Chapter 13 #2
“Twice. The first was back in the desert, which is how I knew where to find the lost city. And again, just now.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The hurt in her eyes stung him. “Because…because…”
“Because you don’t trust me?”
“No!” His voice echoed in the cavernous space. “I do trust you,” he added quietly. He wanted to say that he was afraid the revelation might change the way she looked at him, that she might see the seed of evil sprouting in his soul and recoil, but he couldn’t form the words.
Seeing the anguish on his face, Sita softened and placed her hand on his. “I was the one who put that amulet inside you. Whatever burden that act placed on your shoulders is mine to carry too.”
Karim nodded, warmed by her words.
“So tell me, what did you see?”
He described the vision to her, doing his best to repeat Setnakht’s conversation with the red priest word for word.
Sita scoffed. “Ignoring the fact that Setnakht completely misinterpreted the story of Osiris, what he said is extremely useful. He said that his queen was to be entombed here. If anyone knew Setnakht’s deepest secrets, it would have been his wife. We have to find her.”
“The seventh door to the seventh door,” Karim said.
“Exactly!”
They hurried to the nearest doorway, and Sita noted the little arch and five slashes carved into the stone wall beside it. “The doors are numbered. This one is fifteen. We need to find the one marked with a seven.”
“Here!” Karim called after a few minutes of searching.
Together, they entered the dark passage, the firelight from the hall fading behind them. Karim held his torch high as they came to the first doorway. Sure enough, it was marked with one slash.
“This place is a maze,” he said as they progressed deeper into the temple, counting the doors as they went.
“Amun help us if we get lost,” Sita said, and slid a little closer to him.
After what seemed like a long time, they finally reached the seventh door.
The darkness behind and beyond them was so thick, it was almost palpable.
Karim thrust his torch through the doorway, hoping Sita wouldn’t notice the way his hand shook.
It was all too reminiscent of Setnakht’s tomb.
The stale air. The weight of the earth pressing down upon him.
The oppressive silence. He could almost feel a presence moving in the shadows behind them, breathing, waiting for the right moment…
Stop it, you fool!
Sita stepped into the chamber ahead of him, holding a candle aloft. She turned in a circle and frowned. “There’s nothing here.”
“Nothing?” Karim followed her inside. The room was indeed empty. It wasn’t a particularly large room, although it did have an array of paintings on its walls. Karim sighed in frustration. “Perhaps Setnakht changed his mind and put her somewhere else.”
“What should we do now?”
“I don’t know…”
Karim moved to study one of the images. It looked like a family portrait.
There was a man and a woman facing each other, painted in the same strange style as the figures he saw in Setnakht’s tomb.
The man was clearly the pharaoh himself.
He wore a crown with a serpent at his brow, and Karim recognized the familiar symbols for Setnakht’s name below the image.
The woman must be his queen, but she wore no crown.
Instead, she was bald and had little eyes on each side of her chest, much like the young seer at the Temple of Amun.
“Setnakht’s wife was a priestess,” he said. “And I think they had a son.” He pointed to the small, naked figure in the woman’s arms.
Sitamun squinted at the writing below the woman’s picture. “Her name was Queen Anet. No mention of the child’s name.”
“He had everything,” Karim said bitterly, gesturing toward the idyllic family scene. “A wife, a son, riches beyond measure, a kingdom at his feet. Was that not enough?”
Sita’s expression was solemn. “In some men, power creates a thirst that cannot be quenched, no matter how much of it they drink. Perhaps Setnakht was such a man.” Her eyes darkened.
“My brother is one too.” She moved to the center of the room, shining her candle onto the paintings around her.
“What I don’t understand is: There are images of the queen all over this chamber, which leads me to believe your vision brought us to the right place.
But where is her tomb? Where are her grave goods? ”
The ground beneath Karim’s feet trembled, and a sudden grinding sound filled the air. In the space of an instant, a black hole opened in the stone floor where Sita was standing.
The princess shrieked and was gone.
Karim leaped toward the hole and stared over the edge, screaming her name. “Sita! Can you hear me? Sitamun!” He squinted into the blackness, begging every god who would listen to spare the princess’s life.
In the gloom, he spied a pinprick of light.
The candle!
Somehow, the flame hadn’t gone out.
He heard a soft groan.
“Sitamun!”
“I’m…I’m all right.”
Karim nearly collapsed with relief. He dropped down on his belly next to the hole and lowered his torch into it. A weak tendril of firelight reached Sita’s upturned face. She blinked up at him, a slash of blood across her cheek.
“Trapdoor?” Karim asked.
“Trapdoor.”
He watched as Sita pushed herself out of the rubble and onto her feet. She hissed, then leaned against the wall of the pit. “I twisted my ankle in the fall.”
“Is it broken?”
There was a pause. “No, I don’t think so.”
Karim pulled the rope from his pack. “Hold on. I’ll pull you out.” Grasping one end, he tossed the rope into the pit.
The princess strained to reach it. “It’s too short!” A note of panic entered her voice. “I’m trapped, and no one even knows we’re here…”
“I’ll get help!” Karim exclaimed. “I know the way out. I’ll run back to the village and get Elyas. We’ll bring a longer rope and get you out of there. All right, sena? I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.”
Are you really doing this again? Leaving someone you care about alone in the dark?
First there was silence. Then Sita said, “All right.”
Her voice was calm, but Karim could hear the terror working to claw its way out.
Feeling sick, Karim turned away from the hole and ran.