A Covenant of Thieves

by Christian Velguth

  “It’s actually…it’s actually here,” she panted.

  K’ebero moved up to her side with a click of her cane and peered into the opening. A rectangular shaft plunged straight down. What little light was in the chapel seemed to be immediately swallowed by blackness. There were no steps to be seen.

  “How do we get down?” K’ebero asked.

  Rick crouched, leaning forward precariously. “Handholds. Look, carved into the side of the shaft. Like a ladder.” He glanced up at K’ebero. “Think you can manage?”

  She didn’t look at him, didn’t take her eyes off that darkened passage. “Yes.”

  * * *

  Once again, Rick was made to go first. He climbed down slowly, his way illuminated by the soldiers above him. The handholds that had been cut into the wall of the shaft were slick with condensation and smooth with time. Add to that the fact that they were only a few inches deep and almost too narrow for his boots, and every time he moved another “rung” down it felt like the shaft was trying to dislodge him. Trying to swallow him up.

  He kept climbing downward for what felt like a very long time, as if the shaft were delving deep into the roots of the mountain. K’ebero was above him, moving more slowly with her cane tucked beneath one arm. Rick wondered what would happen if he reached up and grabbed an ankle, tried to dislodge her and send her plummeting into the depths. Likely she’d grab at him as she fell, or he’d just be shot by one of the soldiers ushering Estelle and Booker into the shaft.

  All at once Rick sensed a larger space opening up around him, and his next step down placed his foot on solid ground. He had reached the bottom. He stood in a square of light, with nothing but darkness beyond.

  K’ebero came down next, dismounting less gracefully than he had. As she was steadying herself he had an image of snatching that cane and swinging it against her skull like a baseball bat on a pumpkin, but she was already moving away from him, free hand going to the pistol on her hip. She turned on her own wristband’s light, illuminating the cavern.

  It was a circular domed chamber that seemed to be a natural cavity inside the mountain, with the shaft to the surface opening against one wall. There was nothing to be seen in the chamber as K’ebero swung her light from one side to the other -- until it revealed a second opening. The mouth of a tunnel that delved even further into Jabal Musa.

  “It’s here,” K’ebero whispered. Rick noticed that the thumb of her left hand was twisting the large iron ring on her middle finger. The ring that had supposedly belonged to King Solomon. “Can you feel it? Just beyond…it’s waiting.”

  “Sure.” The hell of it was, he could feel it. Or at least imagined he could. There was a feeling to the chamber, an…atmosphere. Buzzing, almost, like the air before a storm. It had to be his imagination, and yet he felt it on his skin. History, the staleness of air not breathed for centuries -- and something more.

  They waited for Booker, Estelle, and the two soldiers to enter the chamber. Both men immediately drew their rifles once their feet had touched solid ground, keeping them trained on the captives.

  “We are on the verge of destiny,” K’ebero said, voice ringing in the chamber. “At the threshold of the birth of a new world. Come.”

  “Wait,” Rick said, stepping forward and squinting in the darkness. He’d just noticed something. “Shine your light above the tunnel.”

  After giving him a piercing look, K’ebero did so. Revealed in the light were words, carved above the tunnel mouth. They were flanked on either side by two more Templar crosses.

  “The Templars made it here,” Rick breathed. His stomach was sinking.

  “Does that mean…?” Booker began, but then he stopped. If the Ark was gone, K’ebero would probably execute all of them on the spot.

  The warlord was glancing between them suspiciously. “What? What does it say?”

  Rick stepped closer to the tunnel, neck craned. It was more Medieval French, much shorter than the message on the iron cylinder seal. He began to translate aloud:

  Go no further. Two of our company were lost to the evil that dwells in this place. I pray their souls have been ushered into the kingdom of heaven. Go no further. It was not God we found but…

  He trailed off, frowning at the brief translation. “What?” K’ebero snapped. “What did they find?”

  “It was not God we found,” he finished slowly, “but the devil.”

  K’ebero frowned at him, then up at the inscription. “What does that mean?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Nobody spoke. Glancing behind him, Rick could see the soldiers looking uneasy. A heaviness settled over the chamber.

  “These Templars,” K’ebero said finally. “They were crusaders. White men?”

  “Yeah,” Rick said. “But…”

  She nodded, as if that explained everything. “Then we continue.”

  And she started forward, moving with strong strides as if she no longer required the cane, leading the way through the mouth of the tunnel.

  The floor sloped gently downward, a faint draft rising from below as the passage breathed through its newly-opened airway. The tunnel wasn’t wide, only a little broader across than Rick’s shoulders. It forced them to move in single file, which meant the lights of the soldiers bringing up the rear were obscured. Strange shadows were thrown ahead, dark figures distorted and magnified into something more monstrous. Only K’ebero had a clear path, following the beam of her own light. Rick could hear her muttering to herself as they went, but couldn’t make out the words. He trailed a hand idly along one wall as he walked. It was a few seconds before the strangeness of what he was feeling struck him. Rick stopped, turning to examine the wall.

  “What are you doing?” snapped one of the soldiers. “Move!”

  “Yeah, yeah, hang on…” He leaned closer, staring at the stone. It was difficult to tell in the low light, but… “There’s no tool marks,” he said aloud.

  Ahead, K’ebero had stopped and turned. “What are you talking about?”

  Rick stepped back, looking at the ceiling, the opposite wall, the floor. “This passage, it’s -- smooth. Like glass, almost. There aren’t any marks from cutting tools or anything.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means I don’t know how this passage was carved.”

  None of the others seemed to know how to respond to this. K’ebero looked contemplative and continued to twist the iron ring around her finger. “Ok,” Booker said slowly. “So what does that mean?”

  “It means the power of the Ark is real,” K’ebero said softly.

  Everyone, including the soldiers, turned to stare at her. She looked up the passage at them, amber eyes flashing in the reflected light. “It is real! And with it, I will be able to free the oppressed of Ethiopia -- the oppressed of the world!”

  “It’s not real,” Rick said.

  “Then how do you explain this chamber? The message of the crusaders? The strangeness that you yourself pointed out!”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know, but magic is not my first guess.”

  K’ebero merely shook her head. “You will see,” she said, and turned to continue down the sloping corridor.

  Great, Rick thought. Go more crazy, that’s just what we need…

  But he couldn’t deny the oddness of the passageway, or the way it made his skin tingle. It was a relief when they finally left it behind. After maybe ten more minutes of following its descent, it opened onto a much larger chamber. Wider, even, than the one they had dropped into from the chapel, and most definitely manmade. The walls were straight and met at right angles, and the ceiling came to a high vault that reminded him of the Queen’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid at Giza. The difference being that this one had been carved from raw rock rather than made by stacking cut blocks.

  That, and the pattern.

  The walls, floor, and ceiling were as strangely smooth as the passageway had been, but here they were marred by countless shallow depressions and divo
ts that spread across every surface in a strange cubiform motif, squares and rectangles budding into ever-smaller iterations in an endless fractal pattern. It was as if a team of mad stonemasons had attacked the chamber, cutting blocks out of it randomly, with no decipherable plan or reason.

  They all stood at the entrance to the chamber, staring around as three beams of light played off its surfaces. “This is getting weird,” Booker said. The strange fractal depressions seemed to affect the acoustics in the chamber, making his voice echo from everywhere at once.

  “You’ve never encountered anything like it before?” Estelle asked, and it was a moment before Rick realized she was addressing him.

  “Never.” He moved carefully into the chamber. It would be all too easy to twist or break an ankle on this uneven floor. He knelt to examine a series of overlapping, concentric square depressions at his feet. “Smooth. No tool marks.”

  “Could it be natural?” she asked.

  “Maybe…”

  “No,” K’ebero said firmly. “Only a divine power could do this.”

  The chamber wasn’t empty. As Rick stood he saw, in the glare of the probing lights, large stone blocks sitting here and there, seemingly at random. Most were flush with at least one wall, and a couple were stacked, one atop and slightly offset from the other, balanced in ways that would have defied physics if they hadn’t been connected. Few came higher than his shins, and some were smaller than a shoebox. He found one roughly the size of a coffee table standing free of any wall, close to the middle of the chamber. It was smooth-sided, with none of the strange pattern marking the rest of the chamber.

  It was also connected to the floor. Not cemented there, but emerging from it. As if the room had been carved around it.

  Rick stood back, staring at the block and trying to make sense of it. Of this whole damn place. Never mind the how of it; why would anyone carve a chamber in this way? It had to be intentional; even a shitty architect knew how to smooth out a floor. And the fractal pattern didn’t look like something that just happened. The perfectly right angles, the sharpness of the edges -- it was intentional. And it bothered the hell out of him.

  As they came around the largest of the standing blocks, something was revealed in the light. A sort of well in the floor, directly ahead. Not smooth sided, but sinking down in a jumble of steps and tiers that crowded inward as they descended, so that the pit narrowed like a funnel. From where he was standing, Rick couldn’t see the bottom. He moved closer, K’ebero following quickly at his side.

  The light flashed off a golden surface. Rick came to a dead-halt at the edge of the well, breath catching. It sat at the bottom, maybe three or four meters down, with a foot or two gap between it and the surrounding rock.

  He was scrambling down the stone tiers before he knew it, dropping to stand beside the Ark. Two-and-a-half by one-and-a-half by one-and-a-half…

  It matched the dimensions perfectly; but more than that, it looked real. It felt real, without him needing to touch it, in a way the Ethiopian fake hadn’t. The golden surface shone mirror-like, almost liquid beneath the light. There were folds in the metal, of the sort he might expect to see in Damascus steel -- but never before in gold. The corners were straight, sharp, and seamless to his eye, and the lid -- it flared outward ever so slightly, the seam where it met the rest of the chest just barely visible. Perched atop it were two figures, slender and elongated, reminiscent of those he and Booker had found beneath Tana Qirqos, legs folded beneath them, backs arched and arms outstretched. Wings so delicate they were nearly foil extended from their backs, curving around their shoulders and forward so that their tips nearly met over the middle of the lid. Twelve wings; not two to each, but six.

  Seraphim. The highest order of angels. Fiery agents of God’s will.

  He heard the clack of K’ebero’s cane and her labored breath as she came down into the well, but he didn’t turn. It seemed impossible to pull his gaze away from the Ark. It was almost hyperreal, more solid and bright and magnificent than he could ever have imagined. How could he have thought that pale imitation on Tana Qirqos could possibly have been the real thing? Next to the true Ark of the Covenant, it was little more than a flat impression, like a pencil drawing that fell astronomically short of capturing the Ark’s essence. This…this was something else. Something…

  K’ebero appeared at his side, panting. He glanced down at her briefly and saw tears in her eyes as she gazed upon the Ark. The hand bearing her iron ring was clenched into a fist, and for a moment -- just a moment -- Rick could see the girl who had grown up hearing tales of Menelik, of her supposed Solomonic heritage, and who had believed she might secretly be a princess.

  Then Booker said, “There’s a body,” and the spell was broken. Rick looked up, turning. Booker and Estelle remained at the edge of the well with the soldiers. Booker nodded, and Rick followed his gaze down past the Ark. Slumped against the opposite side of the well was a body -- or what remained of one.

  He edged around the Ark, careful not to brush against it with his legs. That seemed important. He stepped up onto a higher tier of stone and crouched. It was dessicated, naturally mummified by the environment, the flesh little more than dry leather twisted around fragile bone. It wore the scraps of what looked like a robe. Whomever it had been had died seated on this shelf of stone, facing the Ark, feet resting on the floor of the well. The arms and legs were pulled in towards the torso. Most of the skull remained, though there was almost no face to speak of. The bone around the nasal cavity had collapsed, as had the right orbital cavity. The top of the skull looked caved in, in a way that maybe wasn’t accidental. The jaw hung loose and askew. Yellow-white teeth glowed softly under his light, and they sparkled with tiny flecks of something. Gold?

  “Is it a Templar?” Booker asked.

  Rick shook his head. “This guy’s been here a long time. As long as the Ark. There’s a wound on the skull, I think. Like he got clubbed or something.”

  “Who was he?” It was K’ebero who spoke. Her voice was oddly subdued.

  “Don’t know. One of the people who hid the Ark, maybe.” Carefully he lifted the remains of the robe, searching for any artifacts that might indicate an identity. There was nothing. Who was this man? A priest of Israel? Had he escorted the Ark to its resting place personally and died here? The blow to the skull -- maybe there had been an argument, an altercation. Maybe those he had come with hadn’t wanted to leave the Ark hidden after all. But then why was it still here?

  “It does not matter.” K’ebero had drawn her pistol and was aiming it steadily at him. Rick felt momentarily surprised to find her there holding a weapon. It was as if the weight of the discovery had shoved all else from his mind. She jerked her head to one side. “Step away from the Ark.”

  He moved quickly but carefully away, climbing up the side of the well to stand above the body. “You still need us. We can help --”

  “No.” The pistol was on Rick, but K’ebero’s eyes were drawn back to the Ark. She took a step forward. “This destiny is mine alone.

  “Kill them,” she said offhandedly.

  There was a clatter of weapons being readied. Rick felt his entire body tense, and it took a supreme amount of effort to force a single word out of his mouth: “Wait!”

  “No. I am done waiting.” K’ebero was moving closer to the Ark. She stopped less than an inch from it, pistol still pointing in his direction. “I have waited my entire life.”

  Rick glanced at Booker and Estelle. The two of them stood frozen at the edge of the well, the soldiers’ weapons at their backs. “At least -- at least let us see what’s inside! Please, we’ve come so far. We deserve that much at least.”

  K’ebero paused, glancing up at him thoughtfully. Rick was sure she would refuse; even if she didn’t, he had no idea what it would get him. At this point all he wanted were a few more minutes of life.

  And to see. He wanted to see what no one else had for thousands of years; to see what the little boy in Housto
n had dreamed of seeing one day. If that was the last thing he saw, it wouldn’t be so bad.

  K’ebero regarded him for a long moment, during which Rick waited for the resounding gunfire that would mark his death. Then, slowly, she nodded.

  “I will grant you this,” she said. She did not lower her pistol, but released her cane. For a moment she wavered, and Rick thought she might fall, thought maybe it would give him an opening -- but then she reached out and steadied herself against the Ark.

  He flinched when she did that. He wasn’t certain why -- maybe he expected it to crumble at her touch. But it remained solid and sturdy. K’ebero drew a deep breath as if gaining some power from the smooth golden surface. Then she gripped the edge of the lid and pushed.

  It did not move.

  A frown creased her face. She pushed harder and, when the lid of the Ark still did not move, holstered her pistol and pushed with both hands. Still it did not budge. “You.” K’ebero was addressing one of her soldiers, the one guarding Estelle. “Come down here. Let her go or kill her, I do not care. She does not matter.”

  “Don’t kill her!” Booker bellowed.

  The soldier holding Estelle seemed to consider for a moment. Then he released her, only to kick the back of her leg and force her to her knees. She went down hard, wincing in pain, bound hands clenched before her. The soldier hissed something in her ear, gun pressed to her head, then left her there and joined K’ebero in the well.

  “Open it.”

  The soldier blinked, stared at the Ark for a moment, then turned to his master. He said something in Amharic, voice tinged with fear. Before Rick could translate, K’ebero rounded on him, and suddenly she was shouting. “I have given you an order! Do not question me! Open it now or I will leave your body in this hole!”

  The soldier stumbled back a step, looking shocked. He swung his rifle onto his shoulder, glanced at Rick, then took a step towards the Ark.

  “Wouldn’t do that,” Rick said in Amharic.

  The soldier shot him another look, hands hovering over the lid.

  “Just saying. You don’t know what could happen.” Nothing. Nothing was going to happen, but Rick was desperate now. If he could find a crack, any at all, and widen it into some sort of advantage --