The Pharos Objective mi-1

by David Sakmyster

  Lydia took her time, walking and thinking. And fighting back her emotions.

  She put a hand to her stomach, and began to cry.

  8

  The advance from Doubleday paid for Caleb and Lydia’s hotel suite for the next month. The first book was still selling well across Europe, but only to limited success in the States, probably because they hadn’t had a chance to do any further promotions there.

  Their room overlooked the harbor. And outside, across the Boulevard de la Rosette, they could reach the causeway and walk to Qaitbey’s fortress within an hour. The museum was a short distance away, as were the Municipal Palace and the Zinzania Theater. Near the harbor, where most archaeologists believed the old library once stood, now proudly stood the Bibliotheca Alexandrina-the modern version of the historic library. With construction finishing in 2006, it comprised ten levels, four of which were built underground to further protect the contents from environmental forces. Adjacent to the library was a science museum and planetarium.

  But as exciting as all these attractions were, Caleb and Lydia had little time for sightseeing. Caleb had enlarged the photos of the great seal Phoebe had given him for Christmas years ago. He posted them on a wall and tacked up a bed sheet to cover them when he and Lydia went out. They spent hours each day analyzing every inch of the image, studying every carving, every symbol.

  He sent Lydia out repeatedly, sometimes several times a day, for journal articles or books they couldn’t access online. Most of these she had to order from contacts at the UK Doubleday offices. They acquired some rare seventeenth-century texts on alchemy-Paracelsus, Geber, Hollandus and Kircher. They consulted works by Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, Madame Blavatsky’s three-volume compendium, and so many other books of arcane knowledge. The trick, as always, was to focus on the truly inspired, those derived from the most ancient writings.

  Their hotel suite quickly began to look like Caleb’s boyhood room back in Sodus. Dog-eared copies of books were scattered about, and stacks upon stacks of heavy tomes covered the floor.

  One day late in September, while Lydia was taking a nap, face-down on the couch as several fruit flies buzzed around a plate of dates and prunes on the coffee table, Caleb sat cross-legged before the wall, considering the enlarged photographs. He imagined he was there again, before the grand staff and the entwined serpents surrounded by seven symbols.

  Those symbols were all familiar now, old friends, after fine-tuning his knowledge of alchemy, immersing himself in the subject for the better part of a year. The first four were Water, Fire, Air and Earth and their corresponding planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus. These were the principles of the denser matter, what the alchemists called the elements of the Below; while the realm of the Above hosted the intangible essences of soul and spirit. The remaining three symbols were the Moon, Mercury and, finally, the Sun, often represented as salt, quicksilver and sulfur, signifying the coming together of Above and Below into a new, immortal form of pure essence. The Gold of the soul, the Philosopher’s Stone. Quintessence.

  It took Caleb a long time to finally accept the obvious: that the sequence might be the key. But no matter which way around the staff he read the symbols, they were not in the right order.

  When Lydia awoke she found him staring at the sign in the lower left corner.

  “It’s a combination lock after all,” he said.

  “Great.” She yawned, then perked up. “So what’s the combination?”

  Caleb’s eyes were out of focus, and in his mind he pictured a cosmic scene of…

  … the planets of our solar system whirling about the sun in their elliptical orbits. He spoke slowly, dreamily. “Working backward from the most distant planet they could see with the naked eye, Saturn came first.”

  “Why backward?” Lydia interrupted.

  “The sun was the center of everything. The light they all aspired to.”

  She nodded, as if the truth had been obvious all along. “So then, Jupiter’s next?”

  “Yes. Then Mars. Then Venus, which is also the symbol for the material of Earth. Then Mercury, the Moon and finally the Sun.”

  “Wait, why not the Moon before Venus? It’s between Mars and Venus, right?”

  Caleb shook his head. “I’m guessing that would stump, or kill, most people who thought they’d figured it out and dared to try. No, in the tradition of alchemy, the Moon occupies an elevated station. It’s the second largest object in the sky, dwarfed only by the Sun. Its influence, while subtle, is just as indispensible to life on our planet. And, as if we needed more confirmation, in the alchemical process of turning something into gold, the Moon represents Silver, the stage just before achieving perfection.”

  Lydia smiled thoughtfully. “Okay, so if we spin the seven symbols in the proper order, we can open the door without releasing the water?”

  Caleb considered that for a while, but it still didn’t make sense. He thought about the alchemist’s instructions, the order for transmuting imperfect material into perfection. And finally something clicked into place.

  “That’s the wrong question.”

  “What?”

  “Trying to avoid the water trap-avoiding any of the traps-seems like the wrong way to look at this.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Bear with me a moment. First, let’s consider how the water trap was sprung. Waxman set it off when he turned the Water symbol.” Caleb focused on the symbol for.

  “He started with Water,” Lydia whispered, “but that’s wrong.”

  Caleb nodded. “Saturn is farther away from the Sun than Jupiter.”

  “So it needs to be Saturn first, or Fire, then Water.”

  “Calcination, then dissolution.” His scalp broke out in a sweat. Could it be that simple? As long as you know the right sequence of the visible planets? “The problem,” he said, “is that we know that when the door opens, a devastating flood is released. For that much water to emerge so quickly, the opposite chamber has to be already filled up, waiting for the doors to open.”

  “What chance does that give us, then?”

  “Maybe we’ve overlooked something.” Caleb scanned the photos again and came back to something he had puzzled over earlier. “There,” he said, pointing, “all by itself above the left edge of the seal. It looks like a ring set in the limestone about eight feet above the ground, with a crescent moon symbol above it.”

  “So?” Lydia reached for the bowl of fruit on the table and popped a fig into her mouth.

  Caleb stroked the ragged stubble on his chin. “So why is it there? And is there another one somewhere? I can’t see the other side of the door, but maybe I didn’t photograph far enough. The crescent moon, it’s a symbol for Seshat, Thoth’s wife.”

  Lydia nodded. “She’s the goddess of libraries and writing, I know that. But-”

  “She was also the mapmaker and the designer of the king’s cities, his temples, and so on. One of her symbols is the rope, and in certain Egyptian hymns she was praised for ‘stretching the cord,’ or measuring out distances in the king’s temples and palaces.”

  Lydia looked from Caleb to the photo. “So we get a rope?”

  He nodded.

  “But why? What do we do with it?”

  “The first task of the true alchemist is to purify himself, to burn away and dissolve his ego. To blast away the imperfections.”

  “You mean…” Lydia drew in a sharp breath and beamed. “We’re not supposed to avoid the traps.”

  “Like I said.”

  Caleb stood and started pacing. “Think about it… the water trap is an effective defense because of its sheer violence. A million gallons of water rush through the door at once and batter around everything that’s not weighted down. The room fills with water, but drains quickly. My guess is, if you’re secured well enough you can withstand it-hold your breath until it drains, and then you’re fine.”

  “But why?” Lydia asked. “Why build the trap that way? Surely there ha
s to be an easier way past the seal?”

  “Yes, but you have to think like they did. Egyptian mystery schools had a different way of teaching-through intuition and experience, symbolism and reason. Imagine an initiate going through this ordeal. Surviving such a watery onslaught would be a transformative, cleansing experience. It would prepare him for the next stage in the process of enlightenment. Think of people who survive a tsunami, clinging to trees, watching their lives, their whole history, wash away. They can’t help but to be transformed by it.”

  Lydia licked her lips. “Only the worthy,” she murmured. “So what comes first?”

  “I hate to say this, but I bet there’s a fire-oriented trap we need to prepare for. Remember the legend about the Muslims who were tricked into almost destroying the lighthouse? The Arab treasure hunters released the tide of seawater and were swept into the harbor, but the few survivors described other horrors: fire, the floor falling away…” He thought about it. “I’m sure they didn’t even try the symbols; they just attempted to break down the door.”

  “And maybe that sets off all the traps in sequence?” She walked up behind Caleb and slid her hands around his waist. She pressed her lips to his neck and he smelled figs, along with a hint of her ever-present jasmine perfume. His skin danced with excitement, both from this new revelation and from Lydia’s touch. “Can’t you try to RV the chamber? See the fire defense?”

  Caleb’s throat tightened as if choking on a thick crust of bread. “No, I don’t think so.” It was one thing for visions to visit directly, but quite another to actually invite them in. It wasn’t a step he wanted to take just yet.

  “So we’ll just chance it?” Lydia asked. “Get a rope, or a bungee or something, a harness. And then just pray we’re worthy enough?”

  “I’d rather do this by myself,” Caleb said. “I don’t know if two of us can make it through, and…”

  “And,” Lydia gave him a gentle squeeze, “you haven’t forgiven yourself yet for Phoebe.”

  Or Nina.

  Or any of the others.

  Caleb tried to pull away but she held him close. “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. “And now’s your chance to make it up to her. We’ll get through that door, you and I. But you’ll need my help. I’ll bring cameras and flashlights, and you’ll have another set of eyes to catch anything you might miss, and-”

  “And it will be twice the danger,” Caleb said, relenting. “But I know you won’t give up. Besides, I don’t really want to go alone.”

  She smiled with him. “So what are we waiting for?”

  “Nightfall.” From his occasional visits after a walk about the city, he knew Qaitbey had become a major tourist site of late, and guards patrolled regularly during the day. At night it was lit up from all angles to provide a visible backdrop of its imposing strength, but Caleb figured they could still slip into the courtyard, hug the shadows and get in to the mosque if they were careful. But they had no special connections this time, so they would have to use bolt cutters on the padlock.

  “Good,” Lydia said. “Then we have time.” She pulled him away from the wall, toward the bed.

  It was a moonless night, the air still thick with humidity, resisting the Mediterranean breezes. The stars shone fiercely above the waves, and as Caleb and Lydia crept through the arch in the sandstone wall, Caleb glanced up at the constellations, imagining for a moment he was a Roman soldier storming the great lighthouse, marveling at its flaming beacon thirty stories overhead. He could picture dozens of statues and winged creatures perched on ledges and atop windows punctured into the face of the great tower. And the simple, cunning dedication greeting visitors: Sostratus of Cnidos dedicates this lighthouse to the Savior Gods.

  As silently as possible, he and Lydia stayed in the shadows and ran along the wall to the inner citadel. Four silent cannons observed their approach, and Caleb could almost hear their muffled explosions, subdued echoes from the conflicts of a bygone age. At the back gate, he rummaged through his bag for the bolt cutters, but paused as Lydia knelt by the padlock and told him to give her some light. “We don’t want them posting a guard in case we need to get back down there in the future.” A few twists and gentle stabs with two pins held in her nimble fingers, and the lock clicked open.

  “Where did you learn that?” Caleb asked.

  She merely smiled and winked.

  He heard a noise-a soft, padded footfall-and his heart lurched. Pausing at the threshold, he looked back but saw nothing moving in the starlight-speckled courtyard.

  “Come on,” Lydia said, and glided through the sandstone halls with a purpose, like this was all second nature. Caleb’s sense of unease returned. First, the incident in St. Mark’s Square, then the lock-picking, and now this feeling that somehow she’d been here before.

  “Are you seeing someone? A girl with green eyes…?”

  He put his imagination behind him and followed Lydia’s flashlight beam, which steadily led the way. She climbed to the second floor, and when he joined her he peered out the arched, barred window to see the sparkling lights of the city and the brilliant floodlights around the new library. After a moment’s reflection, they made their way to the great mosque. The heavy waterproof backpack, stocked with all their supplies weighed him down, and when he switched shoulders, he saw something white fluttering above, against the red brick dome.

  Ahead, in the darkness before a bend in the corridor, he heard his name. It sounded so much like Nina’s voice. Suddenly Caleb was overwhelmed with the sense of foreboding he’d felt before, the same dread that far below his feet the secrets of the Pharos slumbered without a care, secure behind its defenses.

  Again, that lone dove flew around and around the dome overhead, flirting with the trembling beam of light. Caleb’s mouth hung open and it happened again. A shift in perspective, a jaunt into a different medium where everything was a little more real, a touch colder, his senses sharper. He saw a man…

  … in flowing white robes. “Come, Demetrius. It is time for you to see.” Two great Egyptian statues flank the entrance to a grand chamber lit by a half-dozen torches inside glass lamps set high on the walls. A pair of long chains rest on the floor, one hooked to the wall above the inscribed door, the other clamped to the feminine statue’s moon-shaped headdress. Four slaves are securing the chains and preparing a large, circular harness that could hold several men. “This is why you have come.”

  Demetrius, out of breath, holding his side, moves past the enormous onyx statues. “What is that?” he asks Sostratus, pointing to a pit in the floor.

  “Drainage vent.”

  “And that?” He faces the great wall ahead, observing the pair of winged snakes coiled three times around the staff with an inscribed sun symbol above their heads. Six other arcane symbols surround the staff.

  “The great seal.” Sostratus turns and points to a spot on the ground. “Stand there.”

  In the flickering torchlight, Demetrius only now notices the symbols on the floor. One following the other, seven symbols painted and carved on seven large granite blocks leading to the sealed door. He steps onto the first block and reads the sign. “Lead?”

  “We both will stand here,” Sostratus says as he joins him. “Then we shall move forward, block by block. At the next stone we will be secured by these chains.”

  Demetrius looks to the next sign, two feet closer to the seal. “Tin?”

  Sostratus lowers his head. “You will understand.”

  “Hey!” Lydia shook him. Her face loomed over his, her soft hair tickling his skin. “Tell me you just saw something.”

  Caleb leaned on her shoulder. The room was stuffy, oppressive. The dove had stopped its flying and perched somewhere overhead. “I think I’ve just been shown the way. Or at least, past the first two stages.”

  Caleb’s legs were weak from descending the cascade of stairs, and as he stepped on each one he imagined they sighed with audible reminders of his guilt, mocking echoes of Phoebe’s pain, an
d their separation. Then he thought of Nina, and here he was, attempting the same feat that had killed her, with another woman he loved.

  I hope I’m better prepared this time.

  For someone experiencing firsthand what she had only previously imagined, Lydia remained quite calm. As they stood before the great seal, she shrugged when Caleb asked how she felt. “Just like the pictures in our room,” she said, shining the flashlight back and forth, then up the vertical crack in the door, aligned with the caduceus. “So this is it.”

  She walked up to the wall and then shined the light back across her tracks, and Caleb saw for the first time the alchemical symbols for the metals, each about two yards square, taking up seven mammoth limestone blocks. Starting at the door, Caleb recognized them: Sulfur, Silver, Mercury, Copper, Iron, Tin and Lead.

  “There they are,” Lydia said, shaking her head in wonder. “Guess none of you thought to look down.”

  “No, we’d have seen them. The flood must’ve washed away the dust covering them.” Caleb aimed the light now at the wall, at the symbols around the staff. “Anyway, I think I understand. Each element corresponds to a planet and a stage in the seven steps of transformation. But this adds a new wrinkle. I believe we’ll need to turn the symbols on the door in the right order to get this started; then we’ll need to come back and stand on the first block, wait for whatever happens, and then move forward accordingly.”

  Lydia stood before the seal, careful not to touch anything. “The symbols… protruding from… Wait, I see where you can grasp them by their edges and turn each one.”

  “Not yet,” Caleb said, digging into his knapsack for the ropes, harness and carabiners. “Let’s get set for the water trap.”

  When they had secured the first clip to the ring on the wall and the second to Seshat’s statue, they clipped the other ends to their harnesses, so all they had to do after passing the first test was to step forward, slip on the harness, tighten it and wait for the water to come.