voice. "You can see it in every line he drew."
Nicholas smiled softly and put his arms around her shoulders.
There were hundreds more wooden chests stacked in the next alcoves.
Painted on the lids were miniatures of the king decked in all his
jewellery: his fingers and toes were thick with rings and his chest was
covered with pectoral medallions, while bangles of gold adorned his arms
and bracelets his wrists. In one portrait he wore the double crown of
the two kingdoms of Egypt united, the red crown and the white with the
heads of the vulture and the cobra on his brow. In another he wore the
blue war crown, and on a third the Nemes crown with gold and lapis wings
that covered his ears.
"If each of those chests contains the treasures depicted on its lid-'
Nicholas broke off, unable to continue the thought. The possibility of
such riches was daunting, and the imagination balked at the magnitude of
it.
"Do you remember what Taita wrote in the scrolls? "I cannot believe that
such a treasure was ever before accumulated in one place at one times'T
Royan asked him. "It seeffLs that it is all still here, every single gem
and grain of gold. The treasure of Mamose is intact."
Beyond the treasury there was another alcove lined with shelves on which
stood the ushabti figures: dolls made of green glazed porcelain or
carved from cedarwood. They were an army of tiny figures, men and women
from all the trades and professions. There were priests and scribes and
lawyers and physicians, gardeners and farmers, bakers and brewers,
handmaidens and dancing girls, seamstresses and laundrymaids, soldiers
and barbers, and common labourers.
Each of them carried the tools and accoutrements of his or her trade.
They would accompany the king to the after world and there would work
for Pharaoh, and would go forward in his place if he were ever called
upon to perform a service for the other gods.
At last Nicholas and Royan came to the end of this fabulous arcade, and
found their way closed off by a series of tall, free-standing screens,
tabernacles that had been once fine white linen mesh but were now
decayed and rotted into ribbons and streamers, dirty and shabby as old
cobwebs, And yet the stars and rosettes of shining gold Now, still
hanging in the that decorated these curtains were mesh like fish in a
fisherman's net. Through this ethereal web of silken wisps and golden
stars they could make out the shape of another gateway beyond.
actual tomb," Royan
"That must be the entrance to the thin veil between us and the
whispered. "There is only a king now.
tated at the threshold, gripped by a strange They hesi the final step
reluctance, to take an old warrior, Mek Nimmur had seen and treated most
of the injuries that a man might sus in on the battlefield. His little
guerrilla group did not have a doctor, or even a medical orderly.
Mek himself treated most of his casualties, and he always had a medical
kit close at hand.
He had the men carry Tessay to one of the huts near the quarry, where,
screened by the grass walls, he stripped her of her tattered clothing
and treated her injuries. He abrasions with disinfectant, and cleaned
her burns and clean field dressings- Then covered the worst of them with
he rolled her gently on to her stomach and snapped the which glass phial
off the needle'of the disposable syringe wh was preloaded with a
broad'spectrum antibiotic. -and he said, "I She winced at the sting of
the needle, am not a very good doctor."
other. Oh, Mek! I thought I would would have no ared never see you
again. I did not fear death as much as I fe that."
He helped her dress in the spare clothing from his pack, a sweatshirt
and fatigues that were many sizes too large for her. He rolled up the
cuffs for her, and his touch soldier.
was gentle. His hands were those of a lover, not a she whispered through
her must look so ugly," swollen, black-scabbed lips.
"You are beautiful he denied it- "To me you will always be beautiful."
He touched her cheek carefully, so as not to harm the raw burns that
covered it.
At that moment they heard the gunfire. It was still faint with distance,
borne down from the north on the rain winds.
Mek stood up immediately. "It has begun. Nogo is attacking at last it's
all my fault. I told him-'
"No," he told her firmly. "It is not your fault. You did what you had to
do. If you had not, they would have hurt you even worse than this. They
would have attacked us, even if you had told them nothing."
He picked up his webbing belt and strapped it around his waist. From far
off they heard the crumping detonation of exploding mortar shells.
"I have to go now," he told her.
"I know. Do not worry about me."
"I will always worry about you. These men will carry you down to the
monastery. That is the assembly point.
Wait for me there. I cannot hope to hold Nogo for long.
He is too strong. I will come to you soon."
"I love you," she whispered. "I will wait for you for ever."
"You are my woman," he told her in his deep, soft voice, and then he
ducked through the doorway of the hut and was gone.
hen Nicholas touched the frame of the screen, fragments of the mesh veil
tore free with even that tiny movement and fell to the tiles of the
floor. The golden rosettes trapped in their folds tinkled on the stones.
Now there was an opening in the curtain large enough for them to step
through, They found themselves before the inner doorway. It was -guarded
eat god Osiris on one side by a massive statue of the gr with his hands
crossed over his chest, clutching the crook and the flail. Opposite
stood his wife Isis, with the lunar crown and horns on her head. Their
blank eyes stared out into eternity, and their expressions were serene.
Nicholas and Royan passed between these twelve-foot-high statues and
found themselves at last in the veritable tomb of Mamose.
The roof was vaulted, and the quality of the murals that covered it and
the walls was different - formal and classical. The colours were of a
deeper, more sombre hue, and the patterns more intricate. The chamber
was smaller han they had anticipated; just large enough to accommodate
the huge granite sarcophagus of the divine Pharaoh Mamose.
The sarcophagus stood chest-high. Its side panels were engraved in
has-relief with scenes of Pharaoh and the other gods. The stone lid was
in the shape of a full'length effigy of the supine figure of the king.
They saw at once that it was still in its original position, and that
the clay seals of the priests of Osiris which secured the lid were
intact. The tomb had never been violated. The mummy had lain within it
undisturbed through the millennia.
But this was not what amazed them. There were two extraneous items
within the otherwise classically correct tomb. On the lid of the
sarcophagus lay a magnificent war bow. Almost as long as Nicholas was
tall, the entire length of its stock was bound with coils of shining
electrum wire, that alloy of gold and silver whose formula has been lost
in antiquity.
The other item that should never have been placed in a royal tomb stood