He could nearly hear Djet blush. “I was thinking I could trade for a bottle of jasmine oil, or maybe some fine fabric for a new dress…”
“Luxuries that would delight any child of the desert,” Karim mused. They’d reached the bottom of the hallway, which ended in a portal to some kind of large antechamber. His torch held aloft, Karim took one step through the doorway and stopped, his heart thudding heavily in his chest in reaction to what he saw there.
“Djet-sen,” he said softly, “You will have those things and more for your lady love. Much, much more.”
Djet came up next to him, peered into the antechamber, and gasped.
There was so much packed into the chamber, the eye was challenged to remain on any one item. They took it all in like starving men at an endless feast. There were golden chariots, golden couches and beds—their feet carved in the shape of lion’s paws—a golden chair, golden chests engraved with birds and lotus flowers, statues, weapons, fans made of ostrich feathers with jewel-encrusted poles…
Gold, gold, everything was gold.
The sight of it filled Karim with an indescribable hunger that bordered on lust. He wanted to touch the gold, to feel its smoothness under his fingers and know these riches belonged to him.
And Djet, and Babu, and Hager, an irritating voice reminded him. He waved away the thought. There was no reason for squabbling among the Jackals. Here, there was more than enough treasure to go around. The tombs he’d found in the past had conceded a few choice items, but this… this was the kind of discovery that changed a man’s life forever.
Djet whooped with excitement and slipped into the antechamber, rushing from one wonder to the next, exclaiming in rising volume and pitch about everything he saw.
“Look atthis, Karim-sen! There’s more than furniture! Bottles of fragrant oils! Jewelry, beads… and fabric unlike I’ve ever seen! There’s food too. And jars of wine!”
Karim wandered through the room in Djet’s wake, letting his free hand caress the back of a chair here, the top of a chest there. He picked up a goosenecked jar of wine, tore out the stopper with his teeth, and spat it onto the floor.
“Still good,” he said after giving the jar a sniff. Tipping it back, he took a long thirsty swig.
“There are dead birds wrapped in cloth, sen,” Djet called from the other side of the chamber. “Lots of them! And—a horse too! Karim-sen, even the dead horse wears gold!”
Still nursing the wine, Karim took a closer look at the golden chair, illuminating the exquisite artwork engraved and painted along its surfaces with his torch. It was brightly colored, as all the other paintings he’d seen in Khetaran tombs, but the style was different. Unlike the rigid, staid figures he was used to, the figures were curved, their heads and limbs overlong. They seemed to vibrate with activity, as if in defiance of the stillness forced uponthem.
His curiosity piqued, Karim set down the wine jar and knelt to take a closer look. The scene on the back of the chair was one he’d observed before. He didn’t know what it meant, but usually it depicted a man or woman facing a falcon-headed god, who offered them a looped cross. This painting was the same, save for one aspect.
Instead of the falcon-headed god, the figure holding up the cross had the head of a bizarre creature. It was black and looked almost like a dog with its long, downturned snout and tall, blunt-ended ears. Something about the dark figure made the wine turn sour in Karim’s stomach.
“This tomb,” he whispered, more to himself than to Djet, who was off exploring. “Something about it is… odd.”
The man in the painting was pictured wearing a striped headdress, which was common too. What was unusual were the two animal heads peering out from his brow—a vulture and a cobra. Karim didn’t know much about Khetaran art, but he knew what those animals meant when they appeared attached to a crown.
Given its location in the valley, Karim had expected the tomb of a nobleman, or maybe a nobleman’s wife at best. But this was something more.
He’d found the tomb of a king.
Karim’s head spun, and not from the wine.
“Hey!” Djet called, a note of fear in his voice. “Karim-sen! Come here!”
Getting to his feet, Karim picked his way through the piled-up treasures, following the sound of Djet’s voice. He found a portal to another, smaller chamber and Djet standing inside, his body partially lit by candlelight. Raising his torch high over his head, Karim saw that the chamber walls were alive with pictures carved in relief, just as incredible and just as strange as the oneson the golden chair. There were scenes of hunts on the river and great festivals, and lines upon lines of the Khetarans’ mystifying writing—hands, lions, crooks, birds, open mouths—their meanings unknown. But again, they were all painted in that odd style, the figures curved and distorted, making them look… Well, there was no other word for it.
Wrong. They looked wrong.
Unlike the antechamber, this room was empty but for a massive stone box in the center.
Djet stared at it.
“The dead man. He is inside?”
Karim nodded. He walked up to the waist-high black granite box, marveling at the intricate cross-hatched engravings that covered every fingerbreadth of its surface. The Khetarans certainly went to a lot of trouble for their dead. The people of the Red Lands simply buried them where they lay, under a pile of stones—giving their bodies back to the desert from which they came. It seemed more natural to Karim, and quite a bit easier too. Still, without the Khetarans’ eccentric customs, Karim would have been left without a job.
“Hold this,” he told Djet, handing him the torch.
“W-what are you going to do?” Djet stammered, his eyes wide and flashing in the firelight.
