1947 Outside Thebes, Egypt
The sun was setting, painting the desert in long, broad strokes of orange, violet and blue. It was beautiful, worthy of rapt attention. Two exasperating problems, however, conspired to distract from natures art.
First, Cleo was chasing down her impetuous dog. Again. He was always running off, but since their arrival in Thebes, he had begun making Houdini-like escapes with escalating frequency. Second, she was battling the swirling cloud of her wind swept hair. Wishing simultaneously for a leash and a hair tie she finally got hold of Apis’ collar with one hand while brushing hair out of her face with the other.
“And just where do you think you’re going?” she scolded the giant Great Dane who was still little more than a puppy. In response he barked and charged westward, pulling hard. Unprepared, Cleo first lost her grip on the dog and then her footing, tumbling head over heals down the dune.
“Damn it! Apis?” Landing in a heap, covered in sand and very angry, she glared out into the twilight, searching for her blasted mutt.
“Oh. My. God.” Her jaw dropped almost to the ground, a comical funhouse mirror of the gaping black maw cut into the sand across from her. Apis stood in front of it, his black coat glistening red in the setting sun.
Awkwardly climbing to her feet and dusting herself off, Cleo regained control of her jaw, closing her mouth against the wind-stirred sand. She was paralyzed, unable to wrench her gaze from the opening.
Apis was not similarly afflicted. Barking again, he seemed to shrug at his stunned companion before turning to trot into the gash in the sand. Black fur mingled with dark shadows and she lost sight of him.
“Oh my God,” she repeated. Lost and lacking a torch, she was loath to go after him. Night was rapidly falling, chilling the air and turning the sands a deep blue.
A familiar breeze, in conflict with the prevailing wind, reached ghostly fingers from the cavern and caressed her face. It pushed her hair back from her eyes, tracing the curve of her cheek. With gentle but relentless force, it guided her steps toward the opening. Ancient words she could not quite hear drifted through her consciousness. Lost in the sweet caress and enchanting voice, she heard a name that put an instant end to her rapture.
It was little more than a whisper, long and low, “Ankhsenamen.”
Her eyes snapped open, the soothing spell broken, giving way to a nightmare. In the waning light of the setting sun she stood rooted at the doorway to the unknown staring wide-eyed at what appeared to be two balls of fire surging toward her, pounding up and down with the galloping gait of a creature forged in the blackness of hell itself.
Before she had a chance to even think about running it was upon her. The monster exploded from the blackness and slammed into her side, almost knocking her over. Breathing heavily, Apis took up position beside Cleopatra glaring fiercely at a point just past her.
Knocked off balance by voices in her head and the dog at her side, she was almost fell over when she heard someone say, “What the bloody hell is that?”
Spinning in a not so steady circle she signed with relief when she saw who it was. “Oh, it’s only you.”
Under normal circumstances his presence would have made her skin crawl, but at the moment she was happy to see him. She was almost convinced Charles Bridferth’s closest relative was a barracuda, cold and sleek, with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. He was a glittering creature gliding just under the surface, waiting to strike. At the moment, she didn’t care.
Charles was tall and slender, the remains of his light brown hair hidden under a dramatically tilted pith helmet. Ice blue eyes set a little too close together protruded slightly from under a low brow. He wore a goatee on his chin that he had a habit of tugging when he was thinking. It was a gesture that she hated for some reason not clear to her. He was doing it now.
“I was chasing down Apis again and took a fall.” She looked around, masking her distaste. She wished for the return of the comforting breeze that had been violently supplanted by terror. It reminded her of her dreams. She gazed at the opening and said, “I had no idea this was here. Didn’t we come this way?”
“Yes, we passed right by here.” He shrugged, “The winds must have uncovered it. Have you been inside?”
She shook her head in response, gathering her hair against the wind. Charles took a step closer, seeming intent on using the opportunity to ‘help’ her with her unruly mane, but stopped when a low rumble rose from the giant dog’s throat. He tapped his gilded can against his foot in irritation. Returning the Apis’ malevolent glare, he said, “We should come back in the morning.”
“I agree.” Cleo replied, wanting to get as far from the entrance as she could. She also wanted to get away from Charles and his jaunty pith helmet and tailored safari clothes. Neither noticed the whispered words carried on the wind as they walked away.
Only Apis looked back.
~~~~~
Cleopatra woke unable to breathe. The reason was readily apparent. Her face was buried in a wall of black fur. Sputtering, she shoved at the immovable giant. “Get out of my bed right now! What in the world has gotten into you?” she scolded picking little black hairs from her face.
Apis hopped off her bed and curled up next to it, facing the tent flap. His behavior had changed, a goofy clown becoming a guardian over night. Usually it was a struggle just to hang on to him, but now she was having trouble getting away from him. He had attached himself to her side like a barnacle.
Upon their arrival back at camp the night before, she’d tied him to her tent pole as she always did and went with Charles to share her discovery with Dr. Rosemond. Not five minutes into the conversation, Apis arrived dragging both the tent pole and the tent itself behind him. With dignity incongruous with his appearance he took his place on her right side glowering at the men with a sternness that was very un-puppy like.
It had taken almost an hour to reassemble her tent and collect all of her things. It was a task made exceptionally difficult by Apis’ refusal to get out of her way. Now she was waking to find this dog, the canine Houdini, trying to take over the role of pillow. It was very odd indeed. No time to think of it though, the sun was shining and they had a cave to explore.
She had been home for only a short time. But the nine of her 21 years spent in Egypt where the ones she cherished. The other 12 years had passed in America.
During the war they had taken refuge at Rick’s family’s estate outside Chicago. None of them wanted to go but in the end, it was one of Rick’s few victories. It came not because he had grown more eloquent over the years, but due to the greater distance from the Germans than Chicago provided. By virtue of that fact, it was a safer place for them. Acquiring Jonathan a visa had sealed their fate.
When her parents married, her mom hadn’t known he came from one of America’s wealthiest families. There were reasons for that. The O’Connell family was not a happy one. Rick’s rebellious nature, which she’d inherited from him, put him at odds with his parents and outside the confines of their wealth. They had expected him to focus, go to Harvard and eventually take over the family business. Her dad had wanted none of it. The threat of discontinued financial support hadn’t had the detouring effect her grandparents hoped for. As soon as he was old enough he took off to see the world. Before they arrived, the last time they’d heard from their son was when he joined the Foreign Legion. They believed him dead.
She often imagined what it must have been like for them when he wired to say he was coming home. Maybe they had visions of the prodigal son returning contrite and ready to accept his place in life. But he had not changed.
His short attention span and unwillingness to join the family business were made clear shortly after their arrival, even to her. Nothing about those first days had been easy. She and her mother were equally difficult for the senior O’Connell’s to deal with. Their ‘society’ lifestyle contrasted sharply against Cleo and her mother who were dark, intellectual and foreign. It was uncomfortable from the start. Only Jonathan got on well with them though Cleo didn’t think that they really liked him. They just understood him.
As had always been his habit, once he got his family settled, her father took off, this time seeking adventure in the US Army. Cleo had watched her mother try to be strong but had also heard her crying in her room late at night. His parents conversely seemed happy that he was gone.
The separation from her father and the traumatic departure from her homeland, exacerbated by the introduction of private school, blended to make Cleopatra’s American experience less than pleasant. Her appearance and accent were obviously foreign and the other school children were quick to point out her differences and make disparaging remarks about her Egyptian heritage. Even in America, the world’s supposed melting pot, the elite class retained its white racial superiority. She had felt it even from her grandparents. They were not sure what to do with their bronzed granddaughter. The mix of Egyptian, English and American blood was inexplicable for them. While never outwardly hostile, she felt their discomfort every time they were forced to introduce her.
In self-defense she did as persecuted children the world over have done to compensate. She buried herself in her schoolwork, focusing on her growing passion for her homeland’s history.
It was that study that had finally brought her home. Following in the proud Carnahan family tradition, Cleopatra was continuing her studies in Egyptology. With no social life to speak of, she’d had ample time to study and had advanced quickly. At only 21 she was working on her postgraduate dissertation focusing on the cults of Osiris and Isis. The day she had uncovered her first book on the ancient god of the dead and the extraordinary relationship he had shared with Isis she had been drawn to the pair like a moth to a flame. It had been her desire to understand the mythology surrounding their story that drove her quest to learn to read hieroglyphics and hieratic. Her mother shrugged off her obsessed fascination as youthful exuberance and a flair for the romantic. She was proud of Cleopatra’s remarkable understanding of the ancient language and overjoyed by the bond it created between them. Cleo had to admit they had wonderful conversations in Egyptian that, without fail, drove Rick and Jonathan nuts.
Cleo had returned to Egypt as soon as the war ended. She had corresponded for years with Dr. Percy Rosemond, the preeminent expert on all things ancient Egyptian. As a result of her boundless curiosity and diligent study, he had invited her to the Cairo Museum of Antiquities to do her doctorial research. It had been the opportunity of a lifetime and one her mother could not deny her.
Since childhood she had dreamed of Egypt. She often woke with little more than the vague chill of skin that felt the loss of a caressing touch. Like viewing the world through rain-pelted windows she remembered only an indistinguishable blur of huge buildings, infinite sands, blue waters and a plethora of faces, one in particular that she always struggled but failed to remember.
Of course, one could not forget to mention the nightmares. Thankfully, she never precisely remembered them either, waking with only the emotional after taste of rage and love mixed in a violent and somehow euphoric rush. She’d almost convinced herself that they would end when she got home but they didn’t. In fact they intensified, often supplanting her coveted dreams. Now was not the time to think about them however. One should try not to think of nightmares when they are anticipating entering a dark, never before explored corridor, the destination of which was anyone’s guess.
~~~~~
“To think we almost missed this. Mr. Bridferth? Miss O’Connell?” The curator beckoned them to proceed into the opening ahead of him. Cleopatra smiled remembering him telling her that while he relished each new dig, he never entered them first. He always let someone else take the risk of a roof caving in. Since the dig over all was his, so were any discoveries he might make so it didn’t matter who saw what first. He said it was a perfect example of ego becoming a health hazard. He had enough health hazards to deal with already.
Dr. Rosemond could not be politely described as anything other than portly. He resembled Capitan Kangaroo in many ways, his shock of unruly red hair and matching handlebar mustache the only remaining testaments to his long departed youth. His face was bulldog droopy with heavy jowls and eyelids so burdensome it seemed a struggle for the doctor to keep his gray eyes open behind his coke-bottle thick glasses.
Charles didn’t move to enter. His was a long and infamous career in South American exploration from which he must have learned the same lesson. Cleo, whose curiosity was killing her, was waiting for…something. Exactly what, she wasn’t sure. Her future waited for her in that tunnel. As did her past.
Apis, unimpeded by fear of the unknown, took the initiative and eagerly accepted the doctor’s offer. Cleo had learned something from her experiences the day before and had remembered both the hair tie and the leash. As it turned out, she would have been better off forgetting the leash. The massive dog bounded forward, dragging his unprepared owner into the darkness. The only way she new she wasn’t alone were the snickering laughter that followed behind her in a circle of torchlight.
Their travels ended 50 feet down. The ceiling had caved in blocking any further exploration. Charles walked up to the rubble and hefted a stone as if evaluating it’s weight. “It appears there is a decision to be made. We have no way to know what lies on the other side of this rubble.”
“Of course we do,” Cleo contradicted. “This says that this is the mortuary temple of Seti the first. Do you suppose…?” Cleo’s fingers dragged over the rough wall as she read. An anger festering deep in her soul bubbled up, and without thinking she gouged out Seti’s name, leaving the rest of the inscription intact. She gazed in stunned silence for a moment at the dusty evidence of sacrilege coating her fingers. What had she just done? The scholar in her rebelled against the vengeful thoughts that demanded she eradicate any and all cartouches containing his name. Regardless of whom it had belonged to, a new mortuary temple was the find of a lifetime for a student working on a dissertation. Looted or not, her studies were about to be catapulted forward. This could be huge.
Then another more frightening thought struck her. They were in the vicinity of the City of the Dead, which was located to the southwest of Thebes. Seti had been credited with the completion of the city. Like anyone interested in the study of ancient Egypt she had heard the tales. But unlike just anyone she had grown up with people who had actually been there. The legends had proved all too true when they visited the city.
But all that had changed, she reasoned. Her parents had killed the creature. The mummy was no longer a threat. That being the case there was no reason to fear it. The discovery of the lost city would make for quite a dissertation.
Dr. Rosemond, who must also be aware of where they were, was reading the walls, his lips moving silently as his finger dragged over the glyphs. When the line he was reading became obscured by the rubble he said, “Charles, go back to the camp and get Marcus. We are moving the dig.”
Sadly, Marcus Baynard was still at the Museum. During the war he had stayed in Cairo and continued working for the museum. It was said he had avoided military service due to health complications caused by his abundant girth. Rumor also had it that during the war he had made a small fortune funneling black market artifacts to private collectors around the world. Those same gossips mocked him as much for what he did during the war as for what he didn’t. In his 20 years with the museum, he had never advanced beyond his original position as one of several archeologists on staff.
“I believe I should stay behind to give Marcus a hand. No one took much interest in the workman’s village, but a new temple is another story. You know Marcus. I think it is wise to have someone who can control situations here.” Charles replied.
Everyone knew that Baynard was useless in any scenario that required bold decisions or assertiveness. Charles, on the other hand, reportedly had vast experience controlling ‘situations’. Hostile natives were all in a days work to Charles, as were hostile partners according to the rumor mill at the museum.
His was an infamous career riddled with dead diggers, missing partners, and fabulous yet frequently unaccounted for treasures. Predictably, his welcome in South America had run out. Many believed he’d decided to try his hand in Egypt because of the loose controls on looting and black market sales that had existed before the war.
Marcus was the one that convinced Dr. Rosemond a man of Charles’ unique abilities would be a fine addition to the staff. Cleo personally wished he’d continued his treasure hunting in South America. Let the Incas have him. Unfortunately, he was on staff placed in charge of security, a position better known as Leader of the Brain-Damaged Thugs. He had filled the halls of the museum with a menagerie of brawny idiots and men of questionable character.
It stood to reason that he would be ideal to stay behind and protect the dig site. He and his horde of miscreants would be more than capable of protecting the site. But who will protect them, she wondered.
The Curator agreed, “Yes, Charles you should stay. Pity you and I have to go isn’t it Miss O’Connell?”
~~~~~
High on the hill several men draped in black robes watched as the trio started back toward their camp in the distance. Their horses pawed at the sand as if urging their riders to battle. It was a sentiment shared by most of their riders. All were restless and tired of waiting.
One of the younger men, eager to do his recently sworn duty finally broke the silence. The tattoos on his young face were still scabbed and the scimitar he held seemed bigger than he was. He was thin and gangly, his barely post pubescent beard patchy. His voice, however, was deep. “We should stop them.”
“No.” The word was uttered with absolute finality.
Ardeth Bay sat astride a black Arabian stallion. His only movement was the swirl of his robes in the breeze. Like the pyramids, he remained unchanged by the sands of time. Only his words acknowledged the boy, his piercing black eyes were entirely focused on the young woman with the dog in the valley below. There was something about her, something he felt he should know but didn’t.
“But the infidels desecrate the temple!” The young man tried again, determined to cut his teeth on the English archeologists.
Ardeth slowly turned his tattooed face toward the young man letting his powerful stare penetrate the liquid brown eyes of the boy. As expected the youngster couldn’t hold his gaze and his eyes fell to the sand. Ardeth glared at him for a moment longer before turning his attention back to the girl.
The young warrior however was not finished. Taking one final, brave stab at his objective he asked, “What of Hamunaptra?”
Ardeth looked up at the cloudless sky, silently asking Allah to grant him the patience to not wring the little want-to-be-warrior’s neck. They were suffering from a distinct warrior shortage at the moment. Exhaling a deep, calming breath he leveled the glare he reserved for moments of true irritation on the boy. With an air of unquestionable authority he ordered, “The time is not right. We shall wait.”
Reining his horse around, he cast one last glance at the girl and the look on his face turned from stone to steal. The moment his people had waited for over 3,000 years was at hand.
~~~~~
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