Khu: A Tale of Ancient Egypt (24 page)

Doubts assailed
King Khety’s resolve as he peered ahead through the murky cloud that was a pale color of sand. He was carrying a linen sack with the Deshret Red Crown, and the ceremonial wig and beard he had been wearing earlier. With the other hand he pressed a strip of fabric over his mouth and nose, which he had wound about his head in a vain effort to protect himself from inhaling the thick dust. He wondered if he had done the right thing in escaping through the tunnel. What if they could not find a way out? Going back was not an option. But neither did he relish the thought of slowly suffocating to death in the entrails of the ancient city. Its bowels concealed a stale earthiness, much like the tombs whose lifeless air had not been disturbed in centuries.

The men
perspired heavily with the strain of their efforts, as they followed the passage which cut beneath the city in what seemed like an interminable stretch to the ends of the earth. They forced themselves to take shallow breaths through the layers of linen, which made them look like living mummies creeping through the land of the dead. Their backs and legs ached from their half-crouched stances, and the dust burned their eyes and nasal passages. They were heading north to one of the royal chapels in the Terrace of the Great God, which lay along a processional route waiting at the edge of the town.

C
enturies had passed since anyone had crept through these tunnels, which dated back to the first dynasty of the Old Kingdom. They had been constructed as a safety precaution against tomb raiders, and other thieving reprobates, who had a canine ability for sniffing out treasure like a fox in the desert sand. The last time anyone had been down here was well over five hundred years earlier, before the building of the pyramids of the great Giza necropolis that served as tombs and rose like citadels for the dead, in Lower Egypt’s west bank of the Nile.

The
channel-like passages were connected by small chambers cut into the bedrock upon which several tombs were built. But the entrances to those chambers were also hidden within the tunnels themselves, and even more difficult to find than the mouth of the passage within the Temple of Osiris. There were false passages and false doors leading to dead ends, all with the purpose of thwarting would-be robbers from desecrating the holy graves, temples and monuments. They would suffocate long before locating the chambers which remained sealed against all living things. Their only hope for escape was to remain on the path that would take them to one of the shrines belonging to the Terrace of the Great God. And so they continued feeling their way slowly, moving like moles burrowing through the earth, away from the fighting and chaos they had unleashed, which continued raging on the streets above them.

The men
followed the directions of the priests who had assured them that this particular path of the tunnel would arrive to a dead end at the edge of the settlement, preventing them from getting lost. Since the priests had never been down in the tunnel themselves, the fugitives were relying on secondhand information they had gotten from the priests, which had in turn been passed on by a long line of Keepers of the Temple, whose guarded secrets had been relayed in the oral tradition of the Old Kingdom, as well as inscribed on papyrus scrolls which were promptly incinerated before their escape. Khety had verified their information by comparing it to the diagrams on the scrolls, before Ankhtifi had burned the ancient evidence over a torch flame.

Th
ey finally arrived to the end of the tunnel. But it took well over an hour just to find the trap door concealing the exit. Khety and the other men were bent on their knees, feeling blindly along the walls, running their palms over the rough surfaces as they searched for any telltale markings that would reveal the exit’s hidden location. They tried to smother their coughs behind their linen masks as more of the fine, silt-like dust rose in a thick veil around them, and the flames of their single torch lapped greedily at the dwindling oxygen of the cramped space.

It was stifling.

But Khety refused to give up, believing the priests had told them the truth. No one could resist Ankhtifi’s agonizing methods of extracting information. The priests had gladly revealed all they knew in hopes for a swift death at the hands of their tormentor, who inflicted pain with the calloused aggression of a crocodile.

“
Hold this,” Khety ordered from behind his linen mask, as he reached for the arm of a man next to him, and placed the handle of the torch in his hand. “I think I found the opening.”

He brushed away the dirt outlin
ing a crevice in the wall, keeping his eyes closed against the burning dust. The opening was about the same size as the one they had entered in the Temple of Osiris. With the help of another man, Khety carefully pried out the stone covering the hidden exit of the passage, and climbed out of the cramped space. The men stood up slowly, working out the kinks from their aching muscles as they stretched to their full heights. They wiped away the grimy sweat running down their faces like crocodile tears.

No one but the
Wedjat
Eye of Horus watched as the disheveled group of men finally exited the tunnel, and entered the shrine that was dedicated to the son of Osiris and Isis. The
Wedjat
stylized eye and eyebrow was carved into the stone walls of the shrine, covering much of the space which had been built to honor the brave young warrior-god Horus, who had sacrificed one of his own eyes so that his father Osiris could see again, after his murdered and dismembered body had been revived by the loving devotion of Isis. The
Wedjat’s
symbol of protection matched the amulets worn by two of the guards, which they promptly touched upon entering the shrine.

But nothing could ward off the evil that ulcerated within the chieftain who wore no amulets himself. Ankhtifi held little regard for such fanatic zealotry, and had long dispensed with
those tokens believed to provide divine aid to the people. The only talisman he believed in was the power of his mace. And he grasped its hilt warily after he replaced the stone covering over the exit on a lower section of the wall.

It was mostly dark inside
the shrine. No braziers or torches burned in honor of the god. Only the flame of a small oil lamp sputtered a weak glow over the engraved and painted walls. The sounds of men fighting, and the frantic cries of people fleeing in panicked haste, sounded in the distance, far beyond the chapel as the men froze a moment to get their bearings. Their linen clothing was brown from the dust of the tunnel, which also clung to their skin in a thick dirty layer. Anyone spotting them might think they were one of the walking dead who had left their tombs to wander among the living.

“We should be safe here,” Khety whispered as he w
ithdrew the dagger hanging at his side.

A small
war ship was waiting for them in the harbor lying just beyond a field bordering a dirt road. It had been a precautionary move, just in case things did not turn out as planned. Khety unwound the linen from his face and drew the cloth over his head to cloak his features. The other men did the same as they tried to pass for pilgrims fleeing from the city. The king motioned to the men to follow him as he left the enclosed pillared shrine and exited to a small courtyard facing the street. Other shrines and chapels lining the Terrace of the Great God stared out from their stone niches at the darkness that stank of smoke and death.

***

Khu stopped suddenly as he and Nakhti walked along the Terrace of the Great God. Pilgrims scurried away, keeping to the shadows as they sought cover from unfriendly eyes. Most of the fighting had receded to small pockets scattered throughout the settlement which continued to burn well into the darkest hours of the night.

“What is it?” Nakhti asked. Although he trusted Khu’s instincts, he also believed his brother to be a little too sensitive
at times. Sometimes being overly cautious can be just as deadly as lacking any caution whatsoever. It is in those moments of hesitation and uncertainty that trouble strikes.

“Wait,” Khu lifted his palm as he froze for a moment on the narrow street where debris
was strewn, and flowers had been trampled by the fleeing crowds. Khu turned his head slowly towards the shrine of Horus across from them. He drew his brows together, narrowing his eyes as he stared, unblinkingly, into the darkness. He seemed to sniff the air like a wary dog sensing trouble. A vague and inexplicable suspicion prickled the back of his neck, telling him danger was near.

“There is no one here,” Nakhti lowered his voice instinc
tively.

But Khu shook his head and placed a hand on the hilt of his dagger.
He felt the same tingling sensation he had felt earlier while staring at King Khety and his entourage, just before the Nen-nesian king would have had Ankhtifi slay the priest in a bloody sacrifice before the transfixed mob.

Khu suddenly
pulled Nakhti aside, quickly stepping behind a wall as five men emerged from the darkened courtyard waiting across the road, outside the shrine of Horus. Although they were dressed as common pilgrims, there was something clearly uncommon about the men. And they were armed. All of them held daggers with wicked tips glinting in the moonlight. Their proud and menacing postures were more fitting for battle-hardened warriors rather than humble supplicants seeking salvation. The tallest of the bunch also had a mace hanging by his hip. He seemed to prowl with the bearing of a predator on the lookout for prey. His broad shoulders swayed above a long, curved spine resembling the threatening pose of a cobra readying to inflict a deadly bite.

The boys watched the men from their hiding place. Even Nakhti could tell that these were no
ordinary pilgrims, and he admired Khu’s uncanny ability to sense danger, grateful for his brother’s mysterious gift.

Khu was perspiring beside Nakhti. He felt an eerie chill shoot through his limbs, and
yet he broke into a cold sweat despite the iciness flooding his veins. His eyes were locked on the largest of the men, who was cloaked in inky shadows smeared over the settlement.

There was something familiar about the man
, and it filled Khu with dread.

“Let’s follow them,” Nakhti whispered
, as he nudged Khu.

But Khu did not move.

“Khu,”
Nakhti urged quietly. And when Khu still said nothing, Nakhti turned to look at him. “What is it, brother?” he asked with a frown, the tone of his voice full of concern.

But Khu only shook his head.
He could feel his heart race and his breath quicken. His eyes were riveted on the group of men as they stepped away from the shrine and headed cautiously down the street, darting leery glances about them.

Khu did not understand the
terrible fear that gripped him. He had never felt so confused and afraid in his life. There was something about one of those men in particular that left him frozen and immobile. It was as though the pliant tissue in his muscles had been replaced by lead. And although anxiety addled his mind and slowed his movements, he managed to follow after Nakhti who led the way.

An owl hooted in the d
arkness, like a omen boding ill, and somewhere in the distance dogs were barking. A cat darted across the street and disappeared into a shrine, and a warm breeze blew the smoke from the fires across the settlement.

Then someone screamed.

It was a piercing sound that was immediately stifled as the largest of the men in the group ahead of them silenced the shrill cry of a woman with his dagger. She had run out in front of the men with her two children, thinking they were pilgrims like herself, and that they would help her to flee the burning city and all its havoc. But when Ankhtifi raised his dagger, teeth flashing as he snarled threateningly, the woman panicked when she realized that death, rather than deliverance, was at hand.

Nakhti and Khu had closed most of the distance between them and the men
stalking the street ahead of them. The boys kept close to the shadows of the shrines they passed along the Terrace of the Great God. Most of the colonnaded façades stared out at the deserted street, with little more than an ashy light seeping from the darkness beyond their small courtyards, where forgotten oil lamps burned in solitary confinement, within the chapels paying homage to indifferent gods who had forsaken the major cult center of the ancients.

The moon’s light shone
full on Ankhtifi’s face from this angle, throwing his lupine features into high relief. Khu saw Ankhtifi’s face, and reached out a hand to steady himself from the jolting shock that nearly knocked him over. He grasped Nakhti’s shoulder, who walked a pace ahead, stopping him at once. Nothing blocked Khu’s view of the wolf-man’s face, as Ankhtifi kicked the woman’s lifeless body, and those of her two young children, away after they all fell to the ground.

Something twisted
painfully inside Khu. Something within him was wrenched with a violent force, and he groaned softly in spite of himself. It was a low guttural sound, like that of an animal which had been mortally wounded. He stared, wide-eyed, catching his breath as the full force of the horrific memories that had long been repressed and deeply buried within the furthest recesses of his subconscious mind, came crashing over him like a tidal wave. He winced, shutting his eyes tightly, unable to thwart the violent sensations from wracking his being.