Both men looked relieved, then ashamed. “Highness, if you had told me about this I would have appointed my physician to be with you day and night,” the mayor expostulated. “I have been lax in my duty. I apologize.”
“It is not your fault!” Hori cried out with the last of his energy. “Just do as I ask! Antef, see to it!” He closed his eyes and rolled over, away from them. He heard Antef usher them out, and then he must have lost consciousness, for his next awareness was of his friend raising his head and pressing a cup to his mouth. The poppy smelled rank. He sipped at it as cautiously as he could, and when it had gone he motioned for Antef’s arm. “Help me to sit up,” he said. Antef did so, then lowered himself onto the couch. Hori could feel him watching speculatively.
“What is it, Hori?” he asked soberly.
Hori had never heard Antef use his name before, and he felt a rush of love for Antef’s reliability, his unquestioning loyalty. “She is trying to kill me,” he said. “She will succeed, but not before I get home, Antef. I must get home!”
“You will,” Antef promised grimly. “Tell me what to do.”
“Go to the House of Life immediately, this evening. Leave me the poppy. I promise I will not drink it all.” It was starting to dull the pain now, but it was dulling his thoughts also, and he fought its soporific effect. “The librarian will have left out some scrolls for you. Copy them as quickly as you can and do not return here until you have done so. I must get to the tomb tonight. Did you learn anything today?”
“No, only that no one to whom I spoke had ever heard of Tbubui, Sisenet, or Harmin.”
“I expected nothing else.” Hori pushed himself up and swung his legs to the floor. “Go and do what I have asked, Antef. Get a guard in here to help me. I had thought to be more careful in my research but I am running out of time. We must go home as soon as possible.”
He sent a servant to decline the mayor’s offer of a feast with entertainment, knowing that he was bewildering and probably disappointing the man and his family. Then, supported by the burly shoulder of one of his guards, he made his way out, through the long, hot shafts of red light cast by the setting sun, to the litter.
The short journey to the library was uneventful and the effects of the poppy were at their greatest, but every jolt of the swaying vehicle sent a stab of agony through his vitals. He managed a few words with the librarian and then lay dozing, allowing his bearers to follow the librarian’s litter. Time seemed more fluid, less measurable. It seemed to him that he had been carried for many hours, that his dreams were melting into the reality of the heat and movement of an everlasting present, but the litter was eventually set down and Hori drew the curtains to see the soldier waiting to assist him.
The Koptos necropolis was like a miniature Saqqara, an arid, sandy plateau dotted with little pyramids, mounds, broken pillars and half-buried causeways leading to nowhere. The librarian, to his credit, did not exclaim over Hori’s condition. He led the way to a pile of dark, damp earth and a mere three steps leading to a half-submerged rock door. The shadows of evening had already gathered around it as though begging to be let in, and in spite of his enforced self-absorption Hori shuddered.
He stood leaning against his soldier, a slave holding a flaming torch nearby, and watched while the librarian bent over the imprinted circle of mud and wax that held the knotted cord around the metal hooks. Then the man exclaimed and turned to Hori. “This is definitely the seal I imprinted myself when I last inspected the tomb,” he said, “but it has been broken. Look.”
Hori peered at it as it lay in the man’s palm. Half of it had fallen away and the cord hung precariously from one of the hooks. With a slight tug on the librarian’s part, the rope came away altogether and he dropped it at their feet. “Someone has forced an entry here,” he said roughly. “The Overseer of Workmen told me that the sand was extremely light, not heavy and tamped down at all, and I thought nothing of it. But now …” He put his shoulder against the door and it shifted, swinging inward with a mild groan.
The depth of earth covering the steps would hardly come up to my knees, Hori thought distantly. Could a man, could a thing, dig upward through it and then turn to push it all back again? My dear librarian, I fear that someone forced an exit, not an entry. He suppressed a desire to burst into wild laughter. The laws of Ma’at have been abrogated, he thought, and we now inhabit a world where anything may happen. Anything at all. He followed the librarian and the slave into the narrow darkness beyond.