Pandora Gets Vain (Pandora (Hardback)) (13 page)
“Here,” said Iole. Stooping, her fingers stretched toward a bright red stone. “I found the ruby.”
“No!” Homer cried. “Don’t touch it! It’s cursed.”
“Okay,” said Alcie. “So what now?”
“Now we each take just a little bit of the ashes around it. We mix them with water and we drink it.”
After a long moment, Alcie was the first to speak.
“You’re one funny youth.”
“I’m not joking. Habib—the corpse—assures me that this will work.”
“What will work?” said Alcie.
“Can we at least know why?” said Pandy.
“I’ll explain it later. Just trust me, okay? Since you guys don’t know exactly where you’re going to go on this quest, this might be useful. If it doesn’t work, no big deal.”
“Except I’ll basically be a cannibal,” said Alcie.
“Okay, fine,” said Pandy finally, filling her little silver drinking cup with a small amount of water from her water-skin.
Iole and Alcie did the same and Homer, careful not to touch the ruby or the sapphire (once he found it), scooped up a tiny amount of ashes and dropped them into each girl’s cup. After swirling it around, looking at each other like they were crazy, they each took a sip.
“Drink it all,” said Homer.
Iole began to choke as she finished off her cup. Pandy felt as if she were going to bring it all back up again. Alcie stomped her feet in order to get her mixture down.
“Absolute nectar!” she said. “Am I right? Oh . . . oh no . . . great Zeus . . .”
Suddenly Alcie pitched forward and stumbled, landing right next to Pandy’s feet and Iole, already lying on the ground. Pandy was barely able to watch Homer filling a cup with water and ashes. Then she too moaned and fell to the ground.
6:23 p.m.
Millions of small lightning bolts were going off in Pandy’s brain, completely blinding her. She was dizzy right up to the point of fainting, but never quite blacking out, as a sizzling sound grew louder in her ears. She rolled on the floor, unsure which way was up. Standing was out of the question—she felt as if her entire body could fly off into the heavens at any moment. She was vaguely aware that Alcie was moving around next to her, Iole was lying motionless, and Homer had caromed off a bone pile and was hunched over like an old man.
Slowly, the tiny flashes began to dissipate, and darkness was taking over. She lay panting, exhausted again, and once more aware of the throbbing pain in various parts of her body.
Alcie reached over and grabbed her arm, trying to sit up.
“I’ll kill him!” she said, flailing with her other arm in Homer’s general direction.
Iole’s eyes fluttered open.
“I now know what it’s like to die.”
“Homer! You mind telling us what just happened?” said Pandy.
Homer was leaning against a bone pile, his barrel chest heaving wildly, staring at the girls.
“Here goes,” Pandy heard him say, then . . .
“You guys should be able to understand everything I’m saying even though I’m talking . . . like . . . in a totally different language.”
“Yeah,” said Alcie, “so what? Of course we can understand you . . .”
Alcie was suddenly silent. Pandy saw Homer’s mouth forming oddly shaped words; she knew in her head she shouldn’t be able to understand anything he was saying and yet it was all as clear as pure water in a shallow bowl.
“Homer,” said Pandy, “say it again.”
“Can you guys understand me?”
“Yes!” Pandy cried. “Yes! I can totally understand you!”
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“I understand him!” said Iole.
“Me too,” Alcie replied.
“How were you able to understand the corpse in the first place?” asked Pandy.
“Gladiator school. Easy Egyptian.”
“Homer, say something else,” Pandy asked.
“No time,” Homer said, charging forward through the bone piles. “We gotta get back.”
But as he wound his way toward the skull again, he called back a few of the simple phrases he had learned in gladiator school: phrases in basic Sumerian, Ethiopian, and Latin. Pandy, Alcie, and Iole understood every word.
“I don’t believe this,” Pandy said as they stood once more around the living skull. “How did drinking that stuff make us able to understand?”
“Okay . . . like . . . what happened is . . . ,” Homer began.
“It is simple, if you will listen,” said the skull, its eyes fast losing their luster. “But you must be very quiet; my time is almost at an end.”
The eyes rolled in their sockets as a few old eyelashes fell out and a hunk of brittle hair dropped off to one side. The ancient tongue, it seemed, suddenly went very dry.
“You drank in the bones of Calchas, an influential adviser to a great pharaoh. He was a master of languages in his native Greece and, as such, the Greek general, Agamemnon, sought his wisdom and ability to translate documents before Agamemnon decided to invade the city of Troy. But Calchas translated something incorrectly and so the Greeks lost many men in the Trojan War. Calchas was to be executed, but he escaped here to Egypt and became the confidant of the pharaoh.”
“However, Calchas soon developed an insatiable thirst for power and began to learn the arts of magic and enchantments. He became so skilled that many thought him to be as powerful as any of our gods. He sought to assassinate the pharaoh and assume the throne for himself, but was stopped just in time. He was impaled on a gold and bronze pole from which his spirit could never rise. The priests of the pharaoh cursed his soul, imprisoning it in the ruby and sapphire of his ring. Touching the stones would have immediately brought his soul back to the land of the dead from the darkness that holds it. Now, it is trapped forever.”
“But how did drinking his bone . . . dust help us to understand?” asked Pandy.
“He felt so sure that he would rise again and regain his former shape before the flesh left his bones that he mocked the priests and left a taunt: the ability to know all languages if anyone was clever enough to crush his bones and ingest them.”
“How did you know this?” asked Pandy.
“The slaves who carried him here spoke of it as they stood the bronze pole on its end. Naturally, they were all put to death for learning of the curse.”
“Naturally,” said Iole.
“Why did you tell us what to do?” Pandy asked the skull.
“Yeah . . . before, you wanted to eat me. Now you’re helping us?” said Alcie. “Why?”
“The boy wanted to know why I needed your . . . blood.”
“But I was having trouble with some of the big words in Egyptian,” said Homer, looking off.
“As I said, I don’t have much time left,” the skull added. “So I told him what to do. He obviously thought you all would benefit.”
“It’s just that they laugh at me when I know stuff . . . ,” Homer complained under his breath.
“All right,” said Pandy, looking at Homer.
“Sheesh!” said Alcie.
Pandy turned back to the skull. “I would like to know why you need our blood.”
“My own curse,” said the skull. “But my story is simple. My name was Habib and I was a common bricklayer, working on the tomb of the great Tutankhamen. I stole an amulet, a symbol of the Eye of Horus, that had been blessed and left in the tomb for Tutankhamen to find after his death. The amulet was to heal any wounds to the pharaoh’s body as it made its journey to Osiris and the land of shadows. I knew that the priest’s blessing made it very valuable and it would bring a high price if I could sell it. But I was caught coming out of the tomb and condemned to death.”
“By impaling?” asked Pandy.
The skull of Habib looked at Pandy with what little surprise it could muster, sending the right eyebrow sliding down over the nose cavity.
“Of course. You know another way?”
“Figs.”
“Please, go on,” said Iole.
“I was executed two days later,” the skull continued slowly. “But unknown to anyone, including me, was that the chain and the Eye of Horus had fallen into my waistcloth and was pressed against my skin. It was still on my body when I was brought into this chamber. So I was not truly dead. My body decayed, but the healing eye amulet with its blessing has kept me alive for centuries. Enough years to see to hundreds of people interred here, including Calchas. My flesh is almost gone, but my tormented spirit has lived.”
“Let’s get to the part with the blood,” said Alcie.
“Whenever a life force entered the chamber, a priest, a slave, a mourner, anyone, the eye would try to heal and restore me by enabling me to kill him and drink his blood. The force would impale him, but at his moment of death, his blood was no longer useful. It’s the reason that this temple was abandoned: stories of the monster in the Chamber of Despair and the certain death that awaited anyone in here.”
“If it’s keeping you alive, why did your bones crack and break just now?” asked Pandy.
“Everything must turn to dust eventually,” replied the skull. “No matter that my soul will live on, this is the moment of my final physical death. I even doubt that drinking blood would have really helped at this point.”
The skull’s tongue swelled up then shriveled again, turning darker by the second. It turned its sad, rheumy eyes on Pandy.
“The boy has briefly told me of your quest. Your powers must be great indeed, young one, to have done the things that I witnessed in this chamber.”
It paused for a moment, then with great effort spoke again.
“I do not know if it will help, but I would like you to take the Eye of Horus. It is the only thing I have and it was never really mine to begin with. Use it as you can. Perhaps . . . by passing it to worthier hands, the great Nephthys and Osiris will pity me and allow me into the land of the dead. It is the only thing I can do.”
“Thank you,” Pandy said, watching as the light in its eyes began to fade away.
“It is there, wound around my rib bones, underneath that bit of cloth,” said the skull, gazing in the direction of his shattered skeleton.
Pandy walked to the pile of bones and peeled away the centuries-old gauze covering the tiny floating rib at the bottom. There, a thin gold chain and a miniature golden eye the size of a green olive glinted in the dying firelight. Holding it in her hands, she approached the skull again.
“Thank you,” she repeated.
“Wear it and you may be surprised,” said the skull, coughing softly. Then, in a whisper, it said, “The people pray where you come from, don’t they?”
“Of course,” said Pandy.
“Then, perhaps, you might say one for me. You seem to be important. Someone important might listen.”
Pandy walked up to the skull and bent down very close.
“I will. I promise.”
And the last of the light in its eyes went out.
No one said anything for a while. Finally, Homer said, “How long do you think we’ve been in here?”
“An hour, at least,” said Iole, straightening herself. “The sun’s probably set.”
“Great, out of the dark and into the dark,” said Alcie.
“Well, at least the air will be fresh. Come on,” said Pandy, tightening the small clasp on the chain and settling the eye onto her neck. She wasn’t certain but she thought the pain of her many wounds lessened in that instant. Picking up a small piece of wood still alight with flame, she led them back across the chamber toward the entryway.
At the opening, Pandy turned around.
“What?” said Alcie.
Pandy gazed at the pole shards, the huge murals on the walls, the terrible piles of bones disappearing into blackness. For a second she thought that nothing Hera could conjure up could ever be as bad as this chamber. Then she almost laughed out loud—this room would be a child’s playroom to Hera.
“Pandy?” said Iole.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah, I’m okay. Let’s get out of here.”
As they trudged up the gentle incline toward the surface, the air was indeed fresher with each step and the light was growing brighter.
“Good,” said Homer, “sun’s still up. Maybe we’ll find a nice spot to camp.”
“Camp?” sputtered Alcie, as they neared the opening onto the temple terrace. “Sorry, but I’m not leaving this temple tonight. It’s covered . . . except where the roof has fallen in. It’s kinda protected . . . except where the walls have caved.”
“We should try to make up some time . . . ,” Iole began.
“But best of all, since this place is known to be so . . . like . . . haunted,” Alcie continued, following Pandy onto the terrace and into the setting afternoon sun, “there won’t be anyone around to mess with us.”
She put her hands on her hips, as if to say “and that is that!”
At that moment, across the large open terrace, forty-seven pairs of eyes saw three girls, one large youth, and a snow white dog emerge from the burial chamber beneath the temple, dirty and bloody, togas askew and hair wildly mussed.
