Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  “Power given by God.”

  “Really? Or by the gods, under the guise of the one great God?”

  “He was fighting the Egyptian gods, the false idols.”

  “Ethan, it was men fighting with men.”

  She sounded like a bloody French revolutionary. Or Ben Franklin.

  “The savior of his people did not just take the enslaved Hebrews and destroy Pharaoh’s army,” Astiza went on. “He took the most powerful talisman in all the world, so mighty that migrant slaves had the power to conquer the Promised Land.”

  “A book.”

  “A repository of wisdom. Recipes of power. When the Jews reached their Promised Land their armies swept all before them. Moses found food, healed the sick, and struck down the blasphemers. He lived past a normal span. Something kept the Hebrews alive in a wilderness for forty years. It was this book.”

  Once more I tried to remember the old Bible stories. Moses had been a Hebrew slave baby rescued by a princess, raised as a prince, who killed a slave overseer in a fit of rage. He fled, came back decades later, and when Pharaoh refused to let his people go, Moses called down ten plagues upon Egypt. When Pharaoh lost his oldest son in the tenth and worst calamity, he gave up at last, releasing the Hebrew slaves from bondage. And that should have been the end of it except Pharaoh changed his mind yet again and chased Moses and the Hebrews with six hundred chariots. Why? Because he discovered that Moses had taken more than just the enslaved Hebrews. He had taken the core of Egypt’s power, its greatest secret, its most feared possession. He had taken it and…

  Parted the sea.

  Had they carried this book of power to Solomon’s temple, supposedly raised by the ancestors of my Freemasons?

  “This can’t be. How could he get in here and back out?”

  “He came to Pharaoh shortly before the Nile was at its height,” Astiza said. “Don’t you see, Ethan? Moses had been an Egyptian prince. He knew sacred secrets. He knew how to get in here and back out, something no one else had dared. That year Egypt lost not just a nation of slaves, a pharaoh, and an army. It lost its heart, its soul, its wisdom. Its essence was taken by a nomadic tribe that after forty years transported it…”

  “To Israel.” I sat on the empty pedestal, my mind reeling.

  “And Moses, thief as well as prophet, was never allowed by his own God to enter the Promised Land. Maybe he felt guilt at unleashing what was meant to remain hidden.”

  I stared at nothing. This book, or scroll, had been missing for three thousand years. And here were Silano and me, chasing an empty vault.

  “We’ve been looking in the wrong place.”

  “It may have become part of the Ark of the Covenant,” she said excitedly, “like the tablets of the Ten Commandments. The same knowledge and power that had raised the pyramids passed to the Jews, who rose from an obscure people to tribes whose traditions became the source of three great religions! It may have helped bring down the walls of Jericho!”

  My mind was tumbling over itself. Heresy! “But why would the Egyptians bury such a book?”

  “Because knowledge always carries risk as well as reward. It can be used for evil as well as good. Our legends say the secrets of Egypt came from across the sea, from a people forgotten even when the pyramids were raised, and that Thoth realized such knowledge had to be safeguarded. People are creatures of emotion, cleverer than they are wise. Maybe the Hebrews realized that too, since the book has disappeared. Perhaps they learned that to use the Book of Thoth was dangerous folly.”

  I didn’t believe any of it, of course. This mixture of gods was patent blasphemy. And I’m a modern man, a man of science, an American skeptic in the Franklin mold. And yet was there some divine force that worked through all the wonders of the world? Was there a chapter to humankind’s story that our revolutionary age had forgotten?

  And then there came an echoing boom, a long roll of thunder, stirring the air with distant wind. The rocky cavern quivered and rumbled. An explosion.

  Silano had found his gunpowder.

  As the sound reverberated through the subterranean chamber, I got up off the pedestal. “You didn’t answer my other question. How did Moses get back out?”

  She smiled. “Maybe he never closed the door that we entered, and got out the way he came in. Or, more likely, there is more than one entrance. The medallion suggests there is more than one shaft—one west and one east—and he closed the western door behind him but exited the east. Certainly the good news is that we know he did. We found our way in, Ethan. We’ll find our way out, too. First step is to get off this island.”

  “Not until I help myself.”

  “We have no time for that!”

  “A pittance of this treasure, and we can buy all the time in the world.”

  I had no proper sack or backpack. How can I describe the king’s ransom I tried to wear? I draped enough necklaces on my chest to give myself a backache and jammed on bracelets enough for a Babylonian whore. I belted gold around my waist, fastened anklets above my feet, and even took off Moses’ cherubim and jammed them in my drawers. Yet I barely scratched the treasure trove that lay under the Great Pyramid. Astiza, in contrast, touched nothing.

  “Stealing from the dead is no different than stealing from the living,” she warned.

  “Except that the dead don’t need it anymore,” I reasoned, torn between sheepishness at my own Western greed and the entrepreneurial instincts to not let a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip by. “When we’re outside we’ll need money to finish finding this book,” I reasoned. “For heaven’s sake, at least put a ring or two on your fingers.”

  “It’s bad luck. People die when they rob from tombs.”

  “It’s simply compensation for all we’ve been through.”

  “Ethan, I’m worried there is a curse.”

  “Savants don’t believe in curses, and Americans believe in opportunity when it is staring you in the face. I’m not going to leave until you take something for yourself.”

  So she put a ring on with all the pleasure of a slave slipping on its manacle. I knew she would come around to my way of thinking once we were out of this catacomb. That ring alone, with a ruby the size of a cherry, was a life’s income. We jumped in the boat and quickly sculled to the main shore. Once on the ground we felt shudders in the grand structure above, and a continued creaking and groaning as an aftereffect of the explosion. I hoped that fool Silano hadn’t used so much gunpowder that he’d bring the ceiling down.

  “We have to assume Bin Sadr and his assassins are going to be coming in the same way we did, if that keg of gunpowder worked,” I said. “But if the medallion showed a V with two shafts, the other path out must be the eastern shaft. With luck we can pop out that way, shut the eastern door, and be well on our way before the villains figure out where we’ve gone.”

  “They’ll be transfixed by the treasure too,” Astiza predicted.

  “So much the better.”

  The disquieting grinding continued, accompanied by a hiss, like a cascade of falling sand. Had the explosion triggered some kind of ancient mechanism? The building felt alive, and disapproving. I could hear distant shouts as Silano’s henchmen descended toward us.

  Still holding Bin Sadr’s staff, I led Astiza to a portal on the eastern end of the lake. It had two tunnels, one going down and another up. We took the upper course. Sure enough, it soon led to an ascending shaft opposite the one we’d come down. This shaft rose at the same angle, aimed for the pyramid’s eastern face. Yet the higher we climbed, the louder the hiss and groan.

  “The air is feeling heavier,” I said worriedly.

  Soon we saw why. The overhead voids I’d noticed in the western shaft were repeated here, and from the mouth of each one a granite plug was descending like a dark molar from a stone gum. They were steadily sliding down to seal the passage and any escape. A second was coming down behind the first, and a third beyond that. Sand, somewhere in the pyramid’s workings, must have worked
as a counterweight to balance these stones in place. Now, with Silano’s disturbance, it had been triggered to leak away. No doubt the portals were closing on the tunnel we’d entered through, as well. We might be trapped down here with Bin Sadr’s gang.

  “Hurry! Maybe we can slip beneath before they shut!” I started to wriggle forward.

  Astiza grabbed me. “No! You’ll be crushed!”

  Even as I struggled against her grasp I knew she was right. I might make it past the nearest, and even the one beyond that. But the third would surely crush me, or more likely trap me for all eternity between it and its brother behind.

  “There has to be another way,” I said with more hope than conviction.

  “The medallion showed only two shafts.” She dragged me backward with my necklaces like a dog on its collar. “I told you all this was bad luck.”

  “No. There’s that descending tunnel we haven’t followed. They wouldn’t just cork this off for all time.”

  We hurriedly descended back the way we came, coming out again to the underground lake with its island. As we neared we saw a glow of light and soon confirmed the worst. Several Arabs were on the isle of gold and silver, shouting with the same glee I’d felt, wrestling for the best pieces. Then they spotted our torches. “The American!” Bin Sadr cried, his words echoing across the water. “The man who kills him gets a double share! Another double for giving me the woman!”

  Where was Silano?

  I couldn’t help but wave his staff at the bastard, like a cape at a bull.

  Bin Sadr and two of the men leaped into the little alabaster boat, almost capsizing it but also sending it skittering toward us with their momentum. The other three leaped into the cold water and began swimming.

  With no other choice, we ran down the descending tunnel. It too seemed to lead vaguely east, but deeper into the limestone bedrock. I dreaded a dead end, like the descending corridor we’d seen with Napoleon. Yet now another sound was growing, the deep, throaty roar of a running underground river.

  Maybe that was the way out!

  We came to a scene out of Dante. The tunnel ended on a stone landing that jutted into a new cave chamber, this one faintly lit by a lurid red glow. The source of the illumination was a pit so deep and foggy that I couldn’t make out its bottom, even though a glow like banked coals seemed to be coming from its depths. It was an unworldly light, dim yet pulsing, like a navel of Hades. Rock scree and sand sloped down the pit’s sides toward the light. Something mysterious was moving down there, ponderous and thick. A stone bridge, cracked, pockmarked, and without railings, arched across the pit. It was enameled blue and covered with yellow stars, like an upside-down temple roof. Slip from its course, and you’d never get back out.

  At the far end of this chamber the bridge ended on a broad set of wet, glistening, granite stairs. A spilling sheet of water ran down them and into the pit, possibly the source of the swirling steam. It was from the direction of the stairs that I heard the roar of a river. While impossible to see, I guessed there was an underground diversion of the Nile there, running in a channel across the far side of the chamber like an irrigation canal. The channel must be at the top of the wet stairway, higher than the platform on which we stood, and was so brimming with water that some was spilling over.

  “That’s our exit,” I said. “All we have to do is get there first.” I could hear the Arabs coming behind as I trotted out on the bridge.

  Suddenly a block bearing one of the inscribed stars gave way and my leg plunged down into the gap, almost toppling me off the archway and into the pit. Only with luck did I catch the edge of the bridge and regain my footing. The archway block made a bang when it hit, far below. I looked down into the reddish fog. What was writhing down there?

  “By the timber of Ticonderoga, I think there are snakes down there,” I said shakily, pulling myself up and retreating. At the same time I could hear the shouts of the approaching Arabs.

  “It’s a test, Ethan, to punish those who enter without knowledge. There’s something wrong with this bridge.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Why would they paint the sky on the bridge deck? Because the world is upside down here, because…the medallion disc! Where is it?”

  After Astiza had retrieved it from its fall down the face of the pyramid, I’d tucked it into my robes. Souvenir, after all this trouble. Now I pulled it out and gave it to her.

  “Look,” she said, “the constellation Draco. It’s not just the north star, Ethan. It makes a pattern we have to follow.” And before I could suggest we consider the matter, she hopped past me onto a particular stone in the archway. “Only touch the stars that are in the constellation!”

  “Wait! What if you’re wrong?”

  There was the boom of a musket and a bullet whined into the chamber, bouncing off the rock walls. Bin Sadr was coming at full charge.

  “What choice do we have?”

  I followed Astiza, using Bin Sadr’s staff for balance.

  We’d barely started when the Arabs came boiling out of the tunnel and stopped at the lip of the pit as we had, awed by the peculiar menace of this place. Then one of them rushed forward. “I’ve got the woman!” But he’d gone only yards when another star block gave way and he fell in surprise, not as lucky as me. He struck the bridge with his torso, bounced, screamed, scrabbled at the lip of the arch with his fingers, and fell, striking the side of the pit and sliding down into the gloom in a tumble of rock. The Arabs moved to the lip of the ledge to look. Something down there moved, quickly this time, and the victim’s scream was cut off.

  “Wait!” Bin Sadr said. “Don’t shoot them! See? We must step where they do!” He was watching me as carefully as I watched Astiza. Then he leaped, landing where I had. The bridge held firm. “Follow me!”

  It was a bizarre, mincing dance, all of us mimicking the hops of the woman. Another Arab missed and fell shrieking as still another block gave way, transfixing us all for a moment. “No, no, that one!” Bin Sadr shrieked, pointing. Then the deadly game commenced again.

  At the center of the span I couldn’t see a bottom at all. What kind of volcanic throat was this? Was it this navel that the pyramid had been built to seal?

  “Ethan, hurry,” Astiza begged. She was waiting for me to make sure I stepped on the right star stones, even though it gave Bin Sadr time to spy them as well. Then she was finally at the wet stairs, swaying from the tension, and I made a final leap, landing on the polestar. With a triumphant stride I made the granite stairs and turned, holding Bin Sadr’s snake staff in readiness to stab him. Maybe he’d make a mistake!

  But no, he came on implacably, eyes gleaming. “There’s nowhere left to run, American. If you give me my staff, I’ll save you to watch while we have the woman.”

  He was only steps away, his three surviving men bunched behind him. If they rushed me, it was over.

  The Arab stopped. “Are you going to surrender?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Then shoot him now,” Bin Sadr ordered. “I remember the last stars to touch.” Muskets and pistols began to be leveled.

  “Here then,” I offered.

  I threw the staff up in the air, high, but so he could catch it. His eyes widened, gleaming. Instinctively he stretched, leaned, snatched it with the quickness of a reptile, and in the course of doing so unthinkingly moved his left foot for balance.

  A keystone piece at the end of the bridge gave way.

  The Arabs froze, listening to it smash as it ricocheted into the pit below.

  Then there was a groan, a sound of rock splintering, and we looked down. The missing block had begun a disintegration. The bridge’s connection with the granite stairs was dissolving as blocks popped out, the untethered end beginning to dip remorselessly into the pit. Bin Sadr had made a fatal misstep. The Arab’s henchmen cried out and began to stampede back the way they had come. As they did, heedless of where their feet were, more stones gave way.

  Bin Sadr leaped for the we
t granite stairs.

  Had he let go of his staff, he might have made it, or at least gotten a hand on me and dragged me down with him. But he held his favorite weapon too long. His other arm was still wounded and weak, his hand slipped on the wet rock, and he began sliding down into the abyss, trying to hold both himself and his staff. Finally he let go the rod in time to grip a knob of stone to arrest his slide. The staff fell out of sight. He was dangling at the precipice, a skein of water streaming down past him to dissolve into steam, his legs kicking. Meanwhile his companions behind screeched in terror as the bridge rotated downward with a roar, collapsing toward hell, taking them with it. They plummeted, limbs flailing. I watched them disappear into the fog.

  Bin Sadr hung grimly, looking at Astiza with hatred. “I wish I’d butchered this whore like I did the one in Paris,” he hissed.

  I took out my tomahawk and crept down toward his fingers. “This is for Talma, Enoch, Minette, and every other innocent you’ll meet on the other side.” I lifted the hatchet.

  He spat at me. “I’ll wait for you there.” Then he let go.

  He plunged down the side of the pit, struck a steep slope of sand, and tumbled, soundless, into the dim red mist below. Small rocks rattled with him, tracing his slide. Then there was silence.

  “Is he dead?” Astiza whispered.

  It was so quiet that I feared he’d somehow find a way to climb back out. I peered over. Something was moving down there, but for a while we could hear nothing but the roar of the water at the top of the wet stairs. Then there came, faint at first, the sounds of a man beginning to scream.

  By this time I’d heard more than my share of screams, both in battle and among the wounded. There was something different about this sound, however, an unworldly scream of such absolute terror that my stomach clenched at whatever unseen thing or things were prompting it. The screams went on and on, rising in pitch, and I knew with grim certainty that it was the voice of Achmed bin Sadr. Despite my enmity for the man, I shuddered. He was experiencing the terror of the damned.