Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  “Apophis,” Astiza said. “The snake god of the underworld. He is meeting what he worshipped.”

  “That’s a myth.”

  “Is it?”

  After what seemed an eternity the screams sank to an insane gibbering. Then they stopped. We were alone.

  I was shivering from terror and cold. We hugged each other, all retreat impossible, the pit’s red glow our only light. Finally we started up the wet staircase, its waterfall smelling of the Nile. What underworld test would we face next? I didn’t have the energy—the will, as Napoleon would say—to go much farther.

  We reached a trough that ran across the top of the stairs. Nile water was racing from a pipelike opening in the cave wall to fill the stone canal to the brim, and then disappearing in another tunnel at the other end of the stairway. The current was pouring out with such force that there was no possibility of ascending it. Our only exit would be to go the direction the water was running, into a dark drain.

  There was no room, I saw, for air.

  “I don’t think Moses came this way.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Moses was an Egyptian prince who knew how this chamber was constructed,” Astiza said. “He didn’t trigger the granite plugs like foolish Silano. He left by one of the shafts.”

  “And at low water, this trough might be a possible escape route,” I said. “But at high water, the only time that door to the pyramid would open, it’s full to the brim. There’s no air. If you get in you have to use the correct exit to get out or it’s a trap.”

  “But why, then, a bridge that tests your knowledge of the constellation?” Astiza asked. “It must be possible to leave this way, but only for men who know its perils. Maybe this was a last resort for the architects, in case a mistake left them trapped. Perhaps it’s a test of faith that we can get out of here.”

  “You can’t be planning to try to ride this sewer to the Nile.”

  “Worse than waiting for a slow death in here?”

  She did have a way of getting to the heart of things. We could sit on the wet stairs for eternity, contemplating the broken bridge and the granite plugs high above, or take our chances in the sluiceway. Maybe Thoth had a sense of humor. Here I was, fugitive, the medallion used and broken, beaten to a fabled book by a desert prophet some three thousand years before, tired, sore, in love, and—if I could ever use the metal hanging on my body—fabulously wealthy. It’s a wonder what travel will do for you.

  “Suffocation is quicker than starvation,” I agreed.

  “You will drown if you don’t get rid of most of that treasure.”

  “Are you joking? If we’re supposed to jump into this sluiceway, maybe the ceiling opens up ahead. Maybe the outlet to the Nile isn’t that far away. I haven’t come this far to come away with nothing.”

  “And what do you call nothing?” Her smile was mischievous.

  “Well, except for you.” It seemed we were a couple; you can always tell when you start tripping over what you say. “I just meant it’s nice to have a financial start in the world.”

  “We have to save the world, first.”

  “Let’s start by saving ourselves.” I looked at the dark rushing water. “Before we try, I guess I’d better kiss you. Just in case it’s the last time.”

  “A sensible precaution.”

  So I did.

  She was so good at returning the favor that it gave me all kinds of ideas.

  “No.” She pushed my paws aside. “That will be your reward on the other side. Believe in me, Ethan.” And with that, she vaulted herself over the low wall, dropped with a splash into the water, pointed her feet downstream, and let go. In a flash she was where the ceiling touched the water. She took a last breath, dipped her head, and was gone.

  By the spurs of Paul Revere, the woman had pluck! And damned if I was going to stay in this tomb alone. So before I could philosophize about it further I plunged in myself—but instead of floating like a cork I sank to the bottom of the trough like a lead sinker.

  It was the treasure, you see.

  I was helpless as a rat in a pipe, or a bullet in a barrel. My hand reached up to scrape a wet ceiling, looking for air, and couldn’t touch it. I was bouncing along the bottom as if I’d tied on an anchor. Cursing my luck, or stupidity, I began clawing at golden pendants, emptying my pocket of precious gems, and shedding my arms of bracelets. Off came a belt worth a king’s ransom, an anklet I could buy a country estate with. Rings I dropped like bread crumbs. As I tugged each one off it was lost forever, or at least lost to the mud of the Nile or the belly of some crocodile. Yet with each frantic discard I became more buoyant. Soon I was off the bottom and slithering near the top of this insidious culvert, hands scraped raw, hoping against hope for a pocket of air as my lungs began to squeeze and burn. Don’t breathe! I silently screamed at myself. Just one moment more. And one moment more…

  And more.

  And still more as I thrashed to rid myself of wealth.

  The last treasure came off.

  My lungs burned, my ears felt close to bursting, and I was sightless in the dark.

  One thing I especially feared was colliding with the lifeless body of Astiza, which would have caused such despair that I’d suck the Nile into my lungs. Conversely, it was the thought of her waiting ahead that kept me determined to stick it out. Believe!

  I put my arm up one last desperate time, expecting to feel wet rock, and encountered…

  Nothing!

  My head burst the surface just as my breath burst from my mouth. Air! It was still pitch black but I gasped for a lungful. Then I collided with the ceiling again with a painful bang and was sucked further down the seemingly endless, relentless, underground pipe. Air, air, just one more lungful, lord, how I ached, I couldn’t take much more…and then I was weightless, pitched into nothing, the water falling away beneath me. I gasped in surprise and terror, tumbling as I fell, my stomach gone, before crashing into a dark pool. I came up sputtering, eyes blinking, seeing I was again in a limestone cavern. I could breathe! Even more amazing, I could faintly see. But how? Yes! There was light coming from the water at the far end of the cave, a glimmer of outside! I dove and kicked to swim with all my might.

  And surfaced at the edge of the Nile.

  There was Astiza, floating on her back, her dark hair in a fan, her wet clothes translucent, her body pale, in a shallow of papyrus reeds and lotus blossoms. Was she dead, drowned?

  She rolled and treaded water, looking at me with a smile.

  “You shed your greed, and the gods gave you air,” she teased.

  Trading breath for the wealth of Croesus. Thoth does have a sense of humor.

  We paddled into a shallow by some reeds, resting on the muddy bottom with just our heads above water, considering what to do next. Somehow the entire night had passed and it was just after dawn, the warming sun on our faces and a haze of smoke over Cairo. We heard the pops and bangs of skirmishing. The city was still in open revolt and Bonaparte was still determined to suppress it.

  “I think I’ve overstayed my welcome in Egypt, Astiza,” I wheezed.

  “The pyramid is locked and the Book of Thoth is gone. We can do no more here. But what was lost remains a potent weapon. I think we still need to learn its fate.”

  “Wasn’t it last seen with a fugitive Jew named Moses three thousand years ago? With no mention of it since?”

  “No mention? And yet Moses raised his arm to part the sea, healed the sick with a bronze snake, found food from the sky, and talked with God. Everyone knew he was a magician. How did he learn such powers? And was it solely the Ten Commandments the Hebrews carried in the Ark of the Covenant that won them their victories, or did they have another aid as well? Why did they spend forty years in the desert before invading their promised land? Perhaps they were mastering something.”

  “Or perhaps they had no magic at all and had to do things the old-fashioned way, by building an army.”

  “No. What is the book but
another source of the same knowledge you and the other scientists are seeking to uncover right now? That book could give the savants of any nation the knowledge to dominate the world. Do you think Silano and Bonaparte haven’t guessed that? Do you think they don’t dream of a sorcerer’s powers or an angel’s immortality?”

  “So you want us to spend forty years in the desert looking for it?”

  “Not the desert. You know where the book must be, just as the Romans and the Arabs and the Crusaders and the Templars and the Turks knew, and always looked: Jerusalem. That’s where Solomon built his temple, and where the Ark was kept.”

  “And we’re supposed to find what they could not? The temple was destroyed by the Babylonians and Romans three or four times over. This Ark, if not destroyed, high-tailed it into the wilderness. It’s as mythic as the Holy Grail.”

  “Yet we know what we are looking for. Not a grail, not a treasure, not an ark.”

  You know how women are. They grab an idea like a terrier and won’t let go unless you can figure a way to distract them. They don’t understand the difficulties, or they figure that you’ll do the heavy lifting if you run into a snag. “Capital idea. Let’s look for it, right after we settle my affairs in America.”

  Our philosophic discussion ended when the crack of a musket shot sent up a little geyser of water just feet from our heads. Then another, and another.

  I looked up the riverbank. On the crest of a dune was a patrol of French soldiers and, lively as a stag in heat, Count Alessandro Silano. While his henchmen had run down into the pyramid of death, he’d prudently decided to stay outside.

  “The magicians!” he shouted. “Get them!”

  Well, hell. The bastard seemed indestructible—but then he was probably thinking the same thing about us. And of course he had no idea what we had, or rather hadn’t. Astiza still had the medallion’s disk, and I realized I still had the cherubim from Moses’ staff, if that’s what it was, tucked uncomfortably in my loincloth. Maybe I’d make a dollar out of this after all. We launched ourselves into the river and began swimming hard for the Cairo bank, letting the current widen the distance. By the time the soldiers had run down to the edge of the riverbank to take better aim, we were out of effective range.

  We could hear Silano ranting. “To the boats, you fools!”

  The Nile is half a mile wide at the pyramids, but it seemed like half an ocean in the condition we were in. The same current giving us some distance from Silano was carrying us closer to the fighting in downtown Cairo. As we thrashed the last weary feet across the river’s breadth I could see a battery of artillery deploying outside the city’s walls, and one of Conte’s balloons hovering a few feet off the ground. It was being inflated to be used again as an observation post. It was a pretty thing, a patriotic red, white, and blue, with stones hung from bags on the side for ballast. The balloon gave me an idea, and since I was as winded as a Virginia congressman invited to give a few remarks, it might be our only chance.

  “Have you ever wanted to fly away from your troubles?”

  “Never more than now.” She looked like a half-drowned kitten.

  “Then we’re going to take that balloon.”

  She blinked water from her eyes. “You know how to operate it?”

  “The first French aeronauts were a rooster, a duck, and a sheep.”

  We dragged ourselves from the Nile and crept along its bank, working downstream toward Conte. I looked back. Silano’s soldiers were pushing hard on the sweeps of their boats. The count was shouting and pointing to call attention to us, but all eyes were focused on fighting in the city. It would be a close thing. I took out my tomahawk, the other piece of metal I’d saved in my long sluiceway tumble. It was starting to look hard-used.

  “Now!”

  We charged. If anyone had bothered to look in our direction, we would have looked like two half-naked lunatics: wet, sand-plastered, wild-eyed, and desperate. But the fighting gave us the moment we needed to cross the verge and interrupt Conte just as his gasbag reached full inflation. An artilleryman was climbing into the wicker basket.

  Astiza distracted the famed scientist by bounding up into his view like a disheveled harlot, more of her charms on display than either of us would have preferred. Conte was a savant, but he was also a man, and he gaped in stupefaction as if Venus herself had popped from the half-shell. Meanwhile, I darted by and collared the artilleryman, somersaulting him backward out of the rising basket. “Sorry! Change of assignment!”

  He reared up to argue the point, obviously confused by my remnants of Egyptian clothing. To settle the issue, I clouted him on the forehead with the butt of my tomahawk and climbed into the basket in his place. Several French soldiers had disembarked from their boat and were lining up to give me a volley, but their aim was blocked by a charging Silano.

  “I’m sorry, Nicolas, we must borrow your airship,” Astiza said to Conte as she jerked the peg holding its anchor rope out of the ground. “Bonaparte’s orders.”

  “What orders?”

  “To save the world!” The balloon was rising, the rope skidding along the ground, and I was already too high to reach her. So she jumped and grabbed the tether, hanging below the basket as we rose off the earth. Conte, running after us with arms waving, was butted aside by the sprinting Silano. Just as the writhing rope kicked up a last tendril of dust and climbed into the air, the count leaped and grabbed too. The sudden weight sent us sagging, the basket only fifty feet off the ground. Silano began climbing the tether with sheer arm strength, tenacious as a bulldog.

  “Astiza! Hurry!”

  The ground was slipping beneath us at an alarming speed.

  Her ascent was painfully slow, given her weariness. Silano gained on her, teeth gritted, eyes slit with hatred. I reached down. Just as Astiza’s hand neared mine, he grabbed her ankle. “He’s got me!” She kicked, he cursed and swayed, holding the tether, and then clutched her leg once again. “He’s like a leech!”

  I leaned over the basket rim to haul. “I’ll get you in and cut the rope!”

  “Now his other arm is on me! He’s hanging on me as much as the tether!”

  “Kick, Astiza! Fight!”

  “I can’t,” she cried. “His arms are locked around me.”

  I looked down. The demon was squeezing her legs like a constricting snake, his face bitter with determination. I pulled, but couldn’t lift both of them. Combined, they weighed three hundred pounds.

  “Tell me what you learned, Gage!” he shouted. “Let me in, or we all go down!”

  The balloon continued to lumber along less than a hundred feet off the surface. We passed over the edge of the riverbank and drifted along the shallows of the Nile. Conte was running along the river after us. Ahead I saw a company of French infantry turn and look at this scene in amazement. We’d pass so close that they could kill us all with a volley if they chose.

  “It’s the ring!” Astiza cried. “The ring you made me wear! I forgot to take it off! It’s the curse, Ethan, the curse!”

  “There is no curse!”

  “Take it off me!”

  But her hands were grasped like iron on the rope and out of my reach, and I could no more slip the silly ring off than I could chop off her hand. Meanwhile Silano, clutching her legs, was even farther from me.

  That gave me an idea.

  “Take my tomahawk!” I said. “Crack his head like a nut!”

  Desperately she released her right hand, the one without the ring, caught my weapon as I dropped it, and chopped down at Silano. But he’d heard us and as she swung he dropped until his arms were clamped like a vise around her ankles, his head out of range. The blade whistled by his hair. With just one arm holding on she slid down the rope a few feet, palm burning, out of my grasp. I hauled on the tether, but couldn’t lift it.

  “Astiza!” Silano shouted. “Don’t! You know I still love you!”

  It was as if the words paralyzed her for a moment, and they shocked me as well. Her eyes
flickered with memory and a thousand questions roared in my end. He loved her? She’d said she didn’t love him, but…

  “Don’t believe him!” I cried.

  She thrashed the tomahawk at air, her look frantic. “Ethan! I can’t hold on! Pull up the rope!”

  “You’re too heavy! Shake him off! The soldiers are aiming! They’re going to shoot us all unless we can climb!” If I somehow climbed down over her to get to Silano, we’d probably all tumble off.

  She jerked but the count was like a barnacle. She slid down another foot.

  “Astiza, they’re about to fire!”

  She looked up at me in desperation. “I don’t know what to do.” It was a sob. We lumbered along, too heavy to rise, the Nile glittering below.

  “Astiza, please,” the count pleaded. “It’s not too late…”

  “Kick! Kick! They’re going to shoot us all!”

  “I can’t.” She was gasping.

  “Kick!”

  Astiza looked at me with tears in her eyes. “Find it,” she whispered.

  Then, swinging viciously, she swung the tomahawk against the tether. The line snapped with a crack.

  And in an instant, she and Silano were gone.

  With their weight released the balloon popped up like a champagne cork, soaring so quickly that I lost my footing and toppled into the bottom of the basket. “Astiza!”

  But there was no reply, just screams as the pair fell.

  I scrambled up just in time to see a titanic splash in the river. Their fall had distracted the soldiers for a moment, but now the muskets swung in unison back to me. I was soaring away. There was a sharp command, a flash of muzzles, and a huge plume of smoke blew out.

  I heard the hum of bullets, but none arced high enough to hit.

  In despair, I studied the surface of the receding river. The rising sun was in my eyes and the Nile was a dazzling platter of light, every wavelet a mirror. There, was that a head, maybe two? Had one or both of them survived the fall? Or was it all a trick of the light?

  The harder I strained, the less certain I was of what I saw. The soldiers were shouting excitedly and milling on the riverbank. Then all became impossibly blurred, my hope gone, my ambitions dust, my heart profoundly alone.