TOMBRAIDER

BY CHRISTOPHER TOILKIEN

[ part 2 ]

Isis could not move a muscle, both absolute terror and the tight leather straps at her wrists, forearms, waist, ankles and neck, held her thin body tight right against the elaborate funerary chair.

"Remember when I whispered in your ear on that first night" His labored breath informed her. "You were destined for a greater ones sacrifice?"

He then stepped back through the doorway and made a chopping motion with his right hand.

"Those long candles will soon give off an aromatic, but paralyzing gas, my over inquisitive Isis. "You will be very alive, but your bodies muscles will be frozen solid when the life sustaining air runs out in about eight hours"

"And among all these other treasures, serve my late master for all eternity"

Isis cried out in terror as the stone doorway began to slide down, sealing her into the treasure room, just beside the newly deceased Pharaohs burial chamber. Silence greeted the final thud of the doors fitting into the notched step, sent her heart racing.

"What had Ank whispered just before he had snatched her up into his chariot?" Her mind frantically tried to think instead of submitting to the abject terror of being buried alive in a rock tomb.

"Remember funerary objects are create with haste and for their visual, not practical use" That was it. Isis began pushing up with her toes, lifting the front lion’s feet of the ground. The chair creaked. Isis frantically shoved with all her might, leaning back as far as she could. The chair started to fall backwards, but bumped up against a funerary urn full of oil. Cursing, Isis started shifting her weight from side to side, and felt the chair flex under her. She wiggled her bum, while throwing her weight back and forth, as the chair flexed further and further. Suddenly with a crack, it fell apart dumping her on her ass on the floor. She quickly freed herself of the splintered arms and backside.

Standing up straight, but then sagged forward, obviously the candles were starting to make her woozy. But they were also providing the only illumination in her tomb. Isis quickly found a bronze oil lamp, luckily full and holding her breath lit it with one of the tapers. She then blew both out the deadly lights. At least she would be awake and able to move when the oxygen ran out in eight hours.

"Seek the voyage of the Dead" Ank had told her, as the Chariot bore her away.

Isis looked around the funerary treasure room. The usual objects the dead Pharaoh had used in his life were pilled around. As well as those, he would after. Foodstuffs, carved images of servants instead of a live one in Isis’s case. A dismantled chariot, wooden soldiers, chariot horses and a doorway leading to his burial chamber, were piled up before another door guarded by two huge black wooden painted Jackals. But a stone block too sealed it; Isis had seen it drop, before he had told her, she would see the next one from the inside.

As she forlornly walked past a pile of baskets holding food, she saw the flame of her lamp, flicker. As she knew the wick was new and the oil full, what else could have caused the flame to dance?’

Her hands frantically search, and there, a whiff brushed her fingertips were the painting of his funerary barge adored one wall. She searched, and found a stone mortar for grinding indolents and started pounding at the wall. At first, just dents, then bigger dents and finally her hand went right through, rewarded by a slight fresh breeze in her face. She pounded at the edges, until she could shove another lit lamp through. A great Nile funerary barge glistened with painted gold trim shone in the darkness. Isis worked at making the hole bigger, and stopping to fill all the lamps she could, then chose a plain wicker bag and filled it with fresh fruit and breads.

Then she pushed them through the hole, crawling after. "There is no way they got this thing down here through that tomb’s passages behind me" She thought. "And no way they had time to build it, use it, as I rode in it, disassemble it and bring it down here for reassembly"

Again, she searched the walls of painted white plaster. And sure enough, at the far end, her mortar, dented, what should have been a stone wall. She cried tears, as her hand went through a false wall again. The cold breeze told her miraculously that she had found a way out of the tomb she had been left to die in.

This wall was thinner than the first and Isis soon crawled through into a very roughly chiseled out tunnel that would have let the great barge in. Beyond was an abandoned tomb, half carved out, but only a very rough mine shaft full of loose rock so far. Isis gingerly worked her way out until she saw the stars above and then stopped.

"What now?" The man she knew was planing the accession of an easily influenced boy Pharaoh. After plotting and carrying out the murder of his fanatically heretical predecessor. Already he stood just behind and beside the boy, coaching him through the daily rituals.

Had deliberately sealed her alive in the dead Pharaoh’s tomb, and probably calmly mounted his chariot and off to the meal she had set the Arabic girls to preparing before he had whisked her off in his chariot.

The nearness of your place to Pharaohs throne indicated your influence and wealth in the Egypt of these Pharaohs. The priest and the rest of the ruling class had gradually wormed their way, generation after generation, into hereditary positions of power and influence until, they too built for themselves tombs to rival a Pharaoh’s.

But the majority of the populace cared not of how close to their living god you stood. But were their next meal was coming from and were they would lie down to sleep tonight. These Egyptians came and went unnoticed and literally ignored by the elite in their privileged lives. But they were the ones who fought and died in the armies, created wonders out of Nile mud bricks, carved stone into blocks or statuary. Raised, caught, processed, cooked and served all the food. Wrote the papyri everyone required for running the bureaucratic Egyptian Empire. Or gathered and carefully stored the grain for handing out when the harvests were poor, to keep them all fed.

She would need to submerge herself into this ocean of faceless nobodies in order to survive and get her and the Arabic girls, Sister A had tasked her with looking after, all back home, unharmed. And at that level, money ruled.

So, quaking with fear, but a very determined set to her jaw and a dark purposed in her mind. Isis crawled and wormed her way back into the tomb. Picked up another flexible basket, dumped out the fruit onto a pile of urns and started looking for items she could purloin and sell.

A war helmet inlaid with gold was too large, but the medallion of Horus as a War God, in a chain around its peak went into the basket. A thin bladed knife, with a Falcon head handle and a sheath of ebony went into the back of her girdle. Pharaoh’s knife, for cutting the reigns off your wrist if your chariot overturned before your own team of horses dragged you to death, now would be used for a different purpose.

The discovery of a jewelry box made the entire search worthwhile. Dozens of tiny drawers, each one containing a ring, bracelet or anklet, larger ones signet diadems for the hair or the neck. She carefully placed each, still wrapped in its piece of protective cloth into the bag. She then filled it with breads and fruits, crawling her way back out of the deathtrap. Scrambling up the loose rock that nearly filled the entranceway, and up onto a pile of soil. She saw the lights of the workers village they had drove around that morning. So off she went, basket in hand, knife handy at the back of her girdle. Nearer the town, she sidetracked to hide the bag in behind a large rock, before continuing.

The outer houses were dark, low walled, straw matting canopied work areas outside temporarily idle. But closer to the center of town, the noise of revelry, and light out of its high set windows came from the largest structure. Isis crept up gradually into a shadow near the door and listened intently to the conversations inside.

"Another one sealed up successfully, Theus?" A voice inquired.

"And another one for my sons and their sons to guard from tomb raiders" The sober voice replied. "I do not want Pharaoh’s soldiers feeding us to the crocodiles. If they discover the tombs entrance seals disturbed on their monthly inspections" He continued.

"And as I must write a few papyri full of reports about another successful entombment" He continued. "I leave the finishing of that Priests gift of beer to you lot"

Just then a neatly dressed, middle-aged official walked out of the building and across the square into a slightly smaller personal residence.

When the door he went into closed behind him, Isis limped into the building he had left.

"And what do we have here?" A man inquired.

"A forgotten temple girl" Isis replied. "I went off to dispose of the leftovers of my masters lunch, and when I returned, they had left without me?" Isis replied in a soft voice.

"Probably spent to much time eating your fill. Didn’t you girl?" Another inquired.

"Yes" Was all Isis replied.

"Well, we have use for a temple girl tonight" Another drunken one said, reaching out and pulling Isis up close. The stench of spilled beer-gagging Isis, but her right hand slipped the dagger out from behind her back and up touching his jugular.

"This one has a serpents fang," Another said. Reaching out and deftly grabbing Isis’s wrist, and with the other, relieving her of the dagger.

"Were did you get this, Girl," He asked. "This is a Pharaoh’s chariot knife. Not a temple girls.

"I just found it" Isis quietly replied.

Another spun Isis around, holding her close to one of the large oil lamps set on a stone pedestal.

"This is not just a mere temple girl, but a Priests chief aid" He informed his companions. " My own sister Mutnefere was trained in Memphis, by the dark sorceress herself, to be one"

"Fetch her, as she is here on a visit" He instructed, and a younger man stood and walked out.

"You rode in his own chariot to get here, did you not" Another asked.

"Yes" Isis replied.

"But it was another that stood beside him on the return journey, was it not?"

"Probably" Isis replied. "I was not there to see it" "But you did not get forgotten, as one does not abandon one of our expense" An older female said as she walked in. "What happened girl?"

"They sealed me in" Isis sobbed as Mutnefere in a simple, but expensive shift hugged her close.

"The bastard" She said. "That has not been done for millennia"

"But you are standing here" The woman’s brother exclaimed. "How is that possible?"

"I found a way out were they brought the funeral barge in" Isis replied.

"Over here" The man ordered and the woman pulled Isis into a small room were cold braziers used for the communal food preparation, stood along one wall.

"You dug yourself out of the Pharaohs tomb without disturbing the door seals?" He inquired, pulling her close. "Yes, master" Isis replied. Knowing she had both perked his interest, and found a possible ally in this brother and sister team.

"My name is Enkhidu," The man said. "I am not you master, but your coconspirator to loot the tomb of a Pharaoh.

"If she does not lie, nor is an agent of the temple guards, we may have a way to recover our rightful place, sister" The man said.

"If we take her out of the back way, this sodden lot can be convinced the vision in white they saw tonight was just me coming to drag your drunken body home again" The woman said.

The two directed Isis to follow them in a roundabout route, finally ending up at a medium sized house near the edge of the village closest to the excavations. Inside, after first closing the door and the window’s hatch, they lit an oil lamp and sat Isis down. The interior furnishing of the house belied its backwater exterior. Chairs, tables and hangings fit for a middle level official adorned the freshly plastered walls. The untimely death of the Pharaoh led to my dismissal from my post as palace door warder" The man said. "A position my family had occupied for generations" But tell me how you actually dug your way out of a sealed tomb" He said, reaching down and gripping Isis’s chin. " I am not some local quarryman. So do not lie to me girl, or you can still die today" So Isis sat their and recounted the harrowing tale of how she had worked her way out of the tomb he had sealed her in, and why.

"That is quite a tale," The woman said after she was done. "But were is the proof?"

"Follow me, Isis replied, and walked out. The two followed her back up the rocky gorge, past the sloping entrances to the almost hidden one she had crawled out of.

"This one was abandoned after repeated rock falls killed four diggers," The man said. "We will have to be very careful" But a while later, they were at the rough tunnel that led into the funeral barge chamber. Isis could see, from this side, the false wall had been carefully disguised by packing it with rocks from this side into dark colored plaster to make it appear as if the tunnel was filled by a rock fall.

"I will go in and check her story out, sister" He said and slipped into the hole Isis had chopped out.

It was quite a while later, as the moon had descended when he finally returned, face dusty but a smile from ear to ear. "We can loot the tomb of its treasures without disturbing the seals’ He delightfully informed his sister. "I found the smashed chair and discarded fruit as she said"

Dawn was edging up, as they made their way down to the village, Isis darting aside to retrieve her basket as the made their way back.

"Food from the tomb, just in case I cold not find a village" Isis lied to them. She was not sure if they were allies yet.

"Curl up in the corner of our store room in case someone comes in" Mutnefere instructed. "My brother is the chief scribe of this community and many of importance come her on business"

"OK, but can I have my knife back?" Isis replied. Enkhidu returned her blade, but Isis could tell it was only very reluctantly. She slipped it into the sheaf pined just above the crack of her bum cheeks, and curled up in a dark corner to sleep.