“They built the pyramids and the great Obelisk by the Narrow Forest,” he said as we passed the Hall late one evening, returning from an Illyrian masque held in the West Wing. “We believe they built the Phantom Fighters for the First Ascension as well. The Aviation Regent disagrees.” And he had paused at the entry to the Egyptian Wing, staring broodingly at a crumbling tapestry of ivory-colored fiber.
Now I wondered how Franca had disappeared so quickly down the dim hallway, and hurried after her. I shivered a little at the thought of doing something I knew would anger Roland. Lately he had seemed more and more distant from me. More than once he’d snapped about my broken fingernails and callused hands—
“I can find as good as that in our own creche,” he’d said, pushing me away. “And can’t you get your slutty friends to send you some new clothes?”
I flushed at the memory and pounded the wall with my fist, swearing beneath my breath. Before me the light grew brighter. On the wall I recognized the same tapestry Roland had pointed out, angular figures with the heads of dogs and birds drawn on frayed and moldering cloth. I squinted, trying to make out Franca’s silhouette against the bright square of light that glowed a few yards ahead. Finally I reached the crumbling wooden entrance. I passed through this and beneath a second lintel formed of huge blocks of carven stone, and into a room ablaze with sunlight.
I blinked, wondering where Franca was. Then:
“Yaah!” A figure darted from the shadows and grabbed me by the shoulders. I swore and backed away to see Franca laughing breathlessly. “Scared you—”
Grabbing her wrist, I pulled her toward me, until she writhed giggling against my chest. She tried to pull away. I tightened my grip.
“Oww—stop, Raphael, it was a joke!”
I did not let her go. For a moment I breathed in the scent of her hair, tangled with dust and smelling of harsh soap and sweat. That and the warmth of her beside me in the sudden sunlight made me dizzy. Abruptly I released her.
“Very funny.” I straightened my tunic. “Are these your Egyptians?”
She nodded, trying to catch her breath. “Ye-es,” she gasped, and bit her lip. She smoothed out her tunic, like a child running late into first worship. At the sight of me staring she quickly looked away. “Those are the Egyptians.”
I turned to see the Hall of the Dead Kings.
8. “The riddle of the painful earth …”
THERE WERE SCORES OF them, the ancient men, in rows stretching on into the far dark corners of the echoing gallery. Even Franca was silenced by the place. “You’ve been here before?” I whispered. She did not reply, only nodded as she paced from one catafalque to another. I followed her, still blinking a little at the brilliant light that streamed from the arched glass vault overhead. The floor beneath us was black marble, and shot back a pantherish light at the ceiling’s spangled glass. The coffins themselves glowed golden and azure and scarlet, their patina of dust giving them a sheen as though draped in velvet. Throughout the vast room were raised huge statues, like sentinels guarding their sleeping lords, and great blocks of sand-colored stone etched with flat figures of animals and men. A heaviness in my chest made me realize I was holding my breath. I inhaled, and smelled sandalwood and rotting cloth.
How many aeons had they waited before coming here to sleep in silent rows beneath glittering columns of dust and sun? The very air was heated with their dreams. Before the first catafalque I stopped, placed my palm upon the smooth wooden plane of its face, feeling the dust of centuries seep into my pores so that when I turned my hand upward I half-expected to see imprinted there its enigmatic smile and onyx eyes. But there was nothing: only faint gray whorls and feathers of dirt, and a beetle’s shattered wing carapace. I recalled a phrase from one of Roland’s books, referring to the disinterment of the first archosaurs: “The riddle of the painful earth …”
I left the first effigy. Behind it, ranks of mummy cases and catafalques seemed to march endlessly. Only the uneven seams where the silvered glass had shifted gave the lie to this vision of infinity, and showed me where a vast mirror covered the far wall of the chamber. Franca drifted down the aisles, her reflection a white shadow slipping between the stone faces.
As if in a dream I wandered from one coffin to the next. Kings, queens, regents; royal embalmers and charioteers. Glass cases held the desiccated corpses of cats, their shriveled limbs bound with twine and stained brown cloth. Ibises wrapped until they resembled misshapen cruets were stacked in hollowed stone vessels. And everywhere those blank fixed eyes, gazing from catafalques and funerary urns, torques and golden breastplates and the gilded skulls of jackals.
“Who were they?” I asked, and started when Franca answered me from only a few feet away.
“They were the first ones here,” she said softly. “The Pilgrims. They came over the ocean in airships, fleeing the Old World where they were persecuted. They built the great monuments in the City in memory of their homeland. The Sorrowful Lincoln, the Obelisk, the Library of Conquest.”
I frowned. “Are you sure?” I asked, absently scraping a brittle label from a glass case. “I thought they were built by someone else, by Ascendants …”
She shook her head firmly. “No. After the Thirty Wars in the East, the Egyptians came to the City; after their desert was bombed. They all died here in the Long Night, during the Contagions. That’s why they’re in the Museum—”
I snatched my hand from the glass. “They all died from the Contagion?”
“No. They killed themselves rather than submit to the Ascendants. And their priests hid them in these boxes and brought them to the original Curators. Before we came, before the Second Ascension. We have protected them ever since.” She smiled at me, a child seeking approval for a lesson well learned.
“Then why is no one allowed here?” I traced a golden tear upon a wooden case. “If you’re protecting them, why are there no guards?”
She shrugged. “Why are there no guards for your precious Magdalene?” I paused and bit my lip. “Because no one would harm the Magdalene,” I said at last.
Franca leaned on a stone mummy case, chin resting on her hands. “Not even the gaping ones?” she said slyly.
I sniffed and made a face. “The Gaping One,” I corrected her. “I thought you knew nothing about us?” I flicked at her cheek and she grinned.
“I saw it in a play last winter. At Saint-Alaban. About a boy and a girl, twins—”
“Huh. Saint-Alabans: the Masque of Baal and Anat.”
“That’s right!” She brightened and waited expectantly. “Do you know it?”
I shook my head. “Superstitious nonsense, taught them by the Historians. You Curators think we’re such children! Only the Saint-Alabans believe in any of that, really. Most of us just do those things out of—out of habit, I suppose,” I ended. “The way you keep these damn galleries open and the cases clean and the exhibits in order. For who!”
Franca shrugged, then burst out laughing. “For the Egyptians! We’re waiting for the Egyptians!” And giggling she ran down the aisle; pausing to make a clumsy curtsey to the great cracked mirror.
9. A sudden and awful convulsion of nature
I WATCHED HER, GRINNING . I seldom saw any of the Curators laugh among themselves, although we Paphians shared our own delight at the world’s foolishness as well as our joy in the flesh with our sober Patrons. Laughter did not make Franca any less ugly; but the sight and sound of it were rare enough to arouse me.