The Buried Pyramid

by Jane Lindskold

Jenny was wondering if she dared make a more indelicate joke, and had just reluctantly decided that this would be improper when she realized there was something strange about where the kitten was digging.

  “Eddie, look,” she said, keeping her voice low, though every fiber of her longed to shout. “The sand is draining away faster than Mozelle’s digging should account for.”

  Jenny dropped to her knees and pulled the kitten back. Then she saw a small piece of flat sandstone knocked to one side.

  “This crack is longer than it seemed,” she reported, “and either Mozelle or the lizard knocked away the bit of stone that was chinking it. I can hear the sand trickling in somewhere, like there’s a hollow space behind.”

  From that moment, translating hieroglyphs took second place to clearing away the sand. Stephen and Neville were called over to view Jenny’s discovery, and were equally excited.

  “The stone has been dressed here,” Neville said. “Carefully and so as not to show the marks, but once you know where to look for a seam, it’s quite clear. I think we have found the upper edge of a doorway.”

  Jenny didn’t mind that “we,” not one bit, for the tension had melted from Uncle Neville, and his eyes shone with even more intensity than they had done for Lady Cheshire.

  Eddie was wise enough to know that this was not the time to insist his charges take their midday break. With Jenny’s assistance, he broke out the gear that had been brought along in case they found anything worth digging after. Among the most useful items were a selection of wide, shallow baskets, tightly woven enough that they could be used to carry away sand. Although bulky as individual items, the baskets could be nested inside each other, and so Eddie had brought a good many.

  This proved wise, for moving sand was their primary task. They shoved, swept, and even scooped with their hands, but there was no rapid way to clear the stuff, and soon all had been given ample demonstration of sand’s insidious ability to trickle, to collapse, and to otherwise make itself persistently difficult to remove.

  After a time, they yielded to Eddie’s persuasion that they would get more done if they were rested and cool. Back beneath the shelter of the camel-hair pavilion, Sir Neville presented Mozelle with a sliver of roasted mutton.

  “I take back everything I ever said about this kitten, Jenny,” he said, his high good humor evident, perhaps because despite his exertions the swelling in his ankle had not increased appreciably. “Mozelle has earned herself a lifetime of cream and mice once we return to England.”

  Jenny smiled, and scratched the little cat between its tawny ears, obliging with a tummy tickle when Mozelle rolled sleepily onto her back.

  “To think,” Stephen added, “the entire interior wall here could be honeycombed with doors hidden beneath that sand, and we would never have known.”

  “Don’t say that,” Jenny requested with a shiver that had nothing to do with the lengthening shadows. “It gives me goose pimples just thinking about it. What if they should all open at once?”

  “They’d fill with sand,” Stephen said dryly.

  Removing the sand proved to be only part of the job, carrying it away was another—one that devolved largely on Jenny and Eddie, for Stephen still needed to avoid the sun and so was delegated to digging beneath a tarpaulin erected to assure shade. Sir Neville, also restricted to digging, insisted that the sand be carried to the “plain” at the center of the valley.

  “Otherwise we may end up moving it all again to get at something else along the edge, or the least breath of wind may blow it back.”

  The camels were drafted for some of this labor, but human hands had to carry the stuff, and human arms and backs to lift and load it. Within a few hours, Jenny’s back ached abysmally, and she was having second thoughts about her find. Copying had been dull, but decidedly unpainful.

  She was almost grateful when Eddie ordered her in the most matter-of-fact way possible to return to camp and cook the evening meal. He had shot another goat earlier that morning, but the flat bread—more a cracker than a bread by this time—beans, and dried fruit that were to accompany the meat needed preparation.

  When dusk forced them to stop, they had the upper portion of a doorway cleared. Based on other structures of that type, Neville seemed confident they would be finished the next day. They had also uncovered along the sides of the door a short series of incised hieroglyphs accompanied by sunken relief pictures. Stephen had made a quick sketch of these, which he now tilted to the firelight to better study them.

  “I can’t work out the entire meaning,” he said, “since the text runs top to bottom, and so I’m missing a good half. What I can read seems to indicate that entrance through this door is forbidden to all but those confident in the justice of their actions.”

  “Another curse,” Neville asked, masking a yawn, “or a more specific warning?”

  “It seems to be just another warning or curse,” Stephen admitted. “The writing on the other side of the doorway has something to do with sand. I can’t guess what that has to do with anything. It’s in a different hand, and the writing is less deeply incised, and in a later style.”

  “Like what we saw at the Hawk Rock?” Jenny asked.

  “Very similar,” Stephen said, folding the cover shut over his notes. “I should light a lantern and go finish my copying, but I will admit gratitude that Neville has forbidden gratuitous burning of oil. I, for one, am a spent candle. I understand why most excavators hire native help.”

  “We couldn’t have done that this time,” Jenny reminded him. “We didn’t know for sure that we were going to find anything.”

  “And,” Eddie said, staring over where the statue of Anubis kept its silent watch, “it might not have been wise.”

  No one chose to comment on the warning implicit in Eddie’s statement. Since they had arrived in the Valley of Dust, it had become increasingly difficult to believe in the world without. Their entire existence seemed to have been bounded by the golden glow of the curving sandstone cliffs. The lush green Nile on which they had so recently traveled had become nothing more than a rather unlikely and extravagant dream.

  Eddie, however, continued watchful, and until full darkness fell, he frequently strolled to one or more of the watch posts from which he had earlier established he could see out of the valley and into the surrounding desert.

  Speculation as to what they might find when they finally opened the door lapsed as exhaustion made its claim. With very little comment, those who were not on watch retired to their bedrolls until only Sir Neville and Mozelle remained awake. He was so intent on his thoughts, that even when a miniature fox, lured close by the tantalizing scent of their dinner, barked indignantly from the edge of the firelight, he didn’t stir.

  As always, dawn provided their wake-up call. Stephen had tended a pot of stew made from dried fish, onions, and beans, which he insisted was just as nice as dining on kippers and eggs. No one bothered to ask whether he liked that particular meal. Their supply of tea was holding out nicely, augmented with mint from one of the canyons.

  Then the digging began again. Neville, noting how stiffly Jenny was moving, gave her his place digging, and worked with Eddie on loading sand onto the camels. From time to time, he had to lean against the reclining beast to relieve the pressure on his ankle but he managed well enough.

  “I’ve found bottom,” Jenny sang out sometime around mid-morning. She put the trowel she had been using aside, and began brushing the sand away with her hands. Mozelle, who had retained proprietary interest in the humans’ odd behavior, thought this was a wonderful game and began scrabbling with her.

  “Here, Jenny,” Eddie said, leaning down over the edge of the excavation. “Try this.”

  He handed her a small, stiff-bristled broom which she used to clear away the remaining sand.

  At last the door stood revealed much as it must have been on the day it was first constructed. Hieroglyphs ran down both sides and adorned a middle panel of the door itself. The base of
the pedestal on which the sculpture of Horus stood was revealed as level with the bottom of the door. Jenny and Stephen now stood on rock, rather than sand, though whether this doorstep was a ledge, or the true bottom of the valley could not be told without digging away even more sand—labor no one felt an immediate inclination to undertake.

  “The door has neither latch nor hinges,” Stephen said. “How are we to get it open without breaking it?”

  “Jenny, come out and let me have a look,” Neville ordered. “I learned a few tricks when on archeological escort duty.”

  Eddie, his usual watchfulness vanished in the general excitement of discovery, helped Neville down.

  “If you don’t have any luck,” he offered, “I’ll give it a try.”

  Stephen, meanwhile, was inspecting the hieroglyphic writing on the side panels, concentrating on the less deeply incised, presumably newer text.

  “I admire your devotion to scholarship,” Jenny said, leaning back to watch as soon as she had climbed out.

  “Not scholarship,” Steven admitted, “at least not in the purest sense. I’ve been wondering if these might be directions for opening the door. What if after some years had passed, such guidance was viewed as prudent by some Protector?”

  “Like the obelisk that gave directions to the valley?” Jenny asked.

  “Exactly,” Stephen said. “From what I can make out, the text does apply to the door, but it’s as annoyingly vague as the obelisk was, full of references to Nekhebet and Wadjet.”

  “Who?”

  “The patron deities associated with upper and lower Egypt, the vulture goddess and the cobra goddess,” Stephen replied. “Elegant in their strange ways, but hardly useful.”

  Neville had been making a meticulous inspection of the interior of the door frame, and now he gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  “Found something?” Eddie asked.

  “I may have,” Neville replied. “Hand me that whisk broom.”

  He knelt, and carefully swept all traces of sand from the base of the door leaving it, as Stephen commented with fascination, “Clean enough to eat from.”

  “Now some water,” Neville said. “It doesn’t need to be much.”

  Eddie handed down a canteen. Neville poured a small stream of water on each corner of the door. It pooled, then began to sink into the stone. Neville did not seem disappointed, but rose to inspect the top of the door.

  “One of you,” he said to Eddie and Jenny, “climb around and take a close look at the top of the door frame. Try not to knock too much sand down.”

  Eddie obeyed, crossing to the top of the rock and leaning down awkwardly.

  “What am I looking for?” he asked.

  “Try to feel if there is any indication of an opening—a small one. You’d be feeling for motion in the air or a change in temperature.”

  Eddie probed with his fingers.

  “Maybe.”

  “Stronger on one side over the other?”

  “Maybe on the right, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Are you going to tell us what you’re thinking?”

  Neville nodded.

  “I think that the door doesn’t move back and forth, but sideways along a track. There’s enough space in the cliff wall to admit it. The fit is tight, but I think it moves right to left. The water I poured on the stone seemed to leak away just the smallest amount on the right, where on the left it soaked into the stone.”

  “The sandstone could have been more porous on the right,” Eddie objected.

  “It could,” Neville agreed. “However, take a look at the crack—the one Mozelle’s lizard slipped into. It’s also on the right, as if someone knew it opened that way and tried to pry it open, but failed.”

  “Or was stopped,” Eddie said darkly.

  Neville looked up at him.

  “Or was stopped. Come on down. The next step is seeing if we can figure out what holds it in place. Otherwise, we’ll have to try and break through the stone, and I’d hate to do that.”

  Throughout the morning, they remained unable to move the door. When they retired to escape the greatest of the sun’s intensity, Neville decided to hint that the time had come for them to simply break it in.

  To his surprise, both Jenny and Stephen objected strongly, and though Eddie said nothing, his aversion to the idea was evident.

  “We’ve hardly looked, Uncle Neville,” Jenny said sternly. “If you really want this discovery for the sake of science, you can’t behave like a tomb robber.”

  “I’m sure you’re on the right track,” Stephen added. “I think the mentions of Nekhebet and Wadjet are just elaborate ways of referring to south and north—or, since the doorway is on the west side of the valley, to left and right.”

  “Which is which?” Jenny asked quickly, and Neville felt rebuked for his impatience.

  “Well, if you face the door—and from other parts of the text, I think that is indicated—then the right is Upper Egypt or Nekhebet, while the left is Wadjet. The text talks about Wadjet going to visit Nekhebet.”

  “Or, as Uncle Neville has been saying all along,” Jenny completed triumphantly, “that the door slides from left to right. We are on the right track!”

  “No pun intended,” she added as the three men looked at her and groaned—Stephen the loudest of all.

  Perhaps Stephen’s translation provided enough encouragement that they took more care on their return examination, perhaps they would have worked the puzzle out eventually. Whichever was the case, Eddie eventually detected the small piece of stone that kept the door from sliding. It was a skilled bit of carving that looked like just another section of the solid stone, but once his patient investigation of every inch of the upper door frame found that one piece moved, removing the chock offered no difficulty. Grating on the sand that had drifted into its track, the door slid easily enough, vanishing into a recess to the left of the opening.

  “What astonishing engineering!” Stephen marvelled, dusting his palms on his trouser leg when they stopped for breath. Track or not, the sandstone panel was heavy.

  “These are the people who built the pyramids at Gizeh,” Neville said, feeling as absurdly proud as if he’d done the work himself.

  He noticed his niece was no longer peering over the edge. “Where’s Jenny?”

  “Here, Uncle Neville,” the head framed by the wide-brimmed hat reappeared. “I went to get a lantern. We may need light to see what’s inside. Go on, finish opening it!”

  The men did so, the door moving more easily now that they could step alongside it and push. Jenny leaned down to lower the lantern, but it proved to be almost unnecessary. Once opened, the chamber proved to be lit from within by narrow slits cut in the rock above.

  “I am an idiot,” Neville said, striking himself on the forehead. “I should have thought to look along the ridge line above for indications of caverns below.”

  “The openings must be covered,” Eddie said reasonably, “otherwise the sand would have filled the place long since.”

  Debate as to whether this would have been possible, or whether such coverings would have perished long before died away, for at last they could see what had waited behind the door, unseen for who knew how many millennia.

  18

  Dire Warnings

  The room was quite deep and square—excavated, as best they could tell, from the surrounding rock. The floor was covered with a layer of sand that had drifted in through the ventilation slits and the crack in the door, but otherwise it seemed as pristine as the day the workmen had left it.

  The back wall was dominated by a painting of Maat represented as a lovely, winged woman crowned with a single white feather. She was depicted in stylized Egyptian fashion. Her head with its single feature was turned in profile. Her unnaturally long arms—from which depended heavy, hawklike wings, their feathers painted in white, black, and blue—were presented along with the torso in a front view. Her lower torso and kneeling legs were again in profile. Lest anyone fail to recogn
ize her, her name and a brief hymn of praise were painted above her in gold.

  On the left-hand, or northern, wall was painted the monster Ammit, She Who Devours the Wicked, waiting for her prey, surrounded by swarms of vipers and scorpions. Green, red, and black had been used to depict Ammit’s crocodilian snout, her leonine mane and forequarters, and her hippopotamus hindquarters. The monster’s divinity was asserted by the striped nemes headdress she wore.

  Jenny forced herself to study the horrible creature, and concluded that no other monster could so perfectly represent watchful punishment. With her long, many-toothed snout tilted upward toward the underside of an empty set of scales, Ammit didn’t even seem particularly ferocious, more like a mastiff waiting for her master to drop her a tidbit.

  The right-hand wall showed Osiris in a similar fashion to his sculpture on the other side of the valley. In this depiction he carried the flail and crook loosely, as a living man might, rather than crossed over his chest. Unlike the worn statue, here the green hue of the god’s exposed skin was vivid; the expression in his eyes could be seen as stern, but not unkind. He wore a jeweled collar, and the tall crown of upper Egypt was shining gold rather than the more usual white. His wrappings were elaborately adorned with curving lines rather like the letter ‘U,’ ending in tiny dots of yellow, blue, and red. The overall effect was light and elegant. Jenny found herself thinking the design would make a pretty summer dress.

  When Jenny would have brought the lantern into the room, Neville stopped her.

  “We don’t want the smoke to stain the paintings,” he said. “These have been untouched for millennia. It would be a pity to ruin them now—especially since we have light enough.”

  Jenny smiled. She thought some of the fervor for discovery had eased now that they were in the chamber. Stephen was busy trying to spell out the texts alongside the painting of Osiris.

  “What does all of this mean?” she asked.

  “I won’t know for sure until I translate it thoroughly,” Stephen replied, his tone distracted. “I will make an educated guess that this chamber is intended to show the options that await at judgment. On one side stands Osiris in his glory, ready to welcome the just. On the other is Ammit, waiting for her supper.”