The Buried Pyramid (47 page)

Stephen shrugged. “The walls provide some shade along the edges, at least most of the way. I think your suggestion is a wise one.”

Their camp was on the southeastern edge of the valley, so they began with the statue that stood to the east. At any other time, thumping over rock and sand on one good foot and a crutch would have been a disheartening reminder of past, more serious, injuries, but Neville was too intent on his goal to care. Stephen stayed near, carrying their gear, but otherwise not offering assistance.

Tactful blighter,
Neville thought.

The sculpture that stood to the east proved to be a masculine figure done in fashion more commonly used in painting than in sculpture—that is its head and lower body were represented in profile, but the torso was a front view. Its most striking feature was the regal hawk’s head it bore on its broad shoulders. The beak was short and sharply curved, while the feathered head was shaped in a harmonious compromise between a natural bird’s head and a short wig or headcovering. In one hand it bore a flail, in the other an ankh.

“Horus the Avenger,” Neville said almost reverently. “Or is it Re of Heliopolis? I believe they both have hawk’s heads, don’t they?”

“And some say that one is just a manifestation of the other,” Stephen agreed. “However, the name Horus appears several times in the inscription, so I would say that this is Horus.”

The next sculpture, standing to the north, was obviously a woman. Her slender body was clad in a form-fitting gown that left her small, round breasts either bare or hardly veiled. She wore the vulture crown, over which was the hieroglyph for “throne.” She carried an ankh in one hand, a slender staff topped with a lotus blossom in the other. Even in this much worn sculpture, her features were both serene and commanding.

“Isis,” Stephen said without question. “That sign over her head means ‘seat’ or ‘throne,’ which my teacher said is the original form of her name. Some argue that this suggests a matriarchal past, though others question that since women didn’t seem to rate much by the time of the pharaohs.”

“Don’t tell Jenny,” Neville suggested.

“Nope,” Stephen replied cheerfully. “I’ll just tell her this is Isis, wife of Osiris, mother of Horus, and pretty darn powerful mistress of magic in her own right. If Humpty Dumpty had had her around, he’d be sitting pretty to this day.”

Neville blinked, then understood.

“That’s right. She’s the one who reassembled Osiris after Set killed him and cut him into pieces. Nasty story, that one.”

Stephen nodded agreement. “I wonder if we’ll find Osiris represented on the western wall? Horus was in the east, and he’s sometimes associated with the rising sun. Osiris is associated with the afterlife, and his palace is said to be in Amenti, the land of the west.”

Jenny, Mozelle bounding at her heels, came jogging across to them at this point. She arrived in time to hear this last.

“Eddie has gone to see if he can scare up some game. I want a glimpse at the statues before I start the grub.”

“Horus is back there,” Neville said, “and this fine lady is Isis.”

Jenny studied Isis for a long moment then wiped her forehead on the sleeve of her shirt. “Isis had the right idea, didn’t she? No corset, no bustle, not much clothing at all when you come right down to it. Wonder she didn’t burn.”

She glanced sidelong at Neville, and he laughed at her expression—a mixture of rue and pleasure at her own daring. He refused to rise to the bait, but indicated with a gesture that they should continue walking.

“Stephen was hypothesizing that we might find Osiris in the west,” he said.

“Because he’s associated with the west and the afterlife,” Jenny said, showing she’d caught the tail end of Stephen’s lecture. “Weren’t the islands of Avalon, where Arthur supposedly went after he died, weren’t they in the west? And didn’t the ancient Greeks think the Isles of the Blessed were in the west, too? I wonder why so many cultures associate the west with death?”

Stephen pontificated, “I was taught that such traditions are rooted in the passage of the sun from east to west. Since the sun seems to go west and ‘die,’ primitive people assumed that when they died they went west as well.”

Jenny laughed. “Well, I’ll be . . . Does that ever give a new meaning to old Horace Greeley saying ‘Go West, young man!’ Someone had better tell the U.S. of A. that sending all its young men west is the same as sending them to the afterlife.”

Their arrival at the third sculpture forestalled further discussion on this peculiar point of theology.

The carving this time was of a man wearing the tall white crown of Upper Egypt, adorned with two feathers flaring from the sides. He held a crook and flail crossed on his chest, and his feet were bound so closely that they seemed one appendage.

“I was right,” Stephen said with satisfaction. “Osiris. He’s been depicted in his role as lord of the underworld. Let’s see if you’ve learned your lessons, Jenny. Why does it look like he has only one foot?”

“Because,” Jenny said, her nose wrinkling with distaste, “he is shown wrapped up like a mummy—a living mummy. I think that’s a horrible fate, even for a god.”

Stephen shook his head at such an unscientific analysis.

“If you look more closely, Jenny, you can see that his hands and feet were originally painted green.”

“I’ve seen that in other places,” she said, “and always forgot to ask why. Is it for putrefaction, because he’s rotting?”

“So speaks the physician’s daughter,” Stephen replied. “No, it’s green for vegetation. The underworld wasn’t like Hell for the Christians. It was the source of growing plants, so Osiris—who died and rose again—is regarded as emblematic of the rebirth of life into the world above.”

Jenny frowned. “That dying and rising again sounds almost blasphemous.”

Neville cut in, lest Stephen in his eagerness grow offensive, “It can’t be, Jenny. Egyptian religion predates Christianity by thousands of years. It’s just one of those strange ways that the ancients seem to have sensed the truth, even without divine revelation.”

“I guess that’s right,” Jenny said, “or like I heard a shaman say once, that the truth just might have been revealed to more than one group of people.”

“Now that type of talk,” Neville said sternly, thinking once again that being Jenny’s guardian wasn’t going to be easy, “truly is blasphemous. Either of you want to guess who the next carving will be? I can’t say the field glasses were much help.”

Stephen shook his head. “There are too many options. It could be Hathor, who was Horus’s wife, and Isis’s ally in her quest to resurrect Osiris. Or it could be Maat, the principle of justice and truth. Or maybe Thoth, the god of learning and wisdom, who was, like Isis, skilled in magic, and was often associated with Horus.”

Jenny grabbed his arm and tugged.

“Stop talking. There’s a really easy way to find out.”

They crossed the sand, feeling the reflected heat and doubly grateful for the shade cast by the wall and the knowledge that their canteens were full and that plenty more water waited in camp.

Mozelle romped around them, apparently untroubled by the heat. She chased a lizard into a cleft in the wall, challenged a beetle, and then ran right up Jenny’s pant leg when she wanted to be carried. Neville couldn’t help but be glad that Jenny had defied him and brought the little cat. They seemed to have bonded, and the girl seemed happier and more alive freed of the restrictive mourning black, with the tiny creature on which to lavish what was clearly a generous heart.

The final sculpture proved to be neither Hathor or Maat. Nor was it Thoth, though the figure was theriomorphic, the human head replaced with that of a jackal, a jackal’s tail depending from beneath his linen kilt.

Not one of them needed Stephen to tell them who this was. They all knew too well, for the enigmatic smile that curved the jackal’s lipless muzzle was familiar to them from the masks worn by the Cairo assassins.

“Anubis,” Jenny said softly. “Protector of the dead, patron of embalming.”

Neville found his own voice. “That’s why he carried the scroll and the jar. They’re the tools of his trade. Legend says that his mother abandoned him, and Isis and Osiris raised him. When Osiris was murdered, Anubis helped Isis repair the body and so learned the arts of mummification.”

As Neville had hoped, love of the old stories won over Stephen’s disquiet at finding this reminder of their enemies in this place.

“There’s an older story,” Stephen said, “that makes Anubis a son of Ra. Far from being a miserable orphan abandoned by his mother, in this version Anubis had a daughter of his own and was greatly honored by gods and men for his wisdom and abilities. Either way, those Protectors did him a great disservice using his face as a cover for their nighttime raid. Theirs was an act more worthy of asseared Set, murderer of his own brother, not of noble Anubis.”

“I’m sure,” Eddie said, climbing down to them over the wall nearer to camp, “if the god exists he would be grateful to hear you speak so well of him. Now, would you two invalids get out of the sun, and would Jenny come here and help me? I think I’ve located a herd of sheep, of all things, and we’ve got work to do.”

Eddie’s commonplace practicality broke the eerie mood that had stolen over the other three, and they did as he suggested. “I think I found the ruins of a village,” Eddie explained after Jenny had joined him. “It might even be the one mentioned in the legend, if I felt like stirring up Neville’s hopes even more. What is more immediately useful is that I spotted a few date palms there, and some wild onions. There seems to be another spring, too.”

Shifting and sliding down what might charitably be termed a game trail, they reached the ruined village. Wind-blown sand had all but buried it, leaving the occasional protruding wall or a mound that might conceal a structure beneath. The date palms were there, and Eddie boosted Jenny up so she could gather some of the ripe ones.

Backing the “village” was a rocky slope that concealed pockets of grazing. Following the signs, they tracked a mingled herd of wild sheep and goats. The goats bolted, but the sheep were less swift, and Jenny shot one while Eddie marked the likely direction where others might be found later.

They cleaned the carcass where it fell, leaving the entrails for the jackals, but taking the hide. Eddie knew how to treat it so it would remain supple, and didn’t see any reason for waste, especially since they were likely to be in this area for a time to come.

That evening as the sheep roasted over the fire, Jenny peeled thin green onions. Neville and Stephen had copied part of one panel of hieroglyphs and were now trying tentative translation as a means of filling in characters that had been partially smoothed away by the wind. Turning from where he’d been stretching the sheepskin, Eddie broke the comfortable silence.

“What I want to know is why we don’t see any signs of people here?”

Stephen looked at him in surprise.

“We do,” he said, gesturing to where the statues stood guard over the hieroglyph ornamented panels. “There are the artifacts in this valley, the ruins of the village you found, the pillars on the slopes. That’s quite a lot for only a day. Who knows what we will find after we’ve been here a week.”

Eddie shook his head. “That’s not what I mean, and Neville, at least, knows it. Why don’t we see signs more recent than those? There is ample water here, and forage for animals. We should see evidence of recent Bedouin encampments—maybe even run into a poor tribe that doesn’t want to compete with the larger clans for grazing.”

Although Eddie had addressed his comments to him, Neville remained silent, so Jenny spoke up, feeling like she was somehow defending her uncle.

“We did see some evidence of people,” she said. “The sheep showed signs of having originally been domesticated. One of the horns had been trimmed where it curled too close to the skull, and I’m sure you noticed that that sheep didn’t bolt from us with the same energy the goats did. Seemed to argue it knew people.”

“Sheep are stupid,” Eddie said. “Goats would have the sense to get away from humans, whether they were semi-domesticated or not. Bedouin may be nomads, but they do plant little pockets of crops that they return for at the end of the season. I didn’t see any sign of that.”

“What about the onions?” Jenny countered.

“Still . . .” Eddie let his words trail off, clearly not satisfied.

“Maybe,” Neville said, his voice curiously husky, “it’s like the legend says and people shun this valley.”

No one even smiled at his suggestion, instead the silence that met it said that this was the explanation that had been lurking in everyone’s mind, but no one had wanted to be the first to mention it.