Cursed Times - What Now?

Chapter 11 - Tomb

Iseret's note on the letter had indicated they would find the tomb in the place where the people of Waset had buried their dead since times immemorial—the West Bank. When Metjen examined the row of hills rising behind the fields he wondered whether he might have underestimated the task at hand.

Rani-Ra joined him, shading her eyes with her hands.'You explained this all before, but quite honestly I can't see how we'll ever find anything.'

Trueth sat in the back of their rented Jeep, legs clad in black linen trousers dangling from the open door. 'My thoughts entirely.' A pale hand showed, waving a guidebook. 'See, this thing says they've dug up every inch of both the valleys, Kings and Queens, and it's unlikely that somebody's tomb could still be hidden there.'

'Unlikely does not mean impossible,' Ranofer said from the passenger seat, swigging karkadi from his Thermos.

Metjen felt his sun-flow rising and pushed it back down. The noontime sun was hot enough. 'I've told you umpteen times already, I'll notice Iseret's veil.'

'Give!' Rani-Ra grabbed her brother's flask. She filled two cups, one for herself, one for Trueth who was fanning her face inside the car. 'Yeah, yeah, big bro just has to find the right spot, ' Rani-Ra said. 'I still don't get it. Why do we have to start in these valleys? Valley of the Queens? You've been here so many times with Dad, surely you would have spotted something?'

Metjen pinched the bridge of his nose, it was itching from the glasses but he did not dare remove them in public. 'I wasn't expecting to find any magic, bloody hell! Will you give me a break? For what it's worth, I don't think we'll get lucky first time round, but we have to try, it's the most logical place.'

'Nothing is logical about this place,' Trueth said. 'Please get a move on, I'm melting away here!'

'Sounds good to me,' Metjen said before he squeezed behind the wheel of the rental. He started the car and in a cloud of oily exhaust fumes they took off.

They drew blanks, first in the Valley of the Queens, then in the Valley of the Kings. In a way that was positive news given the number of tourists still traipsing around the tombs despite the coming summer. Any attempt at entering hidden gravesites in full view of these visitors was doomed to failure.

The surrounding desert did not yield any treasures either. The Jeep raced past steep cliffs bleeding pebbles down their sides, roared along the terraces of Hatshepsut's mortuary temple and ignored the crumbling remains of the Memnon colossi.

They found nothing.

'Dare I mention the proverbial needle in the dune?' Trueth asked after two days of mind-numbing meandering on desert tracks where one bit of rubble appeared more or less like the arid lot of it.

'Didn't you recognize another clue on that darned papyrus?' Rani-Ra said. She and Ranofer, despite their usual bickering, had tried their best to support the mind-scan of the environment.