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“You mean curses?” Constance brightened with interest. “I was hoping for a good curse! It really wouldn’t be a proper tomb without one.”

Neil peered over Sayyid’s shoulder and smirked with a hint of old mischief. “Looks like it’s your favorite.Keper… wanam’ef… san. ‘It is the scarab who will eat him,’” he finished cheerfully.

“Kheper,” Sayyid corrected him automatically, making the guttural, distinctively Arabic sound at the back of his throat.

“If this is the front door, why’d they build it into the middle of the mountain?” Adam asked, frowning absently as he brushed some of the dust from his hair.

Neil turned to stare at him, as did the others.

“Based on how far we are from that fissure, this oughta be sitting right in the middle of the ridge,” Adam clarified with a wave at the alabaster panels.

Ellie looked from the crack in the ceiling to where they stood. “Of course! How very odd.”

“Perhaps it’s a false door,” Neil suggested.

“A false door?” Mrs. Al-Ahmed prompted.

“They are a common feature in tombs of this period,” Sayyid explained. “They are generally believed to serve as a means of communication between the mundane world and the afterlife. But one usually finds them in burial chambers, not corridors.”

“If it’s false, why does it have hinges?” Constance countered.

She pointed up at the top corner of the alabaster slab, where a round bronze peg was just visible through the slight gap between the glowing stone panel and the bedrock.

“That… admittedly looks very much like a hinge,” Neil conceded, blinking at it with surprise.

Ellie plucked a pin from her hair. She slipped it carefully into the thin crack between the two sides of the door, prodding gently. “There is something blocking the far side.”

“Rubble, perhaps?” Neil suggested. “Or the seals of the necropolis?”

“Or the mountain,” Adam offered dryly.

“Why don’t we just open it and see?” Constance suggested.

Neil stiffened, a posture he saw echoed in Sayyid’s red cheeks and Ellie’s sudden stillness.

“I’m sorry, but that isn’t strictly—” he began.

“Connie, one must really ensure that the context has been fully documented before—” Ellie started.

“The stone would need to be thoroughly inspected and stabilized—” Sayyid hurriedly offered.

Zeinab silenced them with her authoritative tones. “It does not matter. If it is blocked from the other side, then it is not the entrance to the burial chamber—and that means it is not where we need to go.”

Without waiting, she turned and stalked back up the corridor, her black abaya swirling magnificently around her ankles.

Ellie lingered by Neil’s side as the others followed. “Though one does have to wonder… if this opens into the middle of a mountain, then where did those scarabs go?”

Her words rang through Neil’s mind with a strange significance as he stared at the softly glowing images of the two kings—husband and wife, separated by a thin black line that led to who-knew-where.

??

Thirty-Four

Priestesses shaking sistrums, papyrus stalks heavy with white blooms, children playing in the halls of a palace—Adam was surrounded by a vanished world.

The hallway was a revelation. The three Egyptologists in their party were gasping over references to rituals or courtly activities they’d all read about in books. Adam might not have known what a Sed festival was, but he was fully capable of appreciating the paradigm-shattering importance of the artwork that surrounded him.

He just wished they weren’t exploring it with a ticking clock looming over them.