"Tanya Huff - Victoria Nelson - 03 - Blood Lines" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

Not alone. Please, not alone again.

When it returned, he would have wept if he'd remembered how.

Refreshed by a shower and a good night's sleep plagued by nothing more than a vague sense of loss, Dr.
Rax stared down at the sarcophagus. It had been cataloged-measured, described, given the card number
991.862.1-and now existed as an official possession of the Royal Ontario Museum. The time had come.

"Is the video camera ready?" he asked pulling on a pair of new cotton gloves.

"Ready, Doctor." Doris Bercarich, who took care of most of the departmental photography, squinted
through the view finder. She'd already taken two films of still photography-one black and white, one
color-and her camera now hung around the neck of the more mechanically competent of the two grad
students. He'd continue to take photographs while she shot tape. If she had anything to say about it, and
she did, this was going to be one well documented mummy.

"Ready, Dr. Shane?"

"Ready, Dr. Rax." She tugged at the cuffs of her gloves, then picked up the sterile cotton pad that would
catch the removed seal. "You can start any time."

He nodded, took a deep breath, and knelt. With the sterile pad in place, he slid the flexible blade of the
palette knife behind the seal and carefully worked at the centuries old clay. Although his hands were
sure, his stomach tied itself in knots, tighter and tighter as the seconds passed and his fear grew that the
seal, in spite of the preservatives, could be removed only as a featureless handful of red clay. While he
worked, he kept up a low-voiced commentary of the physical sensations he was receiving through the
handle of the knife.

Then he felt something give and a hairline crack appeared diagonally across the outer surface of the seal.



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For a heartbeat the only sound in the room was the soft whir of the video camera.

A heartbeat later, the seal, broken cleanly in two, halves held in place by the preservative, lay on the
cotton pad.

As one, the Department of Egyptology remembered how to breathe.

He felt the seal break, heard the fracture resonate throughout the ages.

He remembered who he was. What he was. What they had done to him.

He remembered anger.

He drew on the anger for strength, then he threw himself against his bonds. Too much of the spell
remained; he was now aware but still as bound as he had been. His ka howled in silent frustration.