The Exodus Quest

FORTY
I

The digging wasn't easy. The sand and rubble had compacted like concrete over the centuries. Gaille's fingernails were soon ripped and bleeding from scrabbling it up. But fear kept her at it. Worms of water had started slithering down the walls, gathering in puddles at the foot.

'Could you light a match, please?' asked Lily, breathing heavily.

'We've only got a couple left.'

'But I think I've found something.'

'What?' asked Stafford.

'I don't know. Why do you think I need a match?'

The flare hurt Gaille's eyes, they'd been in the dark so long. And that sulphurous smell! She lit the candle, took it across. Lily was right. There was indeed something at the bottom of the wall. A line of hieroglyphs.

'What do they say?' asked Lily.

Gaille shook her head. The faded glyphs were hard enough to see in the poor light, let alone decipher. But the implications of their being here at all were enough to excite her. She'd assumed, from the crudely-cut walls of the entrance and burial chambers, that this tomb was simply another of the half-finished efforts that pocked these cliffs, abandoned because of the poor-quality limestone or because the Amarna era had come to an end before the prospective occupant had died. She'd further assumed that, because the layout of this place was so similar to that of the nearby Royal Tomb, this shaft was a sump designed to protect the burial chamber. But now that she thought further, she realized her assumptions were flawed. The sump in the Royal Tomb made perfect sense because its mouth was on the wadi floor, putting it in danger from flash floods. But the mouth of this tomb wasn't on the wadi floor. It was far nearer the top than the bottom. Flooding wouldn't have been a significant issue, at least until the rift had formed above it, so a sump served little purpose. And, anyway, how deep did they need it? They were a good six metres down already, and still not at the bottom. So maybe it wasn't a sump after all. Maybe it was something else.

'Well?' asked Lily.

Gaille passed Lily the candle to hold while she scraped away more sand. 'I don't suppose either of you have ever visited the tomb of Seti the First, have you?' she asked.