Chapter 1

 

With her oxygen mask in securely in place over her nose and mouth, Dr. Nicole Salem descended below the shifting sand of ground level, the rope slowly sliding through the descender at the front of her harness. “Speed’s good, Marcus,” she said into the mask.

“See anything yet?” Marcus’ voice crackled through the earpiece, loud and clear. She knew that he must be riveted to the screen displaying the feed from the small video camera attached to her helmet. As their ‘tech wrangler’, Marcus was very protective of their gear; almost as protective as he was of his girlfriend, Nicole.

“Not yet. The stone making up the roof is very thick… and is definitely dressed stone. I can make out the joins between the sandstone blocks. It also looks like it might be deeper than we thought,” Nicole said, turning her head to pan the camera about.

“Understood, but keep in contact,” the voice of her former teacher and mentor, Dr. Alex Hodges, interrupted.

“Right,” Nicole said, frowning as she dropped below the roof stones. The chamber was at least a hundred yards across and its length lost beyond the edge of her high-intensity light, but there was a distinct lack of decoration that was struck her as odd. The sandstone was dark gold where her light touched it, evocative of the dunes above her head, and she could, again, see the lines between the blocks making up the chamber that told her clearly that this was no natural formation.

“This is bizarre.” Nicole trailed off in a softer voice, her mind working through the possibilities of how the structure came to be built like it was. “There’s no statuary, no glyphs that I can see from here. I’m sure that it extends beyond the range of my light to the northeast.” She added with an undisguised hint of excitement in her voice.

Nicole reached up to push a few stray strands of dark hair away from her face as her cobalt eyes searched eagerly in the dark. Tall and slender, she was dressed in black military surplus pants, steel-toed tactical boots and a tight-fitting tank top which hugged her underneath the climbing harness.

She reached up and touched the earpiece. She could hear crackling and a hint of what must have been Marcus’ voice, but she couldn’t make out any of the words. “Say again, Marcus, I’m not making that out.” There was a series of hisses and pops, but not a hint of a voice in the transmission this time. She gave a surprised gasp as the rope suddenly jerked upward. Marcus must have reversed the winch to pull her up when he stopped being able to hear her.

Nicole swept the light around, trying to get a better look at the walls and floor. She realized she could see the floor, a smooth sandy surface some thirty feet below her, and thought she could see pictures on the walls, though whether they were, hieroglyphs, hieratic, or some other form of writing, she couldn’t be certain. “Marcus, stop!” she said, trying to halt the upward motion; but her signal apparently wasn’t getting through any better than Marcus’. “Damn it,” she growled, the harness jangling softly as she started feeding rope through the descender to counter the upward movement.

Just as she was thinking about how she was going to tell both Marcus and Hodges off for the interruption, the rope jerked again: downward this time.

“What the hell?” She looked up toward the sunlight above. “What are they doing up there?” There were a couple more sharp downward jerks that sent her equipment rattling again and then fear started to creep in. “Maybe the winch is broken?” she mused to herself, peering upward again. “Marcus was right; we should’ve gotten a new one instead of trusting this one.”

The words had barely left her lips before the rope went slack and she was in freefall. So startled, she didn’t even have the opportunity to scream, Nicole plummeted into the dark below her. The scream started to come, and then the wind was driven from her lungs by the sharp impact of her back meeting the sandy floor.

She lay there stunned in the midst of a cloud of dust for a couple of minutes, gasping the air back into her lungs with harsh coughs, before she realized that the chamber was now filled with light.

“Easy, khered, breathe easy,” a soft voice murmured, stroking the end of her ponytail back away from her face and deftly removing the oxygen mask. It took her a moment to realize that the voice wasn’t speaking English. The language was strange and familiar at the same time, warm and fluid, yet fierce.

After a moment, her eyes focused once more and she found herself staring up at a woman of around forty with dark skin and thick black hair that hung around her face in a series of braids woven with strands of colored fabric. Her clothing was simple, a traditional linen Egyptian kilt which wrapped around the hips, and was dyed red, and a matching wrap around her torso which covered her breasts and twisted up to secure the garment behind her neck. Despite her age, her body was trim and well-muscled enough to be the envy of a women half her age.

“Where am I?” Nicole asked, pushing up onto her elbows.

The woman smiled and rose to her feet, offering Nicole her hand.

Nicole took the hand and found herself pulled to her feet with surprising ease by the smaller woman. It was then that she fully registered the clothing and the sword at the woman’s hip. “Who are you? What’s going on here?”

The woman laughed the sound an unrestrained chortle that brought an instinctive smile to Nicole’s face for a moment. “I am Meshrew,” she said, grinning up at Nicole who stood a good eight inches taller than her, the expression softening her brown eyes. “I am the eldest priestess here and am responsible for preparing you.” The woman’s voice was deep and slightly husky, colored with a gentle humor that made Nicole wonder if there was some joke here that she was missing.

“Meshrew,” Nicole said, looking around. Evening, her mind translated. The walls were now thickly covered with hieroglyphs that she would have liked to take a moment to study, but Meshrew didn’t give her a chance.

“Yes, ‘evening’,” The smaller woman said, seeming to read Nicole’s thoughts. “My parents were somewhat lacking in imagination for what to name me, though, I suppose, that is understandable when you are the last of ten children. I was born just after Ra’s barque descended on its nightly journey through the underworld, so I became ‘Meshrew’.” The woman’s voice was warm and soothing, but there was an aura of command about her that made the light pressure of a hand against the small of Nicole’s back into an undeniable demand.

Nicole smiled. “It’s a beautiful name,” she murmured, allowing herself to be swept forward. She looked down and realized that the rope that had been her lifeline to the world above had been cleanly severed about a foot away from the carabineer it was attached to.

“Thank you. Now come. There is much to do,” Meshrew said, her tone very businesslike as she waved a trio of younger women over, the oldest of which looked as though she were barely out of her teens. All of them were dressed similarly to Meshrew, though their clothing was of pale blue linen rather than red, and while none of them wore a sword, as Meshrew did, each carried a long slightly curved dagger that could nearly pass for a short sword. “Prepare her.”

Nicole found herself passed off to the three who immediately began to escort her off. “Wait! What am I preparing for?” she called after Meshrew, but got no reply. She started to pull free of the group guiding her, but stopped when she got a look at some of the glyphs near the doorway they were headed toward. The hieroglyphs depicted the tale of Sekhmet’s birth. The sun Ra became angry with humanity for turning their backs on him and ignoring the gifts he has given them. In his rage, he ripped out his own eye and cast it to Earth where it became a fiery goddess whom he called Sekhmet. She went on a rampage to avenge her father’s name and all but wiped out humanity before Ra saw that she had no intention of stopping. He realized that without humanity, there would be little reason for him and the other gods to exist.

Ra was able to trick Sekhmet into stopping by flooding a vast plain with beer that he dyed red so that she would believe it to be blood. She drank down the beer and became so intoxicated that she passed out. When she woke, Ra convinced her to stop the slaughter.  Later, at her father’s urging, Sekhmet created a champion to guide and protect the Pharaoh and the kingdoms from their enemies.

Nicole tried to stop her forward movement so that she could study the pictures more closely, particularly the last part which looked to be a legend she’d never heard of, but the women were implacable and herded her through the doorway without slowing their pace. This time, however, her astonishment was sufficient to stop Nicole dead in her tracks.

The chamber she found herself in was significantly smaller than the one she had left, though far more sumptuous. It was more brightly lit with braziers spaced around the walls and several at the edges of the long, narrow pool in the center of the floor, allowing Nicole to see the space more clearly. The smell of the water from the pool was alluring after the dry sterility of the desert above, particularly when combined with the smoky fragrance of whatever it was they were using for fuel in the braziers.

There were pillows scattered between the walls and the pool’s perimeter and the walls were painted with murals of life along the Nile with all its beauty. The images, painted in a manner reminiscent of the tomb paintings Nicole had studied all her life showed lotus blossoms and smiling faces of people as they fished, gathered papyrus, and performed other activities of daily life. The dangers were also represented; crocodiles sunning themselves on the shores near where women washed clothes and bathed, and hippos cavorting near barques moving along the river, forcing the pilots to keep a wary eye out. 

She only got a cursory look at the pictures before she realized that she was subject to a piercing amber gaze.

Barely five yards away from her stood a lioness and her three cubs, the adult regarding her with an assessing air that caused the hairs at the nape of her neck to rise as Nicole realized that the animal could easily deem her prey. The women seemed unconcerned by the predator’s presence and, after a flick of an ear, the lioness seemed to dismiss her entirely, pulling one cub into the circle of her front paws to bathe it.

After a moment, the tallest of the three young women she took Nicole’s arm once more, holding her firmly as the girls surrounded her on all sides. Expertly, they stripped Nicole’s equipment from her, then starting on her clothing. “You must be cleansed before we can allow you before the goddess,” the leader of the trio explained.

“Goddess? What goddess?” she asked, trying to push their hands away. “I don’t understand what’s going on here. Stop!” Even with her resistance, first trying to bat their hands away, then trying to turn back toward the entrance through which she came, and even throwing a punch at one of them, which was casually dodged, it was only a matter of moments before her clothing had been tossed aside into a pile. Two of the women took her hands firmly and tugged her toward the pool.

“Let go of me!” Nicole demanded as she was pulled into the blessedly cool water. The bottom sloped down to about four feet deep; the illusion of greater depth was achieved by painting the stone floor of the pool black. Despite herself, sigh of pleasure escaped Nicole’s lips, her desert-parched body relishing the coolness of the water enveloping her. She had almost forgotten how nice it was to be able to submerge herself in water to bathe; a couple of months of sponge baths made it necessary to forget, otherwise, the feeling of ‘ickiness’ would never go away.

It was a truly bizarre experience for Nicole as the pair of young women who accompanied her into the water bathed her and washed her hair, but it also felt right somehow. The two were clearly very accustomed to this sort of thing and it showed as they combined a soothing massage into the washing of her hair. To her bemusement, Nicole found herself relaxing and actually enjoying their attention as the grime and sweat that was a natural side effect of working in the desert was cleansed.

Once she was clean, Nicole ascended the slope on the other side of the pool, water streaming from her body. In the cool air of the bath chamber, she found herself shivering slightly which was a very pleasant change from the scorching heat above ground.

Meshrew stood a few feet from the edge of the pool with an assortment of items, waiting for her. Meshrew watched Nicole emerge, her expression serious, verging on sternness now as she examined the young Westerner.

The young women who had accompanied her into the water wrapped thick, absorbent linen around her hips and applied firm, but gentle pressure to her shoulders to encourage her to kneel in front of the older woman. The feelings of confusion and unease that had faded in the bath disappeared entirely as she looked up at Meshrew. She felt that she belonged here now though her logical mind told her that the idea was ridiculous, that she belonged up above with Marcus and the others, and that this was all too strange for her to accept. Meshrew’s smile down at her appeared pleased.

There were no further words as Nicole settled back on her haunches. The young women gathered around behind her and each began plaiting sections of her long hair into thin braids woven with strips of white, gold, red, and blue fabric which would mingle with the rest of her hair which was left loose. Meshrew, in the meantime, picked up one of several small ceramic pots beside her and began applying the oils and paints inside them to Nicole’s skin, drawing the eye of Ra, the sun disc, and several other symbols that Nicole either couldn’t see or didn’t immediately recognize.

She didn’t know how long she knelt there while the women worked, but when they were finished, Meshrew motioned Nicole to her feet. “You shall not be touched again until you have emerged. Come.” It wasn’t a request and Nicole pushed herself to her feet, allowing the absorbent linen to fall around her feet.

The sense of belonging here intensified as she approached another portal, this one blocked from the bathing chamber by a teak wood door with a symbol embossed on it: a golden silouhette of Sekhmet in profile with the sun disk ascendant above her in blood red with a black cobra draped over the top so that its head was suspended above Sekhmet’s. “Through there?”

Meshrew nodded. “Yes. Do not worry. We will be waiting for you,” she murmured, and then pointed to the door. “Go.”

Nicole hesitated a moment. The glyph on the door was strangely familiar; something about it resonated in her heart in a way that was more powerful than mere déjà vu. It was like the memory of a cherished dream from childhood which had been long forgotten in the cynicism and routine of adult life.

She nodded to herself, and then walked toward the door. When she was five feet away, the door swung inward, with a squeak of protest from long unused hinges, to allow her entrance. Although her conscious mind was surprised to see that no one was operating the door, deep down she realized didn’t seem strange at all that the ancient portal functioned on its own.

The room she entered was cool and darker than the antechamber she’d left, lit only by a few braziers in the corners and a pair flanking the centerpiece of the room: standing a full twenty feet high was a gold statue of Sekhmet the Destroyer. It was the goddess’ hybrid form, a young woman with the head of a lioness, the sun disc ascendant above her.

The red of her gown and the sun, as well as the detailing of the face were enameled on the gold to give it a realistic appearance, down to the indications of where whiskers would attach to the muzzle and the pale pink of the nose. The arms of the statue were crossed in front of her, the right hand holding a khopesh sword, with its distinctive sickle-like shape, which extended up past her left shoulder, the left hand holding an ankh, the Egyptian symbol of life, which came up over her right shoulder. The beauty of the statue brought prickling, unshed tears of pleasure to Nicole’s eyes as she gazed upon it, taking a few seconds to appreciate the craftsmanship before stepping further into the room.

 There was a dais in front of the statue, which Nicole walked to and knelt upon. She bowed her head, her hands resting lightly on her thighs, and waited. Somehow she knew that if she were supposed to say anything, to invoke the goddess in some way, she would have known to do so, but she said nothing.

Nicole sat there for a long time, how long she couldn’t know. She sat until the muscles of her legs started to protest the lack of movement, until the room seemed to grow warmer and the light from the braziers intensified. Nicole lifted her head and found herself looking up into the face of the goddess, caught in the molten gold of her divine gaze. The metal head, now as flexible as flesh, tilted and a small smile curled the corners of the goddess’ lips enough to show the tips of her upper canine teeth.

“Hello, khered.” ‘Hello, my child,’ her mind translated automatically. The voice was huge and she could almost feel the dais shaking beneath her knees, but also warm and soothing with a purring quality to it that eased the last of her nervousness. “I was beginning to think that you had forgotten me.”

Nicole bowed from the waist so that her forehead rested atop her hands on the stone. “Only in my mind, mewet; my heart has always remembered.”

Sekhmet chuckled softly and a gentle touch on Nicole’s shoulder prompted her to sit up. “You are, of course, forgiven, khered. You found your way home when you were ready to, when your spirit was ready for the work to be done.”

Nicole smiled up at the goddess, reveling in the acceptance and implied praise. “I am ready to do as you bid, mewet.”

Sekhmet smiled, exposing enough gleaming white teeth to have spooked most people; her canines were about as long as Nicole’s arm. “I know that you are, child. I wish I could give you more time to prepare for the charge I am to place upon your shoulders, but you would not have been drawn here were you not strong enough already.”

Nicole felt if her heart swelled with any more pride it would burst, temporarily overshadowing her doubts and concerns. “I pray I will prove myself worthy of your attentions, mewet.” She bowed again then found one of the goddess’ massive hands taking hold of her chin in a tender, but irresistible grip.

“Stand, Nicole Salem,” Sekhmet bid her, keeping hold of Nicole’s jaw as she obeyed. “You will remember what you need, as you need it. Your mind is modern, though your heart is true, and I would not cause you the distress that granting you your full birthright immediately would cause.”

“Will I remember this?” The thought of losing the knowledge of the goddess’ face caused Nicole the first tremor of fear she’d had since entering the sacred pool.

Sekhmet smiled. “You will remember, though it will seem as a dream at first. Do not worry, Nicole. My hand and my eye will be upon you, though lightly. If you need me, we will meet as you dream.” She tilted her head, her eyes warm and affectionate. “It is easiest that way as my powers have waned in these less enlightened times.”

Nicole nodded. “I understand,” she said, her confidence returning.

“Now then.” Sekhmet moved her hand from Nicole’s jaw and touched her fingertips to the Nicole’s brow. As the warm metal contacted her skin, Nicole’s back bowed and every muscle in her body drew taught. The pain was intense, arching her back and locking her jaws open in a scream which never made it past her throat, a scream that seemed to go on forever and when it was over she collapsed onto her back on the dais her eyes transfixed as they lay on the once more inanimate statue above her until consciousness faded.