The Amulet of Power

by Mike Resnick

  “What did you do with your afternoon?” she asked as they ate.

  “Not much. Walked around. Looked for ways an enemy could approach your cottage.” He paused. “You’re really not very safe there. They don’t have to come down the driveway and past the desk. They can walk a mile or two through the underbrush, or even come up from the sea.”

  “I know. But the slope is very steep. If they slip, we’ll hear them.”

  Besides, she thought, I’ve done my sleeping for the day. I won’t sleep again until this is ended one way or another.

  They spoke about Africa and the Seychelles, about old times and future plans, and finally dinner was over.

  “I think I’ll buy something to read,” Lara announced, walking to the small gift shop. She looked over the selection, picked up a science fiction novel and a murder mystery, then joined Oliver as they walked back to their cottages.

  “I’d offer to visit for awhile,” he said. “But unlike you, I didn’t take a six-hour nap, and we were up pretty early this morning.”

  “That’s all right,” said Lara. “I have my books.”

  “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good night, Malcolm—and thanks for all your concern.”

  “I wish you meant it. I have a feeling it just annoys you.”

  “I do mean it.” Which is why, she added mentally, I’m not going to endanger you if I can help it.

  He went off to his cottage, and she entered her own. She closed the rest of the windows so the insects couldn’t fly in, then turned on a light, sat down on an easy chair, and began reading.

  When she finished the science fiction novel, it was three in the morning, late enough for everybody to be asleep. She picked up her holster and the item she had purchased on Mahé.

  This is why I chose this cottage, Malcolm. You’re an old hunter. Your senses are better than the average man’s, and there’s always a chance that you’d hear me if I had to walk past your cottage.

  She opened the door, quietly stepped out onto the path, walked up to the parking lot, got into the Mercedes, and drove off.

  She was back an hour later. She returned silently to her cabin and picked up the mystery novel.

  After she’d read a couple of chapters she got up and paced the room nervously, then sat down and forced herself to continue reading. Sleep was out of the question, but she needed all the rest she could get.

  This was going to be one hell of a day.

  33

  Lara looked out the window and estimated that the sun would be rising in about half an hour, and she knew that Malcolm Oliver usually awoke with the sun. She checked her pistols, made sure the clips were full, put half a dozen spares in her holster, then put everything into her shoulder bag. That done, she opened her door very quietly, and shut it gently behind her. Then she walked silently to the registration desk.

  There was no clerk on duty, but the night watchman nodded a greeting to her. She looked around, found a piece of paper, and wrote a note to Oliver, stating that she’d driven to the Amitie airstrip to buy some more clothing, plus some other items she’d forgotten to bring along.

  “Will you please see that Mr. Oliver sees this?” she said to the watchman. “He’s the gentleman in the very last cottage.”

  The watchman stared at her and pointed to his ear. She repeated her request in French, and he picked up the note and began walking out the door with it.

  “No,” she said in French. “Don’t wake him. Just make sure he sees it when he wanders over for breakfast. I’m sure he’ll be looking for me; just tell him that I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Oui, Mademoiselle.”

  “Merci.”

  She got into the Mercedes, started the engine, went up the long driveway, and turned onto the main road. The sun came up as she was driving to the little community of Grand Anse, about a third of the way around the island. She checked her side mirrors; the road behind her was empty.

  As she neared Grand Anse she drove past three side roads and turned off on a fourth. A quarter mile away stood a small white brick church, its grounds immaculately kept. No one was anywhere to be seen.

  She parked the car, opened her shoulder bag, and removed her pistols, sliding them into her holsters. Then she got out and began walking cautiously toward the church. Some birds set up a commotion, but she ignored them and concentrated on the sides of the building, looking for any lurking enemies.

  Finally she reached the front door of the church and entered. A rather pudgy priest was standing beside the altar, and he turned to face her.

  “How may I help you, my child?” he asked.

  “You can’t, Father,” said Lara. “But I can help you.”

  “Oh?” he asked curiously.

  “Get away from here.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s probably going to be some trouble here in just a few minutes,” she said seriously. “I want you to leave before it begins.”

  “If there’s trouble, then this is the place for me,” protested the priest.

  Lara pulled out one of her Black Demons. “This kind of trouble, Father.”

  His eyes widened, and he gulped hard.

  “Who is after you, my child?”

  “I haven’t got time to explain,” said Lara. “Just leave. If any shooting starts while you’re still here, I won’t be able to protect you.”

  He looked at her guns again. “God be with you,” he said, and walked rapidly out of the church.

  Lara approached the altar and carefully began removing a loose stone at the back right-hand corner. Suddenly she heard a stick break as someone approached the church.

  Tensing, she released the stone and pulled her guns, training them on the door.

  A shot rang out, and she threw herself down behind the altar. She heard the sound of shattering glass hitting the stone floor and realized that the bullet had come through a window on the side of the building rather than the door.

  She took a deep breath, then stood up and fired both guns at the window. Two, three, four, five shots rang out almost instantaneously, and a man screamed in agony.

  She saw a flurry of motion out of the corner of her eye, and turned to face the door. Two men had rushed in. She fired again, and put a bullet between the eyes of the slower one. The other crouched behind a wooden pew.

  She looked up, saw a ceiling fan spinning lazily above the man, and put three quick shots into the rod that held it in place. The rod broke, and the fan fell on the hiding man. He yelped in pain and surprise and jumped to his feet, and a Black Demon spat four .32 slugs into him.

  A face appeared at another window. She fired half a dozen shots, and it vanished.

  She knelt down behind the altar, pulled fresh clips out of her holster, inserted them, and then listened intently. When she heard the sound of feet shuffling, she stood up and began firing. Three more men dropped just inside the door. A fourth turned to flee, ran into the door frame, careened back into the church, and paid for his mistake as she riddled him with bullets.

  She hid behind the altar again. When there was no more noise and no more gunfire, she slowly stood up, looked around carefully, then cautiously walked to the door. There was nobody else in sight, just bodies piled up by the door and beneath the two windows. Their silence throughout the fight made her sure that her attackers were Silent Ones, as she had expected. But if her guess was right this was just the beginning.

  Could I have been wrong? she wondered, frowning. Did I set this up for nothing? Where are you?

  She stepped over the bodies, and walked back to the altar. There had to be a back entrance, maybe two, but she didn’t dare leave the main body of the church. It would be too easy for still more gunmen to enter and take up defensive positions behind the pews.

  She stood there, almost motionless, guns trained on the open door for the better part of ten minutes. Then, finally, she holstered her pistols and went back to wor
k on the heavy stone at the end of the altar.

  She never heard the bearded man sneak up behind her. By the time she sensed his presence and turned to face him, his knife was already plunging down toward her.

  “Thank you for leading us to the Amulet,” said the man. “Now prepare to—” A single shot rang out, the knife fell from the man’s hand, and he flew backward as if kicked by a mule.

  “I was almost too late,” said Kevin Mason, standing in the doorway, a smoking pistol in his hand.

  “Thank you, Kevin.”

  “I couldn’t very well let him rob you of the Amulet,” replied Mason.

  “You can put the gun away now,” said Lara.

  “You didn’t let me finish,” said Mason, keeping his gun trained on her. “I couldn’t let him rob you of the Amulet, because that’s my job. Please remove your guns very carefully, and then lay them on the floor.”

  She withdrew her pistols and did as he ordered.

  “Now kick them under one of the pews.”

  She shoved them under a pew with her foot.

  “You don’t seem very surprised, Lara,” commented Mason.

  “I’m not.”

  “Why don’t you just stand by that wall over there, where you won’t be tempted to dive for your guns? I’ll finish extracting the Amulet myself.”

  Lara walked to the far wall of the church as Mason, never taking his gun off her, approached the altar.

  “May I ask a question?” said Lara.

  “Certainly. I owe you that much.”

  “Is there really a Kevin Mason Junior?”

  “Not anymore. I killed him in Cairo after I brought you to hospital. That’s what I was doing when I left you for a few hours to get a room at the Mena House.”

  “Why?”

  “I knew that if you were going to lead me to the Amulet, I’d have to be someone you trusted. Mason’s son was actually an engineer who specialized in building bridges. I figured you’d never heard of him. If you don’t mind telling me, where did I slip up?”

  “It was a bunch of little things,” said Lara. “At the time I wrote it off to you being under pressure from all the ‘hugger-mugger’ you kept complaining about. Then Malcolm Oliver said something on the flight from Kenya to Mahé that brought it all home to me.” He looked at her expectantly. “He said that he might be ignorant of art and science and history and culture, but if there was one thing he knew, it was his business.”

  “There’s nothing profound about that.”

  “No, but it got me to thinking. You said that you examined four churches, but only two survived from Gordon’s era. You didn’t know that a dhow is a felluca in Egypt. You had theoretically made North Africa your life’s work, and you didn’t know that the Sudan became independent in 1956. You studied Sudanese history, and you never heard of Siwar, one of the great historians. You’ve been to Khartoum a number of times, and you didn’t know where the museum that housed your father’s collection was. Any one could be excused; add them up, and it’s clear that you’re an impostor.” She paused. “And there was something else. You said your sources told you the men who attacked us in the truck were Mahdists. Omar found out they weren’t. That means you didn’t have any sources in Khartoum.”

  “Oh, but I do have sources in Khartoum,” he said. “I just couldn’t reveal their existence.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Khaled Ahmed Mohammed el-Shakir. But you can keep calling me Kevin, if you like—or, in just another minute or two, Mahdi.”

  “You’re no Arab.”

  “I’m a Circassian,” he said. “Surely you know of us.”

  “The fair-skinned Arabs.”

  He nodded. “My parents immigrated to England when I was three. I grew up there, had all my schooling there, even took an English name, though of course it wasn’t Kevin, but I always knew that my destiny, a great destiny, lay elsewhere. I first heard of the Amulet of Mareish almost sixteen years ago. That’s when I joined the Mahdists. When I learned that the famous Lara Croft was in Edfu, indeed at the Temple of Horus, I figured you had to be looking for it. Then, after I searched through the rubble and couldn’t find it, I realized that either you’d beaten me to it or it was hidden elsewhere. Either way, I had to rescue you. If you’d found it, I’d take it away and kill you; if not, I’d impersonate Mason’s son and let you think we were partners while you hunted it down.” He paused. “I must admit I never thought it would be in the Seychelles. How did you know it would be right here, in this church, inside this altar?”

  “There were hints in Gordon’s letters to Burton, and hidden clues in his diary and in the maps he drew. I just pieced them all together.”

  “Serves me right for never reading books,” he said. He stared at the altar for a moment, then looked back at Lara. “It occurs to me that if I use both hands to move this cornerstone, I’ll have to set my gun down, and I wouldn’t want to encourage you to do anything rash, so why don’t you come over and move the stone yourself?” He stepped back a few feet. “I’m fully aware of the damage you can do with that beautiful body of yours. Just remember that I’m beyond your reach, and that I’ve got a gun trained on you.”

  “Why didn’t you just let your Mahdist henchmen get it for you?”

  He laughed. “First of all, you killed the lot of them. And second, they weren’t my henchmen. Every attempt on my life back there in Cairo and the Sudan was real. The Silent Ones were after me for the same reason they were after you. As for the Mahdists—I was assigned by them to get close to you, win your confidence. But not to claim the Amulet for myself.” He paused and the smile left his face. “Eventually they realized that I was going to betray them and become the new Mahdi instead of turning over the Amulet to one of their choosing. Now move the stone, please.”

  Lara walked over, placed both hands on the stone, planted her feet, and pulled at it. It gave way, and finally came off the altar, revealing a bronze amulet the size of a drink coaster, perhaps three inches in diameter.

  Khaled Ahmed Mohammed el-Shakir stared at it in rapt fascination, and took a step or two toward it—and as he got within reach, Lara hurled the stone at the hand that held the gun.

  It clattered to the floor, and as el-Shakir reached for it, Lara kicked it across the floor of the church.

  “Don’t make me kill you,” he said ominously. “I have other plans for you.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re not going to kill me.”

  He lunged for her, but she was too quick for him. She ducked under his outstretched arms and leaped lightly over a pew. He pivoted and ran for her again, and this time all he got for his trouble was a left to the stomach and a sneaky right that smashed the cartilage in his nose.

  He bellowed in rage and landed a glancing blow on her shoulder. It spun her around, and he delivered a powerful left hook to her jaw.

  He thought he’d slowed her down enough to retrieve his gun from the far side of the church, and he began running toward it, but Lara saw what he was trying to do. She jumped onto a pew, ran down the length of it, and flung herself into the air. Her outstretched hands reached what was left of the rod that had held the fan she’d shot down, and she swung as far as she could on it, then released her grip.

  Her feet landed on el-Shakir’s back, and plunged him face-first into the wall of the church. He staggered, then turned to face her just in time to see her kick his gun away again.

  He approached her more cautiously this time, watching not only her hands but her feet, but again she was too quick, and landed a spinning kick to his ribs that knocked him backward to the wall.

  Careful, she told herself. You’re showing too much skill. You’d better let him deliver a few blows or he’ll never buy what you’ve got planned.

  She planted her feet and waited for him. Just as he got within reach she lowered her guard, not much, only a few inches, but enough to present him with her unprotected chin. He delivered a roundhouse right that knocked her spinning against
a pew. She made sure she fell over it and was slow getting to her feet.

  She stood up just in time to catch a foot to the head, swung a couple of weak blows that landed but didn’t do any damage, and braced herself for the haymaker she could see coming.

  She almost lost consciousness when his fist crashed into her face. As it was, she fell to the floor, and it was no act when she found herself momentarily too weak and dizzy to get back to her feet.

  “That was stupid!” he said angrily. He walked over to the altar, picked up the amulet, and placed it around his neck. “At last!”

  “You win,” muttered Lara, still on the floor.

  “And I will never lose again.” He frowned. “You know, there was something between us before, something real. I could feel it.” He stared at her as she wiped the blood from her mouth. “I could have made you my queen.” He put his hand on the amulet. “I still can. Come over here.”

  She got painfully to her feet and approached him.

  “You hate me, don’t you?” he said with an amused smile. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Now put your arms around me and kiss me,” he ordered her. “And mean it.”

  She put her arms around his neck and gave him a long, passionate kiss.

  “Yes,” he said when they parted, “they certainly didn’t lie about its charismatic powers.”

  “Am I to be your queen?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “You still hate me. I could never turn my back on you.”

  “I love you,” she insisted.

  “That’s the Amulet speaking. But some day I’ll remove it, to shower or sleep or for some other reason, and then not only will you find that you hated me all along, but you’ll also try to find ways to kill me before I can put it on again.” He stared at her. “Still, you did lead me to it. I owe you something for that. Say that you accept me as the Expected One, and I will reward you by letting you live.”