Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  I unrolled it, my fingers trembling in my excitement. The papyrus, if that’s what it was, was unlike any I’d seen or felt before. It was slicker, stronger, more tensile, and oddly shimmering, but of a material that seemed neither hide, paper, or metal. What was it? The writing was even stranger. Instead of the pictorial script or hieroglyphics I’d seen in Egypt, this was more abstract. It was angular and faintly geometric, but odder than script I’d ever seen, a riot of shapes, slashes, squiggles, loops, and intricate characters. I had discovered the secret of life, the universe, or immortality, if the lunatics chasing this thing were to be believed. And I couldn’t read a word!

  Somewhere, Thoth was laughing.

  Well, I’d puzzled things out before. And even if the scroll proved indecipherable, its container was enough to pension a king of Prussia. Once more, I was rich.

  If I could get out of this mouse hole.

  I considered. A swim back against the current would be impossible, and even if I could do it I’d only climb back up to a shaft we had no means of ascending. Yet going downstream would suck me into an underground pipe with no guarantee of air. I’d barely survived such a sluice under the Great Pyramid, and didn’t have the nerve to try it again. I’d seen no sign of this temporary river emerging anywhere.

  What would Ben Franklin do?

  I’d heartily tired of his aphorisms when I had to hear them everyday, but now I missed him. “Wise men don’t need advice, fools don’t take it.” Clever, but hardly a help. “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” Persistence how? Tunneling out like a miner? I inspected the chamber more closely. The Templar statues were rigid and unmoving, unlike the turning Madonnas under the Temple Mount. There were no designs on the cave walls, and no cracks, doors, or holes in which to insert the golden cylinder, in hopes it might serve as some kind of key. I tapped the shaft, but heard no hollows. I shouted, but the echo was useless. I beat the walls, just to see if something might give, but nothing did. How the devil did the Templars get in here? The tunnel would be dry between storms. Should I wait? No, more thunder had been growling and a stream like this could run for days. I kicked, wrenched, and howled, but nothing budged. “Never confuse motion with action,” Ben had advised.

  What else had he said? “Well done is better than well said.” Yes, but not exactly useful in my present predicament, as near as I could tell. “All would live long, but none would be old.” At the moment, even being old seemed preferable to dying. “In rivers and bad government, the lightest things swim to the top.” Well, at least that had river in it….

  Swim to the top.

  I looked up. If light was filtering down, there had to be a way out. Impossible to climb without rope, ladder, or footholds. If only I had one of Conte’s balloons…swim to the top.

  What Ben did, different than almost all of us, was think first, and then act. Why is that so difficult? Yet finally I had an idea, a desperate one, and—just as important—no plausible alternative. I seized the lid of the sarcophagus that was leaning against the stone box and dragged it, screeching, to the edge of the water. Heaving, I got it upright like a door, balancing on one corner, to teeter above the underground river. As well as I could, I aimed at the dark hole into which the river disappeared downstream. And, with a grunt, shoved the lid out into the water! The force of the current rammed the lid against the mouth of the tunnel, sealing the water’s outlet.

  Instantly, the water began to rise.

  It spilled across the sandstone platform, running over the boots of the Templar statues. This had better work! “Sorry, Montbard, or whoever you are.” I heaved the acacia wood coffin up to the lip of the stone sarcophagus and tipped out its bones. They rattled into the limestone sarcophagus in a sacrilegious jumble, the skull looking up at me with what I swear was reproach. Well, I was cursed now. I balanced the wood box across the top of the sarcophagus, tucked the golden cylinder in my shirt, and climbed in as if it were a bathtub. The water was rising fast, almost a foot a minute. It crept past the Templar knees, topped the edge of the sarcophagus, and poured inside—and then floated me. I prayed to gods Christian, Jewish, and Egyptian. Glory, hallelujah!

  My ark rose. As the well filled and the water deepened, I knew the increasing pressure might blow out the lid I’d jammed below, so I could only hope it would hold long enough. “He that lives upon hope will die fasting.” My own advice is to pick and choose your aphorisms as convenient, so I hoped like the very devil. Up we bobbed, foot after precious foot. I realized my action would also back water into the spiral in the chamber behind, toward Ned and Mohammad.

  I hoped they could swim.

  The dim light grew as we climbed, and stars reflected in the black water. I found a rib or two that hadn’t spilled out of my vessel and unceremoniously pitched them overboard, reasoning I wouldn’t really care what happened to my bones once I didn’t have need of them anymore. Up and up until I indeed saw a silvered disk, reflecting light from a slanted shaft. And on that shaft were sandstone stairs! I stood in my wobbling coffin, stretched for the first step, and boosted. Solid rock! Behind me, the water was still rising.

  Then there was a thump, the water burped, and with a sucking roar it began falling, my coffin boat spiraling down with it. The lid that plugged the stream had cracked under the pressure and given way. Back out of sight the water swirled, pouring again out its drain, but I’d no time to watch it. I mounted the stairs, realizing this was the same well shaft we’d found in the ruined temple. We hadn’t noticed the reflection from our angle, and if we hadn’t cast aside the boards I would have had no light down there at all. I emerged between the stone walls, clambered over rubble, and raced back across the causeway to the base of the pillar where we’d first descended. “Ned! Mohammad! Are you alive!”

  “By the skin of our teeth, guv’nor! That whole funnel filled with water and we was about to drown like rats! Then the water went down again!”

  “How did you get up there, effendi? What’s going on?”

  “I just wanted to give you boys a bath is all.”

  “But how did you get out?”

  “Ferry boat.” I could see their upturned faces like little moons. “Wait. I’ve got an idea to try to get you up.” The base of the fallen column, you will recall, had pivoted out of the way of the star-shaped paving to start the platform descending. Now I pushed it back, there was a click, and sure enough, the platform below began to rise up its star-shaped shaft, Ned and Mohammad hooting in joy like madmen.

  Once they were up I got their help to shove the base back onto its rightful place, sealing the entry again. Then Ned hugged me as if I were his mother. “By Davy Jones, you is a wizard, guv’nor! Always you jump clear like a cat! And did you get the treasure?”

  “There’s no treasure, I’m afraid.” Their faces fell. “Believe me, I looked. Just a Templar grave, my friends. Oh, and this.”

  Like a magician, I pulled out the golden cylinder. They gasped.

  “Here, feel its weight.” I let them hold it. “There’s enough gold here to set all three of us up in decent style.”

  “But effendi,” Mohammad said, “what of your book? Is it here? Is it full of magical secrets?”

  “It’s in there, all right, and it’s the most peculiar thing I’ve ever seen. I’m sure we’ll do the world a favor to keep it away from Silano. Maybe a scholar can make sense of it someday.”

  “A scholar?”

  “I’ve finally got it, by the labors of Hercules, and I can’t read a word.”

  They looked at me with consternation.

  “Let’s go get Astiza.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The level exit from the City of Ghosts would take us past Silano’s camp, which I dared not do. Instead, as the stars faded and the sky blushed, we first put the well’s board back in place in the temple—I didn’t want a falling child on my conscience—and then retraced our laborious route up and over the High Place of Sacrifice, pausing only at Ned’s insistence to let him uproot a sma
ll, wizened pine tree. “At least it’s a club,” he explained. “A nunnery has more firepower than we has.” While we hiked he peeled off branches with his meaty paws like a Samson to shape it. Up, over, and down we went, winded and weary by the time we reached the canyon floor at the ruined Roman theater. A mile or more behind us, I could see a campfire glow where Silano was camped. If Astiza had crept away, how long before her absence was noticed? To the east the sky was glowing. The higher peaks were already lit.

  We hurried back up the city’s main canyon toward the sinuous entry slit and came again to the façade of the first great temple we had seen, the Khazne. As the others knelt at the small brook to drink, I bounded up its stairs and into its dark interior.

  “Astiza?”

  Silence. Wasn’t this to be our rendezvous?

  “Astiza!” It echoed as if mocking me.

  Damnation. Had I misread the woman again? Had Silano tumbled to our plan and held her captive? Or was she simply late or lost?

  I ran back outside. The sky was brightening from gray to blue, and the tops of the cliffs were beginning to glow. We had to leave before the count realized I’d directed him to an empty hole! But I wasn’t going to trade the woman I loved for a scroll I couldn’t read. If we left without her, I’d be tortured with regret again. If we stayed too long, my friends might be killed.

  “She’s not here,” I reported worriedly.

  “Then we must go,” Mohammad said. “Every mile we put between ourselves and those Frankish infidels doubles our chance of escape.”

  “I feel she’s coming.”

  “We can’t wait, guv’nor.”

  Ned was right. I could hear faint calls echoing down the canyon from Silano’s group, though whether of excitement or outrage yet I couldn’t tell. “A few minutes more,” I insisted.

  “Has she bewitched you? She’s going to get us all caught, and your book!”

  “We can trade away the book if we have to.”

  “Then what in Lucifer’s privy did we come here for?”

  Suddenly she appeared from around the bend, hugging the rock to minimize her chance of being seen, face pale, ringlets of dark hair in her eyes, breathless from having run. I rushed back to her.

  “What took you so long?”

  “They were so excited they couldn’t sleep. I was the first to go to bed, and it was agony, waiting all night for them to quiet. Then I had to crawl in the canyon wadi past a sleepy guard, for a hundred yards or more.” Her dress was filthy. “I think they’ve already noticed me gone.”

  “Can you run?”

  “If you don’t have it, I don’t want to.” Her eyes were bright, asking.

  “I found it.”

  She gripped my arms, her grin like a child’s waiting for a present. She’d dreamed of the book far longer than I had. I pulled the cylinder out. She sucked in her breath.

  “Feel its weight.”

  Her fingers explored it like a blind man’s. “Is it really in here?”

  “Yes. But I can’t read it.”

  “For Allah’s sake, effendi, we must go,” Mohammad called.

  I ignored him, twisted the cylinder open, and unrolled part of the scroll. Once again I was struck by how alien the characters appeared. She held the book with both hands, bewildered, but reluctant to give it back. “Where was it?”

  “Deep in a Templar tomb. I gambled there was a twist to their clues, and they required seekers to use pyramid mathematics to prove their knowledge.”

  “This will change the world, Ethan.”

  “For good, I hope. Things can’t get much worse, from my perspective.”

  “Guv’nor!” Ned’s shout broke us from our mutual trance. He had his hand to his ear, pointing. It was the echo of a gunshot.

  I grabbed the book from her, twisted the cylinder shut, thrust it back in my shirt, and ran to where the sailor was looking. Sunlight was beginning to flood down the face of the temple, turning the cliff and carvings a brilliant rose. But Ned was pointing back the way we had come, toward Silano’s camp. A mirror was winking as it tilted.

  “They’re signaling somebody.” He pointed to the sandstone plateau the entry canyon cut in two. “Some devil on top there, ready to roll a rock.”

  “Silano’s men are coming, effendi!”

  “So we have to get those tethered horses away from the Arabs at the entrance. Are you up to it, hearties?” It seemed the sort of rallying cry Nelson or Smith might use.

  “Home to England!” Ned shouted.

  So we ran, swallowed in an instant by the tight entry canyon and absolutely blinded by its many curves. Our footsteps echoed as we charged uphill. Ned’s arms pumped with his club. Astiza’s hair flew out behind her.

  There were shouts far above, and then bangs. We glanced up. A rock the size of a powder keg was ricocheting between the narrow walls as it came down, pieces flying off like grapeshot.

  “Faster!” We sprinted, getting beyond the missile before it hit the canyon floor with a crash. Arabic was being shouted on the rim above.

  On we jogged. Now there was a roar, and a flash of light. The bastards had rigged the whole canyon! Silano must have guessed we might outfox him and that he’d want to block our escape. An avalanche or rock blasted out by gunpowder sluiced down, and this time I pulled my companions back, all of us ducking under an overhang. The avalanche thundered down, shaking the canyon floor, and then we were running again through its concealing cloud of dust, clambering over the rubble.

  Bullets whined, to no effect since we were invisible.

  “Hurry! Before they set off another charge!” There was another explosion, and another deluge of rock, but this time it came down behind us where it would slow the pursuing Silano. We were more than halfway through this snake hole, I judged, and if all the Arabs were on top setting off gunpowder, there wouldn’t be any left to guard the horses. Once mounted, we’d stampede the remainder and…

  Panting, we rounded another bend in the canyon and saw our way blocked by a wagon. It was a caged contraption of the type I’d seen to transport slaves, and I guessed it was the one we’d seen shrouded near camp that the horses had shied from. There was a lone Arab by it, sighting at us with a musket.

  “I’ll handle this,” Ned growled, hefting his club.

  “Ned, don’t give him an easy shot!”

  Yet even as the sailor charged, there was a whistle in the air and a stone flicked by our ears with nearly the speed of a bullet, striking the Arab in the forehead just as he fired. The musket went off but the ball went wide. I looked back. Mohammad had removed his turban and used its cloth as a makeshift sling. “As a boy, I had to keep the dogs and jackals from the sheep,” he explained.

  We raced to tackle the dazed Arab and get past the wagon, Ned in the lead, Astiza next. Yet as the man groggily slid down, he released a lever and the back of the cage dropped with a bang. Something shadowy and huge rose and bunched.

  “Ned!” I shouted.

  The thing sprang as if launched by a catapult instead of its own hind haunches. I had a terrifying glimpse of brown mane, white teeth, and the intimate pink of its mouth. Astiza screamed. Ned and the lion roared in unison and collided, the club whacking down even as the predator’s jaws crunched on his left forearm.

  The sailor howled in agony and rage, but I could also hear the crack of the lion’s ribs as the pine club smashed into its side, again and again, the velocity so powerful that it shoved the animal onto its side, taking Ned’s arm, and him, with it. The two rolled, the human shouting and the cat snarling, a blur of fur and dust. The sailor reared up and the club struck again and again even as he was raked by the claws. His clothes were being shredded, his flesh opened up. I was sickened.

  I had out my tomahawk, puny as a teaspoon, but before I could think things through and turn tail like a sensible man, I charged too.

  “Ethan!” I heard Astiza only dimly.

  Another stone from Mohammad sung by me and struck the cat, making its head whip, and
the distraction was timed so exquisitely that I was able to dash into the melee and take a swipe at the lion’s head. I connected with the brow of one eye and the cat let go Ned’s arm and roared with pain and fury, its tail lashing and its hindquarters churning in the dirt. Now Astiza was charging too, a heavy rock held high over her head, and she heaved like an athlete so it came right down into the beast’s bloody vision, crashing against its snout.

  Our wild assault bewildered it. Against all expectation, the lion broke and ran, vaulting past the wagon cage that had brought it here. It raced up the canyon and then charged, I now saw, more of Najac’s Arabs coming up to contest our way. Screaming at this reversal of their secret weapon, they turned and fled. The bloodied lion took one of them down, pausing to snap the man’s neck, and then set off after the others and the freedom of the hills beyond.

  The horses were screaming in terror.

  We were in shock, hearts racing. My tomahawk’s edge was stuck with blood and fur. Astiza was bent over, chest heaving. Astonishingly, all but Ned were unscathed. I could still smell the cat stink, that rank odor of piss, meat, and blood, and my voice was quavering as I knelt beside the giant sailor. His charge into the lion’s jaws was the bravest thing I’d ever seen.

  “Ned, Ned! We’ve got to keep going!” I was wheezing. “Silano’s still coming, but I think the lion cleared the canyon for us.”

  “Afraid not, guv’nor.” He spoke with difficulty, his jaw clenched. He was bleeding like a man flogged. He glowed with vivid blood. Mohammad was wrapping his turban cloth around the giant’s mangled forearm, but it was pointless. It looked like it had been shredded by a machine. “You’ll have to go on without me.”

  “We’ll carry you!”

  He laughed, or rather gasped, a sneezelike chortle between clenched lips, his eyes wide at the knowledge of his own fate. “Bloody likely.”

  We reached to lift him anyway, but he shrieked with pain and shoved us aside. “Leave me, we all know I’m not making it back to England!” He groaned, tears staining his cheeks. “He scraped me ribs raw, the leg feels like it’s sprained or broken, and I weigh more than King George and his tub. Run, run like the wind, so it’s worthwhile.” His knuckles were white where he grasped the club.