Scroll of Saqqara(80)

The room was very small and appeared to be unfinished. The walls were plain rock into which man-sized but empty niches had been crudely hacked, probably for shawabtis that were never installed, Hori surmised. Ribbons of wet mildew snaked everywhere. The floor was a sheet of black rank water that only dully gave back the flaring torchlight and lapped with a slow easy menace against Hori’s feet. In the centre, islanded by that shallow, mysterious sea, were two lidless coffins. Hori drew in his breath. Craning, holding the torch as far out as he could, he tried to divine the contents but was shown only leaping shadows. With a grunt he ducked his head and stepped gingerly into the water. The Overseer gave a low exclamation behind him, which he ignored. The movement stirred the dark expanse and it circled out from him and kissed the farther wall with a soft sucking sound. Hori’s flesh crawled.

Slowly he waded towards the coffins The water deepened but not much. He felt it just over his ankles and he cringed from the slippery texture of the long-submerged rocky floor beneath him. Nevertheless he kept going, almost unconsciously reciting a litany to Ptah under his breath, and in a moment he was peering into the coffins. They were nothing more than great troughs of roughly hollowed stone, and both were empty. Looking carefully into their pitted depths Hori decided that they had once been occupied. There were traces of blackened embalming salts mingled with body fluids that over time always discoloured the stone.

Carefully, deliberately, he quartered the chamber, his feet questing. Not for anything in the world would he have placed his hands down into that murk. But his toes did not stub against the things he sought. “There are no lids,” he said aloud, his voice falling flat and muffled.

Then he gave a startled shout. The torch had shown him a small arch let into the base of the right-hand wall, just big enough for a man to crawl into. Leaning down he inserted his free hand. He felt cold, dry, sandy rock canting upwards at a gradual rate. Everything in him shrank from what he knew he must do. Damn you, Antef, he thought, annoyed. Why did you have to go away just now? You would have been fearless here. You would have helped me. “Overseer!” he called. “Come here!”

There was a moment of whispering. Hori did not turn round. He waited, feeling all at once alone and very vulnerable, the sheer aloofness of the place sending prickles along his spine. I wish I had summoned the courage to tell Father after all, he thought. I wish he were here, standing beside me taking charge with the aura of authority and security that reassures us all, servant and family alike. Nothing terrible ever happens around him.

After a while he heard the Overseer splash into the water and then felt a touch on his shoulder. The man was trembling but obedient. “What do you think of this?” Hori demanded. The man examined the aperture, then straightened.

“It looks like a crawlspace of some kind,” he replied. “It is not a natural fissure in the rock.”

“I did not think so either,” Hori agreed. “Hold the torch down, as low as you can. I am going to see where it leads.”

He did not wait for objections. Thrusting the flame at the Overseer he lay on his stomach, arms and head in the hole. His kilt quickly soaked up the foetid water and his muscles contracted with cold revulsion. Grimly he pushed himself forward. His shoulders caught. He wriggled them free. “The air is cleaner in here!” he called, “and I am sure I feel it stirring from somewhere above.” If the Overseer replied, Hori did not hear him. Ahead was thick blackness. He squirmed on, up a gently rising grade, keeping his head low, his elbows and knees soon grazed on the gritty rock. Panic threatened to immobilize him but he repressed it forcibly, thinking of the men who waited behind him, bravely controlling their own fears.

It seemed to Hori that he crawled on for an age, that surely the sun must have set by now, that he had only the illusion of movement and he was really making motions that were taking him nowhere. But suddenly the top of his head met something hard and sharp and he recoiled with an oath, turned on his side, and explored with his fingers. The way was blocked by a large stone, but even as he worked at it, it shifted. Bracing himself against the walls of the crude tunnel he pushed. The rock quivered. With all his might, Hori heaved, feeling that his strength was diminished because of the total darkness, knowing it was not true. The rock ground, squealed a mild protest, then all at once gave, letting in a great shaft of blinding light. Hori recoiled. His eyes gushed tears. Blinking, he forced himself forward and in another few minutes his head was free and he was gazing painfully out upon a slope that ambled to a palm grove. The city danced in the haze beyond it. An angle of beige stone obscured his vision to the right, and pulling his hands loose he grasped it and heaved himself free