by Sarah Rayne
‘It looks as if part of the roof’s caved in at some time,’ observed Raffael, regarding the small archway.
‘Well, let’s hope no other parts cave in until we’re through.’
Ginevra had hesitated for the fraction of a second before going to help Grendel, and then she saw, as Elinor had seen earlier, that Grendel was intent only on clearing a way through. She quashed the prickle of unease and kneeled by him, dragging at the piles of broken bricks and stones, and said in what she hoped was an ordinary voice, ‘This is a hellish place, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but beyond this we’ll be safe,’ said Grendel, nodding to the piled-up rubble. ‘And there are beautiful wall paintings to see.’ Ginevra felt the breath catch in her throat for a second – how does he know that!
Lewis said, ‘If you can pile the debris on to the stair behind us it might delay anyone coming after us.’
‘Will they get this far?’ asked Elinor, helping Raffael to carry two huge boulders that still bore traces of carved hieroglyphs on one side. ‘Won’t the bolts on the Temple door hold?’
‘Yes, but let’s block every avenue we can,’ said Lewis, and then, ‘Damn, I’m lying here giving you all orders—’
‘Oh, order away,’ said Ginevra promptly. ‘We’re the poor down-trodden proletariat, slaving under the yoke of bloated capitalism.’
‘I think,’ said Raffael repressively, ‘that we can get through now. The archway’s very low and there are more stairs leading down – do you see them? But we’ll have to go very carefully. I wouldn’t trust an inch of this place.’
As they passed under the low crumbling archway the stench of mould and damp breathed into their faces, and as they went down towards the ruined apartments there was a stifling sense of ancient darknesses and of old, old evil. Ginevra shivered and glanced across at Lewis to see how he was coping.
Lewis was clinging to consciousness and calm by the frailest of threads, but as they descended into the dark, stale-smelling void the pain receded briefly, and the years fell away. He half closed his eyes and for a leaping moment he was his own younger self, descending these stairs in the wake of the mischievous-eyed lady who had dressed up in a goddess’s regalia and was beckoning to him.
And now I’m making the same journey, but this time I’m being carried. And even though I’m trying not to think about it, I’m probably halfway to some disgusting form of blood-poisoning, and even if I escape that I’m probably crippled for life—
And Touaris was dead, her womb ripped to shreds by the sentence of the First Stone Tablet which stated that the office of the gods must be inviolate. But Touaris’s son was here, leading the way, his torch cutting an arc of cold twentieth-century light through the pouring darkness, sweeping aside thick swathes of cobwebs. It was an eerie experience to watch Touaris’s son pushing back the centuries, exactly as his mother had done all those years ago.
Grendel’s face was in shadow, but once or twice Lewis caught a glint from his eyes, and once when Grendel paused and looked back over his shoulder Lewis felt a shiver of new fear. For a second the planes of Grendel’s features had seemed to sharpen, and there had been the sly sideways glance from inward-slanting eyes and the thin cruel smile. If he pounces on one of those girls in this cramped space— I’ll have to watch him closely, thought Lewis, and I’ll have to be ready for anything. Then pain seized him again, and he remembered with fresh bitterness that if Grendel’s dark insanity surfaced now, he would be helpless. Be damned to that! he thought angrily. If he attacks Elinor I’ll drag him away with my own hands! This struck him as an extraordinarily emotional reaction.
The passage was so impossibly narrow that several times they had to stop and clear a path through fallen masonry. In places they had to bend almost double to go beneath the low roof, and the ground everywhere was strewn with fallen stones and dangerously uneven. Once Ginevra twisted her foot in a deeply rutted section and almost went headlong and once Elinor gasped with sudden pain as a jutting spur of rock scraped her shoulder. Sandstone columns supported the roof at intervals, but most of them were eroded almost to dust. Here and there were gaping holes in the ground and on one occasion they had to edge around a well-like void from which a dank sour stench gusted upwards.
‘Horrid,’ said Ginevra, helping to hand Lewis across this. ‘How far down until we reach the actual city part?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Do you know how near we are to the Decalogue Chamber?’ asked Raffael.
‘Not very near. In fact I think we’re going away from it. Why – is it important?’
‘It was,’ said Raffael rather drily. ‘But I think there are other priorities just now.’
The air was becoming very stale, and Lewis felt the beginnings of tightness about his chest. Heart attack pending? No, you fool, lack of oxygen!
Several times the sweeping torch beams showed up crustings of pale fungoid growths on the roof’s underside, but several times as well they caught the glint of wall paintings that owed nothing to the grafted-on Tibetan culture but were wholly Egyptian in execution. We’re nearing the original part, thought Lewis, and through the tidal waves of pain a little pulse of excitement began to beat in his mind.
Grendel stopped by one of the columns and ran the flat of his hand almost reverently over one of the wall paintings. ‘That is the Bubasti people carrying the cat goddess out of Egypt,’ he said, tracing the faded beautiful outlines. ‘Taking with them the Stones of Vengeance.’
Lewis caught his breath. He’s recognising this place, he thought, his eyes on Grendel. He knows it, not because he was here himself, but because he’s inherited the memory; he’s inherited a whole bank of memories and he’s reaching down and down, and back and back into them. I think he’s more your son than mine, Touaris. But I think he always was.
Grendel shone the torch on to the fresco which was faded and dim, but whose colours and outlines were still discernible. Rows of figures, drawn and painted in the formalised style of Egyptian art, some with their heads turned back as if looking to whatever place they were leaving; others pointing ahead as if to the destination. The central figures were driving oxen yoked to immensely thick wheel-shaped objects.
Raffael said softly, ‘The exodus of the renegades.’ He touched them lightly with one hand.
‘And rows of hieroglyphs,’ said Elinor. ‘I wish we could know what they say.’
Grendel said, ‘I know.’ He paused, and then said,
‘Since the time of the ancestors –
The gods who were before time –
Who rest in their pyramids . . .
Their place is no more.
‘It’s from the Eleventh Dynasty and it was the mocking Bubasti jibe at the Pharaoh Amenemhat and his descendants.’
The two girls stared at him, and Elinor started to say, ‘How do you—’ And then stopped and looked around, as if she had caught a sound.
Lewis had caught it as well, but he thought it was not so much a sound as an awareness. Something long dead, something so far back in time that it was almost impossible to catch the echoes . . . Something nearby seemed to shiver and sigh, and a dry, softly warm wind breathed into his face. The exodus, he thought. The desperate journey out of Egypt. But beneath the desperation – flee before we are caught and taken back to face death! – had run an exultant current of triumph.
Because although we are leaving the rainless land, we are taking Satan’s Commandments that were forged in the deepest fire-drenched caverns of hell and cooled in the snow-capped mountains of the world . . . We are taking them from the land of oppression into the remote, mountain-rimmed East, and there we shall found our own civilisation and indulge our own worship – Touaris, goddess of true immortality, who was once Bastet and also Apet and Hesamut and Rert . . . And one day, when Amenemhat’s splendour is in dust and the pharaohs’ names lost to the world, our city will still be standing and Touaris will still live and our people will endure . . .
But for now we must thi
nk only of the journey, and we must hasten to outrun Amenemhat’s jackals . . .
We must run, thought Lewis, confusedly. We must outrun Amenemhat’s jackals . . . The suffocating darkness of the ruined passage closed about him, and he blinked and felt the present click into focus once more.
But the eerie echoes lingered for a moment longer, and although he had no means of knowing what they were or where they came from, he thought they were another of those inexplicable shards of time that occasionally break and lodge in the present. Splinter-echoes of the beleaguered Bubasti tribe from three thousand years ago? More likely I’m becoming feverish from the rat-wounds, he thought angrily.
But the urgency was still crowding in, and there was still the sense that it was imperative to go on and go quickly lest they were overtaken. He started to say something to Raffael about moving faster – when Ginevra whipped round, staring into the darkness.
Elinor started to say, ‘What—’ And then stopped and looked back as well, because they could all hear it now.
And this time it was not a thin faint echo of the past. It was people dragging open the trap door of the Death Temple.
There was no point in going deeper in, but there was nowhere else to go. Elinor, trying to protect Lewis from the worst jolts of the frenzied scramble through the tunnels, scanned the darkness frantically, searching for somewhere to hide. It would be appalling to get lost down here, but it might be better than being caught by Kaspar. And then she remembered that their supply of torches and candles was limited, and that the haversacks held only a couple of days’ food and bottled water. Was it preferable to die from hunger and thirst in the dark than to be flung summarily on to the Burning Altar and roasted alive and eaten? And the danger’s down here with us anyway, she thought suddenly. It’s running alongside us – I can feel that it is! It’s with us in these gruesome passages and it’s much closer than any of us suspect . . . stalking through the darkness . . . prowling the tunnels alongside us . . . Don’t be ridiculous!
The Tashkarans had reached the second stairs and they were pouring into the tunnels; Elinor could hear them shouting furiously in their own tongue. The ground was shuddering under the impact of angry running feet and little flurries of dry red sand were dislodging from the roof. From somewhere deep in the bowels of the ancient city came a faint menacing growling, echoing hollowly. Like standing on a deserted Underground station and hearing a train approach, thought Elinor wildly. Did the ground shudder as well? No, I’m imagining it. But the feeling that something deep and ancient and awesome had been disturbed persisted.
It was then that Grendel turned back. He had been leading them and the arc of light from his torch turned with him, so that there was a moment when he was standing behind the light, wreathed in shadows. And then there was another moment when the shadows twisted about his face, sharpening the features, lengthening the lower lip. Elinor stared at him and knew why she had felt that sense of danger walking with them: the danger was here, it was barely two steps away. Grendel – Lewis’s son, who had his father’s eyes and hands – who had been so helpful about clearing the blocked tunnels and had shown them the cool lovely wall paintings, was changing: he was metamorphosing into the slavering, hungry-eyed thing Elinor had seen chained in the warehouse below Chance House.
As Grendel pushed past them, Ginevra fell back against the wall and Raffael’s arms went out to her automatically. Lewis, his face contorting with pain, struggled to stand, reaching out to Grendel as if to stop him. But Grendel made an angry gesture of repudiation, and then brought both his hands up to clutch his head as if forcing back some deep inner torment.
The dull growling came from beneath the city again, and this time large stones broke away from the ceiling and began to shower down. Elinor sent a nervous glance at the low uneven roof and saw a faint ripple of movement, as if a giant breath had blown across the surface.
Down the dark tunnel came a flood of red torchlight, and from out of the shadows, their eyes wild with the ancient blood lust of their ancestors, their feet pounding on the hard-packed earth floor, burst the Tashkarans. Elinor and Ginevra shrank back, and Raffael made as if to lift Lewis again. But we’re outnumbered! thought Elinor frantically. And we can’t possibly outrun all these!
Grendel shot forward, his hands lifted above his head, the fingers curving into claws. His upper lip curled back and his teeth gleamed in the flickering torchlight, and Elinor understood then that Grendel was channelling his own insanity: he had forced it back earlier, but now he was unleashing it. Kaspar’s people had cheated him and the Tamerlane League had cheated him and he was deliberately summoning up his cruel inner self. As he went towards Kaspar he was like the avenging god of some ancient myth.
Elinor felt a chill of primeval fear. He was terrible and awesome, but against the Tashkarans and against whatever lived in the bowels of these tunnels, he would stand no chance. She started after him but Lewis grabbed her arm and jerked her back. She thought he said, ‘Let him go, Elinor,’ but the ground was shuddering beneath them now and the sandstone pillars were shaking and it was becoming difficult to hear or see or even think.
Grendel was in the centre of the tunnel, sandstones and pouring red dust cascading about him. The torches lit him to surreal life, and he hunched forward, lowering his head. Thick pale mouth-fluids ran from his mouth and dribbled over his chest, and his eyes showed red. Huge splits appeared in the roof, dirt and rocks pouring down, and Elinor threw herself against Lewis, forcing him against the wall, shielding his body with her own. She was totally unprepared for his arms to come instantly about her, and she was even more unprepared for the startling response of her own senses. It was a reflex action, of course, it was absolutely nothing more than that, but her eyes flew up to meet his, and she said a bit jerkily, ‘I’m trying to protect you from the stones and – and things.’
‘I know,’ he said. His eyes were still cloudy with pain but they were perfectly sensible. His arms stayed tightly round her and as he held her against him something fastened about Elinor’s heart and mind that had nothing to do with panic or fear and that had everything to do with sudden soaring hope and surprised joy.
The present came rushing in again almost immediately and Elinor thrust the moment down because it was not to be believed and it was not to be relied on. He was half delirious with pain and they were all half mad with fear and panic. But if they ever did get free, it might be one of those moments to be stored away with immense care, and only unwrap and look at when you were absolutely alone. We’ll get out of here if I have to tear down every brick in this crumbling place, thought Elinor fiercely. We’ll beat those devils if I have to strangle every one of them with my own hands!
As if in echo of this last, Grendel gave a low snarling sound – inhuman, bestial – and fell on Kaspar, knocking him to the ground, sending the burning torch spinning from his grasp. Elinor had a brief terrible glimpse of Grendel’s face with the stark glare of blood lust and then Grendel sank his teeth into Kaspar’s face and Kaspar began to scream, the sound echoing and bouncing through the narrow space.
The deep underground thunder came again and the walls of the tunnels began to crack. For a moment none of them moved, and then Raffael shouted, ‘They’re caving in! The whole place is collapsing! Run for it! Get out while there’s time!’
The angry underground thunder pursued them as they fled deeper into the ancient buried city.
Raffael and Elinor had both grabbed Lewis, handling him roughly but driven by desperation. He had shouted to them to leave him and get clear, but none of them paid him any heed. Ginevra snatched up the nearest haversack and Grendel’s discarded torch, and moving by instinct they went forward.
Huge pieces of rock were falling so that they kept their hands over their heads as the only protection they could manage, and the centuries-old dust was billowing upwards in choking red clouds. Elinor flung a frightened glance over her shoulder. Kaspar and the Tashkarans were screaming and fighting to get free, bu
t the ancient walls were falling in everywhere, and they were already half buried by falling debris. Little trickles of flame had started up in a dozen places where the burning torches had been helplessly flung down and the entire underground city was becoming buried in fire and falling rock.
‘The roof’s coming down!’ cried Elinor, coughing through the dust and trying to dodge the bouncing skittering boulders. ‘Go on, go forward, we can still get through!’
‘Where!’ yelled Ginevra, her eyes streaming, but tumbling forward, trying to direct the torch as she went. ‘Jesus God, Nell, where are we going?’
‘I don’t know but there must be a way. We can’t have got this far and not get free.’
And then Lewis said, ‘The old city gates!’ And heard, like a sweet soft echo, Touaris’s voice across the decades: ‘I wanted to see the original city entrance, which our chronicles say was one of the most beautiful things ever built by man . . .’
Hope surged up within him, and he cried, ‘Go forward! There’s a way out – the original entrance! The gates that the first Bubasti built to enter Tashkara!’ And thought: and if you bequeathed me nothing else, my poor lost love, and if I lost your son at the end, still you gave me the means to escape from your city!
Raffael said suddenly, ‘You’re right, Sir Lewis! There’s a light up ahead.’
Thin dawn light, pure and cool and spangled with glistening dew-soaked cobwebs, streamed into the tunnels, and Elinor, her eyes gritty and her throat almost closed up with the dust, saw that the tunnel was widening. Over their heads, was a glint of something that might once have been pure sawn ivory, and that might have been burnished bronze or gold, veined with fiery threads of gold and of turquoise . . . The Gates of Paradise, made from chalcedony and turquoise and jasper and fire . . .
