They stood together at the door, shining both lights on the caduceus. Caleb saw that one symbol at the end of the upper inscription, the symbol assigned to the Golden Ones. It seemed to pull at his consciousness, to hang there as a marker of denial, a guardian that expressly denied him passage. And now, more fully versed in alchemy and familiar with the symbols, he was even more certain that this was a mistake.
“That sign,” he said, pointing, “I know it now.”
“What is it?”
“Exalted Mercury.” He stared at it and his breath quickened. “An upward-pointing triangle symbolizing Fire-in this case, the sublimated state of distilled consciousness rooted in the Above. And within that triangle, the symbol for what they call Exalted Mercury, which is essentially the Mercury symbol with a dot in the center, signifies that it has become the One Thing perfected.”
“The One Thing?”
“The Philosopher’s Stone. The center of everything. Our minds and personalities come together as one unifying, powerful thought.”
“And the triangles on either side? And the star below?”
“Water on the left, Fire on the right. With the star below, signifying the union of Fire and Water, the permanent coming together of the Above and Below.”
Lydia nodded. Caleb couldn’t tell for sure, but in the shadows he imagined her giving an oddly satisfied smile.
“Sure you want to do this?” he asked. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like we’ve passed the test, like we’re in any way ready. We don’t know what else to expect. If the water trap requires us to be prepared in some way, maybe all the others do too. I didn’t see far enough in my vision.”
Lydia stared at her shoes.
Caleb fidgeted. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what Sostratus did next.”
“Hopefully, your inspiration will come again and help us when we need it.”
“I don’t think so.” Caleb was again overcome with a terrible apprehension. And then, just as suddenly, he had the feeling someone was watching them. Someone not in this room, not even in sight. Someone… “Phoebe,” he whispered, and a deep chill seemed to rush in from unseen vents.
Is this what she saw-the time it would all turn for me?
A grinding sound echoed off the four walls. It seemed he had lost a minute of time, a minute in which the world had moved on without him. Lydia was kneeling at the base of the door, sniffling. She grunted with effort as she turned one of the signs-Saturn, the symbol for Fire.
“Wait!”
But she had stood up and reached for another symbol, the one Nina had turned first. Jupiter/ Water. Again the grating, scraping sound.
“It’s too late,” she said in a choked cry as she twisted the next sign: Mars/Air. “We’re about to see if you’re worthy.” She shot Caleb a look, and in the trembling flashlight beam he saw tears streaming from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Caleb.”
He reached for her and tried to yank her arm away. “Come on. We can still-”
“I didn’t finish the sequence!” she shouted as she pushed him off, thrusting him away with surprising strength.
Off balance, Caleb tripped and fell back. Dropped the light. And in the spinning beam he imagined the walls shifting, closing in. Thoth and Seshat moved, turning as before and contemplating the two intruders. And there was Lydia, reaching for another symbol. She finished with the Venus/Earth sign, and then reached for Mercury.
Caleb scrambled forward and dove for her. “Stop! We’ll come back when we know more!”
She twisted out of his way and kept him at bay with her kicking legs. “It’s too late!”
“What are you talking about?”
She grasped the Moon and, when her eyes settled on his, they looked cold and hard. “We’ve been waiting for you Caleb, but you let us down.”
He took a step back. He couldn’t breathe.
She spun the Moon, then reached for the crown above the snakes-the Sun. “We can’t wait for you to snap out of your psychic exile. I’d hoped to free you, but I’ve failed.”
“Who are you talking about?”
She gave Caleb a look of pity. Turning her back on him, she rotated the Sun. “As always Caleb, you haven’t asked the right questions.”
She lowered her head. “Remember me. Remember that I loved you.”
“Lydia…?” He took a step toward her.
“Back up, and get ready.” Her head inclined sideways. “You told me once how your mother’s powers were triggered. Your sister’s too.”
“Lydia!”
“Welcome, Caleb, to your personal trauma.”
“What are you-?”
A rumbling passed through the blocks and sand fell in thin veils. The wall rattled. Three fist-sized holes opened on each side of the door, and six plumes of gas hissed out. Pungent methane, strong and powerful, streamed from the openings. Caleb reached for Lydia, but she ripped her arm free, switched off her light, and darted to the side.
“Lydia!” In the sudden gloom, Caleb reached for his flashlight and speared the beam madly back and forth, catching a glimpse of her legs, rolling into the shadows, but then he heard a tortured cry of sharp rocks scraping together.
A spark in the darkness.
He cursed and leapt back two steps and curled into a ball, hugging his knees on top of the symbol for Lead.
Calcination.
A rush of heat, a burst of searing hot light. “Lydia!”
And the room became an inferno.
It was as if he knelt in a protective container. The entire chamber swirled in a fuming cyclone of volcanic fire, gases igniting and flames roaring all around. But Caleb was safe, barely uncomfortable from the heat. And then he felt it: all around the block he was crouched on, a rush of fresh air propelled upward, a maelstrom of wind creating a barrier. The stone block had lowered and compressed, and the gaps surrounding it expelled a rush of fierce, steam-laden air.
And as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The whoosh of flames subsided and Caleb stood, unscathed. He had only a moment to take stock of the smoking room and realize that even if Lydia had somehow survived the blast, neither of them would make it past the next trap.
The cords were gone, incinerated.
Coughing from the noxious fumes and the choking heat, he spun the light around, desperately looking for some sign that Lydia might have survived, terrified he’d see a smoking corpse.
Then he heard the door grating again, and now it started to open as if pushed from the other side by a pair of monstrous Titans. He took one last look around the room, saw the melted flashlight against the edge of the pit, smoke and embers rising from its depths.
Then he turned and fled, racing to the ascending stairs and bounding between Thoth and his mistress, just as the great door burst open and the ravenous flood roared in.
Three steps at a time he climbed, never looking back. The water chased after him like a rabid jackal, snapping at his legs. He splashed up the next flight of stairs, dragging his feet through the rising water, and then lunged and collapsed on the cool, dry steps above.
He screamed and slammed his fists against the unyielding granite.
He aimed the flashlight back down. The waters were receding. He followed them back down, step by step. He walked between Thoth and Seshat, trading a wounded glare for their scolding expressions. His feet splashed on the limestone blocks as he played the light around the room.
He waited, poised to flee back up the stairs at the slightest hint of a new trap. He watched and counted the seconds, counted the beats of his devastated heart, urging it to calm.
Nothing else happened. The door remained open, a yawning cavern of blackness, defying even his powerful flashlight beam. All his other supplies had either been reduced to ashes or swept away in the flood. He was left alone with nothing but his mind, as clear as it had become.
He waited. And then he thought, I’m not on the next block, not putting weight on the Iron stone.
Suddenly, the door clos
ed with a quick, efficient snapping back into place. On the seal, the wheels all spun back to their original positions as if nothing had happened.
Caleb switched off his light. Alone, he hung his head and embraced the silent darkness.
9
Acceptance did not set in for another week.
A week in which Caleb had divided his time above and below the harbor. He’d read the papers every day, fearing the worst. After the first day he had rented a boat and cruised around the peninsula, looking for anything that had washed up. As always, Fort Qaitbey had brooded staunchly, baking in the sun as a few tourists lingered about beyond the outer walls. He’d resisted venturing again below, but the chamber beckoned, whispering for him to come back, to dwell there forever. To ease the loneliness of those ancient halls.
The guards had replaced the padlock, and without Lydia’s lock-picking skills, he’d had to break it to get back in. Knowing he was embarking on a hopeless effort, he couldn’t help but feel like Sisyphus rolling his boulder to the top of a great hill only to have the gods kick it back down. Even so, he’d smuggled in a small generator and a half-dozen hurricane lamps and combed every inch of the chamber, in vain.
Under another moonless night’s sky, with Jupiter, Saturn and Mars aligned fittingly in a row along the horizon, Caleb crept back inside. Since he had found a mechanism for opening the fortress’s secret door from the inside, he closed it behind him, so he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. Carrying enough food and water for a week, he descended into the vault. He slept in a roll with a jacket as his pillow. He brought a handful of texts on alchemy rich with imagery and illustrations to aid his interpretation of the next stage. He worked and slept and ate by candlelight. He existed for one purpose only: to study the wall.
To become worthy.
To become Golden.
Again and again he thought about Lydia’s last words. He wondered how she could have deceived him, and he contemplated the breadth and depth of her conspiracy. Who was that man she had been talking to, the one who had chastised him after Nina’s accident? Had Lydia manipulated him into marrying her from the start? Had she worked to become his publicist, then prod him towards the research, pushing him further and further? Had she hoped to spark his psychic talents in order to get the treasure herself?
“You’re asking the wrong questions,” she’d said. And he knew it, but he couldn’t get his mind around the right way of thinking.
All day long, as tourists ambled overhead, he stared and stared, pondering every sign, every etching on the floor and wall. And time after time he endured the flames and the flood, securing himself with steel chains, enduring the heat and standing against the onslaught of frigid water. He reeled as it ripped passed him, tore his clothes and scraped his flesh. He staggered, but held fast, digging his feet in, lowering his head and yielding to the torrent. He held his breath as the waters devoured him, and just when it seemed his lungs would burst the water level dropped in a rush. In the darkness he felt as if he’d ascended and emerged into the clear night air, reborn.
Calcination and Dissolution. Caleb endured them both, and survived.
And then he stepped forward while the water finished draining. His boots splashed to the next stone, and he stood over the symbol for Iron. He breathed deeply, clearing his head and accepting whatever destiny the Fates had woven for him — until the ground shifted. The gaping doorway ahead hissed and a wind blew forth, sending shivers across his raw flesh.
Fire. Water. Now wind. Air. He stood, poised, expecting some great gust to hurl him into a wall of rusted spikes. He was prepared for the brutal piercing, an ignoble death, an end to his hopeless existence, but he merely teetered and stood his ground. He dried, and the shivering subsided.
As the water evaporated, Caleb felt a residue deposited from the water and the fire caked on his skin, on his hair, eyelids and cheeks, covering the tatters of his shirt and ripped jeans. It had the consistency of baking soda. Something to do with the Separation Phase, Caleb thought. In alchemy, it signified that his old life had been burned away by the masculine energy of fire, then washed clean by the feminine strength of water, leaving him with the combination of the two.
Renewed, but somehow certain that he had not yet passed the full test, he considered taking a step forward onto Copper. The next stage was Coagulation, in which the alchemist was supposed to earn the Lesser Philosophers’ Stone, to be imbued with a greater sense of purpose and clarity, to see the way through to the realms of the Above. To set foot on the path to immortality. To Gold.
Instead, Caleb stepped back onto the glyph for Tin. For an instant, he was certain such a backward motion would trigger another deadly trap.
Nothing happened.
He was impatient, and growing angrier with the mocking sense of nothingness that pervaded the room. The parted doors teased him with a false sense of progress that made him furious. But he knew for sure he wasn’t ready. Yet, finally, in desperation, he bolted and ran, determined to make it through regardless of what was expected of him.
It started closing as soon as his weight lifted off the block. Caleb leapt for the narrowing aperture — and collided with the wall as it sealed. The seven signs wheeled back to their preset positions, and something beyond the great door made a low, wheezing sound like a heavy sigh.
Over the next few days Caleb attempted it eight more times.
Every time the same. The fire, the water, the air… and then nothing. He read and reread everything he had on alchemy. He studied the teaching of Balinas of Tyna, who had claimed to have mastered the Emerald Tablet, and who had performed miracles, healed the sick. He studied all the theories about what the tablet was supposed to contain. All of these interpretations had become infused in his mind, into his very breath. And yet he came no closer to wisdom.
And despite Lydia’s belief in his eventual transition, nothing happened. He may have passed the first two tests, but he still felt trapped in the flames of Calcination. He couldn’t let go. Not of her, not of his past, not of his fears.
And I can’t draw down a power I never really had. His visions had always been passive, reactionary. And try as he might, immersing himself in the depths of the lighthouse sub-chamber, opening his spirit to its mysteries, he was denied and could go no further.
She was right, he had failed.
10
On a crisp, surprisingly cool morning, Caleb checked out of his hotel and made his way to the airport.
The authorities stopped him at customs, and he spent eight hours with the local police. He detailed how he and Lydia had gone on a cruise, and he insisted that she had been swept away during a dive. They asked why he had never reported her missing. Caleb couldn’t come up with a good excuse. They called the hotel, where the manager only fueled their suspicions by relating the odd nature of Caleb’s nocturnal comings and goings, his reclusiveness since the sudden absence of his lovely bride.
Caleb didn’t blame them. Because of his vague and rattled responses, they seemed sure he had killed Lydia, and he was prepared to spend the rest of his life wasting away in an Egyptian jail.
As it turned out, it wasn’t that bad, but it was bad enough.
Egyptian laws were incredibly complex and quite often subjective. He asked for a trial, begged to be shown the evidence against him. Where’s the body? he demanded. Witnesses? A motive? Caleb told them to look for a man in a gray suit, with matching hair. He knew her. They had planned her disappearance together. Set him up.
The police didn’t budge, and they told Caleb they could hold him indefinitely if they felt like it.
Doubleday sent a lawyer on Caleb’s behalf, but his efforts proved ineffective. Caleb began to believe even the lawyer thought he was guilty. Their star publicist, and his co-author, was missing, and Caleb was the sole suspect. It didn’t make good press. His book sales plummeted. They took the stock off the shelves. Cancelled further printings.
And left him to rot. Day after day, month after month in a dank ce
ll.
He asked for his research materials and they refused.
He begged to be allowed a few encyclopedias. A book. Anything.
Again they refused.
It was killing him, this separation from books. More than anything else, even more than his own imminent mortality, he longed for a book, a newspaper, a magazine. He had never been apart from his life’s blood for so long. He missed the feel of pages, the touch of a leather spine; missed the smell of the binding, the sound an old book would make as it opened.
Finally, he pled for pen and paper, and they grudgingly obliged. And on a cool day when the wind blew gently through the barred window of his cell, he began to draw. Just random images at first. Then the visions came.
He asked for more paper. They gave him scraps at first, but then a guard with a shred of compassion smuggled in a thick sketch pad. And Caleb drew.
For hours on end, skipping meals, neglecting his body, avoiding sleep, he drew. Pain and hunger were mere inconveniences compared to his insights, compared to his growing sense of purpose. The days and weeks flew by and his portfolio grew as he allowed his practice to become an obsession. Every night he looked over the day’s output, and then never looked at the pages again. He awoke every morning and meditated-just sat and listened to his breathing and his heartbeat, learning to tune out the cries of the other inmates, the banging on the walls, the shrieking, the pleading and find a measure of peace residing deep within. He was lucky to have his own cell, but it would not have mattered. He was passing onto a new level of being.
And he continued to draw.
Eagles and suns, gates and stars. A river flowing beside a large complex of stone buildings. He sketched his father, or at least his recollection of him. He no longer suffered pain, but his essence remained for Caleb to capture and put to paper. The signs were the same. Caleb didn’t understand them, but this time he didn’t try.
And he drew.
Once, he awoke to see that dreadful man in the green khakis sitting cross-legged in the shadows of the cell, just beside the door. He breathed heavily, as if he were sleeping. He stared, propped up on his scrawny arms. Caleb told himself it was only a dream, but he knew better. He finally called out.
The Pharos Objective mi-1 Page 17
