Chapter II
Amber Museum of Arts & Antiquities, 106 PPF

Magni nominis umbra (The mere shadow of a mighty name)

- Lucan

arkness had fallen by the time the carriage drew up before the Amber Museum of Arts and Antiquities. The museum was shut, but the night watchman leapt up to unlock the heavy gates for us. "All well, Josephus?" I enquired. "Quiet as the grave, yer Lordship," said Josephus cheerily, "Even yer mummies is taking it easy. Dr Grenville was complainin' about sea water leakin' out of them octopus galleries, but it ain't happened in a while. And yer new stones is up. Mightily impressive, if you don't mind me sayin' so. Just the thing for yer 'sacrifices', sir." He leered grotesquely at Esmée. My cousin presented me with one of those bland smiles which conveys with the most eloquent economy the message "Explain this if you want to live." I quickly escorted her inside. We could hear him snickering as the door swung shut behind us. "What a quaint little fellow," she said brightly. "You must excuse Josephus," I said, "He's an old Mortlake retainer. Used to be the groundsman at Medmenham Abbey while the Hell Fire Club met there. He still thinks I'm a debauched diabolist." "Curious notion," agreed Esmée, a little too straight faced. "I'm sorry he didn't recognise you," I added. "I think he did, actually," she said acidly, before blessedly changing the subject - "What's wrong with his arm?" "It got ... sucked off during the Zothique Expedition," I replied, "Unfortunate incident. There was this red amoeboid creature guarding the temple we were exploring, and ..." "But what's that thing he's wearing instead?" Esmée interrupted. "The red amoeboid creature," I replied, "We took a sample back with us, and I shifted Shadow to shape it into a new arm for the poor fellow. It seemed only fair." "It's totally gross," she declared. This, coming from someone who was no stranger to the metamorphosis of the flesh, seemed a little rich. On the other hand, she may have had a point. "Can't he wear a glove or something?" she asked. "He usually does," I assured her, "although they tend to dissolve after a couple of days. But he prefers not to wear them when he's on duty. We haven't had a break-in in years." There was a brief silence. "You offered me a drink," she said. We wound our way through the dimly lit halls towards the library, the light of the occasional lantern playing on statues and frescoes from a hundred different worlds, and glinting off the rows of cases that held the treasures of a hundred more. At night, some people found the deserted museum eerie and unsettling. I found it rather peaceful. The only sound was the tapping of Esmée's high heels on the marble floor, and the echoes thrown back by the neighbouring galleries. I paused by a doorway leading out into the largest of the three courtyards. "I just want to check something," I said, "It won't take a minute." Esmée shrugged, so I unlocked the doors, and we stepped out to view the latest of the museum's exhibits. "I know this!" exclaimed Esmée, "It's from Shadow Earth!" She looked at me accusingly. "Isn't it a protected monument or something?" I shook my head. "It's from a Shadow Earth," I replied, "and I had permission to remove it. Once we'd shared a couple of jugs of mead the old druid was quite happy to exchange it for an astrolabe. Apparently the stars were getting out of alignment." Esmée started giggling. "Damien, you're priceless," she said, "You should have been a computer salesman. Only you could have persuaded the druids that they needed an upgrade for Stonehenge." She picked her way through the dismantled scaffolding to peer down at the moonlit altar stone. "Is this where you're supposed to ‘sacrifice' me, then?" she asked. I groaned. "I told you," I said, "Josephus ..." "... still thinks you're a randy Satanist, I know," she paraphrased, before adding with just a hint of a pout - "How come we never played any of your little Hell Fire Club games?" I felt my good humour starting to ebb. "There's a reason for that," I said stiffly. A familiar picture arose in my mind - my mother, barely out of her teens, spread-eagled on a black-draped altar under an inverted cruciform, her eyes screwed shut, Bleys bending over her. I shook my head to banish the vision. I didn't really know how it happened. It could just as easily have been one of those excesses of youth, gladly embraced at the time, only to be repented later. I didn't know. Esmée was staring at me curiously. "There are some things you don't treat as a game," I told her quietly. "You must be getting old," she said sceptically. I shook my head. "Only wiser," I told her, managing a smile. I offered her my arm. "The library?" I suggested. She took it. "The library," she agreed. The library was my own personal corner of the museum, furnished with a variety of objets d'art from the collections. Over ten thousand tomes, scrolls and tablets peered down from the shelves that covered every wall, apart from the space over the fireplace, where hung one of Tamarind's landscapes of Chaos. It was a sanctuary that doubled as a place of reference and study, and as a private gallery where I could entertain selected guests. Esmée, needless to say, was quite familiar with it. "You got rid of the ivory couch," she noted. "Removed for repairs," I said idly, "Wine?" "Brandy," said Esmée. The sight of the night watchman's gelatinous limb really must have gotten to her. Probably best if I didn't tell her about the Punch and Judy show he once put on for the Expedition Widows and Orphans. I set about fixing our drinks as Esmée prowled about the room, examining the newer artefacts. "Don't you think this one looks a bit like our new ambassador?" she asked, prodding a bronze Dagon, "He's got the same froggy eyes." "Maybe I should present it to him," I said. "Or we could just dip him in molten bronze and then we'd have a pair," proposed Esmée. I handed her a glass of brandy, which she downed in one and held out for a refill. I hoped she wasn't in the mood for a drinking contest, since I knew from experience that I'd lose. I waved her to a seat, but she decided to perch on the edge of the desk instead. "So," she said, "What have you been doing?" I wandered over to the safe and unlocked it. "I've been chasing an enchanted mummy case," I told her, as I extracted the leaden weight of the original, pre-Dynastic Amtuat, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and then rummaged around for the protective box that held my worm-eaten but still largely legible copy of the Kitab Al-Azif. "How Egyptological of you," said Esmée. "Indeed," I replied, placing the tomes on the desk, "Unfortunately, this particular casket presents me with an unusual and somewhat perplexing problem. It seems to be able to move through Shadow, which is why I have yet to catch up with it." Esmée blinked. "By magick?" she asked sceptically, "Magick isn't that powerful." "It always leaves behind a certain sorcerous aroma," I mused, "But you're right. There's something else. I haven't been able to get close enough to work out what it is, though. For all I know it's covered with little hieroglyphic Trumps." "Have you asked Tristan or Tamarind for help?" she suggested. I shook my head. "And admit that I couldn't handle the simple task of finding a painted box?" I asked in suitably pained tones, "Please." "It's pronounced 'Puh-lease'," corrected Esmée impishly, but otherwise failed not to appear intrigued. "So what's so special about this mummy case?" she asked, "Apart from the obvious, I mean. Come on Damien, tell me a story." She fixed me with her big violet eyes. I laughed. "Very well," I said, seating myself behind the desk, "It was a dark and stormy night ..." "A true story," said Esmée, threatening me with a soapstone statuette of the god Mung. "It was night, it was dark, and there was a storm," I insisted, "A sandstorm, admittedly, but no less of a storm for all that. I was trying to track down the tomb of Nephren-Ka, the sorcerer-pharaoh whose reign marks the Interregnum between the Third and Fourth Dynasties of Egypt." "Who?" said Esmée. "He's something of a mystery," I elaborated, "There are echoes of his rule in a number of Shadows, but in most of them virtually all records of his kingship have been systematically obliterated. His name means ‘Perfect of Spirit', which I suppose only goes to show just how pious parents' hopes can be." "I can relate to that," smirked Esmée, "I take it he was a bad boy, then?" "If you must put it like that," I replied, "then yes, he was a bad boy. From what I've been able to piece together, he was a worshipper of gods somewhat older and darker than those of the Nilotic Pantheon, and he imposed their worship on his subjects. However, they eventually got tired of living in terror and overthrew him. Necromancy taken in moderation seems to have been socially acceptable, but they apparently drew the line at the abominations instigated by their great reforming monarch. It seems he had a penchant for sewing animal heads onto human bodies and resurrecting them to serve as his attendants. Very droll, and of course a monumental blasphemy - parading around with the gods of Egypt as his slaves." "Gross," said Esmée, this time in fascination, "What else did he do? Human sacrifices?" "Hundreds of them," I confirmed, "possibly thousands, and by the most lingering and agonising methods he could devise. Apparently extreme pain makes it easier to extract the life-force, lest I give the impression that he was a mundane sadist. There was nothing mundane about him at all. And he took his victims from all levels of society - slaves, artisans, nobles, priests. No-one felt safe. So when his cousin Snefru rose against him, the entirety of Upper and Lower Egypt rose too. Not even his sorceries could save him. Some tales say he committed suicide, others say he disappeared, and returned to the gods he venerated. Snefru took the throne, founding the Fourth Dynasty. His first act was to have all trace, all record of Nephren-Ka's reign expunged. Papyri were burned, stelae smashed, statues toppled. Only in a few Shadows are there even myths that mention him by name - usually they just hint at a mysterious and reviled ‘Black Pharaoh' who preceded Snefru. Sometimes they don't even allude to as much as that. And that's the background. With me so far?" "I'm still waiting for the exciting bits," said Esmée, who could be hard to impress at times. I poured myself another drink. "Where was I?" I asked. "It was a dark and stormy night," she prompted. "It was," I agreed, "I was in an Egyptian Shadow where I'd heard rumours of a shunned and hidden tomb of a monarch from one of the earliest dynasties ..." "How can you shun something that's hidden?" interrupted Esmée. License in general she approved of, but the poetic variety was something to be seized on with the utmost ruthlessness if it might afford her the chance to catch me out. "The area in which the tomb was believed to be hidden was shunned," I clarified, "on account of the tomb being believed to be hidden there. Satisfied?" She sniffed and gave me a look as if she had just caught me palming an ace, but waved a hand for me to continue. "I followed the rumours to the desert just beyond the Giza Plateau," I went on, "where we uncovered what looked like an entranceway to a network of catacombs beneath the Pyramids, when a storm blew up out of nowhere. Dusk had just fallen, and all of a sudden it was pitch black, and there was sand everywhere. You would have found it most disagreeable." Esmée shuddered. "I remember that trip to Irem, or Ubar, or whatever you call it," she said, "I was washing sand out of my hair for weeks. And all so you could cart back that monumental erection of yours." I exercised forbearance. "Go on," she said, smiling sweetly at me, "tell me that you're not going to rise to that." "I am not having this conversation," I said severely, "Now do you want to hear the story or not?" "I remember when we used to be able to talk," lamented Esmée with an exaggerated sigh. I folded my arms. "Oh get on with it then," she said. I got on with it. "My initial concern was that the sand might fill in our excavations, but then I noticed that the storm appeared to be magickal. And there were things coming out of it and eating the diggers. When I killed a couple of the interlopers and discovered that they were ghûls, it became obvious that someone was making strenuous efforts to scupper the expedition. The common or graveyard ghûl," I added, as Esmée opened her mouth to voice another question, "tends to avoid unripe flesh unless starving or unless someone asks it nicely. And these boys looked quite sleek. The magick, which was of a type I didn't recognise, was also a bit of a giveaway. Most of the diggers had run off, since I'd unfortunately overlooked the provision of ghûl money in their contracts. As far as I could tell, I was alone. So I wandered over to the dig itself to forestall any physical sabotage, whereupon I discovered our dragoman, Abd Reis, standing over the bodies of the two doctoral students who had accompanied me from the University of Cairo. He was waving a large dagger, and chanting into the storm." "Damien dear," said Esmée, "for a Lord of Creation you seem to have precious little idea of how to hire reliable staff. What happened next?" "Well, I shot him of course," I replied, "which seemed to put him off his stride. The storm started to abate. I had to shoot him several more times before he would deign to lie down - these guardian priests tend to be very set in their ways - and the ghûls carried him off. That was when I noticed that the entrance we had uncovered was open, and there were more ghûls lurking in the passageway beyond. I think he'd called them up out of there in the first place. I took a lantern and investigated, although the ghûls were disinclined to let me enter. Naturally, I insisted. Once I had got past them, I found myself in a maze of passageways leading down, and back in the direction of Giza. I followed them for a while, taking note of the wall carvings, which seemed particularly rife with images of Anuat, Set, Bast and Sebek, all deities whose priesthoods had supposedly been suborned to Nephren-Ka's rule. There was also a peculiar magickal aura about the place, the same sorcery that Abd Reis had been using, except this was a residue of something far, far older." "The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb," declared Esmée, "Cool. How long do you have to live?" "No idea," I said cheerfully, "Care to make a small wager?" She shook her head. "Death cowers in the face of Damien," she said, "You're disgustingly indestructible. Remember when that temple collapsed in Irem? Five workers got crushed. I broke a fingernail. You didn't even get dusty." Given that for Esmée a broken fingernail was akin to having a limb amputated, I suppose that this counted as a valid illustration of her point. "I did scuff my boots," I reminded her. She stuck her tongue out at me. "Get me another drink and tell me the rest," she instructed. "Eventually I came to a door," I resumed as I wielded the decanter, "which did indeed have a curse inscribed upon it, calling upon every single deity and daemon of the Old Kingdom to look askance at anyone who dared open it. Once I had dispelled the wardings and got inside, I found what I had been looking for - a tomb. And someone had taken great care to obliterate all trace of the occupant's identity. Every cartouche that bore their name and titles had been chiselled away. Praenomen, Horus name, Two Mistress name - all ruthlessly expunged. So my initial impression was that I had indeed uncovered the lost tomb of Nephren-Ka. There was only one problem - the glyphs on the walls made one thing clear at least. The individual interred in this particular sepulchre was a woman." "Perusing the inscriptions further," I went on, "it became clear that this tomb was also of later vintage than the Third Dynasty. It seemed to date from the Sixth or Seventh. What I had found was not the fane of the Black Pharaoh, but that of a later monarch, a queen, who for crimes unspecified had been cast into obscurity just as Nephren-Ka had been written out of history over four hundred years before. This in itself sufficed to give me some clue as to the identity of the tenant of the sarcophagus in front of me. My suspicions were confirmed when I discovered her statue hidden in an alcove. It was a magnificent piece of work, unfortunately carved out of the rock itself, otherwise I would have taken steps to retrieve it." I paused, thinking back to the moment when I had raised my lantern and first gazed upon that perfect stone face, and traced with my fingers her captivating, arrogant smile. "She had been beautiful," I said at last, "More beautiful even than Nefertiti. So beautiful that the stonemason assigned to deface the image had been unable to complete his task. He must have realised that it would be a sacrilege even greater than the ones of which she herself had been guilty. So I was able to make out enough surviving hieroglyphs to put a name to her. I had uncovered the last resting place of the legendary Queen Nitocris." If I had been expecting a reaction, I was to be disappointed. Esmée looked blank. "And she is ...?" she asked. I sighed. "There are times," I opined, "when I firmly believe that what this Family lacks the most is the benefit of a classical education." Esmée waved a hand dismissively. "I majored in fashion and publicity," she said, "and I have people to know about everything else for me. I don't need to memorise the ancient history of every single Shadow in existence - all I have to do is ask you." Eyelashes were batted mockingly in my direction. I was not taken in. Esmée is possessed of a voracious appetite for information, and while her retention of detail tends towards the selective, it rivals Caine's in its tenacity. I knew that if I asked, she could probably recite everything we had learned from our expedition to Irem, extrapolate from it, theorise on it, and then speculate wildly about my psychological motivation for bringing back one of the fabled pillars. "Ask me about Nitocris then," I said. "Damien, sweetheart, do, do, do tell me all about the legendary Queen Nitocris," said Esmée. We were both, in all fairness, a little inebriated by this stage. "Nitocris," I complied, "sometimes also known as Nitiqret. She was the last ruler of the Sixth Dynasty, and as such, the last ruler of the Old Kingdom. After her came the chaos of the First Intermediate Period, during which Egypt was racked with famine, and all central government fell apart. Après moi le déluge, and all that, only without le déluge as such. Her reign is only marginally better documented than that of Nephren-Ka. She's mentioned in the Turin Papyrus and the Aegyptiaca of Manetho, as well as the Histories of Herodotus. Herodotus, in fact, tells a rather interesting story about her:" "Apparently, her brother - probably Merenre II, and almost certainly her husband as well - was killed by a mob of his less ruly subjects, who then made her Pharaoh in his place. The method of her succession not being to her liking, she came up with an extravagant and picturesque means of revenge - she constructed a large subterranean chamber in which she held an inaugural feast, inviting all those who had played a part in her brother's murder. Once the revelries were underway, she sealed the chamber, opened a hidden sluice-gate, and let in the waters of the Nile. According to Herodotus, she then committed suicide in an equally elaborate fashion, by throwing herself into a room filled with hot ashes, where she suffocated. However, other accounts credit her with reigning at least another three years, using much the same techniques as Nephren-Ka. She seems to have been a rather talented and well practiced necromancer herself - they sometimes referred to her as the ‘Ghoul-Queen'. Eventually she suffered a fate similar to her illustrious predecessor. Her priesthood overthrew her, and buried her alive, allegedly in a secret chamber far beneath the Pyramid of Menkaure. Under which, I should perhaps mention, my calculations indicated that I was standing." "The most apocryphal accounts," I added, "imply that she never truly died, and that her spirit or ka remained bound to the casket in which she was interred, condemned to enforce the curse that the priests had laid upon her tomb. Consequently, when I opened the outer sarcophagus, I took the precaution of first donning a protective warding. Once the lid was off, I was presented with two discoveries, one good, one bad. The good news, from a scholarly perspective at least, was that there were no canopi, which suggested that the occupant had not undergone the full ritual of embalming, consistent with the tale that she had been buried alive. The bad news, from every other point of view, was that the inner sarcophagus was gone. The marks where it had rested were certainly clear enough, so it must have resided there until relatively recently. The empty space was also suffused with further magicks, distinctly fresher than those of the tomb wardings. It had been removed, it had been removed not long ago, and it had been removed by means thaumaturgical." "In the face of this revelation, I concluded that there was little point in prolonging my stay. Now that I had some idea of what I was looking for, I could always shift Shadow towards it. In any case, the tomb was starting to fill up with sand, apparently triggered by the opening of the outer casing, which also had some influence on my decision to leave. So off I set, and ended up tracking the mummy case to a completely different Shadow. And then another. And another. As I mentioned, somehow the casket seems to have accrued some reality to itself, and has become ... unstuck in Shadow. Consequently, I'm having a little trouble laying my hands on it. I keep on coming close, but then it slips away again, and all I have left to show for my efforts are the corpses generated by her curse. And that, my sweet Esmée, is the story of the mummy case of Nitocris. So far." "Charming girl," commented Esmée when I had finished. "The Old Kingdom had been falling apart for decades," I said, feeling an obscure need to defend the long dead queen, "and she managed to wield it together again, albeit only temporarily. After she fell, the Dark Age that followed her lasted a hundred years." "She still sounds a complete bitch," said Esmée, and then, accusingly, "You're in love with her, aren't you?" "Having held you in my arms," I teased her, "I have exhausted all the pleasures afforded by the company of a living woman." She laughed. "The gallant necrophiliac," she said, "But seriously, you must be carrying a torch for her if you're now chasing around after her, rather than stuffy old what's-his-face." "Nephren-Ka doesn't have a mysterious Shadow-travelling mummy case to pique my interest," I tried. Esmée was having none of it. "She's playing hard to get," she said, "and you're loving every moment of it. Admit it Damien, if you could, you'd bring her back to life and roger her senseless. I know you. Intimately." "This is a purely scientific endeavour," I protested half-heartedly. Esmée snorted. "Want to bet?" she asked. I considered this. It sounded like a wager I'd rather like to lose. "Very well," I said, "If I acquire the mummy case and subject it to nothing more than a scholarly inspection before putting on display, then you owe me a case of Bayle's Golden Unicorn - the '62." "We drank the last of that at the bash you held for Beltaine in the Priory," objected Esmée, "Where am I going to find another bottle, let alone an entire crate?" "You're a resourceful girl," I informed her. The resourceful girl scowled. "All right," she said, "but if you even try and resurrect her, and believe me I'll know, then you're taking me shopping. And you know what that means." I did indeed. Emax domina, as Ovid once remarked, presumably after bumping into her at the Emporium. The lady is addicted to shopping. However, this wasn't all. "And if you do somehow magick her into your bed," continued Esmée, "then you're paying for my next wardrobe. Shoes and accessories included." "Done," I said, pouring out the last of the brandy. We chinked glasses to toast our agreement. "But what happens if you don't find the mummy case?" Esmée asked suddenly. The possibility hadn't even crossed my mind. "I'll find it," I told her. Esmée spread her arms melodramatically. "Of course," she said, "I forgot. What Damien wants, Damien always gets. Urk." I caught one of her hands before she could topple off the desk, and kissed it. "And then I lose it again," I said, "and spend every passing moment of my waking hours regretting it." We amused ourselves with alcohol-fueled flirtation for a while, until Esmée remembered that she was going riding with Lord Rieck the next morning. Consequently, beauty sleep beckoned. I escorted her back to the carriage, where we shared a reasonably chaste goodnight kiss. Josephus, fortunately, was off doing his rounds. "Don't forget," she called, hanging out the window as the vehicle rattled off, "Shoes and accessories!" I waved her on her way, and then returned to the library, cheerfully drunk. Esmée's wager had given my search a renewed impetus. I rummaged around for a fresh bottle of brandy, and then settled down at my desk, the Kitab al-Azif and the Amtuat in front of me, along with a collection of transcripts of the Leyden Papyri from a variety of Shadows. I was no longer looking merely to adapt my warding spells to the ancient sorceries of Queen Nitocris; I needed to reconfigure my more necromantic enchantments as well. Hours passed, and the level of the brandy bottle sank. Enigmatic hieroglyphs and al-Hazred's crabbed and increasingly deranged Arabic swam by. I was making some progress, but as the night wore on, I found my attention wandering. I kept on being drawn back to the mad Damascene's nagging couplet: That is not dead that can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die. I had no idea what it meant, but I found it oddly encouraging. After all, this was as strange an aeon as any; time, perhaps, for Death to put his affairs in order. Eventually, when I caught myself flicking through the pages of the al-Azif to make the shoggoths scrawled in the margins do a little dance, I decided that enough was enough. What I really needed to do was compare notes with an expert. It was time to look up another of my old flames.

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