by Wilbur Smith
that blew into his face. His instinct was to call them out of the chasm
now - there was already less than twelve inches of free-board at the top
of the wall.
However, he knew that Nicholas would be furious if he was made to
evacuate the workings prematurely, and in so doing aborted all their
efforts. Sapper was fully aware of the extreme risks that Nicholas had
taken and of the crippling expenditure he had made to reach this stage.
Before they had left England, he had hinted to Sapper of the straitened
circumstances in which he found himself.
Although Sapper did not understand the intricacies or the
responsibilities of being a "Name' at Lloyd's, there had been so much
publicity in the British press that he could not but realize that, if
their venture here failed, the next stop for Nicholas would be the
bankruptcy courts - and Nicholas was his friend.
The squall of. rain blew over, and a bright hot sun burst through the
low cloud banks. The flow of the river seemed undiminished, but at least
the water level on the dam wall was no longer rising, "I'll give it
another hour," he grunted, engaging the gears of the tractor and easing
her down the bank to place another gabion in position.
Nicholas worked shoulder to shoulder with Hinsith's gang as they began
to strip the paving slabs from the floor of the lowest level of the
maze. The joints between the slabs were so tight that, even using
crowbars, they had difficulty prising them apart, In order to save time,
Nicholas made the hard choice of going into a destructive search. He put
four of the strongest men in the team to work with home-made
sledgehammers, lumps of ironstone on wooden shafts, to break UP the
slabs so that they could be more readily levered out of the floor. He
felt guilty about the damage they were causing to the site, but the work
went ahead very much faster.
The high spirits and enthusiasm of the men were at last beginning to
wane. They had worked too long in the oppressive confines of the maze,
and every one of them was the head of the fully aware of the rising
level of the river at gorge, and of the mortal threat behind those
waters. Their expressions were surly and there was little laughter' or
banter, But more worrying for Nicholas was the fact that at ported the
first the beginning of this shift Hansith had re duty.
desertions. Sixteen of his men had failed to report for They had quietly
rolled their blankets during the night, picked up whatever items of
value or utility they found lying around the camp, and crept away into
the darkness.
Nicholas knew that it was no use sending anyone after them - they had
too much of a start, and would be halfway up the escarpment already.
This was Africa, and Nicholas was certain that now that the rot had
started it would Spread very quickly.
He joked and jollied them along, not allowing them to sense his true
feelings. He worked shoulder to shoulder in the excavation in an and
sweated along with them made attempt to hold them, But he knew that,
unless they Ali under these slabs to keep their interest another
discovery and expectations alight, he might wake up tomorrow to
all find that even the monks and the faithful Hansith were gone.
He had started lifting the slabs in the angle of the corner of the maze,
and they worked out from there in both directions down the arms Of the
tunnel. His heart sank as they broke up each paving slab with the
hammers only to find beneath it the solid stratum of the country rock
with no indication of any joint or opening.
"It doesn't look very hopeful," he muttered to Royan as he took a short
break to drink from one of the water flasks.
She too was looking unhappy as she Poured water from the flask into his
cupped hands, so that he could wash the sweat and grime from his face.
"I may have got the symbols for the levels wrong," she suggested. "It is
just the kind of trick Taita would play, to work out combinations which
would both give a logical solution." She hesitated before she appealed
to him for guidance. "Do you think I should start working back the other
combination-'
Her question was interrupted by a bellow from Hansith. "In the name of
the Blessed Virgin, effendi, come quickly!'
They spun around together. In "her haste Royan dropped the flask, which
shattered at her feet. She did not seem to notice that it had drenched
her legs, but ran back to where Hansith was standing with the hammer
poised for another stroke.
What is it-' she broke off as they both saw that beneath the paving
slabs Hansith had uncovered another layer of dressed stone sills.
These were laid neatly across the floor of the tunnel from wall to wall,
recessed into the surrounding rock, with knife-edge joints between them.
Their sides were smooth and plain, without engravings or markings upon
them.
"What is it, icky?" Royan demanded.
"Either it's another layer of paving, or it)s a cover over fall an
opening in the floor,, he told her eagerly. "We won't know until we lift
one of them."
The stone sills were too thick and heavy to be cracked with the
primitive hammers, although Hansith tried his best. In the end they were
forced to dig around the first of lever it free. It took five men to
raise the end of them and it and lift it off its foundation.
"There is an opening under it." Royan went down on the space that it had
left. "Some her knees to peer into kind of open shaft!'
Once the first sill was removed it was easier to get a urchase on the
others that blocked the rectangular open I away, Nicholas shone ing.
When they had cleared them al the dark shaft that was revealed. It the
lamp down into stretched from wall to wall of the tunnel, and the head
stand up to his room was sufficient for even Nicholas full height on the
steps that led down at a forty-five degree angle.
"Surely this must be it.
"Another stairway he exulted exhausted all the false leads by now."
Even Taita must have crowding up behind them, their The workmen were
very and the ting at this fresh disco sullen mood evapora certainty of
additional bonuses in silver dollars that they had earned.
"Are we going down?" Royan asked. "I know we should be careful and check
it for traps, but we are- running out Of time, Nicky."
"You are right, as always. The time has come when we have to press on
regardless."
hand, "Caution thrown to the winds." She took his laughing. "Let's go
down together."
tious step at a They descended side by side, one cau time, with the lamp
held head high and the shadows retreating before them.
"There is a chamber at the bottom,'Royan exclaimed.
"Looks like a store room - what are all those objects stacked along the
walls? There must be hundreds of them.
Are they coffins, sarcophaguses?" The dark shapes were almost human,
standing shoulder to shoulder, rank after rank, around the walls of the
square chamber.
"No, I think those are corn baskets on one side,"
she said, recognizing
them. "Those on the other side look like wine amphorae. Probably some
sort of offering to the dead."
"If this is one of the funeral store rooms," said Nicholas in a voice
tight with excitement, "then we are getting very close to the tomb now."
"Yes!' she cried. "Look - there is another doorway on the far side of
this store room. Shine the light over there."
The beam picked out the square opening facing them across this lower
chamber. It was inviting, beckoning them almost seductively. They almost
ran down the last few steps in . to . the chamber lined with the reed
baskets and pottery wine jars. But as they reached the leveffloor of the
store room they ran into an invisible barrier that stopped both of them
dead and sent them reeling backwards.
"God!" Nicholas clutched at his throat, his voice a strangled choke.
"Get back. Got to get back."
Royan was inking to her knees, also gasping and hunting for breath.
"Nicky!" she tried to scream, but her breath was trapped in her lungs.
She felt that a steel noose had encircled her chest and, as it
tightened, the breath was being forced out of her.
"Nicky! Help me!" She was strangling, like a fish thrown up on the bank.
The strength drained from her limbs, and her vision began to break up
and fade. She did not have the strength to stand.
He stooped over her and tried to lift her, but he was almost as weak. He
felt his own legs buckling, no longer able to support even his own
weight.
erately as he suffocated.
"Four minutes," he thought desp i to brain death I "That's all we have
got. Four minutes and oblivion. We have to get airer her armpits From
behind her, he slipped his arms und locked his hands together over her
breasts. Again he and ied to lift her, but his strength was gone. He
began to tr ds the stairs down which they had walk backwards towar run
so lightly, and every pace required a huge effort. She was already
unconscious, lying inert in the circle of his arms. Her limp legs
trailed across the stone floor as he dragged her back.
The lowest step caught his heels and he almost toppled his balance over
backwards. with an effort he regained and lugged her back up the steps,
her feet sliding and bumping loosely over the treads. He wanted to shout
to his lungs Hansith for help, but he did not have me air in to utter a
sound.
, she's dead," he told himself, and if you drop her no ps, his lungs
hunting for he struggled up another five ste precious air and finding
none. His strength oozed out of wobbled and as his vision slid and him a
drop at a time A
11 distorted.
"Please God, let me
"Let me breathe," he pleaded.
breathe."
Miraculously, like a direct answer to his prayer, he felt slide down his
panting throat and the precious oxygen ngth began flooding back swell
his lungs. At once his stre Royan's chest and lifted and he tightened
his grip around her bodily. He staggered up the remaining steps with her
sprawled out Of the mouth of the body in his arms and shaft on to the
slabs of the tunnel at Hansith's feet.
"What is is, effendi? What has happened to you and the lady?"
Nicholas had no breath to answer him. He laid Royan in the position for
mouth-tolmouth resuscitation, and slapped her cheeks.
"Come on!" he pleaded with her. "Speak! Talk to me!" There was no
response, so he knelt over her, covered her open mouth with his own and
blew down her throat, until from the corner of his eye he saw her chest
swelling and inflating.
He sat back for a count of three. "Please, my darling, please
breathe!'There was no colour in her yellow, corpselike face.
He bent over her and covered her mouth again, and as he filled her lungs
with his own breath he felt her stir under him.
"That's it, my darling," he told her. "Breathe! Breathe for me."
At the next breath she pushed him away and sat up groggily, staring
round at the circle of faces that hovered over her anxiously. She picked
out Nicholas's pale face amongst the black faces of the men.
"Nicky! What happened?"
"I am not sure - but whatever it was, it almost got both of us. How are
you feeling now?"
"It was as though an invisible hand had me by the throat, and was
strangling me. I couldn't breathe, and then I passed out."
"It must be some kind of gas filling the lower levels of the passage.
You were only out for less than two minutes," he reassured her. "It
takes four minutes of oxygen starvation to kill the brain."
"I have a terrible headache." She pressed her fingers to her temples. "I
heard your voice calling me back. You called me "my darling"." She
dropped her eyes.
"Just a little slip of the tongue." He lifted her to her feet and for a
moment she swayed against him, her breasts soft and warm against his
chest.
"Thank you once again, Nicky. I am so deeply in your debt already, I
will never be able to repay you."
am sure we will be able to work something out."
She was suddenly aware of the niens eyes watching her and drew away from
him. "What kind of gas? And how did it get there? Was it another of
Taita's tricks, do you think, Nicky?"
"One Of the gases of decay, most probably," was his the lower part of
the opinion. . "Because it is trapped in passage, it must be a
heavier-than-air type. I would guess that it is probably carbon dioxide,
although it could be something like methane. I think methane is heavier
than air, isn't it?"
"Did Taita do it deliberately?" The colour was returning to her cheeks,
and she was recovering swiftly.
I don't know, but those baskets and jars are suspicious.
er that question when we have had a I will be able to answ chance to
examine their contents." He touched her cheek tenderly. "How are you
feeling? How is your headacheT
"Better. What do we do now?"
he to
"Clear the gas from the chamber, Id her, "and as soon as possible."
He used a candle from his emergency pack to, test for-the gas level in
the shaft. With it burning in his right hand he went back down the
steps, holding it low'to the floor, descending a step at a time. The
candle flame burned brightly, dancing to the movement of air as he went
down. Then, abruptly on the sixth step above the floor level of the
chamber, the flame turned yellow and snuffed out.
wall in white chalk, and He marked the level on the shaft, "Well, at
called up to Royan at the head of the still here. Must be carbon least
it's not methane. I am dioxide."
"Pretty conclusive test," she laughed. if it goes boom, it's methane."
the blower fan," Nicholas Hansith, bring down shouted to the big monk
Holding his breath as though he were snorkelling under water, Nicholas
carried the fan down the lower steps and set it up on the floor of the
chamber. He set the fan speed at "High' and immediately retreated up the
shaft, drawing a huge breath as soon as he was above the chalk mark on
the wall.
"How long will it take to clear the gas?" asked anxiously, looking at
her wrist-watch. Royan
"I will test with the candle every fifteen minutes.
It was an hour before the gas had dispersed enough to enable him to
reach the floor of the chamber again, and breathe the air down there.
Then Nicholas ordered Hansith to bring down a bundle of firewood and
build a fire in the centre of the stone floor, to heat and circulate the
air more rapidly.
While he was doing this, Nicholas and Royan examined one of the baskets
that stood against the wall.
"The crafty old ruffian!" Nicholas Muttered half in exasperation and
half in admiration. "It looks like a mixture of manure and grass and
dead leaves, the same as a compost heap."
They crossed the chamber, turned one of the pottery jars on its side,
and studied the powder that spilled out of it. Nicholas took up a
handful and rubbed it between his fingers, then sniffed it warily.
"Crushed limestone!" he muttered. "Although it has of acid. Vinegar,
perhaps, or even Isoonakgedagitowdirtihedsoomuetfoarnmd lost any odour,
Taita probably urine would have done the trick. As it broke down the
limestone, it formed carbon dioxide."
"So it was another deliberate trap," Royan exclaimed.
"Even so many thousands of years ago, Taita must have understood the
processes of decay. He knew what gases those mixtures would produce.
Amongst all the other accomplishments he boasts of, he must also have
been a nifty chemist."
Furthermore, he must have known that without a draught or any movement
of air, these heavy inert gases amber indefiould hang here in the bottom
of the ch agreed. "I expect that this shaft is designed like nitely,"
she
' she pointed a ,trap. I bet that the passage rises again at the
mysterious doorway in the far wall, "in fact I can see the first steps
even from here."
"We will soon find out if you are right," he told her, because that's
exactly where we are heading right now up those stePS."
apper had placed caims of stones at the water's edge to monitor the
river level. He watched es his ticker them the way a stockbroker watch
tape.
It had been six hours since the last rain squall had passed. The clouds
over the valley had burned away in the Ithough they still hung densely
over hot, bright sunlight, a the northern horizon. Their great
