24 Bones (9 page)

The heavy wooden door to Tara’s courtyard lay open. In a hutch, pigeons cooed hungrily. A green washbasin sat at the threshold of the walkup to her flat. A clothesline, hung between the doorway and a sycamore, drooped under the weight of towels. They were dry and stiff. No light filtered around closed windowframes. He knocked at the door, fists thudding hollowly. The door opened a crack as he knocked.

He rapped again and then hunkered down to ease the door ajar. With a thin screech, it swung a few inches.

“Hello?” he called. “Sister?”

As he stared through the crack into the pitch-black interior, he wondered what he should do. He was only a few minutes late. That she wouldn’t be waiting for him after he flew thousands of miles rankled.

Still, with the open door and silence, perhaps she needed help? He reached inside the door to feel for a light switch; his hand traced the doorframe and then plunged further into the darkness. He grew conscious of his bare hands. He imagined cold fingers clawing his own.

He shuddered and elbowed the door open. Flies burst outward with the foul stench of decay, stale urine, and shit. Gagging, his fingers brushed against a switch. Cool light filtered through a frosted wall sconce. He lurched through the door, mouth covered by his sleeve.

David’s chest heaved as he glanced around the room and swept flies from his sweat-salted face. Should he go on? Bookcases and shelving were thrown to the carpet. The stuffing from a torn couch with green paisley print formed drifts of foam. He could guess what the looters searched for. He glanced back at the open door, every part of him screaming to run.

But he’d come this far and the smell told him that whoever had done this was long gone. He stepped briefly into the kitchen to draw two triangular blades from a knife block. Their weight was a comfort in his greasy palms. He passed through the living room, but paused.

On the wall, with a quiver still bristling with arrows, an unstrung bow balanced on two hooks. He squinted at them, then drew a finger over the cracked leather quiver. A small inscription at the base confirmed his thoughts. It was
his
bow. His quiver. Left with the sisters after his father had died and they’d sent him away. But what were they doing here?

The inscription read,
Heed the call of Re.
With his curiosity further piqued, he ventured deeper toward the heaviest buzz of flies, suspecting that he was about to find Tara.

In a bedroom, sheets hung over a mattress, and a chest of drawers had toppled on the floor, contents strewn. From the next bedroom came a sound. Something shifted on bedsprings. David’s thick eyebrows gathered together. He edged around the corner with his carving knives held in front.

A furless dog, sleek and muscled like a Doberman, squatted in the center of the room. It growled, protecting its dinner, a half-gnawed man.

David stumbled backward. The hound leaped. David lunged into the adjoining bedroom and fell back against the door. Its swing jammed the hound’s fanged snout. He sliced the muzzle and carved a flap of pink flesh from the bone. The muzzle disappeared and the door clicked closed. He fumbled for the lock and drew it across. He held his hands at his temples. The knife blades stuck upward like horns.

“Fuck.”

Paws scrabbled at the wood. David thumped the hafts of the knives against the door. When the paws stopped, he righted the chest and propped it against the door. David sat on the bed only to jump back against the wall when the door rattled on its hinge. The hound slammed into it full tilt a second time, and the door buckled. David breathed quick and shallow pants.

He tried the tiny window and pulled at its brick frame in an effort to widen it. He sucked the fresh air into his lungs, but the window was too small to climb through. What was going on? He’d have to call Shagar or maybe the police for help. What a disaster. A dead man lay outside the room and who knew how the Egyptian police would see David as implicated. His romantic trip with Zahara. His triumph in bringing to light a new artifact. These dreams crumbled as he slumped back on the bed.

The dog continued its assault. Each bang jangled his nerves, but the impromptu barricade held. Finally the ramming stopped. David waited, picturing the hound feeding on the rotting corpse. He checked his watch. Quaking, he pulled a cover over his legs for warmth and tried to decide his next step.

Outside the door, the dog growled and then gave a startled yelp. David jerked forward on the bed and listened.

Knuckles rapped against the door.

“David Nidaal?” a voice asked. “Tara say to come help.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Faris.”

“What about the dog?”

“Dead.”

David pulled the chest away from the door and unlocked it. He held the knives low at his side. In the doorframe stood a small man dressed in tan robes. Blood dripped from a metal discus-like weapon at his side.

“I come help.” The man reached and snatched David’s hand, pulling him over the threshold. The man winced as he yanked. “She said to say that what you seek lies with the priest’s last duty.”

David glanced at the hound whose body lay next to its severed head.

In the distance, dogs barked, and the man paled. “They are coming,” he said.

David didn’t need him to explain that the people who came owned the creepy dog. The dog they’d left to eat a corpse. The same people who thought, according to Pope Shagar, he was leading them to the engraving.

“The church, the tunnels in the Hanging Church,” David said.

And maybe he was.

The man might be small, but he could sure run. As soon as David mentioned the church, Faris turned his blood-soaked back and set off. David stepped over the dead dog but paused in the living room to snatch his old bow from the wall, a weapon with which he was far more comfortable. The knives dropped to the sea of foam.

Sinew still dangled from one end of the bow and he threaded the shaft between his knees to string it. A long time had passed since he’d used a stick-and-string bow rather than a compound pulley-based system, but the bow still had a good draw and the arrows were tipped with wickedly barbed heads.

Faris waited for him at the courtyard door, waved once, and then dashed into the street. The barking swelled, urging David on, past the sisters and toward the Hanging Church. He caught a flare of light ahead, and then another dog yelped. In his haste David didn’t get a good look but it appeared that the hairless hound had run full on into a scythe.

The small man stood at the gate to leave the fort, bloody weapon dripping. Recalling the woman in the street outside of the fort, David shook his head and pointed the little man toward the Hanging Church.

David, suddenly glad Zahara had disappeared, dashed back up the steps of the church and into the dark nave.

As David entered, Shagar hurried out from beyond the screens and waved away explanation.

“Under those pews.” The Pope pointed to the trap doors. “Hurry, I will close the doors after you are through.”

The small man was pulling the church door shut by way of a brass ring, but David saw another dog racing up the steps ahead of what appeared to be a dwarf—wielding an axe.

For a split second, David gaped but then regained his head. David nocked an arrow, drew back, and let fly. The arrow sped true, lodging in the chest of the animal, sending it somersaulting into the narthex of the church. The dwarf mounted the top step and raised his broad axe, which took on a bluish glow as it lifted.

David drew another arrow back to his ear. With a sudden crack the bow shaft splintered into pieces. The doors slammed shut and a timber dropped to lock them, just as the axe struck. The half-moon of the blade pierced the thick door. David stood aghast at the power used to accompany the stroke.

“Good,” Shagar said to David and started removing the pews to free the trapdoors.

“What the hell is going on?” David demanded.

Faris must not have understood as he simply rushed to help the pope move the pews. David thought back to what Tara had told Faris.
The priest’s last duty
.

“Forgive me, Your Holiness, but there is something else I must do …” David trailed off when Shagar placed his hands over his eyes as if he didn’t want to see.

Lighting the taper of the oil lamp, David hopped over the chain. His steps rang out as he descended the spiral stairs.

At the bottom, he pushed open the iron-studded door. The walls sweated and glistened in the light and echoed with his wheezing breath. At the end of the short passage was the rough hewn altar. Here was where the priests completed their final duty. Here must be where the engraving was hidden.

Despite the attack, excitement churned in his guts as he approached.

In the dim light he couldn’t see a drawer or cupboard where the engraving might be held. At the bottom, however, a thin rectangular line traced the stone, darker as if newly mortared. He dug his fingers into it. His nails bent as he worked. He had no tool. Finally, the soft mortar gave way and he pulled out bricks to reveal a small compartment.

Under the altar, his fingers fell on something smooth, too smooth to be stone, and too cold. He hauled, finding it heavy and difficult to grip with sweaty hands. With a final tug, it slid down to land against his knees, slipping free of a rough cloth.

He swallowed hard at the reflected gold. Gold. A sheet of engraved metal. The engraving matched the rubbing. But his fingers traced text on the opposite side as well. It was true. Tara had only sent him part of the story.

“Hurry, David.”

At his back Shagar stood and stared.

David swung his pack around; the tablet fit neatly inside. Biting his lip as he slung the heavy bag to his back, he nodded at the pope and then edging past, he climbed the stairs up and then went down a half-rotten ladder leading through the now open trapdoor. He still gripped the lantern, which rattled with each hack of the axe falling rhythmically against the church doors above.

Faris waited at the bottom. Together they started into the dark, the lantern dispelling only a small part of David’s misgivings.

All David could think about was the stele. Most stela were lists baked into clay. What could be so precious that it was engraved in gold?

Chapter Twelve

A
s she returned to the City of the Dead, Sam’s thoughts were on the Void-touching companion. Once again, she had failed to acquire the tablet, a failure compounded by the fact that she had let the instrument of her failure roam the Temple of Seth. But when she’d encountered him in darkness, she’d immediately seen the solution to all of her problems.

Emails from her mother to David Nidaal had promised to show him the tablet. By letting the companion free Tara, her mother would not be suspicious and so lead Sam to the tablet. In the pursuit, Sam would have a second chance to release her mother in the sun dweller’s world rather than face the sure death of the underworld. She couldn’t have suspected her mother would choose to remain imprisoned.

More hounds were dead and a very unhappy dwarf marched by Sam’s side. That Pharaoh had allowed Shemsu Seth to publicly attack showed how desperate they had grown. All was not lost however. David Nidaal may have the tablet, but Sam had acquired something of value to him; his woman was already chained below.

The dwarf, however, was not the only one disappointed.

Soon after entering the temple, more Shemsu Seth soldiers fell in and wordlessly guided Sam to stand before Pharaoh. His expression was as implacable as granite. A dirty, blood-soaked rag bandaged Trand’s shoulder, and small cuts scored his face. Five dogs were dead, two by a sundisc, one by Nidaal’s arrow, and two by Trand’s hand; their injuries had rendered them croc-feed.

Pharaoh rose from his throne and walked down toward Sam, stopping beside the pit over which her mother had been manacled. From Sam’s position she could not see into the pit’s depth, but she knew that the walls of the pit sloped downward in an inverted pyramid for thirty feet, ending in a black square hole.

Pharaoh tapped the side of the pit with his
djed
staff. The raps rose to the pyramid roof.

“You didn’t notice this man as you left to meet Nidaal?” Pharaoh’s eyes glowed. “A man made it past the sentries of the city, into the maze, and then out again, fleeing to the Copts where he disappeared.”

Sam shrugged. Pharaoh would easily see through her reasons for letting the companion go free, better to point the finger elsewhere. “The sentries are not yet in place, Pharaoh. They have only just returned from the deirs, and we could not have known they would use the passages beneath the church.”

Pharaoh’s eyes brightened. Sam sensed him probe her thoughts and she forced his mind away. He glared.

“The companion was more powerful than you think, Pharaoh,” Trand said. “A companion, but with skill in the Void.”

The Pharaoh’s pressure against her mind ceased. Sam staggered forward. Pharaoh looked at the dwarf. “Silence. You failed. Go tend your crocs and pups.” Trand bowed away. Pharaoh’s eyes settled on Sam.

Sam felt him probing still. “The full moon will require a substantial sacrifice. The moon is not near the quarter and already Seth is unhappy. His hounds are dying.” Below, in the pit, something moved; talons clicked on stone, followed by a long, slow scrape. “Even Sobek is restless.”

“We have his woman,” she said. “We will make a trade.”

Pharaoh took three strides, rising above her. “Nidaal is a companion and must be killed.”

“He’s no companion. I sensed no threat from him.”

“He is untrained, but a descendant. He will die,” Pharaoh commanded. “As for you, there are openings in the harem …” His glowing gaze caressed her head to foot. She suppressed a shudder.

Beyond the pit’s dark hole, Sobek’s jaws snapped.

“… I will have the tablet by the full moon,” Sam said, her voice cracking as her confidence faltered.

Pharaoh waved away Sam’s assertion and suddenly grinned with benevolence worse than his full fury. He walked her forward, closer to the altar and the pit. “Yes, of course you will—however, I have another job for you, Sam.” An image of her lying spread eagled on a bed bloomed in her mind. “It should not take you away from your hunt for more than a few days.” His tone was apologetic, and Sam cringed. Pharaoh never apologized. “The battalion sent to the Sudan did not quite finish its task.”

Sam was confused. A score of Shemsu Seth had been sent to the Sudan. A battalion sent to destroy targeted villages. Sam had avoided the assignment. Pharaoh’s priority had been the tablet. Nothing could be more important.

“Their failure …” His staff pointed toward the pit. “… is your opportunity.”

The bodies of those Shemsu Seth sent to the Sudan were piled in the pit. Sam knew many of the men. Despair and black anger swelled, and she swallowed it. As Sobek cleared the hole from below, a gummy coat of blood painted the pit’s sides.

Sam’s bowels loosened as she thought of the waste. Pharaoh’s eyes glowed with feverish sheen.

“Tell me what I need to do,” Sam said.

David
had never ridden a camel and immediately disliked the gangly beast.

It groaned, hacked, and stared back at him with rolling eyes that accused him of being overweight. He didn’t need the reminder, his belt reminded him, and the triangles between his shirt buttons reminded him.

He shivered. Without the concrete and asphalt of the city to retain the heat of day, the desert night air chilled the sweat on his back and chest. He eyed Faris’s billowing robes.

After reclaiming the stele from its hiding place, they had escaped through the tunnels of the Hanging Church, and then taxied to Giza, site of the Great Pyramid. Below the face of the Great Sphinx, a herd of hobbled camels had slept.

Initially, David had protested, telling Faris that he needed to find his girlfriend. Faris had asked if he had the tablet and David admitted he did.

Faris had told him without blinking that if he remained in Cairo he would die.

David’s conscience still tugged, but the memory of the axe against the door had been all he required to trust Faris’s instincts. Perhaps Zahara slept on a king size hotel bed with a feather pillow. She was probably safer alone and the weight in his pack reminded him that he had a job to do.

Faris spoke with the herdsman, a sleep tousled man who wound a long band of cloth around his head into a turban as they talked. The two argued until the herdsman threw up his hands.

Faris ignored David’s pleas that they find a train or a taxi instead. No one could trace their steps if they took a camel. They would ride to the outskirts of Cairo and take the train from Helwan. Faris harnessed the animal with practiced hands.

Together they now lumbered, tracing the sweep of the Nile a mile distant, where the feluccas’ lateen sails ruffled white against black waters.

“Where are we going, Faris?” David asked. He struggled to remain centred on the camel’s back while it swayed left and right. It felt like he rode a boat in an unpredictable sea.

“Deir Abd-al-Aziz, a monastery.” David and Faris switched from David’s sparse Arabic to Faris’s rough English interchangeably. Between both languages, they could communicate.

“A Shemsu Hor deir?” David asked.

Faris’s head snapped around. He said something in a strange tongue, the words vaguely familiar to David, but unintelligible. Faris watched for a reaction. “How do you know?” he asked, seeing David’s lack of comprehension.

David rolled up his shirtsleeve enough to flash the edge of his scar. Faris’s eyes widened and he spouted more words in the strange language.

David shook his head.

Faris looked confused. “How can you be companion, but not understand ancient Egyptian?”

David’s face darkened. David remembered the pain of the brand, the pressure for him to learn the language and his resistance. David recalled memorizing parts of the tongue to placate his father, and then promptly forgetting them all as he would later forget his grade-school Latin. Of course, he had had to relearn Latin to study comparative religion. Such is the gravity of fate.

“I’m not a companion,” he said and looked to the sun that breached the horizon.

Faris didn’t argue.

“The woman who helped you escape, the one who told you where to find me, was her name Tara Amat Yasu?” David asked as he stared out to the deep charcoal desert.

“Yes, they have captured her. I owed her for her help.”

David wondered for whom the hound had been set to wait. His eyes narrowed. “What were you doing with the Shemsu Seth?” He could guess why they had captured Tara, and he suspected it was she who was the source of all his problems.

Faris sucked in his cheeks. They trundled across a long rocky stretch before he responded. “I was scouting. The Shemsu Seth slaughtered many of the Shemsu Hor in the deirs, killing anyone under middle age and many of the high priests. I went to find out why.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” David asked.

Faris shook his head and grew silent.

“What did Tara tell you?”

Faris pursed his lips and David knew he withheld information, information which could help David understand why they wanted him dead. Faris’s gaze drifted to David’s courier bag.

“She asked you to find me, surely that means she trusted me,” David added.

Faris tilted his head and looked at David with dark eyes. Then Faris glanced away uncomfortably.

“The Osiris, they search for the Osiris,” Faris said in a quiet voice.

“I still don’t understand,” David stated.

“Any prepared mummy is an Osiris,” Faris clarified. “In this case, Osiris is an object. It represents the Spine of Osiris, a relic used in the resurrection of the god. The twelve original companions, founders of our deirs, were each buried with a part of this spine.”

“What does it do?” David asked, and Faris lowered his eyes and was silent. “So the tablet is also a list, it tells the prophecy and the location of the burial sites?”

Faris’s shrug was non-committal. “Perhaps. We knew where our twelve pieces of the middle back lay. The Sisters of Isis are keepers of the neck and the Shemsu Seth have the lower back. No one knows where the spinal cord left to Horus resides. That is everyone’s mystery. Perhaps its secret lies with the tablet.”

The bag pulled at David’s shoulders.
“The twenty four bones ... yes ... How many did the Shemsu Seth take?”

“We have four vertebrae, three are in doubt. We’ll get them all back, though. We will …” Faris drifted off.

The camel’s hooves clumped on the baked earth, and for a while, David lost himself in the rhythmic lumbering.

“Why do you think the Shemsu Seth targeted the young?” he finally asked.

Faris offered nothing.

David’s mouth twisted sourly. The camel walked steadily beside the dawn, skirting the road near the Nile. Something nagged him. “In the New Testament, King Herod killed all of the male children under the age of two. He was searching for the Prophet Jesus.”

Faris hauled on the camel’s reins and brought it to a groaning stop. He shot David a glance, then shut his eyes in pained understanding.