Heart of the Gods

by Valerie Douglas

  “Lovely,” he said, softly.

  Time hadn’t touched her or the room around them.

  It was a place of light, not darkness.

  Puzzled, he looked around.

  “This was all yours?” Ky asked.

  Raissa nodded, touching one of the necklaces in the coffers. They had done her too much honor. It had been intended to be the home of her spirit, a place for her to go out from to be among those she loved, and in a way, it had been.

  “And the Tomb of the Djinn?” Tareq asked, almost eagerly, for this was clearly not it.

  Involuntarily, she shivered.

  She looked from him to Ky.

  To them, to all of them, what lay below was only a myth, a legend out of time. It wasn’t real and she understood that.

  Neither Ky nor Tareq truly believed and she understood that, too. None of them did.

  They’d never known otherwise, had never experienced this.

  Perhaps because of what those long ago others, and she, had done.

  All of that was about to change.

  Each step of this journey, though, had been to bring them to this place, this time, to prepare them for it and she understood that now as well.

  There wasn’t much time.

  She turned.

  Concealed by the shadow created by the light of the torches was another fissure in the rock, a dark, jagged, uninviting crack in the rock, another dark tunnel. A cold, damp breeze greeted them at the mouth of it as they followed her to it, so strong it lifted Raissa’s hair and blew it back to flutter, chilling all of them to the bone as it struck them.

  It was the breath of the tomb and it was damp, thick and foul. Something fetid hung in it, so strongly you could almost taste it.

  Suddenly Tareq found he wished he hadn’t asked.

  Before them was a long throat of darkness that lead down into the depths of the earth, it was utterly and pitch black.

  No light shimmered here. In fact, oddly and eerily it seemed to swallow up the light that came from behind them.

  The weight of the limestone and granite above them seemed to press on them as they began to descend.

  Raissa led the way, another spell setting the torches leading their way down alight before them.

  Unlike the chamber behind them, either there were fewer torches here or the damp dark stone of the walls drank up that light, too, rather than reflecting it, muted and smothered the brightness as it seemed to smother sound as well. Their footsteps didn’t echo.

  Ky found himself looking down to reassure himself they were walking on stone.

  Here there was no quartz to reflect the light and the walls were rough-hewn, the marks of the chisels used to widen it etched in the stone. It seemed hurried, hasty, as if those who chiseled these walls wider had rushed to get it done.

  It was a long, dark, dank and dripping tunnel spinning down into the deep recesses of the earth. They wound down into the depths, the sound of their footsteps becoming more muffled with each step they took.

  The atmosphere grew more and more oppressive. It seemed hard to breathe.

  The walls were dark, slick and shiny, yet oddly dull, slimy like the skin of a worm. No one wanted to touch them. Shadows stretched weirdly, moved oddly in the wavering torchlight. It sometimes seemed as if something moved beneath or through the walls, or slid behind them or over them, something only seen from the corner of your eye. All around them it seemed as if there were whispers, hushed, barely heard voices speaking in a language no one understood and the sound of that fetid breeze blowing, whistling discordantly in the dark.

  Instinctively they all walked softly here.

  Despite everything they’d known and experienced there was a strong sense something here was asleep and no one wanted to wake it.

  Even Ky felt it, that sense of oppression, of something living, breathing here. He looked to Tareq and saw the same thing reflected in his face.

  As many tombs as they’d entered in their lives, as eerie as some had seemed, nothing touched the miasmic aura of this place.

  Only Raissa seemed untouched by it.

  Whatever caused it, the odd breeze from the depths, the movement of the rock, the echoes, the atmosphere of the tunnel was decidedly eerie. It was becoming easier to believe in almost anything with each foot they descended.

  Ky fought it, as he had at other sites, although it had never been this strong, this heavy, or oppressive, before.

  The only light beside the torches was a slowly growing, dim, pulsing ruddy glow, the light beating at the same rhythm as their hearts, the lurid radiance painting the mottled, dripping walls with light the color of blood, so it looked as if the very walls were bleeding.

  He wondered if he touched them, would his fingers come away bloody? He was half afraid to find out. Given the thick look of it, he thought he’d reserve that experience for another time.

  He’d never seen or heard of anything like this.

  A distant booming rang counterpoint to the pulsing light. It was nearly metronomic, steady and yet it didn’t have the sense of being mechanical… The walls, the floor, even their bones echoed with it. The dissonance between the pulsing light and the steady booming was oddly disconcerting, unnerving.

  “This is some serious, motherfucking baddass and fucked up,” Ryan said, his voice sounding odd even to his own ears as he looked around and shivered a little.

  He’d been on a few digs but this had to be the worst place he’d ever been.

  Komi looked around and shuddered.

  Around them the walls began to open outward, to spread, the ceiling seemed to rise and yet there was no lessening of the sense of oppression, instead it increased. The air was filled with the scent of offal, excrement, ancient, foul and putrid. It was thick enough to turn the stomach.

  In the middle of the broad landing a sarcophagus of plain black marble sat with nothing carved into its rough surface, the join where top and bottom came together nearly seamless.

  No figure had been carved into it.

  Raissa’s soft voice startled all of them, even Ky jumped a little.

  “Kamenwati’s sarcophagus,” she said. “Don’t touch it.”

  She certainly didn’t.

  Looking at it, Ky reflected that they hadn’t even given him a face, rendering him in death anonymous, nameless and faceless.

  If Zimmer was truly Kamenwati reborn, reincarnated, possessed…whatever…this wouldn’t please him.

  The pulsing sanguine light grew only more intense and yet somehow oddly less bright, as if the space diffused it as they descended past the sarcophagus.

  Komi murmured in dismay as his arm brushed the walls and he shuddered at the thick, cold moisture on it. He brushed it away in disgust.

  As they descended further, the walls opened out even farther, the ceiling rose higher and then they stepped out into another great open chamber.

  The last.

  Except that this one was dark, and despite the uncertain light of the torches, it was grim, shadowed.

  In the center of the floor a great circular dial had been carved, each facet of which had been carved and painted with the hieroglyph of each of the major gods. It wouldn’t have surprised Ky to find that it mirrored the placement of the statues above. Towering pillars carved of the same dark stone as the walls, and possibly carved from stalactites or stalagmites already in place, seemed to support a ceiling that rose so high above them it disappeared into the fetid cloying darkness. A channel circled the base of each pillar, as it did the walls. Those channels snaked across the floor…a thick, clotted and noisome fluid ran in them sluggishly…like old blood.

  It was as if the very air was coated with something noxious, thick and slimy.

  At the far wall were set two immense, intricately carved, thick, heavy iron doors. Bands of Isis’s silver and Ra’s gold, imprinted with their cartouches along the length, were threaded across the iron and across the seam between them to seal them shut. That thick iron was bent in places
, bowed from the inside out. Even the massive hinges showed signs of warping but they hadn’t given.

  Ky’s eyes lifted to take in the sheer size of the doors.

  Creating them would have been a major undertaking.

  The power, the strength it would have taken to dent iron that thick was unimaginable. Yet they were clearly bowed and from the inside. The implication was impossible to ignore.

  Ky went cold, just looking at them.

  In the middle of the doors, centered over the join between them, pressed and held in place by parts of the iron mechanism that sealed them shut on each side and at the top and bottom by the thin bands of the silver and gold seals enwrapping and enclosing it, was a great glowing red jewel, an enormous ruby the size of a man’s fist, the light within it seeming to throb as regularly as a heartbeat.

  “The Heart of the Gods,” Tareq breathed.

  His voice sounded oddly muffled, smothered, where it should have echoed in a chamber this size.

  “Yes,” Raissa said. “The Key and the Lock to the Tomb of the Djinn. The surest way to awaken the Guardian of the Tomb is to disturb it.”

  “How can it be both the Key and the Lock?” Komi asked.

  Every sound seemed to be sucked away, drained of life in this place so that Komi’s voice, all their voices, seemed stifled, indistinct.

  Frowning, Tareq said, “I thought the Guardian was…”

  “Both,” Raissa said, cryptically, with a small thin, wry smile, “and neither.”

  There was a miasma to the chamber that was palpable, a darkness only the light of the Heart of the Gods held at bay. It gave them all the shivers, even Ky and Tareq, who had been on any number of eerie dig sites, who had roamed alone among the tombs of the dead and never flinched.

  Only Raissa remained undisturbed.

  It was difficult to imagine living so close to this for so long.

  “That is the puzzle,” she said, softly, “that anyone who wants to open the Doors must answer, if they do not wish to release the Guardian, or the Djinn, or the mechanisms set in place to protect what lies within.”

  A huge boom thundered through the room, startling everyone badly. They could see the huge iron doors shake as a wail arose from within the chamber behind those iron doors like fingernails on a chalkboard to ring and echo from the walls. Hungry, esurient and utterly, completely mad, the sound swept over the skin like a snake’s tongue, flickering, raspy and hot, and made it crawl. Another cry, a weird ululating howl, the sound predatory and avid, made everyone cringe. Then a horrific shriek rang out, scraping over the nerves.

  A carrion stench suddenly filled the room, chokingly.

  “What the fuck is that?” Ryan asked, his voice sinking oddly.

  That sound made his balls want to crawl up inside him and sent shivers down his spine.

  Her eyes sick, Raissa answered, “The Djinn. They’re awakening…”

  Even she shuddered.

  Suddenly a cacophony of wails, shrieks, screams and howls broke out within the chamber, echoing, bouncing off the walls, the sound chilling, wild, voracious, avid and demented, making the skin crawl and the hair on the back of the neck rise. There was a sense of teeth gnashing as the unmistakable sound of claws raked down the iron and stone, multiple claws, the sound a scream of bone on metal. Something pounded against the doors like a great drum and the hinges of the great iron doors moaned.

  If there had been any non-believers in the room moments before there weren’t any after.

  Whatever was behind those doors should never be loosed, set free on the world. And they hadn’t even seen them.

  No one needed to, the sound was more than enough.

  That was real. The pounding on the doors, the way they shook, that was real.

  “And the Horn?” Tareq asked, his stomach clenched, tightly.

  Raissa smiled without humor. “In the safest place possible...”

  Turning her head, she looked at the great iron doors, waved at them.

  “It lies within, with them. After all, they cannot use it.”

  “So,” Ryan said, slowly, “let me get this straight. First you have to let the Djinn out, to get at the Horn that calls them.”

  Raissa smiled grimly and nodded. “That was the intention. Any attempt to open the doors improperly also summons the Guardian and releases the protections meant to keep the Djinn within.”

  “How did you get it in there, then?”

  She sobered, remembering. “It was carried in, by one among us. He stayed with it. His name was Saini. It was a very brave act.”

  That one act had cleansed his heart of all he’d done, of that she was certain, she wouldn’t stain his memory with the details. He deserved his place in the afterlife. If she survived she would see he got it.

  “But,” Komi said, uncertainly, “you are the Guardian, aren’t you?”

  Taking a breath, Raissa said, “Yes and no. Not completely. Some part of me, some part of my will, or ba, remains always within the stele…”

  “Can we get out of here, please?” Ryan said.

  He hated this place, fucking hated it.

  Ky looked upwards toward the distant landing and the sarcophagus in the center.

  Seeing his look, Raissa nodded and said, “Kamenwati. His heart lies inside, too, so it and his body can never be reunited.”

  Turning Ky looked to Raissa. And hers? But he thought he knew the answer to that already.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  The walk upwards was so long it seemed to take forever, until the muscles in Ryan’s thighs ached. It was such a relief to put that horrible place behind them Ryan nearly wept. Stepping into the warm and brightly lit main chamber was such a comfort he walked over to sit on the edge of Irisi’s pedestal and put his head between his knees to clear the lightheadedness.

  “I need a shower,” he said, almost plaintively.

  Far below them the cacophony continued, echoed dully.

  Raissa looked at them.

  Only Ky didn’t look pale and sickened but she could see the effort it cost him.

  Touching his hand, she said, “I’ve seen them, fought them. If there had been time…”

  Ky nodded and looked at her with renewed respect.

  She looked at the others, caught each eye.

  “If the doors below open,” she said, “go to Isis. There is sanctuary there behind her from that which lies below. Don’t leave it. Put your head down, close your eyes and pray. What protection there is, Isis will give you, in my name. Whatever you do, don’t leave that sanctuary. It is no protection against bullets, though, if it comes to that. The Djinn will take care of the rest.”

  She remembered too well Zimmer’s threat…and closed her eyes against it. It hadn’t happened.

  Not yet.

  “How bad will it get?” Ryan asked.

  She looked at him evenly. They needed to know.

  “Very bad,” she answered, grimly. “Worse than you can imagine. It will be a bloodbath. After millennia they’ll be very hungry. Those they don’t possess to do their will they’ll tear to pieces. Anything outside that circle of protection, they’ll devour it or them. Some don’t eat flesh or drink blood, they feed on the life force, the soul. It would be best if you simply closed your eyes and plugged up your ears. Anyone outside that small circle will die.”

  He blew out a breath, his stomach already heaving at the thought.

  “Okay,” he said, “forget I asked.”

  A small laugh escaped her.

  Ky glanced down the tunnel to the outside. Only a dim light showed at the end.

  There were still supplies to be brought in, their weapons and gear.

  He looked at them, all of them.

  Only Raissa was capable of meeting his eyes. Even Tareq was unsettled by what they’d seen, what they’d felt, what they’d heard, below.

  His gaze went to Raissa’s and he saw the concern and sympathy there.

  “How did you live with that?” he asked.
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br />   On half a laugh, she said, “You become used to it. What choice was there?”

  Ky thought of whatever was capable of making those sounds, whatever was strong enough to warp the hinges of those massive iron doors, to dent them… Thought of them unleashed on the world…

  His gut twisted.

  He looked at Tareq and saw the same thought mirrored there…and in Ryan’s and Komi’s eyes.

  Taking a breath, he looked at Raissa. “I’m convinced.”

  She smiled a little. “And I wasn’t alone then. There was Khai, always…”

  The memory of him made tears burn behind her eyes, even with Ky standing before her.

  “And Banafrit, before she died. Djeserit, who was Sekhmet’s Priestess and my friend. Kahotep, Horus’s High Priest, who was the one who made that prophecy on Narmer’s crowning day. Awan who was Osiris’s priest, others. Even Narmer, the King. Now there is you and Tareq, Ryan and Komi…”

  So few.

  Her blue eyes met Ky’s and she took a breath.

  It was as if they sensed it, that responsibility shifting to and settling on their shoulders. All of them straightened a little.

  Tareq’s dark eyes met Ky’s and Tareq blew out a breath as he lifted his head, straightened his shoulders as well. Until now this had all been an abstract exercise.

  It was an abstract exercise no longer.

  Suddenly it was all too real.

  Ky looked to the others even as Raissa did.

  Ryan took a breath, too and straightened, as did Komi.

  “Let’s get the supplies,” Ky said.

  They nodded.

  The sky above the crack in the ceiling was brilliant, glowing, color washed across it as if the Gods had decided to give them a final show. In the west it was radiantly gold still, shading to a deep amber and then a deep cerulean blue, luminous and glorious, so intense, so vivid, it made the eyes ache.

  It had taken only a little time, with everyone carrying as much as they could to empty the jeep of everything in it. Ky wouldn’t take the chance that Zimmer wouldn’t sabotage them to keep them from escaping.

  He intended to survive this.

  They left the tents with the jeep, as warm as it was within, even with the chill of the desert at night, there was little need for them except to keep scorpions out and they were only minimally effective at that. They lent the illusion of privacy more than anything else.