raiders vandalized it.
A smaller fence is about thirty paces away next to the end of a tall wall where a torch is mounted. I mosey over to see what it’s guarding and find another cavity, a hole about six feet wide. As with the fence at the stairwell, the reed fence is flimsy, not meant to hold a person back but just to mark the opening.
I edge closer, bracing myself with my left hand against the granite wall, careful not to put any weight against the fencing which appears ready to blow away with a strong wind. The flickering light from the burning torch at the end of the wall is at my back and casts little light into the hole but there’s enough moonlight for me to see a mound of rubble ten or twelve feet down. From the debris and irregular shape of the hole, I assume that I’m standing on the roof of a tomb or whatever the chamber below is, and that the opening was created by accident, perhaps from a cave-in when the area was excavated by workers inside the cavern who had entered through the stairway I’d seen.
The rest of the room is lost in a dark void but it doesn’t take much for my mind’s eye to envision markings on the walls, perhaps the tale of a war won by a pharaoh, a royal marriage, or the god-king getting sage advice from a god.
I’m leaning over the opening, trying to see more, when a shadow is created in the light of the torch behind me and I hear the crunch of a footstep.
“Is someone—?”
A black blur comes at me and impacts with the side of my head, the blow slamming me against the wall. My legs collapse and I go down to my knees, head spinning, putting my hands out in front to keep from going down on my face. Something drops next to me—a rock—and I see a swirl of a cloth being manipulated. My senses are half knocked out of me but I realize I’d been hit by a rock wrapped in cloth material. The cloth goes over my head and around my throat, a knee goes into the small of my back, and the cloth is jerked back to strangle me. I pull on it and try to twist out of it, my head spinning from the blow, with blind panic giving me some strength. Suddenly the pressure releases against my throat and I take in one gasp of air before something slams against my head again and I see stars.
I feel hands all over my body, exploring, searching, pressing, and grabbing, the strength of them telling me they are a man’s hands. Fingers squeeze my breast and I get a flash of my drunken lout of a stepfather who touched me offensively, and I raise up, pushing back against the man pawing me, banging my head back against his chin.
The grip on me is relaxed again and hands go behind my shoulders and give me a shove, forcing me forward against the reed fence, and I scream as the fence parts like feathers against my weight and my whole body pours through as I plunge into the abyss.
I hit bottom, the wind exploding out of my lungs as a burst of light in my head leaves my mind dark.
14
I lie sprawled out, not moving and with a strange sense in my head that I’m still falling down a bottomless pit. As I reach out to break my fall I realize that my hands are already on solid ground, as is my whole body. I’ve landed on a layer of sand covering the rubble pile created by the cave-in. The fine grains of sand feel soft and cool when I grasp it through my fingers and push back with my feet in a weak attempt to move. I feel more sand with hard objects beneath.
Struggling to get up, I raise dust and such, clogging my windpipe, polluting my lungs, and I start choking, unable to keep the cloud of particles that’s floating in the air from getting in my nose and mouth and eyes. I clamp my teeth together to try and filter the air between them, making it a little easier to breathe in the stifling atmosphere.
Looking up at the opening above lit by moonlight, I sway dizzily, and I have to balance myself to stay upright in order to keep from falling. The opening is much too far away to reach, even standing on the
A smaller fence is about thirty paces away next to the end of a tall wall where a torch is mounted. I mosey over to see what it’s guarding and find another cavity, a hole about six feet wide. As with the fence at the stairwell, the reed fence is flimsy, not meant to hold a person back but just to mark the opening.
I edge closer, bracing myself with my left hand against the granite wall, careful not to put any weight against the fencing which appears ready to blow away with a strong wind. The flickering light from the burning torch at the end of the wall is at my back and casts little light into the hole but there’s enough moonlight for me to see a mound of rubble ten or twelve feet down. From the debris and irregular shape of the hole, I assume that I’m standing on the roof of a tomb or whatever the chamber below is, and that the opening was created by accident, perhaps from a cave-in when the area was excavated by workers inside the cavern who had entered through the stairway I’d seen.
The rest of the room is lost in a dark void but it doesn’t take much for my mind’s eye to envision markings on the walls, perhaps the tale of a war won by a pharaoh, a royal marriage, or the god-king getting sage advice from a god.
I’m leaning over the opening, trying to see more, when a shadow is created in the light of the torch behind me and I hear the crunch of a footstep.
“Is someone—?”
A black blur comes at me and impacts with the side of my head, the blow slamming me against the wall. My legs collapse and I go down to my knees, head spinning, putting my hands out in front to keep from going down on my face. Something drops next to me—a rock—and I see a swirl of a cloth being manipulated. My senses are half knocked out of me but I realize I’d been hit by a rock wrapped in cloth material. The cloth goes over my head and around my throat, a knee goes into the small of my back, and the cloth is jerked back to strangle me. I pull on it and try to twist out of it, my head spinning from the blow, with blind panic giving me some strength. Suddenly the pressure releases against my throat and I take in one gasp of air before something slams against my head again and I see stars.
I feel hands all over my body, exploring, searching, pressing, and grabbing, the strength of them telling me they are a man’s hands. Fingers squeeze my breast and I get a flash of my drunken lout of a stepfather who touched me offensively, and I raise up, pushing back against the man pawing me, banging my head back against his chin.
The grip on me is relaxed again and hands go behind my shoulders and give me a shove, forcing me forward against the reed fence, and I scream as the fence parts like feathers against my weight and my whole body pours through as I plunge into the abyss.
I hit bottom, the wind exploding out of my lungs as a burst of light in my head leaves my mind dark.
14
I lie sprawled out, not moving and with a strange sense in my head that I’m still falling down a bottomless pit. As I reach out to break my fall I realize that my hands are already on solid ground, as is my whole body. I’ve landed on a layer of sand covering the rubble pile created by the cave-in. The fine grains of sand feel soft and cool when I grasp it through my fingers and push back with my feet in a weak attempt to move. I feel more sand with hard objects beneath.
Struggling to get up, I raise dust and such, clogging my windpipe, polluting my lungs, and I start choking, unable to keep the cloud of particles that’s floating in the air from getting in my nose and mouth and eyes. I clamp my teeth together to try and filter the air between them, making it a little easier to breathe in the stifling atmosphere.
Looking up at the opening above lit by moonlight, I sway dizzily, and I have to balance myself to stay upright in order to keep from falling. The opening is much too far away to reach, even standing on the
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