"To get to the Lady of the Lake," said Polly Perkins, as we left the Bar Humbug and tripped lightly through the dark and sleazy streets, "we need to open a very old, and very specialised, dimensional gate. And for that we need several specific, and very rare, items. Think of them as tumblers in a lock."
"A dimensional gate?" I said, trying not to sound too appalled. "No wonder you didn"t want to do this alone. Make even one mistake in opening that kind of gate, and we could end up staring into other dimensions, other realities ... even Heaven or h.e.l.l. If half the old stories are true, and you"d be surprised how many are."
"I"m not an amateur," said Polly, a bit frostily. "I have done this kind of thing before. Present the gate with the right items, in the right order, and it"ll roll over and play nice like a dog having its tummy tickled. So, ready for a little scavenger hunt? Jolly good! First, we need a magic wand. An elven wand, to be exact."
"Oh, this is getting better and better," I said. "An elf weapon? You are seriously loop the loop! The elves never sell, barter, or give up any of their weapons, so they only ever turn up as lost, stolen, or strayed. They are incredibly dangerous, insanely powerful, and nearly always b.o.o.by-trapped. You can usually tell when someone"s found one because bits of him are flying through the air. There are those who say the best way to rid yourself of a troublesome rival is to make him a gift of an elven weapon."
"If you"ve quite finished hyperventilating, can I point out that you"re not telling me anything I don"t already know? You wanted into the big league, Larry, and it doesn"t get much bigger than this. You have to risk some to get some. Or is my big bold treasure-hunter afraid of a little fairy magic?"
"Too right I am! So is anyone with two working brain-cells to bang together! I do not want to end up transformed into something small and squishy with eye-b.a.l.l.s floating in it. But I said I"m in, so I"m in. Where"s the wand?"
She grinned, and batted her eye-lashes coyly at me. "How do you feel about a little tomb robbing?"
"Just call me Indy," I said resignedly. Some rides you have to follow all the way to the end.
She took me to the Street of the G.o.ds, and we strolled down the middle of the Street, giving all the churches and temples, their Beings and their supporters, plenty of room. There was a light rain of fish, a brief outbreak of spontaneous combustion among the gargoyles, and ball-lightning rolled down the street like tumble-weeds. Typical weather for the Street of the G.o.ds. An evicted G.o.d sat miserably on the pavement outside what used to be his church, clutching at his few possessions. The laws of the Street are strict; if you can"t raise enough worshippers, make way for a Being who can. So the grey little man with the flickering halo would now have to make his own way in the world, as something else. A G.o.d no more. A lot of his kind end up doing the rounds on chat shows, selling their sob stories. And even more end up sleeping in cardboard boxes in Rats" Alley, begging for spare change on street-corners. And it"s a wise man who"ll stop to drop a little something into their outstretched hand, because the wheel of karma turns for us all, and cosmic payback can be a real b.i.t.c.h.
"I don"t recognise him," said Polly, as we walked past. "I don"t even know his name. Isn"t that sad?"
"Half the Beings on this Street are celestial con men, fakes, and posers," I said, with youthful certainty and arrogance. "There"s more preying than praying here."
"They can"t all be deceivers," said Polly. "Some of them must be the real thing."
"Those are the ones you give plenty of room. Just in case."
She laughed. "Am I to take it that you"re not in any way religious?"
"I deal in facts, not faith," I said. "I hunt for treasure, not miracles. There"s enough in this world to keep me interested without bothering about the next. Where are we going, exactly?"
"Egyptian royalty had themselves buried in pyramids, to be sure their remains would be protected and revered for all the years to come," Polly said briskly. "We all know how that worked out. But one particular Pharaoh went that little bit further, and used ancient Egyptian magic to send his Tomb through s.p.a.ce and Time, to a place where it would be safe for all eternity. It ended up here, on the Street of the G.o.ds, its original protections boosted sky-high by centuries of acc.u.mulated faith from all those who worshipped the G.o.d within the Pyramid. This being the Nightside, a lot of people have tried to break in, down the centuries, including a few Beings who fancied its preferred position on the Street. No-one has ever found a way in."
"Hold it," I said. "What has all this to do with an elven wand?"
She looked at me pityingly.
"Where do you think the Pharaoh found a magic powerful enough to do all this? The elves got around, in the old days."
"Cool," I said. "I"ve always wanted to meet a mummy. And rob it of everything but its underwear."
"The Tomb stands alone these days, unworshipped and uncared for, almost forgotten. Taken for granted, as one of the sights. Tourists take photos, and then move on to more interesting things. And no-one has noticed that the Tomb"s magical protections have slowly faded away, along with the worship. We can get in now, provided we"re very, very careful."
"How do you know all this?" I said bluntly.
"You"re not the only one who likes to do research in libraries. I found this information while looking for something else, which is often the way. And then I found a Looking Gla.s.s in Strange Harald"s Junkshop." She gestured fluidly, and the Looking Gla.s.s was suddenly in her hand. It looked like an ordinary everyday magnifying gla.s.s, but I had enough sense not to say that. Polly favoured me with a brilliant smile for my tact, and continued. "He didn"t know what this was, or he"d never have let it go so cheaply. This is an ancient Egyptian artefact, and it can lead us right to the centre of the Tomb."
"How are we supposed to get in?" I said. "Just walk up and knock?"
"There"s a side-door," said Polly. "And I know where it is."
"Of course you do," I said.
The Tomb of the forgotten Pharaoh turned out to be a surprisingly modest affair, barely twenty feet tall and ten wide. The pyramid"s orange-red bricks were dull and shabby, even crumbling away in places, and yet ... there was something about it. Set between an ornate church in the old Viking Orthodox style, and a Mother Earth Temple covered in twitching ivy, the pyramid still had its own dark and brooding presence. It wasn"t there to be liked or appreciated; it was a stark, functional thing of simple style and brutal lines. It had a job to do, and it was still doing it after thousands of years, while any number of neighbouring churches had been ground to dust under the heels of history. The Tomb had been constructed to outlast Eternity; and powered by the magic of an elven weapon, it just might.
I stood before thousands of years of history and felt very small and insignificant in its shadow. But, of course, I couldn"t let Polly Perkins see that. So I looked it over and sniffed loudly, as though I"d seen better before and hadn"t been impressed then.
"Bit small," I said. "Maybe it"s a bonsai pyramid."
"Don"t show your ignorance," Polly said kindly. "This is just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the pyramid descends under the Street, so far down that no-one"s ever been able to see the bottom of it."
"Then there"d better be an elevator," I said. "I hate stairs." Polly ignored me, studying the pyramid carefully through her Looking Gla.s.s. She smiled suddenly, and pa.s.sed the Gla.s.s to me. I took it carefully, and held the lens up to my eye. Through it I saw a huge and intricate labyrinth of narrow stone tunnels, criss-crossing the whole structure of the pyramid, going down and down and down. The pattern was so complex it made my head hurt, and I quickly handed the Gla.s.s back to Polly. She made it disappear with another sharp gesture, and I looked after her thoughtfully as I followed her round the side of the pyramid. It was finally dawning on me that there was a lot more to Polly Perkins than met the eye.
She led me along the side of the pyramid, down a dingy alleyway half-full of garbage, some of which was still moving. Stepping carefully around and over things, we finally stopped before a section of the pyramid wall that seemed no different from anywhere else. Polly leaned forward and counted off the levels before pushing a series of bricks in swift succession, in a pattern too complicated to be easily grasped. I looked at her sharply, but she only had eyes for the small section of wall swinging slowly back before her. A side-door, indeed. Beyond the opening there was only darkness, and silence.
"Hang about," I said. "I"ve got a torch here somewhere."
"Boys and their toys," Polly said airily. "Look and learn."
The Looking Gla.s.s was back in her hand again. She held it up before her, and a beam of dazzling bright light blasted out, pushing back the darkness like a spotlight. Polly followed the beam of light into the Tomb, and I moved quickly in behind her. We hadn"t managed three steps down the narrow stone tunnel before the side-door closed behind us, with only the faintest of grinding noises.
Polly held the Gla.s.s up high, but even its light couldn"t penetrate far into the heavy dark before us. She still strode confidently forward, taking left and right turns with breath-taking confidence, according to what the Gla.s.s showed her. Hopefully it was also warning her about the inevitable b.o.o.by-traps and deadfalls. The ancient Egyptians were notorious for their appalling sense of humour in that regard.
The tunnels gave me the creeps. I"d been in worse places as a treasure-hunter, nastier and slimier and even more dangerous places, waded thigh-deep in mud and crawled through earth tunnels barely big enough to take me; but this was different. This was a place of the dead. The air was dry and dusty, and I had to breathe in deeply to get enough oxygen out of it. The ceiling was so low I walked slightly stooped, and the walls to either side of me were covered with lines and lines of hieroglyphics, none of which I could read. I had never bothered to learn, never expecting to end up in a genuine Egyptian pyramid. Well, you don"t.
The air grew steadily colder as we descended deeper and deeper, leaving the Street of the G.o.ds behind. The silence was oppressive-no sound anywhere except for my harsh breathing and the soft slap of our feet against the bare stone floor. I was actually shivering from the cold, but it didn"t seem to affect Polly at all. Being inside the Tomb didn"t seem to bother her either; her grip on the Gla.s.s was steady as a rock. I really should have asked her more questions.
We went down and down, and around and around, following the light from the Looking Gla.s.s as it blazed our way like a searchlight. The hieroglyphics seemed to stir and writhe as the light moved over them, as though desperate to warn us of something, and our footsteps echoed longer than they should have on the still air. Polly was really hurrying by then, striding confidently through one stone pa.s.sage after another, and I had to struggle to keep up with her. My lungs were straining, and I hugged myself against the bitter cold. But a part of me was starting to get excited. This was how Tombs were supposed to feel.
And finally, finally, we came to the main chamber. No warning, no intimations; we just rounded a corner like any other, and there it was. Polly stopped so suddenly I almost ran over her. She moved the Looking Gla.s.s back and forth, the brilliant light flashing up every detail, clear and distinct. The chamber itself wasn"t much to look at. Just a square stone box, deep in the heart of the pyramid. The hieroglyphics covered the floor and the ceiling here, as well as all four walls, and surely it was just my imagination that read dire warnings in the deeply etched figures. Polly knelt to examine some of the markings on the floor, frowning with concentration and tracing them with the tip of one long, slender finger. There was no sign in her face of the girlish adventurer who"d picked me up in the Bar Humbug. She looked ... older, more experienced. And not in a good way.
She straightened up suddenly and shot me a quick smile. "Nothing to worry about. Only the usual generic warnings and curses. Real amateur night. Magic"s come a long way since ancient Egypt. Any one of the half a dozen protective amulets I"m wearing could ward off this stuff."
"Let"s not get c.o.c.ky," I said carefully. "Who knows how much power the wand could have soaked up after all these years on the Street of the G.o.ds."
"Oh, hush, you big baby. We"re perfectly safe. Look at you, actually shaking at the thought of the mummy"s curse."
"It"s cold," I said, with some dignity.
"Is it? I hadn"t noticed. Hot on the trail, and all that. Still, better safe than sorry, I suppose."
She took a bone amulet out of her jeans, and waved it around vigorously. We both waited, but nothing happened. The silence remained unbroken, and nothing nasty emerged from the shadows lurking outside the Looking Gla.s.s"s light. Polly gave me a condescending look.
"Did it work?" I said, wanting to be sure about this.
"Well, the amulet didn"t explode, and neither did we, and that"s usually a good sign, so ... Of course it worked! Trust me, sweetie. I know what I"m doing."
"Yes," I said. "I trust you to know what you"re doing."
"There"s a good boy," she said absently, peering through her Looking Gla.s.s again. The beam of light moved steadily across the wall before us, then stopped abruptly. "There!" said Polly, her voice breathy with antic.i.p.ation. "That"s it. The entrance to the burial chamber is on the other side of this wall. We are about to see things no-one has seen for thousands of years ... And steal them! Help me with the lock mechanisms."
"You think they"ll still be working, after those thousands of years?"
"Of course, sweetie. They"re as much magical as mechanical, and probably still drawing power from the elven wand. The Pharaoh expected to be revived someday, and walk out of his Tomb into the afterlife. They all did."
We worked together, examining the wall inch by inch, and the right places to press and turn and manipulate seemed to flare up before us in the light from the Gla.s.s, as though we were being guided through the workings of some intricate combination lock. I found it increasingly hard to concentrate. It felt like we were being watched by unseen and unfriendly eyes. As though we weren"t alone in the stone chamber, that some third person was there with us. Only iron discipline and self-control kept me from constantly breaking off to look behind me. That, and the knowledge that Polly would be sure to say something cutting and sarcastic.
The last piece finally fell into place, and the whole wall sank slowly and steadily into the floor, revealing the burial chamber beyond. There was a brief stirring of disturbed air and a sudden scent of preservative spices. The wall continued to fall away, then I almost cried out as a pair of shining eyes suddenly appeared before me. I fell back, reaching for the gun I kept in a concealed holster. Polly stood her ground, and the Gla.s.s"s light settled on a tall statue with painted features. The eyes were gold leaf. I gathered what was left of my dignity about me and moved forward to stand beside Polly again, as the last of the wall disappeared into the floor.
She didn"t say anything. All her attention was fixed on the burial chamber before her.
The sarcophagus lay waiting in the exact centre of the room, surrounded by half a dozen life-size statues, painted as guards with ever-open eyes. More hieroglyphics on the walls, of course, and several large portraits. Presumably the Pharaoh"s family. A whole bunch of ceramic pots, to hold his organs, removed from the body during the mummification process. Even more pots, smaller and less ornate, holding grain and seeds and fruit, food for the afterlife. And lying in scattered piles around the chamber, more solid gold items than I"d ever seen in one place.
They say you can"t buy your way into the afterlife, but this Pharaoh had made a serious effort.
"Put your eyes back in your head, sweetie," said Polly. "Yes, it"s all very pretty, but it"s not what we"re here for."
"You speak for yourself," I said. "This is the mother lode!" "And it"s not going anywhere. We"d need trucks to transport this much gold, not to mention an armed guard. We can always come back for it later, after we"ve found the wand. The gold is safe and secure here, but I can"t say the same for the Lady of the Lake. That is still our main objective, isn"t it?"
"Well, yes," I said reluctantly. "You can always find more gold, but there"s only one Lady of the Lake."
"Exactly! Who"s a clever boy."
"Any idea of where we should look for the wand?" I said. "I don"t see it anywhere."
"Of course not," said Polly. "Far too valuable to be left lying around. The Pharaoh took it with him, inside his sarcophagus."
I considered the casket thoughtfully. Eight feet long, covered in jewels and gold leaf, the whole of the lid taken up with one big stylised portrait of the inhabitant. Very impressive, and very solid. Polly pretended to read some of the markings.
"Not dead, only sleeping."
"He"s not kidding anyone but himself," I said. "Don"t suppose you"ve got a crow-bar about you?"
"Hold back on the brute force, just for a moment," said Polly. She walked slowly around the sarcophagus, studying every inch of it through her Looking Gla.s.s while careful to maintain a respectful distance at all times. "There are supposed to be extra-special b.o.o.by-traps," she said, after a while. "Mechanical and magical protections, all set to activate if anyone even touches the lid. But as far as I can see ... they"re all silent. Deactivated. I can only a.s.sume my protections are working overtime."
"Just as well," I said. "We don"t want Sleeping Beauty to wake up. I"ve seen those movies."
"We can handle him," said Polly, dismissively.
"Don"t get overconfident," I said. "After all these years on the Street of the G.o.ds, soaking up worshippers" belief, who knows what the mummy might have become?"
"As long as my protections are still working, he"s only another stiff in bandages," Polly said firmly. "If he should sit up, just slap him down again. Larry? Are you listening to me?"
I was listening to something else. I could hear the sound of soft, shuffling feet. I could hear great wings beating. I could hear my own heart hammering in my chest. The sense of some third presence in the burial chamber was almost overwhelming, close and threatening. I kept thinking the statues on the edge of my vision were slowly turning their heads to look at me. They were only feelings. I wasn"t fooled by them. But I was becoming more and more convinced that someone or something knew we were there, in a place we shouldn"t be. That inside the sarcophagus, under the lid, the Pharaoh"s eyes were open and looking up at us.
Polly moved in close beside me, squeezing my arm hard.
"Larry, please calm down. We"re perfectly safe. If I"d known you got spooked this easily, I"d have chosen someone else."
"I"m fine," I said. "Fine. Let"s get the lid off, get what we came for, and then get the h.e.l.l out of here."
"Suits me, sweetie. The mummy"s holding the wand in his left hand. All we have to do is slide the lid far enough to one side for us to reach in."
Even with both of us pushing and shoving, the sarcophagus lid didn"t want to move. It ground grudgingly sideways, a few inches at a time. Loud sc.r.a.ping noises echoed on the still air, interspersed with m.u.f.fled curses from Polly and me. We threw all our strength against the lid, and slowly, slowly, a s.p.a.ce opened up, revealing the interior of the sarcophagus and its occupant. The mummified head and shoulders looked shrivelled and distorted, the eyes and mouth just shadows in a face like baked clay. The wrappings were brown and grey, decayed, sunken down into the dead flesh. The body looked brittle, as though rough handling would break it into pieces.
The elven wand was held tightly in one clawlike hand, laid across the sunken chest.
"Well, go on!" said Polly. "Take it!"
"You take it!"
"What?"
"Let"s think about this for a moment," I said, leaning on the lid. "I have seen pretty much every mummy movie ever made, including that Abbott and Costello abomination, and it"s always the idiot who takes the sacred object from the mummy"s hand who ends up getting it in the neck. In fact, it"s usually at this point in the film that the warning music starts getting really loud."
"G.o.d, you"re a wimp!" said Polly. She grabbed the elven wand, wrestled it out of the mummy"s hand, and stepped back, holding the wand up triumphantly.
The whole burial chamber shook violently, as though hit by an earthquake. Thick streams of dust fell from the ceiling. The floor rose and fell, as though a great rippling wave had swept through the solid stone. The walls seemed to writhe and twist, as though all the hieroglyphics were coming to life and screaming silently. And the wall we"d opened into the burial chamber shot up out of the ground, and slammed into place against the ceiling again. I glared at Polly.
"Next time, listen to the music! Is there any other way out of here?"
Polly waved the Looking Gla.s.s back and forth, dust dancing in the brilliant beam of light. "I can"t see anything!"
"Terrific," I said.
Then the lid of the sarcophagus crashed to the floor. We both looked round, startled, just in time to see the mummy rise out of its resting place. It moved slowly, jerkily, animated and driven by unnatural energies. It was small, barely five feet tall, a shrivelled wretched thing, but it burned with power. You could feel it. The empty eyes in the dead face fastened first on me, then on Polly, and finally on the wand. It reached out a brown bandaged hand, and the arm made dry, cracking sounds as it extended. The mummy kicked the sarcophagus lid aside with one foot, and the lid flew across the chamber to slam into the far wall.
"Maybe we should give him his wand back," I said.
"Unthinkable!" snapped Polly.
"h.e.l.l, I"m thinking it, and so is he," I said. "Can you use the wand against him? What does it do?"
"I don"t don"t know!" know!" said Polly, backing quickly away from the mummy as it advanced upon her with slow, shuffling steps. The whole chamber was still shaking, making loud, groaning sounds as the heavy stone walls flexed, but the mummy"s attention was still fixed solely on the wand in Polly"s hand. I took out my gun and gave the mummy six rounds rapid. Three to the body, three to the head. Puffs of dust burst out of the bullet-holes, but the mummy didn"t even stagger or interrupt its pursuit of Polly as she retreated before it. Her back slammed up against the wall behind her, and she had to stop. I thought about jumping the mummy from behind and wrestling it to the floor, then thought better of it. Some plans you know aren"t going to float. I ran past the slow-moving figure, and grabbed the elven wand from Polly. The dead face immediately turned to me, and I smiled. Because the moment I had the wand in my hand, I knew what it could do and how to use it. The knowledge was suddenly there, in my head, as though I"d always known it but only just remembered. I said the activating Words silently, inside my head, and the wand"s power leapt forth and took hold of the world. said Polly, backing quickly away from the mummy as it advanced upon her with slow, shuffling steps. The whole chamber was still shaking, making loud, groaning sounds as the heavy stone walls flexed, but the mummy"s attention was still fixed solely on the wand in Polly"s hand. I took out my gun and gave the mummy six rounds rapid. Three to the body, three to the head. Puffs of dust burst out of the bullet-holes, but the mummy didn"t even stagger or interrupt its pursuit of Polly as she retreated before it. Her back slammed up against the wall behind her, and she had to stop. I thought about jumping the mummy from behind and wrestling it to the floor, then thought better of it. Some plans you know aren"t going to float. I ran past the slow-moving figure, and grabbed the elven wand from Polly. The dead face immediately turned to me, and I smiled. Because the moment I had the wand in my hand, I knew what it could do and how to use it. The knowledge was suddenly there, in my head, as though I"d always known it but only just remembered. I said the activating Words silently, inside my head, and the wand"s power leapt forth and took hold of the world.
Time stopped.
The mummy was still, and so was Polly, caught reaching out to s.n.a.t.c.h the wand back from me. The burial chamber was still, caught between one moment and the next. Falling dust hung suspended in mid air. I moved slowly forward, and Time did not move around me. I considered the mummy, the shrivelled face wrapped in yards of decaying gauze, like a mask baked from ancient Egyptian mud. Scary, yes, but take away the supernatural energies that drove him, and the mummy was a small, fragile thing. I considered the elven wand in my hand. Two feet long, carved from the spine of a species that no longer existed in the waking world, it shone with a brilliant light while it did its work. There were all kinds of tricks it could play, with Time. I jabbed the wand at the frozen mummy, and Time accelerated around it. The bandaged body decayed and fell apart and became dust, all in a moment.
I hefted the wand in my hand. Why had it spoken to me and not to Polly? Perhaps because it didn"t trust her. I knew how it felt.
I started Time going again, and Polly yelped loudly as she saw only a pile of dust on the floor where the mummy had been a moment before. She looked at me, glared at the wand in my hand, and gestured for it imperiously.
"No," I said. "I think I"ll hang on to it for a while. It wants me to."
"What happened to the mummy?" she said, studying my face intently.