The Cult of Osiris

booby-trapped.’ Berkeley pointed at one of the large cogwheels. ‘This would be the Lady of Tremblings, at my guess. Wilde and the others must have activated it when they crossed - and survived.’

‘They didn’t fall?’ asked Hamdi.

‘That noise? I think it’s safe to assume that was the Goddess of the Loud Voice, which is the fifth arit. They got that far, at least.’

‘Which means they’ve cleared the way for us,’ said Osir. He stepped on to the bridge.

‘Are - are you sure it is safe?’ said Hamdi nervously.

Osir took another step. The bridge stood firm. ‘Either the trap has been sprung, or it’s broken.’

‘Lead on, Khalid,’ said Shaban as his brother negotiated the crossing. Once he reached the other ledge, he signalled the others to follow.

The cogwheel creaked, the stone jamming it shifting slightly, but nobody noticed.

Another set of columns marked the sixth arit.

‘Okay,’ Nina said, pausing outside. ‘Hewer-in-Pieces in Blood, huh? I think we’ll need more than a few Band- Aids if this goes badly, so let’s figure out how to make it not go badly.’

She and Eddie directed their lights through the opening. The level passage ahead was decorated with the now-familiar disapproving Egyptian gods and grim warnings of the fate awaiting intruders . . . but there was also something new.

Something ominous. Set into the walls were numerous horizontal slots, lined top and bottom with rust-red plates of iron.

Eddie aimed his torch into the nearest slot. There was something within, another long piece of metal on a hinge at one end . . . but this was considerably thinner along its edge. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Blades inside the holes. I get it. We go down the tunnel and they spring out and chop us into chunks.’

‘They’re kinda rusty,’ said Macy. ‘Maybe they won’t work.’

‘You want to bet your life on that?’ Nina asked. Each slot was almost as long as the passage was wide, leaving no room to escape the blades by pressing against the opposite wall - though the sheer number of slots on both sides made finding any kind of hiding place almost inconceivable. ‘How the hell are you supposed to get through?’

Eddie took out the mallet, crouching with his arm outstretched to tap the floor just past the columns. Nina winced in fearful anticipation of a blade’s slicing out from the wall, but nothing happened. He edged closer and tried again, still with no result.

‘Trigger’s probably somewhere further along,’ he said, standing. ‘So you’re right in the middle when it goes off.’ The far wall was a good forty feet away - and even then it only marked a corner rather than the end, the tunnel continuing to one side.

‘There’s got to be some way through without setting it off,’ said Nina.

Eddie hefted the mallet. ‘Let me try something.’ He tossed it through the columns to land a few feet inside the entrance. The blades remained in place. ‘Okay, so that far’s safe, at least. Probably.’ He stepped forward to retrieve it.

‘Don’t say “probably” and then walk right into it!’ Nina yelled as he returned with the heavy hammer. ‘And what are you planning to do, throw it a foot farther along each time? There’s no way to guarantee you’ll hit the trigger - and unless you’ve got some mad boomerang skills I don’t know about, you can’t get it round that corner either.’

‘Okay, so what do you suggest?’ he demanded. ‘We can’t just walk into the bloody thing and think light thoughts so we don’t set it off.’

‘We don’t walk,’ said Macy, looking more closely at the hieroglyphs. ‘I think we’re supposed to run. This text here’s another warning that horrible death awaits, yadda yadda, but it finishes with something like “hurry to Osiris”. Or “hasten”, maybe. “Hasten to Osiris.” ’

‘They left a clue?’ Nina said, surprised. ‘None of the other arits had them.’

‘It’s only a few extra characters.’ Macy pointed them out at the bottom of a block of text. ‘Everything else is the same as we’ve been seeing all the way down. Easy to miss. There might have been others, but we just didn’t notice them.’

‘So we’re meant to peg it down the corridor, then?’ Eddie said, illuminating the passage again. ‘Bit of a risk - we don’t know what’s round that corner.’

‘The Cutter-off of Heads, probably.’

‘Yeah, that’s reassuring.’ He returned the mallet to his pack, steeling himself. ‘All right. So we have to run like an Egyptian.’ He looked at Nina. ‘Ready?’

‘Let’s do it,’ she said.

‘If I get chopped into Oxo cubes I’m going to kick your arse in the afterlife. Macy?’ Macy nodded at him. ‘Okay. Three, two, one . . . go!’

They ran across the threshold.

The blades remained stationary.

Nina’s light swept along one side of the passage, Eddie’s the other, as they ran with Macy just behind. Ten feet along, twenty, their clattering footsteps echoing. Thirty, the corner coming up fast—

A dusty crunch as a block shifted beneath Nina’s foot.

Her heart clenched with fear - but there was still no movement from the walls.

There was a sound behind them, though. A hollow clonking, some mechanism turning and repeatedly knocking metal against metal.

Counting down.

‘Definitely run,’ Eddie gasped, slowing at the corner to let the women get ahead of him. Torch raised, he glanced back—

Kshang!

Ranks of rusty blades shot out from the slots at the entrance, some swinging forward and others back to dice anyone unlucky enough to be caught between them. Corrosion and time had taken their toll, some swords snapping or wrenching themselves from their hinges to clash against the opposite wall - but the result was still as lethal as its creators had intended.

And it was getting closer.

‘Shiiiiit!’ Eddie burst back into a sprint after Nina and Macy as more blades sprang out one after the other, a wave of death chasing them down the tunnel. ‘Runrunrun!’

Nina didn’t need to see what was happening to be spurred on; the rapidly approaching sound was terrifying enough. In her torch beam she saw what she at first thought was the end of the passage - before realising the ornate columns marked the entrance to the next arit.

The Cutter-off of Heads.

Out of the frying pan—

The advancing blades reached the corner, rounded it, continued after the running trio without pause. Gaining.

Nina saw something on the walls beyond the columns. More slots - but only one on each side, at about neck height.

And they were running straight at them.

She didn’t even have time to shout a warning to Eddie and Macy - they were almost at the columns, and the iron wave was upon them—

She swept up her arms to grab the surprised pair round their shoulders - and yanked her feet off the floor. The extra weight made Macy trip, Nina in turn dragging Eddie down as they tumbled through the next entrance - just as two large spinning discs burst from the walls ahead of them, swinging back and barely clearing their heads as they fell.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Nina spluttered, scrambling out from under the whirling serrated blades. ‘They weren’t kidding about the name!’

Eddie waited for the two discs to grind to a halt before rising and returning to the entrance, experimentally pushing one of the swords. He expected resistance, but it moved freely, if noisily, on its rusted hinge; the force of