Heart of the Gods

by Valerie Douglas

  This would be difficult for her, of that he also had no doubt.

  He couldn’t even imagine what she was facing within.

  For himself and for Tareq, the idea of the Djinn was still abstract. It wasn’t real.

  Neither of them truly disbelieved but neither truly believed, either. He didn’t know what Ryan and Komi thought. Or if they thought about it at all. There hadn’t been time to ask.

  He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  Closing her eyes, Raissa soaked up the gesture. It helped to ease the ache in her heart.

  “Let’s go,” he said, turning to the others.

  Everyone shouldered packs, sleeping bags and all the weapons they could carry. Everything they might need in the day or days ahead.

  Tareq was on his satellite phone, informing the Museum they’d found the likely location of the Tomb of the Djinn, giving latitude and longitude with the promise to contact them with confirmation, once they had it.

  It was insurance.

  If anything happened to them or if anyone else claimed to have discovered the Tomb of the Djinn they would have to explain what had happened to those that had preceded them. And official recognition for the discovery would go to Ky and Tareq. Not that it might matter to either of them, then.

  “Stay close,” Raissa said. “I’m not sure if all the protections have been triggered.”

  They stepped into the cool dark shadows of the narrow defile, following Raissa’s bright hair, Ky at her side, slipping his fingers between her now cold ones.

  Rock rose above them, towering as high as skyscrapers, only the very tops lit by the light of the setting sun, the frangible rock a danger in and of itself. Pieces and shards littered the sandy floor of the cleft.

  They turned a corner and then Khai’s tomb was before them, carved into the curve of the dark inner face of the crack in the stone, polished in places until it was as smooth as glass, pillars sculpted out of the rock supporting a narrow roof over the ornately carved sarcophagus. Thieves had obviously chipped away at the gilt and whatever objects Khai had been expected to carry into the afterlife had either been taken or smashed.

  Still, the sarcophagus itself remained.

  Raissa winced at the damage, her heart aching at the damage. He’d deserved more respect, more honor than the thieves had given him. No surprise, they were honorless men who stole from those who had moved on into the afterlife.

  The features carved into the sarcophagus had been worn, smoothed by sand and time but it was still recognizable as the man Khai had aged to become. Strong, dignified, powerful still in body.

  Her breath caught, seeing it.

  “Khai,” she said, softly, her fingers going to her lips.

  Tears stung her eyes.

  It would have taken a blind man not to see the resemblance. And a little odd, certainly, for Ky to see, himself, older.

  Briefly Raissa laid her hand over the crossed hands of the sarcophagus where those folded wooden hands lay over his heart, her own heart aching for what she and Khai had had, for what they might have had and for what they’d lost.

  A thousand memories fluttered through her mind…

  That first day she had seen him standing in his chariot, the white horse in the traces, looking down at her where she stood amidst her dead, so tall and handsome. His lovely dark eyes examining her in cool astonishment… The night they’d first made love. Offering herself to him, a gift for his kindness. Fighting beside him in the King’s Hall and at the Fort, during that first battle. His kindness and his strength, his heart…

  She remembered, too, his face as they prepared her for this.

  The memories made her heart ache.

  She’d loved him so much. She still did. She always would.

  As she loved Ky.

  Love didn’t end.

  Ky watched her lovely mobile face, the others silent behind them.

  Her eyes went to him, the blue darkened, stormy.

  “Perhaps it is knowing what he and I couldn’t have together, by Kamenwati’s will,” she said, softly, looking at him, “that has made me know how precious you are. Perhaps only loss or the possibility of loss that makes us realize how much we must treasure those we love, for only we know how very much we lose.”

  And how much she might lose, again.

  Ky saw it in her eyes, the fear, the grief.

  He pulled her into his arms, held her tightly as she slid an arm around his neck, her fingers spearing into his hair to cling to him, if only for a moment. His throat was wet where her face was buried against it. Her other hand rested on the sarcophagus, over Khai’s crossed hands.

  Tareq cleared his throat a little. He hated to do it but time was getting short.

  Nodding, they separated… For a moment Raissa clung to Khai’s carved hands, pressed there, and then she felt the hands of the sarcophagus shift beneath hers.

  There was something, a glimmer of magic.

  She turned to look.

  The carved hands covered a hidden compartment above where Khai’s heart would have been.

  Something within her shifted, a shaft of pain, of memory, as she guessed what lay within.

  A glint of gold shimmered in the sunlight reflected from the stone above them.

  Reaching in, knowing in her heart what it was, Raissa withdrew a gold chain, a lavalier of mixed knotwork depending from it. She held the pendant cradled in her hands as tears gathered in her eyes, nearly blinding her, at the memory of the day she’d given it to him.

  Khai had promised he would never remove it, he would wear it always above his heart and so he had. Even in death. She could feel his life force there within it, his ba. Her breath caught as her heart wrenched.

  “What is it?” Ky said, looking at it. Carefully, he reached out to cup the pendant in his palm. “It’s beautiful.”

  It was.

  In fact, he’d never seen anything like it in all his years of study. It was unique. The distinctive pattern of Isis’s knot marked the center of it but the intricate knotwork around the outer edges had a more Celtic feel to it.

  The others crowded around to look at the find.

  “Thank you,” Raissa said, softly. “It’s a charm against magic. I made it for Khai to protect him from Kamenwati.”

  Her eyes went to Ky.

  For a moment they just looked at each other.

  Raissa said nothing. It was his choice.

  Looking into her eyes Ky nodded and then his head.

  He understood what she was giving him. It was far more than an amulet.

  Nothing could have touched her more than that simple gesture. Raissa’s throat went tight.

  She touched his hair, briefly in benediction, as she had the day she’d given the charm to Khai.

  Gently, as she’d done millennia before for him, she lowered the chain over Ky’s bent head and then slipped her hands beneath his dark hair to settle the warm gold against his throat. Her fingers traced the chain around his neck, to the pendant below, to where it settled over his heart. She held it there gently, looking up into his dark eyes.

  The gold warmed even more as it settled, so light he barely felt it.

  Looking down at her, he closed a hand over hers.

  Raissa smiled at him, nodded and then turned back to lean over briefly, to kiss the cold lips of the sarcophagus.

  “Thank you, love,” she whispered.

  She knew Khai would have approved.

  Taking a breath, she straightened and said to the others, “Stay close. We aren’t yet there.”

  It was clear where one trap had been, as they had to climb over the fall of rock.

  No one wanted to consider what, or who, might be underneath it. The bleached skeleton that lay partly beneath it was warning enough.

  Ky lifted Raissa down the other side, so much as Khai had once done―his hands closing around her waist―that it caught at her.

  Warm brilliant light beckoned at the end of the long narrow shaft, the cold stone loomi
ng above them.

  They stepped out of the long tunnel and into paradise.

  In the millennia that had passed, the palms had seeded themselves and the wind or birds had carried in the seeds of other plants, so that now the garden bloomed lushly.

  Tall palms swayed in the light breeze from above, vines twined up the stone walls, while thick tall grasses grew in great tufts with towering silken heads. Flowers bloomed riotously, their scent filled the little glen, the aroma fresh and light.

  It was like a little cup of Eden, lush and brilliantly green, brightly flowered and hidden in the depths of the desert.

  All but Raissa were looking up and around in wonder.

  It was beautiful, serene, almost magical in its serenity. The air seemed to hum with contentment.

  A path, marked with great stones, wound into the heart of it. Like Dorothy on the yellow brick road they followed it to a great central meadow.

  Four great statues of lions, each done in warm golden alabaster, each on a tall marble pedestal, glowed golden and tawny in the light of the setting sun. They were spaced down a broad avenue, two on each side and nearly buried in the greenery, vines and flowers twined around them. They were unique, individual, each one of them in a different pose.

  Sunlight sparkled on a thin thread of water falling through another narrow crack from the heights above. A rainbow arced around it. Light coruscated high on the walls.

  The last brilliant light of sunset glowed against the far wall gilding everything with its warm radiance.

  They looked up to see the crack in what had once been the ceiling of some ancient cavern, some catastrophic event in the far distant past opening it to the sky to let earth and sand, seeds and nuts blow inside to give birth to what lay within.

  It was extraordinarily beautiful, bathed in that soft, gilded light, the tops of the trees swaying in time with an unfelt breeze high above them. Within the massive walls it was still, the silence broken only by birdsong.

  The creatures that lived here had found a sanctuary in this place.

  Against one nearby wall, a skeleton sprawled, a harsh reminder of what lay within.

  Raissa watched them all with quiet, careful eyes and took a slow, steady breath, fighting against the pull of the stele.

  “There are others,” she warned, with a nod toward the remains.

  It was another reminder, this time of who she was, who she’d been.

  Gently, Ky tightened his fingers around hers, feeling hers grow colder.

  Her shadowed blue eyes met his. Her fingers released his…

  “There is one more thing for you to see,” she said, looking first at him, warningly, and then at the others.

  Both Ryan and Komi met her glance evenly.

  Tareq’s wise eyes just looked at her. He knew where she was taking them.

  She walked through the tall grass and they were all startled to see butterflies flutter up around her as birds swooped through the air above them. This was indeed her place.

  If none of them had believed in magic before, they might have believed in it at that moment as they watched the slender woman with her long sunny hair walk through the grass while butterflies rose around her and birds swept by, unafraid of the humans in their midst. That warm hazy light filled the avenue of stone, turned it mystical, magical, warming her skin and bathing her white dress in pale gold.

  Vines had twined around the stele, too, so it seemed the face of it peered out from behind a veil of flowers, leaves and vines pensively.

  The face was the face of the woman who stood next to it…

  Raissa’s face…

  She fought the tug of this place, the call of her resting place…

  Or rather, Irisi’s face, as she had been, the blue eyes kohl-rimmed, the color shadowing the lids the same color as those eyes, the features fine, the nose a little crooked as Raissa’s was.

  It was more than a little disconcerting to look at, as Khai’s sarcophagus had been.

  The age of it was obvious, the stone weathered, the plants, thick and lush, shielding it from the ravages of the centuries.

  An intricate series of hieroglyphics covered what would have been her dress, the delicate figures looking like an intricate pattern at first. It was beautiful, the characters tiny and incredibly detailed

  “Look at this, Ky,” Tareq said, in awe.

  With a soft exhalation, he traced some of the characters etched into the stele, his fingers just above the stone.

  “These are from the Book of the Dead. Here’s the Spell for Going out into the Day and living after Death, another, and the spell for Creating another Form. Every spell she would need for recreating herself is here. All the spells she might need to do what she’s done.”

  It took a second for Ky to understand, to truly comprehend the magnitude of it.

  She was in there. Raissa. Irisi. The body she’d been born with resided within the narrow confines of the stele.

  The idea staggered him. It was unimaginable. The stone was barely wider and taller than Raissa herself, within it the confines would be close against her linen-wrapped body.

  Suddenly Ky understood her horror, her loathing, as the same sense of claustrophobia enveloped him.

  He slid his arm around her waist, pressed a kiss to her temple. He couldn’t imagine the courage it had taken to willingly allow herself to be interred within it. Alive.

  Raissa looked into his dark eyes and saw the glimmer of gold deep within them. He pressed another kiss to her forehead. The simple comfort of that gesture meant more than she could say.

  She rested her hand on the cold stone in which her body was interred.

  Carefully, she looked at all of them.

  “Whether you believe or not,” she said. “If anything goes wrong, deeply, drastically wrong, destroy this and the Guardian will be released. Some part of me remains here. Once it’s destroyed, run, drop your weapons and run… The part of me that is Irisi may not know you. She’ll do you no harm as long as you mean none, as long as you’re not armed. But it would be even better if you are not here.”

  She looked at Ky, at Tareq, Ryan and Komi.

  “Are you ready?”

  Behind the stele was the entrance to the Tomb itself, an arched opening in the rock, draped with vines. A stone sealed it. Ky and Tareq pushed it away.

  Once again, Raissa led the way.

  With a simple gesture, she called up a touch of magic and set the torches in the walls alight. Flame leaped from one to the other like a frog, fire preceding them down the narrow mouth of the entry tunnel.

  Suddenly the walls fell away, opening around them. The short tunnel was gone and they stepped out into an enormous echoing chamber filled with light, firelight and lamplight.

  The flame split to encircle the walls, raced toward the rear of the chamber to ignite the last two torches so the space was ringed, filled, with light.

  Tareq sighed and shook his head.

  It was brilliant. Light gleamed, sparkled, glowed and glittered from everywhere, dazzling the eye as the torchlight reflected from the quartz and mica in the stone of the walls, in the stalactites and stalagmite, the gold and silver veined marble, and from the gold and gems that spilled everywhere. Towering figures stared down benignly at them.

  It was beautiful.

  They just stared in wonder as the light filled the chamber brilliantly, warmly.

  Around the circumference of the echoing cavern were the individual figures representing the Gods, each on a pedestal, each carved of a different stone or precious wood, marble, alabaster, even granite, gilded in gold, silver and bronze, each in their traditional clothing and poses. Golden-skinned, serene and lovely Isis with an asp curled around her feet, lion-headed Sekhmet stood at their back with Ra, Osiris, hawk-headed Horus and the others in a circle around them. Each was bejeweled in some way.

  In the center of the chamber was a long white marble pedestal, a plinth, the stone veined with gold, clearly the original intended location of I
risi’s sarcophagus, the center of it hollowed and smoothed to the shape of her graceful curves.

  Gold was all around them, everywhere. Gold plates, gold bowls and gold combs, gem studded jewelry spilled out of coffers and there were figures of lions everywhere―which puzzled Ky a little, as lions were creatures of Sekhmet not Isis and Irisi had been a priestess of Isis.

  Where there wasn’t gold there were jewels, little coffers filled with gemstones of all kinds, a rainbow of glittering stones.

  Tall amphorae were filled with priceless oils, smaller ones with frankincense, myrhh, and millennia-old wine. Still smaller ones contained spices that scented the air when their stoppers were removed.

  In moments the air smelled sweet and fresh, softly perfumed by more than the flowers outside.

  The walls had been smoothed as much as possible, plastered over and painted intricately in red and black hieroglyphs with passages from the Book of Death and the Book of Life, as guides to her passage through to the underworld…except her journey to the underworld had never been completed.

  It was beautiful, a divine and sacred space.

  “Look at this,” Ryan said, reverently, picking up a gold bowl.

  It was pristine, untouched. There wasn’t a scratch or dent in it. Time had not touched it nor had the hands of another since it had been set here.

  Komi picked up a sapphire the size of a hen’s egg and shook his head.

  Pearls dripped from bowls in strands draped across fine linen cloth, perfectly preserved by the bone-dry air within the cavern.

  They could only look around them in astonishment.

  It was simply breathtaking.

  To his amusement, Ky found himself mentally cataloguing where everything was and what it was, to compare it against their guesses, against the later tombs of Pharaohs, Viziers and other priests and priestesses.

  Even as he knew Tareq was doing.

  He looked at his friend. They both grinned, knowing what the other was thinking.

  Tareq reached out to touch the hand of the Goddess Hathor, her carved face serene, kind, perfect and untouched. He shook his head in amazement.

  It was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.