Valley of Kings Read online

  “What should we do with this guy?” said Luke, looking down at the large lump on the floor.

  Alex thought about it and then, very slowly, turned his head and looked out the window.

  After a few more minutes and another pint of water, he was ready. They waited for the night porter to pass and then dragged the guy out into the hall. The next time the train slowed down to take a turn, it lost more than momentum. They watched the man tumble limp-limbed down a sandy bank and then returned to their car.

  Early the next morning, they reached the edge of Luxor.

  They knocked on Ren’s door at sunrise, and she slid it back immediately, fully dressed, bedhead subdued smartly by a wet comb. “You look awful,” she said to Alex. “Not you, Luke. You just look tall.”

  “I was drugged,” said Alex defensively.

  She looked at him dubiously. They’d checked on her the night before, but hadn’t gotten past her startled, angry bunkmate. Ren grabbed her pack and left the lady snoring away. “It’s so early,” she said once they were all in the hallway. “Do you really think The Order knows we’re coming?”

  Alex and Luke exchanged glances. “They know we’re coming,” they said together.

  Ren didn’t ask how they knew, and Alex didn’t really have the heart to freak her out.

  The night porter was slumped over, sleeping quietly on a little fold-down seat at the end of the corridor as they snuck by. Outside, the blood-orange Egyptian sun was just breaking free from the grip of the horizon.

  They stood huddled in the loud, drafty gap between cars, packs on backs and eyes on the little window in the door. Finally, the train began to slow. It reached a road crossing and lurched abruptly to a full stop. Alex could practically hear the collective groan of a hundred passengers bouncing in their bunks. He quickly used his amulet to open the steel door.

  On the road outside, the lights flashed and the signals chimed. A handful of early morning motorists stared as three young visitors climbed down, reaching the pavement moments before the train began to chug onward.

  The sun crept higher in the sky as they edged toward the center of town, walking slowly and navigating by smartphone. They were heading toward the Luxor docks, where they could catch a ferry across the river to the Valley of the Kings.

  “Man, it’s already really hot,” said Luke, fishing a battered Yankees cap out of his backpack.

  “We’re in the desert now,” said Ren, holding up her latest guidebook.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” said Luke. “Look at all these trees.”

  Ren lowered the book and raised her eyes. Evenly spaced palm trees lined the road, thick-trunked and branchless, with shocks of fronds on top that offered pools of shade in the sea of sunlight.

  “We’re on the Nile,” explained Alex.

  “No, you’re in denial,” said Luke, and once again Alex couldn’t tell if he was joking.

  The buildings got closer together as they walked. The whole city of Luxor looked like something out of an Egyptian history book. Alex knew that for thousands of years, this had been Thebes, the capital city and seat of power for some of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs. Reminders of their reigns were everywhere. The skyline was low and spiked with temple pylons and minarets. They passed ancient temples and weathered statues. There were legitimately old buildings and new ones designed to look that way.

  People stared at them openly as they walked. Cairo had offered overcrowded chaos, but Luxor met them with a sketchy ghost-town vibe. Locals were scarce so early in the morning, making the lean, hungry-eyed men creeping sleepily down the streets seem all the more threatening.

  Luke, who looked like an adolescent Viking, got the most stares. Alex got the fewest. Half-Egyptian, thanks to a father he’d never known, and dressed simply in jeans and a T-shirt, he almost blended in. As the sun got higher, the streets remained mostly empty.

  “Where is everyone?” said Ren.

  “Out of work and scared, I bet,” said Alex. “This is a tourist town. With everything that’s going on, you’d have to be crazy to visit now.”

  “Guess that makes us crazy,” said Luke. “But it’s still a lot nicer than Cairo.”

  “Should be even quieter once we get out to the Valley of the Kings,” said Alex, but even as he formed the words he got the unsettling feeling they might come back to haunt him. Nowhere had been quiet for him lately, not even a sleeper car.

  “Yeah, uh, what kind of kings are we talking about?” said Luke as they reached an intersection and waited to cross.

  “A lot of the big ones,” said Alex. “Ramses, Thutmose, Hatshepsut — though she was technically a queen.”

  “Really?” said Ren.

  “Yeah, a female pharaoh, powerful, too,” he said, but they’d lost Luke. Alex glanced over and saw his cousin’s eyes fully glazed. “And Tutankhamun,” he added. “King Tut.”

  Luke perked up. “I’ve heard of him. Dude was really young, right? I mean for a king.”

  “Yeah, like eighteen when he died,” said Alex.

  “Why’d he die so young?” said Luke.

  Alex shrugged. “A lot of people think he was murdered. His heart was missing when they found him. And my mom says there was a hole in his head.”

  “Yeah,” said Luke, “but people say that about me all the time.”

  Across the street, Alex found the street sign he was looking for: SHARIA AL-MAHATTA. “I think this will get us to the ferries,” he said, “but it will take us past the train station, so we have to be careful.”

  They needed to get out of town and over to the Valley of the Kings. The train had arrived by now, without them on it. If The Order was waiting for them, they’d probably already figured out the friends had gotten off early — and they’d be searching for them. They walked on, sunlight and open stares bearing down on them; their own eyes alert. They passed Luxor Temple and beyond that, just visible farther up Sharia al-Markaz, Karnak.

  The two legendary temple complexes were looming labyrinths of ornately carved stone: thick walls and massive columns, presided over by towering statues of the great pharaohs, some of them thirty feet tall. Alex, a museum kid to the core, normally would have longed to stop — but as Alex’s eyes scanned every inch of the dock along the river, it wasn’t more sights he was looking for.

  How many times had his mom talked about these places: this city, and the valley beyond? And now they knew she’d been here, just ten days earlier. Had they just missed her, Alex wondered, or were they about to find her? Maybe she was just beyond them now, in the valley. If she really was hiding, what better place than this forbidding desert that she knew so well? For the one-million-and-first time, he imagined finding her. He would run up and hug her, he knew that, but what would his first words be: “I missed you,” or “Why did you leave me?”

  They climbed aboard the waiting ferry and paid their fares. They quickly headed inside the cabin of the fat-bottomed boat, where it was cooler and they were finally out of open view. The ferry had been built for an army of tourists, but it was nearly empty as it pulled away from shore.

  “Which way are we headed?” said Luke. “I’m all turned around.”

  “West,” said Alex. “The dead were always buried on the western bank, because the sun dies there every night.”

  “Great,” said Luke sarcastically. “Dead and buried … Let’s go there.”

  As Alex turned to gaze out the window at the swift, dark waters of the Nile, he could feel the copper wings of the scarab hot against his skin. It was the Returner, the symbol of a traveler between the world of the living and the world of the dead. And Alex had been in both worlds.

  A smile crept onto his face.

  “Yes,” he said. “Let’s.”

  “It’s so green,” said Ren as the ferry bumped slowly into its moorings.

  Alex looked around. The western bank was lined with fat-trunked trees and dense bushes, all soaking up the water that had given birth to Egyptian civilization five thousand years
earlier, and sustained it ever since.

  As they filed off the boat, a few returning passengers filed on. Two of them moved gingerly, as if very old or injured. As they shuffled by, Alex couldn’t help but suck a sharp breath in through his teeth.

  Their faces and arms were horribly burned. And judging by their stiff, pained movements, that wasn’t all.

  “Don’t stare,” a voice whispered.

  Alex turned and saw a tall woman with dark brown hair pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail. His heart nearly stopped. But then he met her gaze, and instead of his mom’s steely blue-gray eyes, he saw a soft shade of hazel looking back at him. She looked away, turning to face one of the boat’s crew.

  “Shukran,” she said, taking a tightly wrapped paper bundle from him and discretely slipping him a few folded bills.

  “Al’awf,” he said, nodding slightly.

  “I wasn’t staring,” said Alex, when she turned back to him.

  “You were,” she said, not harshly, but firmly enough to settle the matter. She was wearing threadbare khaki pants and a short-sleeved, button-up shirt that may once have been white. On her head was a faded red baseball cap with the white H of Harvard on the front. On her feet, the same sort of battered leather boots his mom had always packed for trips to the desert.

  Ren eyed the cap. She was the type of twelve-year-old who already had a first-choice college picked out, and Alex knew that was it. “I’m Ren,” she said.

  “I’m …” the lady began before pausing a beat. Alex had seen his mom do that, too, deciding whether to introduce herself as Dr. Bauer or Maggie. He knew immediately this lady was an academic. “Isadore,” she continued, “but you can call me Izzie. All of the other crazies out here do.”

  “How do you know we’re crazy?” said Alex, not bothering to deny it.

  Izzie’s only answer was another small smile and a quick look behind them for any signs of parents.

  “What happened to those people?” asked Ren. “Were they in a fire?”

  “Sunburn,” said Izzie. A strange expression flashed across her face. “They say it happened last night,” she said softly.

  “That’s impossible,” said Alex, remembering the open blisters on their faces, the wet stains oozing out from under the fresh gauze on their arms.

  But Izzie was already stepping briskly off the dock, and her only response was an over-the-back wave good-bye.

  They waded out into the parking lot, a fresh blast of heat hitting them as soon as they stepped on the sun-softened blacktop. Alex had no idea how two people could get such brutal sunburns at night, but he could easily see how it would happen during the day out here. He glanced at Luke’s Yankees cap and wished he’d thought to pack his Mets cap — sickly for most of his life, he’d always identified with underdogs.

  Alex looked around. They were at the gateway to what had long been one of the world’s top tourist destinations. But they seemed to be the only tourists there today, and a handful of eager taxi drivers were beginning to circle. Rising up in the distance behind them was the first phalanx of hotels.

  “A real hotel would be nice,” said Ren a little wistfully. “No rats …”

  “We can’t get a hotel,” said Alex, lowering his voice as the first of the drivers approached. “Three kids with U.S. passports … How long do you think it would take The Order to find out about that?” Left unsaid: There’s no way my mom will be there, either.

  Alex waved off the first few taxi drivers and headed for the edge of the parking lot. The other two followed.

  “Well, where, then?” said Ren.

  “Yeah,” said Luke. “What’s your big idea?”

  Alex had decided after nearly getting nabbed in the little shoe-box sleeper car: No more tight spaces. He pointed up at the low-slung building in front of them. The sign above it was crowded with a few dozen words in Arabic, but only two in English: CAMPING SUPPLIES!

  “We go no farther,” the taxi driver said firmly. He pulled over to the side of the road, the desert stretching out around them.

  “We’re not even in the Valley of the Kings yet,” Alex said, scanning some of the signs next to the road.

  “Exactly,” said the driver. “It is too hot in the valley now.”

  It was one o’clock on the nose, and the sun was almost directly overhead. But Alex wasn’t sure that’s what the driver meant by “now.” Those burned arms and the bandages …

  “Has something happened in the Valley of the Kings?” said Alex. “Has something changed?”

  “Everything has changed,” the driver said bitterly. “I leave you here, along with the other …” He paused to find the right phrase and then spat it at them. “Thrill seekers.”

  They were dumped out into the sizzling heat along with all their stuff: their small backpacks stuffed inside big, new ones. It definitely wasn’t much of a thrill. Alex glanced up into the cloudless sky and was blinded by the blazing sun.

  “Where now?” said Ren.

  This time Alex had no answer. “Do I look like the kind of kid who’s been on campouts before?”

  “I have,” said Luke. “Hiking’s awesome for the legs. Throw in some rock climbing, and it’s a killer total body workout.”

  “I’m not looking for a killer workout,” said Ren. “Just, you know, not getting killed.”

  “Nice one, short-stuff,” said Luke, pointing at her with both index fingers. “Point is: The first thing you need to do is find shelter. Like from the wind —”

  “Or the heat,” said Alex, pulling his new hat out of his backpack. It was round and flat on top, with a bill in the front and a curtain of cloth in the back that covered his ears and neck.

  Luke and Ren glanced at each other and laughed softly. Alex pretended not to notice as he put it on.

  The landscape was mountainous at the edge of the valley. Long ridges scraped the sky in both directions, jagged, rocky fins erupting upward from the sunbaked ground. When Alex thought of desert, he thought of softly drifting sand, but the rim of the valley was stony and hard. He kicked the toe of his new boot into the ground and got a solid thud in return. He could feel the heat radiating up from it right through the leather. A sense of dread descended on him. This is an unforgiving landscape, he thought.

  He turned and looked toward Ren. Luke did, too.

  “What are you guys looking at me for?” she said.

  But they weren’t looking at her; they were looking at her amulet.

  “Ask it where the best shelter is,” said Alex.

  Ren’s reluctance was obvious: She refused to even look down at the ibis.

  “Come on,” said Luke. “It’s hot out here.”

  He had settled into a role that was less decision-maker than tie-breaker, joining Ren in laughing at Alex one minute and siding with Alex against her the next. Now she was outvoted. She frowned and then … “Wait!” she said. “It’s telling me something.”

  “Really?” said Luke, gaping at the amulet.

  “You aren’t even holding it,” said Alex, incredulous. Did she no longer need to do that? Had Ren somehow leapfrogged him in amulet use?

  “Yeeessss,” said Ren, her voice sounding ghostly and far away.

  They both watched, rapt, as she quickly knelt down.

  “The power of the ancient amulet is telling me …”

  Her hands moved quickly, and a moment later she stood back up.

  “To use my eyes.”

  She was holding the new binoculars they’d just purchased at 40 percent off.

  “There’s some shadow up there, along the top of the ridge,” she said. “Looks like good shelter. And wait … Yeah … There are some people camping up there already.”

  “I guess those are the ‘thrill seekers,’ ” said Alex. “Is there space for us up there? I mean, without getting too close?”

  “Plenty,” said Ren.

  “Let’s go there,” said Luke, hoisting his pack onto his back. “We can at least follow people who know what they’re do
ing.”

  The slope of the ridge was gentler toward the base, and they stayed low until they skirted around the other campsite. Ren knew the deal. They’d been ambushed repeatedly. None of them were in an especially trusting mood — and the phrase “thrill seekers” didn’t inspire much confidence, especially the way the taxi driver had said it. They were dripping with sweat by the time they dropped their stuff half a mile later, on a small, reasonably flat plateau just beneath the top of the ridge that encircled the valley.

  “How about here for the tent?” said Alex.

  “Okay,” said Ren. “You two set your tent up over there. I’ll set mine up over here.”

  They all dropped their heavy packs onto the hot ground.

  “You bought your own?” said Alex.

  “Uh, yeah,” she said. “You boys stink.”

  Alex stood there, two half-moons of sweat under the arms of his T-shirt, and said, “Then why have I been lugging this circus tent around all day?”

  He tugged an oversized roll of green nylon from his pack as Luke removed the stakes and collapsible poles from his. Ren didn’t answer, already kneeling down to remove a small, light-blue pup tent from her pack.

  She unfolded the directions and began following them carefully. Fifteen minutes later, she was done. She stood back and considered her work: It looked exactly like the picture on the package. She nodded and looked over at Alex and Luke.

  It looked like they were playing Twister with twenty pounds of nylon. The instructions, utterly ignored, had blown halfway down the slope.

  “Little help?” said Alex, looking over.

  Ren considered it, but it was really hot out in the sun. They would have to settle for encouragement. “Good luck!” she called, and then climbed into her little tent to unpack. “Let me know when you’re done!”

  She pulled her stuff inside the warm, plastic-smelling air of the tent and spread out her new foam pad. She checked her phone. No surprise: no service out here in the desert. She wished she could lie down and rest, but they had a mission to get to. For just a second, she thought of that. Finding the Spells and putting an end to all this — going home!