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Karim

A bouquet of dry flowers tied with strips of cloth.

An animal bone blackened by fire.

A still-sharp flint with a carved wooden handle.

A shard of pottery the color of the sky.

Karim laid these items in a row on the sandy ground and stared at them, hoping that if he looked at them long enough, they might reveal their secrets. So far, they were silent on the matter. Kneeling on the valley floor, golden cliffs rising on either side, he ran his hands through the sand, searching, sifting, letting the grains run through his fingers.

“How long we will sit in this heat, hey?” Hager muttered, dragging the back of his hand across his brow. “I’m roasting.” He perched on a nearby boulder like a spider—all skinny limbs and sharp angles. Like the other Jackals, Hager wore a dark coarse robe, open at the chest, with wide sleeves that he’d rolled up to his elbows. A cloth of similar style draped over his head, shielding his long, narrow face from the blazing sun.

“Until I am filled,” Karim replied as he stood, brushing the sand from his palms. He rubbed the dark stubble of his chin thoughtfully. “Something is here. I know it.”

“Aha, he knows it,” Babu jeered. “Just as he knew it yesterday. And the day before that. And yet, our hands remain empty! We waste our time, Karim. Here is nothing but rocks!”

“Yes, there are many rocks,” Karim agreed. “Some on the ground, others in your head. But there is more than that, Babu.”

Babu shook his head. “You tell him it’s a bull, and he tells you to milk it,” he said to Hager. “Why don’t we leave him here, hey? He can sleep with his trash and be happy.”

“Because without me you’re lost, Babu-sen,” Karim said warmly. “You couldn’t find an oasis if one bit you on the ass.”

Babu had twenty-one years—only two seasons more than Karim—but he was at least a double handsbreadth taller and built like a hippopotamus. Even so, Karim couldn’t resist baiting him. When it came to finding tombs in the desert, he was very good. Keeping his mouth shut? Not so much.

“Pah!” Babu grumbled, then spat on the ground. “You best watch where your words will lead you, sen—or you might find yourself at the end of my dagger. A Jackal you may be, but my patience has limits. When the sun passes its zenith—we go.”

Karim bit back a retort and nodded. “Fine.”

“You really think there’s something out there, hey?” Djet asked, sidling up to Karim as he surveyed the valley for the hundredth time.

Djet was plump and smooth-faced, barely out of boyhood. He’d begged Babu to let him join the Jackals, despite his age. After losing both his parents in a raid on their people’s camp a season ago, he was left with nothing and no skills to speak of, aside from his curious mind. Never too young for tragedy , Karim had thought at the time. At Karim’s urging, Babu had relented, allowing Djet preliminary membership to their esteemed company, who were renowned across the Red Lands for relieving the Khetarans of their buried treasures.

“I do think there’s something, yes,” Karim replied. How could he explain to the boy, or to any of the Jackals, that it was more feeling than thought? That whenever he searched for a tomb, something tugged at him, like a rope around his chest, pulling him in the right direction?

Better not to explain. Better to trust his instincts. They had never failed him—so why was this day any different? He’d found the objects, and searched all the obvious places, but so far, no luck. The Jackals had already uncovered half a dozen other hidden tombs in the valley, although they’d all been plundered before their arrival. Still, they’d managed to find a few choice baubles, and that kept them looking for more. They’d scoured the area from back to front though, and Babu was convinced there was nothing more to find.

Karim disagreed.

He squinted at the sky. He was running out of time.

“I’m going to scout up that way,” Karim told the others. “You stay here, hey?”

“Fine with me,” Hager said with a yawn.

“I’m coming with you!” Djet exclaimed.

“Too bad,” Babu sighed, gripping the haft of his spear. “I was going to use the boy for target practice.”

Djet paled, which made the other Jackals laugh.

“Come on, sen,” Karim said, ruffling the boy’s dark hair. “Help me get the tools together.”

After gathering up his talismans and slinging his pack over one shoulder, Karim made his way toward the valley wall. Djet scampered by his side like an enthusiastic puppy.

“If anyone can find it, you can,” he said, beaming. “Of that, I am sure.”

Karim grinned and touched a knuckle to his nose in thanks. Tomb robbery may not have been the noblest of occupations, but for him, it was the best in a series of unpleasant options. Men of the Anen tribe either tended to the flocks, which were the lifeblood of their people, or they took up spears and fought to defend them. Karim had resisted choosing a path during his youth, despite his father’s urging, but his indecision came to a head several years ago when a pack of Shass raiders had come upon their camp in the middle of the night, made off with a dozen sheep, and killed three of their men.

One of those men had been Karim’s father.

He’d been left to care for his mother and three younger siblings, with no trade to speak of. His brother, several years younger than Karim, swiftly dedicated himself to the blade—hungry to avenge their father’s death if the Shass tried to plunder them again. Although Karim understood his desire, he didn’t share it. Neither leading warriors into battle nor sheep into pasture sounded particularly appealing. Either way, the job always ended in slaughter.

His little sisters, who were only ten and eleven years old, had seemed to age overnight. The last vestiges of their childhood had died along with their father.

Soon after the raid, the tribe moved camp. After several days’ travel, Karim had been sitting by the fire at dusk, feeling adrift, listening to the swish of his brother’s practice spear and the crackle of the flames. Gazing at his new surroundings, he’d fixated on the shape of a distant pyramid. The sight reminded him of the stories his father had told him about the Khetarans, the river kingdom that shunned the tribes of the Red Lands.

“Their river—they think it gives them supremacy, hey?” his father used to say. “To them we are like vermin, but when the time comes to bury their sacred dead, where do they bring them? To our home. Our land. They think that whatever the sun touches belongs to them.”

It was because of the Khetarans that the lives of his people were so full of hardship, Karim’s father had said. They were pompous and greedy, spoiled by the riches the river had brought them—completely unlike the rugged Anen, who had no time for superstition and frippery. Worse, the Khetarans had the audacity to use the Red Lands as their personal graveyard and build massive monuments and underground tombs there, but offer no respect to its people.

By the fire, Karim left his own sorrow—the loss of his father, and the suffering of his family in the wake of his death—at the Khetarans’ feet as well.

Perhaps he was too much of a coward to fight and too capricious to tend a herd, but Karim knew one thing. He was clever enough to find a few Khetaran tombs and take back some of what they owed him—what they owed all his people. A little gold to balance out the blood piled up on their ledger. Besides, Karim enjoyed a bit of excitement, and grave robbing beat wading through hordes of sheep any day.

That was the real reason Karim had spoken up for Djet when the boy’s own tragedy struck. In Djet’s plight he’d seen a mirror of his own.

“So, what are we looking for?” Djet asked as they ascended a rocky hill at the foot of the valley. A cloud of dust rose around their feet as they climbed.

“Something that doesn’t belong,” Karim said, squinting at the cliffside ahead.

They stood together, scanning the area. Then Djet spoke. “Everything looks the same.”

“Look closer,” Karim replied, a hint of a smile in his voice, “and tell me all that you see.”

Djet straightened, his round face suddenly serious as he studied the landscape before him. If this was a test, he clearly wanted to pass.

“I see a bit of lovegrass. There and there,” he began, slowly. “A pile of stones. An old acacia tree. A small hole—perhaps a snake burrow? And… and…” He struggled to continue, then sighed in frustration. “I see nothing, Karim-sen. I am sorry.”

“You see more than you think.” Karim pointed to the pile of stones Djet had mentioned. “How do you imagine those came to be there?”

Djet looked at him and shrugged.

Karim waved him closer, and together they approached the pile. He bent and took up a handful of the stones, smelling them and rolling them between his fingers. Standing again, he ran a hand along the valley wall, thoughtful.

“Nature alone gathers no mounds, not the size of this one,” Karim said. “This is the work of man. These stones are different from the others around them, which means they must have been dug from within the cliffside…” He walked forward a few feet, then stopped. Kneeling, he called Djet to his side, pointing at a thin stream of sand pouring from a crack in the wall.

“Tell me. Does this belong?”

Djet’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Sand can’t flow through solid rock. Which means—”

“Which means,” Karim broke in, standing back to survey the wall before them, “It’s not a wall. It’s a door.”

***

Time passed, and the shadows grew long.

The sun was past its zenith, and Karim knew that Hager and Babu would be growing increasingly impatient with their delay.

It will be worth the wait , Karim thought, and put his worries about the other Jackals out of his mind.

He and Djet worked tirelessly, using copper chisels to carve out the edges of a door, which had been packed tightly with dirt to appear flush with the cliffside. That done, they concentrated on widening the gap on one side. When it was large enough, they wedged two sturdy tree branches into the opening and began working together, heaving at the levers with all their might, trying to shift the massive stone slab away from the valley wall.

“Push!” Karim grunted as he strained against the branch for what felt like the hundredth time. Djet threw his whole body into it, sweat streaming down his face. “Now, pull!”

They shifted their feet forward, leaning their bodies away from the poles in unison. Finally, Karim felt the slab move, grinding a fingerbreadth across the ground.

“Again!” Karim shouted. The two of them pushed and pulled with renewed vigor. The slab moved slowly, but it moved.

“Enough, enough,” Karim said after a while, removing his branch from the crevice and leaning against it for support. His muscles throbbed with pain. He rotated his arm in its socket, trying to loosen the tightness there.

Djet dropped his branch and stepped toward the narrow opening in the valley wall. “What do you think is in there, hey?”

Karim pulled the covering back from his head and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. Scrabbling in his pack for his bow drill, he knelt and spun the drill until he got a spark to light the candle he’d brought. Once the wick was burning, he placed a palm on the stone slab and poked his head into the mouth of the cave, holding the candle out in front of him. Turning his body sideways, Karim held his breath and squeezed through the crevice, taking a single experimental step inside. As he did, a burst of wind blew through the opening and into the tunnel beyond, ruffling his curly brown hair and nearly extinguishing the candle. It sounded like whispers. There was a smell too. It was faint, but it reminded him of a fire long turned to ash, and something sweet and intoxicating.

Karim swept the candle around him, beating back the thick darkness. He couldn’t see much at first, just more piled rocks and walls stippled with axe strikes. But then the light illuminated something on the ground. He bent to pick it up.

“Well?” Djet called impatiently. “What do you see?”

Karim held the object close to the flame. It was a ring, its band wrapped in fine gold wire, and its two arms holding a block of gold with engravings on each of its four sides.

A cobra.

A feather.

An eye.

A scarab.

Karim slipped the ring over his knuckle and smiled.

“Something wonderful,” he murmured. “Bring the torch.”

A moment later, Djet squeezed through the narrow opening, pulling their packs through after him. From one he removed a long clay object with a cup at the top, into which he’d stuffed several handfuls of dry scrub. Karim took it from him and used the candle to ignite the kindling. When it was bright and crackling, he handed the candle to Djet, and directed the flaming torch into the corridor ahead.

“There are steps, heading down,” Karim said, a tingle of excitement growing in his belly. “Stay close.”

The air was cool and still as they descended the rough stone stairs, and there was no sound except the ones they made themselves. It was the kind of ambient silence that Karim never got used to, no matter how many times he found himself scavenging inside some dark tomb. His breath seemed unnaturally loud, and the pulse of his heart made him uncomfortably aware of the flow of his own blood. It was difficult to forget his delicate hold on life when stealing into the home of the dead.

Still, it wouldn’t do to reveal any of his morbid thoughts to the impressionable young Djet.

“So,” Karim said brightly, his voice echoing through the tunnel. They’d reached the bottom of the steps and now progressed down a sloping hallway leading deeper underground. “What will you do with your share of the riches, hey?”

Djet chuckled nervously. “Oh, well… there is this girl…”

Karim laughed. “Isn’t there always?”

He could nearly hear Djet blush. “I was thinking I could trade for a bottle of jasmine oil, or maybe some fine fabric for a new dress…”

“Luxuries that would delight any child of the desert,” Karim mused. They’d reached the bottom of the hallway, which ended in a portal to some kind of large antechamber. His torch held aloft, Karim took one step through the doorway and stopped, his heart thudding heavily in his chest in reaction to what he saw there.

“Djet-sen,” he said softly, “You will have those things and more for your lady love. Much, much more.”

Djet came up next to him, peered into the antechamber, and gasped.

There was so much packed into the chamber, the eye was challenged to remain on any one item. They took it all in like starving men at an endless feast. There were golden chariots, golden couches and beds—their feet carved in the shape of lion’s paws—a golden chair, golden chests engraved with birds and lotus flowers, statues, weapons, fans made of ostrich feathers with jewel-encrusted poles…

Gold, gold, everything was gold.

The sight of it filled Karim with an indescribable hunger that bordered on lust. He wanted to touch the gold, to feel its smoothness under his fingers and know these riches belonged to him.

And Djet, and Babu, and Hager , an irritating voice reminded him. He waved away the thought. There was no reason for squabbling among the Jackals. Here, there was more than enough treasure to go around. The tombs he’d found in the past had conceded a few choice items, but this… this was the kind of discovery that changed a man’s life forever.

Djet whooped with excitement and slipped into the antechamber, rushing from one wonder to the next, exclaiming in rising volume and pitch about everything he saw.

“Look at this , Karim-sen! There’s more than furniture! Bottles of fragrant oils! Jewelry, beads… and fabric unlike I’ve ever seen! There’s food too. And jars of wine!”

Karim wandered through the room in Djet’s wake, letting his free hand caress the back of a chair here, the top of a chest there. He picked up a goosenecked jar of wine, tore out the stopper with his teeth, and spat it onto the floor.

“Still good,” he said after giving the jar a sniff. Tipping it back, he took a long thirsty swig.

“There are dead birds wrapped in cloth, sen,” Djet called from the other side of the chamber. “Lots of them! And—a horse too! Karim-sen, even the dead horse wears gold!”

Still nursing the wine, Karim took a closer look at the golden chair, illuminating the exquisite artwork engraved and painted along its surfaces with his torch. It was brightly colored, as all the other paintings he’d seen in Khetaran tombs, but the style was different. Unlike the rigid, staid figures he was used to, the figures were curved, their heads and limbs overlong. They seemed to vibrate with activity, as if in defiance of the stillness forced upon them.

His curiosity piqued, Karim set down the wine jar and knelt to take a closer look. The scene on the back of the chair was one he’d observed before. He didn’t know what it meant, but usually it depicted a man or woman facing a falcon-headed god, who offered them a looped cross. This painting was the same, save for one aspect.

Instead of the falcon-headed god, the figure holding up the cross had the head of a bizarre creature. It was black and looked almost like a dog with its long, downturned snout and tall, blunt-ended ears. Something about the dark figure made the wine turn sour in Karim’s stomach.

“This tomb,” he whispered, more to himself than to Djet, who was off exploring. “Something about it is… odd.”

The man in the painting was pictured wearing a striped headdress, which was common too. What was unusual were the two animal heads peering out from his brow—a vulture and a cobra. Karim didn’t know much about Khetaran art, but he knew what those animals meant when they appeared attached to a crown.

Given its location in the valley, Karim had expected the tomb of a nobleman, or maybe a nobleman’s wife at best. But this was something more.

He’d found the tomb of a king.

Karim’s head spun, and not from the wine.

“Hey!” Djet called, a note of fear in his voice. “Karim-sen! Come here!”

Getting to his feet, Karim picked his way through the piled-up treasures, following the sound of Djet’s voice. He found a portal to another, smaller chamber and Djet standing inside, his body partially lit by candlelight. Raising his torch high over his head, Karim saw that the chamber walls were alive with pictures carved in relief, just as incredible and just as strange as the ones on the golden chair. There were scenes of hunts on the river and great festivals, and lines upon lines of the Khetarans’ mystifying writing—hands, lions, crooks, birds, open mouths—their meanings unknown. But again, they were all painted in that odd style, the figures curved and distorted, making them look… Well, there was no other word for it.

Wrong. They looked wrong.

Unlike the antechamber, this room was empty but for a massive stone box in the center.

Djet stared at it.

“The dead man. He is inside?”

Karim nodded. He walked up to the waist-high black granite box, marveling at the intricate cross-hatched engravings that covered every fingerbreadth of its surface. The Khetarans certainly went to a lot of trouble for their dead. The people of the Red Lands simply buried them where they lay, under a pile of stones—giving their bodies back to the desert from which they came. It seemed more natural to Karim, and quite a bit easier too. Still, without the Khetarans’ eccentric customs, Karim would have been left without a job.

“Hold this,” he told Djet, handing him the torch.

“W-what are you going to do?” Djet stammered, his eyes wide and flashing in the firelight.

“What we Jackals are meant to, hey?” Karim gripped the corners of the box’s lid. “Now move aside.”

He took a deep breath and threw all his weight into it with a grunt. The lid moved with a harsh grinding noise that reverberated through the dark space. Karim heaved again and again, until the huge stone lid toppled to the floor with a deafening crash. One of the corners cracked and crumbled, but it otherwise remained intact.

Panting, his brow beaded with sweat, Karim took the torch back from Djet and shone it into the box. Inside, carved in the shape of a man, was a wooden coffin painted almost entirely in red. Its golden face stared back at Karim with piercing eyes, its expression inscrutable. Golden hands were crossed over its chest, holding a crook and flail dotted with black and blue. Between these, inlaid approximately where his heart might be, was a large blue amulet made of lapis lazuli. It was cut in the shape of a scarab beetle, with more Khetaran writing engraved on its surface.

“It could be his name,” Djet whispered, leaning over to look. “You think?”

“You might be right.” Karim pulled a copper chisel from his pack. He wedged it under the edge of the amulet and began prying it loose. The chisel slipped in his sweaty palm, and the blade raked across his finger.

“Ach!” Karim hissed, pulling his hand back.

“Are you well, sen?” Djet asked.

“Fine, fine,” Karim said. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding, splashing red droplets across the top of the coffin. He sucked his finger, then wrapped a rag from his pack around it. He picked up the chisel to try again. He squinted. The blood splatters had vanished. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks in the dark?

He wielded the tool more carefully now, and after inserting the chisel with greater precision, the amulet finally came free from the coffin.

“There we are,” Karim said with a smile. He held the blue stone to the firelight. It felt heavy and warm.

Then came a sigh. Like a released breath, right next to his ear.

Karim jumped. He took a step back from the box and glanced at Djet. The boy stood a few feet away, the stub of candle in his hand. “Was that you?”

“Was what me?” Djet cocked his head in confusion.

Karim blinked and shook himself. “Nothing,” he muttered, and turned his attention back to the amulet. It was the largest piece of lapis he’d ever laid eyes on by at least tenfold—it alone was worth a fortune. He laughed in disbelief. “What a day this has been.”

Djet’s eyes were hungry at the sight of the stone in Karim’s hand. “We are rich, then, hey? Rich as kings!”

“We’re getting there.” Karim agreed. He glanced up at the torch. Like the candle, it would burn out soon without more kindling. But he had to know what else there was to find, what else he might want to tuck into his pack, before going back to tell the others.

He thought about the other Jackals, reconsidering his earlier plan to share everything equally. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Babu—

No, that was just it. He didn’t trust Babu. The man was a snake, and as likely to slit Karim’s throat in the night as share the spoils of this place.

Perhaps Babu would surprise him and dole out the treasures fairly, but in case he didn’t…

I have to look out for myself.

“Go back to the first room,” he told Djet in a rush. “Gather up whatever you can fit inside your pack. Jewelry, gold, anything valuable. I’m going to search the next chamber. When I’m finished, we leave. We must return to the others and tell them what we’ve found.”

Djet nodded and was about to take flight when Karim gripped his shoulder. “We tell them about the tomb, yes. But we don’t tell them about the contents of our packs, hey? That we keep to ourselves.”

Djet grinned, an impish glint in his eye. “I take your meaning very well, sen,” he said and disappeared back the way they’d come.

Slipping the scarab amulet into his pack with the other treasures he’d already picked up Karim turned toward the last door. His mouth was suddenly dry despite the wine. It looked darker than the others had, somehow filled with a deeper, thicker blackness.

Your eyes play tricks on you , he thought. Spending too long in utter darkness can make a man go mad. Hurry, else you begin to act the fool.

He stepped through the portal and a wave of confusion washed over him. The innermost chamber usually held the treasury—the most valuable items in the entire tomb. But there was no more treasure to be found. No precious jewelry, no fine cloth, no solid gold baubles of any kind. The room was smaller than the other two and looked almost empty save for a large statue dominating the space.

Karim took another step forward and stumbled over something on the floor. He knelt and found a tiny wooden man, one of its legs now splintered in two. The floor was covered with them. Hundreds of tiny wooden men, each one the same as the last, were arranged in orderly lines throughout the room. They all faced the far wall and the statue of the strange animal-headed god he’d seen painted on the back of the chair, its long ponderous snout and tall ears carved from the same black granite as the stone box outside. It held a gold looped cross in one hand and reached out to the army of tiny men with the other, its open palm extended in welcome.

There’s nothing here worth taking . But something compelled Karim to look further. That invisible rope around his chest pulled him in.

Tucking the damaged figurine into his pack, he tiptoed through the army of wooden men and approached the statue. An engraving of a long oval with writing inside decorated the statue’s open palm. At a glance, Karim guessed they were the same symbols as the ones on the amulet. The name, perhaps, of the man whose tomb they were robbing.

Not man , he corrected himself, king.

Satisfied that there was nothing more of value in the room, he turned to go. Something wet seeped through his sandal. “Ech,” he grunted, lifting his foot. A bit of water from an underground spring, probably. He wiped it with his hand, but stopped when he saw the red, sticky smudge it left behind.

Karim directed the torch at the floor where he’d been standing near the base of the statue. Oozing from beneath the pedestal was a thick pool of what looked like—

“Karim!”

Karim’s heart jolted as Djet’s cry shattered the silence. “What?” he shouted, stepping back from the statue and nearly tripping over a hundred tiny soldiers.

“Did you hear it?” Djet’s voice was shrill with terror.

“Hear what?”

And then he heard it.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Karim sighed. “Stop fooling, you goose. We don’t have time for it.” He tried to keep his tone light, but the crimson pool had unnerved him. What was Djet playing at?

“I’m not doing it.” Djet’s voice was quieter now, more a sob than actual words. “It’s… it’s coming from the coffin.”

“It’s what? ”

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

A chill shot down Karim’s spine. No, it was impossible. It couldn’t—

A breeze scented with wine and honey blew across his face. His torch guttered and went out.

In the suffocating darkness, Karim heard wood cracking and splintering, and then something heavy crashing to the ground.

Karim stood rigid in the darkness, not moving, not breathing.

Then came a gentle rustling, so soft Karim could barely hear it over the thundering of his heart.

Another sound exploded so loud and searing that Karim couldn’t believe it didn’t light up the entire tomb with its brilliance.

It was the sound of Djet screaming.