a slim beam of light flashed through the opening as she shone the torch through the skinny opening.
Closing his eyes, he imagined himself on the other side and pushed his body through the opening like a ship rope through a sewing needle.
FOURTEEN
It was almost quiet inside. Isis stood feet from the doorway, the flashlight pointed at the ground. She pushed her scarf off her hair and down off her face. “I was just about to see if I had a shoehorn or some baby oil to slip you in.”
Unwinding the scarf from around his head and face as well, Thorne smiled. “Hold the thought on that baby oil.” He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, allowing his breathing to even out after the exertion. His night vision was above average, and with the faint glow of the small flashlight he could make out most of the shapes and walls inside the room.
The chamber was small, perhaps twelve feet by twelve. Rough-hewn brick walls, dirt floor. It smelled of dust and charred wood from a long-dead fire, evidenced by a tall black scorch mark up one wall and part of the low ceiling, and a pile of half-burned wood in the far corner.
Isis shone the narrow beam of the little flashlight along the walls. “No limestone revetment with reliefs and paintings.” She sounded disappointed. “Probably the necropolis of the workers who built a tomb nearby. Hey! If the Valley of the Scorpions is on the other side of this ridge, maybe they built Cleopatra’s tomb?” Her voice rose, as the idea clearly appealed to her.
“Wouldn’t that be an amazingly cool payoff to all the running-chasing-kidnapping we’ve been through?” She slowly shone the light around. Every now and then Thorne would guide her hand to direct it at something so he could assess their situation.
“I think the stones and rock out there were originally part of a heavy stone plug, something they’d use to seal the tomb to discourage people from coming in after they left. A robber would have to chip away at it for a long, long time to get in.”
She directed the beam across the dirt floor littered with fragments and shards of clay, using the light as a pointer. “That looks like part of a stone sarcophagus, and these are pottery shards. Bones over there. Robbers must’ve stolen whatever they could carry a long, long time ago. But at least it’s relatively warm and out of the wind.”
The bones didn’t seem to bother her, but perhaps she knew they were animal, not human? Two large winged beetles flew into the stream of light. Isis merely swatted them with the flashlight, without the usual female shrieks of fright. His estimation of her went up another notch.
“This was probably the entrance the workers used,” she told him, swatting away the various small bugs that flew around the light. “Hey! Look.” The light jerked across the wall to illuminate a half-collapsed square hole in the back wall. “That’s a tunnel, probably leading to a corridor. And maybe to a burial chamber—”
He had no intention of wandering around miles of underground tunnels to explore. “We’re not tourists,” he pointed out. “We don’t have enough light to sightsee, and I don’t want to use more energy than we need to. We only have half a bottle of water between us. That won’t last long if we’re walking around when we don’t need to. Plus we could get lost. As soon as this wind stops we’ll go up on the ridge and see if we can spot some sort of a landmark. But there’s no telling how long we’ll be away from civilization. Once our eyes adjust we should only use the light when necessary.”
“My vote is to use it as much as we want, and when it dies, we’ll be in Cairo at a nice restaurant eating a candlelight dinner.”
Charmed by her, Thorne shook his head. She had a point. “Fair enough. The bugs certainly appreciate it.”
She crouched down, using a flat stone to scrape off a clear spot in the sand. “This could be a diorite fragment.” She held it up. “Perhaps from a vessel of some kind.”
“Unless it’s a pillow and a feather tick, I don’t give a damn. I need to get off this leg, maybe take a short kip, and get an early start.”
“Is a kip something that goes with leather and baby oil?”
He grinned. “A kip is a nap, but yes, it could certainly go with