By the time they returned to the tomb, Jonathan had folded and unfolded Lindiwe’s drawing often enough to soften its creases.
They had tried two passages and found neither led where she expected. Pieter had shown them a third, narrower route, but Lindiwe had stopped before they reached its end.
Now she stood near the entrance to the chamber they had opened the day before.
“This is where it starts.”
Pieter directed his lamp towards the wall.
“The marking?”
“The way I remember it.”
He waited for her to explain, but she was looking into the tomb.
It had been easier the previous evening. The memory had arrived complete, with a certainty she could not summon simply by wanting it.
Daniel came to stand beside her.
“Here?”
She nodded.
He glanced towards Mara, who understood before he spoke.
They needed to try together.
Jonathan watched the exchange, then turned to Pieter.
“Could you show me where the passage above this joins the main route? I’m having trouble placing it against the photograph.”
Pieter looked at the drawing.
“It doesn’t join directly. That’s probably what’s confusing you.”
“Would you mind?”
They moved back towards the entrance. Jonathan paused to adjust his bag, giving Daniel a brief look.
Then their lights withdrew along the passage.
Lindiwe unwrapped the amulet.
Its central gem lit first. Three smaller stones answered as the others gathered around her.
She looked across the tomb.
“I remember flames.”
Daniel followed her gaze towards a shallow recess.
Light stirred within it.
At first it was no more than a wavering glow. Then a torch appeared, its flame leaning slightly in a current of air none of them could feel.
Another burned beside the entrance. Warm light spread over the walls. Mara caught her breath.
The chamber was changing around them. Rough deposits thinned from the carved surfaces. Broken edges became whole. The floor extended smoothly beneath the dust and fallen stone.
Daniel could feel Lindiwe’s memory taking shape. He no longer had to guess what she was trying to show them. When her attention moved, his followed, giving substance to what she remembered.
Mara felt the places where the present cave obscured it. She loosened them one at a time.
The effort settled between them.
Vale lifted his lamp, then lowered it again. They no longer needed its beam to see.
The central gem and three smaller stones were glowing; the other two remained dark.
Lindiwe looked towards him. Silver shone in his eyes, as it did in Daniel’s and Mara’s.
“Stay with me,” she said.
“We’re here,” Mara replied.
The tomb stood intact.
Torchlight reached into corners their lamps had barely revealed the day before. The figures carved along the walls were clearer now, their hands and faces freed from the mineral deposits that had softened them.
Lindiwe turned towards the carved wall at the side of the tomb.
“This way.”
Daniel followed her gaze. One of the figures held its hand against a narrow vertical line.
Lindiwe approached it.
“I remember someone standing here.”
Beside the figure, a small stone lever projected from a shallow recess. In the present chamber, that whole section had appeared to be an uneven patch of wall.
Mara leaned closer.
“We wouldn’t have seen that.”
Lindiwe reached towards it, then stopped. Her fingers had passed into the recreated surface.
“We need to find the real one.”
Vale raised his lamp while Daniel kept the old wall clear in his mind. They could see both now: the lever as it had been, and the rough deposit concealing it.
Mara placed her fingertips against the deposit.
Daniel steadied her wrist.
A small fragment loosened. She caught it in her other hand, then eased away another.
The end of the lever emerged.
Lindiwe nodded.
“Downwards.”
Daniel gripped the exposed stone and pressed carefully. It resisted. He changed the angle slightly, following the position Lindiwe showed him. Something shifted within the wall.
The sound was low and heavy, quite unlike the silent changes of their recreation.
Beside them, a narrow section of carved stone drew back. Dust fell from its upper edge as it opened onto darkness.
The recreated torchlight reached through the doorway, revealing a chamber directly beside the tomb.
Mara looked at Daniel.
“Yesterday, we were right here.”
He kept his hand on the lever until the movement stopped.
Then Vale directed his lamp through the opening, checking the actual floor beneath the image.
Lindiwe stepped forward with the amulet.
The others followed her into the hidden chamber.
It was smaller than the tomb.
Torchlight illuminated figures carved along the walls. Some stood alone; others gathered beneath shapes that might have represented buildings. Fine lines passed between them, continuing around corners instead of ending at the borders of each image.
Daniel followed one towards the far wall.
There, several figures faced an empty central space.
The stone within it was perfectly smooth. No face had been carved there, no body, no raised hand. Yet everything around it appeared directed towards that absence.
Lines extended from the figures’ heads into its centre.
Mara came beside him.
“What are they looking at?”
Daniel moved closer.
“I don’t know.”
Above the figures were rows of smaller shapes. Some resembled distant buildings, but their proportions were strange, their surfaces too regular. Each was connected to the same empty centre.
Lindiwe watched a point of light travel along one of the lines. Another followed it. Soon, faint light was moving through the carving in several directions.
“Was that there before?” Vale asked.
“In the memory?” Lindiwe shook her head uncertainly. “I wasn’t looking at it.”
Daniel studied the paths. He had expected something like rays spreading from a sun, but these divided and rejoined. Some returned to where they had begun.
It reminded him of a diagram whose subject he did not recognise.
Mara reached towards the smooth centre, stopping short of touching it.
“Why leave this part empty?”
Nobody answered.
Lindiwe moved closer to the wall.
Something about the figures’ position drew her attention downwards. She remembered standing here, waiting while someone beside her knelt.
“There’s something behind it.”
Daniel looked at her.
“The carving?”
She nodded.
“Can you remember how they opened it?”
Lindiwe concentrated.
The torch beside them wavered. For a moment, the room lost some of its depth.
Mara took her elbow.
“Don’t force it.”
“I can almost—”
A hand appeared against the wall.
Only a hand, pale and incomplete. Its fingers rested beneath one of the carved figures.
Daniel held his attention there.
The image steadied.
The hand pressed, then withdrew with a small square of stone resting in its palm.
Behind it was darkness.
Lindiwe let out a breath.
“That’s enough,” she said.
They released the recreation together.
The flames dwindled. Deposits returned to the walls, filling the fine lines and dulling the figures’ faces.
Vale raised his lamp.
The drawing was still there, although parts of it were almost lost beneath the uneven surface.
Daniel crouched where the remembered hand had been.
At first, he could find no join.
Vale lowered the light until it fell across the wall at an angle. A fine shadow appeared beneath the figure.
Daniel traced it carefully.
“There.”
Mara knelt beside him. She rested her fingertips along the edge while he supported the stone below.
He felt her concentrating. A little dust fell between his hands. Then the tile shifted.
Daniel eased it out and passed it to Vale, who laid it on a clear patch of floor.
The space behind it was too small to reach into.
“Another one,” Mara said.
Now that the first tile was gone, they could see how the neighbouring pieces fitted together. Daniel held each as Mara loosened it. They worked slowly, keeping the carved surfaces clear of the floor.
Lindiwe stood close, directing the lamp when Vale needed both hands.
With the third tile removed, the opening was wide enough.
Something metallic caught the light.
The case fitted within a shallow recess.
Daniel slid his fingers beneath it and lifted it free.
It was small, no larger than it needed to be, its smooth shell following an irregular outline. There were no handles, no decoration. A fine seam ran around its edge.
Mara brushed a trace of dust from its surface.
It had retained a soft metallic sheen beneath the stone.
“That looks newly made,” she said.
Daniel turned it towards the light. He could see no obvious hinge or fastening. Lindiwe leaned closer, keeping her injured shoulder back.
“It opens along there.”
She indicated the seam.
Daniel supported the lower half while Mara rested her fingers against the upper edge.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the two halves separated, and Daniel lifted the cover away to reveal the second amulet.
The case enclosed it so precisely that every curve had its own place. Even the raised stones were protected by matching hollows in the cover. It looked less like a box than a shield formed around the object itself.
Four small gems glowed, while the central gem remained dark.
Vale looked from it to the amulet in Lindiwe’s hands.
“Four of us,” he said.
Mara glanced towards the passage.
“And someone missing.”
Daniel kept the open case steady.
Behind them, the carved figures still faced the empty centre of the wall.
Whatever they had been looking at, none of the four could explain it.