Macy wiped her eyes. ‘Well - well, what are we waiting for?’ she said, her hesitant attempt at a smile quickly becoming genuine. She climbed into the Land Rover. ‘Come on, let’s go!’
‘Wow,’ said Nina, amused. ‘Wish I could bounce back that quickly.’
Eddie put an arm round her shoulders. ‘You do all right.’
The two stones revealed themselves as the remains of a small structure, roughly twelve feet by twelve, the other walls barely protruding above the sand. The thickness of the blocks meant the interior was even smaller. If it had once been a dwelling, it would have made a prison cell seem spacious.
Nina had another theory, though. ‘It’s a marker. There aren’t any natural landmarks, so they had to build one. But what’s it marking?’
Macy examined the blocks for further clues. ‘Maybe there’s another set of directions here.’
Nina shook her head. ‘The zodiac text said that after you come out of the silver canyon, the next stop is the actual pyramid.’
‘So where is it?’ Eddie asked. ‘It can’t have been buried, can it? I mean, this thing’s still sticking up, so unless it’s the world’s tiniest pyramid we should be able to see something.’
‘Unless it was buried deliberately.’ But she dismissed the idea. The amount of sand needed to completely bury even a small pyramid would be unimaginable.
It was the right place, though. Finding the canyon required specialised knowledge of the Osireion, which would have been limited to a small number of people, and the astronomical calculations needed to deduce the direction of the journey’s final leg were the province of even fewer. The pyramid had to be here.
So why couldn’t they see it?
It all came back to the zodiac. Nina took out the stolen photo of the ancient relief.
‘Doing a bit of astrology?’ said Eddie.
‘There must be one more clue on here, I’m sure of it.’ Macy hopped down to join her as she perused the image. ‘Which way’s north?’
Eddie checked his compass and pointed. Nina aligned the zodiac with it . . . then flipped the paper over and held it above her head. ‘This is how you were meant to view it,’ she said. ‘Looking up at it - and facing north. The clue’s here, it’s on the map, it’s . . . here!’ She brought the chart sharply down, keeping it oriented so that north, which had been ahead of her, was now at the bottom of the page. ‘The pyramid marking! Do you see it?’
‘Yeah,’ said Eddie, ‘but what about it? It’s just a triangle.’
‘Maybe, but which way is it pointing?’
‘Down,’ said Macy, the implications sinking in a moment later. ‘No way!’
Nina smiled. ‘Way.’
Eddie frowned at the map. ‘Okay, what am I missing?’
‘The pyramid on the zodiac, it’s upside down,’ she told him. ‘Don’t you see? It’s an inverted pyramid - and the people who made the map meant it literally. They were representing what was actually here.’
Macy was also caught up in her excitement. ‘Some tomb paintings, like Ramesses VI’s, show the Egyptian Underworld as a mirror world right underneath ours - like a reflection in the Nile. Maybe they built Osiris’s pyramid upside down to be an Underworld version of the real ones . . . no, wait, that doesn’t work. If the zodiac inside the Sphinx is older than Khafre, it would have to be older than any of the other pyramids.’
‘The Pyramid of Osiris isn’t an inverted copy of the other pyramids,’ Nina realised, breathless. ‘The other pyramids are inverted copies of the Pyramid of Osiris - they were built above the surface to imitate Osiris’s tomb in the Underworld! That’s why they put so much effort into matching the shape.’
‘Hang on,’ said Eddie. ‘You’re saying they built this pyramid upside down?’
Nina scooped a handful of sand from the ground, leaving a roughly conical depression. ‘They dug a hole and built the pyramid inside it, with the point at the bottom and working upwards. Or maybe they dug out each new layer below the one they’d just built and filled in the pyramid’s core once the outer walls were in place, I don’t know. But it wouldn’t be any harder than building the Great Pyramid. It might even have been easier - they didn’t need to lift any of the stones up, just lower them down. Gravity was on their side.’
‘So we’re standing on it?’
‘One way to find out.’ She went back to the Defender and took out three shovels. ‘Let’s get to work.’
‘Where?’ Macy asked.
Nina indicated the ruin’s interior. ‘In there. I don’t think it’s just a marker - it’s an entrance.’
They started digging. It was slow going under the baking sun, requiring frequent breaks for water, but after a while Eddie’s spade struck something hard. ‘Let me see,’ Nina said, sweeping away sand with her bare hands. A flat stone slab was revealed.
‘Might just be this building’s floor,’ Eddie cautioned.
‘I don’t think so. Come on, let’s get the rest of it clear.’
They set back to work, Nina now too eager to take any more breaks. By the time they were done, a space just over six feet to a side had been mostly cleared. Nina brushed away more of the gritty covering, finding a narrow crack about a foot in from the wall. She traced its path with her finger; it formed a square. ‘It could be a cover stone for the entrance.’
Macy found something else at the slab’s centre. ‘Look familiar?’ she said, wiping away more sand. Revealed in the stone was a carved symbol.
The Eye of Osiris.
‘Guess we’re in the right place, then,’ said Eddie. ‘So what now?’ The women looked at him. ‘Oh, right,’ he sighed. ‘I get to lift up a two-ton stone block. Bloody marvellous.’ But he climbed out of the newly dug pit and returned to the Land Rover for more equipment. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Nina as he jumped back down with a long crowbar, ‘drink some water. I’m not having you keeling over, all right?’
‘All right,’ grumbled Nina, who had all but forgotten the heat. She retrieved her water bottle as Eddie examined the slab’s outline.
Finding the widest part of the gap, he inserted the crowbar. Straining, he pushed at it. There was a crunch, and the slab shifted slightly. ‘Not as heavy as I thought - it’ll only give me a little hernia,’ he said. ‘Nina, there’s some metal spikes in the Landie. Bring ’em, will you?’
Nina found them. As Eddie levered the slab open little by little, she pushed the tapered spikes into the gradually opening crack so it couldn’t fall back down. Before long, a thin line of darkness appeared beneath its lower edge. Eddie moved the Land Rover closer and used the 4×4’s winch to raise the slab higher. It rested on an inner lip of stone; grunting, he pushed it up to its tipping point and let it fall back against the wall with a bang.
‘There we go,’ he said, theatrically wiping dust from his palms. ‘Piece of piss.’
‘A bit too . . . piss piece-y,’ said Macy, looking down the hole. ‘The entrances to the other pyramids were all hidden.’
Nina had the same thought. ‘Either they reckoned the only people who would ever find it were supposed to be here . . . or that’s not the only obstacle.’
‘You’d better not be saying what I think you’re saying,’ Eddie growled.
‘Afraid I just might be, hon.’
Macy was confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Nina said.
They collected their equipment, then, exchanging wary looks, lowered themselves into the hole . . . to become the first people in over six thousand years to enter the Pyramid of Osiris.