He rose. “Come,” he said, and without waiting he stumbled to the doors. “Ib!” he shouted. “Order out three litters and command Hori to meet me behind the house immediately!”
His legs felt weak. Forcing them to obey him he strode through the house and out into the garden, sensing rather than hearing Sisenet gliding swiftly behind. Together they waited in silence until the litters and twelve bearers appeared, and Hori emerged, blinking and dishevelled, to join them. He greeted Sisenet amiably enough but Khaemwaset, despite his distress, recognized the marks of a night of concentrated drinking on the handsome face. Not now, he thought grimly. He flung himself onto a litter and the others followed suit.
“What is this about, Father?” Hori asked, but Khaemwaset did not reply. Curtly he instructed the bearers to hurry them to the tomb site, then he pulled the curtains closed and fell back on the pillows, trying to still the confused swirl of shrinking and haste inside him. Never had the trek through the city to Saqqara seemed so long.
He did not reopen his litter until he felt it being lowered, then he stepped out onto ground that burned through his sandals. Sisenet and Hori had already alighted and were coming towards him, eyes narrowed against the fiery afternoon sun. Khaemwaset jerked his head at them and hurried down the steps, but at the entrance, where two dozing, bored guards on either side of the doorway sprang to attention and saluted him, he paused. It required a deliberate act of courage for him to walk through, and he felt an almost physical resistance as he did so.
As always, the damp coolness was a relief, but the pleasure of the still air on his skin was transitory. Sisenet and Hori came up behind him and stood waiting, puzzled. He walked down the short passage and once more came to a halt. A shudder went through him. The bright, intricately painted wall scenes, the two statues, the ranked shawabti figures, and most of all the coffins, seethed to exude a gleeful malevolence that rushed to claim him. You stole it, the chamber shouted silently. You have sinned, you arrogant, heedless defiler and you will pay.
A hopeless anger suddenly propelled Khaemwaset forward. Striding to the coffin that held the mysterious man he leaned over the shrouded figure and drove a fist into the fragile corpse. The brittle ribcage collapsed in a shower of choking dust and tiny splinters of bone. The mummy trembled and Khaemwaset withdrew his arm.
“This man is a nobody,” he said forcefully. “Completely insignificant. He was probably a household servant, a gardener, a carrier of offal for the trash heap. The scroll was attached to his hand so that a fool like me could read it all unwittingly and raise them to life again!” He flung his dust-coated arm at the new false wall Hori’s workmen had so painstakingly erected and repainted. He was in a cold sweat. “That’s why the scroll was sewn to a nonentity’s hand. That’s why there are no lids for the coffins in the inner chamber. That’s why there is a tunnel. The earring, Hori. The earring! A dead woman lost it while she was crawling out! Where are they now and what have they done?” He was becoming incoherent, and Hori turned to Sisenet.
“What is going on here?” he whispered. “What is Father babbling about?”
His words easily reached Khaemwaset in the enclosed space, and he laughed hysterically. “I stole it and I used it,” he shouted. “Only the legitimate owner can do that with impunity. I have condemned myself!”
“He believes that the scroll the two of you found here is the fabled Scroll of Thoth,” Sisenet explained hurriedly to a bewildered Hori. “It did indeed translate as two rather clumsy spells for re-animation and the understanding of the language of all living things, but such a thing cannot be.” He turned to Khaemwaset. “The dead do live again,” he said reasonably, “but not on this earth, Prince. There is no record of anyone coming back from the grave. The Scroll of Thoth is a grand, sad legend and you cannot believe in it literally.” Khaemwaset was staring at him intensely and he moved forward. “Give it to me, Highness, and I will take it away and burn it,” he offered, but Khaemwaset came to himself and violently shook his head.
“No,” he barked. “I will put it back immediately today. Go home, Sisenet.”
The man hesitated, opened his mouth, then closed it again and bowed himself out. Khaemwaset watched his shadow elongate in the sunshine along the wall of the tomb passage, then snap to him and disappear
Hori came quickly, and put a hand on Khaemwaset’s arm. “I am not sure I understand just what has been happening here,” he said with concern, “but you are distraught, Father. Come home and rest, and we will bring the scroll and close the tomb.”