Further along they came to the first of eight shrines set into the walls
of the long funeral gallery. This one was the shrine of Osiris. It was a
circular chamber, the curved wall decorated with texts in praise of the
god, and in its niche a small statue of Osiris in his tall feathered
head-dress, with eyes of onyx and rock crystal which stared at them so
lacably that Royan shivered. Nicholas reached out and gently touched the
foot of the god.
He said one word, 'Gold!'
Then he looked up at the towering mural that covered the wall and half
the domed ceiling above and around the shrine. It was another gigantic
figure of the father Osiris, god of the Underworld, with his green face
and false beard, his arms crossed upon his chest, holding the flail and
the crook, wearing his tall feathered head-dress and with the erect
cobra on his brow. They gazed up at him with a sense of awe. As the
lamplight wavered in the shifting dust cloud LEI the god seemed to
become imbued with life, and to move and sway before their eyes.
They did not linger at the first shrine, for beyond it the gallery ran
on, straight as the flight of an arrow to its target. They followed it.
The next shrine set into the wall was dedicated to the goddess. The
golden figure of Isis sat in her niche, upon the throne that was her
symbol. The infant Horus suckled at her breast. Her eyes were ivory and
blue lapis lazuli.
Her murals covered the walls around her niche. There she was, the mother
with great kohl-lined eyes as black as night, wearing the sun disc and
the horns of the sacred cow pon her head. All around her, hieroglyphic
symbols covered the wall, so bright that they glowed like a cloud of
fireflies; for she possessed a hundred diverse names.
Amongst these were Ast and Net and Bast. She was also Ptah and Seker and
Mersekert and Rennut. Each of these names was a word of power, for her
sanctity and her benevolent aura had lived on where most of the old gods
had withered away for lack of worshippers to repeat and keep alive these
mystic names.
In ancient Byzantium and later in Christian Egypt they had bestowed the
old goddess's virtues and attributes upon the Virgin Mary. The image of
her suckling the infant Horus had been perpetuated in the icons of the
Madonna and child. Thus Royan responded to the goddess in all her
entities, the mingled blood of Royan's forefathers in her veins
acknowledging both Isis and Mary, heresy and truth mingling inextricably
in her heart, so that she felt at once both guilt and religious elation.
In the next shrine was a golden figure of Horus, the falcon-headed, the
last of the holy trinity. In his right hand he held the war-bow and in
his left the ankh, for life and death were his to dispense. His eyes
were red carrielians.
Portraits of his other entities surrounded the statue: Horus the infant,
suckling at the breast of Isis, Horus as the divine youth Harpocrates,
proud and lithe and beautiful, one finger touching his chin in the
ritual gesture, striding out on sandalled feet under his short, stiff
kilt.
Then Horus the falcon-headed, sometimes with the body of a lion and then
with the body of a young warrior, wearing the great crown of the south
