Eye of the Moon (6 page)

I grasped the lamp and held it high with my free hand. Clusters of them hung upside down from the ceiling vault like empty girdle pouches. Too many to count. I was grateful I wasn't wearing a wig, that my head had been freshly shaved for the embalming ritual. The thought of hooks from their wings snaring me made me shudder.

“Tuthmosis . . . ?” I bit my lip. Should I be calling him by his name or by his royal title?

“
Tuthmosis
, I can't do this alone.
Wake up
!” My voice sounded hollow as it echoed into the space. I shook him urgently. But he rested like a stone against my shoulder.

I began half dragging, half pushing him. His legs buckled and splayed in all directions. He started
to shuffle along like a sleepwalker. The ground was mushy and slippery under foot, slick with droppings. Hardly daring to breathe, I dragged him beneath the silent black pouches and prayed he wouldn't suddenly shout out and disturb them.

Rats scampered ahead of me, the skittering sound of their nails scraping stone. Their menacing shadows with long tails danced around the walls of the narrow passage in the lamplight.

I could hardly breathe. The space seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. The walls and ceiling were closing in on me. Pressing the air out of my lungs. Pressing in from all sides. Suffocating me.

I stumbled down some stone stairs and propped Tuthmosis against a wall so I could catch my breath and listen for the sound of my father's footsteps. But the silence was broken only by the squeak of rats.

What if he didn't follow? What if I could never find my way out?

Tuthmosis began murmuring.

“Are you awake?” His head lolled against my shoulder as I pushed him upright. “I can't carry you any longer. Do you hear me? Wake up!” I shook him
urgently and then, without thinking, I slapped him. A sharp slap on both cheeks.

What? Had I lost my senses? He was the crown prince—son of King Amenhotep and Queen Tiy of Egypt. I should've been bowing to him. Yet here I was, slapping him. I could be put to death for much less than this!

I held the lamp up to his face to see if I'd left a mark. Both cheeks were red. His eyelids were fluttering. What if
he
knew?

For a brief moment he opened his eyes and then closed them again.

“No! I beg you! Please,
please
, wake up!”

He finally looked back at me. I held the lamp closer. Beneath the dark lashes and the rims of black kohl, his eyes were a strange shade of . . . blue? “Tuthmosis, can you see anything? Have you been blinded? Your eyes are odd. They're blue!”

He nodded with his lids half-closed. “I know.”

“Impossible! Egyptians don't have blue eyes.”

He rested his head against the wall and sighed. His breathing became deep and even.

I shook him firmly. “Don't you dare go back to sleep again. We
have
to find a way out of here.”

He shivered and started to grumble about something, then demanded, “Are you one of the palace slaves? It's cold here. Fetch my cloak. Where have you put it?”

“I'm not a slave! Listen! Wosret tried to poison you.”

He shook his head like a dog trying to shake off water and then turned and looked at me as if he were emerging from a thick mist.

“Do you hear me? Wosret tried to poison you.”

“Wosret?”
His eyes opened wide. “Don't be ridiculous! Wosret is the highest of high priests. He's my royal mentor.”

“Don't you remember anything?”

Tuthmosis frowned. “A ritual. It had to do with my mother's death. Yes. Now I remember. I was attending her embalming. Wosret offered me a chalice to drink for comfort.”

“
Comfort?
He wanted you to drink
poison
. Listen . . .” I told him quickly about my father's replacing the poison with another potion and replacing him with the dead boy's body.

He shook his head. “Impossible! You've made it up. Where are my servants? Who are you? Why should I believe you?”

“Because I'm trying to help you. If it wasn't for my father, I wouldn't be bothered with you!”

The prince lifted his head sharply and glared back at me. “I could have you put to death for treason.”

“Treason?”
I hissed back at him. “I'm trying to
help
! You don't seem to understand the danger. Look around at where you are. Why do you think you're here? Wosret wants you dead. But stay here, then, if you don't believe me. I can't waste any more time. I'll find my own way out.”

He gave me an icy look. I bowed my head and went on hurriedly. “I implore you. They'll be coming after us soon. And my father ordered me to do this.”

“How do I know you speak the truth?”

“By the white feather of Maat, every word is true. You
must
believe me.” I glanced back quickly at the dark passageway. “My father is supposed to follow. But he hasn't. We have to escape before the high priests come after us. Our lives depend on it. But I can't see an exit.”

As I swung the lamp higher, my heart jumped. Wosret suddenly lurched up through the flickering shadows in front of me in his sneering jackal mask. Then I laughed as I realized I was staring into the eyes of a painted Anubis on the wall.

We were in a small vault.

“This
must
lead to a burial chamber,” I muttered.

“How do you know?”

I pointed at the ceiling. “There's a painting of Nut, goddess of the sky, lighting the darkness. And here on the wall is Anubis touching the mouth of a mummy with an adze. This is the antechamber before a burial chamber . . . before the final journey to Ra. There
has
to be a hidden door. A mouth to the afterlife.”

Tuthmosis seemed distracted. He pointed at the floor. “Those turquoise tiles . . . look at the way they're arranged. Three rows of ten. Like the thirty squares in a game of Senet.”

“Senet?” I reached into my girdle pouch and brought out the board my father had given me. “My father said this would help. He said to be mindful of its messages.”

The cedar-wood box was long and narrow with a turquoise and ivory inlay. On one side was a drawer. I slid it open. Inside were carved agate pieces. Tuthmosis picked up one and rubbed it between his fingers. Then he started to arrange the pieces across the board.

“We're wasting time . . .”

“No, I'm trying to remember something. Senet
is a game of passage. Your father must've given it to you for a reason.” He looked up suddenly. “That's it! A game of passage—a journey! The game follows a journey along the thirty squares. Some squares are more important than others. Look.”

I held the lamp above the box. Drawings were incised into the turquoise squares and inlaid with ebony. Each drawing was precise and perfect. In one square was the ibis-headed Thoth, in another a figure of a man in a boat with his head turned backward. A frog. A scarab beetle. A symbol for a maze or labyrinth. A symbol of water. In the last square, an image of Ra.

“It makes no sense. It's just a game. We haven't time—”

“Games have a beginning and an end.”

“What's that got to do with the tiles on the floor?”

“The floor is a Senet board. See, there are thirty tiles in three rows of ten. We have to find the end square.”

“Why?”

“That's where your pieces leave the board. Where you escape to meet Ra. It's marked with the image of Ra. If we find the end tile, we've found our escape.”

I brushed aside the dirt and rat droppings with
my sandal and bent down and peered at the squares. “Nothing. Not even the tiniest mark or pattern. This isn't a Senet board. They're ordinary tiles. And I was wrong. This doesn't lead to a burial chamber. We're in a dead end. We've missed a turn. We need to retrace our steps.”

“No! Find the Ra square. There are only two possibilities for it. Facing from either end, it'll be the bottom left square.”

I gave him a hard look as I traced my fingers around the edges of the left tile in the bottom row nearest me. He was good at giving orders. “See! Nothing, except rat droppings!”

“Try the other side.”

I went to the opposite end and held the lamp high. The turquoise color of the left tile was worn. My eyes flew to the narrow, shadowed gap around the tile's edges. Then I caught Tuthmosis's knowing look and was forced to admit, “You're right. This
has
to be it!”

   
5
   
THE COBRA
GODDESS

T
he tile was heavy. Eventually I managed to loosen it and ease it aside. Below was a gap. I held up the lamp and followed rough steps that led into a dark, narrow space. They sloped downward and ended against a stone wall.

“What's there?” Tuthmosis groped his way down the steps toward me. I could see by the way his foot turned in that the bone had set badly.

“Another dead end. The passage is sealed with a stone wall.”

He traced his fingertips across the stones and stopped on one particular rock. “There's a pattern here. Lines crosshatched. Like a web. It's a symbol for a labyrinth. It could be a sign. What did he mean?”

I frowned at him.

“Your father. When he gave you the Senet board, he said to be mindful of its messages.”

“Oh, that!” I shrugged. “Maybe this is the entrance to a labyrinth.” I began to claw at the edges of the stone that was marked, searching for a place to loosen it. “It's useless. My fingertips are bleeding.”

“We need something sharp. What do you have?”

My hand felt for my girdle pouch. There was my throw-stick that Katep had carved, but I didn't want it damaged, and my mother's bronze mirror. I'd snatched it up before leaving the Temple of Sobek. The reflecting disk was a large moon held up by Hathor, so that when I looked into it, Hathor's face showed directly below my own. She gave me courage.

“There's this.” I drew it out from my pouch.

“You took a
mirror
to my mother's embalming?”

“I meant no disrespect.”

He laughed. “My mother would've been delighted. She spent hours in front of her mirror every day while her attendants arranged her face and finery. Now, hurry. Dig!”

I gave him a look. He spoke like someone used to giving orders and having them obeyed.
I'm not your servant
is what I wanted to snap in reply. Instead, I jabbed Hathor's feet at the stone's edge and sent her a silent prayer to ask for help in holding my tongue.

My hands were raw and scraped by the time the stone eventually loosened. I wiped them against my tunic and rubbed the mirror clean.

He shrugged as he saw me do it. “Not quite as perfect as before, but the face that looks into it will still be perfect.”

I bit my tongue. He'd given no thought to asking my name but felt free to give me orders and pass comments about my face.

He put his shoulder to the stone and shoved. Then he edged his body halfway through the opening.