Year of the Hyenas (30 page)

Semerket
rushed to the
cat, trying to take in what was happening. She fell on her side,
gasping, but then seemed to overcome her initial spasm. “Sukis…!” he
said aloud. He would have taken the little animal into his arms but at
that moment she emitted such a horrifying wail that he inadvertently
backed away, frightened. The cat’s eyes bulged from their sockets. Her
spine, to his horror, was arching inward as if it would snap in two.
Her wail grew louder still, and the cat’s mouth pulled into a wide,
macabre grin.

He looked
around
helplessly, panic rising, not knowing what to do for her. Suddenly
there was nothing to do at all; with a choking noise, Sukis died. Her
eyes became fixed, slowly withdrawing again into their sockets. The
terrible spasm relaxed its hold, and her spine straightened. Her body
again became soft and pliable. But she was still.

Semerket gazed
down at
the cat. If Sukis had not stolen the piece of cheese, he knew, he would
have been the one lying on the tiles, back bent, foam on his lips. His
eyes misted as he bent to stroke her yellow fur.

Gathering up
the cat’s
body, he wrapped it in a cloth, laying it at the side of the room.
Later, he promised himself, he would have Sukis preserved and placed
beside Hetephras in her tomb. Then he took the bowl of food and the jar
of beer into the far privy and poured them both down the hole.

Semerket
returned to
the room where Sukis’s body lay, and opened the front door. He stared
into the sky. The dark ledge of rain clouds on the distant horizon
stretched over the far desert. Semerket suddenly needed human company;
he craved it. He thought at first he would go to Qar’s tower, to inform
him of what had happened. But then he remembered that Qar was at the
Medjay headquarters on the other side of the Great Place. He had only a
vague idea where the quarters were located, knowing only that they were
in some abandoned tomb on the western side of the valley. It was too
dark a night, he thought, to attempt a run across the steep and winding
trails of the Great Place, for there was no moon…

He lifted his
head,
gazing again into the sky…
There was no moon!

He suddenly
knew—the
tombmakers were going to rob another crypt.

THE TOMBMAKERS EMERGEDfrom one of the
village’s alleys, turning north toward the Great Place. Semerket waited
for them, concealed behind the temple wall. He was astonished to see
that they carried torches, the light spilling brilliantly upon the
pathway. The men seemed blithely nonchalant at being so visible in the
night-shrouded valley. Even their knapsacks, laden with their copper
tools, pealed merrily into the night as they ascended the high trail.
They seemed not in the least worried they might attract attention.

In the circles
of
torchlight, Semerket saw that the scribe Neferhotep led them. Behind
him was the master painter, Aaphat, and his two assistants, Kenna and
Hori. Only these four remained of the chief work gang, where once there
had been seven. The goldsmith Sani, the big foreman Paneb, the lad
Rami—all were confined in the Medjays’ jail. Surely four men would not
be enough to break open a tomb, Semerket thought, to strip it of its
treasures, and then bury it again in a single night…

He became
uneasy.
Perhaps they were not going to rob a tomb after all. They certainly
made no effort to muffle their footsteps. He crept on the trail behind
them, at a distance of some fifty cubits, careful to cling to the dark
crags. At no time did they turn and look behind to see if he followed
them. No doubt they believed he was dead from the poisoned food they
had given him.

A trio of
Medjays
accosted the men, emerging from out of the dark, demanding to know why
they traipsed through the Great Place at such an hour.

Neferhotep’s
thin,
reedy voice rose nasally. “We’re going to Pharaoh’s tomb, where else?”
he replied in aggrieved tones. “Now that you’ve taken our best men,
we’ve no choice but to labor nights to complete it.”

The Medjays
allowed
the tombmakers to pass and returned to their towers across the valley.
Semerket heard the tombmakers’ mordant snickers. Their smugness made
him suspect that Neferhotep and his men had deliberately made
themselves noticed in order to divert the Medjays from their real
purpose. But as he followed them again along the high pathway, he saw
that the men indeed descended into the valley where Pharaoh’s
unfinished tomb waited.

Though there
was no
moon, the night was almost silver-hued, star-lit from above and infused
with the ambient hues of distant Theban hearths. He saw Neferhotep take
a large wooden key and insert it into the cedar door at the tomb’s
entrance. Before the scribe closed the door on them, Semerket saw him
turn to sharply survey the valley. Semerket pressed himself against the
cliff wall, barely breathing—and saw in the light spilling from the
doorway that Neferhotep was searching for someone, or something. After
a moment, Neferhotep pulled the tomb’s door closed.

Semerket
crossed the
wadi, taking up a position on a low escarpment, and settled in to wait.
An hour passed. Another. His legs were cramped and the desert air was
frigid. He grew nervous and uncomfortable, unable to wait quietly.
Throwing aside caution, he crept down the side of the cliff and crossed
the wadi to the door of the tomb, one silent step at a time.

He fully
expected the
door to be locked. When he pulled on its handle, however, it swung
silently toward him, perfectly balanced in its jamb. Semerket was
careful to open it only a tiny fraction.

No one waited
there.
Summoning his resolve, Semerket took his first step inside the tomb of
Pharaoh Ramses III. Torches lit the tomb at various intervals down its
long, descending corridor, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust
to the brightness after being so long in the dark. Semerket heard no
voices, nor any sounds that indicated the tombmakers were at work.

They had gone
to the
far end, he reasoned, into the distant burial chamber itself. He
listened, cocking his head in that direction. Again, silence. Fighting
down his urge to flee, he forced himself forward.

The tomb’s
entryway
stood at the top of a long staircase that descended into the mountain.
At his left was a large wooden workman’s chest stained with paint and
battered from long use. Inside were various tools—saws, axes, picks,
chisels, hammers. Out of long habit he quickly ascertained that none of
the tools was fashioned from the blue metal that had killed Hetephras.
A few torches were stowed deep in the chest as well, and he quietly
removed one. It would both provide light, should he need it, and be a
dependable weapon for his defense. A nearby jug was filled with the
sesame oil and salt that would provide a smokeless light. He filled the
torch’s cone, but did not light it.

Semerket
counted the
steps down to the first passageway, twenty-seven in all. On the lintel
above were paintings that the master artist, Aaphat, had recently
completed—a pristine sun disk flanked by images of the goddesses Isis
and Nephthys.

The torches
that the
tombmakers had lit were located great distances from each other,
illuminating only a few lengths of the corridor at a time. Much of the
time Semerket walked in long patches of shadow before he came again
into light, able to view only a portion of the tomb’s painted figures.
Those he did see were formal and terrifying, as befitting the tomb of a
god.

As he crept
along,
Semerket noticed that the entire angle of the tomb began to diverge
very slightly to the right. In all this time he heard no voices—no
sounds at all. Ahead, leading to what he supposed would be the burial
chamber, the torches stopped. Only primordial black lay beyond. The
tombmakers did not labor in the distant burial chamber, as he had
first thought; they had reached this wide gallery and seemed to have
vanished.

He took a step
forward
into the dark, heading toward the burial chamber, but abruptly stumbled
over a heavy object at his feet. In the dim light he saw that a series
of baskets had been placed in the hallway, at least seven laid out in a
line before him. They were filled with what seemed like flat, oblong
pieces of metal. He reached for one, to examine it beneath a flame—but
at that moment voices came to him from the tomb’s entrance.

Semerket fled
into the
darkened corridor ahead, hiding behind a large square pillar that
supported the curved roof of the long gallery. From the sound made by
their feet he surmised that there must be three individuals. The men
stopped at the place where the tomb angled, and turned into an
anteroom. Semerket peeked around the corner of the pillar.

The
unmistakable
profile—or lack of one—of Noseless the beggar met Semerket’s gaze. The
ragged man scrutinized the floor of the anteroom, then spoke to his
two cohorts, pointing. “It’s there,” he said in his pronounced Delta
accent. “Lift it up.”

The torchlight
eerily
projected the beggars’ wavering shadows onto the wall in front of
Semerket. They hovered together, straining at something in the floor.
Semerket heard the scrape of stone. Then, one after another, he saw
them descend into the floor itself.

He waited
until he
could no longer hear their voices, then stole into the anteroom. In its
floor a ragged hole gaped wide, filled with soft torchlight rising from
a room below. Crude steps had been hacked into the short shaft that led
down. He heard other voices then, recognizing Neferhotep’s distinctive
whine.

The
tombmakers were
in a room below. He returned to his hiding place in the darkened
gallery to wait. Within a few moments he heard noises coming back up
the shaft. The four tombmakers and the beggars emerged from the hole.
Noseless and Neferhotep came last, conversing together.

“—how many?”
asked the
scribe.

“Twenty, at
least,”
said Noseless.

Neferhotep
exclaimed
in dismay.

By now the two
were in
the anteroom. Noseless grabbed a torch from the wall and began walking
down the hallway toward Semerket’s hiding place. The light grew
brighter and Semerket held his breath, heart thumping.

“Seven in this
part of
the tomb, and the ones below. What’s really needed is an ox-cart.”

The beggar and
Neferhotep passed directly by the large, square pillar that shielded
Semerket. The passing light of their torch clearly illuminated him. But
the two men were staring at the baskets of metal discs on the other
side of the corridor. Had they turned their heads a fraction to the
left they surely would have seen him. Semerket edged around the pillar,
facing the northern wall. A painted harpist plucked out a tune on the
wall in front of him.

“Just how are
we
supposed to keep the Medjays away with that many of you in the valley?”
he heard Neferhotep demand shrilly.

“Send them to
hell
with the vizier’s clerk, for all I care.”

“I can’t
poison them
all.”

“Why not?”
snorted
Noseless. “By the time anyone figures out what’s happened, it’ll be too
late, won’t it? In the meantime, we’ll move these out tonight, and
return for the rest tomorrow…”

With many a
grunt and
curse, the men hoisted the baskets to their shoulders. The tombmakers
and beggars slowly made their way up the sloping corridor to the tomb’s
entrance. As they retreated, they extinguished the torches that lined
the walls. Semerket peered up the slanting corridor. The men were now
at the distant cedar door. Neferhotep doused the last torch, plunging
the tomb into darkness, the blackest Semerket had ever known. The
scribe pushed open that door and the men silently exited.

Then Semerket
heard
the most terrible sound of his life—the tomb’s cedar door being locked
from the outside. He was sealed inside Pharaoh’s tomb!

Terror claimed
him.

Semerket
plunged
rashly into the darkness, swiftly ascending the causeway to the door.
He reached the steps, counting them as he went up. At the
twenty-seventh riser he stopped. Edging forward by inches, he placed
his hands on the heavy door and pushed. There was not a fraction of
movement.

Fighting his
hysteria,
muttering to himself to remain calm, Semerket moved his hands along the
door’s face, searching for any kind of bolt or mechanism that he could
release from inside. But the wood was as smooth as polished stone.
Semerket slid to the ground, panting.

Locked in a
tomb… !
Sternly, he told himself that reason and logic would see him through
the crisis. His mind raced. Surely the work gang would return in the
morning to continue their tasks. Yes. They would be coming back. Upon
that comforting thought his heart calmed a bit. Of course he would not
be imprisoned in the tomb forever. He would merely wait until the
workers came in for the day, and then sneak out when their backs were
turned.

Light was what
he
needed, he told himself. It would cheer him, and he could put his
imprisonment to good use by exploring whatever was beneath Pharaoh’s
tomb. He reached into his belt, praying to the gods that he had not
forgotten his flint.

The flint was
there.
He struck it, holding it close to the torch. The flame caught on the
first strike. With light again flooding the tomb, his panic began to
ebb.

Semerket
retraced his
steps down the twenty-seven stairs, then went from gallery to gallery.
He located the point where the tomb angled to the right, and turned
into the anteroom. Holding the torch close to the floor, he looked for
any sign of a door or passage, brushing away the limestone dust that
carpeted the area. His fingers suddenly detected a slight crevice. A
limestone wedge, shaped to cover a hole about a cubit in diameter, was
clearly discernible. He pried it open to reveal the shaft that
connected the two areas.