The Bone House be-2

by Stephen Lawhead

  “All I know,” Kit confided to his new colleague a few minutes after setting off, “is that the tomb is in a wadi to the west of here-beyond the ruined temple.” He glanced at Khefri. “You know the temple?”

  “Of course. But there are many wadis,” Khefri told him. “It is not possible to know which one you mean.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” Kit thought for a moment. “This particular wadi is very large and splits into two branches after a few hundred meters or so. Also, there are small tombs and burial niches carved in the walls all along the way.”

  “Why did you not say this at the beginning, Kit Livingstone?”

  “You know the place?”

  “Of course. Everyone knows this place.”

  “If you can get us there, I can find the tomb.”

  They spent the night in the desert camped outside the ruined temple. Kit showed his new benefactor the avenue of sphinxes and the ley line it contained. “The leys seem to be time sensitive,” he explained as the two stood looking down the straight path between the paws of the crouching lions. “Early morning and evening seem to be the best times to attempt a leap. I can sometimes feel when it is active.”

  “Extraordinary.” The scientist squatted down and put a hand to the broken pavement. “Do you feel anything now?”

  Kit shook his head. “Not at the moment, no.” He cast a glance to the sky. The sun was well down, the night stars rising in the east. “It may be too late. Maybe, when we have found what we are after, I can show you how it works.”

  “I will look forward to a demonstration with keenest anticipation.”

  The next morning Khefri led them to the wadi entrance, and the expeditionary party proceeded down the long, winding stone corridor of the gorge. They reached the divide, and a little farther along began seeing the burial niches; they came to the steep cutting where Kit and Giles and Lady Fayth had climbed up to await their assault on the tomb in the ill-fated attempt at rescuing Cosimo and Sir Henry. Shortly after that, they arrived at the place where the main channel split into east and west tributaries.

  “This is the place,” said Kit, gazing around. “Here is where we make camp.” The bowl-shaped gulley was much the same as he remembered it, with only slight variations-so slight, in fact, that Kit had difficulty remembering that this was not the place he had been before. In this world, it was 1822 and there were neither tents nor Burley Men, and no excavated tomb either: just the sheer dust-coloured rock walls and the dry and empty wadi floor winding away on either hand. The great empty temple was there and still empty-though the interior, when inspected later, bore signs of scavenger activity. Indeed, there was no guarantee that Anen had even lived in this world, much less that he had been buried in the wadi.

  “Are you certain this is the place?” Thomas, sweating beneath his big white straw hat, patted his brow with a handkerchief and looked around doubtfully. “I have to say, I have never heard of a tomb located in such a remote and inaccessible location. I would never have thought of digging here.”

  “If the tomb is here at all, it will be in this wadi,” Kit assured him. “Somewhere…” He paced along the eastern branch a few dozen steps and stopped at a bend in the rock that looked faintly familiar. “Just about here, I’d say.”

  He pointed to the base of the curtain wall. “Somewhere along here is the entrance. There are steps leading down to the burial chambers below.” He looked along the seamless wall for any sign of the tomb but saw nothing to betray a hidden entrance. “At least, that’s the way I remember it from the other place.”

  “Then that is where we will begin.” The doctor told Khefri to have the men unload the animals, unpack the equipment, and set up camp.

  Soon the area resembled a bedouin village, complete with low, wing-shaped tents and a tiny campfire of twigs and dried dung over which flat bread baked on the bottom of an upturned pot. Sweet acacia smoke drifted on silvery threads into the air, and as the sun sank below the surrounding hills, an air of peace and calm descended over the ancient burial ground.

  While the evening meal was cooking, the doctor took a long, thin iron rod and began probing the sandy floor of the wadi where Kit had indicated, thrusting the tip of the rod deep and waggling it around, searching for any fissure or other anomaly that might betray a manmade structure. “This is how we begin,” Thomas explained. “You would be surprised what can be learned by literally poking around.”

  Working methodically, he applied the rod along the base of the wadi wall; when he finished, he had identified a half-dozen places where exploratory trenches would be dug. Kit was satisfied that at least one of them would turn out to be the sealed entrance of the tomb.

  Darkness claimed the day, and after their simple meal the men rolled in their cloaks to sleep, and soon the camp was at rest in the silence of the desert. Kit himself spent a restless night troubled by dreams of finding the bones of Cosimo and Sir Henry, or worse: being locked in the tomb with their rotting corpses.

  Those unhappy thoughts cast a dark cloud over his soul that lingered through the next day until, at the third trench, the diggers uncovered a large capstone set in the wadi floor. Khefri came running with the news. “Sir! Sir, come quickly. Dr. Young is calling for you.”

  “What is it?” Kit was lying on his grass mat in the shade of the tent, having completed a tiring stint at the second trench. “Have they found something?”

  “It is the entrance of the tomb.” Khefri dashed away again. “Hurry!”

  Kit jumped to his feet and rushed after the swift Egyptian. “That’s what I’m talking about! Now the fun begins.”

  CHAPTER 20

  In Which the Infant Science of Archaeology Is Radically Advanced

  It took two days to clear the rubble from the tomb entrance and the small forechamber, filled as both were with sand and rocks and bits of shattered pottery. On the morning of the third day of the dig, Thomas and Kit stood together and viewed the main chamber of High Priest Anen’s tomb. “Someone was in a terrible hurry,” Thomas pronounced upon seeing the extent of the wreckage.

  A new worry snaked through Kit. “You mean the tomb has been robbed?”

  “Oh, no. That is not my meaning at all-quite the reverse, if I am not mistaken.”

  “Then…” Kit puzzled over this, but the sense eluded him. “What?”

  “The burial crew would seem to have been in some haste to discharge their duties and seal the tomb before it could be discovered. See here”-he gestured at the box-like room filled chockablock with debris-“in a funeral of state, the priests would have taken care to preserve the sanctity of the tomb. Egyptians loved ostentation-have you noticed how they decorated every inch of every available surface in a temple with all manner of paintings and carvings?”

  “I have, yes.” It was true, thought Kit. Egyptian temple art was nothing if not spectacularly busy.

  “It is the same with their tombs. Ordinarily, the chambers are filled floor to ceiling with objects the deceased required for his journey through eternity. A high priest would have anticipated a sumptuous afterlife surrounded by the objects he valued and all that was most needful for his eternal existence.”

  “But they didn’t do that here,” said Kit, grasping for the meaning, “because they didn’t have time?”

  “Precisely,” affirmed Thomas. He gestured towards the great heap of broken stone, the remains of building rubble. “We may learn the reason for their unseemly hurry when we have cleared all the chambers. There are two more, I believe?”

  “That’s right.” Kit pointed across the room to a barely visible wall. He tried to visualise the chamber as he last saw it. “The room we’re interested in is somewhere back there. At least, it was the last time I was here.”

  “Correct me if I am wrong,” suggested Thomas, his steel-rimmed glasses glinting in the faint light as he turned to address Kit directly, “but strictly speaking, you have never been in this tomb.”

  “Strictly speaking, you’re right.�
�� The tomb Kit remembered was in a different dimension-a fundamental fact, but one he had trouble remembering.

  “We will begin clearing this chamber today,” Thomas said, rubbing his hands in anticipation. “But we want more workers. I think I shall send Khefri back to fetch Khalid and his crew from Luxor. Have you any objection?”

  “None whatsoever. You’re the doctor.”

  Three days later Khefri returned with the new workers-seven expert excavators, including Khalid-and three donkeys and five pack mules laden with additional tents, tools, water, and provisions for an extended stay in the desert. After half a day’s rest from the journey, the dig shifted into a higher gear, and Kit was glad to see the work progressing by leaps and bounds. At the end of the second day, the main chamber was cleared of rubble and the back wall fully exposed to reveal an expanse of white plaster with vertical bands of hieroglyphs in black and yellow.

  “There is a door to a smaller chamber,” Kit explained, stepping to the wall. He ran his hands along the surface, turning his palms white from the plaster. “It should be right about here.” He brushed his hands on his trousers and turned to Dr. Young. “But you have to remember, none of this was here when I saw it before.”

  “The plaster will be removed-starting in the area you have indicated,” Thomas told him. “That will be tomorrow’s exercise.”

  The labourers were sent out to sift the rubble for any fragments of interest, while the doctor assembled his drawing instruments and drew up a scaled representation of the wall. Then Thomas, Kit, and Khefri set about painstakingly recording the hieroglyphic bands covering the area of the hidden doorway, a task that occupied them far into the night-and would have taken far longer but for Khefri’s native facility with rendering the old symbols.

  The next day they were back at work before sunrise. The more skilled workers were detailed to chisel away the plasterwork covering the doorway to the hidden chamber-but only after Thomas was satisfied he had matched every symbol against the rendering copied the night before. “I will save these to decipher at my leisure,” he explained, rolling up the last long scroll of paper. He gave a nod to Khalid, who commanded the workmen to ply the hammer and chisel to the wall.

  “Do you know how to read them?” wondered Kit, watching as the first blow of the hammer erased a line or two of ancient pictorial text.

  “It is devilishly difficult at best,” allowed Young, “but we are making progress. Each new discovery adds to our store of words, and the knowledge of the ancient text increases. There are some here I have never seen before, but I can foresee the day when we will be able to read the old script as easily as the daily newspaper.”

  “The ones you have deciphered,” prompted Kit, “what do they say?”

  “They seem to be prayers of a sort, addressed to various gods-invocations of protection for the tomb and for the Ka, that is, the soul of the deceased. Others seem to be petitions for guidance on the journey to the afterlife. Some of the writings I have seen undoubtedly show incidents from the life of the deceased-lists of properties and assets, descriptions of family members, notable events, and that sort of thing. Because we are beginning to see certain collections of symbols repeated in the tombs and on sarcophagi we surmise that the prayers seem to follow what we believe is a rote formula.”

  Kit nodded. What little he knew about Egypt, he had learned in school visits to the British Museum. “From the Book of the Dead, perhaps,” he volunteered. A large chunk of plaster tumbled to the floor and smashed into pieces, disclosing bare stonework behind.

  “Ah! You have heard of it. But of course you would. In your time, it must be very well known. Tell me, is Egyptology a well-studied discipline in your world?”

  “It is very popular,” Kit allowed, thinking primarily of mummies and movies about mummies. “Archaeology is big business in the home world.”

  “And do its practitioners solve the many riddles posed by hieroglyphic writing?”

  “Well, I would say-” began Kit.

  “No! Do not tell me. I should not know. It was wrong of me to ask. I have already pressed you far enough.” He smiled nervously. “Please, excuse my impetuosity. I sometimes forget myself.”

  “No harm done,” replied Kit amiably. “What’s a little professional curiosity between friends?”

  “All the same, professional curiosity could lead to some very unfortunate consequences. A single word might put time out of joint-if you see what I mean.”

  “I might say something that would reveal too much of the future,” Kit surmised.

  “And that could cause irreparable harm,” the doctor concluded.

  “Or good.”

  “I am not prepared to take that risk. Are you?” His gaze became intense.

  “I suppose not,” replied Kit, realising he had been revealing whole reams of knowledge about the future from the moment he showed up. “Getting back to the Book of the Dead,” he suggested by way of changing the subject.

  “In actual fact, its title is The Book of Coming Forth by Day. As I was about to say, we have yet to recover the whole text, but we have retrieved many portions and fragments.” The doctor paused a moment and collected his thoughts, then recited a verse from memory: I wake in the dark to the stirring of birds, a murmur in the trees, a flutter of wings.

  It is the morning of my birth, the first of many.

  The past lies knotted in its sheets asleep.

  Winds blow, making flags above the temple ripple.

  Out of darkness the earth spins towards light.

  I feel a change coming.

  My thoughts flicker, glow a moment and catch fire.

  I come forth by day singing.

  “That’s very good,” said Kit appreciatively. “I like that.”

  “It is not about death, you see, but about rising to eternal life. For the ancients, death was simply an emergence-a coming forth-from darkness into the glorious light of a new and better day. They were fascinated by immortality-obsessed with it. As a civilisation, they turned vast resources to furthering their understanding of the afterlife in the hope of eradicating death entirely.”

  Whole sections of plaster were tumbling to the floor now, raising clouds of thick white dust. Khefri, a damp keffiyeh over his nose and mouth, was given the task of supervising the demolition work; Thomas and Kit retreated outside to wait until the dust-making destruction was finished.

  Kit tumbled up the steps and into the bright morning light. He stood blinking up at the sky, clean blue and high above, and it did seem as if he had stumbled from darkness into the all-pervading radiance of a better world. Stepping free of the tomb, he felt compelled to ask, “Why were the ancients so in love with death?”

  “Who told you they were in love with death?” wondered Dr. Young, pulling a soft cloth from a rear trouser pocket. He removed his glasses and began wiping off the dust-covered lenses.

  “Is that not why they perfected mummification-to preserve the body as long as possible? Isn’t that why they went to such great lengths with all their elaborate tombs and mortuary temples and such?”

  “On the contrary, dear fellow. They were in love with life!” corrected Thomas, replacing his spectacles. “And such life-life in great abundance, life in all its glorious splendour. Death was anathema to them. Death, though natural and common, was unacceptable. Death was seen as nothing short of tragic disaster-at the very least an unfortunate accident along the happy road of existence, and one which, in time, they hoped to learn to avoid altogether. They were searching for immortality precisely because they wished life to continue forever without end.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “We do!” cried the doctor. “Of course we do. We were made for it, after all. I know not what it is like in your time-perhaps your world enjoys a more enlightened view-but in this current mechanistic age such thoughts are increasingly considered backwards and unscientific.” He shook his head sadly. “Too many of my brother scientists are succumbing to a view that holds all re
ligion as outdated nonsense-nursery tales from mankind’s infancy, dogmas to be outgrown and swept aside by scientific progress.”

  “I’m familiar with the view,” confirmed Kit.

  “But see here,” continued Thomas, brightening once more. “Contrary to what many may think, immortality is not a fairy tale invented to compensate for an unhappy life. Rather, it is the perception shared by nearly all sentient beings that our conscious lives are not bounded by this time and space. We are not merely lumps of animate matter. We are living spirits-we all feel this innately. And in our deepest hearts, we know that we can only find ultimate fulfilment in union with the supreme spiritual reality-a reality that appears, even during this earthly life, to take us beyond the narrow limits of time.”

  Kit pondered this. Although somewhat alien to his thoughts, he heard in the words, as from a far country, the distant but undeniable ring of truth. At last, he said, “Do you think we live forever?”

  “Oh, I do. I most certainly do. We are all immortal, as I said.”

  “That’s right, you did.” Kit savoured the idea for a moment, thinking of Cosimo, Sir Henry, his own parents, and all he had known who had gone before. “It’s a good thought.”

  “Yet I perceive you remain unconvinced.” The doctor pursed his lips and regarded Kit doubtfully. “Could it be as I fear? Has the concept fallen out of favour in the age to come?” Before Kit could reply, he rushed on, “I challenge you to clear thinking, Mr. Livingstone. Consider! Consciousness is who we are-we interact with the material world as conscious beings and in no other way. Is that not so?”

  “That is so.”

  “Consciousness, then, is the most evident brand of existence there is. You might call it self-evident, and it is not necessarily bound to matter at all. That much is easily demonstrated. Can you not bring images to mind of far-off places, friends and relations fondly remembered, or of things that made you happy in the past? Can you not imagine acts of kindness, or cruelty? Do you not recognise the truth of something when you hear it, or know beauty when you see it?” He glanced at Kit for confirmation, then pressed towards his conclusion. “All these, and more, are expressions of consciousness, and they are not bound by matter or space or time in the least. Since this is the case, it will be most natural for our more limited human consciousnesses to recognise and yearn for an affinity with the One Great Consciousness that made us-the spiritual consciousness of the Creator. Sharing in this divine awareness is the most natural form of existence.” He leaned forward and planted a finger on Kit’s chest. “See here, if we can establish an affinity with the eternal, ever-living Creator, then is it not likely that this affinity, this relationship, if you like, will endure beyond the death of the material body?”