As if searching for escaped prisoners, floodlights swept across a desert dig at Hamanaptra, aiding a starry night whose full moon had already painted the ruins of the City of the Dead with a patina of ivory.
Bowing to her, but keeping his fiery-eyed gaze on the turbaned intruders, the dark-garbed warrior said, "Perhaps explanations are best saved for later."
"Rise up!" someone was saying in ancient Egyptian.
The Curator—reading from The Book of the Dead!
Like a minister reading from the Bible to his congregation, the Curator held open in his hands the massive black volume whose obsidian covers were disturbingly similar to the stone imprisoning Imhotep. "Rise up!" the dark little man said, his voice resounding through the room. "Rise up!"
Another voice—a deep, sand-papery voice— boomed through the chamber: "I think not!" Alex looked past his mother, who also glanced toward the source of the words, and saw a solemn, dark-robed, dark-garbed, angular-faced, trimly bearded desert warrior—his cheekbones touched with strange puzzle-like tattoos. He had come from somewhere, from anywhere, as if he'd materialized.
The Arab strode forward, approaching the little group; then, planting his feet in the sand, he held out his arm, stiffly, crying out, "Horus!" On the similarly outstretched arm of another of the Med-jai commanders sat a large, regal falcon, who at Ardeth Bay's command, took flight and flew to the Med-jai chieftain, landing nimbly on his waiting arm. Jonathan said to the warrior, "A humanizing touch, that—you having a pet bird." Lovingly, Ardeth Bay stroked the feathers of the falcon. "Horus is no pet. He is my best friend, my most clever friend. It is Horus who will let the commanders know of our progress, so that they may follow, at a distance."
Alex screamed.
Lock-nah, still on his knees, raised a hand to slap the boy, but the creature—Alex had already figured out that this was Lord Imhotep—also raised a hand, for Lock-nah to refrain from the blow. Another gesture from the gross, creepy creature told Lock-nah to rise, and the Arab took several steps back, as if granting some privacy to the boy and the mummy.