Pyramid Schemes

by Peter David

  The Rama let out a startled and terrified yell. I was unsure what he was howling about because I hadn’t been in a position to see what was transpiring since his body was blocking my view. But then the Rama backpedalled and I saw to my horror that the mummy’s hand was still firmly grasping his. As the Rama backed up, the movement brought the mummy to a sitting position.

  Clea, upon seeing what was happening, moved much faster than I would have. My instinct was to back up, to retreat, to get the hell out of there. Clea, instead, ran toward the two of them and grabbed the Rama’s forearm and wrist firmly. She yanked as hard as she could and the Rama’s hand came loose of the mummy. I figured that in causing it to release him, the mummy would simply slump backward on its slab.

  Instead it not only remained sitting straight up, but it slowly swung its legs over to the side and stood up.

  This caused all three of us to scream, although I’d swear that my voice was of the highest register. The Rama backed up, stumbled, and fell against Clea. She tried to catch him but his weight and backward motion caused the both of them to fall to the ground.

  At that moment I wanted nothing more than to flee, to leave them to their fates. But the place was a maze; I was uncertain of how to get out of there. And if this monstrous thing went in pursuit of me, the last thing I needed was to get lost in endless corridors. So my only choice was to bring the Rama and Clea with me, which meant I had to find a way to stop the mummy from advancing upon them.

  I thought initially that this was some manner of bizarre and sick joke. That a living person had had himself wrapped up in the linens of a mummy and laid himself upon the slab for the purpose of attacking the Rama, or perhaps giving him a heart attack. But as the mummy rose from its slab, some of the linens that covered its face fell away and I was horrified to see the drained and eyeless face of the dead Rama visible beneath it. Although its mouth was still covered with the bandages, I was able to hear a deep, meaningful growl emerge from somewhere within the creature’s chest. Slowly it stretched out its arms, flexing its fingers, reaching toward the Rama.

  To my shock, Lama seemed to have recovered his wits. He was gazing in rapt amazement rather than fear at the monster, and he whispered, “He wants to embrace me.”

  “Are you insane?!” I demanded. “It’s a monster!”

  “He’s my father! He loves me!” said the Rama.

  Clea was no more enamored of getting near the thing than I was, but the Rama paid her no mind. He shoved her aside rather roughly and walked toward the towering creature. “Father,” he said in a voice filled with awe. “You’ve come back to me. You’ve—”

  The mummy’s hands speared forward and locked onto the Rama’s throat. Lama tried to keep on speaking, but was unable to as the breath was being choked out of him. He yanked at the creature’s hands, trying to pry them off, but was unable to do so.

  I did the only thing I could. I lunged forward, yanking out my sword, and swung it blindly. I might well have nearly killed Lama in my attempt to save him, but fortunately enough my aim was true. My blade swung downward and sliced through the mummy’s right wrist. It cleaved the hand from it and the hand tumbled free of Lama’s throat. Its abrupt unhanding clearly surprised the mummy and it staggered back, releasing the Rama from the grip of its left hand. In what was a somewhat humorous fashion if one was able to maintain one’s sense of humor in this situation, the creature reached over to its right wrist with its left hand and felt in the air for the hand that was currently lying on the ground.

  The Rama stumbled toward me. Clea was already there, watching the creature with wide eyes, clutching onto my arm and whispering, “Get us out of here, get us out of here.”

  The creature ignored them. Instead it reached down and picked up the hand, which I could see was still spasming. It held the hand against the wrist and seconds later it was somehow reattached.

  “Yes, out of here,” I agreed. I shoved the sword back into the scabbard, grabbed up the fallen torch, and moved as fast as I could out of the room. The Rama and Clea were right behind me and, even more problematic, so was the mummy. I had no idea how heavy the thing was, but it seemed to me as if the ground shook from every step it took.

  We were out in the corridor and the Rama shouted, “This way!” I wasn’t sure that he was correct, but he seemed most determined, and so I felt as if I had no choice but to follow him. Clea was running right alongside him, although I noticed that she had slowed her gait so that she would not be appreciably ahead of him. I was bringing up the rear, looking frantically over my shoulder to check on the mummy’s progress.

  It was advancing slowly but steadily. Its eyeless sockets were fixed on us and there was no doubt in my mind that if it got its hands on us, it would not hesitate to tear us to pieces.

  Lama went to the right, then left, then right again.

  And then stopped.

  There was a dead end directly in front of us.

  “This isn’t right,” muttered the Rama.

  “I thought you knew which way to go!” I shouted.

  “I’m being chased by my dead father! Forgive me for getting mixed up!”

  We backtracked quickly and got back to where we had entered the dead end. But we had managed to give the mummy time to catch up with us. It wasn’t running the way we were, but its slow and shambling gait was implacable. It was about twenty feet behind us and gaining.

  “Come on!” I shouted. I no longer cared which way we were going, as long as it was in the opposite direction of the mummy.

  We ran blindly down the corridors, moving in one direction and then another almost at random. If we were trying to lose the creature, we didn’t seem to be having any luck for it continued to follow us relentlessly. I had no idea how it managed to stay so resolutely on our tail, but it was clearly doing so.

  The Rama was staggering even more than his lame leg was responsible for. I caught him from behind as he stumbled and he sagged against the wall. He was clutching at his chest and his breath was coming in ragged gasps. “I just...I need a few moments…”

  “We don’t have a few moments!” I said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Fine. Leave me. Get away while he kills me.”

  It was a surprisingly noble expression of sacrifice, and I was more than happy to take him up on it. But Clea, damn her, shook her head “no” fiercely. “We are not leaving you behind. You have ten seconds and then we keep going.”

  The Rama managed a nod.

  I braced myself against the narrow, dirty hallway of the pyramid, my heart pounding against my chest. Lama was on one side of me, and Clea on the other. They were as terrified as I was.

  From down the corridor, we heard the roar of the creature’s voice. It was coming for them.

  Briefly I considered the possibility of turning and knocking the two of them unconscious and then fleeing into the shadows. That certainly seemed a reasonable way in which to handle the situation. Before I could do so, however, Clea reached over and wrapped her arms around mine.

  “Save us,” she whispered.

  “Not a problem,” I replied, and wondered how in the hell I had gotten into this situation considering the day had started reasonably well.

  I heard shuffling at the far end of the hallway. The mummy was almost upon us. I grabbed the Rama and Clea and said, “Go!” and then turned to face the advancing creature. My legs were shaking violently because the thing was striding toward me and I knew that if it got its hands on me, I was dead. I could have stepped aside and let it pursue the fleeing Rogyptians, but for all I knew, it might turn its attention to me and kill me just for being there.

  I faced the monster with the torch blazing in my hand. “Come on,” I said softly, “come on.”

  It stood there for a moment, as if expecting some sort of trick and then it came right at me.

  I was ready for it and when it drew close enough to grab me, I thrust the torch straight at it.

  The linen immediately caught and began to go up. The
mummy looked down and began to frantically beat away at the fire. I lunged forward once more with the torch, looking to set its lower body on fire, but the mummy moved with astounding speed and smacked the torch out of my hand. It fell to the ground and rolled away from me. I tried to get to it, but the burning mummy stepped in between, blocking my path to it. It continued to beat away at the flame and it was clearly managing to extinguish it.

  “Damn it,” I muttered as I turned and ran. Without the torch I now had no illumination, but it wasn’t necessary to worry about because I could see the torches of the Rama and Clea ahead of me. I sprinted after them as quickly as my lame right leg allowed me.

  The torches ahead of me stopped. I didn’t understand why until I drew near them, and then I did.

  Through sheer dumb luck, the Rama and Clea had found their way back to the area that had provided us entrance to the inner pyramid. But where it had been open before, a large stone door was in place that blocked our egress.

  I heard noises on the other side and realized it was the voices of the guards, shouting at each other. Their voices were muffled, but I was able to make out the gist of what they were saying. They had not placed the stone there to block us in; they were trying to determine a way to remove it. Ultimately, though, who was responsible for the blockage was rather beside the point. The situation we were faced with was that we were unable to extricate ourselves from the pyramid, and the mummy was closing in on us. By the time the soldiers managed to extricate us from our imprisonment, there would be nothing left to rescue.

  I spun and saw the mummy striding toward us. It knew that it had us. The Rama and Clea backed up as far as they could and their backs bumped into the door, blocking their way out. The flame pit was blazing nearby and the large bucket of pitch was off to the right.

  My mind racing, I did the only thing I could think of: I grabbed up the bucket of pitch. It was horrifically heavy and I grunted as I lifted it, but fortunately enough the strength in my arms served me well. The mummy drew closer, closer still, and with a prayer for accuracy in my aim, I hurled the bucket of pitch directly at the creature.

  The gods, or God, or whatever were with me, for the black, foul stuff struck the mummy directly and spilled all over its upper body. The mummy let out an angry roar as its white linen became soaked with black. The pitch dribbled down its torso and legs. It was enough to halt its forward motion briefly as it clawed at the pitch, trying to remove it from its body.

  I circled around the flame pit to the far side and held my staff up as if it were a javelin, balancing it carefully, having a care as I moved since I wasn’t using it to support my lame leg. The mummy saw where I was standing and advanced on me.

  Timing it perfectly, I hurled my staff. The mummy, seeing it coming, raised its arms as if to brush it aside, but it misjudged my target. Instead my staff struck between the creature’s legs, causing it to trip. It stumbled forward and plummeted directly onto the fire pit.

  I swear, it was as if the flames leaped up to greet him. Doubtless it was the pitch that served to attract them, or perhaps they simply recognized a soul that was destined for the pits of hell and were simply eager to drag it down to its final destination. Whatever reason it may have been, the flames wrapped themselves around the mummy within seconds. The mummy lurched upward, trying to climb out of the fire pit. I stumbled around it and fell to the floor on top of my staff, and then slammed my good foot forward into the creature’s “face” as it had managed to climb halfway out of the pit. The mummy fell backwards, its arms waving frantically, and it unleashed a roar of protest that I will carry with me to the end of my days. The creature was now an inhuman torch, its arms thrashing about, and I was sure that it was feeling no pain because it was incapable of doing so. It was, however, royally angry that such an unseemly fate had befallen it, and were it capable of emerging from the pit and wreaking vengeance upon me, it would unquestionably have done so.

  But it was unable to because its legs burned away before its torso did. As its ability to support itself dissolved, its upper half sank downward into the flames, and within seconds the rest of it had been burned…well, “alive” is probably not the best way to phrase it, but it was certainly incinerated. The last thing I was able to see was the creature’s face, or whatever the remains of it were, as it sank into the flaming pit with a look of pure dead fury upon it.

  I lay upon my staff, gasping for air. I could not believe that I had accomplished it; that I had managed to defeat the thing. It was damned near heroic, and that was certainly not a condition to which I was accustomed. I was no hero. I was Apropos of Nothing who, when confronted with some sort of imminent danger, typically found a way to distance myself from it as quickly as possible. Yet here I had actually rescued the Rama and his sister, my supposed fiancée. I tried to clamber to my feet but the strength in my legs went out as the nearness to an abrupt death that had tried to befall us landed squarely on me. In other words, the pure panic that I had managed to bottle up so that we could survive rebounded upon me and I lost all my energy, to be replaced by violent shaking and trembling. It was going to take me some time to recover from our major brush with mortality.

  Then Clea was standing by me and helping me to my feet. I managed to get my budding panic under control and allowed her to get me standing. “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  She was staring at me with open wonderment. “You risk your life to save ours, and all you do is ask if I am okay?”

  It didn’t seem like too much of a big deal to me. I knew that I was fine, so there was no harm in offering police social graces and asking after her state of being. I shrugged. “Just checking.”

  To my utter astonishment, she reached up and brought her lips to mine. It was a rather clumsy kiss as kisses went. I suspected she did not have an extended amount of experience at it. But I gamely stood there and allowed it to run its course. When she broke for air, I could see that she was continuing to gaze at me with what might well have been pure adoration in her eyes.

  I thought, Damnation. The stupid teenager is falling in love with me.

  This was simply not grief that I needed. She was of more use to me when she made it clear that she was not remotely interested in wedding me or even spending time with me. If she came to see me as a hero, if she fell in love with me…

  That was when I thought, Well, now, wait a minute. What would be so wrong with that, really? If I do wind up wedding her, if I become the brother-in-law to the Rama, would that not elevate me in power? Despite what Ahmway said, I very much doubt that the Rama could just dispose of me if I was literally part of his family. And once I was in a position of power, how much easier would it be for me to change the laws from within? My gods, this could actually work. A brother to the Rama—not literal, but close—would have much more influence than an outsider. Of course, it might well initially cause me to lose credibility with Simon and the others, but surely I would be able to make them understand.

  And yes, she is less than half my age, but it isn’t as if I am forcing myself on her. Instead she is somewhat forcing herself on me.

  I managed to pry her off me and I forced a smile. “Thank you, highness,” I said to her, endeavoring to sound subservient. “That was very kind of you.”

  Now on my feet, I went over to the large stone that was blocking our egress. I look it up and down and determined quite quickly that this was no random block of stone that had dropped down by happenstance. “This is a door,” I said firmly. “Something caused it to slide into place. Something…” and then I paused. “Or someone.”

  “Who would have wanted to trap us in here?” said Clea.

  The Rama had the immediate answer. His voice was flat and angry. “Whoever it was that somehow brought that mummy to life. This entire thing was a trap. When I get out of here, I’m going to launch a full investigation. Whoever was responsible for this is going to pay with his life.”

  “I like your thinking,” I said. I was continuing to inspect the area
around the door. If there was one thing I was familiar with, it was hidden passages and hidden doors. The first one I had encountered was when I was quite young, serving as a squire in the court of King Runcible. There was a secret door that led down into the King’s wine cellar and I had availed myself of its contents on numerous occasions. Since then I had had a knack for discovering such hidden entrances in many of the castles that I had had reason to reside in over my life. I applied that knowledge to the situation now as I ran my fingers over the bricks that served as the entranceway. It took me only a minute to discover one brick that was unaligned with the others. I pushed in on it and was immediately rewarded with an internal clacking noise from the wall. Seconds later the door slowly rolled upward and the light shone in from outside. I never thought I would be so happy to see the broiling sun of Rogypt as I was at that moment. The Rama let out a sigh of pure joy and Clea wrapped both her arms around mine as if I were a savior who had led them to the promised land.

  As the door slowly rose, the soldiers who had escorted us came charging forward as if they were meeting an enemy in combat. And amongst them, with a look of great concern on his face, was Mane. “Where is the Rama?” he called and then spotted Lama standing there with a smile on his face.

  Mane was clearly surprised.

  And in that moment, I knew instantly. He was surprised because he had expected the Rama to be dead. Which meant only one thing was possible: Mane had somehow arranged for the mummy to come to “life” and attempt to kill the Rama.

  Which meant he and I needed to have words.

  Chapter 9 Mane Line

  I kept my own counsel on the ride back to the main palace. The Rama and his sister, however, did the exact opposite. They leaned against the edges of the chariot and informed any soldier within shouting distance of my epic bravery within the pyramid, defending them against the attempts of a monster to kill us all.

  It was nonsense, of course. If I had had a means of escaping by myself and leaving them to their fates, I would have done so in a heartbeat. Unfortunately that had not been an option and so I had basically managed to save myself, and the Rama and Clea had accrued the benefits of being with me when it happened.