Lynda Robinson: Murder in the Place of Anubis

Laying his head on the wall top, he closed his eyes for a moment. He'd been watching since the village had quieted for the night. No one stirred, and he was weary of looking at blank walls and listening to the screeches of the village cats. He heard a creak and lifted his head. Below, someone left the shelter of a doorway and glided around a house, Useramun's house, to the side stairs. That walk, that rolling glide. It was the painter.

Useramun crept upstairs to the roof and walked to the back of the house, which rested against the village wall. Kysen strained to see what the man was doing, but moonlight only aided his vision so far. Then he saw movement.

Useramun vanished over the wall. Kysen burst into quiet flight. In moments he was on Useramun's roof, creeping toward the wall. He reached it, cautiously peered over, and found a ladder. Beyond the foot of the ladder Useramun stumbled in the darkness after a distantly retreating light-a torch. Kysen waited for a count of twenty, then scrambled down the ladder after the painter.

Keeping the painter in sight and yet following at enough distance not to be heard when he stumbled over rocks proved difficult and painful. He heard Useramun grunt as he stepped on a jagged stone. Dropping behind a boulder, Kysen waited for his quarry to adjust his sandal. Then he crept after him once more. The torch climbed the hills that surrounded the village and descended again, following the northern path to the nobles' cemetery.

Kysen hated every step. Spirits roamed the western desert at night. Everyone knew that. So Useramun must have a powerful reason to venture forth, as did whoever he was following. Kysen's foot slipped on the loose rock at the base of a cliff. Pebbles clattered, but Useramun didn't turn. Kysen waited anyway, and as he waited a breeze whipped around the cliff, moaning and whining.

The sound filled the void of night and made Kysen shudder. Angry souls roamed the deserts-starving fiends, ancestors of those whose families had ceased to

Murder In the Place of Anubis 185 provide sustenance for them in the afterlife. Kysen gripped the dagger at his belt, knowing that it would do him no good should a spirit attack.

Best keep his mind on his quest. Useramun had rounded the base of a hill. Kysen staggered after him. As he skirted the slope, he expected to see the vague outline of the painter's kilt, but didn't. Cursing, he sped along a strip of flat land that turned into a track. It climbed another hill. Near the summit, Kysen dropped on his belly and crawled so that he could look over the side without revealing himself. No Useramun. Over the next hill he spied the bobbing torchlight, headed for a small cliff.

Useramun must still be following it. Kysen hurried down the hill after the light. On the floor of the valley he began to encounter rubble cast into hillocks and mounds. They were at the edge of the ruins of a temple from centuries ago in the time of the Pharaoh Sesostris. He walked more quickly now, for he couldn't see the light in the next valley, or Useramun. He walked past a broken limestone block, then slowed and turned back, drawing his dagger.

Resting against the base of the block was something white. Kysen sheathed his dagger and dropped to his knees beside Useramun. The painter lay still, his head lolling to the side, his legs splayed. Kysen could see something dark and wet on his head. He sniffed the coppery bitter smell of blood and leaned close. There was a gash in the back of the painter's head. Nearby lay a rock spattered with more blood.

Cursing, Kysen shifted the painter's body until it was supine, then bent over it to feel for the beat of life at his neck. Useramun groaned and opened his eyes. His arms came up, and he thrashed wildly at Kysen, who raised his own arm in defense.

"Damn you, be still."

"Seth?"

"Can you walk?"

"Don't know. They thought I was dead."

Kysen rose and dragged the painter upright. User- amun protested with a whimper, but remained standing.

"You listen to me," Kysen said as he steadied the painter. "Find a place to hide. I'm going on, but I'll be back to help you."

"You know? Be careful. They're not far ahead, at Hormin's tomb."

"Gods, you're a fool to come after them alone."

"And you?"

"Shut your mouth and hide, painter."

Useramun's teeth flashed in the moonlight. He gri maced as he started toward a V-shaped indentation in the hillside caused by an ancient flood, but swayed and would have fallen if Kysen hadn't caught him. Kysen thrust his shoulder under the painter's arm and walked him toward the shelter. Useramun clung to him, and Kysen swore again.

"If you weren't bleeding all over me, I'd think you'd done this just to get me to touch you."

Useramun laughed and then gasped. Kysen lowered him to the ground so that he nestled in the arms of the V. Tearing the painter's kilt, he pressed the scrap of linen to the wound.

"Hold that and stay still."

He left Useramun cradling his head and pleading not to be left behind. He risked running to make up time, but needn't have worried. The torch was still in sight. It had nearly reached the small cliff, and had stopped by the time Kysen slipped behind a fallen boulder a few yards away from the sheer face of limestone.

A tomb entrance had been cut into the cliff, a rectan gular opening roughly knocked out and ready to be smoothed by stoneworkers. The torch had been stuffed into a pile of rubble near the entrance, and beside it, her shift rippling in the desert wind, stood Beltis. As he watched, the concubine bent and picked up a sack at her feet before entering the tomb shaft. Vague light flickered from the entrance, indicating that lamps had been lit inside.

Priding himself on his insight, Kysen slithered out from behind his rock and over to the entrance. Rough steps had been hacked into the side of the cliff. He slipped inside. Putting his back to a wall, he edged down a few steps, then stopped as he heard Beltis.

"It was madness to light our way with that torch."

A man answered her in a slightly hysterical voice distorted by the echo off the tomb walls.

"I tell you I'm not chancing an encounter with de mons," the man said. "Not again. Not after what I've done. I've suffered enough."

The voices retreated, still squabbling. Kysen eased down the stairs, past a supply of torches left by the tomb's excavators, until they graded into a steeply sloping downward walk. He stopped in a shadow when the shaft widened into an antechamber, a rectangular room that connected with the burial chamber through a recently cut entrance. Debris from the cut still lay in hastily made piles on either side of the opening.

From the burial chamber he could hear scraping and chipping noises, as if someone were hard at work excavating in the next room. When the noises started, Beltis and her ally had stopped arguing. Silence fell, and Kysen strained to hear anything at all. To his surprise, the light inside the burial chamber dimmed. He waited, but heard nothing further.

He was about to investigate when more scraping noises echoed in the chamber and the light there brightened again. Next he heard a clatter and more scrapes, this time coming toward him. He bolted for the ramp, scrambled up the stairs and into the open. Racing for his boulder, he dropped behind it and peeped over the top in time to see Beltis pop out of the tomb entrance, dragging her sack as if she'd stuffed it with rocks.

Behind her came a man, his arms laden with several boxes stacked on top of each other so that his face was hidden. He set them down in the pool of light cast by the torch, but he was too tall, and the light didn't reach his shoulders and head. Kysen cursed silently at the man for not offering him a clear view. He returned his gaze to the boxes and caught a glimpse of alabaster, sheet gold, and ebony. No Egyptian could mistake the sight.