The Cult of Osiris

inwards to the roof about fifteen feet above. There were several holes in the ceiling. One of them was large and chimney-like, but it was the smaller ones that immediately made him suspicious: something was clearly supposed to drop out of them.

Except for a relief of a greyhound-faced god watching from one wall, the only objects in the room were several large globe-shaped copper bowls near the entrance. Directly ahead was a square hole in the dusty floor, about three feet across, which turned out to be a pool of some liquid; there was a matching pool by the far doorway. The rest of the floor between the two pools was fractionally lower than the section where they were standing, the perfectly flat expanse stretching the entire width of the chamber.

‘Oh, something is so wrong with this picture,’ Nina said. It was obviously another booby trap, but she couldn’t see the danger. ‘Where’s the fire?’

‘Maybe it went out,’ Macy offered hopefully, advancing for a better look at the snarling god.

‘Stay still,’ Eddie warned as he crouched by the pool and hesitantly dipped a finger in the liquid. ‘Just water.’ He shone his torch into it, noticing that the pool was only walled on three sides.

‘Four feet deep, maybe. Looks like it connects to the hole at the other end.’

‘A tunnel?’ said Nina. ‘Weird. Why not just walk across?’

‘You really think it’s going to be that easy?’

‘Not even for a second. What’s that?’ She turned her flashlight to something between the hole and the lowered area, a bow-taut length of fine black twine running from floor to ceiling.

‘Something I’m not planning on touching,’ said Eddie. He directed his light into the tunnel. ‘It’s threaded across it. You want to go through, you’ve got to break it.’

‘Which I think would be an extraordinarily bad idea, don’t you?’ Her attention switched to the expanse at the room’s centre, where she noticed more threads reaching up to the ceiling - and an absence of something. ‘You see what’s missing?’

‘What?’ Macy asked, moving to the edge of the small step.

‘Gaps. There aren’t any lines marking the edges of different slabs. It’s like one giant block of stone.’

Eddie examined the walls. ‘Biggest blocks here look about six feet by ten. But that floor’s easily thirty feet long. It can’t be all one slab, can it?’

‘I don’t see how.’ Nina looked round - to see Macy about to take an experimental step. ‘No, wait—’

Macy put her foot down on the floor - and it went through it.

She yelped, almost pitching forward before Nina grabbed her. ‘What the hell?’ Macy gasped as she hopped back, glutinous strands stretching from her boot’s sole to the sluggishly rippling ‘hole’ in what a moment ago had looked like solid stone. She tried to scrape the substance off. ‘Gross! What is this?’

‘Oil,’ said Eddie, coming over. He dipped his hand into what was now revealed as a large pool, disguised beneath a layer of sand. The same thick goo dripped slowly off his fingers when he lifted them out. ‘This crap’s floating on top of the water, and then they sprinkled all this sand over it to make it look like part of the floor.’

Nina looked up at the holes in the ceiling. ‘And I bet if you break those threads, something up there catches light and drops into the oil. Whoomph! Roasted robbers.’

Macy rubbed her sole across the floor, disgusted. ‘So how do you get across without setting off the trap?’

‘Swim under it,’ said Eddie, pointing at the water pool, which was clear of the oil. ‘The fire’ll only be on the surface.’

‘It can’t be that easy,’ Nina said, regarding the faux floor with suspicion. She looked round at the odd copper bowls, and shone her light into one. ‘Aha.’

‘What is it?’ asked Macy.

‘There’s something inside.’ Nina reached into the globe and gripped a handle fixed to its bottom - or, she realised as she lifted it up, its top. ‘Know what I think this is?’ She lowered it over her head until it touched her shoulders. ‘It’s a diving helmet!’ she announced, voice echoing.

Eddie knocked on it, drawing a yip of complaint. ‘You won’t get much air in there.’

She lifted it again. ‘You don’t need to. Just enough to get across.’ She gestured at the pool. ‘I don’t think the holes are connected by a tunnel - they’re just ways to get in and out of the pool without touching the oil. Once the rim of this thing is under the surface there’ll be air trapped inside it so you can breathe, and then as long as you don’t raise it high enough to let in any oil you won’t get burned. Then you go through the tunnel into the water hole at the other end, climb out, and hey! You’re across.’

Eddie sceptically examined another globe. ‘It’s too thin to keep the heat out for long.’

‘It’s the only way to get across without being fried. I’m pretty sure there’ll be something to stop people just swimming straight there under the oil.’ She held up the primitive helmet. ‘I don’t think we have a choice.’

Eddie made an aggrieved noise as he shook his head, but acquiesced. ‘Okay. But I’ll go first.’

‘No, I will,’ Nina insisted. ‘If there are any obstacles under there and I bang into them, I’ll need you to tell me which way to go.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘No,’ she admitted, going to the water pool. She hesitantly dipped a foot under the surface, then steeled herself and slipped all the way in. ‘Oh, ew. I just realised this water’s been sitting here for thousands of years.’

‘Just don’t drink it,’ said Eddie. ‘Although you could say that about any water in Egypt!’

Nina carefully crouched until her head was just above the surface, then reached up to take the helmet from Eddie, gripping the internal handle firmly.

‘Last chance to let me go instead,’ Eddie said.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she replied as he gave her the globe. ‘Hopefully.’ Bringing it down to rest on her shoulders, she submerged.

The helmet took a surprising amount of effort to hold down, wanting to float. The water level rose alarmingly as the air inside was compressed, but stopped just short of her nostrils. Acutely aware of her limited oxygen supply, she dropped as low as she could and shuffled into the tunnel. The helmet scraped against its ceiling.

Something tugged across her chest, a momentary resistance . . . then it was gone.

She had broken the thread.

Eddie and Macy reacted in alarm as a scraping sound echoed from overhead. ‘What is it?’ Macy asked, trying to pinpoint the source.

‘Sounds like a lighter,’ Eddie began, before the sound’s meaning struck him. ‘Shit! Nina, you’re going to have a fire any second!’

He stared at the ceiling in horror as the sound spread, ancient rollers grinding against metal, producing sparks . . .

Lights flared in the small holes.

Something dropped from one, a wad of cloth trailing a thin line of grey smoke. Only a small piece of it had caught light, the glow barely more than an ember . . .

But it was enough.

The cloth hit the surface, the dusty oil rippling around it. For a moment nothing happened - then a flame leapt up, rapidly expanding outwards. More pieces of cloth fell. Many were unlit, the sparks not having caught the material, but it only needed a few for the surface of the entire pool to erupt.

A lake of fire, just as the hieroglyphics had warned.

And Nina was in it.

She emerged from the short tunnel. The echo of her breathing and the almost total darkness were unnerving . . . but not nearly so much as the sudden light. The pool’s floor lit up in rippling orange as the floating oil ignited - and she almost immediately felt the heat, the handle she was clutching warming with alarming speed.

‘Oh, shit. Big mistake. Huge,’ she gasped. Forced to crouch, the best she could manage was an awkward waddle, the water slowing her movements to a slow-motion nightmare.

But this was no nightmare. It was real.

Eddie watched, appalled, as fire surrounded the slowly moving globe. Oil had stuck to it when Nina surfaced, and that too caught light, turning the helmet into a spherical torch. ‘Jesus! Nina, turn round! Get back in the