Page 205 of Tomb of the Sun King

Ellie thought once more of a world that she had watched crumble into dust—the legacy of thousands of years and countless lives collapsing into rubble at her feet. Guilt snaked up from inside of her once more. “But to bury it all in the sand…”

Adam’s hand slipped over her fingers. He gazed down at her, his eyes shadowed with both sympathy and understanding. “We’re not in Tulan. And… maybe some stories have to be hidden for a little while, before they can live forever.”

The truth of his words washed over her. Adam was right, of course. The world wasn’t ready for everything history had to teach it—not yet.

But someday, she vowed to herself with a quiet, fierce determination. Someday, it would be. Ellie would do everything she could to make sure of that.

“It is the best choice.” Zeinab rose to her feet. “And it is nearly dawn.”

Ellie was surprised to realize that the eastern horizon was turning a soft pink that rose to merge with the deeper violet of the desert night.

“I’m afraid I don’t recall the actual Egyptian words from that excerpt,” Ellie apologized.

“‘I surround with sand…’” Sayyid mused, frowning. “Nuk ahu sai… teb ament?”

He glanced at Neil for confirmation. Neil flashed him a tired smile. “It sounds right to me, for whatever that’s worth.”

“Driving away,” Sayyid continued. “Xesef-a. And the enemy…”

“Xeft,” Neil offered.

“You always forget your pronouns,” Sayyid automatically corrected him. “Thyenemy. Xeft-k.”

“It sounds splendid to me.” Constance hopped down from her perch with unfair energy. “But perhaps before we do any spells, we ought to cross the wadi. If we are trying to bury this tomb, we might not want to do it while we are standing on top of it.”

?

Dawn continued to climb the eastern horizon as they hiked across the canyon. Ellie’s legs ached as she picked her way along the narrow, winding track. The path was the same one that they had taken when they descended earlier that night, but it felt like a thousand years had passed since then.

By the time they reached the opposite side of the gorge, the sky was streaked with pink and gold, casting the wadi into hues of burnished red and purple.

Ellie glanced behind her to where the camels of the Ibn Rashid lingered in a sandy hollow. Most of them were sleeping, their long necks stretched out across the sand. Yusuf leaned against the rocks to watch contentedly over the flock. Mustafa gazed to the south, a soft desert breeze tugging at his quftan and headscarf as his hand rested on the pommel of his sword in a posture that would have given a Romantic painter convulsions of joy. The skinny yellow dog lay at his feet, its head resting on its paws.

“Might have been nice if they had helped out while we were being shot at,” Neil grumbled beside her.

“They only care about the camels.” Adam clapped a hand on his shoulder. “We’re just the baggage.”

Ellie turned back to the wadi. Beyond the shadowy cut that held the tomb, the ridge flattened into a broad plateau of undulating dunes that stretched out to the east, where the flame-red orb of the sun would soon slip over the horizon.

“It is time,” Zeinab declared solemnly.

The rest of them quieted, gathering near the edge of the cliff—except for Adam, who remained a few prudent steps back. Sayyid drew in a breath, steeling himself, and raised up the was-scepter in his hand.

“Nuk ahu sai er teb ament,” he called out in a clear, steady voice. “Xesef-a xeft-k.”

The canyon caught his words and echoed them softly back and forth against its rocky walls until they faded.

All of them waited in an instinctive, reverent silence. A breeze pulled gently at the bottom of Ellie’s skirt, sand rasping over the toes of her boots.

As the silence stretched, Ellie felt a pang of dismay. Had she remembered the words wrong? She didn’t think she had—but then, perhaps the call to the Flame of Isis hadn’t been a proper spell after all.

She tried to think of an alternative. Perhaps something else from the Book of the Dead? There were quite a few protective spells in its earlier chapters, though most of them referred to the decay of the body. But surely if she wracked her brain, she could think ofsomething…

She was filing through her memories of the Spell of Going Forth By Day when the ground began to rumble.

Little stones bounced and rattled beside her feet. Ellie danced back, struck by a sudden terror that the cliff was about to collapse from beneath her.

Zeinab’s hand clamped around her arm, stopping her short. “La ilâha illa Allâh,” she croaked, her voice raw with astonishment.

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