Across the enormous bowl and against the soft silence of the great desert behind the wall came the sound of stone grating on stone.
Then a coughing, rumbling roar, the sound of a lion on the hunt.
Lions? There were no lions in this part of the desert, where then lions?
A tinge of alarm went through Abdul as a breath of wind moved past him in this vast windless place.
In the distance, he heard a cry. A short scream echoed from the stone that vaulted above them.
Another scream, this one longer, faded in a gurgle Abdul could hear clearly and then died on a sound that drew Abdul’s manhood tight against him.
A deep cry of pleasure, unnatural in this place.
“Rasul!” Abdul shouted.
There was no answer.
A man shouted.
There was another roar and a man shrieked.
Abdul blanched and backed toward the entrance to the split in the rock. He didn’t know what was going on but he was wiser than Hakim, he knew when to give in, he knew when to flee.
From the shadows one of his men came running and Abdul froze in absolute shock at what stalked him.
That wasn’t nearly as frightening as what caught his man.
Fear was like lightning. His balls drew up tight. With a desperate effort he kept from screaming as he turned and fled, pushed past those clearing the cleft in the rock. Perhaps those lives might satisfy what lay within.
He could only pray so.
Racing for the light, he burst out into the open.
“My camel, quickly,” he said, desperate, clapping his hands for his slaves as he ran to his tent. “Hurry, hurry. Mustafa, Najib, with me.”
His people hastened to do his bidding, looking at him in shock and dismay.
Hastily he gathered his most precious booty, his fingers caressing the figurine of the priestess, praying to her for salvation. He leaped onto the saddled camel, set heel to it without a backward glance.
“We go,” Abdul hissed to the other two men.
The remaining men, puzzled and disturbed, turned to look back toward the great crack in the rock.
A sound like the wind in a storm whispered from the crack in the great wall of rock.
From within the rift came cries and shouts, the screams from those within it.
Those outside fell back. Some turned to run.
A great cloud of dust and stone erupted from within the stone to swallow up those outside. Voices cried out in horror, and in pleasure.
That sound followed Abdul across the desert, raising prickles over his skin.
After a time, silence fell as the desert swallowed the sounds up.
It was a shaken, terrified and desperate man who stumbled into the little temple to the shock of the priests and priestesses who served there. His face and hands were scoured and bloodied by the desert.
Abdul ignored them, prostrating himself before the figure of the Goddess. The priests and priestesses couldn’t help him, only a Goddess could.
They’d lost Mustafa in the desert that first night.
At first Abdul thought it safe to rest and so they’d stopped to set up what camp they could.
The wind had come up. All of them had looked up, knowing the signs in the clouds, in the haze in the sky behind them.
A sandstorm.
They found what shelter they could and hunkered down to weather it out.
Still something sent a shiver down Abdul’s back. He weighed his chances.
Something told him his chances were better in the sandstorm.
As the first rush of blowing sand reached them, he leaped for his camel.
Seeing him, Najib followed.
Mustafa had not.
Even over the sound of the storm they heard him scream in abject terror and then in delirious bliss, a dying gurgle of immense pleasure.
And yes, there was something about the sound of that ecstasy that drew their manhood tight and sent a chill through them. Even as it called to them.
Najib’s eyes had turned white at that cry.
It had been a race then, to see which camel could run or be goaded faster against the fury of the storm.
Once again, Abdul won, his fingers clenched around the figurine of the little priestess as he heard the cry out of the darkness.
Still he couldn’t shake the idea he was still hunted. He could feel it.
Desperate, he raced into the first temple he found and threw himself on mercy of she who ruled there.
All he had to offer was the golden figurine of the priestess.
“Take it,” he said to one of the priests, thrusting it into his hands. “Take it as my offering to her, to Sekhmet.”
The Goddess of War.
Instead the priest looked toward the open door of the temple and his face grew grim and set. As one, he and the others backed away, disappeared into the shadowed depths of the temple.
Nearly weeping with terror, Abdul slowly turned.
Sand swirled through the entrance. Something stepped out of it.
He looked from the figure in his hand to the terrible one who stood in the doorway.
The Guardian of the Tomb.
They were the same.
His cry was first of sheer terror and then of a deep and horrifying ecstasy.
When silence came once again to Sekhmet’s temple, the priests and priestesses emerged.
All that remained of the old thief was a dry and empty husk.
The wind gusted and swept the temple clean.
Chapter Three
Late 20th Century, Cairo, Egypt, the Egyptian Museum
The lights in the enormous room had been lowered to increase the drama of what they were about to see and hear. Darkness and gloom surrounded them. Around them, their faces lit by spotlights, were the towering statues of the Pharoahs, Viziers, Generals and their consorts, each lit so their painted kohl-rimmed eyes stared down at the visitors with it seemed as much curiosity as Ky stared up at them.
This trip was his present for his twelfth birthday. He’d been waiting, anticipating it for weeks, ever since they announced the find. He’d followed the progress of it since they first discovered it.
Into the darkness a deep, sonorous voice spoke, the sound thunderous, rumbling against a background of stirring music.
“Welcome to the Egyptian Museum and the unveiling of Narmer’s wall,” the voice boomed.
Silence. And then…
Light bloomed. A single sharp spotlight illuminated the tiny, precise hieroglyphics painted on the wall. It was beautiful, a work of art in itself, the characters surprisingly crisp in places, so perfect.
“Four thousand years ago the Gods set a prophecy upon Pharaoh…”
The light shifted, narrowed to illuminate the first section.
“A darkness rises, oh Pharaoh,” the voice intoned, “to be unleashed upon the world. It comes as a shadow across the desert to lay waste to all Egypt, scouring the earth as it passes. Death and destruction follow in its wake and the cries of the people of the world are terrible. From the north comes a warrior, a crowned and golden servant of the Gods with eyes like the sky, bearing swords in each hand to rise up and drive the darkness out of the world and to stand against it for all time.”
Darkness fell. There was a pause and then the voice filled it.
“So it came to pass that in the seventeenth year of our Lord Pharaoh’s reign a terrible darkness was summoned from the desert…”
In the empty chamber the voice softened and yet rang eerily. A shiver went over Ky at the words, at the sound.
One curtain rose as the other fell and a pocket spotlight illuminated a single spot on a wall, a series of hieroglyphs…
The light followed the characters of the hieroglyphs.
“In a time that would come to be called the time of the Djinn. And so the people of Egypt went to war with the evil Djinn, those spirits of fire. The Generals of Egypt set out to defeat them but could not. Each fell until only one remained, the Lord Khai. The Gods, though, had sent the one who had been prophesied, the foreigner who was called Nubiti, the Golden One, the High Priestess Irisi.”
Ky’s breath caught at the name of the general, so like his own.
“Together the General and the Priestess, Khai and his beloved Irisi, rode down the Djinn and imprisoned them forever in the place that would be called the Tomb of the Djinn, along with the one who had called that horror down on Egypt. He, who shall be forever nameless, was prisoned with them and with him the Horn he’d made to call them down on us.”
“So the Darkness was banished from the earth and the golden one set to guard them as the prophecy foretold, lest Darkness be loosed upon the earth once more.”
“Know this. Whosoever shall read these words the Guardian is the Lock and the Key, the Lightness and the Dark.”
The voice paused dramatically.
Darkness fell once again.
“So the Priestess guards the Tomb of the Djinn still…for Egypt…for all mankind. And the evil Djinn passed from this earth.”
In Ky’s mind’s eye he could almost see it…
The evil Djinn―what some people called genii―savage and terrible.
The beautiful priestess rode alongside him, her brilliant hair streaming in the breeze of their passage, their love ill-fated and tragic. Her eyes met his with love and yearning, knowing what was to come.
“It is said that while he had concubines he gave his heart to no other. He waits for her still…”
Darkness fell as the curtains rose to reveal the wall in its entirety.
Spotlights illuminated it behind its protective wall of glass.
Grand and beautiful, it stretched out before them, the Great Wall of Narmer, the first known Pharaoh of Egypt.
The voice told them the wall had been stolen by grave robbers but recovered by archaeologists. And that there was still more to find, much more, somewhere in the deep, dark reaches of the desert.
Ky hardly heard the words, looking up at the statue of General Khai.
Beside him an empty seat.
Somewhere the beautiful Priestess stood, guarding the Tomb of the Djinn, and the General waited for her.
Waiting to be free, at last…
Chapter Four
Early 21st Century Egypt
The boys were in rare form Ky noted, amused, joking around and shooting rubber bands at each other while he stood over the table looking down at the hieroglyphics etched on the carefully preserved fragment of papyrus in front of him. It was faded in places but much of the writing was still surprisingly legible considering the age of it. That would have been fine if he could read it better but it wasn’t quite as easy as the Internet made it seem especially as this was the hieratic form of hieroglyph and old. If he was right, it was far older than almost anything extant. Translation of ancient languages wasn’t something he’d done since his own graduate student days. He was far more involved in the nuts and bolts now, in the bigger picture. It was also more an anthropology thing.
If Geoffrey hadn’t left it wouldn’t have been a problem but Ky hadn’t been able to bring himself to deny the man the opportunity, no matter how much he needed him on this project. A chance for a permanent position of that kind didn’t come along that often and he couldn’t take away that chance from Geoff.
Ky had put the word out he was looking for another translator, someone who read ancient languages. If they’d been closer to Luxor he might have had more hope of success, there were more Egyptologists or wannabe Egyptologists than you could shake a stick at there. But in this far corner of the world?
It wouldn’t have been so bad except the timing couldn’t have been worse.
They were getting close. He’d devoted most of his life to this project and they were finally getting within reach, he could feel it.
Komi went to the window to open it and let the morning breeze flow through the room from the open door of the suite.
Papers fluttered to the floor, he hurriedly bent and picked them up.
“Good idea,” John said, carrying a box of carefully packed artifacts from the dig site into the room.
It had been getting pretty hot and stuffy, Ky had to admit, he just hadn’t noticed it.
“Thank you, Komi,” he said.
With a shy nod Komi said, in his usual halting manner, “You’re welcome, Professor.”
Their modern language interpreter, Komi always spoke haltingly. Ky sometimes wondered if it was because Komi ran everything he heard through the variety of languages he spoke or whether he translated from the language he heard into his native French, then back again and that accounted for the way he spoke. When he’d asked though, Komi always looked puzzled so Ky finally let it go.
“Yeah, that’s much better,” John said with relief as slightly cooler air washed over him.
He didn’t understand why these people didn’t put air-conditioning in this old pile.
Of course, some parts of the town still relied on old gas generators while others didn’t even have running water.
C’mon, he thought to himself in disgust, this is the twenty-first century, people. But John kept that to himself.
With a grin, Ryan said, in response to John’s statement, “That’s what she said…,” his standard reply to almost any comment.
As always, the graduate student was tipped back in his chair, feet up on the table at an angle, fingers on the keyboard and his eyes on the computer screen.
Of average height, slightly chubby, Ryan was competent, efficient and the closest he’d come to a relationship with a woman was in any number of on-line games, for which he used up entirely too much of their satellite bandwidth. He was the clown of the bunch, guaranteed to lighten things up and Ky’s dependable right-hand man.
They’d been lucky with the suite. Originally it had been several adjoining rooms separated by screens, which they’d moved and set against the walls, creating a larger, airier space.
A soft knock at the open door surprised all of them, they didn’t get that many visitors.
Even more surprising, a young abaya-clad woman looked into the room through the door John had left open behind him, her eyes curious, a little cautious, wary.