I traced the thin glimpses of gold into actual curved links and that woke up my Bette Davis eyes. The boatman was chained to his wall! Was he too a prisoner, like the wretched humans in the caverns?

I’d never heard of a chained figure in Egyptian mythology, granted a scant online education in the subject. I knew the Greek god Prometheus had been chained to a rock with an eagle eating his liver for eternity for the sin of bringing fire to humankind. What could this guy bring to us?

Call me an optimist. I figure if I’ve never heard of something, it might have possibilities. I’d never heard of Cadaver Kid Ric Montoya before coming to Vegas a few weeks ago, for instance.

And look where that had gotten me.

Maybe thinking of Ric had snared his glance. He nodded as if reading my mind.

“Time to improvise, Del,” he said.

He nodded at the dimly glittering wall décor. “You like this guy’s looks?”

“I like his size. He could pole vault that staff over the pit or stomp what’s down in it.”

“He’s just another pillar poster boy,” Ric said with competitive male disdain.

“You didn’t see guys like him leaping off the walls to stop your rescue party from getting to you.”

“Guys that tall?”

“No, our size, but I figure anything that’s kept in chains beneath the Karnak might be willing and able to help us.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Ric agreed. “What do you-?”

I’d been really good at obstacle vaults in Our Lady of the Lake Convent School’s despised gym classes. Hey, I’d already leaped onto a golden chariot and stone horses’ backs during my first visit to the Karnak.

In a moment I was three feet off the ground swinging on Boat Boy’s ankle chains, then I scaled his staff to a swagged wrist chain six feet up. The deeply incised figure provided plenty of crevices.

I heard Quicksilver’s nails scrabbling to gain purchase on the carving, but it offered footholds only to me. The heroic scale of these Egyptian monuments would delight a newbie rock climber. I dangled from a wrist chain that had looked braid-fine from ground level.

In reality-such as reality was in the bowels of the Karnak-the chain was oversized enough for my fingers to close around the links.

I pumped my legs to get my momentum going. Soon I was swinging on the chain, the pendulum of my body weight exerting many times its actual force to pry a link loose.

Of course, padded gym blankets didn’t lie below, but solid stone.

I felt a stomach-churning drop as a link released and I swung back and forth on one wildly whiplashing end. My scrabbling feet found no holds other than the pleats of Boat Boy’s kilt under the navel and over the, uh… well, I understood why Ric was hollering my name like a panicked school principal watching a prank.

The chain link finally pulled free, and so did my grip. I plunged, braced to land hard. Instead, I was caught with a tooth-shaking impact in a pair of brawny, bare, brown masculine arms.

Ah… not Ric’s arms. He was wearing chin-to-sole undercover black.

I’m a rather brawny girl myself-five-eight and fully packed-but this guy had me covered, crushed to his warm Indian clay chest, bringing a dull red flush of annoyance to Ric’s hovering face.

“Thanks,” I said into the man’s liquid sloe eyes, living eyes. “I’m good.”

I wriggled down into Ric’s steadying custody.

The wall behind my recent landing pad was the same, the engraved god was on his pillar, and all was right with the world, except the broken chains were still swaying.

And Boat Boy was now standing right here with us, six-some feet of living ancient flesh.

Bez jumped up and down in manic glee.

“Shezmou, my brother, I have been alone on guard for so many millennia, helpless to succor my kind as their blood flowed thick into the vermins’ throats.”

Apparently, his fellow dwarves had fed the royal vamps since cobras became hair ornaments around here.

Bez remained a puppet on a yo-yo string, dancing and declaiming.

“O Shezmou, my very big brother, how good it is to see your handsome face and form standing in human shape on solid stone again.

“How good to know you will snap off the heads of the evildoers as ripe grapes at the harvest.

“How good to see that you will cast them into the eternally grinding press to again make the bloodwine of Egypt’s gods run red along the Nile.”

All well and good, but was Shezmou into liberation politics?

FOR THE FIRST time, I understood why the Egyptians depicted their gods as either twenty-foot giants or doll-size statuettes.

Shezmou in fleshly human form stood about six and a half feet tall. All the Karnak Egyptians I’d seen so far were on the five-foot-zero side. His self-proclaimed “brother,” Bez, was a shrimp.

I wasn’t sure what rules of form gods had to follow, but this fellow’s well-tanned painted version still stood at eternal attention, appliquéd to the pillar. If he had been the statue brought to life, he could have crushed us all.

So the Shezmou who’d caught me in the bride-carried-over-the-threshold grip that had Ric developing lockjaw had to be an avatar, the living human-form incarnation of a god.

For now, he seemed more interested in taking in the scenery than in me.

“Bez,” he said, warmth cloaking his deep, mesmerizing voice, as he glanced down. Or frowned down. Although Egyptian wall paintings depicted musicians and dancers, the faces were all similarly stylized. No Quicksilver grins on these folk.

“You are as plump and mischievous as ever,” the descended god noted of his baby bro. “Who are these strangers in our land? Who are this serpent man and woman and the pariah dog of strange coat and aspect? And what unfinished tomb is this?”

Okay, Bez’s introduction had been a bit ominous with all that flowing blood stuff, but this guy was hitting political incorrectness on all cylinders.

“The dog is no feral pariah,” I said, despite the tight grip of Ric’s hand on my arm advising diplomatic tact. “Quicksilver is a mighty warrior who could scent a”-what did Egyptians hate? Ah, who?-“an enemy Hittite and track him to where the Blue Nile trickles into crocodile spit.”

My knowledge of Egyptian landscape and history until recently had been limited to corny old films about that old Roman Empire soap opera trio, Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra. Two guys and a gal always provided tried and true dramatic fodder. And guess what we have here, folks? Except for the dog and the class clown.

Shezmou grunted favorably at Quicksilver, whose slavering teeth were positioned over the thankfully veiled “spleen” of his linen kilt.

“A hunting hound, I see. Forgive me. I did not notice the collar in that thick hyena-like neck pelt. Our most prized hounds are lean and flat-coated, but this creature’s head, ears, and jaws are more related to our noble and powerful Anubis.”

We’ll take it! Kinship with the jackal-headed usher of dead souls is a great recommendation for Quicksilver in this culture. Meanwhile, Shezmou was regarding me with initial disfavor as well.

“This form felt female in my grasp but twice the weight it should be. That black, utterly concealing gown feels of the slick of decay rather than the radiant white of linen woven so fine a dancing girl’s tattoos may be sighted through it.”

Well, pardon me for not being reed-of-the-Nile bulimic!

Somebody ought to report those wall babes in their totally ass- and thigh clinging cellophane sheaths. Pity I forgot to put Spanx thigh-smoothers under my steel-studded catsuit to conceal unsightly bulges, like muscles and a skeleton.

“If I hadn’t had some heft,” I pointed out, “like a well-honed weapon, Your Lordness of the Bloodwine, my weight wouldn’t have broken your chain to set you free.”

He looked up at the still-vibrating separated golden links.