Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  Then I recalled what others had named the medallion since I’d won it. A key. I tried sliding the disc into the crack but it was slightly convex and its swell wouldn’t fit.

  I looked back down. Now Silano and Bin Sadr were climbing as well.

  So I reversed the pendant, easing in the linked arms. They stuck, I jiggled, they moved in farther…

  Suddenly there was a click. As if pulled by a string, the medallion arms jerked deeper into the stone, the disc breaking off and bouncing down the blocks toward Silano. There was the creak and groan of stone upon stone. The men below us were shouting.

  The stone had suddenly become weightless, lifted a fraction of an inch off the rock below. I pushed, and now it rotated in and up as if it were made of down, revealing a dark shaft that sloped downward at the same precarious angle of the descending corridor I’d explored with Napoleon. A ten-thousand-pound block of stone had become a feather. The key had disappeared into the rock as if swallowed.

  We’d found the secret. Where was Astiza?

  “Ethan!”

  I whirled. She’d climbed down the precipitous slope to nab the disc. Silano’s hand had closed on her cloak. She wrenched free, leaving him holding cloth, and scrambled back upward. I pulled out Ash’s sword and leaped down to help. Silano pulled out a new rapier of his own, eyes gleaming.

  “Shoot him!” Bin Sadr shouted.

  “No. This time he has no trick with his rifle. He’s mine.”

  I decided to forego finesse for brute desperation. Even as his blade whickered through the air toward my torso, I yelled like a Viking and cleaved down as if I were chopping wood. I was a course higher than him, giving me a two-foot height advantage, and was so quick he was forced to parry instead of thrust. Steel rang on steel and his blade bent under my blow, not breaking but twisting against his wrist. It was still sore, I gambled, from when my rifle exploded. He turned to save his grip but the move cost him his balance. Cursing, he lurched and collided with some of the other brigands. The lot of them went spilling down, clutching at the rock to arrest their bumpy fall. I threw the sword like a spear, hoping to stick Bin Sadr, but he ducked and another villain took the point instead, howling as he tumbled.

  Now Bin Sadr charged up at me, a deadly point jutting from the end of his snake-headed staff. He thrust. I dodged, but not quite quick enough. The blade, sharp as a razor, shallowly sliced my shoulder. Before he could twist to cut deeper, a stone hit him in the face. Astiza, her hair wild as a Medusa, was hurling down broken pieces of pyramid.

  Bin Sadr was sore too, wielding the staff with one arm because of his bullet wound, and I sensed a chance to truly unsettle him. I grabbed the snake shaft, hauling upward, even as he desperately pulled it back, blinking against Astiza’s bombardment of rocks. I relaxed my grip for a moment and he tilted dangerously backward, unbalanced. Then I jerked again and he lost the staff entirely and fell, bouncing down several courses of stones. His face was bloody, his precious staff mine. For the first time I saw a flicker of fear.

  “Give it back!”

  “It’s firewood, bastard.”

  Astiza and I retreated to the hole we’d made, our only refuge, and crawled inside. Bracing ourselves against the walls of the shaft so we wouldn’t slide, we reached up and pulled at the entrance stone. Bin Sadr was scrambling up toward us like a madman, howling with rage. The block came down as easily as it had risen, but as it swung it retrieved its own weight, gaining momentum, and it slammed shut in the villain’s face with a boom like a great boulder. In an instant we were plunged into darkness.

  We could hear faint howls of frustration as the Arabs pounded on the stone door from the outside. Then Silano called out, in rage and determination, “Gunpowder!”

  We might not have much time.

  It was black as a bowel until Astiza struck something on the sides of the shaft and I saw the glint of sparks. She lit the candle she’d taken from Napoleon’s table. So dark was it that the shaft seemed to flare from this feeble light. I blinked, breathing hard, trying to collect myself for the next step. There was an alcove next to the entrance, I saw, and in it, jutting up to and connected by a hinged arm to the stone door we’d come through, was a shaft of glittering gold. The shaft was a stunning thing, at least two inches thick, the gold probably sheathing some base material from corrosion or rot. It seemed to be a mechanism to take up the weight of the stone door, moving up and down like a piston. There was a socket where it connected, and a long well that it descended through. I had no idea how it worked.

  I tried tugging the door. It was wedged like a cork, once more impossibly heavy. Retreat seemed impossible. We were temporarily safe and permanently trapped. Then I noticed a detail I hadn’t observed before. Ranked along the shaft wall, like a stand of arms, were dry brushwood torches, mummified by desiccation.

  Someone wanted us to find our way to the bottom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Once more the shaft seemed designed for the gliding of souls rather than the clambering of men. We half-slid, half-jammed our way down its slope. Why were there no steps? Had some kind of carts or sleds once ascended or descended here? Had the builders never expected to come this way? Or had these shafts been built for creatures or transport that we couldn’t imagine? In the first thirty meters we passed three voids in the shaft’s ceiling. When I lifted my torch I could see blocks of dark granite, suspended above. What were these ceiling pockets for?

  We continued our descent. At length the man-made blocks gave way to walls of slick limestone, still perfectly straight and dressed. We’d passed beneath the pyramid proper and entered the bedrock of the limestone plateau it was built on. Down we went, deeper into the earth’s bowels, far below the descending passage I’d explored with Jomard and Napoleon. The passage began to twist. A hint of air left a curl of torch smoke behind us. The smell was dusty rock.

  Suddenly the passageway leveled to a tunnel so low we had to crawl on hands and knees. Then it opened up. When we stood and lifted the torch, we found ourselves in a limestone cavern. A worn channel showed where water had once run. High above were the stumps of stalactites. While the ceiling was made by nature, the walls had been chiseled smooth and covered with hieroglyphs and inscribed drawings. Once again, we couldn’t read a word. The carvings were of squat, snarling creatures that obstructed twisting passageways filled with tongues of fire and drowning pools.

  “The underworld,” Astiza whispered.

  Standing like reassuring and protective sentinels along the wall were statues of gods and pharaohs, the faces proud, the eyes serene, the lips thick, the muscles powerful. Carved cobras marked the doorways. A line of baboons made a crown molding near the stone roof. A statue of ibis-headed Thoth stood near the far doorway, his beak poised like the reed pen he held, his left hand holding a scale to weigh the human heart.

  “My god, what is this place?” I murmured.

  Astiza was tight to my side. It was cool in the cave, and she shivered in her diaphanous rags. “I think this is the real tomb. Not that bare room in the pyramid you described to me. The legends of Herodotus, that the true burial chamber is under the pyramid, may be true.”

  I put my arm around her. “Then why build a whole mountain atop it?”

  “To hide it, to mark it, to seal, to mislead,” she theorized. “This was a way to keep the tomb forever hidden, or to hide something else within it. Alternately, maybe the ancients always wanted to be able to find where the cave was by marking it with something so huge it could never be lost: the Great Pyramid.”

  “Because the cave was the real resting place of the pharaoh?”

  “Or something even more important.”

  I looked at the ibis-headed statue. “You mean the prize everyone wants, this magical, all-knowing Book of Thoth.”

  “This may be where we find it, I think.”

  I laughed. “Then all we have to do is find our way back out!”

  She looked at the ceiling. “Do you think the ancients hollowed
this space out?”

  “No. Our geologist Dolomieu said limestone gets carved by flowing water, and we know the Nile is close by. Sometime in the past, the river or a tributary probably flowed through this plateau. It may be sieved like a honeycomb. When the Egyptians discovered this, they had an ideal hiding place—but only if it could be kept secret. I think you’re right. Build a pyramid and everyone looks at it, not what’s underneath.”

  She held my arm. “Perhaps the pyramid shafts Bonaparte explored were simply to convince the ordinary workers and architects that Pharaoh would be buried up there.”

  “Then some other group built the shaft we just came through and carved this writing. And they came down here and returned, right?” I tried to sound confident.

  Astiza pointed. “No, they did not.”

  And ahead in the gloom, just past the feet of Thoth, I saw a carpet of bones and skulls, filling the cave from one side to the other. Death grins and blank sockets. With dread, we walked to inspect them. There were hundreds of human bodies, laid in neat rows. I saw no mark of weapons on their remains.

  “Slaves and priests,” she said, “poisoned, or with their throats slit, so they couldn’t carry secrets out. This tomb was their last work.”

  I toed a skull. “Let’s not make it ours. Come. I smell water.”

  We picked our way across the bone chamber as best we could, the dead rattling, and passed to another cave chamber with a pit in the middle. Here a ledge skirted the pit, and when we gingerly looked down it, our torchlight caught the reflection of water. It was a well. Rising out of the well and into a narrow hole in the ceiling was a golden shaft identical to the one I’d seen when we entered the pyramid. Was it the same? The cave could have twisted to lead us directly under the secret door, so that this shaft was the one that controlled the weight of the block we had entered past.

  I reached out and touched the shaft. It rocked gently up and down as if floating. I looked more carefully. Down in the well, the shaft stuck straight up from a floating golden ball the diameter of a man. The shaft would push up or drop down depending on the level of the water. On the side of the well was a chiseled water gauge. I grasped the cool, slick coating of the shaft and pushed. The ball bobbed. “Old Ben Franklin would have loved to guess what this is.”

  “The markings are similar to those on Nile meters used to measure the rise of the river,” Astiza said. “The higher the rise, the richer that year’s crops, and the greater the tax assessment the pharaoh would impose. But why measure down here?”

  I could hear running water somewhere ahead. “Because this is connected to an underground branch of the Nile,” I guessed. “As the river floods, this well would rise, and with it the shaft.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it’s a seasonal gate,” I reasoned. “A lock that is timed. Remember how the calendar pointed to Aquarius and today’s date, October 21? Whoever created the stone door that we came through designed it so it could only be opened at the time of maximum flooding, by someone who understood the secret of the medallion. As the river rises, it lifts that globe, pushing this shaft upward. It must lift a mechanism above which can hold the weight of the stone block so that, with the medallion key, it can be opened. In the dry season this cavern is locked tight.”

  “But why must we enter only when the Nile is high?”

  I jiggled the shaft uneasily. “Good question.”

  We went on. The cave snaked so that I no longer knew what direction we were heading. Our first torches burned to stubs and we lit the next. I’m not a man afraid of tight spaces, but I felt buried down here. Underworld of Osiris indeed! And then we came to a large room that dwarfed any we’d seen so far, an underground chamber so large that our torchlight could not illuminate the far side. Instead, it made a path on dark water.

  We stood on the shore of an underground lake, opaque and still, roofed by stone. In its middle was a small island. A marble pavilion, just four pillars and a roof, occupied its center. Heaped about its periphery were chests, statues, and shoals of smaller things that even at this distance gleamed and sparkled.

  “Treasure.” I tried to say it casually, but it came out as a croak.

  “It’s as Herodotus described,” Astiza breathed, as if she still did not quite believe it herself. “The lake, the island—this is Pharoah’s real resting place. Undiscovered, never robbed. What a gift to see this!”

  “We’re rich,” I added, my state of spiritual enlightenment not quite a match for commonsense greed. I’m not proud of my commercial instincts, but by heaven I’d been through hell the last few months and a little money would be just compensation. I was as transfixed by the valuables as I’d been by the riches in the hold of L’Orient. Their value to history didn’t occur to me. I just wanted to get at the loot, bundle it up, and somehow sneak out of this sepulcher and past the French army.

  Astiza squeezed my hand. “This is what the legends have been hinting at, Ethan. Eternal knowledge, so powerful that it had to be hidden until men and women were wise enough to use it. In that small temple, I suspect, we’ll find it.”

  “Find what?” I was transfixed by the glint of gold.

  “The Book of Thoth. The core truth of existence.”

  “Ah, yes. And are we ready for its answers?”

  “We must safeguard it from heretics like the Egyptian Rite until we are.”

  I touched the water with my boot. “Too bad we don’t have a spell to walk on water, because it looks like a cold swim.”

  “No, look. There’s a boat to take Pharaoh to the sky.”

  Sitting beside the lake on a stone cradle, pretty as a schooner, was a narrow and graceful white boat with the high prow and stern of the type I’d seen in temple wall paintings. It was just big enough to float the two of us, and had a gilded oar to scull with. And why hadn’t it rotted? Because it was not built of wood at all, but rather of hollowed alabaster with ribs and thwarts of gold. The polished stone was translucent, its texture velvet.

  “Will rock float?”

  “A thin pot will,” she said. Handling the craft carefully, the two of us dragged it down to the opaque water. Ripples fanned out across a lake as smooth as a mirror.

  “Do you think anything lives in this water?” I asked uneasily.

  She climbed aboard. “I’ll tell you when we get to the other side.”

  I boarded, the boat delicate as glass, and pushed off with Bin Sadr’s staff. Then we glided toward the island, sculling and looking over the side for monsters.

  It was not far—the temple was even smaller than I would have guessed. We grounded and got out to gape at a pharaoh’s horde. There was a golden chariot with silver spears, polished furniture set with ebony and jade, cedar chests, jeweled armor, dog-headed gods, and jars of oil and spices. The hummock sparkled with precious gems like emeralds and rubies. There was turquoise, feldspar, jasper, cornelian, malachite, amber, coral, and lapis lazuli. There was a red granite sarcophagus, solid as a bunker, with a rock lid too heavy to lift without a dozen men. Was anyone inside? I’d little interest in finding out. The idea of grubbing into a pharaoh’s grave didn’t appeal to me. Helping myself to treasure did.

  Yet Astiza had eyes for none of this. She barely glanced at the spectacular jewelry, dazzling robes, canopic jars, or golden plate. Instead, as if in a trance, she walked up a path sheathed in silver toward the little temple, its pillars carved with baboon-headed Thoths. I followed.

  There was a marble table under the marble roof. On it was a red granite box, open on one side, and inside this a golden cube with golden doors. All this for a book or, more accurately, rolls of parchment? I pulled the small door handle. It opened as if oiled.

  I reached inside…

  And found nothing.

  I felt with my hand in all directions and touched only slick gold lining. I snorted. “So much for wisdom.”

  “It’s not there?”

  “The Egyptians had no more answers than we do. It’s all a myth, Astiz
a.”

  She was stunned. “Then why this temple? Why this box? Why those legends?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe the library was the easy part. It was the book they never got around to writing.”

  She looked around suspiciously. “No. It’s been stolen.”

  “I think it was never here.”

  She shook her head. “No. They would not have built that granite-and-gold vault for nothing. Somebody’s been here before. Somebody high-ranking, with the knowledge of how to enter this place and yet the rage and pride not to respect the pyramid.”

  “And not take all this gold?”

  “This prophet didn’t care for gold. He was interested in the next world, not this one. Beside, gold is dross compared to the power of this book.”

  “A book of magic.”

  “Of power, wisdom, grace, serenity. A book of death and rebirth. A book of happiness. A book that inspired Egypt to become the world’s greatest nation, and then inspired another people to influence the world.”

  “What other people? Who took it?”

  She pointed. “He left his identity behind.”

  There, propped in one corner of the marble temple, was a shepherd’s crook, or staff. It had the practically curved end to snare a sheep’s neck. Its wood seemed marvelously preserved, and unlike a normal crook it was remarkable in its polish and tasteful carving, with a winged angel at the curved end and the blunt head of a serpent at the other. Midway down were two golden cherubim with wings extended to each other, a bracket holding them to the staff. Yet it was still a modest object in the midst of a pharaoh’s horde.

  “What the devil is that?”

  “The rod of the most famous magician in history,” Astiza said.

  “Magician?”

  “The prince of Egypt who became a liberator.”

  I stared at her. “You’re saying Moses was down here?”

  “Doesn’t that make sense?”

  “No. It’s impossible.”

  “Is it? A fugitive criminal, spoken to by God, comes out of the desert with the extraordinary demand to lead Hebrew slaves to freedom, and suddenly he has the power to work miracles—a skill he’s never shown before?”