Refreshed, he breathed deeply and considered the bread and cheese in his satchel. He sat by the pool and fumbled in his pack. His light shone on the water. The pool was oddly shaped.
He dropped the pack to his side and picked up the light. As he traced the edge of the pool, his mind fogged. He stooped, skin crawling when he measured the three-foot diameter of a creature’s footprint. A dry depression further into the cave had four black holes that marked where talons cut into the sand. His gaze flicked about the cave. In the cavern, water dripped in an inconsistent shower. He raised the flashlight’s beam, but darkness swallowed its weak glow. Nearer, the eyes of spiders sparked like gemstones, and he slowly swung the beam around to collect his belongings.
The armored head of the crocodile filled the full circle of light.
Faris bolted.
The crocodile lunged, its jaws opening taller than Faris. Faris let out a strangled cry as he leapt for the passage. Behind him, the crocodile’s maw snapped, missing Faris’s ankles as he slipped into the smaller corridor. The massive crocodile roared. The reek of rotted flesh blew at Faris’s back. He retched, but charged on, taking turn after turn. Finally, he stopped and slumped, gulping stale air.
“Re, help me,” he gasped.
His light shone down the corridor. It was narrow, too narrow for the dinosaur.
After several minutes, his heart slowed. Only the trickling of water and his rapid breaths filled the silence. When a faint call reached his ears, it clattered about the tunnel walls that Faris leaned upon. He hardly dared breathe as he waited for it to come again. The next yell rang out, and he sensed it was from behind. A woman’s voice.
He jogged to the last junction and waited. Another call, muffled, but not threatening. He inspected the well-traveled tunnel to be sure it was free of reptile tracks, ever conscious that he tiptoed toward the crocodile’s lair. His light was dying. He grabbed for his satchel with its spare batteries and groaned when he remembered it was still in the cave with the crocodile. He took a sundisc from the thong at his waist. Casting the flashlight’s beam around to gain his bearings, he shut it off. Instantly, he lost his sense of direction, and he reached to the wall as a guide, stumbling in the direction of the call.
His footfalls grew louder, and he worried he had entered the larger crocodile’s lair. He took a couple steps more and struck something hard. He cried out and whirled; his sundisc glanced off stone, sparks flaring. The strike’s brief flash illuminated a tunnel that ended in a granite plug with no corridor left or right.
Chapter Ten
The disc’s chime gradually quieted, and Faris waited for a response to its tone.
“Hello?” The voice came from beyond the rock plug.
Faris turned on his flashlight and studied the stone, pushing at it. It held firm. The rock was pink and flecked with silica that sparkled in the light. Chisel marks pocked its slightly bulging surface. A thin seam marked where it met the tunnel wall. His fingers strained against the unyielding rock.
“Hello?” the voice asked again.
“Yes, I am here,” Faris replied, brow pinching.
“Are you Shemsu Hor?” the voice asked, feminine and gentle.
Faris raised an eyebrow. Few knew that they were not simply another monastery in the desert.
“Yes. My name is Faris.”
“Good.” The relief in the voice was palpable. “You must go, I have a job for you,” the voice demanded. Faris blinked at the command. “I am Tara. I am a Sister of Isis.”
Faris had never spoken with a Sister of Isis, but seen some at Akhet ceremonies and knew they lived as a Coptic group of nuns. Her imprisonment meant she was more likely to be a friend than not.
“I am supposed to free you. Someone shoved me into here, a woman, and yet I think one of the Shemsu Seth.”
He thought he caught a sob muffled by the granite, but when she spoke again her voice was strong.
“Do the companions protect the vertebrae of Osiris?”
He hesitated but could think of no reason not to tell her. “It is being assembled, yes, but the Shemsu Seth stole at least four pieces when they killed the younger companions.” Faris suddenly realized Askari’s mistake. The keepers and high priests were not the only ones with knowledge of the vertebrae’s locations. The sisters guarded the tablet, and recorded upon it was more than simply the prophecy, but the location of each piece.
“They are killing the …?” Tara’s voice faltered.
“How did the Shemsu Seth find the locations of the vertebrae?” Faris’s head tilted, and he gave the stone plug a wolfish stare. “Hundreds have died, Sister.”
“We haven’t time to discuss the sisters’ involvement. We must keep the remaining vertebrae and, above all, the spinal cord from Pharaoh’s grasp.”
“They have the sisters’ portion?” Silence trailed Faris’s question, and he flexed his jaw. “What would the Shemsu Seth do with the Osiris?”
“They wish to break the prophecy.”
“Then why not simply make sure we can’t find Seth’s piece or destroy it? And if they wish to bring Osiris back, why not work together to restore the Osiris as we have in the past?”
Distant barking echoed down the corridor.
“Leave now before they find you,” Tara hissed.
“But how? How can I escape?”
“Go back the way you came.”
“You’re supposed to know the way. The woman said you would show me the exit.”
A long pause followed.
“The door through which you entered, it will have a latch, a small scorpion’s tail, find it. It will open the door.”
Faris turned on his light and ran it over the slab before him. In the corner of the plug was inset a tiny tail.
“I found one on this door, too,” he yelled. “What do I do with the tail to open the door?” He traced its edge with his finger.
“Do not free me,” Tara shouted. The dogs’ barking grew louder.
Faris swore. “No, let me in.” Faris pressed at the scorpion tail.
“You cannot.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“I need your help, Faris. Find a man named David Nidaal. He will come to my home across from Abu Serga, apartment 2, in Coptic Cairo. Take him back to your deir. Tell him …” She paused and he’d thought she was gone, but then suddenly she continued, stronger than before. “Tell him that what he seeks lies with the priest’s last duty. Don’t let the tablet fall into the hands of the Shemsu Seth.” The words were an urgent rush. “They still require it.”
“I can open the door.”
“Leave me.” Overlapping barks punctuated her demand. “The companions will need the tablet to complete the Spine of Osiris too. You must flee. The hounds come. Flee!”
Faris fingered the tail and then hit the stone with his balled fist. He leaned against the granite and then turned.
He extracted a second sundisc. “Re riseth!” The call rumbled in his throat, and he charged, drawing on his reservoir of strength, thrusting into the Void.
Within the Void, Faris saw movement. A wave of his hand bloomed in his mind as a streak of white. His breath was a cone of mist.
The barks grew rabid. The discs glowed with blue fire, illuminating the tunnel.
Faris held the blades outstretched before him as he ran. With the Void, he sensed movement and touched minds. The hounds howled: frenzy, lust, and thrill. His Void-fed rage roared reply. Black hatred hurtled toward him. Three hounds of Seth. Faris curled into a discus thrower’s crouch.
“Re,” he cried and uncoiled. The disc released at knee level. The air reeked of ozone and energy trailed along the walls as the blade spun. He pressed forward, second disc in hand. Ahead, the aten glanced from one wall to the next. It lost momentum. He focused. It
missed the first dog and then the second. The third caught the weapon in its mouth and skidded, choking on metal and blood from its severed tongue.
It shook its head and knelt to the ground, paws atop the disc. The disc pulled loose with teeth, tongue, and bits of gums, leaving the dog’s lower jaw to hang. Another presence stooped over the beast and twisted its neck until the dog lay dead. The dwarf patted the hound’s head. Hate, oily and thick, gushed toward Faris.
The first hound lunged for Faris’s throat. He twisted and ran the sundisc across its ribs. Flesh parted and the blade bit bone. Teeth scored his arm, but its momentum carried it past. The dog landed and turned, snarling. The hounds, bred to fight, had hides that tore easily and made them difficult to grip with teeth or blade. The second hound slowed. Before and behind, the dogs growled. In the Void’s strange sight, a ghostlike apparition approached.
“This is the best the Shemsu Hor can muster,” the dwarf said. “Half a man?” His laughter echoed from the walls.
Faris delved deeper into Void and launched the sundisc.
The dwarf’s axe blade countered, but the disc still cut into his shoulder as it zinged by. “You’ll regret you missed, sun-dweller.” The dwarf smiled and then sprang.
The dogs leapt.
Faris spun like a figure skater’s scratch spin, outstretched arms tipped with aten. He ground his toe into the mud floor. Blades caught the hounds before the dwarf bowled through him, heedless of the weapons. Faris somersaulted; his breath crushed from his lungs. The dwarf rolled over him and came up in a crouch. Another dog slumped dead; the second limped on three legs.
With the exit clear, Faris sprinted, his longer legs keeping him ahead of the dwarf. Soon, however, his gait widened and his steps shortened. The dwarf closed. As Faris wearied, the Void threatened. It was the longest period he had ever touched it. It urged him deeper, to draw more. Instinctively he pulled back. He retreated on leaden limbs. The dwarf’s axe sliced across his shoulder blades.
Faris bounced from a wall and into the crocodile’s cavern. The dwarf paused at the edge of the tunnel. Faris’s wound burned, but he remained upright. The dwarf didn’t follow him. Still brushing the Void, Faris watched the crocodile lope toward him, and he reached deeper into chaos. He bolted for the cavern’s far wall.
Thump. Thump. Thump, thump. The beast’s claws tore into rock. Faris dove for the blacker rectangle of the far corridor. His robe tugged backwards, caught in mammoth jaws. He teetered on the exit’s lip. The jaws opened, and he tumbled forward. The tunnel shook as the crocodile wedged into the narrow passage. A kaleidoscope of lights and colors danced in Faris’s vision. A dark shadow loomed above. He jerked his legs away. Claws raked at the earth where his limbs had lain.
He squirmed from the fetid breath and hauled himself out of the Void. The crocodile bellowed. Dimly, he heard the dwarf swear and shout at the beast. With the Void flushed from his mind, darkness returned. Faris pushed to his feet, rebounding from the walls as he swayed. His flashlight’s waning beam wavered as he followed the furrow his foot had carved earlier in the night.
Faris reached the base of the forty flights of stairs. He paused to listen for sounds of pursuit. Nothing. He started up the steps at a steady jog, but his back wound and the darkness slowed his pace. With a few flights remaining, the first huffs of the dwarf reached up the stairwell. Faris gave a strangled cry and longed to reach for the Void’s vision and energy. He swallowed the urge and climbed with new vigor. Fear ushered into him needed strength. Faris turned up the final flight.
“I’m going to feed chunks of you to Sobek,” the dwarf called.
A single flight separated them.
Faris climbed to the top and then turned. He drew a deep breath and pictured the mass of Void. When he reached into its froth, he hefted a sundisc and hurled it directly at the wall. It ricocheted upon itself back and forth, faster until it was a horizontal line of force. He fired a second aten at the ceiling, leaping back as it shot down. The two blades rebounded and formed a blue cross. The Void filled him, and Faris knew he hadn’t the endurance to resist the well of the Void long, but he had to hold.
Hoarse grunts crested the final turn, and the spectral shape of the dwarf charged halfway up the flight. At the sight of the sundiscs, the dwarf staggered.
Faris stumbled to the stone door.
The flashlight jittered as Faris inspected the wall at the top of the stairway, heart thudding and eyes darting across the broad surface of rock. The light dimmed; its glow would soon be gone. His hand trembled and jerked the beam. At the head of the stairs, a few yards away, the dwarf was blocked only by the slowing sundiscs. The Void-rage insisted Faris dive deeper, but he slowed his breathing and regained control. At last, Faris spotted the scorpion tail. His finger searched the carving for a button or trigger.
A sundisc cracked into the stone beside his head. Fragments shot about the confined space, the trap broken by the dwarf’s axe. Faris released the Void. The dwarf’s cry blended rage, triumph, and pain. Pushing, pulling, and then twisting, the tail finally clicked. Faris dodged to the right as the axeblade whistled. Sparks lit the doorframe as the axe struck stone.
The door banged against the wall of the pylon, its echoes lost in the rush of the Nile. Faris hauled the panel shut and threw his weight upon it as the dwarf swung his axe again. Once more, the blade clanged against rock. The door closed. Faris ran toward the warren of caves. As he ran, he reached out to Askari. He was there, and Faris let the Shemsu Hor’s strength and calm infuse and buoy him.
The Fullness engendered a sense of peace. The wisdom of ancient souls who had once traversed these same paths guided him, and he heard whispers of their thoughts as he ran. He ducked into the first tunnel and took each arm thereafter as if by memory. He ascended and the first whiffs of freedom swept down. The Fullness soothed his aches and injuries. He sprinted and he knew no one, not a dwarf, not a man, could match his speed. He pushed over the lid of a marble coffin and tumbled into a sunlit crypt.
Chapter Eleven
David broke from the claustrophobic grip of the Hanging Church and shivered in the sudden blaze of light. In early evening, the sun remained hot, but cast long shadows from the surrounding buildings.
Feeling guilty about leaving Zahara to stumble about the area without an orientation, David hurried back out of the fortress to the broad steps of St. George in the hopes of a brief talk before his meeting with Tara, a meeting all the more important with Tara’s promise to show him the original engraving and the pope’s warning.
St. George had once been Coptic, but now stood as a seat of Greek Orthodoxy. Expecting to see his girlfriend lounging on the steps, he paused at their base and frowned. Empty. He checked his watch and headed into the nave of the church.
Besides a few bowed heads, none of which shared Zahara’s shiny mane of black tresses, he saw no sign of her. Outside once more, he circled the grounds, finally spotting their small bags near a stone bench. But no Zahara. He fumbled for his phone, annoyed he’d need to suffer the charges associated with an international call and dialed.
Her bag rang three times before he hung up.
“Zahara!” he called. Her name echoed, drawing the attention of a scarf-wearing old woman who lifted her head as if from a doze.
“Have you seen a young, black-haired woman near these bags?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“Do you understand English?”
She shrugged apologetically even after he tried Arabic.
Given Zahara’s interest in antiquities, religion, and archaeology, she could have found any part of the area fascinating and wandered away, but Zahara wasn’t so naive as to leave the bags unattended, was she?
He frowned at them. Aside from toiletries, his contained nothing he’d miss, his passport, money—anything important was in the courier bag slung across his back.
But her bags had a cell phone and whatever else she’d packed.
Perhaps its loss might teach her a lesson. He chastised himself for such a patronizing thought and had to admit that he struggled with their relationship. If he didn’t want people to see the age gap, he shouldn’t act like he was her father. He huffed and set off to his second meeting.
As dusk fell, the walls of Coptic Cairo loomed, their shadowy height beyond the reach of streetlights. He stood at the stairs descending to the gate of Babylon, disconcerted over the missing Zahara and his conversation with Shagar. David had translated the stele and knew what it said, but he could not believe in such a prophecy, let alone that he be a part of it. But life had taught him that his beliefs were unimportant to what others thought and did.
He reached into his bag and brought out the translation.
The rubbing had at first frustrated him until he realized that the hieroglyphs read vertically rather than horizontally. At first, the whole thing had appeared as a cryptic word jumble. However, as he began to translate, he found very little of it was in fact unique, a great boon to the process of translation. Most of it was familiar and he read it again now, this time trying to place himself at its heart.
I am the Benu bird, the heart–soul of Re. I write at Philae.
If David was to suspend disbelief, the author claimed to be the risen phoenix. And that he engraved the tablet at Philae. The Temple of Isis on the Island of Philae was the last holdout of the Egyptian religion, the last temple to close by Roman decree.
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