❝death is only the beginning.❞
Mara El-Masri's fascination with the long-ago world of ancient Egypt started with the stories her stepfather would tell her when she was a child. Her brother Talib El-Masri is missing, left after their mother's funera...
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"THERE'S THE ANUBIS STATUE," said Mara as she looked up at it. The jackal-headed god cast its shadow upon them as they stood in the ruins, preparing to return to the labyrinth underneath them. The rope they used only days earlier to climb into the crevice to get underground was still tied around the pillar, and O'Connell was double-checking that it was secure before they went down. She turned as she spoke, "If I'm right, the Horus statue should be east of it. So if we go the opposite direction we did when we were searching for the legs of Anubis, we should come across it in no time."
There was no way to know if her theory was correct until they actually found the Horus statue. She herself was not one hundred percent certain they would indeed find Horus east of where they found Anubis, afraid she had misread the hieroglyphics at the museum in her haste, but it had to be there. No, she couldn't have doubts about herself and her abilities, not now.
O'Connell glanced over at her as he pulled on the rope. "Lot of 'shoulds' there."
"It's not as if there's a map of the Hamunaptra labyrinth," Jamil wisely pointed out to him. Jonathan stood beside him and nodded to agree. "Mara's judgement is sound."
"I'm not doubting that," O'Connell said. "I just want to find this thing as soon as possible."
Mara, in all the time between finding an exit from the underground cistern to being strapped to the wing of a biplane that was now buried in quicksand, hadn't asked her father if he had ever been to Hamunaptra. When they were at the museum, she had assumed that he had, and that once, he'd been among the Medjai who were to scare away explorers to the city by any means necessary, but she hadn't wanted to think about it beyond that. She asked him now, "Have you ever been underneath Hamunaptra?"
Jamil shook his head. "No, only above it, and barely even then."
O'Connell gave the rope a final tug, evidently confident of its security, and nodded his head toward it. The man seemed to have become their de facto leader. "That means you're the first one down. Come on."
Jamil took hold of the rope and disappeared into the crevice, the first one underground. Jonathan was next after him, and Ardeth after him, and then O'Connell was gesturing to Mara to go down. With the rope in her hand, she paused before jumping and looked at O'Connell. She told him somberly, "I'm sorry about Winston. I liked him. He seemed like a good man."
O'Connell nodded. "He was. Get down there."
When Mara's feet touched the ground of the sah-netjer, the first thing she heard was her father stating in wonder, "I never thought I would stand here." The pair of mirrors on the surface were still positioned to catch the sun correctly, so there was light throughout the room. He was looking around the sah-netjer. "This is the very room where Imhotep was cursed three thousand years ago."
