The Pharaoh's Secret [antikvár]

Prologue — City of the Dead Ahydos, Egypt B. c., the seventeenth year of Pharaoh Akhenaten's reign The full moon cast a blue glow across the sands of Egypt, painting the dunes the color of snow and the abandoned temples of Abydos in shades of alabaster and bone. Shadows moved beneath this stark illumination as a procession of intruders crept through the City of the Dead. They traveled at a somber pace, thirty men and women, their faces covered by the hoods of oversize robes, their eyes locked on the path before them. They passed the burial chambers containing the pharaohs of the First Dynasty and the shrines and monuments built in the Second Age to honor the gods. At a dusty intersection, where the drifting sand covered the stone causeway, the procession came to a silent halt. Their leader, Manu-hotep, gazed into the darkness, cocking his head to listen and tightening his grip on a spear. 'Did you hear something?' a woman asked, easing up beside him. The woman was his wife. Behind them trailed several other families and a dozen servants carrying stretchers that bore the bodies of each family's children. All cut down by the same mysterious disease.