Place of Darkness

Nonsense!

Shrugging off so preposterous a thought, he raised his hand, signaling his companions to stop, and placed a finger before his lips. Hori, paying no heed, stubbed a toe and muttered an oath, silencing the voices-if voices Bak had heard.

“There’s Ani’s signal,” Kasaya said loud enough to awaken the dead.

He set his lamp on the pavement, grabbed a torch from Hori, and touched it to the burning wick. The oil- soaked linen burst into flame with a whoosh. He grabbed another torch, set it alight, and shoved it into Bak’s hand. As Kasaya lit the third torch for himself, Bak stepped back close to the wall. Not sure of what he had heard-if anything-he tilted his head, listening. All was quiet.

Holding the burning torches aloft, he and his men strode out of the ruined colonnade to stand on the open terrace that faced the workmen’s huts.

“You see!” they heard Pashed bellow. “That’s Lieutenant Bak, his scribe, the Medjay. Men no different than you and I.

Now maybe you’ll lay blame for the accidents where blame belongs: at the feet of a man, not a being without life or substance.”

“What the. .?” A deep and surprised voice behind Bak.

He swung around, saw a man standing at the low place in the wall, glimpsed short-cropped hair, a flattish face, and a small nose. The man slipped back into the shadows beyond the wall.

“We’ve company, my brother!” the man shouted through the darkness. “Let’s go!”

“Kasaya!” Bak yelled, running to the broken wall, hur-dling it, and racing after his quarry through the maze of fallen columns, roof slabs, architraves, rubble. Sparks flew from his torch. The flame, blown backward by his speed, made the shadows ahead dance and change shape and the path he followed elusive, his flying steps perilous. Once, he thought he glimpsed a man off to his right, decided it was cavorting light and shadow.

The man ahead sped through the opening into the colonnade court. Bak, close behind and with no better weapon, hurled the torch at him. It struck his back, drawing forth a furious snarl, and dropped to the pavement. Bak leaped the sputtering light, flung himself at his quarry, and they grap-pled. The man was slightly taller than Bak and broader. He was slick with sweat and not easy to hold on to. They flung each other from side to side, each trying to throw the other.

Their feet slid across the paving stones. They stumbled on rough joins between the stones, their feet struck fallen chunks of rock, but neither dared allow himself to fall.

They struggled along an erratic path, gradually working their way toward the columned hall. They were within a half-dozen cubits of the hole in the floor when something hard struck Bak on the back of the head. He fell half- senseless to the pavement.

“He’s not alone,” he heard. “We have to get out of here.”

“Let’s get rid of him first.” A different voice, a second man, the one who had hit him.

“We’ve no time.”

“Throw him down there. That won’t take long.”

There. What did they mean by there? Bak wondered.

“Lieutenant Bak!” he heard Kasaya yell. “Where are you?”

Strong hands gripped his upper arms and dragged him belly-down along the paving stones. He opened his eyes, saw before him the hole cut through the stone, the old tomb robbers’ shaft. His heart leaped into his throat. They were going to drop him into the tunnel.

Chapter Twelve

One man grabbed his feet and dropped them into the tomb robbers’ hole. The man holding his arms stepped close to the edge, letting him hang, and released him. He plunged downward. The lord Amon and the will to survive came to his aid, clearing his head. Both his arms shot out. His right elbow bumped the rim of the shaft. He flattened his arm on the pavement and caught with his fingertips a broken edge of paving stone. At the same time, his left arm slid over the rim, grating away a layer of skin. He managed to grab hold of the edge and cling with the fingers of that hand. His bottomward flight stopped with a jolt that threatened to tear his arms from their sockets.

“Lieutenant Bak!” Kasaya bellowed.

“Let’s go!” one of his attackers hissed, and they ran.

Bak offered a hasty prayer to the lord Amon, thanking the god that the tomb robbers had cut the hole small to save themselves unnecessary labor. His position was precarious, but he thought he could hang on until help arrived.

Barely aware of a frustrated oath and the pounding footsteps of his assailants racing away, he pushed his left hand hard against the side of the hole, using the pressure to hold him in place, and scrabbled on the wall below with his feet.

One foot found a minuscule ledge. With the other, he could feel slight projections, but the woven reed sole of his sandal was too slippery to allow a firm hold. He shook it off, heard it strike the stone below with a slight thunk, planted his toes on a protrusion.

“Lieutenant Bak!” Hori’s alarmed call.

“The colonnade court!” he yelled. “Come quickly!”

He heard the swift flight of his assailants, retreating through the main court toward the front of the temple, and the thudding feet of Kasaya and Hori speeding toward him.

“Sir!” Kasaya burst through the doorway and looked around, confused by the torch sputtering on the pavement, the rapidly fading sound of running feet, and what on first glance looked to be an empty court. “Where. .?”

“There!” Hori pointed. “The robbers’ hole!”

“Get me out of here,” Bak called. “Quick! They’ll get away.”

The two young men leaned their torches against a fallen column and ran to him. Each grabbed an arm and, with Bak using the rough surface of the shaft wall to help himself, they pulled him to safety.

He scrambled to his feet and picked up his torch, giving it new life. “Come on! There were two of them.”

He dashed into the main court, though he had little hope of catching the pair. They had too much of a head start and knew the temple and its environs far better than he and his men. The birds they had flushed had flown away.

“Did you see a light other than the two we carried?” Bak asked, looking up at Ani, standing on the roof of the scribes’

hut. The boy would have had the best view of the old temple.

“No, sir. I saw no one but you. The way you made the lights vanish and reappear was confusing, and if I hadn’t known there were two lamps, I’d never have guessed. But your lights were always in one small area. I saw none anywhere else in the temple.”

“We didn’t see anything either,” Pashed said, speaking for himself and everyone else within hearing distance.

A rumble of assent arose from the large group of workmen standing in the darkness around them.

Ramose, Seked, and Useramon nodded agreement. The light of the boy’s torch played on the planes of their faces and deeply defined the muscles of their arms and torsos. The sharp smell of the flame tainted the air.

“So whatever the intruders came for, they never got to it,”

Bak guessed, “or they were in some part of the temple not visible from these huts.”

“Or they can see in the dark,” Kasaya muttered.

A voice came out of the darkness: “I’d wager my month’s ration of grain that they’re tomb robbers. That they have nothing to do with the malign spirit. I bet they’ve been taking advantage of our fear of him to roam around at night, trying to find an old tomb to break into.”

“Yes,” another man agreed. “The malign spirit always makes himself seen.”

A third said, “I, for one, wouldn’t walk around this valley at night for any reason at all. Look what happened