The Eye of the Serpent

Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue: Egypt, the Valley of the Kings, 1923

Chapter One: Return to Luxor

Chapter Two: The Tall American

Chapter Three: Family Reunion

Chapter Four: Hostile Reception

Chapter Five: Mohammed Hansa

Chapter Six: The Valley of the Kings

Chapter Seven: At the Dig

Chapter Eight: The Road to Luxor

Chapter Nine: Uninvited Guests

Chapter Ten: The Bazaar

Chapter Eleven: Early Risers

Chapter Twelve: Waiting

Chapter Thirteen: The Search

Chapter Fourteen: Into the Tomb

Chapter Fifteen: Luncheon is Served

Chapter Sixteen: The Scrolls

Chapter Seventeen: The Return of Sonchis

Chapter Eighteen: Crash

Chapter Nineteen: The Guardian

Chapter Twenty: Flying Blind

Chapter Twenty-One: The Gates of Apophis

Epilogue: One Week Later

Also by Philip Caveney

Copyright

EGYPT 1923.

Fifteen-year-old Alec Devlin is on his way to the Valley of the Kings to spend the summer holidays working
on his Uncle Will's archaeological dig. It's not the first time he's spent his summer this way . . . but this year things are different.

Uncle Will and his young assistant, Tom, have recently made an amazing discovery – an ancient tomb hidden deep below the earth. But only hours after opening its doors, Uncle Will falls mysteriously ill and Tom seems to have disappeared without trace.

Alec sets about unravelling the tomb's mysteries – seemingly harmless animals have turned into rabid killers, long dead mummies are rising from their tombs, the spirit of a powerful High Priest is claiming people as his living hosts . . .

and Alec must confront a terror that has waited three thousand years to be reborn.

Thanks to Biff Devlin for the use of
just two of her many names . . .
and to Mark Whitaker,
web monkey extraordinaire
.

WITH A GROWING
sense of anticipation Sir William Devlin stood at the top of the long flight of stone steps and gazed down at the massive doors set deep into the sand below him. At his side, his young assistant, Tom Hinton, could hardly conceal his excitement. This was the moment they had devoted so many years of their lives to; the moment they had begun to believe would never come.

The workmen had finished unearthing the steps weeks earlier and, in removing the piles of rubble heaped at the base of the huge gates, had revealed the seals bearing the name of Akhenaten,
one of the mightiest pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty and the father of Tutankhamun. After so much fruitless searching, this was like a miracle.

For four years the two men had worked side by side in the Valley of the Kings, both convinced that Akhenaten's final resting place was hidden not in his desecrated tomb in Amarna, but somewhere in these limestone hills. But in all that time they had discovered nothing more than ancient trinkets: a faience cup, a calcite jar, the occasional piece of discarded jewellery. They had been on the verge of giving up the search when workmen had, quite by accident, uncovered a step, just a few inches beneath the constantly shifting sands.

The resulting dig had unearthed fifteen more steps, perfectly cut from smooth white stone and angling steeply down into the bowels of the earth. But even then there had been a maddening wait while the seals were photographed and artists reproduced every element of them for the archives. Now, as the two archaeologists watched in silence, a couple of their most trusted workmen were finally breaking the seals and pulling open the doors, to reveal the darkness beyond.

Sir William and Tom descended the steps
together until they stood peering into the blackness. Sir William was aware of a thick sweat on his brow: this moment could be the greatest achievement of his life or the greatest disappointment. With a shaking hand he lifted his Eveready torch, flicked the switch and directed a beam of light into the antechamber.

What he saw there made him gasp in amazement.

The large room was piled high with treasures – gilt decorated boxes, gold statues, chairs, couches, even a beautifully ornate chariot. Apart from a fine film of dust, they looked as though they had been placed there only days ago, but Sir William knew that they had been waiting to be discovered for over three thousand years.

‘My God!' whispered Tom – and excitement flashed in his blue eyes. He lifted his own torch and added a second beam of light. The two men stood in shocked silence as the twin beams picked out yet more details – intricate necklaces, the threads that bound them long since rotted away, stone jars stacked in orderly ranks, mummified cats, their shrivelled faces staring sightlessly back into the glare of electric light.

At last Sir William took a deep breath. ‘It's
going to take us months to make an inventory of all this,' he said. It seemed a terribly lame thing to say after such an incredible discovery, but it was clear to him that their work had only just begun. Ahead of them lay a long stretch of photographing and filing; then the packing of the countless relics for the journey to the museum in Cairo.

‘Wait!' said Tom, pointing into the darkness. ‘Look – there! Another doorway.'

Sir William redirected the beam of his torch and saw that Tom was right. Beyond the jumble of treasure, half concealed by the sides of the chariot, there was a second sealed door. Before he could stop him, Tom, with all the impulsiveness of his twenty-two years, had run forward into the antechamber and was picking his way nimbly through the litter of treasure.

‘Tom, just a minute, we must go easy!' cried Sir William.

‘Don't worry,' Tom assured him. ‘I'll be careful.'

A few moments later, as Sir William watched, Tom went down on his hands and knees to crawl beneath the chariot. ‘The door's intact,' he shouted back over his shoulder. ‘No grave robbers have been here. This
has
to be a burial chamber!'

Reluctantly Sir William followed his young
assistant, terrified that he might blunder into some priceless relic and damage it beyond repair; but after a few moments he too was crawling beneath the chariot and staring at what was affixed to the sealed door.

It was a Wadjet eye – an oval of smooth blue faience, onto which had been painted the symbol of an eye. Sir William knew that these eyes were usually representations of the eye of Horus, the hawk lord, son of Osiris – a powerful talisman used to protect precious items from harm. He also knew that in ancient Egyptian mythology, the eye represented the moon and, it was believed, had the power to bring the dead back to life. But there was something different about this one. The painted pupil was a vertical line, making it look more than anything like the eye of a serpent. Sir William noticed how the edges of the stone were rounded and how it stood out from the door in relief, as though it had been used to plug an opening of the same oval shape.

Tom lifted a hand to touch the stone. ‘I believe I can pull it free,' he whispered. ‘We'll be able to peep through the opening into the room beyond.'

‘We shouldn't,' said Sir William nervously. ‘Not
until it's been photographed and documented. We could cause damage.'

‘It'll be all right,' Tom assured him. ‘We could be on the verge of finding the sarcophagus of Akhenaten. You want to look in there, don't you?'

‘Well . . .' began Sir William.

‘If we do it by the book, it'll be months before we can even get back to this door. We'll have to clear all the artefacts from the antechamber, one by one, catalogue them, photograph them . . . Let's just take a quick peek.' Tom didn't wait for an answer but raised his hand again and took a firm grip of the eye. He pulled once, grunting with the effort, but the thing didn't budge. ‘It's jammed in tight,' he said. ‘Looks like wax has been set around the edges.'

‘Tom, maybe we should wait,' said Sir William.

‘No, it's all right, I think I can . . .'Tom gritted his teeth and applied all his strength to the task. There was a brief silence, during which Sir William was aware of his heart beating furiously. Then, quite suddenly, the eye came free with a dull thud that seemed to echo weirdly in the enclosed space, and there was the opening, an oval of the deepest, darkest midnight black.

Sir William experienced a sudden powerful sense of dread. It spilled through him like a wash of Atlantic water, and once again he opened his mouth to tell Tom to wait. But it was already too late. Tom had scrambled closer and was raising his head to peep through the opening.

There was a long, loud hiss, as though a blast of air had escaped from the next room; and beside him, Sir William felt Tom's body flinch.

‘Tom?' he gasped. ‘What's wrong?'

Tom edged slowly back from the door. His handsome young features were very pale in the torchlight and bore a vacant expression, a look of dull surprise.

‘What did you see?' Sir William asked him.

‘Nothing,' said Tom, his voice little more than a whisper.

Sir William went to put his own eye to the opening but Tom suddenly placed a hand on his shoulder with a strength that was surprising in one so slight.

‘There's nothing,' he said again, and this time his voice was a deep, rumbling growl.

Sir William felt quite unnerved by the incident and decided that enough was enough. ‘Come on,' he said. ‘Let's get out of here.' He scrambled
back from beneath the chariot and helped Tom towards the entrance.

Stepping out into the open sunlight was a shock. The power of the sun hit Sir William like a clenched fist and he almost cried out with the force of it. It seemed as if the two of them had been in the antechamber for days. He turned to look at Tom and felt another shock go through him.