And then, all was as silent as before.
Not daring to move, Lucius collected his bearings and surveyed the room from his new vantage point. The great stone that had blocked the entrance was now gone. Presumably it had been withdrawn back inside the great dark hole in the ceiling that Lucius only now noticed while looking up from his prostrate position. Along one side of the room stretched a long, dark slit, or cavity. No doubt the giant sword, or whatever it was, had come from there. The blood-stained stone that Lucius had stepped on to start the whole terrifying sequence had now risen back to its former height. Whatever engineering the old Alexandrians had devised to drive this devilish contraption, Lucius surmised that it had just reset itself and now lay ready for its next victim.
Certainly, other bricks in the floor might activate the device, aside from the one he had just stepped on, and he had no way of knowing how far the lengthy blade extended into the room whenever it made its deadly journey. Then he remembered something. The old priests of Horus had left themselves a means of getting past the spiked pit in the passage. Surely, they would have afforded a means of getting past the blade. This room appeared to have been used for rituals, and had most likely been full of priests on many occasions. While a twelve-foot mechanical blade vivisecting a dozen priests in the blink of an eye made for one damn impressive sacrifice, Lucius suspected that was not what the priests had in mind. There had to be a way to disable it.
Lucius looked around the room for something simple, and he found it just inside the doorway. A large metallic rod stood out from the wall at an angle, out of sight or reach to anyone outside the room. Lucius inched his way over to the lever, being careful to step only on the stone bricks he had safely stepped on before. He had to use his full weight and strength to pull the lever downward, but it eventually moved, and he heard some mechanical vibrations running through the wall and the floor which he could only conclude was some type of safety mechanism.
Of course, there was only one way to know for sure. He crouched low, and pushed on the blood-stained stone brick. This time, it did not budge, and Lucius breathed a sigh of relief. Proceeding with a wary eye out for any other lurking snares, he walked forward through the lane of masks and approached the altar. Now, he was close enough to better see the shield that sat upon it. Constructed more for the throne room than for the battlefield, the round object appeared to be made of bronze, and was lavishly modeled with inlaid swirls of gold. At first, Lucius dismissed it as too cumbersome of a prize to haul away. He was about to turn his attention to the jeweled wall when he noticed that the seemingly random swirls on the shield had an order to them. He carefully removed the shield from its pedestal, fully expecting it to set off some deadly device. He was relieved when nothing happened. Moving into a shaft of light, he wiped off the dust covering the shield’s face and then studied it. A single streak of gold ran down the length of the shield in one congruous meandering line. As the line neared the edge of the shield, it blossomed into several individual streaks. Within this jumble of lines was a bright, red ruby, the placement of which relative to the gold lines seemed to lend to some significance. Lucius suddenly realized that he had seen these markings before – or more precisely – he had seen similar markings in a different form.
Back in Alexandria, during the many councils of war coordinating the defense of the palace, Lucius had stood with the other Roman officers as they consulted a myriad maps supplied by Cleopatra. He knew how to read them and, whenever they were available, always took care to get quickly acquainted with any new place that the legions took him. This gold band on the shield with its blossoming lines represented the Nile, and the red ruby, Alexandria. He was certain of it. There were hieroglyphs on the shield, which he could not read, but there were also Greek inscriptions, which he could. They gave distances between a series of graphically portrayed landmarks that wound down the map and finally ended in the center of the shield where a large eye had been drawn in gold. The eye looked like that of a painted Egyptian girl, with a long, thin eyebrow above the eye, a line trailing off from the outer corner of the eye, another line ending in a spiral, and a final line resembling a teardrop drawn just beneath the inner corner of the eye. Lucius assumed this to be a representation of the Eye of Horus. There were several prominent landmarks portrayed around the eye – three small mountains of equal height, with a fourth mountain distinctly higher than the other three.
This was undoubtedly the map he had been sent to inscribe on the papyrus in his pouch. But there would be no need to copy the map now. Evidently, Ganymedes, Demetrius, and Khay had not realized that the map would be inscribed on a shield which he could carry out without difficulty.
But before he did that, there was the matter of the jewels on the wall. He eyed the fortune before him, deciding which of the jewels would be the easiest to carry inconspicuously while fetching the best price.
As Lucius’s eyes had finally settled on a particularly large set of red rubies, a noise sounded in the chamber behind him. Wheeling around with his sword drawn, he could see no one, but he suddenly felt a small prick on his sword arm. Looking down, he saw a feathered dart lodged in his bicep. He quickly plucked it out and dove behind the altar, understanding that whoever had fired the dart had the advantage. As he crouched there, waiting for his attacker to make the next move, he began to feel light-headed. His hand opened involuntarily, dropping the gladius to clang upon the stone floor. Lucius tried to pick it up, but his arm had gone completely numb and he could not move it. Glancing at the dart on the floor, Lucius saw that it was too small to have come from a bow. It was the kind often used with a blow tube and often tipped with poison. Instantly he put his mouth to the wound and began to suck and spit out as much blood as he could manage, but the numbness began to spread, and he found himself fighting to remain balanced.
“You should be feeling the effects of the poison now, Roman!” a voice boomed from the other side of the room. It was Khay’s voice, and it was amplified as it had been when he wore the mask in Arsinoe’s courtyard. “I have tested it on dozens of slaves and prisoners and have found it to be very effective. It causes complete paralysis within a few moments. The more you move, the more swiftly it works.”
“The curse is upon you now, priest!” Lucius shouted back, trying desperately to keep a clear head. “You have crossed the threshold!”
“Curse?” Khay laughed hysterically. “There is no curse, you dimwitted fool. I concocted that story to keep those other two idiots out.”
Lucius tried to remain steady, though his body was wracked with a tingling sensation that left him shaking all over. He had to keep talking. He had to keep the priest talking. “Then why use me?”
“Is it not obvious? No, maybe not to a daft Roman.” The priest’s voice seemed to be coming from a different part of the chamber now. Either Khay was moving around, or the creeping poison was affecting Lucius’s hearing. “You, no doubt, encountered the bodies of my unfortunate acolytes. They and I came here a fortnight ago, knowing full well the shrine would be laced with many traps. I used my acolytes to find them. But they could not get past the final snare – the snare in this chamber. Two of them entered, and two of them died. The doorway was always blocked whenever the snare activated so I could never see what killed them. I did not bring enough acolytes, you see. I had fully intended to return the next day with another dozen, but then the thought occurred to me, perhaps a warrior with quick reflexes might succeed where my bumbling servants had failed. I decided to tell the queen about this place and to ply her with promises of the great heights she would attain should she be the one to find the Eye. Then I invented the curse. I did it to serve two purposes. To keep her people out, and to force them to produce a warrior for me. This they did. And, alas, I was right. You have succeeded.”
Lucius could tell the voice was drawing closer, and he fought to stay alert. “And the Eye of Horus?”
“Oh, it exists. The curse may be a lie, but the Eye is quite real. And whoever bear
s it will be the rightful ruler of all Egypt. That is assured. But I have been chosen by the gods for that honor, not that half-breed who calls herself queen! I, and I alone, will possess the Eye. Egypt will rise out of the ashes under my rule, and all kingdoms shall bow before it. Those who do not, will be swept away by my omnipotent hand, including that pathetic city you bear allegiance to.”
To Lucius’s right, a falcon mask suddenly appeared around the corner of the altar. The narrow eyes peered scornfully at him and looked much more terrifying under the effects of the poison. Lucius did not move, doing his best to pretend that total paralysis had overtaken him. He had seen the effects of other poisons before and did his best to emulate the jittery eyes he had seen in other victims. He was still clutching the shield, and he still had use of his left arm – at least, he thought he did. He could not be certain of anything in the jumble that his mind had become, but for some reason the poison had not had the total effect on him that the priest had expected. Perhaps the remnant of whatever Arsinoe had made him inhale the night before was having some kind of counter-active effect.
“Can you speak, Roman?” Khay asked amusedly. “I didn’t think so. But I know you can hear me. You see, although the poison causes paralysis of the limbs, it allows the victim to remain fully conscious. A most intriguing convenience, wouldn’t you say?”
Lucius felt that he could speak if he tried, but he kept his mouth shut, hoping the priest would think him immobilized. His eyes began to cloud as he saw Khay cautiously turn the corner of the altar and approach him. As the priest stood over him, holding the blow tube in one hand and a long ceremonial dagger in the other, a devilish smile formed beneath the falcon mask.
“They say, Roman, those who were sacrificed here were blessed by the gods, that their souls live forever in the underworld, and that those they left behind enjoyed good fortune for generations after. Whether it is true or just a myth, you will soon know. Consider this only just compensation for laying your foul hands on me in Arsinoe’s house yesterday. You nearly choked the life out of me. Now, you will witness every movement of my blade as I slice open your chest and remove your beating heart.”
Khay stooped down and began to pull open Lucius’s robe to unlace the mail shirt. But before Khay could get to the armor, Lucius brought his left arm around to smash the bronze shield into the side of the priest’s head. The staggering blow shattered the mask and knocked the priest off his feet. Then, while the dazed Khay groped for his dropped dagger, Lucius snatched up the spent dart and drove it into the priest’s exposed calf as far as it would go.
Khay screamed in pain, struggling to crawl away. Lucius strained every one of his weakened muscles to keep hold of the priest, driving the dart into his leg several more times before he slipped away. Khay rose, clutching his bleeding leg, and quickly took up his dagger. His face, no longer hidden by the mask, was now clearly visible in the dim light, and Lucius could see that it was anything but imposing. The priest had a hooked nose, gaunt cheeks, and a weak, sunken chin. The crooked lips, now twisted in agony from the wound in his leg, drooped on one side, indicating a past illness of some kind.
“How?” Khay said in shock and anger. “The poison should have immobilized you.”
“You would have done better to test your foul mixtures on warriors, dog!” Lucius said, holding up the dart, and then tossing it away. “Half-starved slaves make poor subjects for your experiments.”
A look of terror came over the priest as he realized that he had been stabbed with his own dart.
“No, no, no,” Khay said again and again as he desperately clawed at his leg, examining the wounds.
Khay was hysterical now. He dropped the dagger and began to fumble with his robes, but it was obvious that the poison was taking its toll on him. His hands moved like clubs, and he seemed to have little control over his fingers. He managed to remove a small object from a fold in his robes. It appeared to be a vial of some sort, and the priest struggled to hold onto it in his drug-induced state. Fumbling the thin ampoule between his immobile fingers, he eventually lost his grip on it, and it fell to the floor. Khay then fell to his knees, but could not manage to snatch up the vial with his useless hands.
Lucius suddenly realized that the vial must contain some kind of antidote. In less than a heartbeat, Lucius had thrown his own lumbering form at Khay, using every last scrap of energy to shove the priest away from the vial. Khay fell onto his back, and though he struggled briefly, he did not rise again. The multiple stabs of the dart had injected him with a much higher dosage. The poison had worked its sinister magic swiftly, and now the priest was paralyzed from head to foot. As Khay himself had described, the potion did not deprive him of consciousness, as evident by the jittery eyes following Lucius’s every move.
Lucius now took up the vial, broke the seal, and poured its contents down his own throat while the priest watched in utter hopelessness. Within moments Lucius began to feel a change, as if his body suddenly underwent a complete reversal. The degradation had stopped, and now a sensation of healing burned from within his very core. He was still devastatingly weak, but he could crawl – and crawl was all he needed to do at the moment.
Lucius took up the dagger in one hand and dragged himself over to Khay’s still form. The dagger was no more than a sewing needle compared to some swords he had handled, but in his current state it felt as though it weighed as much as ten bricks. He placed the blade against Khay’s throat and stared into the priest’s twitching eyes.
“No,” Lucius snarled. “You will not die so easily.”
Throwing the dagger away, Lucius took several moments to catch his breath, all the while Khay’s wild eyes stared at him in bewilderment. Then, using every bit of his returning strength, Lucius began to drag himself and the priest toward the doorway. It was slow and painstaking work, but Lucius was determined. Every inch closer to the door brought a new level of terror to Khay’s eyes as he began to comprehend the fate that awaited him. When they had finally passed through the door, Lucius positioned the priest’s body on the precipice of the gaping pit beyond. Khay’s eyes were now silently screaming with a look of rage and horror.
“Go tell Horus to kiss my Roman arse!” Lucius cried, bracing himself against the wall and kicking Khay’s body with all of the strength he could muster.
With wild eyes twitching, the priest slowly rolled over the edge and fell into the unseen depths of the dark shaft.
Fourteen heartbeats later, a dull splash echoed up from the blackness.
VII
“There it is!” Ganymedes exclaimed, pointing up ahead. “You were right, Roman! You were right! The gods bless you!”
After ten days of travel, ten days of swaying atop meandering camels, ten days of fighting wind, sand, heat and the indomitable sun, the three weary travelers had finally arrived at their destination. Having reached yet another crest in the seemingly endless sea of dunes, the three sand-beaten men and their camels now stared gratefully at a cluster of four mountains before them. Like the knuckles of a giant fist, the steep slopes rose out of the desert floor, their majestic red peaks brilliant in the late afternoon sun. One peak towered high above the rest, just as Lucius had seen on the shield inscription. Most welcoming of all, a belt of green vegetation, a color nearly forgotten by the three men, enshrouded the base of the mountains where palm trees swayed and swarms of birds took to the air.
There was life there. And where there was life, there was water.
“Four peaks.” Demetrius smiled. “Just as you said, Centurion. I suppose there is no doubting your memory. Incredible!”
As the three spurred their mounts forward into the longed-for shadows of the great peaks, Lucius could hardly believe it himself. Even he had begun to doubt the existence of the Eye of Horus, through the days of endless dunes and sun, guiding his companions across the empty desert without the aid of a map, using only the landmarks and directions he had memorized from the inscriptions on the shield. It now appeared that Khay had t
old the truth about at least one thing. The amulet must exist.
It had taken no small bit of work all those days ago, sitting on the steps of the shrine, to convince Ganymedes and Demetrius to trust in his memory and head out across the desert with him, but they had really had no choice in the matter. Lucius had seen to that.
After his struggle with the priest, Lucius had remained in shrine for hours, drinking as much as he could from his waterskin. He had carefully considered his options before re-emerging to face Ganymedes and Demetrius waiting outside. From everything Khay had said, the two had not known of the priest’s treachery, and in fact had been deceived themselves. But Lucius could not take that risk. It would be days before the poison was completely out of his system and he could defend himself physically. Once Ganymedes and Demetrius had their hands on the shield with the map, his value to them might sour quickly. So, Lucius had decided to make himself valuable to them. He memorized every line, every marker, and every Greek inscription on the shield. He had recited them over and over again, until his poison-affected mind throbbed from the concentration. Once he felt comfortable that he would not forget any of it, he tossed the shield into the abyss where the priest had fallen to his death. When he had finally emerged from the shrine, and had informed his anxious companions what had happened and what he had done with the shield, they had been disappointed, to say the least. But, they had seemed to eventually accept the fact that Lucius was the only one who now knew the location of the Eye of Horus. Over the ten scorching days of travel, they had followed him, through sandstorms and unmerciful heat. Ganymedes’s patience had begun to wear thin, but, surprisingly, Demetrius’s had not. He seemed to have some measure of trust in Lucius, that Lucius himself was not certain was warranted.
Rome: Sword of the Legion (Sword of the Legion Series) Page 7
