murals.
Before they were carried away to be thrown into the sinkhole, she tried
to retrieve those on which significant portions of the paintings were
still intact. There was one jagged piece of plaster on which the lovely
head of Isis was still in one piece, and another on which the entire
figure of Thoth, the god of writing, was preserved. However, most of the
paintings were destroyed beyond any hope of ever restoring them, and
sadly they were consigned to the pit.
There was no sense of time in the long gallery, and they could not tell
night from day. It was always a surprise to leave the precincts of the
tomb and find that the stars were shining in the narrow strip of sky
that showed above Taita's pool, or to find the bright African sun
burning hotly down out of the cloudless blue. They ate and slept only
when their bodies demanded it, not according to the passage of the
hours.
Re'entering the tomb after a few hours' sleep in their shelters beside
the pool, they were crossing the causeway over the sink-hole when a wild
cry reverberated down the shaft ahead of them. Immediately there was a
hullabaloo of query and answer, and excited shouts from the men working
in the upper levels of the tunnel.
"Hansith has found something," Royan cried. "Dammit, Nicky, I knew we
should have stayed-' She began to run, and he hurried after her.
They came out on the landing in front of the gallery to find it crowded
with chattering, gesticulating, half-naked workmen. Nicholas forced his
way through them with Royan on his heels. They realized that Hansith had
cleared the gallery as far as where the shrine of Osiris had once stood.
The roof above them was jagged and broken, and lying amongst the rubbish
on the ruined agate tiles of the floor Nicholas made out the remains of
the mechanism which Taita had placed in the roof, and which they had
brought crashing down when they had activated the device.
The main part of this was an enormous stone wheel, resembling a mill
wheel and weighing many tons. Nicholas stopped to give it a cursory
examination.
"When you read River God, you realize that Taita had an obsession with
the wheel," he told Royan. "Chariot wheels, water wheels, and now this
must have been the balance wheel of his booby-trap. VA-ten we moved the
levers, we toppled the wedges that held this monstrosity in place. Once
it started rolling, it tumbled all the drop-stones that he had stacked
above the ceiling of the gallery." He glanced up at the shattered roof.
"Not now, Nicky!" Royan was hopping with impatience. "Time for your
lectures later. Taita's deathtrap is not what has excited Hansith. He
has found something else. Come on!'
They pushed their way through the pack of workmen until they reached
Hansith's tall figure.
"What is it?" Nicholas shouted over the heads of the others. "What have
you found, Hansith?"
"Here, effendi," Hansith shouted back. "Come quickly."
They pushed their way to the face, and stopped beside the monk at the
end of the blocked gallery.
"There!" Hansith pointed proudly.
Nicholas went down on one knee in the shattered remains of the shrine.
Small pieces of the painted plaster still adhered to the fractured rock
wall. Hansith pulled a slab out of the collapsed face, and pointed into
the space it had left. Nicholas peered into it and felt his pulse begin
to race. There was an opening in the side of the gallery, Even at first
glance he realized that it was the mouth of another tunnel leading off
at right-angles from the long gallery. It had been concealed behind the
plaster-covered image of the great god.
As he stared into it with awe, he felt Royan's hand on his arrn and her
warrii breath on his cheek. "This is it, Nicky. The entrance to the true
tomb of Mamose. This gallery was a bluff. Taita's red herring. This is
the veritable tomb."
"Hansith!" Nicholas called to him in a voice that was hoarse with
emotion. "Get your men to clear this doorway."
As the workmen moved the rocks Nicholas and Royan hovered close behind
them, so that they were able to watch the shape of the doorway as it was
fully revealed. It proved to be a dark rectangle, of the same dimensions
as the tunnel leading up from the sink-hole, three metres wide by two
high. The lintel and the door jambs were of beautifully cut and dressed
stone, and when Nicholas shone his lamp into the opening he saw a flight
of stone steps rising before him.
They moved the cables and the lights into the gallery and arranged them
at the entrance to this new doorway, but when Nicholas set foot on the
first step he found Royan at his side.
"I am coming with you, she told him firmly.
"It's probably booby-trapped," he warned her. "Taita is lying in wait
for you around the first bend."
"Don't try that. It just won't work, mister! I am coming."
They went slowly up the steep steps, pausing on each one to survey the
walls and the way ahead. Twenty steps from the bottom they reached
another landing. A pair of doorways led off it, one on either side.
However, the staircase continued climbing directly ahead of them.
Which way?"Nicholas asked.
"Keep going up," Royan urged him. "We can explore these side passages
later."
Cautiously, they continued climbing. After twenty more steps they came
out on an identical landing, with a doorway on each side and the
stairway in front of them.
"Keep going up," Royan ordered, without waiting for him to answer,
Twenty more steps and there was another landing with the familiar
openings on either side and the stairway straight ahead.
"This isn't making sense," Nicholas protested, but she prodded him in we
should keep going on upwards," she told him, and he did not protest
further. They passed another landing and then yet another, each of them
the exact image of those that they had passed lower down.
"At last!" Nicholas exclaimed when they came out at ay on each the top
of the staircase,,with the expected door.
"This is as far side but now a blank wall in front of them. as it goes."
she asked. "How man
"How many landings are there? altogetherr
"Eight he answered.
"Eight," she agreed. "Isn't that a familiar number
nowr lamplight. "You He turned to stare down at her in the mean-'
"I mean the eight shrines in the long gallery, these the bao board."
eight landings, and the eight cups of They stood silent and undecided on
the top landing looked about them.
an Okay," he said at last, "if you are so damned clever, tell me which
way to go now."
she recited. "Let's try the
"Eeny'meeny-miny-moe,'
t'hand doorway." righ and passage only a short They followed ri t
distance before they were confronted by a Tjunction - a blank wall with
identical twin passageways on each side.
"Take the right one again," she counselled, and they followed- it. But
when they came to the next T junction Nicholas stopped and faced her.
"You know what is happening here, don't your he demanded. "This is
another one of Taita's tricks. He has led us into a maze. If it were not
for the cable, we would be lost already."
With a bemused expression she looked back the way they had come, and
then down the unexplored passages to their right and left.
"When he built this, Taita could not have anticipated the age of
electricity. He expected any grave robber to be -quipped the same way he
was. Imagine being caught in here without the electric cable to follow
back the way we have come," Nicholas said softly. "Imagine having only