CHAPTER THREE

The passage under the temple wove deeply into the earth. Elizabeth and Lord Hayden held their lanterns high. Each scanned a side of the eight-foot walls, searching carvings in the rock that would give them a clue as to where it led. They had trod through the corridor for hours; stopping only to lunch briefly on sandwiches and juice they carried in their backpacks, and replace the batteries in their dimming lanterns. Rested, and their lanterns shining brightly once more, the two resumed their exploration.

"Quickly, look here," Elizabeth exclaimed. Lord Hayden joined her at once beside the opposite wall. "These carvings," they’re different from the ones we’ve encountered thus far."

They certainly were different, Lord Hayden agreed, studying them closely. Up until now they had found only carvings and drawings depicting everyday life in ancient Rome and Greece.

Elizabeth said, "If memory serves me correctly, they remind me of the ones etched on the bottom of the Apollo statuette."

"They’re definitely Egyptian hieroglyphics," Hayden confirmed. Elizabeth traced her fingertips over the carvings. She stopped when she came to a combo of the opal and the woman.

"Keep going," Lord Hayden urged.

The next carving was that of a man. He wore a garb that was neither Egyptian nor Roman. Neither Lord Hayden nor Elizabeth could identify it. "The symbol above it—" Elizabeth began. "No, it’s not a symbol," she amended, "it’s a ragged circle, pitted and lined. It might be natural erosion.

Lord Hayden shook his head, though he was as puzzled as she was.

Elizabeth urged, "If not that, what does it signify? Let’s go on. I want to know more."

Lord Hayden nodded, his curiosity peaked along with hers.

They continued onward until they reached the end of the passage, and the entrance to a huge chamber.

"My God," Elizabeth whispered. This was the room in her dream.

Life-sized golden statues of Egyptian deities lined the walls of the chamber. Among them, Osiris, God of the Netherworld and Resurrection. He wore a tall, pharaonic crown with a feather on each side. In his left hand he held the heka scepter, the crook that symbolized the pharaoh’s power as the leader of his people. In his right hand, Osiris held the flail, tail end resting over his shoulder and representing his authority over the land. Beside him stood Isis, his sister and wife, considered by the Egyptian the ideal wife and mother, and the Goddess of pure love, a beauteous, lithe woman, wearing a crown of cow horns enclosing a sun disk. The third statue was that of Anubis, sculpted as a jackal with the body of a human, God of the Dead.

A hundred other mementos of past millenniums lay scattered on stone tables about the chamber—silver canisters, turquoise-blue glass goblets, gold and silver cups and dishes and beakers. The two archaeologists entered the room slowly, reverently. Lord Hayden and Elizabeth forgot each other’s presence. Moments like this were rare in the life of an antiquarian, and every second of them was required to touch and examine the past, relish it and relive it in the evidence of lives long consigned to the afterworld.

Much later, when they had savored and memorized the aura of the past, jotted it down in little notebooks, and safely tucked those notebooks into pockets, Lord Hayden said, "Our friend, the official, will dance the tarantella when we tell him what we’ve discovered here." Elizabeth made no rejoinder. Her gaze was fixed on the mural at the far end of the chamber behind the dais and the throne. The woman in her dream, in white flowing garments, the same woman the ancient sculptor had captured in the statuette that Lord Hayden had tried to purchase for the Museum, stared back at her from the wall mural. In her hands, outstretched and cupped, the opal levitated, prisms of light shooting from its center.

At the woman’s left stood Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, pictured as a man with a falcon’s head, worshipped as a solar deity, and patron of every pharaoh. To the woman’s right—Maat, the goddess of truth and justice, wearing an upright ostrich plume in her hair, and holding in her right hand, a papyrus staff, and in her left hand, the ankh, a cross with a looped top. The staff and ankh were symbols of life, of truth, and of justice.

The opal held the gazes of Horus and Maat, as it did Elizabeth’s. The dream was repeating itself, and Elizabeth—

"Eros, you came to me from a rock midst the stars. You loved me, and gave to me the opal of truth. Yet you asked that I never look upon your face with the knowledge bestowed me by the opal, for then I would see you in your true form. I dared, and when I saw, I could not bare to look. You could not stand to feel my revulsion and so you left in your golden chariot of fire. But with that same knowledge bestowed me by the opal, I saw also into my soul. Too late, my love, for it is the soul that loves. And I will love you for all eternity, in whatever form you be, in whatever life you live, I will search for you."

"Grace, what are you talking about?" Lord Hayden asked from behind, clasping her shoulders.

"Seek the opal in the Valley of the Queens," Elizabeth said, turning and lifting her gaze to Lord Hayden. "Behold its light. Behold my soul, Eros, my beloved."

"Grace!" Lord Hayden cried, as she slumped into his arms. It was this room bewitching her, he reasoned. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her out of the chamber, and as far away from it as the strength in his arms would allow. When he finally set her down gently on the ground, he cradled her in his arms, calling her name several times before she opened her eyes and he was able to breathe a sigh of relief. "Welcome back, Miss Grace Quinlan."

Elizabeth regarded him speculatively, then her eyes widened as full memory returned and she sat upright. "What happened?" The last thing she remembered was studying the mural of the queen levitating the magic opal.

"I’m not sure," Lord Hayden admitted. "You entered a trance and spoke with someone else’s voice."

Elizabeth whispered, "I dreamt about her last night, just as she is pictured in the mural. William, I believe the legend of Eros and Psyche is true." Accepting Lord Hayden’s hand to steady her, she climbed to her feet. Excitement feeding adrenalin, she went on saying, "Though considered a Greek and Roman myth, the clues we have encountered thus far—Psyche’s Temple, the Egyptian Audience Chamber, and the mural, all these point to the legend’s origin as Egyptian, absorbed into the Greco/Roman cultures."

Lord Hayden listened to her every word, but over and beyond her comments, was the effect of his first name on her lips. She had called him "William." He felt a pleasant tremor between his shoulder blades. The gentle pitch of her voice, the way his name had rolled from her lips, an almost physical, tangible caress.

Unaware of his heightened sensitivity to her closeness, Elizabeth continued, "Egypt’s early influence over the Mediterranean cities is a recorded fact. Truly pure cultures are few, if any at all. Most are derived from or mixtures of others. It is the same with mythology. You know that."

Lord Hayden nodded, smiling. Beauty and brains, a rarity. Indeed the clues thus far affirmed Professor Elizabeth Eldridge’s theories. "What about the drawing of the circle, ragged and pitted, with strange lines running across it?" he asked. "And below it, that of the man with the garb neither of us recognized?" He had already drawn some conclusions, but he was curious to hear hers.

She replied promptly, "We didn’t recognize the garb or the man wearing it, because it was no earthly garb, and the man wearing, no earthly man, but a being from another world. The circle, ragged and pitted with the odd lines running across it— a rock, a planet, or an asteroid, perhaps the planetoid, Eros." Elizabeth continued to postulate, absently dusting off her skirt. "Eros’ orbit comes closest to earth than any other large body we know of to date, except the moon. William—"

Again the pleasant tremor. Hayden shifted slightly, a bit unnerved. "William, I’ve concluded that many thousands of years ago this alien being visited earth and fell in love with a beautiful Egyptian queen. He was a being of superior intelligence, with abilities and technology far in advance of ours. Capable of projecting images, he camouflaged his appearance and forbade Psyche to see him in his true form, afraid she would find him unappealing. I suspect the opal was a visual aid, an instrument that permitted one to see more than the apparent." Elizabeth paused, wondering if Lord Hayden, who stood listening with a peculiar look on his face, believed she was expounding nonsense. "Is that what I... spoke of during the trance?" she asked modestly.

Lord Hayden nodded.

"Then it follows," Elizabeth continued, gathering confidence, "that Psyche used the opal to look upon her lover in his true form. And when she did so, Eros left her and returned to his world, the planetoid, though in the end they found each other once more."

"No, that’s not exactly what you said during your trance. I’ll tell you precisely what you said while we head back to the surface. Let’s go."

He told her everything except that she had called him Eros, partly because he did not believe the voice was actually addressing him, and partly because he was a little afraid it had been doing just that.

"I’m going to the Valley of the Queens," Elizabeth said with determination, when they were back on the sun-bleached surface.

"Miss Quinlan, you are a writer, not an archaeologist."

Both stopped walking and faced each other. Elizabeth lowered her gaze, reflecting a moment. Then her chin rising to the point of straining, she said, "Lord William Hayden, in the interests of Professor Elizabeth Eldridge, your peer and colleague, will you come with me?"

Laughter suffused his clean-shaven jaw and wide-set eyes. Elizabeth waited for a sneer to follow the laughter, and finally a rejection dipped in mockery. His laughter suffered a quick death as he eyed her skeptically. Her chin did not budge from its height; the emerald gaze remained fixed on his, ready for whatever reply he chose to give. Her lips pursed, and again Lord Hayden caught that hint of familiarity that continued to elude him. All at once the idea struck him. They had to be related! Her mannerisms, especially the way her lips pursed when she grew anxious. Elizabeth Eldridge had a similar habit. She was headstrong, this writer, like Eldridge. "I’ll need at least a week to complete my work here," he said, "but then I’ll accompany you." Even if only one tenth of what Elizabeth had theorized about the tomb and the opal was true, the archaeologist in him would give him no choice but to follow her lead to its conclusion.