Valley of Kings Read online

  For Ronald Martin Solan

  Artist, soldier, Porter Street irregular

  Contents

  Hieroglyphic Message

  Awaken the Adventure

  Hieroglyphic Alphabet

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1: Hungry Ghosts

  2: Voices of the Dead

  3: Back Against the Wall

  4: Footsteps. Voices.

  5: Shangri-la

  6: To the Museum

  7: A Red-Hot Sledgehammer

  8: Wall Crawlers

  9: Splitting Up

  10: Highly Trained

  11: Ghost Town

  12: The Far Shore

  13: Base Camp

  14: The Valley of the Kings

  15: Burned

  16: A Visitor in the Night

  17: Going to Town

  18: Missing Mummies

  19: Betrayed

  20: The Dark Heart

  21: Into the Valley

  22: Tunnel Vision

  23: Moths to a Flame

  24: Royal Rumble

  25: Have a Heart

  26: Dark Deeds

  27: A Grave Situation

  Epilogue: Truth and Consequences

  About the Author

  Online Game Code

  Sneak Peek

  TombQuest Game

  Copyright

  His name was Abdel. Once, he had been Mr. Shahin, the boss of ten men. But like so many in Cairo, he had fallen on hard times. Now, he was a proud man in a cheap suit — a good man in bad company. Desperation had brought him here, but he was worried.

  “What’s this job you have for me?” he said, trying hard to hold his voice steady.

  The towering man next to him answered with the same three words as last time: “You will see.”

  Abdel glanced over at him. Was this man truly the leader of The Order, the criminal cult that had haunted Egypt for thousands of years? He certainly looked the part, tall and strong and wearing a suit more expensive than Abdel’s car. Under his arm was a large, elegant leather bag.

  “Nothing illegal,” Abdel added. “You promised me …”

  “Of course not,” said the man, a hint of amusement slipping into his flat, cold voice. “As I said, you are here to help.”

  Abdel nodded, forcing himself to think of the food he would buy his family, maybe even long-overdue birthday gifts for his children. Still, he wondered what sort of help he could offer in a drafty warehouse on the edge of the city.

  Their footsteps echoed in the massive space as they approached a heavy steel door. “Here we are,” said the cult leader.

  Abdel eyed the thick bar holding the door closed as the man slipped the bag from under his arm and began unzipping it. “You will excuse my new appearance,” he said, removing a heavy golden mask and letting the bag fall to the floor. “But as you know, we are a very old organization, and we have certain … traditions.”

  Abdel had hoped those “traditions” were rumors or exaggerations, but now he knew better. He gaped at the mask. It was an Egyptian vulture made of finely wrought gold, showing every fold and pockmark of the vulture’s skin. The beak was forged of sharp iron. The leader slipped it on carefully, and his words echoed out from underneath: “Open the door!”

  Abdel suddenly understood that he had made a deal with the devil. He knew that he should refuse, that he should run. And yet the powerful voice thundered in his head, robbed him of his will. With fear-widened eyes, he watched his own hand pull the handle of the bar up and back. The door began to rattle against its hinges, and fresh voices reached his ears. A chorus of sinister whispers buzzed around him, and his warm skin went cold.

  The bar slid aside with a loud thunk.

  Suddenly, the door opened inward, releasing a rush of stinking air and a swarm of dark whispers so strong that Abdel could feel them, like snake tongues on his skin. And for a moment — one brief, horrible moment — he saw it.

  An abomination.

  “That … should not … be,” he managed.

  Two powerful hands pushed him, strong palms slapping his back. “Ooof!” he gasped as he stumbled forward into the room. The door slammed shut behind him, and in the sudden darkness, he heard the bar slide shut.

  Ten thousand whispers combined into one word — “Welcome” — before shattering back into pieces. Unleashed, the heavy whispers cut into him, no longer tongues but teeth! Each one grabbed a piece, tore it off, gobbled it down. It wasn’t his body they were devouring; it was his soul. The effect was the same. His pulse revved for a moment from fear and pain.

  And then it thickened.

  And slowed.

  And, finally, it stopped.

  What was left of his soul slipped free of his body and was torn to bits, devoured.

  Abdel Shahin was a good man, and that was what they liked.

  Elsewhere in the old warehouse, a second man emerged from the shadows. He had kept his distance during the feeding and now cast a nervous look at the barred door. Little more than a ridiculous decoration, he knew. What was inside could not be contained. In a sense, it was already loose.

  The man pried his eyes from the door. “We have received information from the source,” he said.

  “Have the amulet keepers arrived?” said the leader, carefully placing the heavy mask back in its leather carrier.

  “Yes,” said the man. “They are here.”

  “And Peshwar awaits them?” said the leader.

  The man hesitated. “Yes, but … are you sure this is the right way? If we give them more time, if we follow them … they could lead us to the Spells.”

  “No,” said the leader flatly, “they have troubled us enough. We will cut them down. Leave the others in a ditch, but bring me the boy. Whatever he knows of his mother we will wring from him.”

  The man nodded. Challenging the leader on anything was dangerous. Challenging him about the boy could be suicide. “I have told Peshwar this, but she has no mercy in her. I worry she will kill them all, and whatever they know will die with them.”

  “Then tell her to think of it as playing with her prey,” said the leader, zipping up the bag. “Cats are good at that.”

  The thin metal skin of a battered taxi was all that stood between Alex Sennefer and a city at war with itself. The car wove its way through madhouse Cairo traffic as news reports on the radio screamed of a crime wave for the ages. But as the cab sped past groups of heavily armed police, Alex thought they seemed to be huddled together less to protect the public than themselves.

  He glanced around the cab at his own compatriots. His athletic older cousin, Luke, sat next to him, dressed as if for basketball, and Alex’s best friend, Renata Duran, was barely visible on Luke’s opposite side. In the front seat were the mysterious scholar Dr. Ernst Todtman and the taxi driver, who leaned heavily on his horn.

  Alex flinched from the noise. His nerves were shot and his thoughts were dark. He tried to shut out the chaos of Egypt’s capital as he remembered his time in England. Once again, he saw a man in a fearsome mask shouting questions at him in the eerie tomb beneath Highgate Cemetery. “Where is your mother, little boy?” He remembered the words so clearly that the man could have been in the taxi with him.

  But of course, if he had been, one of them would be dead by now. The man was Ta-mesah, a top lieutenant of The Order. The mask was a powerful artifact in the shape of a crocodile’s head and capable, Alex knew from firsthand experience, of inflicting tremendous pain. “She must be in the Black Land,” Ta-mesah had shouted. “Tell us where!”

  And now Alex was in the Black Land — Egypt, named for the rich, dark soil on the banks of the Nile River.

  Those words had changed everything. Before them, Alex
had believed that The Order had kidnapped his mom. That they’d taken her and also stolen the Lost Spells of the Egyptian Book of the Dead from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. But after Ta-mesah’s words, he knew the ancient cult didn’t have her — that they were hunting for her, too. Now Alex and The Order were in a race to find her, and with her, perhaps, the Spells.

  His mom had used the massive power of the Spells to bring Alex back from the brink of death. But in doing so, she had accidentally opened a gateway to the afterlife and released the evil ancients known as the Death Walkers. Now those sinister beings were working with The Order toward some dark end Alex could only guess at.

  All this evil unleashed just to save his life. He felt a familiar wave of guilt at the thought, both a weight on his shoulders and a punch in his gut.

  The traffic began to slow down, and the taxi’s air conditioning gave out with one last, dying wheeze. The driver shouted something in Arabic and pressed the button to lower the windows. Warm air hit Alex in the face. It wasn’t so bad while they were moving, but a moment later they ground to a full halt. A toxic mix of smells settled into the still air: uncollected trash from the curb, sulfurous fumes from the traffic, and the heavy smog that hung over the city.

  “Ugh,” said Luke, burying his face in his hands.

  “Did you know,” Ren began, leaning over to raise her window back up. Alex smiled despite the stench: Did you know were three of his friend’s favorite words. Ren continued: “… that living in Cairo is the same as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day?”

  Alex flicked his eyes out over the city. The day was ending now and the sky was doubly clouded by weak light and strong smog. The buildings faded into a gray haze in the distance.

  “It is not just the air that is bad here now,” added the driver in heavily accented English. “The whole city has gone mad.”

  Alex’s eyes were beginning to water from the combination of odors. As he reached down to pull his T-shirt up over his nose and mouth, he heard shouting from the sidewalk. He turned his head in time to see a woman run headlong into the front window of a small store. The woman tumbled inside under a razor-sharp shower of broken glass.

  “Is she hurt?” blurted Ren at the exact same moment that Luke said, “That was crazy!”

  The taxi began moving again as the traffic crept forward. Alex kept his eyes on the shattered window as it disappeared behind them, looking for movement inside the store’s shadowy interior.

  “Why would she do that?” he said to no one in particular.

  It was the taxi driver who answered. “They say the voices of the dead haunt the city now,” he said. “Carried on the wind. Telling truth, telling lies, it doesn’t matter. They sow anger and seek to harm.”

  “Yeah, but that was seriously bazonkers,” said Luke.

  The driver paused, possibly trying to figure out what bazonkers meant. “That,” he said finally, “was nothing.”

  His tone suggested that he was done with the subject, but Todtman wasn’t going to let it go. “What have you seen?” he asked.

  The driver paused, considering it, then took a deep breath and answered. “I was at the hospital last night. My wife had been stabbed.” Alex heard Ren draw in a sharp breath.

  “I am sorry,” said Todtman, but the driver shook him off. Now that he had started, he seemed determined to tell the story.

  “She will recover,” he said. “But the hospital was like a war zone, and we left before we could see the doctor. We didn’t trust him.”

  “Why not?” said Todtman, continuing his gentle prodding.

  “Because he had attacked the previous patient with a metal crutch. It was late, you see” — he paused once more to weigh his words — “and the voices are worse at night.”

  Alex looked out his window at the darkening sky above them and felt a shudder of fear run through him.

  The taxi pulled off to the side of the road and came to one final abrupt halt.

  “We are here,” said the driver. “Good luck.”

  Alex slid across the seat and exited curbside, and the friends dragged their bags toward a large apartment complex. Ren and Todtman rolled prim wheelie bags, while Alex and Luke lugged heavy suitcases.

  Todtman was in the lead, slowed down only slightly by a noticeable limp. Alex could follow the old scholar by sound alone — the hum of his wheelie bag and the steady click-clack of his black walking stick — so he let his eyes wander. The city was alien and dangerous, but he was looking for something much more familiar: his mom.

  He knew it was crazy to think he’d spot her in a city of millions. But then, craziness was all around him now. Everyone thought she was in Egypt, and this was the capital, a few blocks away from the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on the planet. Before she’d used the Lost Spells to heal him, Alex had always been too sick or weak to travel with her when she came here for work. Instead, she’d described the streets of Cairo and the wonders they led to, telling him true stories that felt like fairy tales. What better place for a missing Egyptologist? he thought.

  He saw a woman with brown hair like his mom’s and nearly gave himself whiplash turning to look. Nothing. Not her.

  He checked to see if Ren had seen him acting crazy, but she was looking at the buildings, sizing up the angles and architecture. She got that from her dad, a senior engineer who’d worked alongside his mom back at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  Ponytail! Pantsuit! His head whipped around again. Not her.

  He glanced up at the apartment complex. A tall brick wall surrounded it, and Todtman was leading them toward the lone opening in the center. This was where they were supposed to stay. The rooms had been arranged by Todtman’s contact at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the powerful agency in charge of Egypt’s ancient treasures.

  Alex forced himself to stop scanning the sidewalk for his mom and tried to focus. We have other fish to fry, he told himself, but even that phrase came from her — and reminded him of what a bad cook she was. “What is it?” he’d ask her when presented with her latest on-the-fly concoction. “Burned,” she’d answer, an inside joke but often true.

  Maybe she’ll be the one to find me, he thought, but that really was crazy. If she wanted to find him, all she had to do was call. So why doesn’t she? he thought for the one-millionth time. He looked down at his phone. Nothing. If she was really out there — if she really had the Lost Spells, like everyone seemed to think — why didn’t she call and tell him where she was? She must have a reason, he told himself. But what? He was so distracted he didn’t notice that the click-clacking of Todtman’s cane had stopped — until he walked right into the German’s back.

  “Sorry,” said Alex, retreating — right into Ren.

  “Hey!” she said.

  “What’s up?” said Luke, smoothly sidestepping the jumbled bodies.

  Todtman pushed his palm toward the ground — quiet, please — and then waved them all to the side. “Over here!” he whispered urgently, motioning them toward the brick wall on one side of the entrance.

  Alex knew it was serious when Todtman lifted his bag’s wheels off the ground and didn’t use his cane, choosing to limp quietly — and painfully — over. The others huddled up against the wall next to him.

  “I don’t think she saw us,” said Dr. Todtman, nodding toward some unseen enemy inside the complex. His face was always a little froggy, with eyes that protruded too much and a chin that protruded too little, but fear now amplified the effect.

  “Who?” said Alex, resting his suitcase on the ground.

  “So we’re not going in?” said Luke, a little too loud. He was fast on his feet but could be painfully slow on the uptake.

  The other three shushed him.

  “Peshwar,” said Todtman, as if it were the name of a particularly gruesome disease. “She is another Order operative. And it seems she is waiting for us.”

  Alex flattened back against the wall. The bricks were still radiating heat left over
from the blazing Egyptian day but Todtman’s words sent a chill through him. How did she know we were coming?

  “We can’t stay here,” said Todtman.

  Alex glanced up at the sky — as dark as gray wool now — and the taxi driver’s words came back to him: “The voices are worse at night.”

  “We will have to make other arrangements,” said Todtman. “I have a friend here … It has been years, but maybe …”

  Suddenly, Alex heard footsteps coming from the other side of the wall: the brisk slap of expensive shoes on the stone walkway. Alex pushed himself off the wall. Instinctively, his left hand reached up and wrapped around the ancient scarab amulet that hung from a chain beneath his shirt. He felt his pulse rev and his mind calm as the magic of the ancient amulet surged through him.

  A man in a tan, summer-weight suit walked out through the entryway in the wall and turned toward them. His cold eyes lit up with recognition.

  “Walak!” he shouted in Arabic, before turning and waving to whoever was behind him. He was an Order thug, calling for backup.

  Alex gripped his amulet tighter with his left hand as his right shot up and unleashed a spear of concentrated wind that knocked the man back against the wall.

  “Kuhh!” he said as his head hit the bricks and his eyes fluttered closed.

  But as fast as Alex had acted, it wasn’t fast enough.

  More footsteps sounded from inside the complex. A stampede of Order muscle was heading toward them!

  “Let’s go!” said Ren.

  Luke, an elite athlete with Olympic dreams, leaned forward into a sprinter’s stance. But Alex knew that they weren’t running anywhere. Todtman’s left leg had been crippled by a scorpion sting back in New York. He looked over to see Todtman’s own amulet, a jewel-eyed falcon known as the Watcher, disappear into the scholar’s hand.

  “Ahlan!” he shouted.

  It was one of the few Arabic words Alex knew, a simple greeting. Several pedestrians who’d stopped to gawk at the fallen thug now looked over at Todtman and snapped to attention. They immediately rushed into the opening in the wall, forming a tightly shut human gate. The Watcher could do more than watch …