Marah Chase and the Fountain of Youth

by Jay Stringer

  “A bartender and a thief climb a mountain…”

  ONE

  August Nash was ready. He’d been waiting for this moment, impatient for his chance to make history. As dawn broke across Lake Tana, he began to move, counting out steps across the large, flat rock.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Taking up the correct position, he turned toward the sun rising above the Simien Mountains on the far shore. A distant red glow, filtered through a smoky brown haze, marked the spot where Erta Ale, a large volcano, had been erupting for the past few weeks. The increased activity was making people nervous, fearing it was a sign of something bigger to come. The sun broke through the dust, and a line of golden light ran across the surface of the water toward Nash, dividing the lake into two halves.

  Nash unfolded a bloodstained parchment. A small disc was drawn on the top corner of the page, sticking out above two mountain peaks. Thin yellow lines led outward from the disc, with one large line pointing straight down in the six-o’clock position. Nash held the paper out ahead of him, lining up the images of the sun and light with the real thing. Other rays on the map pointed out at three, four, and five o’clock. The thickest of these was at four, which led down to a painting of a small island with a stone building at its center.

  Further markings ran down one side of the paper and across the bottom. For eight hundred years, the document had been seen as a piece of art. An early landscape portrayal of a lake or coastline. The image didn’t match up to any known location. Tana had been discounted, because the lake had many more islands than were shown in the picture. Nash was the first to see it for what it was: a map, with a grid reference along the edges. There was only one island shown, because only one of them was important. Nash’s destination.

  Nash didn’t show it, but he was worried.

  This had been almost too easy.

  Nothing in his line of work came without struggle, but he was only moments away from the greatest archaeological find in history. And, aside from the map’s previous owner’s, no blood had been spilled. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the worst was yet to come. There were legends about the demons carried on the wind, summoned to kill anyone who stepped on the island.

  Things could be about to get very interesting.

  Behind him, the mercenaries stirred. Gathering together their weapons and supplies. Talking in whispers, preparing for the signal to move. They didn’t know what Nash was looking for, but his money was good, and his reputation was better.

  Between the invasion of Iraq, the fall of Syria, and the uprisings in Egypt, the black market for antiquities had exploded. Any local with a shovel could head out into the desert and start digging, free from the laws of collapsed governments. But the real money—and the real glory—went to the relic runners, a select band of treasure hunters who would cut any corner to get what they wanted. The mortality rate was high. The pay was even higher.

  August Nash had been in the game longer than everyone else. He was a legend in the field. A name whispered in bars around the world, along with only one or two others. But after today, he’d be world-famous, going down in history for what he was about to find.

  He held the map up to the sky again, putting the image of the sun over the real thing. The mountains weren’t in the right position. Or, rather, the sun wasn’t high enough in the sky in relation to the peaks drawn on the page. He waited. Following the sun as it moved. When everything finally matched up, he traced his finger down along the four-o’clock line and let the paper fall away to see where he was pointing.

  Tana Kirkos.

  A small island near the eastern shore, with the large silver dome of an Ethiopian church showing above the trees. But that couldn’t be right. Tana Kirkos had been searched before, countless times. If the item ever had been there, it had been moved long ago. The map was eight hundred years old. For the first time since finding it, Nash started to think he was wrong. The map was too old. Out-of-date.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. Breathing in and out, preparing to tell his men the job was over. As his eyes opened, Nash caught the last moment before the sun completely cleared the mountains. Darkness still shrouded the edges of the view. On the far shore, he could see the many local churches starting to shine. The single beam of light had widened, spreading across the water’s surface, ready to vanish as the sun climbed higher and morning light filled the area. In the last second, right before the beam faded, Nash saw something.

  The hard edge of the beam had gone past Tana Kirkos to fall on a smaller island, closer to the mouth of the Blue Nile. And, caught in the ray’s last moment, Nash saw the square roof of a temple.

  That was it.

  Had to be.

  Nash pointed to the island and shouted commands to his team. Romain, a bald Moroccan sailor, grunted an acknowledgment. He liked to play tough and almost never spoke. But Nash had once caught sight of a Mickey Mouse tattoo on his right biceps. There had to be a good story behind that, but Nash had never asked. Romain ran down to the water’s edge and pulled the cord on a small black cube. With a long hiss, the cube began filling with air and unfolding into a boat.

  Bakari, a former gunrunner from Senegal, finished packing their bags and headed down to the boat. He was a tall man with a sloping gait, his broad shoulders rocking lazily from side to side as he moved.

  Nash glanced to his right, where the lights were starting to blink on in the port city of Bahir Dar. Neither Bakari nor Romain knew this, but there was another member of the team. When Nash found what he was looking for, a rubber boat wouldn’t be enough. He had a helicopter waiting on an abandoned airstrip to the south of the city. Once the pilot received Nash’s signal, he would home in on their position to lift the prize out by air. There wouldn’t be enough room on the chopper for Bakari or Romain, but Nash would deal with that problem when it came up. From there, the pilot would head straight for a small airstrip hidden away in the Mile Serdo Wildlife Reserve. Nash hadn’t decided whether to let the pilot join him on the secret road into Djibouti. That could wait, too.

  The trio climbed into the boat and started off across the lake, their wake sending large ripples across the calm surface. Romain pulled a plastic hood, specially designed to muffle the sound, over the outboard engine. Even still, Nash could hear every tick and rev. He was convinced they could be heard for miles around, and anyone waiting on the small island would be ready for them. He touched the knife strapped to his calf and checked that his Glock was loaded and ready.

  Nash kept his eyes on the surface, watching for crocodiles. Every expert he’d spoken to said there were no crocs in Lake Tana, but with rivers and lakes starting to dry up across Africa, and increased volcanic activity along the Great Rift Valley, Nash knew predators were starting to show up in areas they’d never been before. With a surface area of over one thousand square miles, the lake offered plenty of room to hide.

  Romain steered them around Tana Kirkos, keeping them hidden from the city. Along the shore, Nash could see movement. Local fishermen pushed their papyrus-reed boats into the water, preparing for the day’s work. Some of them paused, staring out at the sound of the engine. As they neared the small island, Nash could see a square section of rock hidden beneath the leaves of overhanging trees. It looked unnatural. Smooth.

  A dock.

  Nash pointed, and Romain nodded, changing course. Nash gripped the gun. Bringing it up into a two-handed firing position, he knelt at the front of the boat as they nosed under the tree canopy and the bow slapped against the stone. The dock was ten feet across and five feet deep, with thick bushes on three sides. Nash scanned the undergrowth for any sign of life. />
  Nothing.

  Not even wind.

  Romain killed the engine and tied off on a large stone. The three men braced and waited. Nothing happened. It was quiet. This set off every instinct Nash had honed over his years in the military, then the CIA, and now over a decade as a runner. Silence was a bad sign. Nature wasn’t silent. If nobody was watching, they’d hear noises. A bird flapping its wings, a scavenger moving away through the undergrowth. But the wildlife on the island was keeping quiet.

  Nash thought again of the legends. The demons carried on the wind, guarding the island. His skin crawled with the feeling of being watched.

  They weren’t alone.

  Nash nodded for Bakari to climb out of the boat. The big man hesitated, then followed orders. He leaned over, unsteady as the boat buffeted against the stone wall. Placing a hand on the stone surface, he stepped across. The moment his second foot landed on the hard ground, the bush ahead of him rustled. There was a fast movement, followed by the sound of wind. Bakari fell backward, and Nash could see he’d narrowly avoided the blade of a long sword. He caught a glimpse of an arm clad in a deep green robe, matching the foliage, and then a dark face with odd, milky eyes appeared through the leaves. Bakari rolled onto his side, leaving room for Nash to shoot three rounds into the bush, and a small man slumped forward, dropping the sword.

  The shots echoed around them, and Nash knew everyone across the lake must have heard. People would come to investigate the sound. They didn’t have much time.

  Bakari turned and offered his hand to help Nash across, followed by Romain. As all three men paused to look down at the dead sentry, the bushes moved again. Two more men rushed them, their swords at the ready, before they pulled the blades back in unison, turning them in a fast circle over their heads, bringing them back down, fast and hard. The weapons were followed again by a sound like wind.

  Nash stepped aside and put two shots into his attacker. The body fell at his feet, the sword skidding away across the rock and into the water.

  Bakari was too slow, staggering backward and fumbling for the gun at his side. The second attacker got to him, and the sword cut into his neck, taking his head off with the sickening sound of metal cleaving through bone. Romain screamed. It was a much higher pitch than Nash would have expected from a man who prided himself on his cool. Nash spun and put two more bullets into Bakari’s killer, who was in the middle of turning to swing his sword at the Moroccan sailor. The swordsman fell but wasn’t dead. He twitched on the deck. Romain recovered his composure and finished him off with his knife.

  Nash knelt over Bakari’s body and took the dead man’s extra ammo, sliding the gun into his own holster as a spare. Then he paused to examine the three dead guards. They all had the same creamy white eyes. Were they blind?

  The swords had notches along the blades. This was the source of the sound, the air moving through the holes like wind chimes. Nash picked up the nearest one in his left hand and jabbed into the bushes, looking for more guards. When he didn’t find any, he began pulling back the leaves, until he saw a narrow stone path leading between the trees. He gestured for Romain to go on ahead, but the Moroccan shook his head and started to move back toward the boat. Nash raised the Glock in his right hand. Romain looked at the weapon, then at Nash. His shoulders slumped, and he led the way up the path. Nash followed a few yards behind.

  The path turned into steps, twisting uphill between bushes and trees. There were still no sounds aside from Romain’s low voice and heavy steps. He was complaining under his breath. Nature all around them was holding its breath. Nash’s instincts kicked in again, telling him to freeze. He stood stone-still on the path, letting Romain get farther ahead.

  Twigs snapped. Branches moved. On either side of Romain, two more guards leapt from the undergrowth. Romain got one, firing four shots in rapid succession. At least two of them were unnecessary. The attacker was dead before he hit the ground, rolling downhill. Nash got the second, closing the distance fast and using the sword, feeling the solid connection as the blade pierced the skin, pushing in to hit something firm. Nash twisted the handle and pulled the sword away to the side, slicing the attacker open. Blood poured across the greenery as the man fell backward, vanishing into the foliage. The solid thump confirmed the dead weight had hit the ground.

  Nash waved Romain on again but didn’t follow.

  Something wasn’t right here.

  He’d once spent two days crawling through booby-trapped antechambers in Syria, only to find a dead end. The whole thing had been a distraction from the real tomb, which was on the other side of the valley. Misdirection. He watched as Romain disappeared around a bend. Rather than following, he squatted down and pushed through the leaves in the direction the dead man had fallen. He paused over the dead body, taking care to avoid the damp patches of earth where the blood had pumped out into congealed pools. Nash stayed still. Motionless. Willing himself to blend into the background.

  Letting his ears grow accustomed to the silence, he could make out the heavy footfalls of Romain farther up the hill. There was another sound. Lighter steps, almost directly ahead of Nash, farther up the incline. Someone stalking Romain. Nash let both sounds continue to move away. He looked down at the ground and saw a narrow dirt track. He stepped onto it and found himself in a clear corridor cut between the bushes, a path running parallel to the steps, leading all the way back down toward the dock. He walked slowly along it, making sure to test out the weight of the ground before planting his foot down each time. As he neared the bottom of the hill, two gunshots rang out from far off behind him, followed by a muffled scream. He stopped and moved quietly off the track to stand behind a tree. More silence followed, then footsteps. The padding footfalls that had been stalking Romain. They were coming this way.

  These were the demons. Blind swordsmen who had learned to move in near silence, with paths leading through the bushes to allow them to seem invisible.

  Nash placed his Glock on the ground, unable to holster it while he also had Bakari’s gun. He raised the sword in both hands and waited. The sounds came nearer. The muscles in Nash’s arm twitched, urging him to move. But he held off, waiting until he was sure the guard was close. At the last second, the steps paused, slowing down before coming to a complete stop on the other side of the tree. The guard must have sensed something was wrong. Nash could be giving his own position away with each breath.

  Nash swung the blade, stepping out from behind the tree in the same movement, putting his weight and forward momentum into the move. He connected, cleaving high into the guard’s shoulder and upward toward the neck. The sword completed its arc as the tip embedded in the tree, pressing the already dead guard against the trunk. Nash let go of the sword rather than pulling it free and picked up the dead man’s off the ground.

  A wave of nausea rolled over him. He leaned against the tree and controlled his breathing before he coughed and started heaving, bringing up his breakfast.

  He took a few moments to calm down before continuing to follow the dirt trail toward the dock. Near where they had found the stone path, the trail veered left, heading inland again. In less than a hundred yards, Nash came to a clearing. Two wooden huts were sitting on either side of the path. He approached them slowly, but nobody attacked him. There were no signs of life. He noticed, too, that he could hear a few birds skittering through the trees. Nature was starting to move again. The tension had passed.

  Continuing along the path as it widened into a well-trodden clearing, he could see the top of the building he’d spotted from across the lake. It was behind a copse of trees. He rounded them to see a large square structure, about twenty feet tall but mostly obscured from view off the island by large trees that had grown up around it.

  Nash recognized the architecture. It was tall and narrow, like a house brick laid on end. The doorway was cut high into the stone, a rectangle with a series of similar shapes cut into the surface around it. On either side of the doorway, two large columns had be
en carved. It was a scaled-down replica of the central temple of King Solomon’s Jerusalem complex.

  An old man in orange robes sat on the steps to the entrance. He had the same milky eyes, but his skin was cracked like aged paper. His head twitched as Nash approached.

  The old man laughed and spoke in a language Nash didn’t recognize. It sounded vaguely like Hebrew. The old man sniffed the air, and his head twitched again. He put his hands to his face in prayer. Nash raised his sword. The old man seemed to sense this. He turned his head up at the sky and smiled, then bowed back into the prayer. Nash rested the blade on the old man’s neck before clubbing him hard with the hilt.

  Nash stepped around the slumped figure and into the temple.

  The walls on either side were covered with tapestries. They showed King Solomon and a great war. Then a woman with dark skin, who Nash guessed to be the Queen of Sheba, or Bilkis, as she was known to the Ethiopians. Solomon and Bilkis journeyed together, and, in time, there was a small child, Baina-Lehkem. The child grew into a man and was shown journeying from his homeland to visit Solomon. He traveled back home by river, with a large golden box. In the final image, the golden box was shown on an island, surrounded by men in orange robes.

  At the end of the passage, Nash came to wide stone steps, painted gold. They led up to a curtain, which shone the same color as the steps. At the top, he paused before reaching out to touch the curtain. Never a man to have any real faith or belief, he still felt a moment of awe and reverence. He was about to look on something that had been hidden from history for thousands of years.

  He thought again of the milky eyes of the guards and the old priest. Were they turned blind from looking at the object behind the curtain, or was it done to them to prevent them from looking? He found himself doubting, at the last moment, whether he should do this. Then he swallowed back the fear and gripped the curtain again, pulling it aside before he could let any fresh doubts creep in.

  The room beyond was small. There were four statues standing at each corner of a large stone altar. They were winged creatures with four heads, each of them bearing the fearsome face of a different animal: a lion, an ox, an eagle, and what looked to be a jackal. They were cherubim, the guardians of the throne of God. Renaissance artists had turned cherubs into small, cute humans with tiny wings, but they had originally been described as much more fearsome. Nash had expected to find statues like these, but he’d thought the fourth head would be a human, not a jackal. The canine face gave everything a vaguely Egyptian feel.