Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear gh-2

by Gabriel Hunt

  “Why do you need me?” Sheba said.

  “Because you know how to read and interpret the instructions,” DeGroet said. “Unlike the last eight people I sent in, all of whom are now dead.”

  Chapter 7

  DeGroet snapped his fingers twice, pointed to the section of the paw they were next to, and then pulled Sheba away to one side. Two of the local workers—a hardy older man with wind-weathered cheeks and extravagant gray moustaches and a younger, beefier sort in a striped robe and fez, whose angular goatee and eyebrows made him look perpetually outraged—stepped forward and bent to the task of scraping out mortar around the edges of a block of stone that Gabriel hadn’t realized was a separate block to begin with. Which was the point, of course—for this block to have remained in place undetected for all these centuries, the seam would have had to have been pretty damn well concealed.

  They made short work of it, no doubt because they’d done it at least eight times before. Grunting and straining, they then levered the stone out of the way, moving it first just a millimeter at a time, then an inch, then a few inches, and then all the way. It slid smoothly, though ponderously, across the ground and the two workers left it where it lay, smacking their hands together to get rid of dust or restore circulation or both. A third local, wearing the same sort of striped turban as the older man (and looking similar enough facially, Gabriel thought, that he was likely related—a son, a nephew, something), brought a handful of torches and passed them around: one to each of the first two workers, one to Karoly. He also held onto one for himself, but that left one extra, and behind DeGroet’s back, Gabriel stepped forward to take it. No way was he going to let Sheba go in there by herself.

  The son/nephew went first, after lighting his torch with a flick of a lighter. The lighter went around from hand to hand and the torches all went alight quickly—they must have been doused in some sort of accelerant. Karoly followed the young man in, then DeGroet, pushing Sheba ahead of him, one of her bare and goose pimpled arms in his left fist, his sword in his right. The two workers who’d moved the stone looked at Gabriel then, offering him the privilege of following directly behind the boss, but Gabriel had his own reasons for not wanting to get too close to DeGroet and waved the others on ahead. They grabbed some bags of supplies from the ground and went inside. Then Gabriel ducked to squeeze through the dark entrance himself. As soon as he did, he realized that this was not just a passageway—it was a crudely carved staircase, descending steeply into the rock below the statue.

  The steps were about half a foot high and Gabriel counted fifty-three of them before the descent bottomed out. So they were some twenty-five feet below the statue’s base. The passageway opened up, widening slightly, and the torchlight cast into relief a set of carved images on either side. Bordered with a double row of hieroglyphs above and below were long, narrow strips of art depicting seated deities with animal heads, men of various descriptions, what looked like scenes of court life on the left wall and of farming on the right. Sheba stopped at several points to examine a particular image or piece of writing, then continued on in silence.

  Gabriel could only imagine what this was like for her—it was extraordinary enough for him, and he wasn’t a linguist with a specialization in ancient languages. To someone in Sheba’s field, this corridor by itself was a lifetime’s work, handed to her on a platter. At the same time, she was twenty-five feet underground, in a claustrophobic stone corridor, breathing musty air and not enough of it, surrounded by men with torches and blades who’d already kidnapped her twice and threatened to do worse. Of course Gabriel was there, too—but she didn’t know that, and there was no way he could tell her.

  They came, eventually, to another staircase, this one leading up, and from the direction they’d been walking Gabriel concluded they were now ascending into the belly of the beast, literally: by his mental calculations he’d have said they were more or less at the geometric center of the Sphinx, equally far from the right and left sides, from front and back. The steps here were taller, and Gabriel only counted thirty of them before they had reached a chamber at the top. Gabriel hung back, pulled the fabric of the burnoose around to cover his nose and mouth and held his torch away from his face so that he remained in shadow.

  “Rashidi,” DeGroet said and gestured at the young man in the lead. “Show her.”

  Rashidi looked to his older relative for guidance, received a nod, and then cautiously brought his torch closer to the far wall.

  Gabriel noticed two things immediately—three, really, if you counted the smell. The first was a rectangular panel on the wall, similar in size to the stele outside and filled with what to his eyes looked like similar writing. The second was a hole in the wall at waist height, circular and dark, just about wide enough for a trim man to fit inside.

  Then there was the smell, which was the unwholesome odor of a morgue or a battlefield, the smell of bodies that had lain out too long and been neglected. Gabriel wondered if it was the remains of the unfortunate men DeGroet had sent in earlier that he was smelling. Even if they’d removed the bodies (and he didn’t see them lying around anywhere), this was certainly not the sort of place you could air out afterwards.

  The flickering torchlight played over the writing on the wall and Gabriel saw Sheba’s face fixed in concentration. Her lips moved rapidly but without sound, as though she were talking to herself.

  “You see what we are dealing with, Miss McCoy?” DeGroet said. “We’ve had the symbols translated as best we could—which was not very well, I’m afraid. But even if we knew accurately what each symbol meant, that wouldn’t tell us anything by itself, would it?”

  “No,” Sheba said.

  “So you tell us, please. What is on the other side of this wall, and how can we get to it?”

  “It’s a…a reliquary, a storage chamber for, for…well, it says here ‘the remains of the gods,’ but the word for ‘remains’ is ambiguous, it could also refer to artifacts—artifacts depicting the gods, ritual artifacts, that sort of thing.” She paused. “There is a warning that says only priests shall enter. ‘A priest of Sekhmet may cross the threshold’—you see the lioness figure, there, that’s Sekhmet.”

  “Good, good,” DeGroet said. “And how shall they enter?”

  Sheba approached the wall, ran one index finger along the ancient images.

  “‘Through the portal’—that’s this here, I’ve got to assume,” she said, pointing to the circular hole, “‘but,’ it says, ‘take heed the supplicant shall bear all right and proper offerings to…placate, mollify, something like that…the jealous heart of Hathor.’”

  “And what does that mean?” DeGroet said.

  Sheba shrugged. “There were many forms of ritual offering in ancient Egypt. Burnt offerings, bowls of grain, poured water, incantations.”

  “And which form does it say is called for here?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “It must,” DeGroet shouted, and his voice echoed from the close stone walls. “It must. Read it again.”

  “I already—”

  DeGroet whipped his sword up. The point of the blade danced an inch away from Sheba’s throat. “Read it again, I said.”

  She stepped back, turned once more to face the inscription.

  “‘…all right and proper offerings…jealous heart…’” Sheba’s voice took on a quality of despair as she ran her eyes along the rows of symbols again. Then her voice changed. “Wait, hold on. Here it talks about Hathor’s role as guardian of the floods, ensurer of fertility…it says, ‘Her heart is’…gladdened?…no, no, made light, ‘her heart is made light by the vision of her holy ones loaded down with the river’s wealth.’”

  “The river’s wealth,” DeGroet said.

  “It’s an expression you see in inscriptions during the Early Dynastic Period,” Sheba said. “They were a desert people and depended wholly on the Nile for survival. The river’s wealth was its water—that and the red silt it left behind, the rich dirt in
which they could cultivate crops.”

  “So what is it telling us,” DeGroet said, a mocking tone in his voice, “that we must carry mud to enter?”

  “I don’t know,” Sheba said unhappily. “All I can tell you is what it says.”

  DeGroet turned aside, surveyed his men.

  Gabriel hung back, kept his chin tucked down.

  “Zuka,” DeGroet said, pointing with his sword at the the older man, who was loaded down with the pair of canvas rucksacks he’d picked up on the way in. “You have canteens in those bags of yours?” The man nodded. “Mix up some mud.”

  “Mud?” Zuka said. “With what?”

  “You have a sandbag?” DeGroet said, and Zuka nodded again. “Use that.”

  “But—”

  “Use it,” DeGroet snapped. He turned to Rashidi. “You will carry it in.”

  The young man’s face went pale, and Zuka’s head snapped up. “Not my son, please, effendi,” he said. “I will go. I will carry it.”

  “You?” DeGroet growled. “Do you think you could fit inside that hole, you fat ox? Or Hanif—” he waved at the man with the goatee “—or Karoly?”

  Karoly frowned at this.

  “Send the woman,” Zuka said.

  “I do not trust the woman,” DeGroet said. “Your son will do it.”

  “But he will die, effendi.”

  “He most certainly will die if he doesn’t go, since I will kill him, and you with him. Now make your mud.” Zuka miserably returned to mixing water from one of his goatskin canteens with the contents of a heavy sandbag.

  “You,” DeGroet said, turning back to Sheba. “You will tell us what he is to do with this mud.”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Figure it out,” DeGroet snapped. “You have one minute.” He turned to Karoly. “It is like pulling teeth, sometimes. Getting anything done.”

  Sheba went back to the writing, searching it for any further indication of how the offering was to be presented. Zuka remained kneeling on the floor, taking the sand and dirt that had filled the bag and mixing it with water in a loose, wet pile on the chamber’s floor. Rashidi stood alone in the center of the room, visibly trembling.

  Gabriel’s hand tightened on the grip of the rifle in his hand. He would have to act—he had to do something. The only question was when. He could pull his guns now, grab Sheba, try to escape, but even assuming he didn’t get them both killed, the best he could hope for was to make it out alive—he’d never know what lay beyond the hole, what the ancient reliquary held. If there was any chance Sheba could coach Rashidi into opening it successfully…

  “Inside the hole,” Sheba said, “there should be a basin, some sort of recessed area. He should put the offering in that. You’ll need to fill it completely,” she said to Rashidi. He nodded furiously, desperately. “Make sure you bring enough.”

  The pile on the ground had grown considerably—Zuka had split open a second sandbag and emptied a second canteen. Anything to ensure his son’s success.

  DeGroet flipped a metal pail into the air with the tip of his sword. Hanif caught it. “He can use that,” DeGroet said. “Go on, fill it.” Hanif fell to the task, scooping handfuls of the mud into the container.

  When it was filled, he exchanged a glance with Zuka and handed the pail to Rashidi.

  “Go slowly,” DeGroet told the young man. “You don’t want to end up like the others, do you?” Rashidi violently shook his head. “Then for god’s sake, be careful. You understand what you are going to do?” Rashidi nodded. “Then tell me.”

  “I am going to pour the mud into a basin.”

  “It may not be an actual basin,” Sheba said. “It might just be a, a, a depression, a shallow area. Or a hole—there could just be a hole.”

  “A hole,” Rashidi said.

  “Enough,” DeGroet said. “In with you.” And he struck Rashidi smartly on the backs of his legs with the flat of his blade.

  The young man took off his cloak and crawled into the hole, pushing the container of mud before him. It was a tight fit. He wriggled to get his shoulders and head inside, then his torso, and finally his legs. For a moment, his feet remained, sticking out of the hole, but one at a time they vanished inside, too.

  A moment later they heard his voice, muffled and echoing in the enclosed space. “I can’t see anything,” he said.

  “Feel for it,” Sheba called out. “On the bottom.”

  Silence.

  “Do you feel anything?” she shouted.

  “Rashidi?” DeGroet said. “She asked you a question.”

  “I do,” his voice came. “It’s like a bowl, with sloping sides.”

  “Good,” Sheba said. “Are you filling it?”

  “Yes,” came the voice. And a moment later: “It’s full.” And then: “What should I do now?”

  DeGroet looked at Sheba who had nothing to offer but a look of grave uncertainty. “Keep going,” he shouted.

  “No,” Sheba said, “don’t, it could be booby-trapped—”

  They all heard a sound then, a terrible sound, the sound of stone moving against stone deep within the wall, rapidly gathering momentum, like a heavy boulder as it topples off the side of a cliff, gaining speed as it sweeps past; and then the sound of a collision, but only briefly, as though the object in the stone’s path had offered only token resistance and been plowed through.

  “No!” Zuka shouted, and he ran forward, dived head-first into the hole himself. DeGroet had been right—he could not fit past his shoulders, but he knelt with his head and arms inside, reaching for something, groping, then finally grasping and pulling, extracting. Gabriel saw Zuka’s head pop out of the hole first, then his arms emerged, and in each hand one of his son’s boot heels. Zuka pulled at his son’s body and it came, shins and thighs and lower torso—but where his upper torso should have been there was nothing. He’d been sliced neatly in half at the breastbone.

  Zuka fell back, howling.

  “Of course it’s trapped,” DeGroet said, disgusted. “Whatever did you think you were here for?”

  Chapter 8

  The smell was stronger now, and no doubt at all about its source. Gabriel saw Sheba turn aside, one hand clapped over her mouth.

  “If you insist on being sick, Miss McCoy,” DeGroet said, “please do so quickly. We have work to do.” He swung around, saw Zuka kneeling over Rashidi’s remains, seemed about to say something, then held himself back. He paced over to the still considerable heap of mud on the ground and kicked at it, sending a clod or two against the wall. There was a second metal pail where he’d picked up the first one, and he snagged its handle on the end of his sword. Without looking, he lifted it into the air and sent it flying behind him—in Gabriel’s direction.

  “You,” he said. “You’re not fat, at least. Why don’t you give it a try?”

  Gabriel caught the pail against his chest with the arm in which he held the torch; in the other, he still held the shovel and the rifle. The folds of the burnoose were wound around the bottom half of his face but Karoly, looking over, recognized him from outside. “Lajos, no,” he said in Hungarian, “this man’s clumsy as hell, he’ll be dead in no time.”

  “Well, if he is so clumsy,” DeGroet said, loudly, in English, “then his death will be no loss.” Without looking over at him, he snapped a command at Gabriel. “Fill it!”

  Gabriel hesitated a moment, his fist tightening on the rifle’s stock. He saw Karoly’s hand drop to the sidearm on his hip. With his own hands full like this, there was no way he could beat Karoly to the draw.

  He let the rifle down slowly, set it against the wall, then put the pail down beside the mud pile. He used the shovel to fill it, then set that aside, too. The pail was heavy when he lifted it, the metal of the handle cutting into his palm.

  He kept his face averted as he walked past DeGroet toward the far wall and its deadly tunnel.

  The hole loomed. What had Sheba called it? The portal. For nine men it had been a portal to
the underworld, from this life to the next. What chance was there that it would be anything less for him?

  Nonsense, he said to himself. You’ve been in tighter spots. (Though measuring the tunnel’s narrow opening against his shoulders, he wasn’t so sure.) You’ve seen traps like this before and defeated them.

  Yes, replied a little voice in his head, but all the knowledge and experience in the world won’t stop a ten-ton boulder from snipping you in half if you’re lying beneath it.

  “Miss McCoy, have you got any advice for our newest volunteer?”

  Sheba looked up. She’d been leaning against the wall with her eyes closed, her chest heaving. It was one hell of a chest, and Gabriel had to admit that, if this had to be his last sight on earth, there were worse ones to have. With DeGroet behind him, he pulled the burnoose to one side, uncovering his face, and cocked a crooked smile at Sheba. “Do not cry, effendi,” he said softly in Arabic, and recognition came all at once into her eyes. She started toward him but he shook his head minutely. With an enormous effort she restrained herself, but the look in her eyes changed from momentary relief to terror, a mute pleading.

  “No,” she said to DeGroet, “no, this man can’t go, you can’t send him, he’ll die—”

  “We all must die sometime,” DeGroet said. “But if you are so concerned for his well-being, why don’t you tell him something that might help him once he’s in there?”

  “But I don’t know anything,” she said, and Gabriel could tell that she wished with all her heart that this wasn’t so. “A tribute,” she said rapidly, running through the text in her head, “an offering to Hathor, the river’s wealth, must deposit a heavy burden to make her heart light…that’s all it says. Please…please don’t send him.” Her eyes slid shut again and her voice got very small. “Send me. I’ll do it. Send me instead.”