‘And how is it that you know so much about these supposedly secret brotherhoods?’ I had always suspected that my Lord Hamilton belonged to such an order himself, although of course he would not speak of it.
He smiled, and gave me his typical response. ‘Oh, I read.’
‘So our friend could have returned a sacred relic to this place, and then been trapped here?’ I suggested. ‘The question we should ask ourselves is how he became trapped.’ I looked back to the open exit in the distance.
‘Look here.’ Hamilton was down on his haunches inspecting the neck bones. ‘This man was beheaded…almost.’ The bone had held firm, but a mighty gash to the front of the neckbone revealed much. ‘The blow would certainly have been enough to kill him.’
‘Thank you for that insight, my love.’ I moved around the knight, and as my torchlight illuminated the huge room before me I caught my breath.
Continuing on from the entrance where we stood the red-gold path led through a round chamber, and at the far end was a large, golden arched door. In the centre of the room was a round platform, and two red pathways passed in opposite directions through it, forming a crossroads. Concentric rings, built in sandstone, radiated out from the central platform. The first ring from the centre formed an empty canal a few feet in depth. The next ring was wide and level with the height of the pathway: at each of its four quarters was an ornate pillar dedicated to a different Egyptian goddess. These mighty pillars supported the bulk of the domed ceiling, which sparkled like gold wherever the torchlight flickered upon it. The next ring was another canal, a little wider and deeper than the first. The final ring ran around the wall of the round chamber and was a plain stone pathway. Directly beside where we stood at the entrance, a large lever extended from the floor; we decided not to investigate its purpose just yet.
‘This has got to be the find of the millennium,’ Hamilton muttered under his breath as he gazed up at one of the four pillars. This particular one depicted Isis.
‘That’s probably what our knight friend thought,’ I commented as I passed my husband on my way to the central platform. ‘And yet, I feel sure he didn’t cut his own throat.’
‘No point in being alarmist, Mrs Hamilton.’ He followed me to the central platform to investigate what lay at the east and west ends of the red crossroads.
The chamber was so large that all we could make out from where we stood was that each path led to a darkened entrance, beyond which we could see nothing from this distance. One entrance was adorned with red pillars, the other with white.
‘Wait here,’ Hamilton instructed, heading off toward the red-pillared entrance. As he drew closer, I noticed the glyph for ‘fire’ inset above the doorway. As he passed into the small room beyond the pillared entrance, there was a cry of pain, but it was not my husband who cried out.
From the annexe emerged a dark spirit, moaning in unearthly agony. I gasped when I realised it was headed straight for me, whereupon it immediately changed course and followed the outer path around the wall toward the exit passage. When my fear ceased to drown out all my other senses, I realised I could hear footsteps and that it was no spectre I was viewing, but a human being wearing a long hooded black cloak. As the intruder escaped the chamber, I ran to see what had become of my husband.
‘Hamilton!’ I screamed, demanding a response if he could give it.
‘Don’t panic,’ he said, sounding preoccupied.
Through the red-pillared doorway was an annexe and there I found Hamilton inspecting an ornately decorated tablet inset in a plinth. ‘This appears to have held something of great spiritual import. “This Fire ignites the wisdom and strength of the Gods”,’ he read. ‘And see here…there is a small hollow which is obviously meant to hold something.’
‘That man was a thief, do you think?’ I asked. Then I noticed my husband’s arm was dripping blood. ‘Oh, my lord, you’re wounded!’
Hamilton explained that our surprise guest had wielded a sword to make a path to the door and had nicked my husband when he failed to move aside fast enough. He insisted that I not fuss, as it didn’t hurt.
‘Do you think he slipped in here before or after we entered?’ I queried, as Hamilton made for the central chamber.
‘Judging from his adverse reaction to the light of my torch, I’d say he’d been down here a while.’
‘How is it possible that anyone could survive in this place when it has been buried for centuries?’ I appealed, practically running to keep pace with Hamilton as he made for the white-pillared doorway.
‘I wish I knew,’ he replied as we approached the white annexe, above which was inset the glyph for ‘star’.
Inside the small room, inserted in the hollow in the top of another ornately decorated plinth and tablet was a small vial of unique beauty. It was filled with a fine white substance, much like the powder we’d used to get the exterior door open. The longer we stood staring at the treasure in the torchlight the brighter the substance inside seemed to glow.
Hamilton leant down to translate the glyphs on the tablet: ‘From this Star flows the eternal powers of the goddess’. Hamilton stood and reached for the vial, but it would not release from the stone tablet in which it was imbedded. ‘There must be a trick to it.’ He looked to the door, torn as to what to do next. ‘I should go after him.’
‘No, please…’ I urged my husband against it. ‘You have no weapon and what happens to me if you are killed? No find is worth our lives.’
‘He has no transport out of here.’ Hamilton was horrified, and he ran to prevent our unexpected company from stealing our lifeline back to civilisation—and our water.
I ran after Hamilton for part of the way, and felt some reassurance when he retrieved the sword from the dead warrior at the entrance to the tunnel. ‘Stay with the Star,’ he suggested more than ordered.
‘Be careful,’ I begged as Hamilton disappeared up the tunnel and out of my sight. ‘I’ll just hope that there aren’t any more nasty surprises down here,’ I added quietly.
The huge central chamber felt rather ominous without my husband’s presence and I moved back toward the white-pillared annexe to watch over the Star as requested.
I wonder what triggers the release of the vial? Now, there was something useful I could do. I smiled when I thought of the lever and hurried back to the tunnel entrance to see if I could shift it.
The lever only went one way, down, and when I shifted it into position, the sound of running liquid reached my ears. I moved quickly to see clear liquid pouring into the empty canals via holes that sat below the level of the walkways. My heart leapt for joy, thinking the liquid was water. When I reached down to dip my hand into the flow, the liquid felt oily and smelt nearly as bad as the insect oil used in our torches. I hurried back to the lever and raised it, and the liquid ceased to flow.
Disappointed, I wandered back to the white annexe to take another look at the Star vial.
As I stood wondering why the vial wouldn’t release, I touched it and it floated up into my grasp. I chuckled, rather pleased with myself, until I heard the rising hum of a swarm of insects. It sounded rather like locusts, but as the din intensified I realised it was not an airborne swarm: the sound was more like a scratchy scampering. ‘Scarabs!’ My heart filled with dread as I approached the annexe opening and saw masses of beetles swarming into the canals. I could have attempted a dash to the tunnel, but at the rate the canals were filling I wouldn’t make it past the crossroads.
‘That’s what the liquid is for!’ I threw my arms up, frustrated that I’d solved the puzzle too late. I tried placing the Star vial back in its setting, but that didn’t stop the advancing army of bugs. When the beetles began to overflow onto the red pathway I climbed up on the tablet’s plinth.
To my great surprise the beetles did not enter the annexe, but continued to pile up beyond the doorway. Maybe they couldn’t sense me if I wasn’t standing on the ground? I lowered a foot to the floor, but still no reaction.
‘Clarissa!’ Hamilton rarely called me by my first name—he was fearful for me indeed, and I him.
‘Hamilton! The lever!’ I cried and ran to the door, from where I could see Hamilton wielding his torch around his feet.
‘The locals are right about this repellent. It does keep the bugs at bay,’ he joked, having shuffled his way to the lever.
Just the sound of the mechanism being thrown was enough to send the beetles into an even wilder frenzy.
‘I suspect the liquid is—’ Before I could say ‘flammable’, my husband had lowered his torch to meet with the liquid pouring into the outer canal and fire erupted all through the canals in the central chamber. Seemingly blinded by their own fear, the scarabs fed themselves to the flame in their panic to escape it. The next thing I knew, Hamilton was running down the red path, between the walls of fire, toward me.
As soon as he reached me, my husband hugged me for dear life.
‘I’m fine,’ I assured him, holding up the Star vial. ‘I got it out.’
‘So I gathered.’ Hamilton glanced at the chamber, ablaze, beyond the annexe. ‘How much would you like to wager that we need the Fire vial to get the next chamber open?’
Sadly, I had to back his theory. ‘Time to depart then.’ I took hold of his hand, having had enough adventure for one day.
We decided to take the vial with us, in case the thief returned and stole it too. If fate would have it, perhaps we could track down the other vial and return both to this mount in the not-too-distant future? On the way out of the chamber, my husband returned the sword he’d borrowed from the dead knight and thanked him for the loan.
It wasn’t until we were outside once again that Hamilton hit me with the bad news; the thief had taken half of our supplies, and two of our camels. Our guides had packed the animals ready to depart this afternoon, so all the thief had to do was climb on and take off. The camels loaded with our supplies had been tied up to our riding camels.
I didn’t even ask Hamilton what we were going to do. I knew he intended to make the journey anyway. He saw himself as a bit superhuman and arguing would prove a waste of energy. Besides, what choice did we have but to try and make our way back to civilisation?
My husband joked briefly about sprinkling some of the levitating powder on a carpet and flying me home, only he had to confess that he could not think of how one would steer such a transport. Still, it was a good giggle in an otherwise very sobering moment.
The sun was low in the sky and we were considering leaving before dark to make the most of the cool night, when the most unusual sound met our ears—it was like metal buckling under great pressure. The sound emanated from the entrance we had opened that day, and before our very eyes the entrance to the tunnel was reconstituted into the metal door that had originally barred our entry.
‘Praise the heavens we got out by sunset.’ I realised how easily we could have been trapped, and the knowledge shocked me to the core.
‘Indeed,’ Hamilton agreed. ‘We should leave before our luck runs out and a sirocco blows up.’
‘Don’t even joke about it,’ I warned him, as the odds were against us surviving the journey as it was. Still, we had beaten the odds many times before.
As our two remaining camels carried us down Mt Serâbit, we had no idea that it would be the last time we would ever be permitted to return there. And although I suspected that the journey home would be taxing, I did not expect that it would cost me my life!
Anyone reading this journal must now be asking, ‘But how did Lady Hamilton pen this memoir if she perished on the journey home from Mt Serâbit?’ Since I have raised the question, perhaps you have guessed the answer. Nevertheless I will tell what I remember.
Two days short of the closest well, our water was all but gone and our camels were dehydrated. We’d kept the water for our own consumption, praying that the camels’ bodily stores would maintain them until we reached a water source. They were now too weary to carry us. We freed them of everything that was not essential to our journey home. Except for our tools, books, food, water, personal papers and a few little treasures, we left all our other possessions in the desert.
When the weaker of our two camels collapsed later that day, I pitied the animal and envied its release. Even under my umbrella, over which I had draped a long piece of fabric, the heat was relentless and I was burning to a crisp. My lips were so blistered that it was agony to wipe my tongue across them, and the whole of my body itched from the heat rash that was irritated by my tight clothes and perspiration. I had never felt so wretched and weak.
The first rule of desert travel is to never allow your mind to wander, as this is the first sign of submission to heat exhaustion. One day from water when I was seeing mirages everywhere, I knew I was fading, but I said nothing to Hamilton, who had taken less food and water than I had.
I recall reaching the point where I could not take another step. Dizziness overcame me and beyond that, I draw a blank.
Thus, I leave it to my husband, Lord Hereford, to recount what followed.
My wife was not dead when she collapsed, but I knew the reaper was not far afoot, for either of us.
I also knew that the well was only hours away—all I had to do was keep walking.
If I placed my wife on the camel, I knew it would collapse too. The only thing for it was to carry Clarissa. I wrapped her in the fabric that had been over her umbrella and bundled her up in my arms.
The first few steps were the hardest, but then my body seemed to resign itself to carrying the extra load. My throat was too parched to whistle or hum a tune, but I replayed symphonies in my head, told myself stories, and asked myself archaeological trivia questions. Anything to keep my mind active and stop it wandering.
As the sun hung low on the horizon, my pace had slowed considerably and, for the first time in my life, I doubted my ability to press on.
Then, by the blessing of all the gods, the camel began to pick up its pace and I knew the well must be near; this sign was enough to spur me on to our saving grace.
Despite my wretched state I don’t think I’ve ever drawn water faster. After gulping a few mouthfuls and splashing my face, I rushed to revive my wife, only to find that she had passed away in my arms en route.
No pulse, no breath and no spirit—Clarissa was an empty shell and the soul I loved so well had fled this wretched torment that I had led her into. My want of fame and prestige in my chosen field of endeavour had been the death of her, just as many had predicted it would be.
I thought the journey had extracted all the water from my body and yet I cried a river and wailed out my pain into the dark desert night. I cursed the gods for their cruelty in taking her from me when all I had ever done was to seek the truth on their behalf. And what had I to show for my loss?
Angry about what it had cost me, I pulled the Star vial from my pocket, looking about for a good rock to smash it against. The recollection of something my wife had asked me, back in what I now thought of as the Star-Fire Temple, stayed my hand.
But how is it possible that anyone could survive in this place when it has been buried for centuries before we found it?
I had suspected since I’d discovered the powder with strange gravity-defying properties, that it was the fabled Bread of Life, manna or ORME, also known as the Holy Grail. This substance was said to have major regenerative properties. But could it bring the dead back to life?
‘From this Star flows the eternal powers of the goddess,’ I muttered under my breath as I took up my wife’s dead body to administer some of the glowing, floating powder onto her tongue, and then closed her mouth. ‘Let us see just how eternal those powers are.’
Nothing happened and I feared that my love was lost forever. I leant forward and kissed her goodbye.
Clarissa’s body gave a great heave; she gasped for breath and opened her eyes. When she spotted me, she smiled. ‘We made it.’ She held a hand to my cheek, proud of me, and I lapsed into tears of relie
f and joy.
‘We did.’ I held her tightly, inwardly vowing that I would never again risk her life for my own professional vanity.
I was absolutely howling by the time I finished the account, my tears dripping on the handwritten text and smudging the ink. ‘Oh dear.’ I blotted tears from my eyes with one tissue and used another tissue on the book. When I was satisfied I’d blown the page dry, I closed the big green journal and pushed it aside.
Why was I so emotional? Well, besides the truly romantic tale, knowing that Albray’s bones lay in this mount had me feeling rather at odds. I’d been greatly upset to learn that he’d been almost beheaded, and if my knight’s claims proved true, it had been by the hand of my current employer. In Ashlee’s tale, Albray speculated that Hereford had released Molier from an imprisonment of some kind. Hereford’s tale certainly confirmed that he had let something or someone out of the Star-Fire Temple when he’d opened it, but had that entity been Molier?
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