Lauren Haney - Place of Darkness

“I’ve always been one to behave in a right and proper manner, to obey the law of the land and do right by the lady Maat, but in this case. .”

“No.” Bak placed a hand on the architect’s wrist. “What good is the law if men take punishment into their own hands?” He noted Pashed’s troubled demeanor and said no more. The man’s conscience would lead him to reveal nothing-or so he prayed.

He started down the ramp, remembered a question he had failed to ask, and turned back. “Do you know anything about the tomb of a woman called Neferu, spouse of Nebhepetre Montuhotep?”

“Neferu?” Pashed shook his head slightly, as if to clear away his troubled thoughts, at least enough so he could speak of a less bothersome subject. “Hers was the first sepulcher we came upon in this valley.”

Bak gave him a sharp look. “Kaemwaset knew nothing of it until he found mention of it in the archives. Has he not been priest from the day construction began?”

“He wasn’t assigned to Djeser Djeseru until after our sovereign laid the foundation deposits and the chief prophet consecrated the valley. We found the tomb a few months earlier, the day we inspected the landscape to learn the extent of the effort we must make to give the building a firm base.”

Bak nodded his understanding. “You were here at the time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where exactly is the tomb located?”

Pashed pointed eastward and a bit to the left of the temple of Djeserkare Amonhotep and Ahmose Nefertari. “At the base of the slope below the cliff, north of an old wall partly buried in sand that runs alongside the temple.”

“How did you find it way out there?”

“The mouth of the tomb lay open.” The architect eyed the terrace below them, the incomplete statues and architectural elements, the many men toiling there, and a look of pride blossomed briefly on his face. “You must remember that before this project began, this valley was seldom visited by man or woman much of the year. Only during the Beautiful Festival of the Valley. Oh, a few women came to bend a knee at the shrine of the lady Hathor, and the cemetery guards made random visits. The robbers must’ve felt they had the place to themselves.”

Bak well remembered how empty and desolate the valley had been when, as a small boy, he had accompanied his father’s housekeeper to the shrine of the lady Hathor. “What did you find inside the tomb?”

“As was apparent the moment we laid eyes on the open shaft, robbers had been there ahead of us. Not once, but several times. Much of the devastation we found in the burial chamber had occurred many years before, many generations ago, but a small niche looked as if it had been opened recently. What had been removed, we had no way of knowing.”

Bak was willing to bet his iron dagger that the jewelry he had found in far-off Buhen had come from that niche. If so, the malign spirit and his gang had already entered Neferu’s tomb and rifled it. It could not possibly be the one they were searching for-or had found but had been unable to clear.

“The tomb was quite lovely,” Pashed went on. “Senenmut ordered it temporarily closed, to be reopened later. He’s not yet decided if the terrace will be extended beyond its entrance, but he plans to make it accessible so all who come to Djeser Djeseru will be able to visit the sepulcher of our sovereign’s worthy ancestor.”

An admirable goal, Bak thought, especially since Maatkare Hatshepsut’s forebears had no blood tie to Nebhepetre Montuhotep, and probably not to his spouse either.

“I must leave you, Pashed, but I wish to be told the instant Senenmut appears.”

“Should I need you, where will you be?”

With a grim smile, Bak pointed toward the ruined temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep, where Hori, Kasaya, and Kaemwaset stood with the white dog among the broken columns on the northern terrace. “We’ll be there, searching for the tomb of a royal spouse or child.”

The architect flung him a startled look. “If Menna’s the malign spirit, if the tomb he’s been seeking is there, he’ll not sit back and let you find it ahead of him.”

“So I hope.”

“How much time do we have before Senenmut arrives?”

Kasaya asked.

Bak knelt among the broken columns and scratched the dog’s head. The sturdily built animal, which stood higher than his knee, had slick white hair and a bushy tail that curled over its back. Its head was thick and flat, its brown eyes alert and intelligent. It wore a red leather collar studded with bronze squares. “I hope he’ll take a pleasant noonday meal in the royal house before crossing the river. That’d give us about two hours free of worry.”

Hori wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Why would he not listen to Amonked and Maiherperi? Why walk into the arms of a slayer?”

Bak gave the dog, trained as a tracker of men, a final pat and stood up; his eyes slid toward Kaemwaset. “It’s time we began.”

The priest untied the ends of a cloth bag he had hung on his belt and withdrew the roll of papyrus on which Hori had redrawn the plan. He handed it to Bak, who climbed over the broken wall into the main court. His companions followed.

Locating a column standing to waist height, facing the cliff behind the temple, he unrolled the scroll across the broken but relatively flat upper surface.

He and Kasaya glanced at each other, their thoughts alike, and both examined the vertical cliff face that loomed high above the temple. Here the tower-like projections were not as numerous or as tall, not as well-defined, as those behind Djeser Djeseru, and they would not shelter the temple as well. A significant break in this natural shield could be seen, and it occupied the worst possible location. It rose directly above what looked like a fairly recent slide that had partly crushed a portion of the columned hall near the sanctuary.

Menna had not been seen for some time, and the fishermen had vanished about thirty hours ago. Was one man or more somewhere high upon the cliff face even now? The most likely target for attack was the new temple and not the old, but. .

Shoving the thought firmly aside, Bak signaled his companions to gather around his makeshift table. While they looked at the plan, the dog lay in a nearby patch of shade, licking a paw. A warm breeze ruffled their hair and dried the sweat the sun stole from their bodies. The odor of fish drifted to them from the workmen’s huts, as did an acrid smell from the metalsmiths’ furnace. A familiar, comfortable scene that made a lie of Bak’s fears.

“We’ve no way of knowing for certain,” he said, “but let’s assume the temple in this plan was torn down and its foundations buried beneath the one in which we’re standing.”

Kasaya glanced around, skeptical. Hori eyed the ruin with distaste, reluctant to search again for something he had looked for twice without success. Kaemwaset nodded, his faith in Bak bolstered by prayer.

Bak turned his back to the cliff and studied the main court. Around the ruined block of rubble and stone in the center, a few paving stones had been removed and others were broken, but no gap was deep enough to reveal what lay beneath. If the need to know became imperative, they could dig a vertical shaft in the hope of finding the old temple, but such a laborious effort must be a last resort.

Turning slowly, he looked at the broken stone blocks and slabs among which he stood. Pairi and Humay had been somewhere here or in the colonnade court just beyond when he and his men had disturbed them. Had they been working their way around the temple and reached this point after many nights of fruitless searching? Or had they concluded the tomb they sought lay in this court or the next?

The dog growled, alerting them to a new arrival, the young scribe Ani.