But no eye saw two black-cloaked figures emerging from a small postern gate that was always locked, but never guarded. The two moved across open ground swiftly, keeping to the shadows.
Mimses and Nefron walked through the sand, their concealing cloaks fluttering in the blessedly cool breeze. They strode silently until they reached the bottom of the stair at the base of the pyramid. It loomed above them, strangely beautiful in the starlight.
“You know where the entrance is?” Mimses asked doubtfully.
Nefron nodded. “Of course. I studied the blueprints. Follow me.”
She went determinedly up the steps at a half trot. Mimses hiked up the hem of his cloak and followed at a considerably slower pace and without a fraction of her nimbleness of foot.
Halfway up the side of the pyramid, Nefron stopped and watched Mimses’s panting ascent with a condescending half smile on her lips. She wasn’t even slightly out of breath. Mimses reached her, swaying slightly on weak legs. “Now what?” he demanded between rasping gulps for air.
“The keystone sequence.” Nefron stretched out her right arm and hammered twice with the heel of her hand against the corner of the closest casing stone. With a grating rumble, the square of stone sank inward, seemingly to sink beneath the surface of the pyramid.
Mimses scowled his astonishment. “How does that work?”
“Pressure-sensitive actuators connected to a hydraulic sleeve pivot,” she replied breezily. “Predark engineering, nothing magic about it.”
She stepped into a black abyss. After a hesitant moment, Mimses followed her into the darkness. He had to squeeze his bulk between the rope-wrapped drum of a winch-and-pulley device. Far away glimmered a pinpoint of light. He followed the cloaked girl as she went forward into the shadows, which slowly receded before them until they stood in the King’s Chamber.
It was a vast, hollow pyramid within the pyramid, made of pink-hued granite. Workmen had set up flaming braziers at intervals of ten feet along either side of the room. Arrangements of fragrant white flowers stood between each brazier. The air was heavy with the scent of gardenias and incense.
At the apex of the pyramid, suspended by a web of wires, hung a copper sigil of an enormous, lidless eye. It stared down with a fathomless gaze upon the varnished sarcophagus. Light glittered from quartz inlays, gleamed on the gold-leaf face fashioned into an exaggeratedly noble likeness of Akhnaton.
High on the ceiling, two shaft openings aligned with mathematical precision allowed the diffused light of two carefully selected stars to reflect from the polished surface of the sarcophagus.
Nefron shivered. “It frightens me to be in here.”
Mimses looked upward. “Yeah. Millions of tons of stone, held together by a small deadfall. Just waiting for someone to pull the right lever in the right way at the right time.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t bother me. It’s the thought that Pharaoh’s scheme to increase his power might really work.”
Mimses eyed the sarcophagus, then the copper sigil. “He explained it to me once. Didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense.”
Nefron shrugged out of her cloak, folding it over one arm. “It’s simple, really. The crystal in the pyramid acts as energy condensers. They hold enough bioaural energy to trigger a series of synapses in Pharaoh’s brain and relay the energy to his pineal gland. The process will take about an hour. If Krysty is with him, we’ll have to deal with two insufferable chrysalides evolving into arrogant butterflies.”
Mimses watched her, hearing the subtle undertone of hatred in her voice. “What happens if you undergo the process instead?” he asked.
Nefron snapped her head around, eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask that?”
“Just curious. You inherited some of your father’s powers. Mebbe you could enhance them this way.”
“Perhaps,” she admitted. “I’d rather have him dead.”
Mimses didn’t reply as she paced with feline grace around the chamber. Acting as the consort of a queen, of a young goddess, might have been an exciting prospect if any woman other than Nefron was the candidate. She was certainly beautiful, but she was too bright and too sleek for his tastes, with her small, hard breasts and the rondure of her slim hips. He preferred the other court women, languid and fluttery though they were. The image of the new woman, Mildred, flashed into his mind.