“Rashidi,” DeGroet said and gestured at the young man in the lead. “Show her.”
Rashidi looked to his older relative for guidance, received a nod, and then cautiously brought his torch closer to the far wall.
Gabriel noticed two things immediately—three, really, if you counted the smell. The first was a rectangular panel on the wall, similar in size to the stele outside and filled with what to his eyes looked like similar writing. The second was a hole in the wall at waist height, circular and dark, just about wide enough for a trim man to fit inside.
Then there was the smell, which was the unwholesome odor of a morgue or a battlefield, the smell of bodies that had lain out too long and been neglected. Gabriel wondered if it was the remains of the unfortunate men DeGroet had sent in earlier that he was smelling. Even if they’d removed the bodies (and he didn’t see them lying around anywhere), this was certainly not the sort of place you could air out afterwards.
The flickering torchlight played over the writing on the wall and Gabriel saw Sheba’s face fixed in concentration. Her lips moved rapidly but without sound, as though she were talking to herself.
“You see what we are dealing with, Miss McCoy?” DeGroet said. “We’ve had the symbols translated as best we could—which was not very well, I’m afraid. But even if we knew accurately what each symbol meant, that wouldn’t tell us anything by itself, would it?”
“No,” Sheba said.
“So you tell us, please. What is on the other side of this wall, and how can we get to it?”
“It’s a…a reliquary, a storage chamber for, for…well, it says here ‘the remains of the gods,’ but the word for ‘remains’ is ambiguous, it could also refer to artifacts—artifacts depicting the gods, ritual artifacts, that sort of thing.” She paused. “There is a warning that says only priests shall enter. ‘A priest of Sekhmet may cross the threshold’—you see the lioness figure, there, that’s Sekhmet.”
“Good, good,” DeGroet said. “And how shall they enter?”
Sheba approached the wall, ran one index finger along the ancient images.
“‘Through the portal’—that’s this here, I’ve got to assume,” she said, pointing to the circular hole, “‘but,’ it says, ‘take heed the supplicant shall bear all right and proper offerings to…placate, mollify, something like that…the jealous heart of Hathor.’”
“And what does that mean?” DeGroet said.
Sheba shrugged. “There were many forms of ritual offering in ancient Egypt. Burnt offerings, bowls of grain, poured water, incantations.”
“And which form does it say is called for here?”
“It doesn’t.”
“It must,” DeGroet shouted, and his voice echoed from the close stone walls. “It must. Read it again.”
“I already—”
DeGroet whipped his sword up. The point of the blade danced an inch away from Sheba’s throat. “Read it again, I said.”
She stepped back, turned once more to face the inscription.
“‘…all right and proper offerings…jealous heart…’” Sheba’s voice took on a quality of despair as she ran her eyes along the rows of symbols again. Then her voice changed. “Wait, hold on. Here it talks about Hathor’s role as guardian of the floods, ensurer of fertility…it says, ‘Her heart is’…gladdened?…no, no, made light, ‘her heart is made light by the vision of her holy ones loaded down with the river’s wealth.’”
“The river’s wealth,” DeGroet said.
“It’s an expression you see in inscriptions during the Early Dynastic Period,” Sheba said. “They were a desert people and depended wholly on the Nile for survival. The river’s wealth was its water—that and the red silt it left behind, the rich dirt in which they could cultivate crops.”
“So what is it telling us,” DeGroet said, a mocking tone in his voice, “that we must carry mud to enter?”
“I don’t know,” Sheba said unhappily. “All I can tell you is what it says.”
DeGroet turned aside, surveyed his men.
Gabriel hung back, kept his chin tucked down.
“Zuka,” DeGroet said, pointing with his sword at the the older man, who was loaded down with the pair of canvas rucksacks he’d picked up on the way in. “You have canteens in those bags of yours?” The man nodded. “Mix up some mud.”
“Mud?” Zuka said. “With what?”
“You have a sandbag?” DeGroet said, and Zuka nodded again. “Use that.”
“But—”
“Use it,” DeGroet snapped. He turned to Rashidi. “You will carry it in.”
The young man’s face went pale, and Zuka’s head snapped up. “Not my son, please, effendi,” he said. “I will go. I will carry it.”
“You?” DeGroet growled. “Do you think you could fit inside that hole, you fat ox? Or Hanif—” he waved at the man with the goatee “—or Karoly?”
Karoly frowned at this.
“Send the woman,” Zuka said.
“I do not trust the woman,” DeGroet said. “Your son will do it.”
“But he will die, effendi.”
“He most certainly will die if he doesn’t go, since I will kill him, and you with him. Now make your mud.” Zuka miserably returned to mixing water from one of his goatskin canteens with the contents of a heavy sandbag.
“You,” DeGroet said, turning back to Sheba. “You will tell us what he is to do with this mud.”
“I don’t know!”
“Figure it out,” DeGroet snapped. “You have one minute.” He turned to Karoly. “It is like pulling teeth, sometimes. Getting anything done.”
Sheba went back to the writing, searching it for any further indication of how the offering was to be presented. Zuka remained kneeling on the floor, taking the sand and dirt that had filled the bag and mixing it with water in a loose, wet pile on the chamber’s floor. Rashidi stood alone in the center of the room, visibly trembling.
Gabriel’s hand tightened on the grip of the rifle in his hand. He would have to act—he had to do something. The only question was when. He could pull his guns now, grab Sheba, try to escape, but even assuming he didn’t get them both killed, the best he could hope for was to make it out alive—he’d never know what lay beyond the hole, what the ancient reliquary held. If there was any chance Sheba could coach Rashidi into opening it successfully…
“Inside the hole,” Sheba said, “there should be a basin, some sort of recessed area. He should put the offering in that. You’ll need to fill it completely,” she said to Rashidi. He nodded furiously, desperately. “Make sure you bring enough.”
The pile on the ground had grown considerably—Zuka had split open a second sandbag and emptied a second canteen. Anything to ensure his son’s success.
DeGroet flipped a metal pail into the air with the tip of his sword. Hanif caught it. “He can use that,” DeGroet said. “Go on, fill it.” Hanif fell to the task, scooping handfuls of the mud into the container.
When it was filled, he exchanged a glance with Zuka and handed the pail to Rashidi.
“Go slowly,” DeGroet told the young man. “You don’t want to end up like the others, do you?” Rashidi violently shook his head. “Then for god’s sake, be careful. You understand what you are going to do?” Rashidi nodded. “Then tell me.”
“I am going to pour the mud into a basin.”
“It may not be an actual basin,” Sheba said. “It might just be a, a, a depression, a shallow area. Or a hole—there could just be a hole.”
“A hole,” Rashidi said.
“Enough,” DeGroet said. “In with you.” And he struck Rashidi smartly on the backs of his legs with the flat of his blade.