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When we reached the water tower, I didn’t see any obvious tomb entrance The tower looked quite old--four rusty steel posts holding a round tank the size of a garage about fifteen meters in the air The tank had a slow leak Every few seconds water dropped froainst the hard-packed sand underneath There wasn’t ht except for more palm trees, a few tarnished farround The sign was spray-painted in Arabic and English, probably from some attelish read: Dates--best price Cold Bebsi

"Bebsi?" I asked

"Pepsi," Walt said "I read about that on the Internet There’s no ‘p’ in Arabic Everyone here calls soda Bebsi"

"So you have to have Bebsi with your bizza?"

"Brobably"

I snorted "If this is a faists? Ticket booths? Souvenir merchants?"

"Maybe Bast sent us to a secret entrance," Walt said "Better than sneaking past a bunch of guards and caretakers"

A secret entrance sounded quite intriguing, but unless the water toas a ic teleporter, or one of the date trees had a concealed door, I wasn’t sure where this oh-so-helpful entranceunderneath exceptto mud from the drip, drip, drip of the leaky tower

Then I lookedon" I knelt The water was pooling in a little canal, as if the sand were seeping into a subterranean crack The crevice was about a ht to be natural I dug in the sand Six centiernails scraped stone

"Help me clear this," I told Walt

Astone about one es, but the stone was too thick andas a lever," Walt suggested "Pry it up"

"Or," I said, "stand back"

Walt looked ready to protest, but when I brought out et out of the way With ic, I didn’t so much think about what I needed as feel a connection to Isis I rerown into the trunk of a cypress tree, and in her anger and desperation she blew the tree apart I channeled those emotions and pointed at the stone "Ha-di!"

Good news: the spell worked even better than in St Petersburg The hieroglyph glowed at the end ofa dark hole underneath

Bad news: that’s not all I destroyed Around the hole, the ground began to crumble Walt and I scrambled backward as more stones fell into the pit, and I realized I’d just destabilized the entire roof of a subterranean roos of the water tower The water tower began to creak and sway

"Run!" Walt yelled

We didn’t stop until ere hiding behind a pal a hundred different leaks, wobbled back and forth like a drunkenus froh the rows of pal, it hout the oasis

"Oops," I said

Walt looked at ed But it’s just so bloody tes up, isn’t it?

We ran to the Sadie Kane Me pool Five meters down, under a pile of sand and rocks, were rows of mummies, all wrapped in old cloth and laid out on stone slabs The mummies were now flattened, I’htly painted with red, blue, and gold

"Golden mummies" Walt looked horrified "Part of the tomb system that hasn’t been excavated yet You just ruined--"

"I did say Oops Now, help me down there, before the owner of this water tower shows up with a shotgun"

16 …But Not as Evil as Romans

TO BE FAIR, THE MUMMIES in that particular room weretower above Just add water to mummies for a truly horrible smell

We cli deeper underground I couldn’t tell whether it was natural or h solid rock before opening into another burial cha was rehts, for you Aht, on stone slabs and in niches carved along the walls, gold-painted littered There were at least a hundred in this room alone, and more corridors led off in each direction