Michael Belmont and the Tomb of Anubis (The Adventures of Michael Belmont) (10 page)

Abby grinned at him excitedly and began to rub her hands together, jumping up and down in place.

Michael soon found that exploring the hallway with his sister and best friend created an altogether different experience than exploring it alone.
 
This time he felt more relaxed, and there were two more sets of eyes to inspect all the artifacts and paintings.
 
Michael was noticing many things for the first time as the other two pointed them out.

Most of the doors they came across in the corridor looked like those in the rest of the castle, and most were locked.
 
Every unlocked door they came to led to an empty room.
 
A few of the locked doors however, like the one with the moon carving on it, were unique.
 
There was one door that was perfectly smooth and black, almost as if it had been carved from one giant piece of obsidian.
 
There was no handle or keyhole on it, and they couldn't get it open.

As they kept moving, Liam found another unlocked door.
 
He turned the handle and pushed, and it creaked on its hinges and swung open.
 

Shining their lights inside, the room looked empty, and they were about to close the door when Abigail noticed a painting hanging on an inside wall.
 
"What's that?" she said.

They entered the room and walked over toward the painting.
 
The air suddenly became cold, and the closer they got to the painting the colder it seemed to get.
 
They stood in front of it and all stared up, shining their lights on it.
 
It was a portrait of an old, hideous woman.
 
Her scraggly white hair shot from her head in all directions.
 
She had yellow, cragged teeth and dark circles under her eyes, which glared back at them with hatred and malice.

"Banshee," muttered Liam in an audible whisper.

The painting was mesmerizing and revolting, the kind of thing that draws your eyes to it even though you keep telling them to look away.
 
Michael was stunned at how real it seemed.
 
It was almost as if the woman was staring right back at him, trying to see inside his soul.

Abigail stared into the old woman's eyes.

"Free me," it seemed to whisper to her.
 
Its voice was tired and raspy.

"Did you hear that?" she asked the boys without turning her gaze away.

"Hear what?" responded Liam.
 
He wasn't moving his eyes from the painting either.

Michael had turned his face from the painting and was now watching Liam and his sister.
 
They were both shivering.
 
In fact, Liam's teeth began to chatter from the cold.

The voice came to Abigail again.
 
"Let me out of here."

"Which one of you keeps talking?" she grumbled, aggravated that one of the boys was teasing her.

Michael didn't like the way they were acting.
 
He grabbed them both by the arm.
 
"I think its time to move on.
 
Come with me."

They left the room and he slammed the door behind them.

"I think that door ought to be locked too," said Liam, and Michael nodded.

When they got to the portrait of the wolfish man, both Abigail and Liam agreed that he was not at all a nice looking man.

"Hey," said Liam with a tone of surprise.
 
"That's the Staff of Anubis he's holding."

Michael smiled.
 
"I thought it looked like Anubis."

"The Staff of what?" asked Abigail.

"Not what, who?
 
The Staff of Anubis.
 
Last year Da and I visited the British Museum.
 
There was an Egyptian display there, and I saw pictures of that artifact in a presentation one of the Egyptologists made on Anubis."

Michael raised his eyebrow.

"That's him on the head of the staff."
 
Liam pointed it out.
 
"He's the Egyptian god of the dead, responsible for protecting departed souls as they made their transition to the afterlife.
 
Didn't you hear your mum talking about the Tomb of Anubis the other morning?"

"Guess I wasn't listening.
 
You seem to know a lot about it though," Abigail told him.

"I just thought it was really interesting," he said.
 
"That staff is the stuff of legends.
 
Everyone thought it was a myth, but it was recovered by the Catholic Church during a thirteenth century crusade, and supposedly remained in the possession of Rome until it was stolen in the early sixteenth century.
 
It hasn't been seen since."

"Well, what's so special about the thing?" asked Michael.

"According to the legends, it has some sort of magical powers.
 
Gives its owner unusual strength and the ability to change form.
 
It's also supposed to be able to open a porthole to the afterlife or something like that."

Michael contemplated this for a moment.
 
It was certainly an interesting story.
 
But he wondered why the man in the picture would be shown holding the staff.
 
Was he the thief who stole it?
 
And if he was, where was the staff now?

"I don't know why this bloke has it," Liam said, as if he were reading the look on Michael's face.
 
"It'd be interesting to know where this painting came from."

Michael told Liam about the statue of Anubis, and what he had seen through the eyes, but Liam had never seen the statue, or heard anything about it.

Michael then pointed out the werewolf mural hanging directly across from the portrait.
 
His companions agreed that this too was a creepy and disturbing thing to have displayed in the castle, although Liam commented that it was "Kind of cool in a demented sort of way."

They continued on and made their way up the stairs to the chamber containing all the artifacts.
 
Liam's eyes grew wider than Michael had ever seen them.

"We should call this room the
chamber of antiquities
," Liam said grandly, his hands on his hips.
 
Abigail clapped her hands, but Michael just looked down and shook his head, trying not to laugh.

"Wait a minute," said Liam, "what's this?"

A doorway broke off to the right at the top of the stairs.
 
Michael hadn't noticed it on his previous visits, but now saw that a faint glow emitted from within.
 
"I don't remember seeing that before.
 
Let's go check it out."

The three of them entered another chamber, a bit smaller than the room of antiquities, but still fairly large in its own right.
 
It was an armory.
 
There were swords, shields, muskets and morning stars, and just about every other kind of weapon they had ever seen.

Liam selected a large Scottish Claymore off a display on the north wall, and strained himself to pick it up.
 
He only managed to get the tip a few inches off the ground.

"This is awesome," he said.

"I think you're going to have to grow into that one," Abigail told him.
 
Then she saw something that caught her attention.

She ran over to a section that contained some Asian weapons.
 
There were Japanese suits of armor, the kind that had been worn by Samurai, along with swords and some long wooden bows.

"Hey, I've seen one of these," she said excitedly, picking something up.
 
"It's a Chinese chain whip.
 
A girl from Hong Kong who came to visit our kung fu class last summer had one.
 
She was amazing."

She gave it a few clumsy swings.

"Why don't you keep it," Liam told her.
 
"Maybe if you practice you could get as good as her."

She nodded and smiled from ear to ear.

Liam found a pair of simple, but extremely sharp daggers.
 
"These are pretty cool, and they might come in handy if anything jumps out at us."
 
He gave one to Michael, who examined it before returning it to its sheath and sliding it into his pocket.

"Well, at least we know where to go if the castle is ever sieged," he said while scanning the room.

"Yeah," said Liam.
 
"Let's go take a look at that statue you were telling me about."

They left the armory and entered the chamber of antiquities.

Liam looked around in awe.
 
"I can't believe this stuff has been here all along and I've never known about it.
 
It's so weird.
 
I thought we had a lot of cool stuff on display in other parts of the castle, but none of that comes close to the things in here."

Abigail stopped before a glass display case.
 
"Everything is so dusty." She made a smiley face with her finger.
 
"Ooh, look at this.
 
How beautiful."

Inside the case was a jewel encrusted, golden crucifix.
 
The sign in front of it said something that they couldn't make out, and then "recovered in Portugal, 1938 by".
 
But the only part of the name they could see was "Jones Jr."

"Here's the statue," Michael said as they approached it.
 
"Why don't you take a look?"

Liam stepped up on the box.
 
He stood there for a few seconds, looking through the eyes.

"I don't see anything unusual," he reported with a frown.
 
"Just the wall on the other side of the room."
 
He hopped back down and stood beside them.

Michael folded his arms and sighed.
 
He was hoping that Liam would see what he'd seen.
 
"Well, let me try and get it to work again," he insisted, stepping back up to the statue.
 
He looked through the eye slits, and it instantly began to glow and vibrate.

After a moment, the small ball of light appeared.
 
It drew Michael in, growing larger and larger as he flew toward it.
 
He was prepared for the experience this time, although it was terribly uncomfortable to lose control and be swept away.

There was a piercing burst of light. He opened his eyes, allowing them to adjust to the bright world around him.
 
The sun shone fiercely overhead, and he was standing at the top of some sort of high stone platform.

Hundreds of steps descended before him, to where a large crowd of people had gathered far below.
 
They were all chanting, and it only took Michael a moment to realize that he was the object of their praise; they were worshiping him, as well as the man standing at his side.

It was Horus.
 
He looked quite different from the last time Michael had seen him.
 
He had the head of a falcon, but the rest of his body was that of a man, and it wasn't just a mask, his head was literally the head of a falcon.
 
He was wearing a long, linen skirt, and a few pieces of jewelry.
 
His swarthy skin glistened under the heat of the fiery Egyptian sun.
 
In his hand, he carried a scepter; very similar to the one Michael had in his own hand.

It was all becoming clear, and Michael realized that he'd once again been thrust into the body of Anubis, and he again knew everything that the Egyptian did.
 
He also knew that as he was standing in front of this crowd, he appeared to them much like his brother, only his own head was that of a jackal.
 

They had both practiced hard to attain the ability to appear this way.
 
Changing fully into a jackal was easy, natural to him, but to control the change in a limited way, allowing him to appear as part man and part beast, had been quite another story.

He and Horus had mastered it now, and today as they stood before this crowd, they were being honored in front of the peoples of their nation.

Their father Osiris walked up behind them.
 
He placed a hand on each of their shoulders.
 
Osiris was dressed in a long white robe with a red belt.
 
On his head was a large white crown with ostrich feathers attached on each side.
 
His long black pharaoh's beard protruded from his pale, green colored face.

Michael knew that Anubis loved this man, his father.
 
But he also knew that he was greatly feared, even by his own sons.
 
Osiris wielded a great dark power and an insatiable thirst for control.
 
He was a necromancer and a sorcerer, who had called upon the dark arts and unthinkable forms of evil to serve his purposes.

At that moment, Anubis was wondering if this man truly had any real love for him or for Horus.
 
Perhaps they too were nothing more than stepping-stones in his quest for power.

"My beloved people," Osiris said in a gravelly voice, which echoed down into the valley below, "today the Mighty Ra shines his beloved face upon our wondrous city of Ain Shams, because this is a happy day.
 
Today I present before you my own dear sons, Horus and Anubis."

The people cheered loudly at the sound of their names.

"Like me, they are both powerful gods who have been sent down to you by Ra to bless, guide, and protect you."

The people roared out in approval.
 
Michael looked at his brother, and noticed that although he stood there proudly with his head held high, a single tear came flowing down from his large, round eye.

"My sweet children," Osiris growled on, "you have all heard of the brave and wonderful deeds which have been performed by my sons, and the battles they have fought for the glorification of our people.
 
Now you will worship them just as you worship me."