Page 175 of Tomb of the Sun King

“It’s a bone! It doesn’t have a bloody wick!” Neil flapped an urgent hand at Sayyid. “Give me one of your socks!”

“Mysocks?” Sayyid shot back. “What do you want one ofmysocks for?”

“Oh, dash it anyway!” Neil cursed.

He shoved the bone at Sayyid, who accepted it with fumbling hands, nearly dropping his crowbar. Hopping on one foot, Neil pried off one of his boots and then yanked his sock free.

With a wincing squint, he snatched the bone from Sayyid’s hand and dropped it into the tube of argyle knit, which was looking significantly worse for wear after being dunked in the Nile and trudged halfway across Egypt.

Through the muddy filter, the light softened from the glare of a comet to the moderate glow of a paraffin lamp. With the change, Neil’s watering eyes could finally adjust—and see what the illumination revealed of his surroundings.

He stood at the edge of a broad, low cavern supported by countless pillars roughly hewed from the stone. It sprawled far beyond where the light of the sock-encased firebird bone could reach—a cool, silent, and uncannily still cathedral carved from the earth.

The hairs on the back of Neil’s neck rose at the sight.

“I knew it!” Sayyid cried out, shattering the quiet. “Iknewthere was a quarry! The road in the wadi made me suspect it, and then when I saw the regularity in the shape of the walls where we fell—”

“This is a quarry?” Neil cut in, still reeling with astonishment at the sight of the bone-lit underground fairy kingdom.

“A cave quarry,” Sayyid clarified. “Cut right into the mountain rather than dug out. Old Kingdom, based on the size of the blocks they were cutting. Just look at the ridges in this wall—these weren’t talatat stones.” His gaze roamed over the rest of the cavern. “It appears to be fine-grade limestone, mostly—though I should not be surprised to find traces of alabaster. It is clearly an extensive works. Comparable to Tura, at the very least. Of course, it begs the question of whether the builders of Nefertiti’s tomb knew of the quarry and used its proximity deliberately, or whether…”

Sayyid stopped, catching himself. His jaw tensed as though he had just recalled that he was supposed to be angry at Neil—not rattling on to him about the development of stone-cutting techniques as though they were still working comfortably side-by-side in Saqqara.

Neil felt a sharp pang—but he could hardly blame Sayyid for it. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Would you mind taking the bone while I put my boot back on?”

Sayyid startled uncomfortably. “Oh! Of course.”

He accepted the sock with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, eyeing it with disdain. Neil could hardly blame him for that, either. It was hardly in a fine fettle. He wasn’t all that excited about wearing it on his foot, never mind carrying it around in his hand.

Neil tugged his boot back on. The leather stuck against his bare, clammy skin. He hoped he wouldn’t end up with blisters.

The light flickered, growing weak. Both Neil and Sayyid looked at it with alarm.

“I think it needs to be shaken again,” Neil guessed urgently.

Sayyid let out a sigh of resignation. With a grimace, he took hold of the bone through the sock and gave it a vigorous jiggle.

The bone flared up, casting its pale glow over the silent, marching columns of stone.

Sayyid thrust the sock back at him, then surreptitiously scrubbed his hand off on his waistcoat.

Neil’s companion looked a mess. His beard was lightened with a layer of dust, while the collar of his shirt was smudged with dirt. He had lost his fez in the fall, leaving his head bare.

Not that Neil would be looking much better. His glasses were bent, and his sockless foot stuck a bit against the leather of his boot. The buttons of his waistcoat had torn off in the fall, leaving it hanging open over his battered shirt.

“What now?” he asked.

“We need to find the way out.” Sayyid gazed through the maze of pillars.

“Isthere a way out?” Neil pressed nervously.

“There must have been,” Sayyid returned. “How else could the quarrymen have taken out all this stone?”

“That wasfive thousand years ago. Archaeologists and looters have been scouring these hills for a century now, and nobody’s ever reported finding a way into something like this!” Neil waved a wild hand around the vast space before them.

“That does not mean it isn’t there,” Sayyid insisted stubbornly.

He set off without looking back to see if Neil would follow. Neil did follow, of course. The notion of being left behind in that silent, eerie cavern frankly terrified him, even if he was the one holding the light.

---