Valerie turned again, holding the light for a moment on each object on the oor in front of her. A statue of Osiris stood in one corner of the * 55 *

chamber. To his right against one wall a wooden bed stood on slender animal legs with lion heads carved at the upper end. Along the opposite wall, chests of wood and ivory were lined up, with alabaster vessels spread out over them.

One object drew her like a lure and she crouched in front of it, illuminating it with her ashlight. A river barque, of gold leaf hammered over wood, nearly a meter in length from swanlike prow to the high curved stern. At the center, the naos-cabin housed a gleaming sphere.

She dared not touch it, but its sheen suggested it was solid gold. Ra in his essence and glory, and ten painted wooden gods sailed in state with him.

"Beautiful," Ahmed said softly. "This god has long spear, goddesses have horns and feathers and every little thing. Is great piece of art."

"More than art, Ahmed. This was to the ancients like a cross to a Christian. More, even." She inhaled with effort, needing air again.

"This is the Barque of the Sun. The emblem of their living world."

Derek had crept into the chamber behind them. "What's this writing here, in the long columns?"

Valerie stood up from a crouch, ghting sudden vertigo. "That's a calendar, twelve thirty-day months ending in July. The last ve days were just tacked on." She took a cautious step closer to the wall. "It looks like this man died then, just before the beginning of the New Year. That's curious-"

"Ho! What's this?" he interrupted from behind her. "Men kissing?

Is there something you haven't told me, girlfriend?" He pointed toward a drawing of two male faces touching.

"What? Oh, that's the God's kiss. To empower the king for the New Year. It's the transfer of knowledge, not romance." She coughed dryly. "Sorry to disappoint you."

Something moved in the corner of her eye, and she spun around to shine the ashlight on it. A parrot-like bird perched on the top of the lion's bed. In the ashlight beam the bird's eyes ignited as it tilted its head, as if studying them. Then it lifted from the bed, uttered over her head, and disappeared.

"How did a bird y down here? And what's a bird doing this far out in the desert?" No one answered, and pivoting around made her suddenly realize how little strength was left in her legs. And the air was sti ing.

* 56 *

"Hey, come here. You have to see this." Derek stood trans xed before the opposite wall of the tomb.

"What? Another kiss?" Rubbing the muscles above her knees, Valerie went to stand beside him, adding her light to his. Two circles danced over the scene of a king bestowing a gift upon a kneeling man. Pharaoh wore the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The maternal Vulture hovered over him with outspread wings.

"Look at the guy who's kneeling. With the African features. Jeez, Valerie. Am I narcissistic or does he look just like me?"

She leaned on his shoulder. "He does, kind of. Nubian, probably.

Owner of the tomb." She was mumbling, scarcely able to form words.

Her mouth felt like paper. With a shaking hand she unhooked her canteen and took a long drink. Her heart would not stop pounding. She felt her hair hanging in clammy ringlets around her face, and she was unsteady on her feet. One more wall to see, she thought. Three more minutes.

She shone her light beam on the west wall and smiled in spite of her increasing vertigo. It was a scene every Egyptologist would know, the Weighing of the Heart in the Underworld. She took another drink of water and shook her head, trying to clear it.

Still light-headed, she stepped forward toward the Great Balance, blinking to focus her eyes in the insuf cient light. The painted gods on both sides seemed to shimmer and move, their eyes registering her presence. She felt drawn into the scene itself, and she knew suddenly whose heart lay on the scale. She shrank before the unrelenting gaze of the Jackal-god and the Ibis-scribe, and she heard the whispering of the judges. She covered her eyes, murmuring, "You live on truth...and gulp down truth...Let me enter in. I am without falsehood..." Then she stumbled backward.

Familiar hands reached toward her as she heard herself condemned-and she collapsed unconscious on the oor of the tomb.

* 57 *

* 58 *

CHAPTER VIII:.

REKEMHEB.

Well, it's about time, Miss Drama Queen."

Valerie awoke to the light of an oil lamp somewhere below her feet and the smiling face of Derek hovering over her. Slowly, lethargically, she came to her senses.

"I fainted, didn't I? Merde. In front of all the men."

He wiped her face with a damp cloth. "Don't worry about it. You actually came to right away, but you were babbling, so we carried you in here for a good long sleep. I thought I was the weak one, but I guess you don't have superpowers either."

"Is everything okay? I mean with the tomb?"

"Yes, the tomb is ne. Ahmed let everyone in to see it and then got them busy unloading the supplies. He gave them the afternoon off for a little celebration, and they kept coming by to ask if you were okay.

Uh....what's the matter? Why are you looking at me that way?"

"Not you, behind you on the chair. It's the bird again, the one we saw in the tomb. Something's not right..."

Derek twisted around to look over his shoulder and shot up from the chair as if jolted. "God. What is this thing?" The creature remained, unruf ed, on the back of the chair.

Derek leaned toward it, peering at its head. "It doesn't have a beak or feathers on its head, just a little dark face." He swallowed hard. "My face."

The bird bobbed up and down as if agreeing and walked sideways along the chair back. Then, as if startled, it lifted off the chair and swooped out through the tent entrance.

"It can't be." Valerie sat up on her cot. "God help us. It just can't be." She took hold of her friend's arm. "Derek, listen! It came for us. I * 59 *

know it came for us. We have to follow it!"

He shook his head. "What are you talking about? That makes no sense."

She pounded her feet into her boots without lacing them and stood up. Snatching a ashlight, she stumbled out of the tent, stepping awkwardly over apping shoestrings. The creature hovered a few meters away, defying gravity.

"Just grab another light and come on!" she hissed back into the tent.

Derek emerged and the creature uttered on toward the excavation.

It circled once, as if looking to see if anyone followed, and descended the ramp into the tomb.

Valerie took a deep breath. "Listen. What we just saw, I think...

well, it looks like..." She inhaled deeply. "A Ba - bird." To give her trembling hands something to do, she knelt down to nally lace her shoes. "A dead man's soul."

"A dead man's soul? With my face? Excuse me? I may be out of my element here, but I'm pretty sure I am not dead!"

"No, No! It can't be your Ba. What am I saying? It can't be anyone's Ba. It's a myth." She lurched to her feet again. "Come on.

Just follow the damned thing!" She dragged him by the elbow toward the hole in the desert oor. "And if you're running, you can keep your knees from shaking."

"If that's your encouragement speech, it needs work," he said, huf ng alongside of her.

They reached the narrow channel to the tomb and were slowed immediately by the sharp limestone. "Ow!" Derek grunted. "I just tore my shirt." At the foot of the ramp, before the entrance, a gure curled up in a blanket startled awake.

"Ahmed, did you see the bird y past you?"

He stood up. "Ah, Dr. Foret. You are well again. Alhamdulillah. A bird? No, I saw nothing. Is something wrong? Should I call the men?"

"Thank you, Ahmed. That's not necessary. But you can go back to the tent. Now that I'm rested, I want to look around in the tomb again. There's no need for you to stand guard. Go and get a good night's sleep."

"Are you sure? All right, Doktor. But please call me if you need anything." He shuf ed up the ramp, throwing his blanket over his shoulder.

* 60 *

Their fear dissipated by the delay, they stepped over the rubble that once was the doorway and hurried along the stone tunnel. Valerie noted that the men had cleaned away much of the dirt that had been underfoot and was grateful. At the entrance to the tomb chamber, they stopped and shone their ashlights inside.

The not-quite-bird waited for them. Perched at the head of the lion bed, the creature half opened its wings once. At the moment they stepped into the chamber, it rose from the bed and ew into the wall.

"Where the hell did he go?" They shone their ashlight beams along the edge of the ceiling, rotating to illuminate all four walls.

"Look!" Derek lowered his beam to the picture that took up much of the wall space behind the lion bed. "There he is, in the painting!" He focused his light on the painted animal perched on top of the Balance.

Valerie shook her head. "That's ridiculous. There's got to be a hole in the wall someplace. Something that we missed before." She stepped back, perplexed.

"I don't see any hole, but I do see the Ba thing," Derek insisted.

"Right there in the middle of that scene."

"That's the Hall of Judgment scene, in the Duat . But that doesn't explain-"

"Duat? What's that? And why is there a balance?" He stepped closer. "Look, this guy here on the end in a white skirt, he has the same face as the bird. My face. Man, my face is all over the place! What the hell is going on?"

"Slow down. Let me explain," she began, and her shift to the voice of the lecturer had a calming effect on them both. "The Duat is the hereafter, where the heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of justice. The gure there in the kilt is the deceased or, rather, his Ka spirit. The Ka and the Ba have the same face because they're both the dead man. But put your mind at ease, Derek. It's not you. Look, here's his name, right beside it. Rek-em-heb."

"Rek-em-heb," Derek repeated, as if savoring the strange new sound.

She shone her ashlight again along the juncture between wall and ceiling. The bizarre creature had to have landed someplace. She was determined to nd it and the explanation for its existence.

"Yes. Rekemheb. He's about to enter the afterlife, but only if his heart is light. He'll be judged by the forty-two judges all around the Hall." She turned around and shone the light beam on the juncture on * 61 *

the opposite side of the chamber. "Maybe it has a nest."

"But why does this Ka guy look so much like me?" Derek persisted, leaning close to the image.

"He's probably Nubian. Maybe your ancestors were too."

"How would I know?" He shrugged and pronounced the name again. "Rekemheb."

Behind Anubis, the painted gure of the Ka opened his eyes.

Valerie took hold of his arm. "Say it again, Derek."

"Huh? What's happening?" His voice rose in pitch.

"Say it!" she hissed.

"Rekemheb," Derek said tentatively.

She squeezed his arm tightly.

"Rekemheb. Rek-em-heb!"

The gure brightened, became luminescent, and the fragrance of fruit and owers wafted over them. They stepped back a pace as the glowing gure turned out of pro le and stepped onto the tomb oor before them.

"Rekemheb," it said.

* 62 *

CHAPTER IX:.

REVELATION.

Silence. Long moments of stupe ed silence. As if dream-paralyzed, Valerie's muscles would not move. The wounded side of her head pounded ercely, and her disbelieving mind would not compute. Finally fragments of perception ltered through, like insects through a screen, separately, too few to be interpreted. Nubian features.

Side lock. White kilt down to the ankles. Sandals. Slowly the particles aggregated to a whole, forcing her to a frightening logic.

He was a living Ka.

She panted through dry lips, waiting for light or rescue to come, to banish the illusion. She could hear her own labored breathing as her thumping heart signaled ight. If there could be a Ka, then there must also be...

Derek's ashlight crashed to the stone oor, startling her and saving her from the terrifying conclusion.

The impossible thing tilted its head in the same way as Derek had moments before and repeated, as if talking to an infant, "Rek. em. heb."

He laid a shimmering hand on a shimmering chest.