 Brought to you by Penguin Journey of the Pharaohs by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown Red View by Scott Brick Prologue Valley of the Kings, Egypt, 1074 BC during the time of the 18th dynasty Heat shimmered in waves across the Valley of the Kings as the merciless sun baked the desert sands into clay High above the valley, at the edge of a cliff A man named Kemet lay flat on his stomach Sweating beneath the noonday sun Looking for any sign of movement Sweat trickled down the side of his face A fly buzzed around his ear But nothing moved down below The valley was still As the resting place of the buried Pharaohs should be The only movement was a dust devil That rose from the southern end and danced across the sand Kemet slid back from the rim Several men in linen robes crouched there A boy stood next to them Kemet addressed the child What is it you've brought us here to see? Villagers in Thebes called the boy Kesson Which meant sparrow They used the term not because he was small for his age And tended to chirp as he spoke But as an insult to the people of Egypt The sparrow was a nuisance Stealing food and spoiling fruit The townspeople saw the orphaned boy in the same light Kemet knew differently The child was a beggar, not a thief In fact, he worked hard for the smallest of coins Watching everything with sharp eyes Gathering information His size and age meant he was often invisible Even in plain sight The boy crawled to the edge of the cliff Looked down into the valley and then tugged Kemet's arm He extended a tiny finger, pointing Pharaoh's tomb has been opened The stone has been thrown aside Squinting to see in the bright sun Kemet looked past the magnificent three-story temple Of Hatshepsut with its long central stairway And rows of towering columns And ignored the piles of rubble sealing the entrance Of some lesser-known ancestors Finally focusing on a gap in the rock Where smooth limestone blocks denoted the entrance To the tomb of Horemheb, one of the more recently buried Pharaohs His eyes weren't as sharp as the child's But after shielding them from the sun He began to see into the shadows The white-washed slab that had been used to seal The tomb lay on the ground Broken in two were it had fallen The path in front of the tomb was heavily rutted From the wheels of carts and trampled with the hooves of oxen The boy's right, Kemet said The tomb has been violated And just what does he want us to do about that? One of the other men said The boy looked back, unafraid to address the adults You are the Magi, he said in his high-pitched voice You are the servants of Ramses, the eleventh of Memphis You guard the resting place of the sons of Amun Kemet smiled He had been a captain in the Magi A force of warriors appointed by the Pharaohs To guard the tombs of their ancestors But his position had been swept away In the political upheaval that was dividing Egypt Perhaps the sparrow doesn't hear everything One of the men said We're no longer needed by the sons of Amun But Ramses, Ramses' rules in Memphis and Alexandria Kemet explained more patiently But this is Upper Egypt And Harryhor has taken the title of great house for himself The boy's face showed contempt Harryhor is not only the high priest He is here, he is a king, Kemet snapped There are those who would cut your tongue out For seeing otherwise The boy shrank back Kemet allowed the lesson to sink in Before adding, fortunately We're not among them The men behind them laughed The child looked relieved Egypt is not what it was One of his men said The weaker it gets, the more Pharaohs it needs Soon there will be one in every region This brought more laughter from Kemet Though the boy looked stricken He was still young enough to believe in concepts Like duty and honor And above all, the glory of kings descended from the gods Those beliefs were not unlearned without great pain Kemet turned his attention back to the open tomb We should investigate and see what they've taken Leaving the cliffside He led the group around and down a secret trail That took them to the valley below These were hidden paths only the Magi knew When they arrived, the light was bright Sample complete Ready to continue?