Chris Blake - Egyptian Curse

Tom wondered if the man hadn’t understood him. So far, thanks to Anubis’s magic, he and Isis had been able to speak to people in every time and place they had visited. Had the magic worn off?

“The capital, of course!” the man finally said, to Tom’s relief.

“Memphis?” Isis asked, looking hopeful.

As he started to climb the scaffold, the man laughed. “No, Amarna, silly girl.” He looked down at Isis and shook his head. “Do you think we’re still in the Old Kingdom, or something?”

Tom expected Isis to tell the worker off for being so rude to a princess, but instead she just looked puzzled.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I was sure me and Fluffpot had come home.”

“Let’s go and look over there,” Tom said, pointing to a high stone wall that had already been finished. Two men were chiselling away, covering the wall in hieroglyphics.

“Those men are scribes,” Isis said. “This must be a temple of some sort.”

When they reached the wall, Isis pointed excitedly at a figure carved into the stone.

“Look!” she said. “Here’s a picture of my father.” She smiled as she traced the carved surface with her fingertips. “Everyone used to tell me I looked just like him.”

Tom looked at the carving, but couldn’t see much of a resemblance.

“We are in Egypt,” Isis said, studying the wall. “But judging from how old this carving looks, it seems we’ve turned up long after I was alive.”

As she spoke, there was the sound of splitting rock above them. Tom looked up and saw three men pushing the head off the biggest statue he had ever seen. It slowly rolled forward and then …

CRASH!

The whole statue came tumbling down. Cleo darted out of its way. Tom grabbed Isis, and they stumbled backwards as bits of stone smashed all round them.

“Whoa!” Tom cried. “That thing nearly killed us!”

“This is too dangerous, even for someone as brave as me!” said Isis. “Let’s find my amulet and get out of here.”

“The ring,” Tom said. “Ask your ring for help.”

Isis looked down at her magical scarab ring, which had once belonged to the goddess Isis herself.

“Oh, goddess Isis,” she began. “Please help us one last time. Tell us where we can find the final amulet!”

Silvery words drifted up out of the ring and hung in the air in the shape of a riddle.

Tom cleared his throat and read out loud:

“From the north, ill tides do flow,

As neighbours seek to breach the bank.

Into battle you must go,

If you want to find what’s in the ankh.

This final quest has brought you home,

But the kingdom’s threat is very real.

Seek the boy king! Crush his foe,

Beneath the chariot’s mighty wheel.”

“What does that mean?” Tom said. “For a start, what’s an ankh?”

“It’s an Ancient Egyptian symbol that means the key to life,” Isis said, watching the silvery words disappear.

Tom was wondering whether the words ‘ill tides do flow’ and ‘breach the bank’ had anything to do with the River Nile, when a gruff voice shouted, “You two! Get over here and stop slacking!”

Swinging round, Tom spotted a short man with a bald head and an enormous pot belly that hung over his loincloth. In his hand was a large whip.

“Somebody’s been eating more than his fair share of cake,” Isis giggled.

With the pot-bellied foreman cracking his whip at their heels, Tom and Isis were forced to join a group of workers pulling a sledge across rolling logs. The sledge held a giant lump of stone.

Tom grabbed the rope.

“HEAVE!” the foreman yelled. His whip snapped on a worker’s back. “HEAVE!”

The sledge hardly moved an inch, even with everyone pulling. Tom could feel the scratchy rope biting into his hands. To make matters worse, the sun blazed down on his head.

“This is not a job for a princess!” Isis gasped.

Crack! went the whip. “Get on with it, boy!” the foreman barked at her.

Isis’s eyebrows bunched together. “Boy? I’m not a boy – I’m a princess. I’m going to teach that bully a lesson!” she hissed, throwing the rope to the ground.

“No, Isis! Don’t—”

Tom reached out to stop her, and lost his grip on the rope.

“No!” he cried.

Too late! Tom stumbled and several huge, muscly builders piled on top of him and Isis, as the entire line gave way. From underneath the mountain of workers, Tom spied a very angry-looking foreman.

“You! Get over here!” he snarled at Tom, cracking his whip. “I’m going to give you the thrashing of your life!”

Snap! The foreman’s whip whizzed through the air and cracked on the sand, right by Tom’s feet.

“I don’t have time for weaklings!” the foreman shouted, grinning nastily.

Tom braced himself for the whip’s sting. But suddenly a young man, dressed in a pleated loincloth, ran up to the foreman. He whispered urgently in his ear.

The foreman frowned at Tom and Isis. “It’s your lucky day – I don’t have time to give you a beating. Get over to the old temple wall and help chisel off the picture of Aten!” He pointed at a stone building in the distance.

Tom, Isis and Cleo ran off before he could change his mind.

The temple was full of workers hacking away at a picture of a large disc carved into a lump of pink granite.

“Yikes. That was close,” Tom said. “Who’s this Aten?”

Isis shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said.

One of the workers, who’d stopped chiselling to wipe his sweaty brow, looked at Isis and chuckled. He pointed to the disc.

“This is Aten, silly!” he said. “The Sun God, of course.”

“Nonsense!” Isis scoffed. “Everyone knows the Sun God and creator of all things is Ra! Amun-Ra!”

“What? Where have you two been?” the man asked. “The whole reason we’re getting rid of this carving is because the old pharaoh made everyone worship just one god, Aten. His son, the new pharaoh, has gone back to worshipping the old gods – so there’s a lot of work for us changing all the temples back.”

“Quite right,” Isis said, frowning at the giant carved disc. “Whoever heard of having just one god? How ridiculous!”

Seeing a new foreman glaring at them, Tom and Isis each picked up a chisel and hammer and began chipping away at the rock. Even Cleo scratched at the carving with her claws.

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