseball cap, glad to be out of the draining heat of the Land Rover even if it meant exposing herself to the sun’s full fury. Something in the canyon wall caught her eye. ‘Take a look at this.’ The rockface was a pale yellow-grey, sunlight glaring off the sandstone - but in places the reflected light was brighter still, glinting.

  ‘Is that silver?’ Eddie asked, making out very fine threads running through the stone.

  Macy lowered her sunglasses for a better view. ‘Guess that explains the name. You think there’s more of it?’

  ‘There must be,’ said Nina. ‘It’d justify the effort of coming all the way out here. Egypt’s got almost no silver deposits, which is why it was considered so valuable back then. Anyone who found a seam would be very rich.’

  Eddie looked up the canyon, which rose at a shallow angle. The sandy floor was easily wide enough for the Land Rover, only occasional fallen rocks presenting any likely obstacles. ‘Think there might be any left? Maybe we could scrape up enough for a silver egg cup or something.’

  Nina grinned at the odd image. ‘We can see.’

  They returned to the 4×4. Eddie carefully guided the Defender up the canyon, dropping them into shadow. Before long the ascent steepened, the turns becoming tighter.

  Nina spotted something to one side and told Eddie to stop. ‘I think that’s our silver mine.’ Several roughly rectangular recesses had been dug into the cliff. ‘You’ll have to live without your egg cup, though. All the best stuff ’s been taken.’

  ‘Well, arse. Must be the right place, though.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Macy. ‘We just have to follow the direction of Mercury from the zodiac and we’ll find it.’

  ‘I dunno,’ Eddie said, sceptical. ‘A temple being buried by sand I can go for, maybe even something the size of the Sphinx . . . but a pyramid? They’re not exactly hard to miss.’

  He started the Land Rover again. The ground became even steeper, the walls closing in. The Defender rounded another turn, and entered a tight channel, beyond which was visible nothing but open sky. They had reached the far end of the ravine.

  Eddie stopped as they came out of the canyon, checking his compass and the GPS before pointing. ‘That’s the way the zodiac said to go. Macy, there’re some binocs in my rucksack - can you get them for me?’

  Macy handed him the binoculars. ‘Can you see the pyramid?’

  ‘I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with . . . S.’

  ‘Syramid?’

  ‘Sand,’ was Nina’s more realistic guess.

  Eddie nodded. ‘Shitloads of sand, I was going to say, but near enough. How far away is it meant to be?’

  ‘One atur,’ said Nina. ‘Six point eight-five miles.’

  He checked to each side, still finding nothing. ‘There’s definitely nothing pointy.’ He entered new co-ordinates into the GPS. ‘If it’s there, this should take us right to it.’

  They set off again, the vast empty plain opening out all round them. Nina kept watch on the GPS, its display counting down the distance. Four miles, three, two . . . There was still nothing visible ahead, no lost monument rising from the dunes. She looked at Macy. The eagerness on the young woman’s face was visibly fading with almost every foot they travelled.

  One mile. Still nothing in sight. Eddie gave Nina another glance, his expression warning of impending disappointment. Half a mile. Less. The landscape ahead was indistinguishable from what they had already covered.

  The GPS bleeped. ‘This is it,’ said Eddie, stopping the Land Rover. ‘We’re here.’

  Macy jumped out, turning to see only endless empty desert. ‘I . . . I don’t get it,’ she said, running to the other side of the 4×4 as if expecting to find a different view. ‘We followed all the clues, we found the silver canyon . . . why isn’t it here?’

  Nina put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder as Eddie clambered on to the Land Rover’s roof to survey the surrounding plain. ‘Hey, it’s okay. There might still be parts of it under the sand.’

  ‘Only parts of it?’

  ‘This is what archaeology is usually about - it’s very, very rare that a completely new site is found intact.’

  ‘They’re intact when you find them, though.’ To Nina’s surprise and dismay, Macy seemed on the verge of tears.

  ‘Hey, hey, what’s wrong?’ she said. ‘We haven’t even started checking the area yet. We might still find something.’

  ‘No we won’t,’ Macy stammered. ‘There’s nothing here. I’ve wasted your time - I’ve wasted everybody’s time, I almost got you both killed, and for nothing! Oh, my God, I’m sorry!’

  ‘What - why are you sorry?’ Nina asked helplessly. ‘Macy, why are you so upset?’

  ‘Because . . . because Dr Berkeley was right about me! And so was my professor, and so were my teachers at high school . . . and so were you.’

  ‘Right about what?’

  Macy couldn’t look at her, tears trickling down
her cheeks. ‘I’m-I’m-I’m worthless,’ she managed to say.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Nina, shocked by the young woman’s sudden and total collapse of confidence. ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘Because I am. I’ve never had to work for anything in my entire life. I always got whatever I wanted just because I was rich and pretty and popular, and people did things for me.’ She bowed her head miserably. ‘And the one time, the one time, when I really, really try hard to prove I can achieve something myself . . . I completely fail and let everyone down! I let you down.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ said Nina. ‘Really, you didn’t. You said it yourself - if it hadn’t been for you, Osir would have gotten away with the zodiac and nobody would ever have known. And you have achieved things for yourself. You got a place on the dig.’

  ‘Only ’cause my mom called in a favour. Oh, God . . .’ She finally raised her head. ‘I wanted to be like you because I thought you were cool. I never realised how hard you worked, how much you went through. I thought that if I tried to be like you, everything would just come to me like it always did . . . but I was wrong, and now we’re in this fucking horrible place with nothing to show for it. Nothing!’

  Nina couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, she put her arms round the sobbing woman, trying to provide some comfort.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Macy mumbled. ‘I really am.’

  ‘You don’t have to apologise for anything,’ Nina assured her. ‘And we should still search the area. Maybe there’s something to find.’

  ‘There won’t be,’ she said miserably.

  ‘Oi!’ said Eddie, jumping down from the Land Rover. ‘Enough with this fucking defeatism, okay? I just got my wife through one bout of it; I’m not having someone else start.’

  Nina was about to berate him for his insensitivity when she realised his attitude had changed; his obnoxiousness was a deliberate set-up for something. ‘What is it?’ she asked instead. ‘I know that face - you’ve got something.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got something. It’s not a pyramid, but it’s man-made.’ He pointed northwest. ‘Over there.’

  Nina saw nothing except more sand and rocks. ‘Where?’

  He gave her the binoculars and pointed again. ‘Those rocks, the ones in a sort of L-shape?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘They’re not rocks.’

  The magnified view revealed something new. Two large stones, one flat on the ground touching the base of another poking up from the sands.

  Stones . . . with straight edges. Not rocks.

  Blocks.

  The same size and colour as the ones used to construct the Osireion.

  ‘My God,’ Nina gasped. ‘It’s a building!’

  ‘What’s left of one, anyway,’ said Eddie.

  Macy looked back and forth between Nina and Eddie, wondering if they were playing some cruel joke, before realising they were not. ‘Wait, you - you’ve found something? There’s really something here?’

  ‘We were just a bit off course,’ Nina told her, giving her the binoculars and pointing out the ruin. Macy gave a little gasp when she saw it. ‘See? I told you not to give up, didn’t I?’

  Macy wiped her eyes. ‘Well - well, what are we waiting for?’ she said, her hesitant attempt at a smile quickly becoming genuine. She climbed into the Land Rover. ‘Come on, let’s go!’

  ‘Wow,’ said Nina, amused. ‘Wish I could bounce back that quickly.’

  Eddie put an arm round her shoulders. ‘You do all right.’

  The two stones revealed themselves as the remains of a small structure, roughly twelve feet by twelve, the other walls barely protruding above the sand. The thickness of the blocks meant the interior was even smaller. If it had once been a dwelling, it would have made a prison cell seem spacious.

  Nina had another theory, though. ‘It’s a marker. There aren’t any natural landmarks, so they had to build one. But what’s it marking?’

  Macy examined the blocks for further clues. ‘Maybe there’s another set of directions here.’

  Nina shook her head. ‘The zodiac text said that after you come out of the silver canyon, the next stop is the actual pyramid.’

  ‘So where is it?’ Eddie asked. ‘It can’t have been buried, can it? I mean, this thing’s still sticking up, so unless it’s the world’s tiniest pyramid we should be able to see something.’

  ‘Unless it was buried deliberately.’ But she dismissed the idea. The amount of sand needed to completely bury even a small pyramid would be unimaginable.

  It was the right place, though. Finding the canyon required specialised knowledge of the Osireion, which would have been limited to a small number of people, and the astronomical calculations needed to deduce the direction of the journey’s final leg were the province of even fewer. The pyramid had to be here.

  So why couldn’t they see it?

  It all came back to the zodiac. Nina took out the stolen photo of the ancient relief.

  ‘Doing a bit of astrology?’ said Eddie.

  ‘There must be one more clue on here, I’m sure of it.’ Macy hopped down to join her as she perused the image. ‘Which way’s north?’

  Eddie checked his compass and pointed. Nina aligned the zodiac with it . . . then flipped the paper over and held it above her head. ‘This is how you were meant to view it,’ she said. ‘Looking up at it - and facing north. The clue’s here, it’s on the map, it’s . . . here!’ She brought the chart sharply down, keeping it oriented so that north, which had been ahead of her, was now at the bottom of the page. ‘The pyramid marking! Do you see it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Eddie, ‘but what about it? It’s just a triangle.’

  ‘Maybe, but which way is it pointing?’

  ‘Down,’ said Macy, the implications sinking in a moment later. ‘No way!’

  Nina smiled. ‘Way.’

  Eddie frowned at the map. ‘Okay, what am I missing?’

  ‘The pyramid on the zodiac, it’s upside down,’ she told him. ‘Don’t you see? It’s an inverted pyramid - and the people who made the map meant it literally. They were representing what was actually here.’

  Macy was also caught up in her excitement. ‘Some tomb paintings, like Ramesses VI’s, show the Egyptian Underworld as a mirror world right underneath ours - like a reflection in the Nile. Maybe they built Osiris’s pyramid upside down to be an Underworld version of the real ones . . . no, wait, that doesn’t work. If the zodiac inside the Sphinx is older than Khafre, it would have to be older than any of the other pyramids.’

  ‘The Pyramid of Osiris isn’t an inverted copy of the other pyramids,’ Nina realised, breathless. ‘The other pyramids are inverted copies of the Pyramid of Osiris - they were built above the surface to imitate Osiris’s tomb in the Underworld! That’s why they put so much effort into matching the shape.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Eddie. ‘You’re saying they built this pyramid upside down?’

  Nina scooped a handful of sand from the ground, leaving a roughly conical depression. ‘They dug a hole and built the pyramid inside it, with the point at the bottom and working upwards. Or maybe they dug out each new layer below the one they’d just built and filled in the pyramid’s core once the outer walls were in place, I don’t know. But it wouldn’t be any harder than building the Great Pyramid. It might even have been easier - they didn’t need to lift any of the stones up, just lower them down. Gravity was on their side.’

  ‘So we’re standing on it?’

  ‘One way to find out.’ She went back to the Defender and took out three shovels. ‘Let’s get to work.’

  ‘Where?’ Macy asked.

  Nina indicated the ruin’s interior. ‘In there. I don’t think it’s just a marker - it’s an entrance.’

  They started digging. It was slow going under the baking sun, requiring frequent breaks for water, but after a while Eddie’s spade struck something hard. ‘Let me see,’ Nina said, sweeping away sand with her bare hands. A flat stone slab was r
evealed.

  ‘Might just be this building’s floor,’ Eddie cautioned.

  ‘I don’t think so. Come on, let’s get the rest of it clear.’

  They set back to work, Nina now too eager to take any more breaks. By the time they were done, a space just over six feet to a side had been mostly cleared. Nina brushed away more of the gritty covering, finding a narrow crack about a foot in from the wall. She traced its path with her finger; it formed a square. ‘It could be a cover stone for the entrance.’

  Macy found something else at the slab’s centre. ‘Look familiar?’ she said, wiping away more sand. Revealed in the stone was a carved symbol.

  The Eye of Osiris.

  ‘Guess we’re in the right place, then,’ said Eddie. ‘So what now?’ The women looked at him. ‘Oh, right,’ he sighed. ‘I get to lift up a two-ton stone block. Bloody marvellous.’ But he climbed out of the newly dug pit and returned to the Land Rover for more equipment. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Nina as he jumped back down with a long crowbar, ‘drink some water. I’m not having you keeling over, all right?’

  ‘All right,’ grumbled Nina, who had all but forgotten the heat. She retrieved her water bottle as Eddie examined the slab’s outline.

  Finding the widest part of the gap, he inserted the crowbar. Straining, he pushed at it. There was a crunch, and the slab shifted slightly. ‘Not as heavy as I thought - it’ll only give me a little hernia,’ he said. ‘Nina, there’s some metal spikes in the Landie. Bring ’em, will you?’

  Nina found them. As Eddie levered the slab open little by little, she pushed the tapered spikes into the gradually opening crack so it couldn’t fall back down. Before long, a thin line of darkness appeared beneath its lower edge. Eddie moved the Land Rover closer and used the 4×4’s winch to raise the slab higher. It rested on an inner lip of stone; grunting, he pushed it up to its tipping point and let it fall back against the wall with a bang.

  ‘There we go,’ he said, theatrically wiping dust from his palms. ‘Piece of piss.’

  ‘A bit too . . . piss piece-y,’ said Macy, looking down the hole. ‘The entrances to the other pyramids were all hidden.’