“Aset,” I whispered back.
He nodded.
So it was true. We had both been in this land a thousand years ago, or more. And she was here now, waiting for me to restore her to life. I knew it. I was close to her. The thought made me tremble inside.
“I will remain here, Orion, while you go up to Khufu’s tomb,” said Hetepamon.
I must have flashed him a fiercely questioning glance.
“I cannot climb the steep ascent, Orion,” he apologized hastily. “I assure you that there are no further dangers to be wary of.”
“Have you ever been in the king’s burial chamber?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, each year.” He guessed my next question. “The procession enters the pyramid from its outer face, where a hinged stone serves as a door. The ramp leading to the tomb is much easier to climb than the shaft you must go through tonight. Even so,” he smiled, “I am carried along by eight very strong slaves.”
I nodded understanding.
“I will await you here, and offer prayers to Amon for your destiny, and for the safety of Prince Aramset.”
I thanked him and, after lighting one of the altar lamps from his, started up the steep winding stairs.
It must have taken an hour or more, although I lost all sense of time as I plodded up the steep steps, winding around and around and around. They seemed to be cut into the walls of the shaft, some of them little more than narrow clefts in the native stone. My lamp provided a little pocket of fitful light against the darkness, and as I climbed I began to feel as if I was not actually going anywhere, as if I was on a vertical treadmill, trudging achingly, painfully forever. It was almost like being in sensory deprivation: no sound except my own breathing and the scuffling of my boots against the stone steps; nothing to see except the dusty walls in the dim light of the lamp. The world might have dissolved outside or turned to ice or burned to a cinder and I would never have known it.
But I plodded on, and at last came to the end.
I climbed up through a hole in the floor and found myself in a large chamber where a great stone bier bore a magnificent sarcophagus, at least ten feet long, made of beautifully worked cypress inlaid with ivory, gold, lapis lazuli, porphyry, turquoise, and god knows what else. Splendid implements filled the chamber: bowls bearing sheafs of grain and vases that were filled, I was certain, with fine wines and clear water. Probably they were renewed each year, as part of the ceremonies Hetepamon had told me about. Tools and weapons were neatly stacked against the walls. Stairs led upward, toward other storehouse chambers. Everything the king needed in life was here or nearby, ready for his use in his next life.
But there was no sign of the Golden One.
Chapter 43
I stood before Khufu’s dazzling sarcophagus, surrounded by the finest implements that human hands could make, and clenched my fists in helpless anger.
He was not here! He had lied to me!
Neither the Golden One nor the body of Athene was in this elaborate burial chamber. I wanted to scream. I wanted to smash everything in sight, rip open the dead king’s sarcophagus, tear down the entire pyramid, stone by giant stone.
Instead I merely stood there, dumb as any animal, feeling tricked and defeated.
But my mind was working. The Golden One had made this pyramid his fortress, protecting it with energies that not even the other Creators could penetrate. It took an ordinary mortal to physically penetrate the passages built into the pyramid to reach this far. Trying to translocate oneself from outside the pyramid would not work, the energy defenses would prevent it.
So why did the Golden One defend this pyramid? As a decoy? Perhaps.
Or — perhaps this chamber was in reality a jumping-off spot to his actual hiding place. He is protecting the pyramid because it contains some clue to his true whereabouts. Some clue, or some device for making the transition.
I knew that the Creators were not gods. They did not shift their presences from one realm of the continuum to another by mystical fiat. They did not generate energy by divine willpower. They used machines, devices, technologies that were godlike in their power but the offspring of human brains and hands, just as the weapons and implements in this tomb were.
I thought to myself, If the Golden One has such a device hidden in this titanic pile of stones, it must be emitting some kind of energy. Could I sense it?
I closed my eyes and tried to shut off my conscious mind. With a gut-wrenching effort of will I disconnected all my five normal senses: I was blind, deaf, totally alone in a universe of nothingness.
For how long I remained that way, I have no idea. But eventually a tiny thread of sensation wormed its way into my awareness. A gleam, a tendril of warmth, a faint, faint buzzing, like the hum of electrical equipment far off in the distance.
Very slowly I opened my eyes and revived my other senses, careful not to snap the connection with the energy leak I had found. I made my way, almost like a sleepwalker, toward a carved panel in the wall of the tomb. It opened at my push and revealed another upward-winding passage. I climbed.
Through several other chambers and along more dark passageways I went, always pulled along by that faint hint of energy.
Finally I found it: a small chamber up near the very top of the pyramid, so low and cramped that I had to bend over to get into it. My upraised hand touched smooth metal that was warm and vibrating with energy. The electrum cap of the pyramid: a good conductor of electricity and other forms of energy, I realized.
Hunched in the middle of the tiny chamber, taking up almost all its space, was a dome of dull black metal, squatting there like the egg of some gigantic robot bird. It was humming to itself. I put my hand on its smooth surface. Warm.
My hand seemed to stick slightly as I pulled it away, as if I had touched paint that had not yet dried. I put my hand back on the dome, pressed it flat, and felt the surface yield slightly. I leaned on it harder, and my hand seemed to penetrate the surface, sink through it. It was cold, freezingly, painfully cold.
But I could not pull my hand back. Something inside the dome was drawing me forward, forcing me deeper into its cryogenic innards. I yelled and dropped the lamp I had carried all this way as my whole body was sucked into the deathly cold beyond the surface of the dome.
I felt death again, the cold breath that brings agony to every cell, every nerve in my body. I was falling, falling in absolute darkness as my body froze and the last flashes of life in my brain succumbed to pain and darkness. My final thoughts were of love and hate: love for my dead Athene, hate for the Golden One, who had beaten me once again.
But when I opened my eyes I was lying on soft grass. A warm sun beat down on me. A pleasant breeze sighed. Or was that my own breath returning to my lungs?
I sat up. My heart thundered in my chest. My eyes stared. This was not Earth. The sky was vivid orange. There were two suns shining, one huge enough to cover almost half the sky, the other a small diamond-bright pinpoint shining through the orange expanse of its swollen companion. The grass on which I sat was a deep maroon color, tinging off to blackish brown. The color of dried blood. It felt spongy, soft, more like a mold or a layer of flesh than like real grass and ground. There were hills in the distance, strangely shaped trees, and a stream.
“We meet again, Orion.”
I turned and saw the Golden One standing behind me. Scrambling to my feet, I said, “Did you think you could hide from me?”
“No, of course not. You are my Hunter. I built those instincts into you.”
He was wearing a loose flowing shirt of gold with long billowing sleeves, and dark trousers that hugged his lower torso and legs closely and were tucked into thigh-length boots. He seemed more relaxed than ever before, smiling confidently, his thick mane of golden hair tousled by the wind. But when I looked into his tawny eyes I saw strange lights, hints of passions and tensions that he was trying hard to control.