Chapter 16
Celia Sinclair had never sweat so much in her life.
As the sun boldened toward noon, she became more and more jealous of Biz’s linen dress, which at least let a breeze through.
Trousers, it turned out, were not nearly as airy.
Her safari suit was starting to get dark stains at the armpit seams, which only grew as she stalked around the pyramid.
Circles, they were going in circles. No matter how many times she stared at the too-smooth stones of the pyramid’s south side, all she could see was white.
No hidden shafts appeared. No second clue spontaneously revealed itself.
No Ageless One rose out of the capstone to curse them.
No Order members had appeared either.
Celia didn’t exactly want them to—but as the sand beneath her feet turned baking, the absence of Hugo Pratt was starting to make her even more uneasy than the prospect of the magician’s arrival.
Surely, he and Everett would have arrived from Cairo by now.
Did they know something she didn’t? Was it possible that there was another location the hieroglyphs had been referencing?
One that wasn’t so obvious or impossible to enter?
She glared back at the pyramid and took yet another swig from the canteen that had been attached to her camel. The beast was almost as grumpy as she, but it seemed reluctant to waste precious moisture to spit at her.
“Is it possible the door might only appear at night?” Biz was asking again. The four of them were huddled by the caravan of kneeling camels, doing their best to rehydrate. “Perhaps when the stars are shining on the stones?”
“It’s possible,” Ezra relented. “But we’d have to wait months for Sah’s Crown to appear in the sky here.”
His sweat stains weren’t nearly as bad. The perspiration on his brow even resembled tiny jewels. Celia doubted she looked so regal as she mopped her face with her sleeve.
“It’s too obvious,” she protested. “If starlight was all it took, then the Order would have had everything inside carted back to the British Museum.” She paused, studying Ezra again. “Do you feel any draw here? The way you did with those sphinxes back at the vault?”
The young man’s brow creased. Sweat trickled down his temple, slow as a thought. “I’m not sure. I haven’t been quiet enough.”
They all fell silent. Celia could hear the long-strung hissssssss of sand being swept endlessly over itself, erasing any sign of footprints.
It wasn’t a pleasant breeze. It felt like standing by a fire as more logs were tossed on.
Heat shimmered at the edges of her vision.
There were patches of air that didn’t quite match the rest of the ground or sky—where several giant birds had appeared.
“Oh look.” Vincent had seen the creatures as well. “Vultures are circling. They could probably smell me cooking from a league away.” He fanned his face, which was looking far pinker than it had earlier that morning, despite the safari hat.
Biz frowned up at the bald sky. “That’s a bad omen, isn’t it?”
Her brother followed her gaze, watching the birds’ wings wheel through the blue. “Not in Egyptian lore. Vultures were associated with the goddess Nekhbet, who watched over the pharaohs. They symbolized protection and—” He stopped suddenly.
“And what?” Celia prodded.
“Mothers,” Vincent said. “They symbolized mothers. I always thought that was funny.”
But Celia wasn’t laughing. She studied the birds more closely as they circled the same spot, several dozen yards away from the base of the pyramid.
There didn’t seem to be a carcass… but one of the vultures swooped down anyway.
It hopped on the bare sand, white feathers ruffling against the wind.
Its talons began scratching at something.
Ezra started to run.
Celia followed, thankful now that she’d chosen the safari suit instead of the skirts that blew against Biz like a sail.
Vincent trailed behind with his fiancée.
The vulture startled skyward as the scholar approached, joining the other birds where they circled.
Circled. Their shadows rippled over the sands.
Ezra halted in the center of this ring, got on his knees, and started digging.
It was a bit like watching a boy try to make sandcastles at the seaside—using nothing but his hands.
Except, Ezra Bright’s hands could glow. They were glowing, Celia realized.
She didn’t think her companion had registered this.
He was too fixated on digging. Sand swept away in vast swathes, far more than his fingers should have managed.
It piled high over Celia’s boots as she stood to the side.
“Aha!” The scholar leaned back in a flat-footed squat that reminded Celia of the vendors they’d seen at the train station.
“What is it?”
“Have you found something?” Biz called out, holding tight to her hat as she and Vincent drew close.
Curious. Wind was whipping all around, but the sand Ezra had swept away wasn’t moving. His excavation site remained clear. In it, Celia could see large stones, carved and fitted as if for a floor. Every single one was engraved with a hieroglyph.
“Stars,” Ezra answered, breathless. He looked back at the circling vultures, watching the white birds as if they were ghosts.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Vincent clapped his hands together. “Or we will once we walk through them like the clue instructs. They must be connected to a pressure mechanism: Step on the right ones and a secret door will open.”
“But which ones are the right ones?” Biz squinted at the grid. “There’s more than three.”
She wasn’t wrong. Celia counted nine stones. They sat in a neat square, like noughts and crosses. The stakes, however, were a bit higher than that schoolyard game.
“We need to be certain,” she told Ezra. “If we choose the wrong combination, we could end up cursed.”
“Cursed?” Biz repeated. “What kind of curse?”
“We could all die from a mosquito bite. Well, all of us except Ezra,” she amended. “Or your fingers might start to rot in a way no doctor can see…”
This caused Vincent to shudder. “Sounds unpleasant.”
Celia swallowed, trying to rebury the memories that had suddenly surfaced.
Her father’s withered arm. The awful smell of flesh turning, slowly but surely, into dirt.
How ragged his gasps became at the end, stealing all the air from Celia’s own lungs.
My death is not worth your life… What would William Sinclair say now, if he could see her here?
On the cusp of one of the greatest discoveries the Order never made?
“We’re facing the south side of the pyramid,” Biz pointed out. “Perhaps you should press the stars that lie at the same angle as Sah’s Crown.”
Vincent looked impressed with this guess. “I say, you’d have made a much better archaeologist than me.”
“I know,” Biz replied.
Her fiancé seemed amused as he gestured back toward the tiles. “But do you know what order the stars should be pressed in?”
“As if you’re walking to the pyramid,” Celia reasoned. “Journeying toward it, the way the clue said.”
“No treasure in Egypt is safe from these two,” Vincent said with a laugh.
Ezra didn’t share in the sound. He was focused on the stars sunk into the weathered squares. “Mintaka.” The scholar pointed at the left-lowermost tile, then the center one. “Alnilam and Alnitak.” He ended at the square on the uppermost right.
Vincent eyed the stones cautiously. “Are you sure they line up diagonally?”
“It’s how my mother drew them out on the scroll.” Ezra tapped the pocket of his utility belt, glancing back up at the vultures. “This is the path she set out for me.”
At this, he stood and stepped onto the first stone.
It didn’t sink beneath his feet the way a pressure mechanism might—instead, the star engraved at its center started to flare, as if filled with molten gold.
The second star did the same. And the third.
Once Ezra stepped off the stones, back into the sand, there was a shaking that caused the vultures to scatter.
Even the camels, yards away, lifted their heads and stared in the direction of the pyramid, where alabaster stones were rearranging themselves.
Several folded over to create a staircase leading to a door that appeared about a tenth of the way up the pyramid.
Celia found herself squeezing the key around her neck as she watched, but this door didn’t have a lock.
The stars had opened it.
The darkness was waiting.
“Brilliant!” Vincent clapped again. “See? Everything’s fine! No black hands or mosquito bites!”
A prickly feeling crept across Celia’s skin. She wasn’t sure why. Something about this… It was too easy, no?
Ezra strode across the sands, mirages shimmering on either side.
She hurried after him to climb the newly formed steps.
It felt like scaling the surface of the sun.
The inside of the pyramid offered no relief.
In fact, darkness served to make the heat even worse.
Paired with the walls, it was oven-like.
But when Celia opened her locket, all thoughts of cooking fell away. Light poured down their path, revealing carved reliefs on both sides of the tunnel. These held gods and rivers and ankhs and suns and so many more stars… all painted with the most brilliant colors.
“My God,” she breathed, taking in the greens and blues, yellows and reds. “It’s so much brighter than the museum displays.”
Ezra studied the scenes with a reverent expression. A hand rose from his side and hovered in midair. Not glowing. “Because they haven’t been touched,” he said. “We may be the first people to see these reliefs in thousands of years…”