Shadows on the Aegean (6 page)

However, if Kela said to move, they would pack up their looms, their donkeys, and their white-clothed infants and move. They
believed the goddess loved them and protected them. They didn’t understand why, but they believed. If only Aztlan had so much
trust, Sibylla thought. Even if the very Nostrils of the Bull spewed blood, Sibylla doubted the Aztlantu would believe. Hundreds
of years free of conflict with earth or mortal had made them arrogant. They had no fear or respect. Would they leave their
lush garden villas, the cobbled streets and shops where any merchandise known to the Aegean could be purchased? Would they
leave their vineyards overlooking the glittering wide expanse of Theros Sea?

If they did leave, where would they go?

After lunch the village women retired to the shade of the hill,
sitting like crows on a phone line
, Sibylla heard in her mind. She dozed, feeling the sunlight on her breasts, face, hands, and feet. Her mind seemed still,
content to be part of this community of women. When they awoke, they drank more wine. Today was special because the sweet
girl who had been in Sibylla’s vision was marrying after the full moon. Would Mistress Sibylla bless the union by attending?
The vision was faded, easy to forget. A marriage party would hearten them all. Sibylla agreed with a smile.

The bride was almost fourteen summers. Her body had developed a little ahead of her spirit. Surrounded by her aunts, cousins,
sisters, and mother, she listened wide-eyed as her grandmother took her hands and described the mysteries of the wedding night.
With giggles and suggestions from the matrons, the girl’s questions were answered and her sparkling brown eyes were no longer
fearful.

Sibylla sat back, contemplating the differences between Caphtor, a rural vassal, and the cosmopolitan islands of Aztlan. Was
this what Aztlan was like before the clan structure, when families were linked by blood ties only? In Caphtor everyone did
a little of everything; had their own garden, owned their own goat, carded their own wool, wove their own cloth. At home in
Aztlan, each clan had a separate responsibility to the empire. The Mariners sailed the sea, the artisans on Delos beautified
the empire, her own clan fed and cared for the cattle.

Together they entered the sacred cave and bathed the bride in the icy waters of the sacred spring. They rubbed her skin dry
with fresh herbs and flowers, then led her outside. An elderly aunt mixed henna and with graceful strokes began to paint the
bride’s hands.

Sibylla’s glance fell to her own hand, long fingered and elegant. She wore no symbol of marriage. No tattoo wound around her
wrist and over her fingers, declaring she was wed. Would she ever love like that?
I already have
, she heard an impatient voice say.
I lost him, and what the hell am I doing here?

Disoriented, Sibylla ignored the voice in her head and focused on the celebration. This was her youngest grandchild, the weathered
woman leading them had announced proudly. May it be the wish of Kela that she have a great-granddaughter by next harvest.
The bride blushed as the women laughed. Sibylla shrugged away her sense of unease—the vision was false, surely.

Kela wouldn’t let them come to harm, would she?

The women of the village brushed the bride’s hair, braiding sections and tying in an odd number of trinkets in honor of the
goddess as bride. In Aztlan the bride would wear gold and silver and precious stones, but the Caphtori were poor and found
their wealth in herbs, flowers, and ribbons. The situation worked to the benefit of Aztlan.

Finally the bride’s hands were finished, vines and flowers winding over her palms and inner wrists, the butterfly of Kela
in the center of her left palm.

Please don’t let this be for naught, Sibylla begged Kela. She is so young, so full of life. Please spare these people.

Sibylla thought she smelled burned flesh in the air already.

JANUARY 1996, EGYPT

T
HE SECRET HAD BEEN GUARDED FOR AGES
. Hidden beneath and within tons of stone, waiting for those chosen.

A living sentinel, the last lion sat in a rare patch of shade in Egypt’s eastern desert, his tawny gaze fixed in the distance
where humans toiled, moving the earth, scrabbling beneath it like jackals. They were working in the den where his ancestors
had died. There they had given their lives, watching, waiting, and defending.

It was his turn.

Only his instinctual need to return to this den motivated him. He licked his paws clean, watching the humans. They had now
all descended into the den.

Rising to the call he felt, the old lion began to hobble his way across the sands, to end his life where it had begun. To
end his ancestors’ mission.

To reveal the secret.

S
WEAT TRICKLED BETWEEN HER BREASTS
, but Dr. Camille Kingsley ignored it, as she ignored everything that interfered with her excavation.

Bubbles of excitement boiled in her blood. Anticipation that she didn’t dare voice. They were so close now. She could feel
it in the air: all her senses were on full alert. So close, so very close! The swishing sound of brushes on stone was musical
in its rhythm. Please let this be it, she petitioned blindly.

After a cartouche had been found inscribed on the rock above them, funding for this project had escalated. The excavation
had stepped into the spotlight, and Cammy was lucky she was still a part of it. Though she was an expert on the early eighteenth
dynasty, she still was a lowly postdoc. Fortunately her location (already being in Egypt) and her role in the early finds
(as one of the diggers) had helped her case.

The cartouche they found was Hatshepsut’s, the woman pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty and arguably one of the most powerful
female rulers in history. Finding anything from her reign was miraculous, not to mention suspicious. Why would she have carved
her name way out here in the eastern desert? No one could answer that question, at least not in a way that made sense.

Please be the find of my life, Cammy thought again.

She heard one of the others coughing from the centuries of stirred-up dust. Cammy kept at her detail work, brushing away the
wall dust in fragile layer after layer, searching for the slick plaster the ancients had painted here almost 3,500 years ago.
If this room had been anything more than a storeroom, the Egyptians would have painted the walls. It was their way.

The cavern was eerie. The subterranean room had apparently also served as a lion graveyard. Piles of bones had been found
and removed. Within the chamber her team of Egyptologists had found some of the most amazing papyri ever unearthed in Egypt.

The huge, elaborate drawings were in a style unlike that of the ancient Egyptians. The ink and papyri unmistakably placed
them in the early eighteenth dynasty. An enigma wrapped in a mystery most assuredly, she thought. The drawings were so odd,
so debatable, that the team leaders were relieved to have the discovery upstaged when Rameses the Great’s sons’ tombs were
found. The drawings could still be an elaborate hoax.

But the cartouche was not.

Pharaoh Hatshepsut
.

Her near twenty-year reign had brought peace, prosperity, and foreign trade. She had then been usurped, presumably murdered,
though by whom was anyone’s guess. Her nephew Thutmosis III had taken the throne. During his long, bloodstained reign he had
become one of history’s greatest conquerors: the Napoleon of ancient Egypt.

Cammy pushed her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose and blinked, then blinked again.

Ink!

With trembling hands she brushed lightly at the dust. There, beneath it, was the faintest tracing of a line. She frowned.
The paint wasn’t typical; it was far too thick and inconsistent. Swallowing carefully, she continued to brush away. A fine
crossbar. Another line, parallel to the first. A few pieces of the ink flaked off, and Cammy bit her lip to keep from cursing.
She rubbed her sweat-soaked face on her dusty shirt, then brushed away some more at the wall.

A ladder—the common symbol used to portray climbing to Osiris. The means to get to heaven, to the afterworld … which meant
the chamber …

It was a tomb!

“Jon,” she said calmly, calling the head archaeologist.

A tomb? Hatshepsut’s cartouche above? Was it possible that this was Hatshepsut’s tomb? The tomb prepared for her in the Valley
of the Kings had never been inhabited. Would Pharaoh have built a tomb on the east bank of the Nile? In the middle of the
desert? It was unheard of, but so was a female pharaoh.

“Jon,” she said a little louder.

Above them she heard muffled screams, which she ignored. Hatshepsut’s tomb? The idea was too fantastic!

“What the—!” said Brian, the Aussie.

Tearing her gaze away from the ladder drawing that stretched up the wall, Cammy looked over her shoulder.

A golden roaring blur soared in from the opening in the roof. Camille heard her screams mingled with the others. A giant cat!
A lion? The rushing of blood in her ears was so loud that she couldn’t hear. The lion advanced on her, his massive chest spattered
with blood, tufts of fur missing from all over his body. Cammy’s mind dashed from utter darkness to fears of rabies, attacks
… He advanced and she stepped backward, crashing into the seven-foot wooden ladder that leaned against the wall.

Ironic that it leaned in parallel to her new discovery, Cammy thought fleetingly. She couldn’t look away from the lion. Clumsily
she backed her way up one step and then another and another, hoping the angle of the ladder would support her.

The lion growled low in his throat and swiped at her with a massive paw. Cammy shrieked and clambered up another step, her
trembling arms reaching toward the ceiling for balance. He sat down, his shaggy head and huge mouth just inches from her sandaled
feet.

With a whimper, Cammy scooted onto the highest step, her shoulder blades against the ceiling, her legs tucked close to her.
The lion roared and Cammy cringed, backing against the ceiling. She felt her hands, already near the meeting point of wall
and roof, go up …

And inside the rock.

“Camille! I’ve got him in my sights! Duck!” Jon’s voice filled the chamber a moment before the lion leaped.

An explosion rocked the room and Cammy grabbed the rocky ledge above her, struggling to hang on and pull herself up to safety
as the lion collapsed against the ladder, sending it crashing onto the dirt-packed floor.

Cammy glanced up and into a hallway, lit with the dull gleam of gold. This
was
it!

Then the ceiling gave way.