the huntress 04 - eternal magic Read Free Page B

it again.
    Fortunately, she didn’t find any trap holes, and I didn’t fall into any. By the time we reached the room at the end of the hall, I was vibrating with the tension of waiting for the next booby-trap.
    “This is weird,” Del said.
    I looked at the piles of wood that were laid out neatly on the floor. Coils of rope were piled next to the wood. The walls were decorated with carved reliefs and hieroglyphs, but no door. 
    “Yeah,” I said. “Definitely odd.”
    “At least the hieroglyphs aren’t coming alive,” Del said.
    “Small mercies. But I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do with this wood.”
    “Light a fire?” 
    I looked up, searching for holes in the wall. I caught sight of one in the ceiling. “Doubtful. There’s only one small air shaft in here. A fire would suck up all the oxygen in a heartbeat.”
    I studied the carvings on the wall. There were hundreds, every inch covered with a story I couldn’t decipher. Del paced the edges of the room.
    “No hidden doors,” she said.
    My gaze roved the wall, looking for the beginning of the story. Maybe that would help me understand what we were supposed to do to get out of this weird room. The Egyptians wrote from right to left, in columns, so I started in the upper right corner of each wall.
    “I can’t find the start,” I told Del.
    “Well, it’s about a boat.” She pointed to one wall where a long, low boat was depicted on many of the carvings. Depending on the scene, the boat was loaded with goods or people. In the final scene, only one person rode upon the boat, standing at the bow.
    I glanced at the piles of wood and rope. “Shit.”
    “What?” Del asked.
    “We have to build the boat.”
    She laughed. “Build a boat?”
    I crouched near one of the piles of wood while scouring the surface for clues. I found them near the edges of the wood. “Yeah. Look here. There’s holes all along the edges of the wood. And these little dash marks near the edge are a key.”
    “A key?”
    “Yep. We’re basically working with eighteenth dynasty Ikea furniture here. The four dashes on this piece of wood correspond with the four dashes on that piece.” I pointed to the long board right next to the one I was studying. “These two boards go next to each other. We just follow the directions. And the boards are jagged on the edges.” They actually looked a bit like very fat lightning bolts rather than your normal rectangular boards. “So they kinda fit together like a puzzle anyway.”
    “Wow, you’re right,” Del said.
    “Except we have no nails,” I said. “Or a hammer.”
    Del’s face lit up. “We don’t need them. The Egyptians lashed their boats together with rope. I read that once.”
    I glanced at the coils of rope, the last piece of the puzzle and the one I hadn’t quite understood. “Of course. There’s the rope.”
    Del high-fived me. “Good work, Sherlock.”
    “Let’s just hope we can build the thing.”
    “At least it’s not a big boat,” Del said.
    “Just pray it’s not a real river we’re going to be traveling upon.” But I didn’t think so. I didn’t see any caulking material, for one. And this was the desert. I’d bet money that the boat, when fully constructed, ignited a spell. We might travel down a magical river, but there’d be no real water.
    “Let’s get started then,” Del said.
    It took us a solid four hours and a whole lot of cursing, but we managed to get the small boat built. It was about twelve feet long and narrow. The jagged-edged planking had made it easier to assemble than I’d expected. Just like building a giant jigsaw puzzle. There were a few small spare chips of wood left over that we hadn’t been able to figure out, but it looked like a boat.
    To finish the job, we wedged some larger pieces of wood next to the curved bottom of the boat to keep it sitting upright. They were too bulky to be pieces of the boat, so we assumed that was their purpose.
    We stood next to our