Luxor Lost and Found Read online

  The Egyptian Adventures of

  Kathryn Black

  ~

  LUXOR

  LOST and

  FOUND

  Graham Warren

  Copyright © 2014 Graham Warren

  This edition 2017

  The author asserts the moral right under the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.KathrynBlack.co.uk

  Dedication

  To Renée,

  and to my ancient friends

  for allowing me to tell their stories

  Contents

  Chapter 1 - Whiplash from a Warlock

  Chapter 2 - If Looks Could Kill

  Chapter 3 - Planning for Action

  Chapter 4 - Worker Trouble

  Chapter 5 - Tea, Scones and Red Wine

  Chapter 6 - Unplanned Action

  Chapter 7 - Dr Margretti Arrives

  Chapter 8 - Unwelcome News

  Chapter 9 - Out On Their Own

  Chapter 10 - Three Separate Journeys

  Chapter 11 - Lead Astray

  Chapter 12 - Reunion of the Three Adventurers

  Chapter 13 - Who Said This Was Impossible?

  Chapter 14 - Pure Red Cinnamon

  Chapter 15 - Awamya, Not a Good Idea

  Chapter 16 - Television Street

  Chapter 17 - Tensions Mount

  Chapter 18 - Serapeum or Bucheum

  Chapter 19 - Armant Temple

  Chapter 20 - Tunnels, Tombs and Marble

  Chapter 21 - A Difficult Conversation

  Chapter 22 - Sand, not Scuta

  Chapter 23 - Vision of Reality

  Chapter 24 - Wall to Wall Ancients

  Chapter 25 - Dust and Confusion

  Chapter 26 - No Way Back

  Chapter 27 - Too Late to Find Out

  Chapter 28 - United We Fail

  Chapter 29 - Crocodilopolis

  Chapter 30 - Magic and Mayhem

  Chapter 31 - Revelation

  Chapter 32 - Righting a Wrong

  Chapter 33 - Short Lived Celebration

  Chapter 34 - We Are Not Alone

  Chapter 35 - Escape to Where?

  Chapter 36 - Loitering Within Tent

  Chapter 37 - Life is a Fragile Thing

  Chapter 38 - Tears

  Chapter 39 - Luxor, Amarna and London

  Also from this Author

  Chapter 1

  -

  Whiplash from a Warlock

  When her eyes finally opened, a shiver of fear went through Kate as fast as a bolt of lightning. She found herself looking up at the featureless shape of a face, around which radiated a brilliant white halo. This shone with such intensity against a rich blue background that Kate could not bear to look at it. “I must be dead,” was her first and only thought before drifting back into unconsciousness.

  It had been such a good day. Kate had secured Pharaoh Nakhtifi’s place in the afterlife, and by doing so, had also secured the future for everyone who relied on him for their place, their existence in the afterlife. This amounted to a significant number of people who, in Kate’s opinion, owed her a great debt of gratitude. She had been on a high, as she had also thwarted the warlock’s attempt to turn himself into a pharaoh.

  It was just as everything was going so right, that everything went so wrong. Without warning, the windows of the Winter Palace Hotel had imploded with a force so great that she had been bodily lifted from the floor, before being flung backwards through reception. Her flight had been all too abruptly stopped by not only a really large, but also a really heavy sofa, though her momentum had been such that both it and its occupants had proved to be no match for Kate. Thankfully, the upturned sofa had protected her from countless shards of flying glass, though she could remember nothing more until seeing the face with a halo!

  Almost fearfully she forced herself to open her eyes. Immediately she relaxed. Gadeem was looking straight down at her. There was a bright blue sky behind him and a sun slightly off to one side, which caused her to squint. She closed her eyes again without saying a word. The next time she opened them, she saw Ramses looking down at her and a sun which was even further to one side. A fraction of a second later she experienced the shock of freezing cold water as it hit her squarely in the face. She screamed, instantly sat up and dripped. Now she was extremely alert, even though her head was spinning. There was also more than a slight ringing in her ears.

  As she took in the roof of Rose and Gadeem’s villa, which stood on the banks of the River Nile, a short distance from Luxor, she became all too aware of a smirking Ramses. With red wine in hand, he beckoned for his Thoth to move closer. Without losing the smirk he quietly gave his orders, orders which Thoth was not at all happy to receive from the look on his face. Rose was in a deeply animated conversation with Bast, whilst Gadeem sat slightly away from the others. He had the look of a man with the worries of the world on his shoulders. He did, however, still manage to take a sip of his red wine between frowns.

  Kate suffered a pang of guilt as she looked upon an unconscious Alex, her best friend, her only real friend, whom she had completely forgotten about. Immediately she could hear him talking in her head. Only very recently he had rebuked her for using ‘I’ far too often when she should have used ‘we’, as they, along with Cairo, were a team, and there was no I in team. Until she had seen him, Alex had not even entered into her thoughts. Now that he did, she found it to be somewhat annoying. She did not want to share her victory, her triumph. It did not dawn on her for a moment that there would have been no victory if all three of them had not ‘seen,’ and then worked together to achieve all they had achieved. Her thoughts were broken as Alex screamed. Though she missed the enjoyment of seeing it, he had obviously received the same treatment as her, because he was now sitting up and also soaking wet. “Are you okay, Alex?” she called over with no real conviction.

  “I will be when this ringing stops,” he replied as he rubbed his ears with the palms of his hands. “What the hell happened?”

  “As I understand it, it was a sonic boom.”

  Kate and Alex spun their heads far too quickly to see who was behind them, which left them wishing they had not. Now, not only did they have ringing in their ears and headaches to contend with, they also had extreme giddiness and nausea.

  “It’s not a good idea to turn your heads quite so quickly, as you are both suffering from whiplash,” said Rose, to which neither Kate nor Alex could disagree. “Now come around here, Nakhtifi, and join us. It’s no good sulking over there.”

  “I am not sulking, I am thinking!”

  “Sulking,” said Ramses.

  “Sulking,” said Gadeem.

  “Sulking,” said Bast.

  “What does it say in your notes, Thoth?” asked Ramses.

  “It says, my lord, Pharaoh Nakhtifi sulked all afternoon and would not even partake of any red wine.”

  “Thank you, Thoth. I feel the evidence is rather conclusive, hey, Nakhtifi?”

  “Not at all, father. It was you who refused to share any of your beloved twelve hundred and ninety BC red wine with me.”

  “A minor point, my boy.” This was a comment which always served to confuse. Though Nakhtifi was indeed the son of Ramses II, he only became pharaoh late on in life, so therefore looked far older than h
is father. Everyone in the afterlife appeared as they did at the height of their power, and Ramses achieved his greatest fame whilst still young. “Without a doubt, you are sulking.”

  In one last attempt to prove otherwise, Nakhtifi called his Thoth forward. He asked him to read out loud what he had written of the events of the day. There was great reluctance, but Thoth, or Thoth N as Kate called him to avoid confusion with Ramses’ Thoth, started to read from his notes. “The great benevolent and powerful Pharaoh Nakhtifi has today been deep in thought. He has spent his time with friends, though distant from them. So distant that to his ordinary subjects, less understanding and less knowledgeable subjects, he could be considered to be …” There was a long pause, far too long.

  Nakhtifi ripped the papyrus from his Thoth’s hand and read it for himself. The very last word was, as he expected, ‘sulking’. He looked up to see everyone except Kate and Alex nodding at him. He clipped his Thoth around the ear and then everyone laughed, even Kate and Alex, though they had no idea what they were laughing about. Somewhat reluctantly he moved to sit next to Ramses, who did indeed pour him a glass of his beloved red wine.

  “How do you do it?” asked Nakhtifi of Ramses. “He is my Thoth, yet you can control what he writes.”

  “It is quite simple, my son. When I say I would love a banquet where roasted ibis was the main course, your Thoth believes me.”

  “That’s nothing to be proud of,” said Rose, though Bast, in a rare moment of naughtiness, asked if Ramses would let her know when the banquet was, as it had been such a long time since she had tasted ibis.

  “Enough,” bellowed Gadeem. Just a single word, but it had the desired effect.

  “What was this about a sonic boom?” asked Kate after a silence which seemed to last too long.

  “It was just the boys with their toys not understanding their power yet again.”

  “What Rose means,” interjected Bast with a purr in her voice, “is that the Egyptian Air Force decided on a three-plane flypast to celebrate your father’s discovery, Alex. The problem was that they raced each other down the Nile. All three of them broke the sound barrier at roughly the same time, just as they passed through Luxor. Windows shattered everywhere. The three pilots are now training camel herders how to milk their camels in the Sinai.”

  “Why the Sinai?” asked Alex.

  “Because the Sinai is to Egypt what Siberia is to Russia, somewhere to put people they wish to have out of the way. Do you realise just how much damage they caused and it all happened in front of the world’s press? Actually, some of the damage was to the world’s press. Several reporters ended up in hospital. Nakhtifi was almost side-lined as a story. Luxor is a world heritage site and it was not just broken glass. Several temples and tombs were damaged and over one thousand people had to be treated for injuries, admittedly mostly from shards of glass, but one gaffir was almost buried alive when the entrance to a tomb collapsed.”

  “That’s a relief as I thought the warlock had escaped.” Kate moved her head around slowly, before rocking it from side to side. She was recovering quickly.

  “Have no fear,” said Ramses as he swirled red wine around his glass, “he is still where he should be, and I have my best men searching for Henuttawy. She will get what is coming to her. I shall not be merciful this time.”

  Rose and Bast were quickly back into a conservation which was just as animated as before. Gadeem was sipping at his red wine, yet he did not appear to be enjoying it. Even Ramses with his boyish humour appeared to be using it as more of a front than usual. Alex observed this, though he kept his thoughts to himself. He picked up his tamar-hindi, took a small sip, then put the glass back on the table in front of him. Nakhtifi had not spoken for a while. He had also failed to touch his red wine. Kate appeared to be quite unconcerned. She had wandered over to the edge of the roof, where she was leaning on the low wall as she waved to the fishermen below, in their colourful little boats.

  Alex wondered if he was possibly reading too much into the situation. Everyone was bound to be slightly different, now that Nakhtifi was safe in the afterlife. Previously, just saying his name had been dangerous. It had almost gotten Kate killed. Now his name could be said anywhere, by anyone, and nothing would happen. There was no danger anymore, as the world now knew of his existence. After the press conference of yesterday, today Nakhtifi’s name would be in almost every newspaper in the world as well as on television and on-line. A person would have to be living under a rock not to have heard his name. Children would be huddled together in school playgrounds excitedly chatting away about this newly found pharaoh. Alex thought of his father, Quentin, who would be bringing artefact after artefact out from the gold chamber of Alexander the Great, where many of the looted items bore the name Nakhtifi.

  Kate came back to the centre of the roof, and though the looks were only fleeting, Alex clearly saw that both Rose and Bast were unhappy to have to stop talking. This was so unlike them. They were always happy to see Kate, especially Rose. Now he knew he was correct in his thinking, though he still did not want to say anything.

  “You are not drinking, my boy.”

  “You can stop calling me ‘my boy’, Ramses. You know I do not like it.”

  “But my boy, that is why I do it!”

  “If you say ‘my boy’ once more, I will knock over your wine.”

  “Well, what is wrong, Nakhtifi? Are you not enjoying my wine?”

  “Yes, yes, the wine is fine!”

  Alex decided to seize the moment as now that Nakhtifi was irritated, his guard was likely to be down. He addressed him directly, though in a very casual and normal tone. “What do you think we can do in order for this not to happen again?” Alex was playing this very cleverly, as he knew if he mentioned the word ‘warlock’ it would immediately draw the attention of everyone. Rose, Bast and Kate were chatting, Gadeem remained in a worried world of his own and Ramses was drinking his red wine.

  Though Ramses so often acted the fool, he was anything but! He looked directly at Alex, though he did not have to say a word, the twinkle in his eye was enough. He was going to enjoy this almost as much as his red wine.

  “I really do not know what we can do. We never thought he had this much power.” Nakhtifi nervously picked up his glass of red wine, though yet again he put it down without drinking.

  “Yes, it was a bit of a shock.” Alex did not want to say too much, just enough to lead Nakhtifi into telling him more.

  “Shock is an understatement. It was only the quick thinking of Rose that saved the day.”

  “I know,” said Alex, who knew nothing. “We were lucky this time and the cover story was brilliant.”

  Nakhtifi again picked up his glass of wine, though he just stared at it as the sun shone through the dark red liquid.

  If Alex was to keep him talking, he had no option except to add an educated guess, “I am so pleased the family were able to free Rose. Nobody but her could have …” He left the sentence hanging.

  “Yes, she is absolutely fantastic,” said Nakhtifi reflectively as he placed his untouched glass of wine back on the table. “We were so worried when she was taken. At least she was able to free herself, though we still do not really know why she was taken in the first place. Thankfully for us she was arriving back at the Winter Palace just at the right time. I doubt anybody else would have been able to come up with the jets story. She was so convincing. Nobody saw the jets, yet nobody questioned her. Everyone accepted the story just as Rose told it to them. Incredible!”

  “We are really lucky to have her on our side.”

  “Yes, Alex, that we are.”

  Alex worried about being called by name. His concern was that this would remind Nakhtifi that he and Kate knew nothing of these events and they were not to be told. However, he need not have worried.

  Nakhtifi yet again picked up his glass of red wine. This time it almost made it to his lips; he replaced it on the table without taking a sip. “Who would have thought h
e would have been able to conjure up all that energy. He has never been able to produce a spell anywhere near as powerful as that since he has been locked away.”

  “I have an idea, that girl, what’s her name, had something to do with this.” Alex was searching his mind for the name of Ramses’ wayward daughter, when, looking to Ramses, he watched his lips mouth her name. “Henuttawy is the name I was looking for. I would bet she has something to do with this, though I suppose you have already worked that out.”

  Nakhtifi had not, though he did now. “Yes, yes you are correct. Why didn’t I think of that?” He turned to Ramses, “Do you think Henuttawy could be behind his new powers?” Nakhtifi had been told not to mention the warlock in front of Kate or Alex, and so far he had not done so, though he had already unwittingly said much more than he should have.