The Sleeper in the Sands by Tom Holland Read Free Book Online

said Newberry. ‘We do not want to be out in the desert late at night.’ Yet even as he said this, he continued to stare up at the weird carving of the Pharaoh, as though he could not bear to look away. ‘It would be a grand thing,’ he whispered, ‘to discover the tomb. A grand thing indeed.’
    ‘And if we were successful’ -- I paused -- ‘what then? What do you hope to discover inside?’
    It took Newberry a moment to reply. ‘A darkness rendered light,’ he answered at last, ‘a mystery solved. For that the fate of Akh-en-Aten is a mystery, both science and legend can agree.’
    I laughed. ‘Legend claims that he never even rested in the tomb.’
    Newberry glanced round at me irritably. ‘In the end,’ he muttered, ‘who knows what we may find?’ He stared up at the carving one final time, then urged his camel onwards. ‘For that is the mystery -- the great mystery, and the prize.’

    We began our search early the next morning. I had been sworn once again to the profoundest secrecy, and we left the camp as quietly as we could, for Newberry could not endure the thought that others should learn of our ambitions. I doubted, though, that our departures would long remain concealed, for the camel is not the most discreet of beasts, and I knew that my colleagues, Blackden and Fraser, were both observant men. When I mentioned this to Newberry, however, and suggested we bring them into the search, a look of near panic passed across his face. ‘No, no,’ he insisted, ‘we must keep this to ourselves’; and he began to speak to me again of his hopes of the tomb, of the many mysteries it might prove to contain. ‘We must keep this as quiet as we can.’ And in truth, I was content to do as he said, for the passion of his enthusiasm was infecting me strongly and I was experiencing for the first time what I had long desired to feel - the thrill of a quest.
    We concentrated our efforts on the rocks above the plain. Whenever we passed into the desert, I was filled, leaving the Nile behind and gazing at the red sands piled against the sky, with the strangest sense that the world had been ended, that all was silent, and empty, and vast. As we laboured in our search, poking about amidst gullies and clefts, Newberry would tell me of the legend of Seth, the ancient god of darkness and evil, who had once sought to seize the throne of the world from Osiris, his brother. The resulting conflict had been terrible and long; but Seth, in the end, had been overthrown and banished to the deserts which stretched beyond the Nile. There he had reigned as the spirit of confusion, eternally restless, and hungry for revenge. When the fiery winds began to blow across the river, and the fields be lost to the encroachments of the sands, then the Ancient Egyptian would pray with fear in his heart that Seth was not seeking to return from the desert, that the realm of darkness might not be restored. At night, when the gales swept in from the endless deserts, he would pray all the more; for he would know that he was hearing the devil-god’s screams.
    ‘Remarkable,’ I commented. ‘Just as the peasants today, in the story you have told me, hear the screams of the spirit of the restless King.’
    ‘Remarkable indeed.’ Newberry smiled at me. ‘The persistence of these myths never ceases to amaze.’
    Nor, so far as Newberry himself was concerned, to inspire. His excitement may well be imagined when, on the third day of our search, we were approached by three bedawin who spoke to us of tombs buried deep within the desert. The bedawin had clearly learned of Newberry’s obsession, for when he mentioned to them the folk tale of the restless King, they smiled and nodded: ‘Yes, yes, that King!’ We mounted our camels in a flurry of excitement, and the bedawin led us for several hours across the sands, until at length we discovered an ancient road. Following this for a couple more hours, we arrived at a deep and extensive gorge where veins