by Anna Butler
We’d flown well into the Abyssinian Highlands, a harsh, jagged land of sharp cliffs sliced and diced by the streams and rivers carving their passage into the mountain rock by cutting innumerable gorges and sheer-sided ravines into the stone. Water glinted deep in the ravine depths, the brown-glass flashes often broken by the white gleam of falls and rapids. Above the edges of these fissures, the lands climbed upwards in steeply rolling hills, the dense forests of their lower reaches giving way to thick grass tussocks of acacia and scrubby dogwood bushes. On the higher reaches, vast herds of ibex grazed among the bushes, and once we flew over a pair of males, their great curved horns locked in battle. Troops of baboons sunned themselves on rocky outcrops, watching us pass overhead with incurious eyes and the occasional display of sharp yellow teeth.
It had a wild beauty, this land. But it wasn’t hospitable.
“Look! What’s that?” Nell pointed to the immense bird wheeling a hundred feet or so off our starboard bow.
She and Theo had come to the cockpit an hour earlier. The long wide windows of the passenger cabin showed her a side view, and she preferred, she said, to be at the front and see where she was going. Reitz had given up the co-pilot’s seat to her and now squatted on a pull-down seat behind me. Theo leaned on the back of Nell’s chair, riding out each change in the Brunel’s flight, each fleeting reaction to temperature and pressure changes in the air around us, with a slight shift of his weight.
“A lammergeier, Fräulein.” Reitz leaned sideways, craning around the arm of my chair. “A bearded vulture.”
“A vulture? Something that majestic?” Nell sounded quite put out.
Not as ugly as most vultures, it was yellow-headed with a golden underbody and a wingspan of at least nine feet. It floated along, climbing up a spiralling thermal. An effortless way to fly.
“It’s quite beautiful.” Nell spread her hand against the glass in a gesture of homage to the magnificence outside.
The lammergeier turned its head our way, and even from a distance the hard curve of its beak was obvious. It tilted its left wing and dipped away from us, drifting down to land on a craggy outcrop far below.
“How long, Rafe?” Theo put his hand on the back of my chair.
“An hour. Perhaps a little less.” I pointed to port. “Lake T’ana is up ahead to our left. We’ll be sweeping around to the south to reach the Ch’ok’ē Mountains.”
“Will this Altenfeld person know where we’re going?” Nell saw the glance I gave Theo, I think, and forestalled any complaint I might make in his direction concerning loose tongues, by adding, “Theo explained why he was so worried I’m going with you. I knew something was in the wind. I’m not a ninny, Rafe. You asked questions about the man everywhere we stopped. Theo told me you think Altenfeld has gone after his brother, for reasons yet unknown. Now then, we know to look for the bird plateau first. Does this other man?”
She most certainly wasn’t a ninny. And “Theo” was it, now? That was promising.
“It’s possible. We think he has some of the right information, at least.”
“Bird plateau?” Reitz’s tone suggested his eyebrows were climbing up into his hair.
I glanced at Theo and nodded.
While I focused on flying, Theo told Reitz about Ned’s charts and drawings, adding in Causton’s theory about the missing cook and ending with, “He might have all the information from which Ned worked, and a dozen possible sites to explore. We hope he hasn’t come to the same conclusion Ned did about where to focus first.”
“He’s an archaeologist and a good one.” The far horizon to the left was a glinting blue-grey line. Lake T’ana. I swung the Brunel onto a new course towards the Ch’ok’ē Mountains and the Talba Waha. “One of Friedrich Lansbach’s star pupils. He’ll work it out. The question is whether he already has.”
“Ned has Sam Hawkins and three House guards with him along with your man Peters.” Theo had all the confidence of a young House scion who couldn’t envisage anything more powerful than the world led by House Gallowglass. “They can handle a few archaeologists.”
“While Altenfeld has perhaps a dozen Prussians with him, and I, for one, doubt they are archaeologists.” Reitz sounded tired. “If they are military… Frankly, Winter, I am not sure where I would put my money if it came to a fight between your House guards and our Prussians.”
“I am.” Theo’s naïve confidence was rather endearing.
“I hope you are right. It is as I said yesterday, you British are the Prussians in your own world. You are blinded by the same ambitions. Your Imperium and our Empire want the same thing.” Reitz gazed down at his twill riding breeches and picked at something with careful fingers. A loose thread, perhaps. “It is inevitable that one day, you and they will clash. The world is not big enough.”
In the following silence, we three English exchanged Oh Lord what do we say to that glances, while over and over, his long thin hand pulled at the thick cotton, making patterns with those twitching, restless fingers.
In the end, Nell stretched out a hand to put it over his, stilling his fingers before releasing him. “Well, I hope you’re wrong, Herr Reitz, because it might shake the world to pieces. Whatever happens here will be big enough for me. What can we do if Altenfeld is already there?”
I snorted. “Ask Theo to put his money where his mouth is. We may yet be pitting House guards against the Prussian military.”
Perhaps it wasn’t the right thing to say. Nell’s chin wobbled, and when she sat back and Theo put his hand on her shoulder, quick as a flash, she reached up and put her hand over his. Theo wouldn’t look at me, and Reitz returned to pulling threads.
I turned back to the console, adjusted the flow of phlogiston up a tiny amount, and then took it back to where it had been originally. It was something to do.
“Oh, heavens!” Nell’s tone held more than a mere touch of wonder.
The plateau was startling, symbolic and significant—an image of Thoth in a tomb painting made manifest in the living earth. Ringed about by higher splinter-toothed ridges and peaks, it lay before us in a shallow bowl in the range of mountains surrounding the highest peak in the region, Ch’ok’ē Terara. The curving beak promontory, at least three miles long, thrust out from the oval head, itself more than a mile in diameter at its widest point.
Theo and Reitz pressed forward in the flight cabin to see better, crowding Nell and me. Nell didn’t appear to mind Theo’s closeness. I endured Reitz’s.
Theo raised a hand and traced the bird’s-head shape in the air with his forefinger. “I didn’t expect it to be so precise.”
“When you see things on the ground, they are rarely as neat as the Schiehallion contour lines on a map.” Once more, Reitz proved he was a thoughtful, reasoning man. He pointed to where the steep plateau sides fell into ravines and gorges on all sides, commenting on how well forested the lower regions were. “The plateau itself is covered in scrub brush, as you see. I would have expected all the growth to blur the edges, make the shape less distinct. How odd…” His voice trailed off.
We all exchanged glances and nods to agree with him, but words weren’t needed. It was damned odd. I was in quiet, contemplative mood, myself, and I could well believe we all preferred to look and wonder, rather than exclaim aloud in our ignorance and awe. We continued our approach to the plateau in rapt, pensive silence. As we neared it, the curious tall rock outcrop denoting the bird’s eye became clearer where it pushed itself up out of the flat ground to tower above the surface.
“That’s clever! Can you see Thoth’s looking northwest, back towards Aegypt?” My voice sounded croaky, even to my own ears, and I coughed to clear my throat. I nudged the Brunel into a slight course correction, to a murmur that might have been agreement.
“How even the ground is,” Nell said, tone almost dreamy.
She was right. Though studded with bushes, grasses, and the odd groups of stunted trees, the ground was pancake-flat, as if the top of a great ridge had been s
liced off with a knife, carefully and deliberately levelled, then its sides shaped into the ibis head.
It wasn’t natural. It couldn’t be. The plateau was shaped by design, not nature.
The engineering skills, the craft, the sheer power such a feat demanded were impossible to grasp. I couldn’t imagine any scientist in the world doing that, even with all the technology we had at our command. How in heaven’s name had this been done five or more millennia earlier, when mankind still moved stone blocks with ropes and pulleys, and new kingdoms and empires fought one another with greedy bronze swords?
And while we stared and wondered, the eye’s shape sprang into clarity.
“Großer Gott!” Reitz breathed, while Theo exclaimed an identical prayer, in English.
“Oh. My. Lord.” Nell closed her hand over my knee so hard I winced. “Look at that!”
Thoth’s eye was a pyramid.
An enormous step pyramid, soaring upwards as if to meet us, its base on a cleared oval patch of rock. It was geometrically regular. Too regular. Perhaps from a distance it might look like a hill, but close up, it was unmistakable.
A pyramid.
A ruddy pyramid. At least the size of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Bigger. The base was much larger, the apex higher.
“Was für ein Monster.” Reitz’s expression when he glanced at me was all round-eyed, slack-jawed wonder. “It is enormous. I cannot fathom it.”
“Well, I’m jiggered!” Theo said at last. “If Ned isn’t down there, I’m a Dutchman.”
Not much chance of that. I was sure of it. “How in heaven’s name did the cartographer not realise what it was he saw? Was he blind?”
Theo shrugged for all of us. “Who knows? A pyramid! That’s quite unusual, I take it.”
A masterly understatement.
“This far south? Of course it is, ja. Ich kann es nicht glauben.”
Theo brushed Reitz’s wonder aside. “We need to land.”
“Can you, Rafe?” Nell asked.
“It will be hard, but the Brunel’s made for rough landings. She’ll bounce over most of those bush—” I broke off.
A long scar slashed across the scrubby surface to the northwest, leading from the pyramid to expose a dark gleam of basalt along the beak. A black mass huddled at the other end of this fresh new wound on the bird’s face, stub of a tail pointed up into the sky, spars of broken wings jutting out at angles no engineering artificer could countenance.
A plunge into an ice bath couldn’t have robbed me of breath faster or turned my heart so cold in my chest it might as well have stopped.
Ned. Oh, Ned.
I ignored the gasps and the quiet “Oh, no!” and “Gott!” of my companions. Muscle memory and automatic responses took over. We passed the pyramid, heading south, then I turned the Brunel hard over starboard, to bring her over the wreck.
“Altenfeld’s machine?” Reitz was sombre.
“No,” I said. “It’s not a Telford Menai. It’s the Bazelgette Ned hired in Cairo.”
No one said anything further.
Don’t think. Don’t feel.
We were too high to see much detail, so I kept her curving around in a long, descending ellipse. The land around us was more elevated than the plateau, rising in steep slopes towards Mount Ch’ok’ē Terara in the north.
I made another, lower pass around the pyramid, trying to make out as much as I could of the structure itself and the terrain on which it stood, to gauge the condition of the crash site. Theo and Reitz pointed and jabbered. I didn’t hear more than a few words, not for the thrumming noise in my ears. Broken in half and See that wing tip’s snapped right off and That’s one of the paddle vanes, all the way over there. How on earth did—
I clamped my lips tight closed. I wouldn’t let out the words pressing against the back of them, or the noise of pain and fright trying so hard to force its way free. The world scrunched down on me, choking life and hope.
Ned. Oh dear God. Ned.
And Hugh. My poor Hugh. I’d sent him in my place. Stayed safe at home and now—
Don’t think. Don’t feel.
For God’s sake, don’t feel.
I tipped her over starboard, to gain a better look as we passed over the wrecked six-seater. No sign of fire damage. I supposed that was something. We veered away in another long ellipse, with the pyramid in the northwest vertex, and as we turned to approach it again, it changed.
It grew.
The pyramid grew. A tall clear spire shot up from its apex, piercing the sky. A slender tapering obelisk, it stretched fifty feet from the roof, its tip a good seven hundred feet above the plateau’s surface. The obelisk was clear, but not empty. Glass, perhaps? Something like that. Glass or crystal, with blue gas coiling around inside it like smoke from a chimney.
Theo yelled something. I don’t know what. Nell gasped, and Reitz’s “Was zur Teufel!” echoed in the cabin.
I broke off the approach and retreated, bringing the Brunel around again at a vertex point a good couple of miles away.
“Turn around!” Theo snapped and snarled. “We have to—”
“Take Nell and strap in.” I talked right over him and jerked my head towards the main cabin behind us. We needed to be ready for anything. “Get everyone strapped in.” I kept the Brunel on a circular holding course. He and Nell could move faster than Reitz. “Reitz, take Nell’s seat. Now!”
Nell scrambled to her feet and ran back to the main cabin, catching Theo’s hand and tugging him along with her, urging him to hurry. He went, glowering at me over his shoulder.
Reitz hustled to some purpose, taking the co-pilot’s seat and fastening himself in. “What is it?”
“I have no bally idea.” I kept the Brunel on a slow approach.
“All set!” Theo called.
My mouth was dry, and I worked it to get some saliva flowing. “Right. Let’s go and take a closer look.”
It hit us when we were over the pyramid. Though we were two thousand feet up, it hit us. As we came overhead, lightning flashed up the obelisk, sending a shaft of sapphire-blue light leaping to catch at us and pull us down.
I was once a fighter pilot. I reacted without thinking. I heeled the Brunel over to starboard so hard she almost stood on her wing, flipped ninety degrees. The light sizzled along our underbelly, coruscating into fireworks above us, and exploded, flashing out from the beam in a fast-moving, glowing sphere.
It got us, caught us in some sort of backwash.
A lightning squall danced and played over the control board in front of me, zinging through my hands where they lay on the steering yoke.
The engines stopped.
They just stopped.
The Brunel heaved, struggling against the air. The huge paddle propellers under the short, stubby wings on each side slowed. Stopped. And then we were spinning and spinning, all power gone.
I shoved the yoke to push her nose down hard. She’d go faster. Get more air moving over the wings. Get some lift. Too slow to move the paddles— No. Not fast enough. But plenty of lift to pull her back under control.
Behind me, Nell screamed. Other voices were angry or afraid, or both.
Feel the air flow under her wings. Boosting her up. Haul back on the yoke.
Up you come, my pretty bird. Up you damn well come!
“Gott im Himmel! Can you land?”
“Shut up. Shut up.”
He shut up.
Swing out over the ravines. Find an updraught. Find— There! There! A lammergeier soaring on the air current surging up the plateau’s steep side. Cant her over there. Get over! Get into that updraught. That’s it. Lift. We’ve got much more lift. She’s going up, now. Not much. A bit.
Up you come, my girl! Up!
Enough. That’s just enough. Got more control now.
Wind’s from the northwest. Of course. From Aegypt. There’ll be wind shear where it comes over the ridges. Find it. Use it.
Someone’s panting for breath now. Me? Must be. Haul
the yoke round.
And back over the plateau, coming in along the bird’s beak. Hugh cleared a path for me when they crashed. He scored a landing strip into the earth for me.
Landing wheels down.
Too high for a safe landing. Go around again.
Another circuit, faster now with the energy we built up riding the gradient where wind surges over the ridge edges and roils and eddies in the slower air beneath. Wind shear. Bring her around again. Catch more lift. Soar higher, soar faster. Ease her nose down. Ten degrees. Get her down ten. Yes. Good approach. Coming back along the beak again. What the hell’s the glide ratio? Doesn’t matter. We can do it.
Another swing around. A big S shape, to lose height. Taking us northwest again to ride those turbulent winds, gain energy and control. Dynamic soaring, that’s what the birds do. Flying like this, strictly for the birds.
And back again in another elongated S. Pointed straight at that damn pyramid. Slowing. Slowing.
Come on, girl. You can do it.
And down we go. Down. Down between the crash site and the pyramid.
Facing the wind. Get that last bit of lift and—
Over the crashed six-seater now. So low the broken tail almost catches our underbelly. Just misses.
And down.
Down.
God, the brush makes the ground rough. Bouncing us to hell… Slam on the brakes. Brakes! Now!
And pull around. Pull! God, my arms.
And stop.
Stop.
Stopped.
Bless her, the Brunel almost stood on her nose before dropping back, but she gave me everything she had and got us down. I sat slumped over the steering yoke, catching my breath in huge, whooping gasps while my arms were on fire, pain savaging both shoulders. Reitz swore in his native tongue beside me, and voices, rising in relief and delight now, came from the cabin. The trouble I had breathing suggested I hadn’t done any for a moment or two.
A moment or two. That was all it had been.
Nell snaked her arm around my shoulders, her shaky voice in my ear bringing me back. “Oh, Rafe! Rafe! How well done of you! Oh, Rafe. You did it!”
