Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  “There is more at stake here than you may realize, or have been told. The more I study, the more I fear, and the more I am convinced.”

  “Of what?”

  “Your medallion may be some kind of clue or key to open a sacred door to a long-hidden vault. The pendant has been sought and fought over for millennia, and then, its purpose undeciphered, probably lay forgotten on Malta until Cagliostro learned of it in his studies here and sought it out. It curses the unworthy and drives them mad. It taunts the brilliant. It has become a riddle. It is a key with no lock, a map to no destination. None remember what it relates to. It has baffled even me.”

  “So perhaps it is useless,” I said with a mixture of hope and regret.

  “Or, its time has at last come. Silano wouldn’t have followed you here after his own studies if he didn’t have real expectation.”

  “To find treasure?”

  “If only it were that. There is treasure, and then there is power. I don’t know which truly motivates this mysterious European and his so-called Egyptian Rite, but were Silano to ever find what so many have sought, he would have not only immortal life and wealth unimaginable, but access to secrets that could undo the very warp and weave of the world. The right man might build with them. The wrong…”

  “What secrets? What the devil are all you people really after?”

  Enoch sighed, considering what to say. Finally he spoke. “The Book of Thoth.”

  “The book of what?”

  “Thoth is the Egyptian god of wisdom and knowledge,” Astiza said. “Your English word ‘thought’ comes from his name. He is the thrice great, the one the Greeks called Hermes. When Egypt began, Thoth was there.”

  “The origins of our nation are mysterious,” Enoch said. “No history exists. But Egypt came before all. Instead of legends of a gradual awakening, our civilization seems to have sprung from the sand wholly formed. There is no precedent, and then suddenly kingdoms emerge with all the necessary arts. Where did knowledge come from? We attribute this sudden birth to the wisdom of Thoth.”

  “It was he who invented writing, drawing, surveying, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine,” Astiza explained. “From whence he came we don’t know, but he started all that has come since. To us he is like Prometheus, who brought fire, or Adam and Eve, who ate from the apple of knowledge. Yes, your Bible story suggests a similar great awakening, but recalls it with dread. We believe men were wiser in those days, and knew magical things. The world was cleaner and happier.” She pointed to a painting on the wall of Enoch’s library. It was of a man with the head of a bird.

  “That’s Thoth?” There’s something disturbing about people with the heads of animals. “Why a bird? They’re dumber than donkeys.”

  “It’s an ibis, and we Egyptians find the unity of humans and animals quite beautiful.” There was a certain frost in her tone. “He’s also portrayed as a baboon. Egyptians believed there were no sharp differences between humans and animals, man and god, life and death, creator and created. All are part of one. It is Thoth who presides when our hearts are weighed against a feather before a jury of the forty-two gods. We must proclaim the evil we did not commit, lest our soul be devoured by a crocodile.”

  “I see,” I said, even though I didn’t.

  “Sometimes he would roam the world to observe and would disguise his wisdom as he learned still more. Men called him ‘the Fool.’”

  “The Fool?”

  “The jester, the wit, the truth teller,” Enoch said. “He emerges again and again. The saying is that the fool shall seek the Fool.”

  Now I was really disturbed. Wasn’t that what the gypsy Sarylla had said in the French forest when she dealt the tarot cards? Had what I dismissed as vague nonsense actually been real prophecy? She had called me the fool, as well. “But why all the excitement about one more book?”

  “This is not another book, but the first book,” said Enoch. “And surely you agree that books can drive the world, be it the Bible, the Koran, the works of Isaac Newton, or the songs of the Iliad that inspired Alexander. At their best, they are a distillation of thought, wisdom, hope, and desire. The Book of Thoth is reputed to be forty-two papyrus scrolls, a mere sampling of the 36,535 scrolls—one hundred for each day of the solar year—on which Thoth inscribed his secret knowledge and hid around the earth, to be found only by the worthy when the time was right. On these scrolls is a summary of the deepest power of the masters who built the pyramids: Might. Love. Immortality. Joy. Revenge. Levitation. Invisibility. The ability to see the world as it truly is, rather than the dreamlike illusion we live in. There is some pattern that underlies our world, some invisible structure, which legend says can be manipulated to magical effect. The ancient Egyptians knew how to do so. We have forgotten.”

  “That’s why everyone is so desperate for this medallion?”

  “Yes. It may be a clue for a quest as old as history. What if people didn’t have to die, or could be revived if they did? For an individual, time alone would eventually allow the accumulation of knowledge that would make him master of all other men. For armies, it would mean indestructibility. What would an army be like that knew no fear? What would a tyrant be like who had no end? What if what we call magic was nothing more than ancient science, directed by a book brought by a being, or beings, so ancient and wise that we’ve lost all memory of who they were and why they came?”

  “Surely Bonaparte doesn’t expect…”

  “I don’t think the French know exactly what they seek or what it could do for them, or else they’d already be taking our nation apart. There are stories, and that is enough. What do they have to lose by seeking? Bonaparte is a manipulator. He has put you to work on the problem, and savants like Jomard, as well. Now Silano. But Silano is different, I suspect. He pretends to work for the French government, but really he uses their support to work for himself. He’s following Cagliostro’s footsteps, trying to see if the legends are real.”

  “But they aren’t,” I objected. “I mean, this is crazy. If this book exists, why don’t we see some sign of it? People have always died, even in ancient Egypt. They must, for society to renew, for young people to succeed the old. If they didn’t, people would go crazy with impatience. Natural death would be supplanted by murder.”

  “You have wisdom beyond your years!” Enoch cried. “And you have begun to understand why such powerful secrets were rarely used and must continue to sleep. The book exists, but remains dangerous. No mere mortal man can handle godlike power. Thoth knew his knowledge must be safeguarded until our moral and emotional advancement balanced our cleverness and ambition, so he hid his books somewhere. Yet the dream runs through all of history, and perhaps fragments of the writings have been learned. Alexander the Great came to Egypt, visited the oracle, and went on to conquer the world. Caesar and his family triumphed after he studied with Cleopatra here. The Arabs became the world’s most powerful civilization after overrunning Egypt. In the Middle Ages, the Christians came to the Holy Land. For the Crusades? Or for deeper, more secret reasons? Later, other Europeans began to roam the ancient places. Why? Some contended it was for Christian artifacts. Some cite the legend of the Holy Grail. But what if the grail is a metaphor for this book, a metaphor of ultimate wisdom itself? What if it stands for the most dangerous kind of Promethean fire? Have any of the battles you’ve witnessed so far convinced you we are ready for such knowledge? We’re barely more than animals. So our old order slowly wakened from its lethargy, fearing that graves long buried were about to be reopened, that a book of secrets long lost might be rediscovered. Yet we know not ourselves what, precisely, it is we are guarding! Now the godless magi have come with your Bonaparte.”

  “You mean the savants.”

  “And this conjurer, Silano.”

  “Do you want to destroy the medallion, then, so the book can’t be found?”

  “No,” said Ashraf. “It has been rediscovered for a reason. Your coming is a sign in itself, Ethan Gage. But thes
e secrets are for Egypt, not for France.”

  “We have our own spies,” Astiza went on. “Word came that an American was arriving with something that could be a key to the past, an artifact that had been lost for centuries and was a clue to powers lost for millennia. They warned it would be best just to kill you. But in Alexandria you killed my master instead, and I saw that Isis had another plan.”

  “Word came from whom?”

  She hesitated. “Gypsies.”

  “Gypsies!”

  “A band sent warning from France.”

  I sat back, rocked by this new revelation. By Jupiter and Jehovah, had I been betrayed by the Rom as well? Had Stefan and Sarylla been distracting me while word was sent ahead of my coming? What kind of string puppet was I? And were these people around me now, these people I liked and trusted, true informants who could lead me to a treasured book—or a nest of lunatics?

  “Who are you?”

  “The last priests of the old gods, who were earthly manifestations of a time and race with far more wisdom than ours,” Enoch said. “Their origins and purpose are lost in the fog of the past. We are our own kind of Masonry, if you will, the heirs of the beginning and the watchmen of the end. We are guardians not entirely certain of what it is we are guarding, but entrusted to keep this book out of the wrong hands. The old religions never completely die; they are simply absorbed into the new. Our task is to discover the door before unprincipled opportunists do—and then shut it again forever.”

  “What door?”

  “That is what we don’t know.”

  “And you want to shut it only after taking a peek.”

  “We cannot decide what best to do with the book until we find it. We should see if it offers hope or peril, redemption or damnation. But until we do find it, we live with the fear that someone else far less scrupulous could find it first.”

  I shook my head. “Between bungling my assassination in Alexandria and not having much more of a clue than I do, you’re not much of a priesthood,” I grouched.

  “The goddess does things in her own good time,” Astiza said serenely.

  “And Silano does his in his.” I looked grimly at our little gathering. “Isis didn’t help poor Talma, and she won’t protect us. I don’t think we’re safe here.”

  “My house is guarded…,” Enoch began.

  “And known. Your address is no longer a secret, that oil jar tells us. You must move, now. You think he won’t come knocking if he’s desperate enough?”

  “Move! I will not run from evil. I will not leave the books and artifacts I’ve spent a lifetime accumulating. My servants can protect me. And besides, trying to move my library would give any new hiding place away. My job is to keep researching, and yours to keep working with the savants, until we learn where this door is and secure it before Silano can enter. We are in a race for rediscovery. Let’s not lose it by fleeing now.” Enoch was glowering. Trying to send him into hiding would be like budging a barnacle.

  “Then at least we need a safe place for both Astiza and the medallion,” I argued. “It’s madness to keep it here now. And if I’m assaulted or killed, it’s imperative they not find the medallion on me. In fact, if I’m kidnapped, its absence might be the only thing to keep me alive. Astiza could be used as a hostage. Even Napoleon has noticed my, er, interest in her.” I kept my eyes averted while I said it. “Meanwhile, Bonaparte is about to lead a group of savants to the pyramids. Maybe in combination we’ll learn something to head Silano off.”

  “One cannot send a beautiful young woman off by herself,” said Enoch.

  “So where does one put a woman, in Egypt?”

  “A harem,” Ashraf suggested.

  I’ll confess that some erotic fantasies concerning that mysterious institution flickered through my mind. I had a vision of shallow bathing pools, fanning slaves, and half-draped, sex-starved women. Could I visit? But then, if Astiza went into a harem, could she get back out?

  “I’m not going to be locked in a seraglio,” Astiza said. “I belong to no man.”

  Well, you belong to me, I thought, but it didn’t seem the time to push the issue.

  “In a harem, no man except the master can enter, or even learn what goes on,” insisted Ashraf. “I know a nobleman who did not flee the French, Yusuf al-Beni, who has retained possession of his house and his household. He has a harem for his women and could give the priestess refuge. Not as a harem girl, but as a guest.”

  “Can Yusuf be trusted?”

  “He can be bought, I think.”

  “I don’t want to sit blinded from events, sewing with a bunch of silly women,” Astiza said. Damnation, she was independent. It was one of the things I liked about her.

  “Nor do you want to be dead or worse,” I replied. “Ashraf ’s idea is excellent. Hide there as a guest, with the medallion, while I go to the pyramids and Enoch and I solve this thing. Don’t go out. Don’t give the neckpiece any significance, should anyone in the harem see it. Our best hope is that Silano’s scheming may be his undoing. Bonaparte will see through it and realize the count wants these powers for himself, not for France.”

  “It’s just as risky to leave me alone,” Astiza said.

  “You won’t be alone, you’ll be with a bunch of silly women, as you said. Stay hidden and wait. I’ll find this Book of Thoth and come get you.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Napoleon’s visit to the pyramids was a grander excursion than the visit I’d made earlier with Talma and Jomard. More than a hundred officers, escorting soldiers, guides, servants, and scientists crossed the Nile and hiked up to the Giza plateau. It was like a holiday outing, a train of donkeys bearing French wives, mistresses, and a cornucopia of fruits, sweets, meats, and wine. Parasols were held in the sun. Carpets were spread on the sand. We would dine next to eternity.

  Conspicuous by his absence was Silano, who I was told was conducting his own investigations in Cairo. I was glad I’d tucked Astiza safely out of the way.

  As we trudged up the slope I reported Talma’s hideous death to Bonaparte, to gauge his reaction and plant doubt in his mind about my rival. Unfortunately, my news seemed to annoy our commander more than shock him. “The journalist had barely started my biography! He shouldn’t have wandered off before the country is pacified.”

  “My friend disappeared when Silano arrived, General. Is that coincidence? I fear the count may be involved. Or Bin Sadr, that Bedouin marauder.”

  “That marauder is our ally, Monsieur Gage. As is the count, an agent of Talleyrand himself. He assures me he knows nothing about Talma, and in any event he has no motive. Does he?”

  “He said he wanted the medallion.”

  “Which you said you lost. In a nation of a million restive natives, why do you suspect only the people who are on our side?”

  “But are they on our side?”

  “They are on my side! As you will be, when you begin to solve the mysteries we brought you here for! First you lose your medallion and calendar, and now you make accusations against our colleagues! Talma died! Men do in war!”

  “They don’t have their heads delivered in a jar.”

  “I have seen parts worse than that delivered. Listen. You saw the defeat of our fleet. Our success is imperiled. We are cut off from France. Rebel Mamelukes are gathering in the south. The population is not yet resigned to its new situation. Insurgents commit atrocities precisely to sow the kind of terror and confusion you’re exhibiting. Stand fast, Gage! You were brought to solve mysteries, not create them.”

  “General, I’m doing my best, but Talma’s head was clearly a message…”

  “A message that time is of the essence. I cannot afford sympathy, because sympathy is weakness, and any weakness on my part invites our destruction. Gage, I tolerated an American’s presence because I was told you might be useful in investigating the ancient Egyptians. Can you make sense of the pyramids or not?”

  “I am trying, General.”

  “Succeed. Beca
use the moment you are of no use to me, I can have you jailed.” He looked past me, the admonition given. “Ah. They are big, aren’t they?”

  The same awe that I’d felt on my initial visit was experienced by others as they came within view of the Sphinx and the pyramids behind. Customary chatter went silent as we clustered on the sand like ants, the depth of time palpable. Their shadows on the sand were as distinct as the pyramids themselves. It was not the ghosts of the long-vanished workmen and pharaohs I experienced, but rather the serene spirit of the structures themselves.

  Napoleon, however, scrutinized the monuments like a quartermaster. “As simple as a child might build, but they certainly have size. Look at that volume of stone, Monge! Building this big one here would be like marshalling an army. What are the dimensions, Jomard?”

  “We’re still digging, trying to find the base and the corners,” the officer replied. “The Great Pyramid is at least seven hundred and fifty feet on each side and more than four hundred and fifty feet high. The base covers thirteen acres, and while the building stones are huge, I calculate there are at least two and a half million of them. The volume is large enough to easily contain any of the cathedrals in Europe. It is the largest structure in the world.”

  “So much stone,” Napoleon murmured. He asked the dimensions of the other two pyramids as well and, using a Conte pencil, began jotting calculations of his own. He played with mathematics in the way other men might doodle. “Where do you think they got the stone, Dolomieu?” he asked as he worked.

  “Somewhere nearby,” the geologist replied. “Those blocks are limestone, the same as the bedrock of the plateau. That’s why they appear eroded. Limestone isn’t very hard, and wears easily from water. In fact, formations of limestone are frequently perforated with caves. We might expect caves here, but I must assume this plateau is solid, given the aridity. Reportedly there is also granite inside the pyramid, and that must have come from many miles away. I suspect the facing limestone also came from a separate quarry of finer rock.”