“Did Lyle tell you anything of his plans today?”
“Yes, yes. He was to lunch with his friend, and bring me his sister for the evening meal, though I do not doubt that some obstacle would promote itself.” He smiled, but ran a hand over his close-cut beard worriedly. “He has met a bad thing, there is no doubt. The Lyle, he is a very scrupulous boy. When he does what he can for his Alba, he will tell me ‘these things, they serve my interests’, as if I do not know that! He does not like the vampires, though, and yet he has gone into a place of theirs. No small reason could drive him. Look, the friend has news.”
Evelyn was returning, trailed by a bird-framed elderly woman with a powder-pink complexion.
“He has been here,” Evelyn said, without preamble. “He made a booking in Lord Msrah’s name for two this afternoon.”
“I thought it an unusual time for the Nomarch to attend,” said the woman, pale eyes curious but friendly.
“This is Dama Wishart, the Black Pyramid’s Day Custodian,” Evelyn said, well-trained manners kicking in. “Dama Wishart, Dama Seaforth, and His Highness Prince Gustav.”
As soon as the polite murmur of responses had passed, Evelyn went on. “There were also two missing…the tour groups are counted in and out, and before lunch one group came up two short.”
“The attendants checked, of course,” Dama Wishart said. “It’s a frequent problem with the tours, and we’re quite experienced at making a thorough sweep. We concluded that they’d simply left early—some get quite overwhelmed, you know, by the sensation of being within one of the larger pyramids.”
“There’s no description of the two absentees, but the timing surely can’t be coincidence.” Evelyn moved restively on the spot. “But what now? Where do we go from here?”
“Inside,” Rian said, adding to Dama Wishart: “Even if it’s been checked already, it can’t hurt to look again. Unless it’s in use?”
“There’s time enough for a thorough tour, if you think that it will help in any way,” Dama Wishart said, clearly more than happy to see what developed.
“Then we go,” Prince Gustav said, and started toward the stair, gesturing for his returning driver to follow.
Past Ma’at’s wings, a painted entry hall offered them three choices. Briskly, Dama Wishart led them directly ahead along an upward sloping corridor to the central chamber, where the celestial forces would be concentrated: a large and carefully undecorated room with a single monumental chair facing the open doors. In the forest, the space was almost clear of trees, but for one massive trunk rising from floor and through ceiling, exactly where the throne-like chair was set.
For Rian, even entering the pyramid had required steeling herself to manage simple matters like walking in a straight line, and not sitting down in a corner to gasp. The central chamber brought a faint stagger to her step, and she had to stop and breathe deeply. Dama Wishart’s bright curiosity burned as a small sun beside her, while Evelyn’s confusion and fear gathered in a grey fog ahead. Even Prince Gustav, striding buoyantly around the room, became less opaque to her, sparking with determination, excitement, and an undernote of concern. The god-touched resistance of his connection to the Aesir was not proof against her new senses in this place where Amon-Re, above all others, held sway.
Fortunately, they did not spend more than a minute in the central room, eliminating it for sake of form before returning to the entry hall and making a quick circuit of the tight ring of offering rooms located at the level of the top of the stair. Then they went down to the crypts.
The weight of the structure would not support large open spaces, but as vampirism had spread through Egypt, and the pyramids had ceased to focus on a single exalted tomb, a design involving a honeycomb of crypts had been perfected. The corridors were narrow and dimly lit, but Dama Wishart had drafted one of the attendants, and a couple of powerful torches, which played across walls painted with images of the lives of vampires gone to rept, their names recorded in a mixture of Egyptian cartouches and Prytennian writing.
“It’s been decades since there’s been a new internment at the Black Pyramid, of course,” Dama Wishart said cheerfully, as the attendant and Prince Gustav’s driver blocked two vital junctions, and she directed them through the method of ensuring no-one was lingering around the many corners. “Completely full, and Green near capacity. But the design is quite efficient, with the weight-bearing blocks each surrounded by a set of tombs—rather like bookshelves, really. They’re sealed and inscripted after the internment. The only variation are the Nomarches’ tombs, right at the centre. While Shu vampires don’t have quite the primacy here as they do in Egypt, they’re also rarer, longer-lived, and the most powerful outside the Amon-Re.” Dama Wishart smiled. “So they rate a larger shelf.”
Tenement housing for ba. Vampires, could, of course, have their rept forms maintained anywhere, but Rian quite understood why they would want to share in the uplifting effect of large and expensive pyramids. Here their transformed souls had a far greater chance of gaining the strength for the grandest of ambitions, becoming a ruling star rather than simply another soul in the Field of Rushes under the dominion of Osiris. Besides, the Egyptian Otherworld was difficult to reach, and required high standards of virtue to enter.
The torch dazzled Rian’s night-efficient eyes, but she did not need to see to know there was no-one in the area they were searching: there were no unexpected rivers of blood lurking around a corner. Gustav had progressed far in his guesswork, and was clearly looking for intrusion rather than missing Albans, gaze constantly straying to any hint of damaged masonry. Rian saw no sign of more than wear, but she had not expected to.
“There we go,” Dama Wishart said, sounding disappointed as the last of the search quadrants proved as empty as the first. “No-one here, not even a forgotten coat or umbrella. I am sorry not to have been able to help more.”
“What then next?” Prince Gustav asked, still eyeing the stonework.
“There must be someone we can speak to about accessing the rail tunnels.”
Evelyn’s voice was hoarse, reminding Rian that he had already lost one old friend, a bare few weeks ago. Delia Hackett’s life had changed on the same night as Rian’s, but in a markedly different way, and Rian could only hope that Dama Hackett’s soul had successfully reached the shores of Annwn, and that some disporting had been achieved, though the islands were not known for their sun-kissed beaches.
But there were other lives changing now, and Rian was suddenly, urgently convinced that the Blairs were not currently occupied in setting up an opportunity to rob her.
“Evelyn, as part of being Bound, you’re aware of living people, yes? You can sense those nearest you?”
“Yes, of course,” Evelyn said, distractedly.
“Then don’t you…Evelyn, I’m sure there’s someone beneath us.”
The tall man stared at her, and then at the flagged stones of the floor.
“You think the thing from the Burning Circle dragged them down?” asked the helpful attendant, with ghoulish interest.
“So faint,” Evelyn muttered, took several long strides down the corridor, paused, and then moved again. “Here. Directly below here.” He dropped to his knees, running his fingers around the edge of the flag. “Only a short way down. Ten feet perhaps.”
“But there’s nothing permitted beneath the pyramids,” Dama Wishart said, blankly. “Not even drains.”