

Lesser Nefertiti

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella's Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch's Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The Bad Samaritan – The 13th Month – The Silvered Mare – SpinDell

Swan Moon – The Unicorndoll

Text copyright© 2019 Jon Jacks

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Thank you for your support.

# Chapter 1

'It just seemed to me that he has an almost human intelligence,' Clary explained when Mrs Davis asked why she had drawn the jackal as if he were more man than beast.

'You see things _so_ oddly, my dear,' Mrs Davis replied with a nervous laugh. 'You will have to temper this oddity within yourself if you are to render the Egyptian artefacts accurately.'

'I'm sure that I can portray them truthfully, Mrs Davis,' Clary reassured the much older woman, slipping her sketchpad and pencil back into the panniers straddling her horse.

The jackal had followed them all the way from the outskirts of the city, easily keeping pace with their unhurried journey across the sands as their camel-mounted guides led them out towards the Valley of the Kings. Even now, as their small column wound its way through the rocky hills, and they more frequently encountered the odd worker taking a break from the digging, the jackal insisted on closely accompanying them, slinking low across the hill tops.

It wasn't until they reached the camp itself, and were helped to exhaustedly slide down from the backs of their horses, that the jackal seemed at last to tire of his task, loping off along an ancient track that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular.

*

'We'll get you some refreshment first, before taking you down to the tomb; we're not quite through the second door yet anyway.'

'A _second_ door? But my husband sent someone out to tell us you'd _already_ broken through?'

'Ah, yes; but _unusually_ – no one's _ever_ come across this before – there was this _other_ door. A far more _formidable_ one than the first one we encountered too!'

The kaki-clad man escorting them towards the gathering of low-set, mud-brown tents had taken Clary by surprise when he had introduced himself as Arthur Weigall. Mrs Davis had quickly taken her through the main characters she would be meeting in the camp without addressing their ages, and so Clary had naturally assumed that anyone holding the exalted position of Chief Inspector of Antiquities would be much older than this young man in his mid-twenties.

Vainly attempting to dust off the sand that seemed to have magnetically attached itself to every part of her clothing, Clary followed him, briefly looking back over her shoulder to check that the men unloading her travel bags from the overloaded camels were also bringing along the panniers containing her sketching materials.

She always carried a small pad and stubby pencil in the pocket of her dress, but she hadn't wanted to leave her equipment in more careless hands, fearing she might be left with broken leads in her pencils, or scuffed papers.

The camels grunted nosily in complaint as they were made to kneel, a harsh braying that almost drowned out the excited cries coming from beyond the tents that, it seemed to Clary, were muted by distance.

'Hah! It seems we've broken through after all!' the young man grinned elatedly, perhaps unconsciously increasing his pace. 'Once we've got you settled–'

'Settled nothing!' scoffed Mrs Davis, hitching up her long skirt so the hem pulled clear of the ground, revealing the most unladylike of boots. ' _My_ thirst is to see what my husband's discovered out here!'

Her own pace picked up, so set on keeping close to the young man that she displayed not even an inkling of concern that her much younger companion might have preferred to take a quick drink before progressing on to the excavation.

Fortunately, Clary was every bit as eager as the old woman to see the recently uncovered entrance to the newly discovered tomb. They had been regularly given water on the journey out here, and although that could never have completely eradicated her sense that the heat made her feel forever parched, it meant she could wait a while longer before slaking her thirst.

'The _seal_ on the second door is quite wonderfully _clear_ , Miss Davis!' Weigall gleefully pronounced as he looked back towards Clary with a beaming smile. 'It's a jackal; a black jackal!'

*

# Chapter 2

As Weigall had no doubt intended, he had grabbed Clary's interest by mentioning the jackal seal, although perhaps not in the child-like thrill he had probably expected of her. Even though she realised there couldn't be any possible connection, she couldn't help but link the presence of the seal to the strange way that the jackal had so closely followed them all the way out here.

It was a coincidence, that was all, of course.

'She's not my _daughter_ ,' Mrs Davis irritably sniffed back at Weigall. 'I brought her out here with me because she has an undoubted talent in quickly and accurately rendering objects in the most precise detail.'

'Oh, er, sorry, Miss, er...' a flustered Weigall stammered, his apology directed more toward Clary than Mrs Davis.

'Clary; just call me Clary,' she replied; for she had never warmed to the second name given to her by the orphanage, accepting only that pinned to the basket she had been found in.

'How was it discovered? The tomb, I mean,' she said, hoping to change the direction of the conversation.

'That's the trouble or the beauty of the wind's control of the sand, depending on how you view it,' Weigall explained excitedly. 'It regularly changes the whole landscape, perhaps maliciously hiding a tomb for centuries; then suddenly decides on a whim that it's going to reveal everything after all.'

*

They arrived at the dig far sooner than Clary had expected.

The elated cries had not been muted by distance, as she had assumed, but by the surrounding walls of rock the workers had uncovered as they had dug their way deep into the hillside.

A steep and long flight of steps had also been revealed, originally cut into the bedrock and now dangerously littered with all kinds of rubble. The stairs descended past what were now the remains of the first door the work teams had carved their way through, limestone blocks that had for the moment been pushed aside if not completely shattered.

Beyond this, down yet more steps, men were still ferociously hacking at a second set of firmly enjoined blocks. Towering above the men frenziedly seeking to break their way through it, this doorway still retained for the moment its plasterwork, along with seals and hieroglyphics of various kinds.

Three white men, their jackets cast aside, their shirt sleeves rolled up, were avidly joining in with the enlargement of a hole that had already been cut into the doorway. They were each covered in a thick sheen of dust that made their hair every bit as white as the oldest amongst them, a man of at least seventy that Clary took to be Mrs Davis's husband, Theodore.

Their patinas of limestone ensured that the other two men were indistinguishable, though – with Mrs Davis's earlier descriptions in mind – Clary presumed one must be Edward Ayrton, an English archaeologist hardly older than Weigall, making the other Joseph Smith, an American painter and photographer.

Much to Mrs Davis's obvious chagrin, everyone was far too busy and excited to notice her approach. Clary was actually grateful that they had been ignored, for it gave her the chance to fully take in this wonderfully chaotic scene, with its dusty actors enthusiastically hammering at the door in a confined area that made them a danger to each other.

Instinctively, she reached for her pad and pencil, eager to record the moment when the gap would be large enough for one of them to clamber through and be the first person to enter the tomb since its sealing thousands of years ago.

And yet...as she made the very first lines of her sketch, she found herself drawn instead to the jackal seal lying just above the heads of everyone taking part in the melee to break into the chamber. Her lines became those of the jackal she suddenly found herself rendering, a jackal that exuded power and terror.

On the back of her neck, in the back of her head, she suddenly sensed she was being intensely watched. She whirled about, wanting to catch this person who was probingly staring at her.

She caught the eyes of the jackal, lying low, but still watching her from afar across the hills.

Strangely, the eyes themselves seemed ridiculously close.

Their intent, too, was obvious.

They were full of warning, of a need to explain.

And then, abruptly, the link was shattered.

*

# Chapter 3

The jackal seal lay upon the ground, shattered in the rushed, carless urgency to enter the tomb.

Alongside it there lay other fragments of the seals that had accompanied it.

Clary was shaken by her experience with the jackal, but before she could begin to try to make sense of what might have happened, she found herself being tenderly taken by her upper arm as Weigall eagerly led her down the last few steps.

'Quick, Miss...Clary,' he said breathlessly. 'You won't want to miss this; there are things in this tomb no one's seen from long before even Jesus himself walked upon our earth!'

*

Scrabbling through the ragged hole was ungainly and difficult even for the men, who were wearing nothing but trousers and loose shirts.

For Clary, in her long, voluminous skirt, it was particularly difficult; yet she was determined to see the tomb's contents, no matter how filthy or bruised it left her.

Ahead of her, the darkness was broken by swaying angles of light coming from the lanterns of those who had gone on before her. Excited cries echoed around the narrow chamber. There was dreadful, sickening smell of what could have been rotting fish.

Weigall had chivalrously allowed Clary to slip through the hole before him and now, as he clambered through pushing two lanterns before him, he told her to take one, as she would need something to help her see in what would otherwise be complete darkness.

Taking the lantern and lifting it high above her head, Clary saw that they were in a corridor that, dimly lit by the lanterns of those who had gone on ahead, gently slopped away from her. Even here, surprisingly, the floor was littered with large pieces of rubble.

As Weigall rose to his feet alongside her and took in the scene with a raising of his own lamp, he frowned in disappointment.

'I had hoped that the two, complete doors meant we had found an undisturbed tomb,' he said in a reverential whisper. 'Even so, it is odd; if it _has_ suffered from grave robbers, then why would the doors be resealed without anyone bothering to clear this mess up?'

The mess, as Weigall called it, only got worse as they progressed farther down the corridor. Towards the end, almost blocking the entrance into the burial chamber itself, it had become a pile, surmounted by broken gilded panels that – Weigall dejectedly informed Clary – appeared to be parts of what would once have been a magnificent shrine.

Weigall's disillusionment continued as they passed through into a burial chamber resembling the chaotic shambles of a long abandoned building. The rest of the partially built shrine was set at a carelessly odd angle, standing before broken timbers leaning against the facing wall.

'So small,' Weigall whispered, perhaps this time so no else would hear his disenchanted tones. 'I had hoped that the deliberate widening of the steps we'd encountered at the entrance indicated we'd found a royal tomb.'

Rubble once again lay everywhere about the floor, this time including smaller, discarded items glistening dully with remnants of paint and gilding. Over to Clary's right, Davis, Smith and Ayrton were crowded around a large coffin, but she picked up their own dejected comments regarding their find: 'It's broken....it _is_ a royal coffin, a _woman's_...but just the _one_ , it seems...and _every_ cartouche gouged out!'

Weigall lifted his lamp towards a nearby wall only to accompany his action with his own moan of frustration.

'Bared plaster! Where are the instructions to guide the soul– no, wait!'

He urgently swung the light towards the largest of the walls, the one facing them.

Although this was for the most part obscured by the positioning of the shrine, as well as the timbers of what might have been a fallen roof haphazardly stacked against it, the upper sections that could be seen had been rendered mainly in a bright blue. Stepping closer, lifting up his lantern, Weigall suddenly illuminated a large, sky-like circle, interspersed with a variety of more gaily coloured figures of men, women, animals and various objects.

'A sky map!' Weigall exclaimed, his tone at last one of elation. 'Yes, yes; it's almost the Dendera Zodiac to a tee! There are typical Egyptian images here and – more remarkably still – I daresay it contains elements of an extremely _early_ form of how they viewed the night sky!'

Behind them in the darkness, the men gathered around the tomb had fallen into what sounded like an argument. As Weigall turned away to join them, and the light of his lantern shifted away from the circular illustration, Clary lifted her own lamp to inspect the zodiac's centre.

Yes, she had been right.

There was the jackal once again.

*

# Chapter 4

This zodiac's jackal was standing on top of the blade of a long handled plough.

It was formed from a joining of the stars surrounding the polestar, much as she had seen other constellations of the brighter stars combined to create bears, swans or scales.

This zodiac obviously created its own forms, seeing the stars in a different light to modern eyes.

Off to her side, Weigall's interruption had only intensified the argument taking place there. Clary spun around and approached, wondering what the fiery disagreement could all be about.

'We _didn't_ move it!' Davis growled irritably at Weigall. 'It was like this when we _entered_!'

The coffin's lid had been slid aside, its carved and gilded face so badly damaged there was little left of it, though it still retained the long beard and uraeus-adorned helmet of a pharaoh. Weigall, Clary presumed, most have accused the men of causing the damage in their eagerness to open the coffin.

Most of the coffin was in a poor state, its sides rotten, with only its gold foil now holding the inlaid glass and stones together. The lion-headed bier it had been laid upon was equally badly damaged.

It was a much smaller coffin than Clary had been led to expect by her earlier viewings of artefacts recovered from the tombs on previous expeditions. Moreover, she had learnt on her many visits to the museums to prepare for this journey that the coffins were usually stacked one inside the other, Russian doll-like, whereas here there only appeared to be the one box.

She could see the incarcerated mummy; and once again, this was nothing like those tightly wrapped and amazingly well preserved examples she had seen reverently laid out on display.

The head had been separated from the body, and the skull ferociously smashed.

*

What remained of the head had been crowned; but once again, unusually so.

The 'crown' was of gold, and formed by the huge encircling wings of a vulture. But this – Clary knew from her museum visits – was in fact a pectoral, and meant to be worn high across the chest.

Like the badly preserved head, the rest of the body was in a similarly poor condition. The encasing bandages were obviously too loosely wrapped to have achieved their task of preservation for the mummy had been reduced to little more than a skeleton.

It had been laid with the right arm extended, the left crossed over the chest, and this seemed to have caused a new series of disagreements amongst the men.

'It's _posed_ like a woman...'

'It could have been _disturbed_...'

'It's a woman's coffin; the pharaoh's beard added later.'

'But the _names_ on the coffin...' a confused Weigall protested.

_'Every_ symbol that could identify our occupant has been gouged out,' Davis admitted miserably.

Ayrton wasn't taking part in the quarrel. He had moved aside to study a small niche carved into the wall at the foot of the coffin. Even so, he must have been listening in to it, for as he turned back to face his companions, he triumphantly held up in each hand a canopic jar.

'Is seems we have a good part of our answer here, gentlemen!' he announced jubilantly.

Even in the dim, flickering light, Clary could see that the stoppers of the jars – used to store the vital parts of the deceased for use when they had arisen once more – were the heads of women. Moreover, as with the coffin, each headdress sported the royal uraeus of vulture and cobra.

'A _female_ pharaoh!' Weigall gasped in a mix of astonishment and horror. 'But...well, we've never _heard_ of such a thing!'

'It seems the Egyptian's didn't like the thought of it either,' Ayrton admitted, passing a jar to Weigall, the other to Davis.

As he accepted the jar, Weigall gasped again, only this time in confusion. Davis was also bewildered, for as he took the jar he abruptly and unintentionally lifted it higher, as if he had expected the jar to be far heavier than it turned out to be.

'They're _empty_!' he breathed furiously.

'Which means,' Ayrton said with a wry grin, 'they didn't _want_ her to arise to a new life, did they?'

*

# Chapter 5

Now that she was fully settled in her tent – it was one of the smaller ones, but more than adequate for the few belongings she had brought with her – Clary took out the drawing she had made earlier of the jackal seal.

It wasn't the 'clear and accurate rendering' of the seal that Mrs Davis had warned would be expected of her when it came to registering the many artefacts that would be taken from the tomb.

Once again, as with her sketch of the jackal that had followed them, it was one of her more 'sensual' drawings.

Sometimes, she just couldn't help but draw certain objects or scenes like this.

She felt something either surrounding or perhaps even beyond the subject; much as, she had read, worshippers were supposed to view icons, using them as a means to see beyond the physical and apprehend instead the spiritual.

Sometimes, she picked up a sense of an object's history, a knowledge of their owners indelibly etched there by the scuffs and scratches others saw only as unfortunate disfigurements.

Sometimes, she seemed to see through what were quickly revealed to be only apparent physical appearances – for we so often lazily resort to relying on habitual observances, wilfully fooling our eyes, our brains, into seeing things that aren't actually there at all – and see instead its true reality.

When Mrs Davis had seen her drawing of the jackal, she had scolded Clary for succumbing to her ridiculously overactive imaginings.

'Such an _ugly_ thing, chid!' the older woman had sneered in disgust, her nose drawing up and away from the illustration as if from a dreadful stench. 'You really _must_ curb these stupidities if you are to be of _any_ use to my husband's excavation!'

What would Mrs Davis think of this? Clary wondered, staring at her drawing of the seal.

There was no indication at all that it even _was_ a seal.

All the focus was on the jackal; a jackal that once again exuded a sense of humanity, rather than pure bestiality.

He rose up on two feet. He looked back and out at her with eyes blazing with intelligence and malice.

For yes, Clary felt sure it was a _he_.

And the seal was in some way linked with the mummy discovered within the tomb.

But hadn't the mummy been that of a woman?

*

Clary had left the tomb on Davis's suggestion that Smith should begin his preparations to photograph everything before it was moved, leaving the four men arguing over the shrine they had moved on to studying.

It was small, intended for a woman. And yet the focus of the images appeared to be on the Pharaoh, rather than the queen portrayed alongside him.

Once again, there were no scenes of a celestial journey but, rather, a series of the royal couple worshiping the sun disc, Aten. The Pharaoh's name had been carved out, or altered, changed in almost every case into the cartouche of Amenhotep III. Yet where the original name remained, it was actually that of Amenhotep III's son, Amenhotep IV – or Akhenaten, has he had renamed himself on rejecting the plethora of Egyptian gods and worshiping instead only Aten.

The queen was Queen Tiye, his mother, and Davis was overjoyed that this, in his eyes, implied they had found her tomb.

Weigall had continued to disagree, insisting that it made far more sense that this was the tomb of the heretic Akhenaten, for only that could explain the angrily slipshod way he had been buried.

Clary had considered offering to quickly sketch a number of the items, wondering if she could provide some clues leading to a closer identification of the tomb's occupant.

But how could she explain her ability without appearing crazed?

*

# Chapter 6

Clary had read that Mozart, along with other musicians, would somehow hear a complete symphony in his head as he sat down to write it.

She saw this ability as being linked with her own, admittedly far more insignificant capabilities. It was, moreover, a skill that could only serve a purpose if people were prepared to believe she actually possessed a talent to see that denied others, rather than dismissing it as crazed imaginings.

She had helped the police identify a killer, only to later see her drawing of the murderer holding the knife she had been given mocked as a copy of an earlier, gruesome newspaper illustration.

She had led the family of a missing child to an almost prehistoric mineshaft, where the boy was found alive but undernourished, trapped by a fallen rock. Once again, however, as soon as all was well with everyone, no one wished to admit that she had played a part, the credit going to a dog who had sniffed the dropped neckerchief she had been asked to draw.

So now she was here, on one of Theodore Davis's many archaeological expeditions into the Valley of the Kings; but she had been specifically warned by Mrs Davis to avoid 'indulging in such nonsense'.

She felt an urge to draw; to draw the inside of the tomb while she still retained a memory of what she had seen there. She reached for one of her larger pads, found herself also reaching for the darker pencils, even the charcoal sticks.

Her hands – yes, in moments like this, she used both hands – flew across the page. Flew to pick up first one pencil then the charcoal, then another, different pencil. Smaller fingers rubbed and smudged even as larger ones controlled the deft strokes that rendered details.

Yet she was disappointed with her efforts; for rather than conjuring up and bringing to life images of coffins and shrines jumping out of the darkness as the dim lamplight struck them, she was creating a sheet of an almost pure black. Only a few sparse elements of a dull grey granted a sense of form to a photographer working on the development of his own pictures, images that were being hung in large batches on strings strewn across the tomb, for they were almost paper thin rather than made of the heavier materials Clary was more familiar with.

It wasn't Smith she was drawing either, Clary realised. It was a man of similar age – mid forties, she would guess – but it was most definitely a different man.

Her image finished, she urgently pushed it aside, feeling the need now to take a fresh sheet, to concentrate this time on a section of the tomb that was almost invisible in the darkness of the charcoal-heavy drawing.

She also put aside the softer leads, reaching now for the brighter coloured crayons, pencils she rarely found any use for when sensing rather than simply observing the items presented to her.

She was drawing the niche in which the four canopic jars had been found. Every jar had been empty, there being no heart, no brain, for the deceased to be once again reunited with once he – or _she_ – had ascended to the level of a god.

Why was she rendering this particular area? What was so important about this crude niche that it had unconsciously drawn her attention?

She found herself drawing red masonry marks she hadn't noticed when she had been wandering around in the darkness of the tomb.

At one point, there had been an intention to enlarge the chamber, to create another room.

This niche had been the beginnings of an unfinished antechamber. Hence its rough, coarse surfacing, its uneven shaping.

Despite it being unfinished, Clary felt herself approaching the niche as if it were a doorway, as if you could pass through this way anyway.

Not to a _room_ – but to something _far_ greater.

Something _darker_.

She herself had left a large part of the niche unfinished, left it as bare, virgin paper.

Now, at last, the coloured pencils whirled over and over this area, a blur of movement to anyone watching.

She was drawing the queen, Clary felt sure of that now.

Then she corrected herself, realising this queen was too young to be the mother of a Pharaoh.

Sixteen, at most.

She pictured the young queen with her mouth open, speaking – _welcoming_.

'I've been waiting _so_ long for you!'

*

# Chapter 7

Clary immediately pushed the picture away from her.

She was shocked – _horrified_.

How could a drawing _speak_ to her?

Yes, of course; _metaphorically_ speaking, as it were, the subjects of her drawings _had_ spoken to her.

But not in the sense that it was an actually _vocally_ delivered phrase.

That _wasn't_ possible – was it?

She could only have _imagined_ it, of course!

_Crazed_ imaginings.

It briefly seemed _real_ ; not a mere _drawing_.

She reached out for the illustration once more, drawing it back towards her, determined to continue with it, to see where it took her.

There was rap on the name board that had been fixed across the top of her tent flap.

Somebody wanted her.

She pushed the drawing away once more, unsure whether she was relieved or frustrated.

*

Entering her tent, Weigall triumphantly waved what could have been a brick, only one gilded and gaily painted.

'A magical brick!' he said jubilantly. 'Could you draw this for me please, Clary? I'm sure it proves once and for all that we've uncovered Akhenaten's tomb; but Davis insists I get the symbols checked as soon as possible.'

_'Magic_ brick?' Clary chuckled.

'They're placed at cardinal points in the walls,' Weigall explained, carefully placing the brick on the table, making sure he avoided disturbing the drawings Clary had made. 'Although this one – as with a lot of other things down there – wasn't exactly where I'd normally expect it to be.'

His interest had moved from the brick to Clary's drawing of the young queen.

'That's quite an imagination you've got there, Clary,' he grinned, taking up the illustration to study it more closely. 'Obviously, you're backing Davis's idea that it's Queen Tiye's tomb we've discovered here; although, if you don't mind me saying, she would be _much_ older than this. Her son Akhenaten was probably around fifty.'

With his other hand, he picked up the darker, charcoal sketch.

'Oh, you went down to watch the photo– oh, no, sorry. Your imagination again, I see!' he laughed light-heartedly, even as he peered more intently at the drawing's details. 'It's not a photographic process I recognise; but, you know – _he_ has the look of Harry Burton. Well, at least as he might look twenty years from now!'

He set the drawings back down on the table, smiling.

'So, now you've _criticised_ my sketches...' Clary said, taking on a pretence of being affronted, 'you're _still_ expecting me to draw your _magic_ brick for you, yes?'

'If you would?' Weigall replied, bringing her attention back to the symbols cut into the now long-hardened mud. 'You see, it contains a reference to Akhenaten's nomen; OsirisNeferkheprureWaenre.'

Of course, to Clary the symbols meant nothing. But she had overheard the arguments that had loudly continued even as she had exited the tomb by once again clambering through the hole that had been breached in the tomb's door.

'But didn't Mr Davis say he would have been buried elsewhere? At a _city_ called Akhet-Aten?'

Weigall nodded in agreement.

'When he turned away from worshiping the chief god Amun, he formed a new, great city now lost to us. But not long after his death, the Egyptians returned to Thebes – or Wo'se, as they knew it – and their old gods. They were so angry with Akhenaten they may have hastily reburied him here, using a small tomb, coffin and shrine originally intended for someone else.'

'Did he have any daughters?' Clary asked, glancing apprehensively at the rendering of the young queen she had drawn.

'Ah, like the one you've conjured up from your imagination, you mean?' Weigall said observantly, picking up the drawing once more and studying it even more intently than before. 'You must have spent a long time in museums before you came out here; the style of dress seems about perfect for the period, I would say. As for his daughters, it seems there were a number of them, most of whom died far too early to have become particularly famous.'

'Were...were any connected to... _jackals_?' Clary said hesitantly, knowing it was a strange question to ask.

Weigall grinned knowingly.

'Ah, you mean the _seal_ on the door, yes?' he said and, receiving a nod from Clary, continued, 'It's simply the Royal Necropolis seal; a jackal surmounting the nine bows representing the traditional enemies of Egypt.'

'And on the zodiac? The jackal right in the centre?'

'The French nabbed a similar one for their Royal Library; they blasted it off the ceiling in a chapel dedicated to Osiris in Hathor's temple at Dendera. The wolf's there too; in Mesopotamia the seeder feeding the plough was called a wolf. And as ploughs were hung up by a cord when not in use, and the plough symbolised life, it was said the wolf could bring the whole universe crashing down if he cut it.'

'And you accuse _me_ of having an overactive imagination?' Clary laughed, hoping Weigall wouldn't notice her strange sense of disappointment.

So that was that then.

There was nothing unusual at all about the presence of the jackal illustrations.

Naturally, it was all just her overactive imagination playing tricks on her.

*

# Chapter 8

Along with Weigall, Davis and Ayrton had stayed behind in the tomb after Clary's departure, studying their find more closely. Smith, the American, had spent most of his time preparing the plates of a new colour process he was intending to use to record the find, while his assistants set up his camera and flashes in areas the others had declared safe for him to occupy.

Mrs Davis had entered the tomb only after the hole in the door had been further enlarged, and she, of course, had been afforded a little more time than Clary to take in the artefacts that were gradually been brought to light.

'They found the other three magical bricks,' she told Clary as they later shared a light dinner in the old lady's far more substantial tent, 'two of which are poorly preserved, and one which again refers to this pharaoh of Weigall's, Akhenaten. Even so, Theo is convinced that the _mummy_ is a woman, and he intends to get some experts out from Luxor to conduct a _thorough_ examination.'

She also showed Clary a few of the skilfully rendered sketches she herself had made of some of the items uncovered, including 'faience objects related to the Opening of the Mouth ceremony' that had been discovered in two crumbling boxes.

As everyone had been working hard since early that morning, taking only the shortest breaks for eating, it was agreed they would retire as soon as the sun had begun to set, with the intention of starting as soon as possible once more in the morning. This understanding was partly made under Smith's intransigent insistence, for he intended to be the only one working late, developing his fragile colour plates in his specially darkened tent, and he didn't wish to run the risk of being disturbed in any way.

Clary was relieved that there would be no formal dinner for her to attend. Her social graces were lacking, as Mrs Davis quite frequently if not maliciously pointed out.

The camp's facilities were quite basic, scarcely adequate at all for removing sand that seemed to have a magical ability to ingrain itself on every inch of skin. Even so, Clary felt comfortingly soothed as she washed herself in the cooling waters of the large basins brought into her tent by the deferential servants. She slipped happily into her light nightdress, and was pleasantly surprised by the soft traveling mattress that had been laid upon her camp bed.

When she blew out her lantern, she realised that the tent's dark brown canvas sides weren't quite as opaque as she had assumed, for she could just make out the dull and unfocused glow of some of the other tents as if they were a light scattering of Chinese lanterns. One by one, these also went out.

Clary was surrounded by a complete darkness the like of which she had never experienced before. The silence, too, was odd in its fullness; as if nothing, the absence of all sound, had itself become tangible.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she flattered herself she had begun to pick out the odd familiar object, much as Smith's chemical baths must now be gradually revealing forms generated from the light's reaction to his dark plates.

There was the dress she had prepared for wearing in the morning, wraithlike as it hung by the tent's flaps. There were the hard angles of the edges of the table, the backs of the two chairs. There was her baggage, most of it now emptied, her belongings packed away in the foldable, traveling wardrobe she had been provide with.

Then the completeness of the silence, like the solidness of the darkness, was broken.

It was, Clary was sure, the howl of a jackal.

*

The howling was bad enough; but at least it was coming from somewhere far in the distance, whereas a sound of sniffing, of scuffling, sounded fearfully near to Clary's tent.

It was an animal of some sort moving close by her as she lay on her camp bed, with only the canvas side of the tent separating them and preventing it from drawing even nearer.

Suddenly, the side of the tent lit up in a dull glow, like theatre curtains in the limelight. Smith had lit his lantern in his own tent, the veiled light weak but enough to throw a silhouette of the scavenging jackal up onto Clary's tent walls.

She almost cried out in fear, for help; but bit her lip, knowing it would draw the beast's attention, perhaps scaring it into a ferocious attack.

Besides, if the creature turned out to be harmless – didn't some people claim they were no more dangerous than wild dogs – then wouldn't she have made a fool of herself for no reason?

She remained still, holding her breath, scared that even that might draw the animal's interest.

Close by outside the tent, the jackal slowed, inhaled deeply – and came to a stop, like a dog who had been following a trace scent, and had now found his prey.

The dark silhouette projected upon the tent's wall shifted oddly, the jackal's body appearing to abruptly and unnaturally collapse in upon itself as it swung about on its forelegs to more directly face Clary. Then it lifted those forelegs up off the ground, rising on powerful hind legs as if about to throw its whole weight on the tent's side, bringing it all crashing down.

Rather than doing this, though, it continued to rise up on its legs, once again unnaturally so. The hind legs were stretching higher, the forelegs elongating too, but also stretching out and away from the body.

In an instant, it was the silhouette of a man who was standing outside Clary's tent.

*

# Chapter 9

Had she only imagined that the man had been a jackal?

Had he been – bizarrely – sniffing around Clary's tent on all fours?

These thoughts only quickly spun through Clary's mind as she tried to work out what was happening, what was going on.

Was she in danger?

She sprang up from her bed, nervously seeking out the box of large matches she would need to relight her lantern.

The clatter of disturbed sideboard objects, the creaking of her bed, seemed to have taken the man by surprise; for his silhouette abruptly transformed, in an instant shrinking from man back into beast once more. It spun about, this weird creature, this time on its hind legs – and it slunk away, immediately vanishing as its shadowy projection rushed away from the tent serving as its screen.

Clary didn't stop to think if she was being courageous or foolish.

She dashed towards the tent flaps, flung them aside, and rushed out into the night, hoping to get a better look at this intruder as it lopped off towards the light flowing out from Smith's tent.

But as soon as she was outside, Smith unfortunately blew out his lantern, plunging everything about Clary into a solid darkness.

She couldn't make anything out, even the tent she had just exited apparently ceasing to exist in an instant.

Turning about, she reached out to touch the canvas sides of her tent.

She must have turned about too much, too sharply, for she was touching nothing but the cool air.

She turned back a little – but still felt nothing, no matter how far she reached out.

Had she, in her rush to identify the beast, stepped away far farther from her tent than she had intended or realised?

She walked about, reaching out, still touching nothing but empty spaces.

As her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, ill-defined forms edged with a dim light at last began to take shape before her.

She could make out rocky outcrops, the rough, rubble strewn ground stretching out before her.

She couldn't see a single tent however.

*

An entire encampment couldn't just simply disappear!

Had she somehow got lost, disorientated, wandering about in the darkness?

She glanced up at the stars, forlornly seeking guidance there, as if the permanence of its structure somehow offered her aid in establishing where she was, the direction she must travel, as it so often helped lost seafarers set their bearings.

Naturally, it gave her no help at all. She was caught in the very centre of its glittering net of light, the polestar the fisherman, slowly twirling it about her.

There, too, she now saw that ancient, rather than the new, plough.

The wolf standing atop its blade.

Threatening to cut the thread that the whole universe hung by.

*

There was a light other than the stars, Clary realised.

It was the glow of a bright lantern, one with an overly large, fiercely flickering flame splitting the darkness.

The entrance to the tomb.

That would be under guard, someone positioned there and ordered to stay awake.

Clary set out towards it, deciding that once she was standing by the tomb's entrance, she would regain her presently lost sense of direction. And indeed, the nearer she drew towards it, the more reassured she became that she was familiar with her surroundings.

Yet, strangely, a sense of foreboding was welling up from deep within her.

The cleanly lined stone of the entrance was picked out clearly in the moon's light, shining as if it were freshly cut and polished. This had a sharpness to it lacking everywhere else, its form hard and substantial, the moonlight increasingly bringing out ever more details from the darkness

The _moon_?

When she had felt lost only a moment before, she hadn't been aware that the moon was shining so brightly. Why hadn't it lit up the tents as sharply as it brought the tomb's entrance out of the relatively black hillside?

It must have been veiled by the clouds, of course.

She looked back over her shoulder, hoping the encampment would now be highlighted every bit as cleanly as the tomb's entrance; but all she saw, as before, was the rough ground, rolling out from hilltop to hilltop.

How could she have become so completely lost so quickly?

*

# Chapter 10

The entrance had been cleared of the piles of rubble that had almost completely blocked it earlier in the day.

More surprisingly, the stonework had also been thoroughly cleaned, such that in the moonlight it appeared to be as smooth as silver. There was a redder light, too, that of the flame; for it wasn't the oily yellow of a lamp, but the rawer oranges of a naked fire, a large brand that had been thrust into bronze supports projecting from one of the walls.

Despite it having been cleared, the entrance appeared far narrower than Clary recalled from her previous descent of the steep steps.

'Hello! Is anyone there?' she shouted ahead of her, wondering where the man set to guard the entrance most have sloped off to.

The remains of the first door the excavators had broken though had been completely removed, she realised. Even more astonishingly, the even more substantial second door had also been entirely cleared away, revealing a pristine framing of stone.

The gently sloping corridor was better lit than earlier, even though it must now be close to being the middle of the night, for more brands blazed in the sockets provided to support them. The constantly dancing and ever changing parings of red and yellow, orange and white, whirling fluidly on every surface, mingled with the lacy swirls of black smoke, that which was hidden suddenly revealed, that revealed abruptly hidden.

She could have been dropped deep into one of Smith's chemical baths, Clary thought, marvelling at the life brought to the placid stone by the intensity of the flames.

There was no longer anything here for her to stumble her way through, to trip her up; the incline was smooth, easily navigated.

The previously partially blocked doorway leading into the burial chamber had likewise been magically cleared of its blockage of accumulated rubble and discarded shrine panels. The incompletely built shrine had also been taken away, as had the roof timbers that had fallen against the far wall.

Through the cleared doorway, Clary could already see the first intimations of the full beauty of a wholly restored zodiac. Even in the transforming glow of bloody tones, the bright blue shone out, as if she were walking through onto a veranda that was open to a spectacular sky.

Someone was reverently kneeling down before that spectacular skyscape.

A man almost wholly naked, but for what seemed to be little more than a loincloth tied about his waist.

Hearing Clary enter behind him, he glanced back over his shoulder, frowning at being disturbed.

'I've been waiting for you,' he said resignedly.

*

# Chapter 11

Failing to recognise the kneeling man, Clary was about to say, 'I'm sorry; do I _know_ you?'

Then, abruptly, she realised she _did_ know him.

It was her husband.

*

'I _knew_ you would follow me!' the man snarled menacingly, turning back to his meditations, his prayers for salvation.

'We can't _save_ her soul this way; you must know _that_!'

Save her soul?

Of course; her _sister's_ soul.

Her sister, until she had died, had been the chief wife; not her.

Like so many of her sisters – Neferneferure, Setepenre, Meketaten – Meritaten had died young. She had survived the plagues that had swept their kingdom, only to die later of the natural weaknesses that have unfortunately beset the family for generations.

'She believed, like my father–'

The pharaoh leapt to his feet, snapping around beast-like in his litheness and urgency of action.

'How many more times have we to go through this?' he growled in exasperation, angrily glowering as he aggressively strode towards the doorway lying behind her.

'You have disturbed me _again_!' he snapped, brusquely pushing her aside so hard that she was sent stumbling away from him. 'If it happens again – well, it's not your _sister's_ soul I'm trying to save, but any child _we_ have!'

Clary only faintly heard the last of his words.

As she had fallen, she had struck her head violently against the wall: and that solidity of the darkness had returned.

*

# Chapter 12

'Miss...Clary! Clary! Are you all right?'

As she woke up, she was half dazed, half asleep.

Where was she?

Who was this?

Who was _she_?

Hadn't she been a queen of a pharaoh?

No, no; of _course_ she hadn't.

It must all have been a dream.

The wolf man too, off course; that had also just been some weird dream.

'Clary...Clary; you're all right!' Weigall exclaimed happily as he saw that she was slowly recovering, her eyes opening. 'What _are_ you doing here?' he added, deeply concerned once more. 'Were you sleep walking?'

'Here?'

Clary realised she was lying on something hard and uncomfortable.

'What do you me–'

Glancing worriedly about her, she saw that she was lying in the tomb.

*

'What on earth possessed you to come out here in the dark?' Weigall asked as he helped Clary dazedly rise to her feet.

'It's a miracle you didn't damage anything while you were wandering around without a lantern!' Theodore Davis growled more admonishingly. 'Smith's cameras and flashes could have been knocked over; completely ruined!'

Smith's ultra-modern photographic equipment, its lacquered wood and slivered metallic glittering in the light from the lamps being held aloft by Davis, Smith and Ayrton, stood out like alien intruders amongst the wreck of the ancient artefacts lying everywhere else about them.

Yes, Clary realised; it was indeed lucky for everyone that,she hadn't stumbled into them as she had aimlessly wandered around here in the dark.

Was Weigall right?

Had she been sleep walking?

What other explanation could there be for her being down here, without a lantern, and without recalling how she had ended up here?

She glanced towards the facing wall, where her dream had revealed to her just how spectacular the zodiac must have appeared when it had first been painted.

Naturally, the wall was mostly covered once again with fallen timbers.

But where the wall was revealed, there was now something starkly different about it.

It was now as plain as all the other walls.

The colourful zodiac had completely disappeared.

*

# Chapter 13

'The zodiac – have you covered it up?' Clary asked as she anxiously stared at the now completely blank wall.

'Zodiac?' Weigall repeated curiously, turning around to follow Clary's puzzled gaze.

As he spun about to look at the wall, the others lifted their lanterns up towards it.

They all gasped as one, dismayed that such a beautiful painting had somehow entirely vanished.

No one had noticed when they had entered the chamber, for their interest had been immediately drawn towards the fallen Clary.

'What? How the dev–'

Davis hurriedly strode across the rubble strewn floor, reaching out to touch the bared wall, as if hoping he could simply wipe away a light patina of dust to reveal the zodiac in all its glory once more.

'The plaster – it must have suffered water damage,' Ayrton suggested worriedly, raising his lantern to inspect the ceiling, checking for any gaps that a fleshly disturbed watercourse might have flooded down through overnight.

'It seems dry enough!' Davis irately corrected him. 'So how can it ju–'

'Maybe it's the light,' Smith observed thoughtfully. 'The chemicals I'm using in this new colour process react to light; if this fresco had been created unknowingly using similar sources of colour, well; when we opened the tomb, we'd have set in process its natural destruction. Much as someone entering a darkroom can immediately dissolve any pictures you've taken.'

'But you've a got a record of it right?' Weigall asked him hopefully. 'On your prints?

Smith appeared abashed by Weigall's optimistic question.

'Er, well, unfortunately _not_ , I'm afraid,' he admitted miserably. 'I tried all night, but; not one of the plates came out. Most odd; but it is an entirely new process, and one I'm not _entirely_ familiar with...'

'Then – we have nothing at all that we can study?' Weigall sighed disappointedly, briefly brightening as he turned back to ask, 'Clary, I don't suppose you...?

She shook her head miserably.

'No, sorry, Arthur; I didn't stay here long enough to draw it, of course.'

'Hrm, thought not,' Weigall groaned more dejectedly than ever.

'So we have _nothing_ photographed as yet then?' Theodore Davis asked sourly, raising his lantern such that he could have been interrogating Smith.

Smith appeared more ashamed than ever, but attempted to put a more positive light on things.

'I can set up my regular camera; record everything via a tried and tested process.'

'But that means we have to wait another day until we can begin removing things?' Davis demanded bitterly.

Smith nodded.

'I'll be quick; as quick as I ca–'

'Good, good,' Davis irritably interrupted, swinging his lantern aside as his attention returned to Clary. 'As for our Miss, er, Miss...well, can you see that she's all right, please, Weigall, and get her safely out of here – she's already stopped us from getting straight down to work as I'd hoped.'

*

# Chapter 14

Back in her tent, a quick self-inspection thankfully revealed that Clary had suffered little more than a few light bruises, even where she had stuck the back of her head as she had fallen against the wall.

Reassured that she had sustained no permanent damage, she had – on the advice of Mrs Davis – slept for a while, waking to a light yet filling breakfast.

As she finished eating, Davis, Weigall and Ayrton briefly returned to the encampment to take lunch. Smith had remained in the tomb, as he had insisted on making up for the previous day's debacle by working full out and this time successfully recording their remarkable find. Clary suggested that, as the tomb was now otherwise clear, she too could make some sketches of the items in situ.

'As long, my dear, as you _do_ ensure the artefacts remain in situ,' Mrs Davis hurriedly pronounced, noting through long experience of her husband's moods that he was about to refuse permission of any kind.

'Yes, to make their finer details perfectly clear, you might be tempted to give them a quick clean,' Ayrton pointed out, adding, 'But that _has_ to be done professionally, to ensure there's no damage.'

'Yes, yes,' Mr Davis agreed more apprehensively, 'don't touch _anything_!'

'I could accompany her?' Weigall brightly suggested, pushing his hardly touched plate of food away from him. 'I mean, if you're so anxious tha–'

'No, no, Weigall!' Mr Davis said, waving away the younger man's protestations and indicating that he should take his seat once more. 'We need to discuss the occupant of our tomb!'

'Ah, you _still_ think it's Queen Tiye?' Weigall sighed resignedly as he sat down once more.

Davis brusquely nodded.

'Indeed I do. I've sent word to Professor Maspero that I would like him join us for a while and confirm my conviction that we have an important find on our hands.'

Mrs Davis's own nod of approval was more guarded than her husband's, for it was aimed solely at Clary. Along with a slight rolling of her eyes, it was an indication that the young girl should be on her way before anyone changed their mind.

*

Smith's assistants held the lanterns as he carefully prepared his camera for another shot.

He hummed happily as he worked, his previous disappointment having obviously dissipated. As Clary entered, he exchanged smiles rather than appearing in any way disturbed by her arrival.

Although the room was cramped, with its scattering of damaged artefacts and rubble, it would be easy enough for Clary to make sure she worked in one part of it while Smith aimed his camera elsewhere.

Before she began her sketching, however, she stepped close to the wall, holding her own lantern close to it to inspect the plasterwork.

There was no trace at all of the zodiac illustration, not even a faint residue of colour.

'Ah, Miss...Clary,' Smith said to her kindly, noting how close she had brought the light up toward the wall, 'we have to be careful with our lanterns; the oily smoke, the heat, and even the light from them can easily destroy something that has survived for thousands of year in the darkness.'

Seeing the way Clary urgently and anxiously stepped back from the wall, Smith said with a reassuring chuckle, 'Oh, don't worry about our wall; I suspect it's far too late for that, and it's nothing of your doing, I assure you!'

'But what happened to it?' Clary asked curiously. 'It was _so_ beautiful; and now, it's simply vanished! Were you being serious when you claimed it might be all down to something similar to photographic processes?'

Smith warmly chuckled once more, even as he shrugged his shoulders.

'Half serious, maybe,' he confessed. 'I'm as bemused as anyone, to be honest. But as soon as you open one of these tombs, you're causing a sudden change in humidity, bringing in the hot sand on your soles, throwing up everywhere grime and dust that has settled on the floors over the many centuries. When you're dealing with something created thousands of years ago, the truly surprising thing is that we've got _anything_ we can inspect!'

'And your photographs; why didn't _they_ come out? Could it be connected?'

'I can't see how,' he said. 'It's far more likely that it's all down to my own incompetence. The inventors of the process – it's going to be called Autochrome, I believe – introduced me to a particularly early version so that I might put it through its paces for them.'

'So you don't think you'll face any problems with the process you're familiar with?' Clary asked, taking in the large camera he was using.

'Oh, not at all!' Smith replied confidently, affectionately tapping the top of his camera. 'She always works efficiently enough, believe me.'

He brought his hand down to the protruding lens.

'She may be cyclopic,' he said fondly, 'but whatever she's cast her all-seeing eye over is instantly frozen in time; a record for all eternity, as long as I complete my part of the job and ensure it's all suitably fixed.'

Clary glanced over towards the badly preserved coffin.

'And her? Have you taken any of her yet? Recording for all eternity the incredibly poor state we found her in?'

'Naturally, yes!' Smith replied. 'Though I suspect there will be many more to make yet, once we've had a proper inspection made of him!'

Clary noticed that, like Weigall, Smith didn't seem to think they had the body of a queen on their hands.

'May I take closer look?' Clary asked. 'If I promise to be careful with my lantern?'

'Of course!' Smith said. 'If you don't mind, I'll get back to taking these shots here?'

As promised, Clary approached the coffin with the utmost care, holding her lantern in such a way that there could be no way in which oil might spill across the mummy. The lantern's light caused portions of her own shadow to fall across the badly deteriorated and much abused figure, while the glow flickering from the illuminated glass and gold of the coffin swayed as her hand unsteadily held the heavy lantern as high as she were able.

The steady tremble in her arm seemed to spread into her chest, her hips, until it had suddenly become an overall shivering of her body.

In the wavering glow of her lantern, the mummy, too, appeared to shiver, suffused in a quivering skin of orange light.

It seemed to solidify, this transparent light, taking on the form of flesh.

It was a man once more.

The man she had dreamt of.

Her husband.

*

# Chapter 15

The freshly fleshed mummy lying before Clary instantly vanished as there was change in the light, a new shadow reaching out across the corpse.

It was Smith, holding his own lantern high above him.

'You've been here a long time,' he said with a grin. 'Have you spotted anything we missed?'

'Oh, no, no,' an embarrassed Clary replied, wondering what he could mean by a 'long time'. 'I was just thinking that, well, yes...I think he was a "he" too now.'

'Really?' Smith asked, his interest piqued. 'How did you...hello, what's this?'

Bending down towards the floor, he reached out towards the filthy rubble lying beneath the coffin's bier. In the combined light of their lanterns, Clary spotted something glistening richly amongst the darkness.

Smith straightened up, having managed to grasp between his extended fingers a paper thin strip of brightly glittering gold, but leaving behind what appeared to Clary to even more strips.

'Now, that _is_ interesting,' Smith whistled, carefully turning his hand about so he could more clearly see the other side of the gold foil.

'Part of the gilding?' Clary asked.

'Better than just _any_ old gilding,' Smith said, indicating the long, dark beard of the lid's visage. 'Foil from his beard; which means that – yes, see that?'

He brought the foil closer to Clary's face so she could see the symbols imprinted upon it.

_'His_ cartouche – his _name_!'

'So _not_ a queen then?'

Clary realised she said this with an unmistakable tone of disappointment.

'Sorry, no; _not_ a queen. But a _pharaoh_ – and that means it is a far more important find, I'm afraid Miss...Clary!'

_'Which_ pharaoh? Can you read it?'

'My skill's not up there with the others, but – yes! "Sem" something something."Semkh", maybe?'

'Smenkhkare,' Clary found herself blankly stating.

'What? Why, yes! You're _right_!' Smith declared in amazement. ' _Smenkhkare_!'

Yes, yes, Clary thought; that was _indeed_ the name of my husband.

*

# Chapter 16

Her _husband_!

Was she crazed? Entirely mad?

Inwardly, Clary laughed at the absurdity of it all; fearing that, if she laughed out aloud, it would indeed prove that she was crazed.

Her overactive imagination; that's all it was.

Had she even, really, pronounced the man's name; Smenkhkare?

Wasn't it far more likely, as she had explained to Smith when he had enquired how she had acquired a capability to interpret Egyptian symbols, that she'd merely advised him to 'take care' as he handled the fragile foil?

What was the alternative?

That, like in some penny dreadful story, she was in fact a reincarnation of an Egyptian queen?

_That_ was _truly_ mad!

She stared only half consciously at the large shrine that been carefully taken from the tomb and reassembled in the safer area of the main tent.

She had made no sketches while down in the tomb. She had excused her lax attitude by claiming she had suffered a piercing headache after falling against the wall earlier.

It was a lie, of sorts.

But certainly, she had to admit she was no longer thinking straight or reasonably.

Now that Smith had brought his photographic recording of the tomb's sad state to an end, more and more of the chamber's artefacts were being removed and brought up to the tent to be tenderly cleaned and inspected. Clary had briefly moved in here too, with the intention of drawing some of the cleaner items; but, as when she had been down in the tomb itself, she found that there was no connection between eyes, mind and fingers.

For the moment, for perhaps the first time in her life, she felt unable to draw.

It was a shame, because there were so many wonderful things gradually accumulating about her. Things she would at one time have been incredibly eager to set down upon paper.

The wooden shrine, sheathed in gold, remained the largest object so far recovered from the tomb, for it had been firmly declared by Davis that the coffin must remain undisturbed until the mummy had been inspected by experts from Luxor who could determine its age and gender.

Smith's discovery of the cartouche embedded foil had been dismissed by Davis as a distraction, declaring that the coffin had quite obviously been constructed for a woman, the beard being a later addition that had probably been included to demonstrate her high 'semi-pharaonic' position.

There were other reasons, of course, for Davis's apparent intransigence.

The items being removed from the tomb carried a confusing array of names and attributes. There were, of course, more innocuous artefacts, such as fragments of furniture, a statue plinth, a vase stand, the silver head of a goose, and gilded copper pall-discs. Yet Queen Tiye's name – along with that of her husband, Amenhotep III – appeared on vessels of stone, glass and pottery, as well as being inscribed upon a few pieces of jewellery. Princess Sitamun, one of Amenhotep III's daughters, was also named.

And to her surprise, Clary found she could read these names. More disturbingly still, hazy images of the queen, if not the pharaoh, seemed to be attempting to take shape within her already highly confused mind

She looked down at the jigsaw-like pieces of the shattered seals recovered from the second, main broken door, all of which had now been granted the belated care they deserved and were set out upon one of the tables.

There were small clay seals, once again bearing the name of the old Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Yet there were other, apparently newer seals, ones granted far more importance in their size and positions upon the door.

Even so, no matter how many times the pieces had been moved around, in an attempt to restore them to their original order, no one had managed to agree on the name of the pharaoh who had resealed the door.

Despite the irregular, broken nature of these seals, Clary could read them, make out a name.

A name she didn't really recognise; Tutankhamun.

But that was only because she had known him by his given name.

Tutankhaten: 'Living image of the Aten.'

Her younger brother.

*

# Chapter 17

So; as Tutankhaten had promised her, he had completely resealed the door.

How must he have ruled? He was always so ill.

He had required a cane to walk, one leg being shorter than the other, his foot too large and badly deformed.

He had the wide hips of his sisters. An overbite. And, fortunately, the cap he always wore hid his unshapely head.

No, her younger brother could in no way have been called handsome like his young uncle, Smenkhkare.

But... _wait_.

Her husband had been buried in a coffin bearing his own visage; not in this altered one, that had originally been prepared for Queen Ti– no, _not_ Queen Tiye. The coffin had been intended for Queen... no, she couldn't quite recall the other queen's name just yet.

Had Tutankhaten removed the original box; perhaps deciding Smenkhkare's richly inlaid coffin would make a far more fitting cocoon for his own body?

_That_ hadn't been part of their settlement when she had agreed to leave the kingdom, making way for him to become pharaoh!

*

# Chapter 18

It was agreed by everyone that, as Clary seemed temporarily unable to draw after her accident, then she could at least make herself useful by helping Smith develop his photographs of the tomb.

She enjoyed herself immensely working as his assistant, marvelling at the way the timelessly captured images slowly appeared from amongst the swirling chemicals, the white of the paper almost magically becoming the deepest black in some sections, different shades of grey elsewhere.

In this way, an originally blank page was made to take on the three-dimensional appearance of a tomb you could imagine yourself walking into.

The whole process, Clary recognised, had a wholly magical air to it; for wouldn't any ancient Egyptian, seeing the forming of these images, regard it as being entirely miraculous?

They wouldn't see the science of the process, or be aware that it was merely a series of entirely explicable chemical interactions taking place (indeed, she herself knew little of the chemistry, truth be told). They would see only that it was a process – with its bright flashes, its shaded cameras, its carefully veiled celluloid and magical papers, its dark rooms – bringing light from the darkness, darkness from the light.

In this way, the tomb you had walked in that morning slowly appeared before you once more, coming into being where only a moment ago there had been nothing but a bare sheet, taking form in this chapel dedicated to a complete darkness.

Ironically, where Clary dearly wished she could see images taking form from the blankness of the sheet, the area remained at best a dulled, dirty white.

It was the wall where only yesterday – perhaps even only last night – there had been a beautifully illustrated zodiac.

But here, as in the tomb, it was nothing but a bared wall.

*

The wall lying behind the coffin on its bier, of course, was also perfectly bare.

But then, it had always been so, hadn't it?

Naturally, Smith had focused the power of his lighting upon the coffin, ignoring the wall itself, which was little more than a dull backdrop to the scene.

Under the lights, the glass and gilding of the coffin glittered. The rotting of its wood was far less apparent here, even if it was obviously damaged and incomplete.

At its foot, a dark rectangle was forming, becoming increasingly black so rapidly that, for a brief moment, Clary panicked that she had left the paper in its chemical bath for too long. Yet, she saw with an inner sigh of relief, the rest of the image was still developing normally.

The darkness she saw there, then, was the reality.

It was the recess; the one in which the canopic jars had been found.

Whereas before, when she had actually been down in the tomb, this recess had appeared so insignificant – an aspect of the chamber that could have been an entirely unintentional element – here it seemed to have taken on far more importance than anything else around it. Before it had been a hole, a nothingness; now it possessed a hard solidity denied everything else.

It was so dark, so uniformly and fully black, that it seemed wholly separate from its surroundings, existing in a world all of its own.

If there was any light here, then it was light that was being sucked into it, devoured, never to be returned.

A doorway, then, into another realm.

No; not a _doorway_ , but a _tunnel_.

Clary felt impelled to touch that rectangle of purest black, felt sure that if she did so, then her finger would penetrate the darkness; that, if she failed to be careful, she would – like the light – be wholly sucked deep into its cavernous embrace.

Even so, she resisted the temptation to reach out, to pierce the veil, only because she realised she would interrupt the alchemical processes of the photographic bath.

She realised, also, that this dark window was far more than the just the most important part of the tomb; it was the whole _reason_ for the tomb's existence.

This was where everything happened.

This was where Smenkhkare underwent his changes.

*

# Chapter 19

'Smenkhkare!'

She shouted out before her as she cautiously made her way down the incredibly dark, ridiculously narrow tunnel.

It hadn't been carved this way, of course. It was all perfectly natural.

A crevice in the earth, always steeply leading down, as if it were a track to the night realms.

Sparks scattered everywhere about her, falling like so many briefly blazing stars in the darkness. They fell from her burning brand every time she inadvertently caught it against the rough-hewn walls.

This was her only light, the cramped fissure's side closing in too closely to allow room for any other kind of illumination.

'Smenkhkare!' she cried again, hoping she was hiding her nervousness. 'I _know_ you're down here!'

The cleft's roughened walls had one advantage it that they provided handholds she could reach out for, cling on to, and stop herself from stumbling on the uneven floor.

The darkness lying ahead of her moved.

She _saw_ it move.

She _felt_ it move.

A draught, a change in pressure, maybe?

But the darkness also had eyes.

Malevolent.nGlaring. Yellow.

The glowering amber orbs rushed towards her.

She couldn't out run it, whatever it was.

She didn't even have room to turn around in time.

She breathed in deeply, holding back the scream rushing up from deep inside her.

Then the darkness struck her hard, a huge, heavy chunk of it.

It growled in frustration, brushed by her even in the narrow confines; then rushed onwards, hurtling up towards the surface.

It had all happened in the very briefest of moments.

Even so, even as she once more slipped into unconsciousness, having struck her head on a jutting rock, she realised what she had seen; felt; heard.

A jackal; a jackal larger than any other she had ever seen.

*

# Chapter 20

That night, in the darkness of her tent, Clary found that the images she had been working on throughout the day continued to appear on the lids of her tightly closed eyes.

One, the image of the coffin, would continue to darken until there was nothing there but a sheet of purest black.

Although she had supposedly been watching over it, it had ominously darkened, irretrievably so.

She had left it for too long in its bath of transforming chemicals.

It had ended up in the waste bin.

She'd had to start again on a fresh version of that particular image.

This and all the other images, Smith had proudly declared, were an undoubted success.

If he had also noticed that the niche by the coffin's foot was a peculiarly intense black, then he hadn't commented on it. Perhaps, Clary reasoned, he had simply assumed its solidity was purely down the to shadows cast by its own walls. Or, maybe, he had put it down to the strength of his lights flooding other areas of the tomb.

Areas _he_ thought carried more importance.

Why hadn't the exploration of the tomb uncovered the crevice, the pathway leading down and down into the very innards of the earth?

Had it, at some point, closed up once again as the earth moved, healing its own fault?

Surely, the crack would have been discovered if it still existed there.

That is, if it had _ever_ existed there.

For hadn't she only _imagined_ it?

She hadn't really _experienced_ it, had she?

Was it nothing more than a false manifestation of yet another dream?

A hallucination brought on by the crack to her head?

Yet she had also sleepwalked; and that hadn't been _caused_ by but had been the _cause_ of the knock to the head.

The jackal outside the tent; the jackal becoming a man – that had even taken place before she had even set out on her sleepy stroll.

When, then, had her series of bizarre dreams really been set in motion?

Which was dream?

Which was reality?

*

On the screen of her eyelids now, as on the canvas walls of her tent the previous night, the jackal stalked its prey.

Its prey was a girl.

A girl blissfully unaware that she was being followed. For although it was late at night, the moon was bright and illuminating, and everything seemed peacefully quite.

At last, as she walked, she heard something behind her disturbing the rocks strewn across the pathway; she turned, frightened, fearing what she might see out here, where no one was around to help her.

Yet even as she turned – such that she failed to notice it – the wolf shivered, stretched: and in the twinkling of an eye, had become a man.

A naked man, naturally.

Yet the girl laughed; for obviously, she knew this man.

She _liked_ this man.

And so far from running away from him, she drew near.

And they lay upon the ground together.

*

The silhouette of the jackal was once again projected upon the screen of Clary's canvas-walled tent.

The lights lying beyond it tonight were numerous. Lanterns around the encampment were ablaze, Smith having no need of the darkness tonight.

Clary realised she should scream; but she didn't.

Instead, she held her breath, remained perfectly still.

The jackal sniffed at the air, the ground.

It loped silently towards the entrance of Clary's tent.

Other lights were behind him now.

He stood up, on hind legs, rising high, then higher still.

And as his forelegs became the arms of a man, he reached in between the overlapping flaps; and effortlessly snapped the securing cords.

*

# Chapter 21

_Now_ she should scream!

Yes, Clary was close, so close, to crying out for help.

But the man quickly ducked through the loosened flaps.

And Clary recognised him.

It was her husband.

It was Smenkhkare.

*

It was the man she had seen in the tomb, worshiping before the circular zodiac.

The man she had seen given flesh as she had stared at the mummy in the shattered coffin.

Of course, it wasn't really _her_ husband; but it was Smenkhkare, husband of the young girl who seemed to have established this uncanny connection with Clary.

What could it all mean?

Was she in danger?

She sensed not; well, not in any danger from this handsome man, least ways.

Even though, naturally, he was entirely naked.

'Please don't scream,' he said, his English surprisingly clear and unaccented, his tone low and soothing.

'I won't,' Clary honestly replied; for she wished more than anything to be provided with some form of explanation of what was happening to her.

'I realise you might be confused,' the man whispered, drawing closer, reaching out towards the water basin and taking a towel he used to unhurriedly, unashamedly cover himself, 'and I might be the only one who can help you understand it all.'

*

'I can see by the way you've so calmly accepted my appearance,' the man said, his warm smile showing just how handsome the ancient pharaoh could be once he lost his scowl, 'that you've already sensed – perhaps even experienced – the reason why you've been drawn here.'

'I was brought here to draw the artefacts discovered in the tomb, that's all,' Clary modestly admitted, refusing to grant herself any real importance in everything that was happening around the encampment.

'That would _seem_ to be the reason; but, as in so many things that are beyond our control far more than we realise, there are other, stronger forces at play.'

'If you don't mind me saying,' Clary replied scornfully, 'you're already beginning to sound a bit like some overemotional character in a cheap novel. I take it that, next, you'll be telling me I'm either the reincarnation or some direct descendant of the queen, who now wishes to re-establish her rule by completely taking me over?'

The man smiled knowingly as he shook his head.

'I hope I'm reassuring you if I tell you that you're neither a reincarnation nor a descendant. As for the cheap novel, not _everything_ in them is ridiculous. As I'm sure you've now seen for yourself.'

'Then why _am_ I here, if I have _no_ connection to anyone?'

'No _connection_?' Her visitor raised his eyebrows in surprise as he chuckled at her comment. 'You obviously have a _remarkably_ strong connection. _You_ were the one brought here to take part in this process; not me.'

'Process? What process? And what do you mean – you _weren't_ brought here? _You_ look _exactly_ like Smenkhkare! '

The man was obviously surprised if far from upset or worried by this revelation.

'I _am_ a direct descendant,' he admitted. 'And yet _I'm_ here _purely_ out of interest; and, if needs be, to help you ensure the process takes place as smoothly as possible.'

'A process...for what, exactly?'

'The beginnings; the very beginnings of my people.'

*

# Chapter 22

As Clary made her way through the darkness, once again heading towards the tomb but this time wholly awake, her head was naturally full of fears that she was making a mistake.

Now a jackal once more, Bara was silently and stealthily leading the way, cleverly briefly distracting anyone he came across who might question why Clary was so far away from her tent.

Naturally, to persuade Clary to go with him to the tomb, Bara Kadmon had had to offer far more than his name.

His people had their own secret testaments, a mingling of history and ancient tales, that had been pored over through the centuries as the more learned individuals amongst them – for yes, they had the instincts of the beast, and the intelligence and thirst for knowledge of men; and no, they did not hunt for food, for they preferred to eat like any regular human – sought answers to the reason for their existence.

It was an existence the majority of them relished; for hadn't humans through the ages pursued ways of bringing together the strengths of the wolf with the reasoning of a man?

The testaments, like any religious tracts, or creational myths, were far from being precise and easy to interpret. Bara suspected that many had been sent off on wild goose chases; maybe, too, some had chosen this very spot, but had picked the wrong time.

He had been more fortunate than all these others, that was all.

'The time is right not because I guessed right; but simply because it _is_ the right time!'

'But _why_ now? How _could_ it be now?' Clary had protested. 'Surely if your people exist, then this process you're talking off has _already_ taken place!'

'And so it has, in its way,' Bara agreed. 'But only by drawing on events in its own past and future – even _our_ future. It's a process taking place in eternity, rather than being constricted by time.'

Clary wasn't quite sure if she had been entirely persuaded by Bara's supposedly reassuring words.

If the opportunity presented itself, would she bring the process to an end? For how could she take Bara's word for it than his people meant no harm to humans?

Why had she so casually accepted his unnatural ability to transform from wolf to man and back again?

Shouldn't she be terrified? Shouldn't she be calling for help?

Something welling up from deep inside calmed her, told her to be patient; answers to all these things would soon be coming her way.

'What _is_ my role?' she asked uncertainly as, entering the tomb, she picked up one of the lanterns left lying there and lit it.

'That I _don't_ know,' Bara confessed. 'I only know it must be _extremely_ important; you're probably the whole _reason_ for _my_ existence

*

# Chapter 23

Clary entered the burial chamber with a barely withheld sigh of disappointment.

The facing wall was still blank, bar its marbling of sandy water stains.

She had been hoping that, as with the previous night, the zodiac would have returned in all its bright blue magnificence.

Thankfully, however, the chamber had been cleared of most of its chaotic mess. Smith's cameras and lights had also been removed, though the sharp stench of strong chemicals lingered.

In these tight confines, the acrid nature of the compounds used in the process was even more obvious than it had been in the relatively airy dark room created within Smith's tent. She could well believe that Smith might have had a point when he'd suggested airborne chemicals might have affected the plasterwork in some way.

As the substances touched and reacted with the ancient woodwork and gilding, the previously undisturbed plaster and stone, who could really say what other alchemical transformations had been set in motion?

Could this be what Bara had meant when he claimed the 'process' may well have drawn on future events? Could it have somehow utilised the discoveries of a more enlightened age, taking advantage of a chemical knowledge denied the early Egyptians?

Alongside her, Bara had once more become a man, reaching for the large towel she had brought with her for him to slip into, toga like.

Dressed like this, he looked even more like Smenkhkare, causing Clary to take a sharp, shocked intake of breath.

What if – despite his protestations for, naturally, he would be bound to deny it – Bara _was_ some reincarnated form of Smenkhkare? Could he (and this was another idea she'd gleaned from those cheap novels) be preparing to sacrifice her, enabling his beloved wife to take over her body?

Yet, she had to admit, Bara appeared dumbstruck by his surroundings.

That wouldn't be the reaction, would it, of a reincarnated pharaoh? Unless, of course, he was displaying dismay at how badly his corpse had been treated.

Making his way over towards the sorely damaged coffin, lifting up one of the other lanterns he and Clary had taken from the entrance, he almost fearfully peered into it.

'That's not what I was expecting at _all_!' he sighed forlornly.

'They're not usually in such a terrible state,' Clary admitted, joining him as he stood alongside the badly rotten box.

'No, no; not _that_!' Bara confidently replied. 'I mean, the stories handed down to us naturally claim that Smenkhkare was handsome, quite athletic; but I'd always wondered if in reality he hadn't suffered like so many others in his family–'

'Suffered?'

'They believed they were the descendants of gods; and so to maintain the bloodline, they intermarried. Meritaten Tasherit – the _Lesser_ Meritaten – Smenkhkare's daughter by his first wife, was weak, crippled. That's why he sought a god who could restore their strength, their purity.'

Clary recalled her dream (had it been a dream after all?) of Smenkhkare reverently kneeling before the zodiac. A zodiac who's central emblem had been a wolf, a wolf who had the power in his hands to bring the whole universe crashing down.

'A wolf?' she asked uncertainly.

Bara nodded, pursing his lips in the satisfied manner of a great sage.

'Anup, or Wepwawet; the two had been separate, but merged into one. Anubis was another name. He was one of the oldest gods, lord of death and the underworld long before Osiris came along.'

Clary thought once again of an earlier experience in the tomb, this time of her unsteady descent down through the narrow fissure.

Yes, it had felt like she was wending her way down into the underworld.

And the wolf, the wolf that had rushed past her in the darkness?

Had that been Smenkhkare, transformed by some magical process?

The first of Bara's people?

'Anup hardly ever appears in Egyptian myths,' Bara continued as he excitedly swung his lantern up and around to see more of the chamber. 'He was too pure, you see, to be toyed with– the crack! The Crack in the Earth!'

The light from his lamp had caught the edges of the recess, highlighting the slab of darkness hidden within. His excitement now close to ecstasy, he strode purposely towards the apparent opening, his joy immediately vanishing when his lantern light revealed the blocking wall.

'Oh, no; it doesn't lead _anywhere_!'

'It did.'

On hearing Clary's assured declaration, Bara turned, intrigued.

'It went down, almost straight down,' Clary explained further. 'A natural fissure, I think.'

He didn't question how she could know this. He knew she benefited from connections with the past denied him.

'Then if it was a natural fissure, it could also naturally reseal itself,' Bara said, reaching out to touch the back wall of the recess, perhaps hoping to find some clue pointing towards its previous state.

As Bara withdrew from the recess, Clary swung her lamp towards the now almost perfectly blank wall that had originally carried the mural of the night sky, hoping to offer him further reassurance that his journey here hadn't been wasted. The swinging of the heavy lamps almost made her stumble on the uneven floor; she reached out an arm to steady herself, her hand lightly touching the coffin lying on its bier beside her.

'Queen Kiya!'

Her original attempt to highlight the vanished zodiac forgotten, Clary stared down in wonder at the coffin.

'Queen Kiya?' Bara repeated curiously. 'Secondary wife of Akhenaten; why mention her?'

Even as he asked this, Bara had his answer; for he saw that Clary was touching the coffin, her eyes ablaze with excitement. She was once again experiencing one of those remarkable insights somehow afforded her by the ancient Egyptians.

'This was _her_ coffin,' Clary explained. 'The jars; the canopic jars were hers too,' she added, lifting her lantern a little so it briefly illuminated the niche once more.

Bara remained quiet, not wishing to disturb Clary as she began to delicately run her fingers over the damaged cartouches on the coffin lid.

'Meritaten went around all the monuments removing Kiya's name; replacing it with her own and Ankhesenpaaten's – my _other_ elder sister.'

_'Sister_?' Bara asked worriedly. 'I mean...Clary, that _is_ still you, isn't it?'

'What? Oh, yes, yes; of course!' Clary giggled nervously, realising that for a moment she had indeed felt as if she were someone else, someone long dead.

'When his wife Meritaten died,' Bara said, 'he too went around removing the names of his brother Akhenaten; blaming him and his worship of Aten for her death.'

'His had another wife,' Clary said to Bara, recalling now that the young queen she was somehow linked with had called Smenkhkare 'husband'. 'Do you know the name of his _secondary_ wife?'

'Of course!' Bara declared assuredly. 'She was named after her mother Nefertiti, or Neferneferuaten: "The most beautiful one of Aten".'

_'Neferneferuaten_!' Clary breathed excitedly. 'Yes, yes; _that's_ who I am! Neferneferuaten Tasherit – the _Lesser_ Nefertiti!'

With a mystified frown, Bara brought his lantern up closer to Clary's face. With a gasp of surprise, he fell to his knees before her, bowing his head.

'What? Bara, what are you doing?' Clary asked in embarrassment.

Bara remained on his knees even as he bent his head up to face her.

'Neferneferuaten Tasherit,' he said in awe. 'You are the _mother_ of my people!'

*

# Chapter 24

'Such a mess; it was glittering and beautiful in my time.'

She gazed despondently about the tomb.

She looked down at the still kneeling and overawed Bara.

'And you?'

She reached down, caressed him tenderly upon the cheek.

'You are _so_ like him – and yet you are _not_ him, I see that. There are _many_ differences. A descendant; which means...?'

She frowned doubtfully at him now, obviously no longer quite so certain about whom this man might be.

'Yes,' Bara confidently and proudly declared, instinctively knowing what she needed confirming. 'I _am_ a Son of Anup.'

'And so...the wolf...?'

Bara nodded; subserviently, enthusiastically.

'Yes; I can become a wolf, if you wish?'

Nefertiti waved a hand dismissively.

'There's no need; I know how it works. I believe you.'

A frown of concern flickered across Bara's face.

'May I ask; the other girl, Clary? Where is she? You haven't...?'

With a knowing smile, Nefertiti gave a slight shake of her head.

'She's fine; I will return her to you, whole and well.'

Reassured, Bara asked an even more important question.

'What do I need to do to help you assure the birth of my people?'

Nefertiti appeared thoughtfully distracted as she once again took in the poor state of the tomb.

'Yes, yes; the birth...the birth of the Sons of Anup.'

She looked down at Bara with an anxious smile.

'I know, too, the _precariousness_ of being a wolf.'

*

# Chapter 25

The darkness is my friend.

As a woman, I always seek the light, seeing safety there.

What I can see, I can trust.

What I can't see, I have no knowledge of, and therefore it remains fearful to me.

As a wolf, the darkness cloaks me.

There is no danger in the darkness itself.

It makes _me_ something to be feared.

It allows me to easily stalk the fear filled men and women. Their very nervousness makes them foolish and ungainly, makes them easier to hunt down.

I can see better than they can in this darkness.

I can smell what I cannot see.

I can smell fear; it leads me to them.

I am silent, powerful – focused.

I can remain a part of the darkness until I am almost upon them; and then it is too late for them.

They are easily dispensed with.

Like any common animal, they put up little of a fight, when they know they're time is near.

Better, they think, to accept it; to make it quick, make it easier for them.

A struggle would only painfully delay the inevitable.

Once they are killed, the thrill rushing deep within me immediately dissipates.

Now it is time only for feeding; but quickly, before they are missed, before I am seen gorging myself on their bloodied flesh.

I don't have time to eat anything more than the chunks of flesh I can quickly rive from their bones, of course.

The other scavengers – they can dine after I have finished.

*

Why am I like this?

It was Smenkhkare, not me, who demanded his transformation.

He thought he would be able to control it; he _assured_ me he could.

Yet like me, he found the bestial instincts were too overpowering: too _delightful_ to be ignored.

That raw sense of power. Of abilities long denied man.

Of a connection to nature lost to us so many thousands of years ago.

You can sense it. Read its purposes; its needs.

Become involved within it; become as one with it, rather than feeling alienated, separated – fearful.

This was all so much more than Smenkhkare had anticipated, or could have wished for.

I believe he had begun to become ever more impatient for the night to descend.

The people, however, began to increasingly dread nightfall.

What was this beast hunting them down, a beast with the intelligence to avoid every trap the pharaoh and his men would set for it?

How long would Smenkhkare have continued with this if he hadn't become ever more foolishly overconfident? He was teasing those around him, demonstrating with ease that even the richest, the most well protected, could be found dead and half eaten the next morning.

His enemies, those who had angered him; he could take out his wrath on them at night, as the city nervously slept.

Man may have lost his connections with nature, but he had forged new ones with reason. And reason increasingly pointed to Smenkhkare's links to these killings.

He could have fed on slaves; but he relished the god-like powers he had been granted, removing in an instant those who threatened or even merely irritated him.

It had to end, before he brought us all down.

The people were close to rebellion, angered all the more by what they saw as an irresponsible and uncaring attitude by the royal family. They had already been angry with us, of course, blaming my father's rejection of the gods for all the plagues the kingdom had suffered.

Smenkhkare was not an easy man to kill.

Only his trusted wife could have any hope of carrying it through.

*

Is that why I have become like him?

Because I took his life as we lay together?

What power, what magic, lies in the spume of a man? Had his soul entered my body? Or, at least, the soul of Anup?

It seems to the people that he has returned; I had been warned by the priests not to bury him as a pharaoh, for I would only be ensuring his life beyond death. But I had to make amends, of course, for my own misdeeds.

I had given him a coffin worthy of his rank, a shrine too. The full procedures had been carried out, despite the fears of those around me; for, I assured myself, how could even these elaborate preparations enable him to rise up from the dead and stalk amongst us once more?

It all had to be done in a hurry, naturally, before his death and the disappearance of the stalking terror were linked in the minds of the people.

I had given way only on the tomb, agreeing that the chamber of his own creation would serve. Now the priests – led by my resentful brother Tutankhaten, who believes I should have turned the kingdom over to him – insist we break in to ensure Smenkhkare can't continue to threaten us.

How can I resist, when to do so not only endangers my own life in so many ways, but also that of my child?

'Make your checks, then,' I snarl down at my rebelliously half kneeling brother. 'But when you see his corpse still lies there – rather than having somehow arisen, as you purport to fear – then see to that he is reburied properly!'

Even from nothing more than a half kneel, Tutankhaten can only rise unsteadily, ungainly. He smiles, attempting to hide his sense of triumph.

He limps as he backs away from me.

This, of course, is why Smenkhkare had undertaken his reckless transformations.

Because he hadn't wanted to see this cursed illness inflicted on the child he'd hoped to have with me.

It had seemed to me for a long time after his death that we'd left it too late to try for a heir. And yet, within me now, down by my ravenous stomach, there's an abrupt leap of movement.

Our child.

I'm with child.

It doesn't seem possible. Not with Smenkhkare dead so long.

Unless...he _has_ arisen after all, but in his own way.

What are the chances that this is a normal child?

How long does a wolf-woman have to be with child before she notices? How long before she gives birth?

Now I have the reason for my _own_ transformations!

The blood of my child is now my blood, after all.

What does such a child look like when it is born?

Even if it appears normal, how can I hope to control such a thing?

How, even as queen, can I assure its safety?

I will have to renounce my title and leave the kingdom before I give birth.

I will have to come to some agreement with my detested brother too, it seems.

*

# Chapter 26

'He didn't keep his word, did he?'

Nefertiti once again sadly looked about the tomb, taking in the deliberately maltreated mummy, the shattered coffin.

'What?'

Bara was confused by Queen Nefertiti's morose demeanour.

'My brother,' she only partially explained. 'He wasn't supposed to leave everything like this.'

The walls around them seemed to shiver a little as the crump of feet on broken stones echoed about them hollowly.

'The night-watchmen; they must have noticed the lanterns were missing, or seen lights down here!'

Bara jumped to his feet.

'I can scare them mayb–'

He didn't finish. For Nefertiti was already undergoing what he was about to offer to do; she was rapidly transforming into a wolf.

Bara transformed too, the change taking place in the blink of an eye.

As wolves, then, they turned and slinked silently away from the chamber, loping into the gently sloping corridor, where darkness waited to embrace them, to be their aid.

The night-watchmen had their lamps, of course, but they were farther up the slope. They cried out as they approached, seeing only the edges of dim light coming from deeper within the burial chamber.

They were nervous, wondering what or rather whom they would find there. Hoping it would all be perfectly innocent, one of the foolish white men from the camp, overly curious and eager to progress the investigation even if it meant giving up his sleep.

They couldn't see, couldn't hear, the low, grim shapes quietly flowing towards them through the darkness lying ahead of them.

Fortunately for the men, the wolves intended no harm, the creatures seeking only their own safety.

The wolves emerged abruptly from the darkness, taking the men by surprise by the suddenness of it all. The creatures leapt through the spheres of light, growling, snarling, as if in the act of bounding upon the petrified men; but as the terrified men threw themselves aside, the wolves safely soared over them, vanishing once more into the darkness on the other side of the balled light, disappearing like whispers into the extended silence leading back up towards the surface.

The lanterns were dropped, the flames snuffed out; and the corridor was plunged into a complete darkness.

The wolves were in their element.

*

# Chapter 27

They weren't expecting to be followed; nevertheless, the two wolves slinked quickly away from the tomb's entrance, refusing to come to a halt until they both arrived at an understanding that it was now safe to become themselves once more.

Bara stared in surprise as he saw Clary appearing before him.

'Was...was that _you_?' he asked uncertainly. 'The, er, wolf, I mean?'

'It was Nefertiti – but, of course, I _was_ Nefertiti.'

'Then...do you now understand what it feels like to a wolf? The sense of po–'

He trailed off, sounding even more unsure of himself than even a moment before

'What she _allowed_ me to experience,' Clary admitted. 'There was something she was _hiding_ from me – I'm sure.'

Clary herself was hiding from Bara the discovery that these Sons of Anup had indeed sought and devoured human flesh. Had he been lying when he had claimed they ate as humans ate?

He could be telling the truth, of course; if the queen and Smenkhkare had been the first of the wolves, then they would naturally have found it far harder to control the new instincts flooding through them than any descendants thousands of years later.

'Why would she be hiding things from you if she drew you here to help?' Bara asked.

'I don't know,' Clary confessed. 'But we're only _assuming_ , aren't we, that she _has_ drawn me here to help?'

'But hasn't she let you know what she needs you to do next?'

Clary shook her head.

'No; nothing,' she admitted.

'That doesn't make any sense,' Bara pointed out anxiously. 'She's had contact with you; we need to know what we're supposed to do!'

'We were surprised; maybe she didn't have time. She seemed as amazed by the experience of coming together as I was – she was allowing me to hook into her memories of what had happened. I suppose it is important that I know the background to all this.'

'Then we'll just have to wait until she establishes contact once more; maybe tomorrow night, as she doesn't seem to exert her hold over you throughout the day – it would be too obvious that you were acting oddly.'

'Where will you be? How will you survive?' Clare asked, curious to know how Bara lived. He didn't have the benefits of shelter, food and cleaning facilities offered by the encampment.

'I can live as a wolf, feeding off the smaller animals I hunt, the roots of plants I can smell out; yes yes, I know this goes against what I said earlier about eating and living as any other man does – but these are special circumstances and I've been offered no other choice.

Clary had to concede that this was correct; it in no way demonstrated that Bara had lied when he'd claimed that the Sons of Anup didn't need to hunt down man.

'You can _control_ it?' Clary said, still seeking confirmation that she wasn't about to help bring about the beginnings of a murderous people. 'I mean – regressing like this; it won't become more permanent, less controllable?'

'Doesn't any man, finding himself starving in the wilderness, have to regress – as you call it – to a more _primitive_ form of sustaining himself?'

'I suppose so,' Clary agreed, seeing the hurt in Bara's eyes. 'I'm sorry; I had to ask.'

Bara nodded in recognition that it was only natural that Clary would require reassurance that he was in complete control of his bestial component.

'Tomorrow night then,' he said, transforming once more into a wolf and silently slouching off into the shrouding darkness.

*

# Chapter 28

'Is it female? Is it Queen Tiye?'

As everyone on his own team had disagreed with him so far, Theodore Davis was eager to receive confirmation from Professor Maspero that he had discovered the tomb of the long lost queen.

The two of them were standing close by the coffin, the professor taking care not to disturb the delicate mummy as he tried to examine it in more detail.

'In such difficult circumstances, it's almost impossible to determine the sex of our subject,' the professor admitted, having already insisted that while the coffin remained within the tomb, it was altogether too badly illuminated to make any definite judgements.

Politely standing to one side while their two seniors took prime positions around the coffin, Smith, Ayrton and Weigall swapped sly yet knowing glances, seeing in the sixty-year-old Maspero's refusal to make a confident pronouncement a backing of their own theory that this was Akhenaten's corpse.

Clary had also been allowed to accompany them, working as Smith's assistant as he recorded the arrival of the famous professor to their dig. Despite spending most of yet another night awake rather than sleeping entirely through it, she felt refreshed, even elated.

It hadn't been hard to return to the encampment unnoticed in the darkness. Even her incredibly short experience as a wolf had taught her the importance of stealth, of using the darkness as a friend as opposed to something that should be feared.

She had even considered attempting to become, once more, a wolf, wondering if it were possible, and what it would feel like when it had been a conscious choice.

Now she was considering pointing out that the mummy must have some traits that would make it more obviously recognisable as being that of a man in his twenties. But, as with her previous urge to try and briefly take on the form of a wolf, she dismissed it as being foolhardy; how could she hope to explain why she was so certain that it was neither a woman nor an older man?

Even Smith's claim to have arrived at a name for the coffin's occupant via the discovery of the cartouche on the gold foil had been summarily dismissed, for it seemed that the precious metal had vanished.

'...pendent chin...distorted cranium...'

The professor was carefully studying the severely shattered skull, his examination curtailed by his reluctance to move it in any way.

Davis had no such reservations. He reached out to point out the teeth, one of which crumbled at his touch.

'If only we could see more of the teeth,' he sighed morosely. 'Then we might be able to determine her sex...'

'I would suggest we wait until this Dr Pollock and the American obstetrician you mentioned can come out here to conduct a proper investigati–'

'The _wide_ hips, though, Professor,' an impatient Davis interjected, urgently indicating the lower parts of the mummy.

'Akhenaten is rendered with female qualities; rounded hips, enlarged breast–'

'Only symbolically; to make him appear more godlike, surely?'

The professor shrugged.

'Smith,' Davis said, using the wag of a finger to indicate that his fellow American should draw closer, 'you're used to handling things delicately; hand your camera to Miss...er, and see if you can remove some of these bandages.'

Professor Maspero appeared ready to protest, but resignedly consented by drawing aside to allow Smith access to the coffin.

Despite the artist's care in his handling of the unwrapping, it wasn't just the bandages that turned to powder in his hands but this section of the mummy itself also crumbled into ashes. Nothing remained except a pile of dust and disconnected bones.

'Hah, see!' Davis announced triumphantly. 'A complete absence of male genitalia!'

Maspero was not so easily convinced.

'The pelvic bones have been dislocated,' he mused. 'What you claim is missing seem to me to be merely _obscured_ by the remains of the bandages and this other debris.'

'How many _more_ excuses must be made?' Davis exasperatedly stormed. 'I need _some_ form of confirmation _either_ way; I want to announce to the world our discovery of the tomb of Queen Tiye!'

'Surely we can wait a little longe–'

_'How_ much longer, Weigall?' Davis rudely interrupted. 'These digs cost a fortune to organise and fund, as you well know! If we can get the newspapers out here, I might at last begin to get _some_ return on my investment!'

A defeated Weigall shrugged, his smile acquiescent; Davis had indeed subsidised a great many excavations, and the younger man didn't wish to cause offence to such an important sponsor.

'Yet Akhenaten's tomb would be an even greater find to annou–'

As with his frustrated interruption of Weigall, Davis treated Ayrton as nothing more than a paid underling whenever a disagreement wasn't going his way.

'And what kind of vainglorious fool would _I_ be revealed to be if it ever came out _you_ were wrong, Edward? If we claimed _that_ – only to later confess it was actually Queen Tiye's tomb that we've discovered – it would be regarded as a disappointment rather than a wonderful find!'

It was surprisingly hurtful for Clary to see them arguing like children over the body – to even callously _damage_ that body – of a man she now realised she had really seen alive, rather than in a dream as she had first supposed.

She had seen him in the flesh, moving, talking – expressing emotions even more heartfelt than those now erupting about her.

How would these foolish men like it if a cackle of archaeologists would one day be picking over their bones like argumentative carrion?

Naturally, Nefertiti had had an even deeper knowledge and closer relationship with Smenkhkare; she had been married to him, had borne at least one of his children. How much harder must it be for her to see, first, the desecration inflicted upon her husband's body by her own people, her own brother – and then, added to this, the second and further series of humiliations and insults he'd had to suffer at the hands of people far within his future?

Did it make her fear, too, for what would happen to her when her own mummified body was discovered?

_Her_ body?

Of _course_!

Nefertiti's corpse would _never_ be found.

For in leaving the kingdom and turning it over to her brother Tutankhaten, she had also ensured she would _never_ be mummified.

She would never rise, then, to be amongst the _gods_!

*

Had this failure to leave behind a mummified body been an unintended, even unwanted consequence of leaving the kingdom?

Surely it had.

For an Egyptian believed mummification was the only way he or she could live on after their death on Earth. The only way their life energy could navigate and survive the perils waiting for them in the afterlife and have a bodily from to return to.

Nefertiti wouldn't want to willingly throw way such a prize, would she?

And yet...looking about her now at the injuries deliberately served upon Smenkhkare's body, Clary realised that Nefertiti must have also realised that she would be denied this goal anyway if it were ever discovered that – like her husband – she had also become a bestial hybrid.

She might have feared, too, that any mummification process might have somehow revealed her semi-wolf state, endangering not only her own afterlife but also the life of her child.

It must have been quite a dilemma for her to have faced.

An unsurmountable dilemma, in fact.

The most probable result would be an eternal life of damnation no matter which course she chose.

How could it ever be satisfactorily resolved?

How would _she_ approach such a problem?

Clary once again went back over the alternative routes that might be taken in an attempt to solve the situation Nefertiti had unintentionally found herself in. Yet no matter which option she chose, not matter how she attempted to see light at the end of this dark tunnel of hopelessness, she saw only that there could never, ever be a perfect solution.

But in experiencing that same unnavigable darkness of depression that Nefertiti most have also found herself hopelessly wallowing in, Clary at last found hiding there the things Nefertiti had been withholding from her.

It would be far better indeed, of course, if Nefertiti had never been placed in this unfortunate situation.

Smenkhkare should never have attempted to draw on the powers of darkness to solve this perceived problem of a weak royal family; for instead of giving birth to a dynasty of ever stronger kings and queens, he had assured their alienation, their ejection from power and the chance to live forever in eternity.

Nefertiti was embarrassed, ashamed, by what she and her descendants had become.

She hadn't called on Clary to help her _fulfil_ the process of change.

She had called upon Clary to help her _prevent_ it.

*

# Chapter 29

Even as Bara silently slipped into her tent later that night and instantly began his transformation from wolf to man, Clary's mind was still alive with thoughts of her task; but foremost amongst these thoughts was her own, new dilemma – for how could she tell Bara what was on her mind?

How could she betray Bara, who was here to enable the birth of his people?

But how could she betray Nefertiti, who – Clary was quite sure now – didn't wish to be the mother of his people?

If the process was halted, Nefertiti and her children would no longer be hunted beasts, but royalty in the most powerful, advanced kingdom on earth. Nefertiti herself, of course, was queen, and a queen who ruled in her own right at that, rather than attaining her power through a husband who was pharaoh.

There was another question troubling Clary.

Was it even possible to stop the process?

Yes, of course, she understood that the process itself, far from being constrained by time, drew on its many potentialities to achieve its purpose. But if it was to be halted, then Bara himself would cease to exist; why, she herself would probably also cease to exist, for such a change, so far back in the past, would set off an endless series of repercussions.

And if they ceased to exist, then how could they change the process?

It was a paradox, one far more unsurmountable than even the one Nefertiti had found herself facing.

'Have you received any further communications from Queen Nefertiti?' Bara asked anxiously. 'Has she told you what she expects you to do for her?'

Clary shook her head.

Was she lying, she wondered, or being truthful?

Before she could ponder this any further, Bara thankfully became a wolf once more.

And the next moment, she was a wolf herself.

*

# Chapter 30

It was as wolves that they both slinked silently across the barren ground, swiftly heading towards the tomb's entrance.

Clary had experienced what it was like to be a wolf before, of course. But then it had been at Nefertiti's instigation; this time, it had been her choice to make the change.

She hadn't been entirely sure, of course, that she could do it; she hadn't been aware, either, how to go about setting the transformation in motion.

She had simply thought it would be _desirable_ to be a wolf – for it would allow her to move rapidly yet quietly, without fear of being discovered.

As she padded over the hard ground, she found herself picking up things she had never sensed before: she heard the rhythmic throb of insects, the burrowing and hurried scampering of frightened animals; she smelt that fear, along with the scent of disturbed flowers longing for attention, the earthy fragrances of gathering dew upon the stones; then there was the darkness itself, opening up before her as she fearlessly rushed through it, revealing to her bright eyes all manner of life that lay veiled to her whenever she saw it only from the viewpoint of an arrogant human who believed herself to be superior and therefore separated from nature.

Thankfully, the few men awake, those supposedly acting as night-watchmen, were every bit as unobservant as she would normally be.

They were also unconsciously slow, cumbersome. Whereas she, like Bara, had an enviable, remarkable strength, an array of the most responsive muscles working as one to swiftly propel her forward as if a section of the darkness itself had briefly broken loose. It was a litheness, a sleek agility, combined with utmost confidence and a highly intelligent cunning.

They were pathetic, these humans.

Surely Nefertiti must have also experienced this sense of raw yet ultimately highly controllable power?

Yes; but what was such natural power when compared to the power of being a queen?

Nefertiti had sensed only the shame of being a beast.

There was no shame, Clary thought, in the way they so easily slipped past the unwatchful night-watchmen.

*

There was no consideration that they might need lanterns as they headed into the tomb.

As wolves, they had no real need of them, for they remained fully aware of the nature of their surroundings despite the darkness, the lack of light.

If, when they became humans once more, they found they required light, then they might head back towards the entrance, seeking a way of helping themselves to one of the many lanterns stacked there.

Even in the darkness, it was obvious their way wasn't hindered by the smaller blocks of rubble yet to be cleared from the gently sloping corridor. It was completely clear of any debris, as it had been when Clary had found herself in the freshly constructed tomb.

There was that sharp scent, too, of newly cut stone, a fragrance almost spring-like in its sense of renewal.

They were back, then, in the past; and yet there was no sign that Clary was aware of of the presence of Nefertiti.

Neither were there burning brands set into the walls to illuminate their way. The corridor remained perfectly dark, causing a sting of human concern to surge though Clary; when they became human once more, there would be no lanterns to be retrieved from the entrance way.

*

# Chapter 31

As the two wolves loped down the corridor, it gradually became obvious that at the end of the dark tunnel there was a slight difference in what should have been a wall of perfect blackness, there was a partial rectangle of a less than solid darkness, the edge of the doorway, opening up onto a burial chamber in which a dim light burned.

It could be nothing more than the minute flame of a small oil lamp, Clary surmised; it wasn't, for sure, anything like the brightly burning brands that had irradiated a Smenkhkare pleading for assistance before the zodiac mural.

It was a lamp even smaller than Clary had supposed, a burning taper set within a bowl of oil, its purpose to add a fragrance to the surroundings rather than bring light.

It was enough of a flame, however, for a retransformed Clary to use to light one of the bands left projecting from its wall socket.

As the flame took hold, the first thing it revealed was the nakedness of both Bara and Clary, her clothes having fallen about her uselessly to the floor on her transformation into a wolf. They felt no shame, however, for they had seen each other naked as wolves, and instinctively realised this was our natural state after all.

Bara's gasp of surprise came on his first sighting of the wall-painting of the zodiac, elatedly stepping towards it every bit as reverently as Smenkhkare had worshipped before it.

'The wolf; the plough!' he exclaimed, almost reaching up and touching them in excitement, only to quickly withdraw his hand, as if to do so might be sacrilege.

He looked back over his shoulder towards Clary.

'The wolf is the Opener of the Ways to the heights of heaven, the House of the Great Aged One Anu, where the imperishable stars never set or die.'

Clary was only half listening; she had seen the zodiac before, of course, and her attention was focused instead upon the magnificent coffin laid upon an equally elaborate and gold laden bier.

It was far larger than the coffin Davis had discovered in the wrecked tomb. And yet, just like that more sorely disturbed coffin, this one also lay with its lid slid to one side.

*

Making her way towards the coffin's side, Clary was startled to see that the lid of every other box stacked inside the larger one had also been removed.

The mummy lay bared to the air.

And its head had been clearly severed.

*

# Chapter 32

'Who could have done this to my husband, the pharaoh?' Nefertiti growled furiously.

She quickly glanced everywhere about her, taking in the state of the tomb, its relative darkness, its general lack of disturbance other than the coffins and the disfigured occupant.

'It hasn't been broken into,' she observed, her anger this time tinted with fear, 'so it's not by _human_ hand!'

Her head whirled, taking in the fissure leading out of the tomb and deep down into the earth.

'We've arrived at an important point in the transformation; far _later_ than I'd hoped!'

*

As before when Clary had become the queen, an awestruck Bara made to bow down before her; but Nefertiti impatiently waved his obedient observances aside as she urgently reached instead for the burning brand. Immediately spinning about on her heels, she strode towards the fissure.

'It's _open_!' Bara breathed in wonder as the flames lit up the way leading down into a fractured earth.

In an instant, he was a wolf, bounding past Nefertiti to vanish into the thick darkness of the narrow crevice.

How could she betray such loyalty to the birth of his people? Clary wondered morosely.

'Because we _must_ ,' Nefertiti assuredly replied.

*

Clary was shocked.

In their previous mergers, she had somehow been aware of Nefertiti's actions, as well as a great deal of her recollections; yet she had never, ever felt that they existed together at the same time within the same body.

Now, however, Clary had not only managed to think separately to Nefertiti's own consciousness and actions, but the queen had also somehow _listened_ in to her thoughts; and, moreover, had _replied_ to them.

Had, then, Nefertiti heard Clary's admonishment of the queen for weeping over a husband she herself had murdered?

'Of _course_ I heard!' Nefertiti scoffed. 'As for his death, what choice did I have? They knew he had worshipped Anup; the people blamed him for the attacks! Just as they will later blame him for attacks that take place when he is supposedly dead; for Anup could also surely raise him from the dead. That's why we must "betray" your friend; to prevent further desecration to his corpse and the hounding of his children!'

'The severed head?' Clary asked, wondering if the desecration had somehow already started, despite Nefertiti's insistence that the tomb hadn't been broken into.

Wait...if it remained sealed, then how had Nefertiti herself managed to enter the tomb?

Ah, yes; of _course_!

By wilfully merging with Clary, who had entered the tomb at a time when it _had_ been broken into!

Was this her only role in the process? As an aid to enable Queen Nefertiti easy access to a sealed tomb?

If it was, Nefertiti didn't answer. Not that she needed to; Clary could read some of Nefertiti's more prominent thoughts just as the queen could listen in to hers.

On becoming an unwilling participant in the timeless transformation process, Nefertiti had found that she could also stretch her consciousness out through time, seeking some equally special girl whose unusual senses might make enough of a difference to prevent the delicate metamorphosis taking place.

If Nefertiti hadn't been prepared to answer an unspoken question, she did, however, audibly answer Clary's query regarding the meaning of the severed head.

'It has to be replaced by the head of a wolf; making Smenkhkare the image of Anup himself.'

'But Smenkhkare's dead...'

'Smenkhkare!' Nefertiti yelled down into the fissure as if ignoring Clary. But then, momentarily calming her obvious nervousness, she explained why she believed her husband was still alive.

'Anup is the divine physician who showed us how mummification enables a life beyond death; he reconstituted the dead and dismembered Osiris as the light that is Horus. Light comes from the darkness that is Anup.'

As the burning brand she was holding scuffed against the crevices' uneven walls, sparks scattered everywhere about her, falling like so many briefly blazing stars in the darkness.

'Smenkhkare!' Nefertiti cried again, hoping she was hiding her fear. 'I _know_ you're down here!'

The cleft's roughened walls had one advantage in that they provided handholds she could reach out for, cling on to, and stop herself from stumbling on the uneven floor.

Clary recognised the situation she was in; the ungainly scrambling down the tight fissure.

Wasn't it at this point when– yes, here he comes!

The darkness lying ahead of her moved.

She _saw_ it move.

She _felt_ it move.

A wolf was rushing up towards her from the darkness of the crevice.

*

As before, when she had experienced this very same situation, Clary didn't even have room to turn around in time.

She breathed in deeply, holding back the scream rushing up from deep inside Nefertiti.

Then the darkness struck her hard, a huge, heavy chunk of it.

It growled in frustration, brushed by her even in the narrow confines; then rushed onwards, as if unstoppable.

It all happened in the very briefest of moments.

Even so, both Clary and Nefertiti realised what they had seen; felt; heard.

It was Bara, darting back up through the fissure. Hurtling back up towards the surface.

And Clary saw this clearly, for this time she had ensured she wouldn't be knocked unconscious by the wolf's abrupt – and this time fully expected – leap from the darkness.

Had he overheard their discussion echoing down through the crevice, their conversation regarding the replacement of Smenkhkare's head with that of a wolf?

Had Bara realised that, maybe, he was the wolf whose head would be used?

*

# Chapter 33

The descent was long and arduous, but at last the narrow fissure was beginning to widen a little, to level out; and light could at last be seen at the end of the dark tunnel.

Abruptly, the crevice opened up into a vast cavern, the light that Nefertiti had seen coming from the flaming torches of a serpent-styled boat lying upon what Clary presumed must be the darkly veiled waters of an underground river. And at the bark's prow, proudly and erectly positioned on top of the serpent's head above its wide open eye – an eye that fiercely blazed with the fire of the brightest of burning brands – there stood a black-bodied, wolf-headed man.

Smenkhkare? Clary wondered.

No, Anup, Nefertiti corrected.

Then Clary saw, as Nefertiti had fully expected, that a headless mummy had been laid out upon a bier at the bark's centre.

This, surely, was Smenkhkare.

And yet, if everything was prepared for Smenkhkare's transformation, then why was the bark still here? Why hadn't it already set sail?

Even Nefertiti remained uncertain about this. Instinctively, her hand went to the hilt of the sheathed dagger strapped to her waist.

As she drew closer, however, each saw that there was no river, there were no waters; the boat was beached on nothing but sand.

The sand was still. There was no wind here to take it, to constantly move and reform it, as it did upon the surface.

But as Nefertiti nervously continued her approach, the sand at last began to shift. At first as if lightly rippled by the slightest of breezes, then swelling into even more fluid motion. Then it flowed, as even rocks burst into life when the ground itself begins to otherwise imperceptibly shake.

And as a snake whisks rapidly across the sands, turning dust into a stream as smoothly flowing as any water, the bark surged into movement, beginning its headlong rush through the darkness.

*

As the body of the serpent boat so unexpectedly whipped into action, Nefertiti was lifted up by its flailing coils, the crook of its tail catching her then depositing her gently upon its deck.

Now the bark was moving far too swiftly for her to abandon it; everywhere about the boat there was darkness, and yet there was a sense of rapid movement, of countless things being passed by at unbelievable speed.

On the bark itself, however, the flames remained undisturbed by its hurtling motion. The flaming eyes of the serpent lit the way, briefly highlighting obstacles – monsters perhaps, demons, or lost souls – that only briefly appeared caught within the glare before being thankfully left behind in the darkness once more.

The river they sailed upon now was no longer composed of sand, but the darkness itself, vibrating into streaming rivulets that supported and guided the bark on its journey through the night, through little more than a second, rushing forward and back through time.

They passed the sphinx who, in an instant, lost its human face, gaining instead the face it had originally been carved with; that of a jackal.

*

# Chapter 34

In the very centre of all this darkness, the point towards which they were undeniably heading, there stood a wolf.

The bark wallowed in the waters of darkness, otherwise motionless, having imperceptibly drawn to a sudden halt.

It was the waters, rather than the boat – and perhaps, Clary thought, this had really been the case all along – that flowed into action, lifting the wolf up on a great wave, throwing him up onto the bark's deck.

He proudly stood there before Nefertiti, as dry as if he had never been touched by any waters at all.

Clary recognised him

It was Bara.

*

'Bara?' Clary said to him uncertainly, recalling how he had fled this underground chamber, rushing back to the surface.

'I have been purified in the divine pool, the lake of propitiation,' Bara intoned, kneeling subserviently before her. 'It has all been explained to me; and I am prepared to make the sacrifice to enable you to become the mother of my people.'

'No; you _can't_ do this, Bara!' Clary cried out fearfully. 'They mean to take your _head_! Don't you _see_?'

'No; _you_ are the one who doesn't see,' Bara insisted. 'The wolf is death, which feeds the seeder, as all life is a seed.'

'I can't let you _do_ this!' said Clary and Nefertiti, each for their own reasons.

Behind Bara, appearing out of the darkness – for the flames can't illuminate that which is darkness itself until it wishes to reveal itself – there came another wolf.

And with a sharp, precise lash of his flail, a towering Anup took off Bara's head.

*

In a moment, Anup was holding a headless, bloodied pelt.

Bara's head had vanished.

Nefertiti's own head whirled around; she looked back towards what had been the headless mummy of Smenkhkare.

It had gained a head once more

Bara's head.

*

# Chapter 35

The mummified body of Smenkhkare began to blacken, becoming as dark as the human torso of Anup.

It was a rapid discolouration, one set in motion by the mummification – the treatment with natron and the smearing of the wrappings with resinous substances – but here taking place unnaturally quickly. It was also the colour of the fertile silt of the River Nile, symbolising the possibility of rebirth in the afterlife.

Even knowing all this, even knowing that it signified that Smenkhkare would once again regain life, Nefertiti was still shocked when she noticed the first signs that life was already returning to her husband's beheaded corpse. She suffered, too, the even greater shock of Clary, who had no inkling of the symbolic meaning lying behind the discolouration.

Swinging his legs to one side, freeing himself of the swiftly rotting and shredding bandages through this movement alone, Smenkhkare rose up from his bier.

He was whole once more, yet now in an entirely different form; for the wolf head of Bara was now firmly attached, as if it had always been Smenkhkare's head and no other's.

*

# Chapter 36

Seen like this, standing apart, the newly arisen Smenkhkare and Anup could have been dark twins. It was only as the wolf-headed Smenkhkare drew closer towards her that Nefertiti realised there was a difference in height, her dead husband now far taller than he had been in life, and yet nowhere near to being such a looming presence as the dreaded Anup.

Despite this, Smenkhkare was terrifying enough. Once again – despite this being her husband, reborn – a trembling Nefertiti intuitively reached for the hilt of her dagger, prepared to withdraw it in an instant if she felt at any time that she needed protection.

As the newly risen Smenkhkare took his place alongside his trembling queen, Anup silently withdrew, becoming the darkness once more.

When Smenkhkare spoke, Clary noted a hint of Bara's voice, Nefertiti a touch of Smenkhkare's.

'I am glad you have agreed to this,' he breathed wearily, grabbing Nefertiti by the tops of her shoulders, his grip both firm and yet tender. 'Only _you_ can be the mother to this new people.'

_'Me_?' _Mother_?' Nefertiti repeated nervously, unsuccessfully trying to back away a little, tightening her grip on the dagger's hilt.

With her other hand, she instinctively felt for a roundness, a hardening, of her belly, wondering if her husband had already made her with child, a child who would naturally reflect the transformations he had been undergoing.

_'You_ must also be transformed; _your_ rebirth merely demands that you should willing accept being merged in death with Anup's own companion, Anupt.'

A chill ran through Clary, through Nefertiti.

'No, no; not that!' she insisted, attempting to back off once more, failing yet again, for Smenkhkare's grasp of her shoulders was even more insistent.

'No! I don't accept that!' snapped Nefertiti forcefully, fearfully. 'I don't _want_ to be like you!'

'Not like me – like Anupt,' Smenkhkare calmly replied.

_Where_ do we run? Nefertiti inwardly screamed.

_How_ do we run? Clary wailed, unable to break free of Smenkhkare's grip.

Then, in an instant, Clary realised what she must do.

'I accept,' she declared firmly, shocking Nefertiti to her core.

*

# Chapter 37

We can't escape, Clary pointed out to Nefertiti.

Smenkhkare's hold is too powerful to resist. And, even if we do break free, we don't know how to escape this place; we don't even know _where_ we are!

And in her mind, she showed Nefertiti the only possible solution to their dilemma.

It was an image of Smenkhkare's broken coffin, an image strangely continuing to darken until there was nothing there but a sheet of purest black.

Although Clary had supposedly been watching over it, it had ominously darkened, irretrievably so. For she had left it for too long in its bath of transforming chemicals.

The process set in motion to create the image had ended up destroying it when pushed too far, when an over-saturation of the process's constituents were brought all at once into operation.

In such a short space of time, Nefertiti couldn't hope to fully comprehend Clary's reasoning; but at least she understood Clary's intention, and knew why they must both agree to it.

Besides, she had her own reasons for accepting Clary's offer, not least because she couldn't think of any other answer to the problem.

Hearing, seeing, feeling, his queen's acquiescence, her relaxing of her muscles and stance, Smenkhkare loosened his grip a little.

It was enough of a loosening for Nefertiti to fully withdraw her dagger.

Smenkhkare guffawed at his queen's pathetic, foolish attempt to free herself in this way; surely she understood that he had died and was now reborn – how could she possibly hope to kill him?'

'We make our _own_ sacrifice,' Nefertiti whispered, hoping she was also speaking for Clary.

Swiftly bringing up the knife, she deeply slashed her own throat.

*

# Chapter 38

Nefertiti woke up in a tomb lit once again by nothing more than the small oil lamp.

Her hand immediately rose to her throat; there was no cut there, no gaping, mortal wound.

She was lying on the cold stone floor. Smenkhkare's headless corpse lay alongside her, the wolf head of Bara completely separated from his neck.

The bloodied pelt that Anup had held was also there; he must have draped it over the transformed Smenkhkare before withdrawing into the darkness, Nefertiti presumed.

Clary had been right; not that Clary, naturally, had been so certain herself that making a sacrifice of her own body would work in her favour.

If she died too early in the process of rebirth, then the transformation couldn't possibly take place.

The process would have to be started all over again for there to be any hope that it would be successful.

Nefertiti, of course, had doubted the wisdom, the strength of reasoning, behind Clary's proposal.

Yet she had always been aware that – even if she didn't know the precise location – they had been brought to a place where neither life nor death existed in the very same forms they took on earth.

Besides, if she had died – well, then at least she wouldn't have had to face the shame of being a beast; a _mother_ of beasts.

*

# Chapter 39

When Smenkhkare had broken free of his mummifying bandages, a few had remained caught about his body.

Other bandages and fresh oils had been left amongst the possessions set about the tomb, and using these Nefertiti managed to grant her husband an incomplete re-mummification.

Placing him back in his coffin was more difficult still, despite the earlier burial processes that had stripped away most of his innards, making him far lighter than the impossibly heavy weight he would have been otherwise.

His head had fallen to the floor at some point, and had been badly damaged as it struck the stone. Retrieving it, Nefertiti placed it back in place within the coffin.

'The wolf's head; the fleece,' she said out loud worriedly.

Clary understood her anxiety.

Although there would be no reason now for anyone to break into the tomb and desecrate her husband's body, any grave robbers or excavators would surely see them as substantiation of rumours of a wolf-like pharaoh.

When Nefertiti left, Clary would have to be holding the wolf's head and pelt to ensure she took them with her back into the future.

'Thank you,' Nefertiti said to Clary, her tone remorseful, almost regretful, as she decided it was time to bring their brief merging to an end.

Suddenly, Clary was on her own in the tomb once more.

Off to her side, there was a shriek of movement, a clash of stone, as the crack in the earth, the fissure in time – no longer required – closed up.

And as the crack closed, Clary brought together the head and fleece; and the two merged, the wolf abruptly forming whole and alive once more.

*

# Chapter 40

Bara required no explanation.

Everything that must be, that would be, everything that he must do, had all been explained to him by Anup when he had rushed ahead of the queen.

He had dashed back, as commanded, to prepare Smenkhkare's corpse for the next part of the transformation. Then – and here, of course, it had been _inexplicably_ miraculous – he had found himself lying the headless mummy upon the bark.

Equally miraculously, he had next appeared at the centre of the universe, awaiting the arrival of the bark, the time for his own brief sacrifice.

But then, every supposedly fortuitous discovery leading him, Smenkhkare and Nefertiti here had all been carefully arranged long before the pharaoh had even ascended to the throne.

Now, in a similarly mysteriously miraculous fashion, he and Clary were back in the desecrated, newly excavated tomb.

Alongside him, Clary shrugged; and in a moment, like him, she had become a wolf, so that they effortlessly slipped past the inattentive watchmen.

*

Clary had set up her easel on the edge of the encampment, apparently sketching the wolf that had taken up a patient vigil of the dig.

The wolf never drew too close or bothered anyone, so no one from the encampment could be bothered trying to chase him away anymore. He had taken up an ideal vantage point from an outcrop of rock with a sheltering overhang. From here he could easily make out anyone's approach long before they had any chance of taking him unawares.

If anyone had bothered drawing close to Clary unawares – which, in fact, was every bit as unlikely as taking the wolf by surprise – they would probably have been amazed to see that she wasn't drawing the wolf hiding amongst the rocks but a wolf calmly seated upon a plough, surrounded by all the other creatures and symbols of the ancient zodiac that would otherwise be lost to later generations.

This would be her leaving gift to Smith and Weigall for their help – no matter how unintentional – in helping her fulfil her task.

Poor Nefertiti; for all the unintentional help _she_ had given, she deserved the most wondrous gift of all, of course. Unfortunately, she obviously regarded her own gift as nothing but a curse.

Clary had had no choice but to leave the poor girl suffering the comforting delusion that everything had been set right to her liking. No wonder, when she later began her transformations, she would blame them on her child rather than herself.

And yet she, Nefertiti, not the child, was the one – if once again unintentionally – responsible.

She had willingly called upon and merged with Anupt.

As Clary finished her detailed sketch, she resisted the temptation to explain the true symbolism lying behind the wolf of death, the plough of life, by combining it with her third attribute, the flail of fertility and therefore rebirth.

Seeing that no one was watching, she shivered into her more comfortable form; that of the wolf.

Then she sloped silently across the rocks, heading towards the patiently waiting son of the Daughters of Anupt.

End

If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella's Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch's Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The Bad Samaritan – The 13th Month – The Silvered Mare – SpinDell

Swan Moon – The Unicorndoll

