Death of an Archaeologist

When a secret tomb is discovered in Egypt, a team of archaeologists is sent to investigate. But hidden motives in the present may spell disaster as they delve into the secrets of the past... (~7k wds)

When word hit the academic community that a recent LIDAR scan had uncovered an untouched chamber in the Valley of Kings beneath KV20, the first tomb of Thutmose I, it was not terribly difficult for me to secure a spot on the archaeological team put together to open it. I was, after all, the pre-eminent Egyptologist at Oxford University.

The dig would last potentially several months, so I set my affairs in order with Oxford for the sabbatical and finalised some outstanding legal papers of my own---proper estate planning simply cannot be overlooked once you’ve reached my age. Once a team of Oxford lawyers had finished hammering out the terms of my contract with their counterparts in Cairo, I was on the plane and bound for adventure.

Well. Field archaeology, at least.

Professor Mona Mousa from Cairo University, the head archaeologist of the dig, picked me up at Luxor International. We’d met perhaps a dozen times over the course of her long academic career, and professionally corresponded a few dozen more. I’d always found her to be pleasant company: soft-spoken and mild-mannered in a crowd, but possessing a prodigious mind and keen wit when drawn out of her. I spotted her waiting outside the arrivals gate in a conservative houndstooth trouser suit, her wrinkled face framed by a pale violet hijab.

“Professor Amensis, it is good to see you again,” she reached out and clasped both her hands around mine in a friendly shake.

“Really, Mona? ‘Professor’ is for my students, or people who haven’t earned my respect. You’re in neither of those categories.”

She pursed her lips in mock contrition. “How right you are, Hatty. Whatever possessed me to pay you formal respects.”

I smiled. She squawked as I pulled her in, but returned my warm embrace. “Oh, you’re skin and bones---have they stopped feeding you in Cairo?”

“It's nothing. I have not had much of an appetite, is all. But Allah smiles upon you, no? You look hardly a day older than last I saw you.”

“Would you believe me if I said it’s all this healthy living?”

“No. I was at that conference in Vienna.”

I laughed. “Fair. I’ve had a little work done.”

Mona’s cheeks flushed. She occupied her hands in smoothing out her suit jacket. “Here I suspected sorcery. I was not aware that ‘a little work’  could make a woman look forty when she's actually… Sixty-five now, is it? Sixty-seven?”

“Mona! A lady never tells.”

She frowned. “A lady also doesn't do what you did in Vienna.”

“Let’s agree to disagree,” I winked. “It’s really good to see you again. Well, shall we be going?”

“Sorry, we have another party to collect. Do you know a Mr. Takeshi Sako?”

“The documentarian? Not well. I’ve attended a handful of his premieres in London over the years.”

“He is bringing a film crew to the dig. His plane lands in a little over forty-five minutes---I do apologise for the wait.”

“Nonsense. That’s just enough time to stop by a cafe.”

In the airport lounge, Mona and I caught up over a pot of strong coffee liberally spiced with cardamom. Mr. Sako’s plane arrived on time, and together we met him and his assistants, a pair of women in their early twenties who had not been part of his retinue when I last saw him a year past. Mona left to bring the rental van around, and I waited at baggage claim while Sako and his girls collected a truly astounding amount of videography equipment. I asked after his wife’s health, and he informed me she was recovering from a recent operation but in good spirits, happily tending to their sixth grandchild.

The hour-long ride to the Valley of Kings was uneventful, though taxing. Sako talked the whole way about his recent projects; his coming projects; his approach to the craft; his views on film as an art form---on and on, while his girls clung to his every word like anime lampreys. They both spoke only Japanese and his voice was rather loud, so rather than having my own conversation with Mona, I dutifully translated his ramblings into Arabic---with my own colour commentary of course, I didn’t care to die of boredom---so she needn’t be left out.

It was all worth it for the final stretch of the drive into the valley. I hadn’t been back for many years, and it struck me with the particular nostalgia of a long-awaited homecoming. I pulled my headscarf free and leaned my face out the window. The wind tugged at my jet black hair as I inhaled the tantalising aroma of sunbaked dust and sand.

I’ve gotten ahead of myself, I suppose---at this particular point in time, Mona was not yet in charge of the dig. The actual director was Dean Ibrahim Muhammed Mahmoud, the head of Mona’s department. He greeted us when we arrived at the camp outside KV20, his furrowed gaze fixated overly long on my windswept hair. Two men accompanied him. The first was a tall, bespectacled Egyptian---younger, mid thirties at most---who didn’t bother to hide his scowl. I recognized him from his picture on the university’s webpage: one Professor Muhammed Abtin Bahrami, a freshman member of the faculty. The second, two-hundred-fifty pounds of solid Israeli muscle, I assumed must be Isaiah Mizrahi, the site's security consultant.

“Miss Amensis, peace be with you.” Mahmoud nodded to me.

“And with you, Dean Mahmoud. But it is ‘Professor Amensis,’ thank you.”

His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but he only nodded again. “Mr. Mizrahi will show you to your tent, professor.” He extended his hand to Sako. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sako, come please, let me show you around the site.”

“Be careful, Hatty,” Mona whispered in my ear as the dean departed with the documentarian, “he can make a lot of trouble for you here.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said. “My fee is non-refundable.” I turned to shake hands with Isaiah, and he led me off to get settled in.

The following morning, we woke to find Mahmoud cold as the grave, having expired due to a massive aneurysm overnight. The paramedics who came to pick him up said it was as though a section of his brain had popped, like a blood-filled balloon. 

I eavesdropped from outside the operations tent where Mona and Bahrami held a choppy Skype meeting with the university administration and their investors back in Cairo. The Dean’s right-hand man was unavailable to step in as his replacement, having been hospitalised with acute meningitis shortly after the team had left for Luxor, and Bahrami didn’t have the field experience necessary to head a site of this importance. Some of the regents were of the opinion the dig should be postponed, but Mona pointed out that considerable resources had already been mobilised onsite, and that she had worked on almost twenty archaeological dig sites over her forty-five years with the university. 

After approximately ten-thousand hours of circular debate and latency errors, the hold-outs finally relented: the dig must continue, and Professor Mousa would lead it. Bahrami emerged first, clutching a splintered pencil in one hand and a crumpled notebook in the other. He stomped away to his own tent without a word. Mona exited a moment later, her posture slumped as though she’d just completed Sysyphus’ task, but she shot me a thin smile, and I nodded back.

Now comes the part where I tell you how we cracked open the tomb with dynamite charges, and waded through snakes and rats and flesh-eating scarabs, and the mummy’s treasure was actually a riddle that pointed us to a different tomb, and then Isaiah turned out to be a nazi in disguise (I know, right---a Jewish nazi? What a twist!), except none of that actually happened because this wasn’t a f*****g Nicholas Cage movie, it was an archaeological dig.

What actually happened was:

The six-man crew of excavators spent several days inside KV20 setting up scaffolding and braces for a light crane over a two-metre slab of limestone weighing several tonnes. Multiple earlier visits from GPR and X-ray survey teams had determined this particular stone to be the lid sealing a deep void. 

While the excavators worked with their adult Legos, Mona, Bahrami, and I painstakingly recorded and studied every last scratch, mark, or mar on the surface of the slab to assess whether they might be intentional markings with hidden meanings left behind by the ancient architects of this mystery. Spoiler: they weren’t.

Isaiah’s job at this point consisted entirely of chasing off curious tourists who had ‘accidentally’ wandered across his cordoned-off barriers in hopes of seeing a mummy. Sako shot hour after hour of useless footage along the way, and we all pretended not to notice which tent his girls actually slept in each night.

Hell, we were only camping on site in draughty, old-timey-archaeologist tents because the university already owned all the equipment, and didn’t want to shell out the lucre to put us up in any one of the four-star hotels only thirty minutes drive away.

After six days with nothing more exciting than Bahrami’s passive-aggressive comments and stares, we completed our assessment, and the crew completed their crane. We retired for the evening with the knowledge that tomorrow we would enter a room that hadn’t been touched since the fifteenth century B.C.E.

The following morning, as the mosque loudspeakers in distant Luxor whispered out echoes of morning prayer, I climbed up the short rise of a hill to the cliffside overlooking our campsite to join Mona. I waited for her to finish and pack up her prayer rug before approaching, then settled in next to her, dangling my feet over the edge of the cliff. The pre-dawn glow steadily climbed up the sky to the east, bringing definition to the murky features of the Valley of Kings sprawled out below us. From my satchel, I produced two tinned camp mugs and a bottle of wine with a faded label.

Mona arched an eyebrow. “Vile temptress.”

“Hey, you were there in Vienna too.” The bottle gave off a satisfying pop as I pulled the cork.

“That was a very special occasion.”

“Today seems pretty damn special.” I poured, then held out a mug.

She took it and swirled the rich burgundy contents. “What is it?”

“Château Mouton-Rothschild, 1945.” I raised my mug, and we tapped rims with a metallic clonk. 

“And… that means?” 

“Uh, it’s red.”

She took a delicate sip, while I drained my cup and poured a refill.

“It's smooth,” she said.

“It had better be.”

“Tastes a little… dusty?”

“That’s just the residue flaking off your atrophied sense of adventure.”

She laughed, a beautiful, clarion burst of mirth, and I wondered how long it had been since last she had done so. A cough cut her laughter short, and she leaned forward, thumping her chest.

“Sorry, wine’s a little stronger than you expected?”

“No, the wine is not… It's nothing, I'll be fine.” She cleared her throat and dabbed her eyelids with the hem of her hijab. “The truth is, despite all my protestations to the contrary, I have discovered quite suddenly that I have grown old. This will be my last time in the field, I am quite sure.”

The first blinding slice of sun flared to life on the horizon. “A dig like this isn’t a bad legacy to leave behind.”

“I suppose not. You know, I always thought someday I would marry. Raise a child, perhaps two…”

I studied her face for a stretched moment. “Why didn’t you?”

Mona turned away, looking out over the valley. “I guess I never met the right man.”

I scoffed. “Hard to do so with Dean Mahmoud looming over you like a ghoul every day.”

“Hatty!”

“He was a horrid man, and he treated you awfully. You hold two doctorate degrees, Mona---it was not your job to fetch that man his f*****g coffee!”

“It is not proper to speak ill of the dead.”

“Well, he was. He can bother one of his seventy-two virgins for coffee now.”

Mona groaned. “That's not---no,” she wagged a finger at me, “I know you only say these things to tease me, I will not give you the satisfaction.”

I shot her an impish smile.

“What of you? Did you never consider making a family?”

“I did marry, once, and bore several children.” 

“What---how have I never heard of this?”

“I was very young, and it wasn’t exactly my choice.”

“Hatty, I…” She paused and gave me a silent, knowing look, and I wondered how many of her childhood friendships had evaporated under similar circumstances. “What of your children---where are they now?”

I looked out across the valley, the resting place to generations of Egyptian royalty. “I’ve outlived them all.”

She tensed up, and then let out a long, ragged breath. “I am so sorry. I didn't know.”

“It’s okay. I was bitter and angry once, but that was, oh… many lifetimes ago.”

“I fear bitterness may be all I am left with soon.” Mona’s voice wavered with a tremble of her chin. “Will you tell me, how did you rid yourself of it?”

“Time,” I said. Revenge had also played a critical supporting role---but that wasn’t what Mona needed to hear.

“I thought you might say that,” she whispered, and blotted her eyes with her hijab again.

“Also, sunlight. When I felt the sunlight on my face, I could smile. You should try it.”

She scoffed. “I don't think that will solve my problems.” But she closed her eyes anyway and lifted her chin, letting the dawn bathe her face in light. After a few moments, the hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

We sat together in shared silence as the line between dawn and shadow receded toward the valley floor, eventually brushing the finials atop the tents below us with golden light. I pointed out Isaiah as he emerged from his tent to face the sun. He produced a tefillin from a small leather satchel and began winding its strap down his left arm. The black banding stood in stark contrast to the black shoulder holster adjacent.

“He is an unlikely character to find here.”

“I’d never met him before this, though from what I’ve heard he’s one of the best in the business when it comes to securing sites and transporting antiquities. But yes, it’s not every day you see an ex-mossad operative in the employ of Cairo University.”

Mona shot me a curious glance. “That's all just rumours, no?”

I shrugged with my hands. “Sure, you’re probably right.” She wasn’t; Isaiah Mizrahi was a very dangerous man, with a very dark background. But the way I’d come to possess that information was not something I cared to share with Mona just yet. Down in the camp, he finished strapping the second tefillin to his forehead, and started praying out of a small, battered book.

“What is it you call his boxes in English, again?”

“Phylacteries. From the Greek for ‘safeguard.’”

“Fitting. I am glad he is here. It is good to be reminded that we are human first, Muslim or Jewish second.”

I doubted she would be if she knew what I knew. “You’ve certainly got all sorts on this dig. Sako’s a Buddhist, right? Plus, your excavation crewmen are all Coptic---best watch out, you Muslims are far outnumbered by infidels on this dig.”

She chuckled. “And you, ‘Professor Atheist?’ Feeling lonely out in the cold yet?”

“No. I’m always outnumbered,” I smiled. “I prefer it that way.”

“I cannot say I agree with you… but different ideas and perspectives are what strengthen academia.”

“I think your Professor Bahrami disagrees with you on that point.”

Mona groaned and rubbed her eyes. “That young man is a thorn that I cannot pull out of my sock.”

I held the bottle of wine out to her, but she waved it away.

With the sun firmly stationed above the horizon, we made our way back down to the camp as the rest of the team stirred from their tents. The mood in the camp was electric with anticipation. Mona led a final logistics and safety meeting over breakfast, re-hashing facts and procedures we had already discussed on several previous occasions, and then we gathered our gear. The puttering rumble of the small gas generator dulled to a light vibration as we filed into KV20, brightly lit by work lamps. Lifting eyes anchored and straps secured, the excavation crew foreman engaged the winch to lift the slab, centimetre by centimetre, out of the floor.

“Ya Allah, look at that,” Bahrami gasped as the slab rose. Dull, featureless limestone on its surface, the underside was shaped into an inverted pyramid. The first twenty or so centimetres were stone, where it interfaced with the surrounding floor, but below that the pyramid was clad in polished gold, tipped with a spike that extended another metre down into the inky black void. Etched hieroglyphs sat in relief across the surfaces of the golden sides.

“The scans showed this was supposed to be flat on the bottom,” Mona considered the pyramid with a furrowed brow. “We cannot remove this stone while that rod is attached.”

“Ma’am, I’m afraid our structure isn’t tall enough to remove this thing even without the hanging bit.” The foreman pointed to his winch, which had only a few turns left until it would be fully retracted. The tip of the pyramid still sat at least half a metre below the level of the floor.

“How was this missed by your surveyors, Mr. Atalla?”

He rubbed the bald spot on the back of his head. “Look, scanning tech has come a long way, but it still has limitations. We can only guarantee so much accuracy---it’s all in the contracts I signed with Mr. Mahmoud. You want me to put this back down and rebuild the crane?”

“No, not yet---so long as it is safe, please keep it there while we assess.”

Bahrami produced a book on hieroglyphics and sat down in front of one face. “That is ‘Pharaoh,’ there… ‘order or decree,’ good…”

I leaned down over his shoulder and read aloud:

<By Pharaoh’s command we seal this tomb. By Pharaoh’s will alone shall it open again.>

I circled to the next face.

<We servants of Pharaoh, the Nameless, the Undying, do here--->

I paused and glanced back at Bahrami, whose jaw hung open. Mona stood behind him, half a smile on her lips. “You should really be writing this down, professor.” I continued:

<…do here commit our souls to his service, in this world and the next.>

<Seven curses of woe and seven curses of agony upon you who trespass this sacred seal. By Pharaoh’s will be it so.>

<Entombed below lies Pharaoh’s greatest treasure, wealth never-ending. Forever may it serve Pharaoh in the world beyond.>

“Feel free to check my work.” I patted Bahrami on his shoulder as I completed my circuit of the pyramid.

Isaiah knelt at the rim and pointed a torch down into the hole. “There’s a landing only about three metres down, with another gold rod in the middle of it. Looks like it has a socket on top that the pyramid spike was resting in.”

Mona stood with her arms crossed, toe tapping against the ground, her eyes fixed on the suspended pyramid. She glanced at me, looked back at the pyramid, and nodded. “Very well. Mr. Atalla, please shift that to the side as far as it will go. That should open up enough of a space for your men to drop a ladder into the shaft.”

“With respect, I don’t think that’s a good idea, professor,” Isaiah said. “Egyptian tomb-builders were notorious for incorporating traps into their designs, and this has all the hallmarks of a trap waiting to be sprung. In fact, we may have already done so the moment we lifted the spike out of its socket---that entire chamber could be filled with noxious gases for all we know.”

“Then fetch me a sniffer. You are more than welcome to remain up here where it is safe, but I am going down into this tomb.”

Isaiah made as though to protest further, but I think he saw a look in Mona’s eyes---something that only the sort of person with a background like his would recognize---and instead, he nodded. “You heard the professor,” he said, and the excavation crew got to work.

Fifteen minutes later, Mona stepped off the bottom rung of a rope ladder onto the landing below.

“There is a passageway leading further down, with very steep steps,” she called up to us. “I see the next landing…” her voice faded as she descended further into the stone.

Isaiah pressed his fingers into his eyebrows and let out a low, rumbling growl.

Mona reappeared a moment later. “It’s a small chamber, from the looks of it perfectly cubic, approximately four metres to a side. Hatty, Muhammed, you’ll want to come see this.”

One-by-one, Bahrami, Sako, and I descended into the tomb. Isaiah followed behind, instructing Mr. Atalla’s men to brace the dangling pyramid and erect a barricade around the socketed rod on the landing against any accidental contact. They dropped in an LED lamp on an extension cord, and Mona led us down the stairs to the chamber.

Sako looked around with a frown. “I thought this was supposed to be full of riches?”

“Perhaps it was already discovered by looters in antiquity,” Bahrami offered.

Mona shook her head. “That is unlikely, with the state in which we found the sealing slab. Barring any secret doors, it appears to be the sole way in or out.”

“‘All that is gold does not glitter,’ Mr. Sako.” I said.

The chamber had a sole feature at its centre: a cylindrical stone pedestal. Atop it perched a small urn, about thirty centimetres tall---rotund around the middle, with a flared base for stability. The wax-sealed lid was sculpted in the figure of a horned serpent.

“This is not Egyptian,” Mona brought the lamp closer. "Not by style, at least. This figure does not appear as part of the known Pantheon. If I had to guess…" she looked over at me. "Sumerian?"

I nodded. "Basmu---a great horned serpent who eats the souls of the dead.”

Professor Bahrami tisk-ed and shook his head. "Basmu is Babylonian. He post-dates KV20 by several hundred years at minimum---and he doesn’t eat souls."

“Babylonian myth did not emerge from a vacuum, professor. Behind every myth is the older myth it evolved from. And behind that, sometimes, is a monster.”

A shout rose from the entryway steps behind us, followed by the splintering of wood. The suspended pyramid lurched, and then crashed back down into its slot. A shower of blinding sparks flashed out as the extension cord was crushed, and we were pitched into darkness.

“Everyone stay calm, and stay where you are!” Isaiah’s booming voice blanketed the space before panic had a chance to set into the team. A moment later his torch sliced a beam of light through the black. With a quick glance to confirm we were unmolested down in the chamber, he turned away to check on the three crewmen trapped with us in the entryway. 

Bahrami stared after him. “Ya Muhammed, what have we done? We are trapped---we are entombed! We will starve to death!”

I shook my head, for all the gesture was worth in the darkness. “No, thirst will take us far more quickly than hunger. Provided we don’t suffocate first, that is.” I smiled as Bahrami’s breathing audibly increased.

“Stop it, both of you,” Mona snapped. “Inshallah, no one is going to die. I don’t know why or how the slab broke free, but we have skilled crewmen above who will soon remove it again. The worst thing any of us can do right now is panic. So, do as Mr. Mizrahi instructed, and calm yourselves.”

“Professors!” The display screen on Sako’s camera lit his face with an eerie glow. He pointed. “Why is it doing that?”

Atop its pedestal, the urn glowed like a backlit emerald.

“That… is a very good question.” Mona made a slow circuit of the pedestal. 

“Perhaps there is some anomaly in the embalming fluid?” Bahrami said. “An unexpected chemical reaction causing luminescence?”

“A chemical reaction that persists after three-thousand years?” Mona shook her head, her eyes focused on the urn. “I think the material is some form of glass. It is unlike any other canopic jar I have observed.”

“It’s not a canopic,” I said. “These days, we call it a phylactery---a safeguard. In antiquity though, it commonly bore a more literal name: soul jar.”

Sako lowered his camera. “You mean like hunping? Han Dynasty? That’s nowhere near the Valley of Kings, regionally or temporally.”

“Correct, this is from much earlier. By the time soul jars came to popularity in Han China, they had become mere decoration---much like the later canopic jars placed empty alongside their pharaohs. But as with Basmu, the ritual use of hunping developed from an earlier tradition, with far more practical applications.”

“Miss Amensis, I have had enough of this drivel!” Professor Bahrami stepped in front of me and jabbed a finger at my chest.

“Professor,” I corrected.

“You clearly take pleasure in masquerading as a great historian, possessed of secret knowledge beyond that of your peers. Perhaps your charade works on the feeble-minded students at Oxford, but here you are in the company of scholars.”

“Professor Bahrami, you are out of---” Mona started, but she was seized by a coughing fit and Bahrami forged on.

“I wrote my thesis on Babylonian mythology. There is no evidence of a Sumerian progenitor myth to the serpent Basmu. I can only assume the same is true of this outlandish claim about soul jars. Now, unless you intend to present hard proof backing your ridiculous theories, I must insist you silence yourself, and leave the task of serious scholarship in the capable hands of properly learned men.”

I crinkled up the corners of my lips, craning my neck to look up at him, a shadowy green phantom in the light of the jar. “But I do have the proof you’ve demanded. I have all the proof I need---for both of my outlandish claims---here in this room with us.”

He lifted a finger as though to begin his next lecture, but I had already stepped past him.

“Humor me, professor. It’s all right here in the jar.”

Bahrami rolled his eyes, but he stepped up next to me and crossed his arms. “I am waiting.”

Mr. Sako approached from the side, the shutter on his camera snapping rapidly. Mona finally remastered her lungs, palms pressed against her knees.

I leaned in close to the serpent-headed statue. I smiled, and a shiver ran across its carved features.

<FEAST, BASMU.>

The carved pits of the serpent’s eyes filled with vibrant green energy, and the sculpted jaws split into a gaping maw. A rasping hiss rose from the urn.

“What in the name of…” The words died on Bahrami’s lips as he locked eyes with the serpent. The skin across his face tightened and stretched, his lips twisting on themselves into a rictus of horror. Past him, Mr. Sako’s camera fell from his rigid fingers and shattered against the stone, the documentarian’s face frozen in a silent scream.

I drew in a deep, even breath as their vitality rushed into the phylactery, and for a few brief moments while I revelled in the sensation, my glamour flickered.

Both men crumpled to the floor, and Basmu’s jaws snapped shut.

“See, Professor Bahrami?” I looked down at his corpse. “It’s a soul jar.”

Mona rushed to Sako and pressed two fingers against his neck. “Takeshi! What---What just happened?”

Back at the entrance shaft, the excavation crew clambored at the sealing slab, one of them yammering in Coptic, <A mummy---Jesus save us, she’s a mummy!>

“They died. Eh, sort of. I’ll explain in a moment.”

A metallic clatter sounded behind me: the distinctive racking of a firearm. Mona shrieked and dropped to the floor, covering her ears as deafening gunshots reverberated throughout the small chamber. Puffs of desiccated powder burst out from my chest as the bullets ripped through me, finding very little resistance.

<SLEEP> I pushed my hand downward at my side, palm held parallel  to the floor, and behind me Isaiah and the team of excavators collapsed like rag-dolls in a heap. I smiled at Mona. “That’s much better. Nice and quiet.”

“Stay away from me!” She scrambled away across the floor on all-fours.

“Oh, come now. You’re going to hurt yourself Mona, don’t do that.”

She reached the far end of the chamber and pressed her back into the corner. “Mezrahi---he just shot you---how are you still alive?”

I gesture to the urn. “That won’t let me die.”

“You’re not making sense!”

I stepped forward and caressed the top of Basmu’s head, between his little horns. “Like I said earlier, this is a phylactery; a safeguard. It stores the energy of souls, so when someone or something attempts to kill its creator---say, by shooting her in the back like a cowardly assassin---it steps in and, ta-daa, she’s still alive.”

“Two people have died, you’ve just been shot, and you are describing horcrux!”

“Sure, you’re more or less on the same page. This,” I pointed to the soul jar, “is exactly like a horcrux---only, entirely the opposite, because real souls are indivisible. So instead of putting my own soul into the jar to keep me alive, I put… theirs.”

Mona stared at the fallen men. Her mouth worked wordlessly. Comprehension was going to take her a minute to achieve---it always did.

“I crafted this phylactery via the sacrifice of two-hundred souls, which I predicted would grant me around four-thousand years of vitality. But I was new to the occult back then, working from near-indecipherable texts scrawled in blood on demonhide, and my itinerant instructor was not the most forthcoming sort of entity. How was I to know sacrificial offerings only convey the precise number of days that would have been left in a lifespan? That’s not even a number one can calculate, it’s all guesswork. The average longevity of a slave in the New Kingdom era turned out to be, let’s just say, less than desired.”

“The New Kingdom…” she repeated, turning her vacant gaze to me. Not long now.

“This phylactery is nearly depleted several hundred years early, and needs to be recharged.” I looked down at Sako, next to his cracked camera. “That’s why I dropped the wards on my father’s tomb, and allowed this space to be discovered. Life expectancies in the era of modern medicine are much improved. Even Mr. Sako might have had a solid forty years left in him.”

“Your father’s… tomb?” There it was. The churning of a true analytical mind could be shocked into a temporary stillness, but never fully stifled. She climbed back to her feet. “We are under the tomb of Thutmose the First---you would have me believe that you are Pharaoh Hatshepsut?”

“I accept ‘Hatty’ from my friends.”

“This is ridiculous!”

I shrugged. “You don’t have to believe in something for it to be true. The fact is, magic is real, and much of what you think you know about the world is wrong. <LIGHT>”

I snapped my fingers, and the chamber brightened evenly to a comfortable, reading-nook sort of level. Mona flinched. Her eyes bulged as she looked fruitlessly for the source. She waved her hand in front of the wall. “No shadows…”

“That is pretty easy to do. Not much better than parlour magic, really, and you could argue it’s just a trick or an illusion. But observe instead: <RISE, THRALL>”

I turned my palm up as though plucking a pear from its tree, and raised my hand overhead. Mona’s breathing went from ragged to panicked as Sato’s body stirred, and then lifted off the floor as though hoisted by a hook between his shoulder blades. Set back on its feet, the ghast lolled its head toward me, awaiting instruction.

<Bring the rest,> I said in Japanese. Sako’s body set off with lurching steps toward the entryway.

“No, no it can’t---he’s dead, he is dead, he can’t be doing that!”

I shrugged. “Dead men tell no tales, but they are useful for heavy lifting.” Sako re-emerged, dragging Isaiah by the wrists. The Israeli’s boots thumped rhythmically against the steps on his way down.

“By Allah… If this is true, if I am not hallucinating,” she looked past Sako to the sprawling bodies that choked the entryway, “you’ve killed them all!”

“Bahrami and Sato, yes. Their souls now fuel my phylactery. The rest are only comatose.”

“But you are going to?”

“Yes.”

“Hatty, this is monstrous! What gives you the right to take their lives?”

“I do, by my power to take it from those who wish death upon me.” I spat on Bahrami’s corpse, and my glamour faltered again. Mona’s ochre skin paled. “All creatures must eat to sustain themselves, Mona. The powerful feed off the weak, but most of them do so like leeches---bleeding their prey dry, an exhausted, inevitable death their only escape. My method is infinitely more humane.”

“Murder is not humane---it is an offence against the most basic teachings of Allah!”

“Oh, spare me the proselytising,” I jabbed my finger toward the expired Bahrami. “Did your God not wish for him to die? That he is in fact dead proves he received the fate which was written for him in the Book of Decrees. Or do you, blasphemer, believe me more powerful than the divine plan of Elohim?”

“No, I---we are not meant to comprehend Qadar, but that does not absolve us of our sins---”

“Comprehension be damned! You are instructed not to question, or even think about predestination, because it cannot be reconciled. I have walked this earth for three millennia---Ya Mashalla: ‘what God has willed has happened!’ If I am an unrepentant sinner, it is only because God created me so; if I am to be punished in the world that follows, it will be for the crime of following his will, as he intended. That, my friend, is monstrous.”

Mona pressed her fists against the sides of her face and snarled. “Why? Why are you telling me all this? Just put me in your damned bottle already and be done with it!”

I held my hands out to my sides. “I’m not going to take your soul, Mona. I respect you too much for that.”

“You needle at my faith, you murder my colleagues, you hide abominable secrets from me for decades while pretending to be my friend---this is how you show respect?”

“I am your friend, Mona, and I tell my friends the truths they need to hear---whether they want to hear them or not. Let’s play a little game, shall we? We’ll call it ‘radical honesty.’ How many academic papers have you written?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Answer the question,” I growled.

“Seven.”

“Wrong. You have a very distinctive writing style. Try again: how many papers have you written!”

She paused, her eyes growing moist. Finally, she whispered, “Twenty-nine.”

“And of those, how many were published with the name ‘Ibrahim Muhammed Mahmoud’ listed as the primary author?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Next question. Why did you never marry, Mona?”

Tears ran freely through the wrinkles on her cheeks.

“It wasn’t because you never found ‘the right man.’ It was because you knew the second you were wed you’d be packed off to your new life as a broodmare---as I was---and your academic career would be over. You deserve better. That’s why I killed Mahmoud and hexed his colleague back in Cairo, that’s why I ensured an expensive camera crew would be onsite causing far too deep an investment for the administration to back out of.”

“You what?”

“At least once before the end, you deserve to see that you are more capable and worthy than they’d ever let you believe. But you also need to understand that they will never let you have this. When news breaks of this disaster, they will not blame Isaiah for failing to secure the site. They will not blame Mr. Atalla and his crew for improperly bracing the slab. They will blame you, because you are a woman, and that is the one thing in this vast world that they simply cannot forgive. They will not let us have what we deserve, Mona, so we must take it.”

“Ah.” Mona deflated against the chamber wall. “I think I understand now. ‘Before the end,’ you say… So, you know?”

I sighed. “I do. Has your doctor told you how far it’s spread?”

“We… We’re not sure. It’s in the lymph nodes.”

I nodded. “Quite a few of them.”

“Not much life left to add to your jar, have I?” She laughed, a barking, bitter sound. “Do you know how long? Can… can you tell that?”

“No. Months, maybe a year---only one being I’m aware of knows these things for sure, and he doesn’t share that information lightly.”

“If you are truly Hatshepsut, then you have survived…” Her words trailed off as she stared at me, and I allowed the silence to fill the room for as long as she needed it to. Sato’s ghoul finished dragging the last of the crewmen into the chamber, and propped him up neatly against the wall with the others. “Can you stop it?” she whispered.

I nodded slowly. “I could. But all that would do is buy you a little time. In a few more years, you would just be dying again of something else, because that is what humans do, Mona. They die.”

A terrible sob wracked her body. She looked so truly frail. “A few more years is better than nothing, isn’t it?”

“Not to me.”

“So is this your parting gift? You murdered Mahmoud just to show me what my bravery might have purchased in life, when I have one foot firmly upon death’s doorstep? I always knew you could be ruthless, Hatty. I respected you for that. I never thought you heartless, too.”

“Well, I am. Rather literally. But I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you. I just refuse to hand you meaningless extra time to fret over your health until you die.”

“I… don’t understand.”

“Twenty-two years.” I turned to the phylactery. “From the day I emasculated those stodgy old priests and claimed the title of Pharaoh, I set my eyes on immortality. It took me twenty-two years to Ascend. That’s what I offer you, Mona Mousa. Two more decades of life, and the knowledge and training required to break free of the limitations placed upon you. Apply your considerable intellect, heed my lessons, and by the end you won’t need me to stop the cancer for you.”

She stepped forward. The verdigris light of the phylactery reflected against her eyes like a glimmer of hope, but then she looked back at Bahrami and the ghoul of Sako.

“Wait… you mean…”

“Yes. Life for life.”

“I’ve never---I don’t wish to take the life of another.”

“Then you will fail your final exam, and die.”

Her breath grew shallow and ragged. “No… Choose my own death, or force death upon another?”

“Mona. You’re hyperventilating.”

“I must learn to kill? Like you kill, to sate this jar of souls---but---” with unexpected spryness, she seized my phylactery and raised it overhead, “What if it were to break?”

My eyes narrowed. “Then I would be very cross with you, because that has extreme sentimental value to me. Please put it down.”

“You said yourself, this phylactery is what keeps you alive! Will you not trade its safety for mine?”

“Oh, Mona,” I leaned up against the pedestal and crossed my arms. “That is precious because it was my first. I never said I made just the one.”

A quiet settled over us, as I waited for Mona to decide her future. It couldn’t last long; her frail arms wobbled and shook under the weight of their burden. A slight movement caught my eye.

“Basmu, no! Bad snake,” I chastised as the serpent’s jaws slowly widened and stretched toward the arm holding him aloft. Mona looked up and gasped as he reverted to stone, and the jar teetered precariously in her grasp.

***

“<TRAGEDY IN VALLEY OF KINGS: 14 FALL VICTIM TO MUMMY’S CURSE>”

The headline stood on page five of Le Monde, below the fold.

 

“<Rescue operations are underway after an ancient trap caused the cave-in of a newly discovered tomb in Egypt’s Valley of Kings. However, authorities say it is unlikely any members of the 14 person team of archaeologists and excavators remain alive…>”

I folded up the newspaper and set it aside as my waiter approached with a fresh cappuccino. “Merci,” I nodded to him. The aroma of the coffee settled nicely in the air around my table. Away below the nearby bridge, the reflection of the Eiffel Tower rippled lazily in the wake of a tour boat coasting down the Seine.

Professor Harriet Amensis had met her end in the Valley of Kings---but then, she had grown a bit old. In short order, her entire estate would transfer into the possession of her estranged daughter Heather, who lived in a lovely flat with a view of the Sacred Heart cathedral in Paris. My students at Oxford would mourn---or perhaps celebrate---my death as they saw fit, and then fret over whether to complete the ninety-page paper I had assigned to them directly before my departure. 

My true pupils knew how to get in contact with me.

“Hmm,” I mused aloud, “Peut-être qu’ils ont besoin d’une égyptologue au Louvre…”

I pulled a corner off of my chocolate croissant and dipped it in the cappuccino, then popped it in my mouth. I leaned back and smiled at the warm sunlight caressing my face.

“Ah, c’est la vie.”