The Quiet Darkness

John Waterman

In the quiet darkness a man waited for other men. He knew that they would arrive soon, but not exactly when. He knew how many, but not their names – that last detail was unimportant. He knew what they were, which was more important than who. They didn’t expect him, nor how their lives would change after they met him.

The room was filled only by the slight noises he made as he shifted in the beautiful chair he sat on and smoked. The occasional flare of dim orange light from his cigarette lit very little within it. He smirked, thinking that before him only a royal fundament had ever sat on the chair. Its owner - previous owner, anyway - wasn’t far away, though was no longer able to complain that a foreign commoner had appropriated it for this short time.

*  *  *

‘So we’re sure,’ Thorsten said for the eleventh time. ‘We’re sure?’

‘You’ve read the markings on the seals yourself,’ Dieter replied, nervous and tired of Thorsten’s uncertainty. ‘This is the right one.’

‘This is still insane,’ Thorsten muttered.

Other muttering behind the pair made Dieter wince. The locals didn’t like it when they spoke in German - though to them it was just barbarian gabbling, of course. Dieter and Thorsten were only of middling height for Moderns, but they proved heavily built and well-fed next to the Egyptians. Dieter knew that this band of locals were nearly all members of the very same community that had worked on all of these tombs carved under Ta Dehent over the past century and a half for the Living Gods, the Masters of The Great House of the Two Lands. He’d heard their whispers, knew that they wanted to slay the barbarians as soon as the last wards were opened and the treasure of the opened tomb lay in their grasp. The magic of the wards meant instant death to any Egyptian who broke them, but they believed that foreigners were immune to the curse.

The well-worn bronze khopesh swords and keen daggers at the Germans’ belts had dissuaded the locals so far, and under their tunics they had other means to protect themselves from the greedy men who would loot the tomb. Dieter sighed, took a wooden mallet and bronze chisel from the bag slung over his shoulder, and began to chip away at the plaster and Nile mud that covered the outer door of the tomb of Tutankhamun, the Living Image of Amun, now dead in his tomb for two years. Beside him, after taking an anxious glance around in the torchlight, Thorsten did the same.

The plan had always been a little daft, Dieter thought to himself. He and Thorsten hadn’t been engaged in the planning part of this operation, though. They were instead the execution end of it. Their part had begun when they’d been inserted into this timeline in what a later era would call 1323BC, not long after the infirm and inbred boy king laying a dozen meters away had died and been buried in his appropriated and hastily re-decorated tomb here in The Valley of The Kings.

It had taken them these two years to cross Canaan into Egypt, supposedly travelers from a land later known as Thrace, at the edges of the world known to the People of the Two Lands. Two years living in the Late Bronze Age, learning Akkadian and New Kingdom Egyptian along the way. Two years as rough men living a rough life as sell-swords, caravan guards, and toughs for hire along the Levant, earning their keep in wine, food, and loot while learning and always heading southwest towards the Nile.

Half an hour later the door lay revealed, its two valves of cedar shut with the seal of the Superintendent of the Houses of Eternity and the name of its occupant. Thorsten put his chisel behind the cord and raised his mallet. ‘We abjure this seal,’ he said in formal Egyptian. ‘We profane it, we rob it of its power, we cast it down, we lay it open and broken, we put it asunder, in the name of Apep we rob Anubis of the mastery and guarding of this space.’ Two blows tore the cord loose from the bronze staples and shattered the clay seal.

The locals standing behind them held their breath for several heartbeats, and then they all exhaled as one. The steep stair behind them turned into a sloping flat-floored corridor that extended beyond the flickering light of the smoky torches the locals carried. Dieter led the way, followed by Thorsten, and then the score of locals. The next door was behind a smooth wall of white, glittering gypsum plaster stamped all over with the seal of the Superintendent and the name of the eternal occupant. Some of the locals had probably applied this plaster two years ago, but none bothered to help the Germans as they chipped away at it. As they worked the hot air in the passage became close with the dust from the plaster, the smoke of the torches, and the smell of unwashed humans who loved onions and garlic.

This time it was Dieter’s turn to speak the spell and break the seal, this one made of bronze and gold, bearing the name of the King whose immortal sah lay within. ‘I break the eternal house of Him of the Living Image of Amun,’ he intoned, ‘who slumbers here, with no need of mortal goods since his departure to the Sea of Reeds. I abjure the curse, I break the seal, I ward away Anubis who has no power to stay my hand nor that of any other mortals.’ The cord broke under two blows from his chisel, and the seal fell to the floor among the shattered plaster. Dieter ground it underfoot and stood aside. He and Thorsten now faced the locals, whose breath came fast as their minds turned towards their avarice. A few fingered their stout prybars and mallets, eying the barbarians who’d broken the wards and curse.

The Germans’ hands slid down to the worn bone hafts of their curved bronze swords, eying the men before them. ‘Be about it, then,’ Thorsten said to them. ‘The House lays open, to have its goods taken without.’

‘You two go within first, outlanders,’ said Enka, the leader of the robbers. He hefted his stout club. ‘Just so we can be assured that your spells have worked.’

‘As you like it,’ Dieter replied. He reached for a torch from one of locals standing close.

‘Nay,’ Enka said. ‘You’ll need no light in that chamber, and we will be here by the valves.’

Dieter locked eyes with the aged but still stout crew leader and master of the robbers. He then nodded after a few pulse-beats. ‘Come,’ he said to Thorsten. He reached for the bronze staple on the left door and pulled. The cedar wood grated through the pile of plaster on the floor. Hot air, redolent with strange scents, wafted forth from the opened tomb. He smelled must, mildew, frankincense, myrrh, spoiled meat, and . . . something he hadn’t smelled in over two years. 

*  *  *

The sounds of tools chipping plaster proved the signal for the next-to-last act. He tamped out his cigarette, dropped the recovered butt into a pocket, and stood. He stepped away from the chair into the corner of the eight by three and a half meter wide room and vanished to mortal eyes, remaining very still.

Soon enough one of the cedar doors grated across the floor of the passageway outside, and flickering torchlight played on the opposite wall. Two men, neither bearing torches, came a meter or so into the room, one after the other. He could see them clearly in the gloom that would have given few details to unaugmented eyes. The first was about a meter seventy tall, wide shouldered, with curly dark hair and brown eyes but skin only lightly tanned under the plaster dust. The second was five centimeters taller, with straight dark hair but lighter eyes. They were built heftier than the locals, though they both wore linen kilts, loose thin wool tunics, and patterned head scarves.

They turned back towards men that he could sense stood without, with torches. ‘See,’ one of the pair said in barely accented Egyptian, addressing someone in the entry passage. ‘We yet live. Now proceed. There is much for you to do, and the night progresses.’

Locals bustled in, at first tentatively, then with wonder and excitement as they saw the riches piled in the chamber. Men with baskets began to pile trinkets and small artifacts within them, and other men came to pick up smaller pieces of gold-inlaid furniture. They worked quickly, almost as if they already knew where the finest pieces lay, though they cried out in joy and wonder as they found gold, silver, ebony, ivory, alabaster, and fine jewels; vials of oils and perfume, and other small offerings.

He stood aside, invisible to their gaze, making sure that none so much as brushed him. There were a score of the robbers at first, but they transferred their goods to others who stole down the corridor to then haul the loot away outside in the darkness of night.

The pair of outlanders, who had come within the antechamber first, spoke to one another in low tones, but he could understand their German. ‘We have to open the burial chamber next,’ one of them said, ‘where the shrine is, because that’s the real payoff. It has to be looted, so when the Englishman discovers it the tomb is empty and wrecked.’

‘Do you think that these bandits can strip it all this night,’ the other replied. ‘We run the risk of being discovered, no matter that they say the necropolis guards have been bribed to not patrol here.’

The first one looked at the locals methodically removing the finest items from the chamber. ‘I think yes, but they’ll want us to desecrate the entrance to the burial so their heathen gods will not put the curse on them.’

‘Best we get at it, then. We’ll soon enough have the items for which we’ve asked, as our fee, whether the locals give it over as agreed or we just take it from them.’ The second of the pair strode to the plastered wall by which stood the statues of the guardians of the burial itself.

The room had been fairly rummaged through and denuded of the finest of the easily portable riches by then. An older local stood by with a torch, barking orders at his underlings; he had probably been one of the workers placing all of the riches here two years before, but he kept looking meaningfully at the outlanders and then towards the plastered wall closing off the burial chamber. His compadres had already smashed down the wall into the annex holding more treasures, as they seemed to think that nothing fell would happen if they breached that chamber. They were reticent to open the chamber holding the actual burial of the dead king, though.

The larger of the pair of foreigners applied his chisel and mallet to the wall between the guardian statues, themselves of gold, silver, and ebony, but the other one hissed in German. ‘The spell, idiot!’

The man sighed, then said, ‘We abjure thee, Anubis, and by this act show that you have no hold here, no power, no ability to harm those who open the tomb of he who was born a false servant of the cursed God whose name is now spoken by no one. His ill-gotten riches are forfeit by his apostasy and will return to the mortal world.’ The outlander continued to chip away at the plaster, working quickly, and his companion joined him.

Quickly the wall fell away, and some of the locals joined in the effort as soon as their torchlight showed the gleam of gold. A wall of intricately tooled and inscribed pure gold appeared, and soon all of the robbers were standing around the widening gap, ready to pull apart the outer shrine with their crude tools and bare hands.

Still invisible, he now spoke in formal Egyptian from behind the scrabbling robbers. ‘Didst thou think that breaking a House of Eternity would be so trivial?’ His voice, though not loud, penetrated throughout the narrow chambers of the tomb. ‘Didst thou forget the divine, which lives past the veil of Death and touches those on each side of it?’

There was a pause of a single pulsebeat, then each robber howled, dropped their tools as if they’d turned red-hot, and engaged in a desperate effort to quit the chambers as fast as was mortally possible. Even so, many did not drop the baskets and bags they had filled but still clutched them as they sought to escape. In the space of five quick pulse beats only the foreigners were left in the chamber, and the robbers merely a fading scrabbling of feet dashing back up to the mortal world.

Both men whirled around, reaching not for swords but for items concealed in their tunics. The watcher became visible then, a ghostly image in the chamber now lit only by the guttering light of dropped reed torches. He waved his hand, which bore a short baton, and the Glock pistols fell from their nerveless hands as they both slumped to the floor though still conscious.

The ghostly watcher walked over slowly, stepping past bags of dropped riches, and took the two pistols from where they had clattered to the limestone. He placed them carefully in a satchel before he addressed the paralyzed men in a Berliner-accented German. ‘Nice try, gentlemen. But I fear you’ve been sent here under false pretenses.’ He sat back in the chair in which he’d waited and lit a cigarette.

*  *  *

Now Dieter recognized the strange but familiar odor he’d smelled among the others upon opening the final door to the tomb. Burning tobacco, which wouldn’t become a thing anywhere on this side of the Atlantic for another 2700 years, but one he remembered well from the Modern era. ‘Who-‘ he managed to croak past the burning paralysis.

‘Not important. I’d identify myself were I making an official arrest, but I’m not. Justice will be served today, but not by the hands of the Agency. Saves me effort, though it’s going to be pretty rough on you two. This tomb doesn’t get emptied out today, nor even by the next attempt in another few years. It’ll still bear its treasures in thirty-two hundred years when the Englishman opens it to reveal the only more-or-less intact burial of a Pharoah. Your employer’s plot will not succeed, and Carter will note only that the first robbery of the tomb was thwarted, likely by the necropolis guards. But lo! They come now, with the Superintendent of the Houses of Eternity. Someone ratted out your compadres, it seems. I think that you know by now what the penalty is for breaching a royal tomb here in the Two Lands. I’ll leave you to it. Good evening.’

Behind the ghostly man a chunk got bitten out of reality, an ebony rectangle darker than the darkest tomb. He stepped through it, and it vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. Dieter could hear the shouts of men and their charge down the violated entrance to the tomb of Tutankhamun to apprehend the thieves.