TO BE FAIR, THE MUMMIES in that particular room were mostly ruined already, thanks to the moisture from the leaking tower above. Just add water to mummies for a truly horrible smell.
We climbed over the rubble and found a corridor leading deeper underground. I couldn't tell whether it was natural or man-made, but it snaked a good forty meters through solid rock before opening into another burial chamber. This room had not been damaged by water. Everything was remarkably well preserved. Walt had brought torches [flashlights, for you Americans], and in the dim light, on stone slabs and in niches carved along the walls, gold-painted mummies glittered. There were at least a hundred in this room alone, and more corridors led off in each direction.
Walt shined his light on three mummies lying together on a central dais. Their bodies were completely wrapped in linen, so they looked rather like bowling pins. Their likenesses were painted on the linen in meticulous detail-hands crossed over their chests, jewelry adorning their necks, Egyptian kilt and sandals, and a host of protective hieroglyphs and images of the gods in a border on each side. All this was typical Egyptian art, but their faces were done in a completely different style -realistic portraits that looked cut-and-pasted onto the mummies' heads. On the left was a man with a thin, bearded face and sad dark eyes. On the right was a beautiful woman with curly auburn hair. What really pulled at my heart, though, was the mummy in the middle. Its body was tiny-obviously a child. Its portrait showed a boy of about seven years old. He had the man's eyes and the woman's hair.
"A family," Walt guessed. "Buried together."
There was something tucked under the child's right elbow -a small wooden horse, possibly his favorite toy. Even though this family had been dead for thousands of years, I couldn't help getting a bit teary-eyed. It was so bloody sad.
"How did they die?" I wondered.
From the corridor directly in front of us, a voice echoed, "The wasting disease."
My staff was instantly in my hand. Walt trained his torch on the doorway, and a ghost stepped into the room. At least I assumed he was a ghost, because he was see-through. He was a heavy older man with short-cropped white hair, bulldog jowls, and a cross expression. He wore Roman-style robes and kohl eyeliner, so he looked rather like Winston Churchill-if the old prime minister had thrown a wild toga party and gotten his face painted.
"Newly dead?" He eyed us warily. "Haven't seen any new arrivals in a long time. Where are your bodies?"
Walt and I glanced at each other.
"Actually," I said, "we're wearing them."
The ghost's eyebrows shot up. "Di immortales! You're alive?"
"So far," Walt said.
"Then you've brought offerings?" The man rubbed his hands. "Oh, they said you would come, but we've waited ages! Where have you been?"
"Um..." I didn't want to disappoint a ghost, especially as he was beginning to glow more brightly, which in magic is often a prelude to exploding. "Perhaps we should introduce ourselves. I'm Sadie Kane. This is Walt-"
"Of course! You need my name for the spells." The ghost cleared his throat. "I am Appius Claudius Iratus."
I got the feeling I was supposed to be impressed. "Right. That's not Egyptian, I gather?"
The ghost looked offended. "Roman, of course. Following those cursed Egyptian customs is how we all ended up here to begin with! Bad enough I got stationed in this god-forsaken oasis-as if Rome needs an entire legion to guard some date farms! Then I had the bad luck to fall ill. Told my wife on my deathbed: 'Lobelia, an old-fashioned Roman burial. None of this local nonsense.' But no! She never listened. Had to mummify me, so my ba is stuck here forever. Women! She probably moved back to Rome and died in the proper way."
