Did you hear it?
Djet’s last words echoed in his mind.
It’s coming from the coffin.
Karim held the guttering torch aloft, but the light barely reached the threshold. He’d left Djet in the burial chamber. There had been knocking, then splintering wood, and then—
Stop it, Karim scolded himself.Stop being a fool and go to him. Quickly. The boy could be hurt.
He took a deep, steadying breath, and lowered his free hand to the knife on his belt. Perhaps an animal had attacked the boy—a snake, or some other underground creature.
That doesn’t explain the knocking.
Karim picked his way back through the maze of little soldiers. Perhaps some part of the tomb had come loose and fallen on Djet.
You know it didn’t.
Karim gritted his teeth, willing his mind to be quiet. He was a practical man, but there in the dark, he could feel a kind of madness creeping in.
“Djet?” he whispered, taking another cautious step forward. He hated how small his voice sounded, how fragile and weak. “Djet?”
There was no response.
Karim crossed back into the burial chamber. The sting ofsmoke and something metallic filled his nostrils. Bile pushed up into his throat as he tried to control his breathing. Djet was nowhere to be seen.Where could he have gone?If something scared him, perhaps he ran out. Karim took two more steps, and his torch illuminated the black granite box and the coffin within. The corner of its lid was just visible on the floor nearby. Trembling, Karim peered inside.
The coffin was empty.
He recoiled from the box, nearly dropping the torch on the ground.
It’s a trick, he thought, his mind reeling.A Khetaran trap. It has to be.
A whimper, soft and wet, sounded to his side. Slowly, he lowered the torch, illuminating a bundle of rags on the ground.
He drew closer.
“No…”
The rags were the remains of familiar clothing, sodden with blood and still hanging from a small shivering body.
Karim fell to his knees next to the boy, frantic, but terrified to touch him. He couldn’t identify any one wound—the blood seemed to come from everywhere at once. Djet’s eyes were closed, and his lips moved, long red trails sliding out from between them.
“It’s going to be all right, hey?” Karim said gently, not believing the words as he said them. “Come on, I have to get you out of here.” Tentatively, he reached out for the boy’s arm.
At his touch, Djet’s eyes flew open. They first focused on Karim, kneeling there in a pool of light, then slid to gaze over Karim’s shoulder.
Karim had witnessed horror in his life. He had heard the cries of sheep as they were eaten alive by lions. He knew the screams of mothers after they’d been told their sons had been killed in battle. But never in his life had he heard a sound as harrowing, asbone-chilling, as the one that escaped the boy’s throat.
Karim shot to his feet, humming with fear. Then, though the torch burned a mere handsbreadth from his face, Karim felt a chill on the back of his neck.
It’s right behind you. It’s right behind you. It’s right—
He ran.
Images of strange painted men and golden treasures flashed before him as he dashed headlong through the darkness, the torch spilling red-hot embers into his wake as it died. He discarded it on the ground and immediately tripped over something in the crowded first chamber, landing hard in the dirt. In an instant he was up again, groping for the door, led only by the finger of sunlight reaching through the crevice they’d opened in the cliffside. He scrambled through the passageway, squeezed his body into the opening, and collapsed under the blinding sun, elbows on knees, sucking in lungfuls of fresh air. After he caught his breath, he squinted at the horizon. The sun sat lower in the sky than he expected.How long were we in there?It felt like only minutes but—
Djet.
The name nearly stopped his heart.
