over the wings and down its belly to the cruel curved talons. Beneath
the paint the plastered wall was smooth. There was no Projection or any
irregularity.
The head, Nicky. Look at the head of the bird!" She jumped up and tried
to reach it, but her fingers fell short and she turned to him with a
desperate edge to her voice.
"You do it - you are much taller than I am," Only then did he see the
slight shadow down one side of the bird's head where the floodlamp
caught it, and as he touched it he realized that the head was in relief,
standing slightly above the level of the surrounding wall. He ran his
fingers over the raised head and found that the beak was part of the
relief.
"Can you feel any joint in the plaster?" Royan demanded.
He shook his head. "No. It's smooth. It all seems to be part of the main
wall."
"'The vulture rises to greet the sun",, she insisted. "Can't you detect
any movement? Try pushing the head upwards towards the sun painting."
He placed the heel of his hand under the bulge of the head and pushed
upwards. "Nothing!" he grunted.
"It's been there for almost four thousand years." She was hopping from
one foot to the other with frustration.
"Dammit, Nicky, if there is a moving part, it will be stiff.
Harder! Push harder!'
He shifted his feet to get well under it and placed both hands under the
projection of the head. Slowly he brought all his strength to bear. The
cords in his neck stood out and blood flooded his face, turning it a
deep, angry red.
"Harder!" she implored him, but at last he dropped his arms to his sides
and stood back.
"No." His voice was hoarse and strained with the effort.
"It's solid. Won't budge."
"Lift me up. Let me look."
"With the greatest of pleasure. Any excuse to lay hannds on you." He
stepped behind her and placed lascivious han both arms around her waist,
then lifted her until she was able to touch the bird's head.
Quickly she explored it with her fingertips, and then she let out a
small cry of triumph.
"Nicky! You have started something. The paint is cracked all around the
outline of the head. I can feel it.
Lift me higher!
He grunted with the effort but raised her another foot off the floor.
"Yes, definitely!" she exclaimed. "Something has a hairline crack in the
wall above the moved. There is head, as well. You have a look!
He fetched one of the empty ammunition crates from the landing outside
the entrance and placed it below the vulture image. When he stepped up
on to it he was on a level with the vulture's eye.
His expression changed. Quickly he groped in his pocket and brought out
his clasp knife, He opened the blade and probed carefully around the
outline of the head.
Tiny specks of dried paint and plaster filtered down as he worked.
It does look as though the head is a separate detached piece, "he
admitted.
"Look on top of it, higher up the wall. There along the edge of the
sunbeam. Can't you see a vertical crack in the plaster?"
"You are right, you know," he admitted. "But if I try to open that crack
I am going to damage the mural. Do you want me to do that?"
She hesitated only a moment. "This tomb is going to be reflooded when
the river rises, so we are going to lose it again anyway. It's worth the
risk. Do it, Nicky!'
life-blade into the fine He pressed the point of the kn crack and
twisted it gently. A slab of painted plaster the size of his s'read hand
fell out of the wall and splattered into the dust on the agate tiles of
the floor.
He peered into the cavity that it had left in the wall.
"It looks like some kind of slot or groove in the wall," he said. "I am
going to clear its full length." Carefully he worked at the cavity he
had opened, and more loose plaster rained down.
Royan sneezed in the dust, but would not retreat, Particles of debris
lodged in her hair like confetti.
"Yes," he said at last. "There is a vertical groove running up here."
"Chip the plaster away from the crack around the vulture's head," she
ordered, and he wiped the blade against his trouser leg and attacked the
wall again.
"It's free," he said at last. "It looks as though the head will travel
up the groove. Anyway, I am going to try it, Stand back and give me room
to work."
He placed the heels of both hands under the head of the vulture, and
heaved upwards against it. Royan bunched her hands into fists and
screwed up her face in sympathy with his effort.
There was a soft grating sound, and the head began to move jerkily up
the exposed groove in the wall. It reached the top of the slot and
Nicholas jumped down from the crate. They both stared expectantly at the
disembodied head, now disfigured by the chipped and damaged plaster.
After a long, breathless wait, Royan whispered dejecr edly, "Nothing It
hasn't changed anything."
"The rest of the quotation from the stele," he reminded her. "There was
more to it than just the vulture and the sun."
"You are right." She looked around the rest of the wall eagerly. "'The
jackal hops and rests Upon his tail.
She pointed with a trembling finger at the small, almost insignificant
figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the graveyards, on the wall
opposite the vulture that they had mutilated. Standing at the foot of
the huge, towering painting of Osiris, he was only a little larger in
size than the ringed and bejewelled big toe of the husband of Isis and
father of Horus.
Royan ran to the wall, and the moment she touched Anubis she felt that
his image too was raised. She flung all her strength against the tiny
figure, trying to twist it first one way and then the other.
"'The jackal turns upon his tail"," she panted as she wrestled with him.
"He must turn!'
"Here, let me do that." Gently Nicholas pulled her away, and knelt
before the black-headed god image. Once again he used the blade of his
clasp knife to chip away the plaster and the thick layer of paint from
around the outline.
"It seems to be carved in some sort of hard wood and then it's been
plastered over," he told her, as he tested the construction of the
figure with the point of the blade.
When at last he had chipped it clear he tried to twist it in a clockwise
direction, and grunted with the effort.
"No! He gave up at last.
"They had no clock dials in ancient Egypt," she reminded him agitatedly.
"The other way. Turn it the other way-$
When he tried to turn it counter-clockwise, there was another rasping,
gritty sound from behind the wall panel.
The tiny figure revolved slowly in his hands, until the black head
pointed down towards the yellow tiles.
They both stood well back from the wall, looking expectantly at it, but
after another long wait even Nicholas was disheartened.
"I don know what to expect, but whatever it is, it isn't happening he
grunted with disgust.
"There is still the last part of the quotation," Royan whispered. "'The
river flows towards the earth. Beware, you violators of the sacred
plain, lest the urrath of all the gods descend upon you!"'
"The river?" Nicholas asked. "As Sapper might say, I don't see no