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“But it might break when it hits the floor!” Neil protested.
“We would be best lowering it down,” Sayyid admitted uncomfortably.
Neil closed his eyes with a wince, clearly torn. “It’s solid granite.”
“Five hundred pounds,” Adam repeated. “There’s six of us. That’s less than a hundred pounds apiece.”
“How often do you run around lifting a hundred pounds!?” Neil demanded.
“I mean, I liftmeall the time,” Adam countered. “And I’m pretty close to two hundred.”
“You take your two hundred, then,” Zeinab ordered as she grabbed the fluted edge of the lid. “And the rest of us will split the difference.”
They circled the sarcophagus, each taking hold of the rosy granite slab that covered it. Ellie joined them with a wrench of guilt. The stone was cool under her hands.
Sayyid picked up the crowbar from Zeinab’s bundle of gear. With an expression of solemn resignation, he wedged it carefully under the lid. “On my count. One… two…”
Ellie lifted along with the others, her shoulders already protesting at the weight.
Beside her, Zeinab crouched down to put her shoulder to the fluted edge. Ellie did the same, and the granite unsteadily rose.
“Tip it our way!” Adam barked.
“Our way!?” Neil echoed from beside him in obvious panic.
Ellie slid a little closer to Zeinab and shoved up on her end of the stone. The enormous slab tilted. She was facing away from the lower end and could only hear the commotion that followed.
“Sweet… holy…” came Adam’s groaning voice.
“I’m going to lose my fingers!” Neil cried.
“Get the corner down—No, the other corner!”
“I am lowering the other corner!”
“Sure as hell doesn’t feel like it!”
Ellie heard a firm tap of stone on stone, and the weight against her back released.
“Slide it down—no, the other way!” Adam ordered.
She turned to see him sandwiched between Sayyid and Neil as they worked the rest of the long edge of the lid down onto the floor of the burial chamber, leaning it against the side of the sarcophagus… which now lay open.
Ellie stared down at a golden coffin. The gilded image of the pharaoh gripped a crook and flail in its hands, accented by pieces of rich blue lapis and sunset-hued quartz. It was crowned with a striped nemes headdress and uraeus cobra.
A face was carved into the fine-grained wood. Ellie recognized the noble visage from the walls brought to full, three-dimensional life. The pharaoh’s lips were softly open as though about to draw a breath. Her wide-set almond eyes gleamed softly with an inlay of ivory and onyx that showed from under delicate golden lids.
The entire splendid construction stood out in stark glory against a background of the fine, blood-red sand that filled the rest of the sarcophagus.
“She’s lovely!” Constance exclaimed wonderingly.
“She is,” Ellie agreed reverently.
Sayyid rose from the far side of the coffin, red faced and still huffing—and then raised his arms in a desperate warning. “Wallah—stop moving! All of you! Stay exactly where you are! Do not even breathe if you can help it!”
“What’s wrong?” Zeinab held herself in a tense, ready stillness.
“That powder,” Sayyid rasped urgently. He barely dared to nod toward the interior of the sarcophagus.
