The Eye of the Serpent (20 page)

‘I've never heard such nonsense,' said the Algerian. ‘How could it be your property? It's three thousand years old! Now, I'm telling you that the piece has a price affixed to it and it shall not be yours until I'm paid what I am owed. Give it back and you can return with the rest of the money tomorrow.'

He tried to prise the charm from his client's hands. A mistake.

Sonchis concentrated for an instant and felt new strength flowing through him. He grabbed the man by the throat, picked him up as easily as if he were a bundle of dried sticks and flung him against the wall. He crashed into it so hard that chunks of plaster rained down with him as he fell to the floor and lay there, gasping for breath. He began to fumble in his coat pocket and pulled out a revolver; but before he could aim it, Sonchis had stepped across and kicked it out of his hand. He leaned over to prise the wad of money out of the man's other hand.

‘You should have taken my offer when you could,' he said. ‘Now you will have nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing.' He lifted a foot and placed it across the man's throat.

The Algerian's eyes widened in shock. ‘Who are you?' he gasped. ‘
What
are you?'

‘I am vengeance,' said Sonchis quietly; and he pressed his foot down hard.

Sonchis let himself out of the apartment and went downstairs again. He stepped out into the street and headed back the way he had come, taking a short detour so he would not have to pass by the Algerian's shop. He was well aware
that the man's body would be found soon enough and that his assistant would tell the authorities about the fat man in the white suit who had accompanied the Algerian to his apartment to look at some curios he had for sale. But it mattered little. By the time the local police organized themselves to look for Wilfred Llewellyn, he would have vanished from the face of the earth.

As he walked back to the Ford, Sonchis could feel the power of the Apophis statue throbbing in his breast pocket; while in the pocket on his right hip the serpent's eye emitted a strange power all of its own. Now he knew he could come and go at any hour of the day or night, and the first place he intended to visit was the tomb that had for so long been a prison – but was now a temple.

THE TIME HAD
come at last. Alec, Ethan, Madeleine and Mickey stood in the now empty antechamber and watched as two Arab workmen broke the seals on the inner door. It had been decided that the four of them would enter the tomb now and the others would take their opportunity later. Pointless for everyone to go in together. Nobody knew what they might find in there, and the last thing they needed was over-excited groups of people blundering into priceless relics and destroying them.

Ethan was there as director of the expedition, Madeleine as hieroglyphics expert, Mickey was
going to take photographs for the records and Alec . . . well, as Ethan had explained to the others, he was there to represent Uncle William, who for obvious reasons could not be present in person. Alec felt tremendously honoured and rather guilty, because in his heart he believed that there were others who deserved the place more than he did.

As they watched in expectant silence, the men struggled to open the heavy doors; but gradually they began to part, creaking slowly back onto darkness. Ethan and Alec switched on their torches and sent rays of brilliant light into the swirling dust that rose in the rapidly widening space in front of them. Then the dust began to settle and they could finally see what lay within.

‘My God,' said Ethan; and they stepped into the burial chamber.

It was a large rectangular room, dominated by a huge sarcophagus that rested in the very centre. But this was unlike any Egyptian sarcophagus that any of them had ever seen before, a big oblong wooden box with no decoration whatsoever. Furthermore, the box had been damaged. Not by human hand, Alec could see, but by a major shift in the earth that had torn a great
crack in the ground beneath it, creating a gap of some six inches or more. This had caused the heavy sarcophagus to split across the middle. The thick wooden lid had snapped diagonally across and as Alec approached, he saw that the top half had slid aside to reveal the mummy's bandaged face staring sightlessly up at him. Alec felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. The bandages had merged so completely with the face that the expression was quite visible, the features frozen in what looked like a grimace of hatred. Alec felt as if the mummy could see him; as if the look of hatred was directed at him.

Could this really be the body of Akhenaten? he asked himself. Why no decoration on the outer sarcophagus? And why no inner sarcophagi? Tutankhamun's mummy had been enclosed in three separate coffins, each fitting inside the other like Russian dolls. This man had nothing: his bandaged body lay inside one plain wooden box.

Then Alec noticed a puzzling detail. The lower edge of the diagonal split had exposed the mummy's waist and he could clearly see that the man's arms were clamped with what looked like heavy manacles.

‘Come and look at this!' he said. Ethan and Madeleine hurried to his side. ‘This is so strange,' he gasped. ‘This man was chained when he was put in here!'

‘Why would anybody do that?' asked Ethan, but neither Alec nor Madeleine could think of an answer.

Mickey had set up the camera and was busying himself snapping pictures, the occasional burst of flash powder lighting up the interior of the chamber. Ethan and Madeleine had meanwhile moved to inspect the other sarcophagi. There were four of them in all, undecorated in any way, just plain black boxes propped upright in each corner of the room and facing inwards, as though the mummies were looking at the central sarcophagus. The earlier tremor had also disturbed one of the upright boxes and the lid had shifted to reveal a glimpse of another wizened bandaged face, this one frozen in an expression of absolute agony.

Madeleine made a sound of revulsion. ‘It looks as though 'e was still alive when 'e was entombed,' she said.

Ethan was shaking his head and gazing around
the room. ‘This is nuts,' he muttered. ‘I'm not sure what I expected to find in here, but it was nothing like this.' He looked at the other two. ‘Have either of you ever seen anything like it before?'

Alec looked puzzled. ‘It isn't like any other burial chamber,' he said. ‘I've studied books on all the tombs, but this . . .' He struggled to find the word. ‘It's so . . .
plain
,' he said.

Madeleine too seemed taken aback. ‘It is very strange,' she said. ‘I cannot believe this is the tomb of a pharaoh. Where are the murals, the nested shrines? It is almost as if these people 'ave been placed 'ere . . . as some kind of punishment.'

Alec had returned to the main sarcophagus and was directing the light of his torch into the opening. ‘This thing is lined with metal,' he said. ‘Looks like . . . copper.' He studied the manacles once more. ‘I'd say those manacles are copper too.'

‘Really?' Madeleine moved over to join him. ‘Yes, I think you are right, Alec. That is interesting. Many Egyptians believed that copper 'ad protective qualities. Placing it around something would keep whatever was inside from harm.'

‘Yes, but' – Alec thought for a moment – ‘if that was the case, wouldn't they have put the copper on the
outside
of the sarcophagus?'

‘An interesting point,' she admitted. ‘Could that be it, Ethan? 'Ooever was buried in there was considered evil. Nobody wanted 'is spirit to escape.'

Ethan frowned. ‘Could be, I guess. Alec, you said something before about how Akhenaten was unpopular . . . how people tried to destroy all record of him.'

Alec nodded. ‘Well, yes, that's true. And after his death his son Tutankhamun even changed his name to reflect the god Amun. He wanted to distance himself from his father's beliefs because they'd proved so unpopular. But . . . surely this can't be the resting place of one of the greatest pharaohs in history? This . . . black box? It just doesn't seem right.'

‘I don't think this is Akhenaten's tomb,' said Madeleine flatly. She looked at Alec apologetically. ‘I know that is what your uncle was 'oping to find, Alec, but I really don't think that is what we 'ave uncovered. Remember what I saw on the outer door seals? “
By order
of Akhenaten”. I believe 'e 'ad these
people buried 'ere. All the artefacts you found in the antechamber must 'ave been their belongings, but in this chamber there are none of the things you would expect to find in the tomb of a pharaoh. It is so bare . . . almost like a prison chamber.'

Alec looked around the tomb and nodded. ‘And yet there were so many artefacts in the antechamber . . . more than were ever found in Tut's tomb. But no tomb robber ever came in here. You have to ask yourself why.'

‘The Ancient Egyptians were superstitious people,' said Madeleine. ‘Maybe they were afraid to take this man's possessions.' She pointed to the grimacing face in the sarcophagus. ‘It is almost as if this was a man that Akhenaten feared. One of his rivals for the throne per'aps?'

‘Let's see what we've got in here,' said Ethan. His torch beam had just revealed a large storage jar standing against one wall. He kneeled down, lifted the lid as gently as possible and set it on the ground. Inside the jar he could see several papyri, tightly rolled into tubes. He extracted one and carefully unrolled it to reveal closely written text on what looked like a well-preserved sheet of papyrus.

‘Maddie, this is your territory, I think,' he said. He handed her the sheet and she took it gently, handling it like the priceless relic it was. ‘What does it say?' he asked her.

She gave him a scornful look. ‘I cannot read it just like that,' she protested. ‘It is not like reading a page in the
New York Times
! It is going to be a while before I can tell you anything.'

‘How long?' he asked her.

‘I don't know. There are so many scrolls 'ere, it could take weeks to translate them all.'

Ethan frowned. ‘Well, I suggest you get straight on to it. We need some answers and I'll bet my bottom dollar that this is where we're going to find 'em.' He gestured around the room. ‘There's nothing else here that's going to give us a clue. Mickey, get some pictures of these scrolls in position, will ya? Then Maddie can take them away and study them in detail. Maybe they'll tell us something more about this place.'

Alec had moved back to the central sarcophagus and was directing his torch onto the grimacing face of the mummy within. He still could not shake off the conviction that the creature was looking at him.

Who are you?
he thought.
And what made people hate you so much that they buried you like this?

Sonchis sat in the back of Mohammed's car as it trundled down the road to the Valley of the Kings, marvelling at his newfound ability to venture forth by daylight. Beneath his shirt, his temporary skin still shifted and squirmed, but the combined power of the two talismans he now wore on a thong around his neck ensured that it would not burst asunder. His eyes still felt sensitive to sunlight and he had put on the dark glasses he had found in Llewellyn's room. Now he needed to get closer to the people at the dig and there was an obvious way to do that.

The Ford bumped along the winding road, passing occasional groups of tourists on the way. Some of them were mounted on donkeys; a couple of wealthier travellers, a husband and wife, perched ludicrously on the backs of two camels, clinging on for dear life.

Sonchis allowed Llewellyn's lips to curl in a sneer. When he was back to his full power, no foreign travellers would dare return to this valley, for he would rule it and deal with such fools accordingly.

Up at King Tut's site there was the usual crowd of gawping imbeciles, currently watching as a rather ordinary-looking chair was brought out into the daylight. From the reaction of the crowd, you'd have thought that they had just brought out a heap of precious jewels.

As they cruised by, the newspaperman, Biff Corcoran, stepped forward and raised a hand for Mohammed to stop. He regarded Sonchis with interest.

‘Professor Llewellyn, ain't it?' he said. ‘You finally decided to head back to your friends at the dig, huh?'

Sonchis decided that Biff had a gift for stating the obvious but refrained from commenting on it.

‘I thought I'd see what progress they've made,' he said.

‘Me and Charlie was up there yesterday,' said Biff. ‘They got some swell little pieces of pottery for you to look at. Bet you can hardly contain your excitement, huh?'

Again, Sonchis said nothing.

‘By the way, what museum did you say you were with?'

‘I didn't,' Sonchis assured him.

‘It's just for the record. You wouldn't want me to get it wrong, would ya?'