No, they were not friends.
That was what his eyes had told her. They were sharp eyes, like well-honed blades, and they deftly severed the invisible rope she had foolishly imagined strewn between them.
What a stupid question to ask him. ‘We are friends, yes?’ As if they could somehow erase the world of difference between them.
No, he had said with his eyes and inside the dark corridor his meaning had been as bright as day. No, he would not tell her his secret. No, they should not give in to this inexplicable lust. No, she could not trust him. They had become allies only by necessity. They could never, ever be more.
Good. Thank the gods for his good judgement, for in her mourning she had apparently grown weak and lost her own. The only feeling they should be allowing inside their hearts was the simple will to survive.
She watched him cross to the middle of the false chamber in four long strides, but she remained standing at its threshold, feeling foolish.
She had no idea why she had responded so unusually to the sight of the arrowhead. Seeing him pull it from beneath his belt should have inspired anger or even fear, certainly not the warm desire that had crept beneath her skin.
That kiss. She had tried to forget it—had tucked it away inside her heart with the other memories of things she could not explain. She wondered how she could have ever kissed him at all. More importantly, she wondered how she could ever have enjoyed it.
She loathed the memory of his hot breath, abhorred the thought of his gentle touch, scorned the vision of that small tremble she had perceived in his lips, as if he had been nervous and wished to please her.
She was the only person in the world who could protect Tausret from an afterlife of privation, yet she had enjoyed a kiss from the man who would make that privation manifest.
She should not have been kissing, but praying. During the past twelve hours, her beloved Pharaoh had been navigating the labyrinthine marshes and fiery lakes of the Underworld. She had been fighting the giant serpent and merging with the sun god and making the long journey back to the horizon.
Or so Aya hoped. Trapped inside the tomb, she could not know for certain if Tausret had succeeded in her journey. All she knew was that she had been negligent in her duty to her Pharaoh. She could not allow it to happen again.
‘Forgive me, Pharaoh,’ she whispered and felt the tiniest of breezes tousle her hair. Her heart skipped. ‘Pharaoh?’
‘Are you coming?’ called Intef, giving her a fright.
‘Just a moment,’ she called back.
She gulped the strange air moving near the ceiling, imagining it to be Tausret’s own breath. ‘I am here,’ she whispered. ‘I will not forsake you.’ Then she crossed to the middle of the false chamber.
Although slightly smaller than the main chamber—only ten paces wide and twelve long—the false chamber loomed larger to Intef somehow.
Its eight noble pillars—four on each side of the room—held up a steep, barrel-vaulted ceiling whose painted stars glowed with an otherworldly light.
Two vibrant wall-sized murals graced each end of the space. Their beauty gave him pause. On the far wall, he saw the outline of the final brick seal.
‘Your Pharaoh was clever,’ he said. ‘No tomb robber would ever think to search beyond this false chamber. It seems even truer than the main chamber somehow.’
He watched her approach the hut-sized burial container at the room’s centre. She gazed at its gilded walls. ‘And yet it is truly false,’ she said.
He stepped behind her and breathed over her shoulder. Even in the low light, he could see her skin rising beneath his breath.
‘There is a sarcophagus inside this shrine,’ she informed him, ‘but nobody is in it.’
He tilted his head slightly and breathed in her scent. How was it possible she could smell so good? He imagined himself bending to kiss her neck.
She turned to face him and his heart skipped. Gods, those eyes. They were watching him again, causing his thoughts to scatter.
‘I have heard of false doors and hidden pits,’ he said stupidly, ‘but never an entire false chamber. It is a brilliant ruse.’
‘Yet it was never meant as one,’ she said. His eyes slid to the base of her throat. She frowned and stepped away from him.
‘Then why was it constructed at all?’ he asked, pretending interest in the walls.
‘I invite you to guess,’ she said.
They were still standing far too close to each other. He could not allow her to drive him from his mission yet again. ‘We have little time for puzzles,’ he said and started across the chamber.
‘Those sound like the words of a man who fears he cannot solve them,’ she said, hoping the statement would reach its mark.
He stopped in his tracks. ‘There is no one better than I am at solving puzzles.’
‘Then guess.’
He continued to the other side of the chamber and paused before a pillar, studying an image of the deified Pharaoh Seti. ‘This was originally Tausret’s chamber and the main chamber was for her husband Seti,’ he pronounced.
‘Alas, no,’ said Aya. ‘The main chamber was carved only after Seti passed on.’
She motioned to the chamber’s most splendid painting: a netherworld chimera with a ram’s head and an eagle’s body, whose massive blue wings stretched almost the entire width of the wall.
‘That is from the Book of Caverns,’ Aya explained. ‘The great being is the sun god in his most elaborate form. Is it not a lovely rendering?’
‘It is,’ Intef said, but he was looking at her, not the mural. ‘You seem to know much about the sacred books.’
‘Tausret saw to my education herself.’
‘You joined her court when you were young?’
‘Three years old.’
‘And your parents?’
Aya shrugged, then directed his attention to the mural. ‘Do you see the images above the great being? They are the three other incarnations of the sun god: the sun disc itself, a scarab beetle and a child.’
‘You know nothing of your origins?’
‘Tausret told me that my father was a Libyan warrior. He died the same year Tausret’s father Merneptah assumed the double crown. Come, let me show you the other mural.’
She turned on her heel and walked closer to the mural at the opposite end of the chamber. In it, Osiris’s supine figure stretched across the top of the image in the dignified pose of death. ‘I remember seeing the sketches for that image when Pharaoh was still planning the tomb,’ Aya remarked in wonder. She heard his footfalls behind her.
Her gaze slid down to the bottom of the mural where an image of Osiris’s standing figure and fully erect member caught her eye.
‘That is from the Book of the Earth,’ Aya said. ‘An invocation of the power of resurrection.’
She turned to find Intef smiling wryly. ‘I can see how such an image could inspire the wife of a pharaoh.’
‘Was that a jest?’ Aya asked with a small grin.
Intef grinned back smugly. ‘It was the answer to your puzzle.’
Aya frowned.
‘This was the original burial chamber for Tausret,’ said Intef, ‘but it was meant for a chief wife. When Tausret became Pharaoh, she decided to dig deeper.’
Aya bowed her head. ‘I did not think you would arrive at the truth so quickly.’
‘Then you underestimate my cleverness.’
‘I believe that was Tausret’s problem,’ said Aya. ‘She underestimated her own cleverness.’
‘Now it is I who does not follow.’
‘All her life Tausret was told that women begat kings, they did not become kings. After she was named regent, she remained in the shadows, letting Bay counsel Seti’s heir, Siptah. She believed the boy needed a man to guide him.’
‘A man indeed,’ huffed Intef.
‘Pharaoh did not yet understand her divinity, or her power. She only became Pharaoh in order to right Bay’s wrongs and help save the people from drought. She was officially Pharaoh for only a few years, but she saved many lives. She was Egypt’s greatest champion.’
Aya prepared herself for a cutting remark, but none came. ‘And it seems that you are hers,’ Intef said. ‘Come.’
They crossed to the final sealed entrance—a wall of bricks separating the false chamber from the long entryway, which had been filled in with earth. Intef placed his chisel between the bricks and in minutes the wall was destroyed.
He plunged his arms into the wall of backfill and began heaving it in volumes on to the floor of the false chamber. Aya held out the torch and closed her eyes.
Forgive us, Pharaoh.
When she opened them again, Intef was standing before her, his muscular stomach heaving. ‘The ceiling of the corridor is not as high as that of the chamber itself,’ he said. He pointed up at the chamber’s domed ceiling, then lowered his gaze to hers. ‘We must begin our chiselling at the highest possible point.’
Aya shook her head. Not the domed ceiling.
‘We cannot.’
‘But this is a false chamber only,’ argued Intef. ‘Pharaoh’s spirit will not return here.’
Aya gazed up at the lovely domed ceiling, replete with stars. ‘This chamber represents a part of Tausret’s life, her history. We must leave it as it is.’
‘We will save hours, perhaps even a whole day,’ he argued. ‘I do not think you understand the haste we must make.’
‘I understand—but to despoil this chamber would be like carving a hole inside my own heart.’ She dropped to her knees and assumed the position of entreaty. ‘Please, Intef, keep the sacred chamber whole. I promise you that I will do everything I can to help us make up the time.’
He was shaking his head. ‘It could mean our deaths, do you understand?’ But he turned from the chamber, stormed up the ramp and wedged his chisel in the corridor’s low ceiling.
‘I will never cease to thank you for this,’ she called meekly.
‘Five days,’ he growled, then landed his first blow.