The Pyramids of London

by Andrea K Höst

  "You've probably visited the Black Pyramid before."

  "Of course. It's the most convenient for my Lord when he is in London."

  "I know there are conducted tours, but I don't know the process for vampires. Does Lord Msrah reserve a time to use it?"

  "Exactly. Though being Shu, he would have priority, able to override other bookings if there was some need. He would of course have to give way to the Nomarch of the East, but Lady Adiol usually uses the Green Pyramid. You think—what—that Lyle wanted to look within the Black Pyramid for signs of damage?" Evelyn's face was a picture. "He told me to bring a chisel," he added.

  Not knowing of that wire hand, would they make the same connections Rian had? And could Griff be prevented from announcing the possibility if he realised it?

  Mindful of the hearing range of vampires, and of cats, Rian said briskly: "Perhaps he wanted to check whether anyone from Ficus Lapis had visited? Or —" She gestured toward the pile of newspaper. "I don't think he could have planned to go into the tunnels, not when the entrances are all guarded and there is, I'm sure, some kind of official search. But this possibility at least gives us a starting place. Please, eat something, rest a moment, while I get ready. Griff, Eleri, do you think you could find a small hammer and chisel? No running, please, Griff. I don't want you sick for another week."

  Eluned came with her to her room, and poked her head unceremoniously out of the window, looking to see what was on the roofs. "How do we know any of this is true?" she asked. "They could be making it up."

  "Or either Lyle or Lynsey could be using them in rather dramatic style," Rian agreed, finding her sturdiest travel belt and checking over her smaller pistol before slipping it into the main pouch. "But then, I am supposed to be lured."

  "There's at least an hour until sunset."

  "I know that." She considered the girl, and thought that she was bearing up well enough, though none of the three had simply shrugged off the Burning Circle. "I'd push to delay them more, but I don't think Evelyn or Gustav will wait. And I cannot bring myself to ignore the possibility that for all our suspicions the Blairs have innocently walked into some very real danger. Until I return, do not leave this house for anyone other than Makepeace or the Suleviae. I don't care if your Great Uncle Tobermory shows up to whisk you to my death-bed."

  "Aunt Arianne…"

  Halfway out the door, Rian glanced back. Eluned murmured "Never mind," but no matter how anxious she was to get on, Rian had to go briefly grip the girl's hand.

  "It would be odd for me to claim to have faith in Dem Makepeace, but be assured I think him very dangerous, and more than capable of overcoming so small an obstacle as an hour's sunlight. If not, well, I am a good shot."

  If only they had not already encountered so many things to which bullets meant no more than flies. But she did not mention that.

  Twenty-Eight

  Prince Gustav's excellent driver, a compact, dark-haired man, brought them all too quickly over the river to the Black Pyramid. It was really more a dark grey, with a gold-covered capstone, and sides made sheer by a polished granite casing. While less than quarter of the height of the Great Khufu Pyramid, it still rose imposingly above London and of course, unlike those earliest pyramids designed solely to uplift a single ruler's soul, the Black Pyramid of London incorporated into its structure a grand entrance involving two statues of Ma'at, each with one wing held across the portico, and the other forward. The last of the day's tour groups was flooding out beneath this, meandering down the stairs, chattering and arguing.

  "Find somewhere for the car and come back, Ishi," Prince Gustav said to his driver, then turned to study the pyramid, golden brows knitted.

  Lyle had warned them not to underestimate the bluff Swedish prince, and during the drive Rian had found herself agreeing with that judgment. Recovering his aide was certainly a goal, but he clearly understood the impact of a connection between fulgite and Egyptian pyramids, even if that connection was simply crystals forming in the stone beneath instead of the possibility Rian feared. The world would shift around this truth.

  "The administration building is over here," Evelyn said. "I'll check to see whether Lyle's made any booking, or if they remember talking to him."

  Long shadows stretched across the road, but sunlight still gleamed bright on the southern face of the pyramid and set alight a capstone untarnished by any pigeon's leaving, since the divine forces channelled through it would kill anything except the bennu bird that Amon-Re at times used to survey the lands under his dominion.

  "You are bound to the vampire Makepeace, Dama Seaforth?" Prince Gustav said. "Yet serve Cernunnos?"

  "That's correct, Your Highness."

  "And you will unite Albion for the Trifold, perhaps?"

  "I have no idea," Rian said, well aware that Gustav would be very unlikely to regret something thoroughly fatal happening to her. Already the news of the foreseeing had thrown predictions about the next vote on the Protectorate into disarray.

  "The mixing of allegiances, that is a dangerous thing. Tied to too many gods, the soul becomes a scrap to be fought over."

  "I'm certainly not looking to expand my collection," Rian said, all too aware of the trees now ever with her.

  "And sometimes a pivot," the man murmured, apparently to himself as he considered her. Like all Swedish royalty, Gustav would have undergone a trial at sixteen to gain formal allegiance to one of the Aesir, and would be subject to demands which would not necessarily align with his king's.

  The gun and the chisel in her belt-pouch were a not at all comforting weight, but Rian put aside the difficulties of allegiance to more immediate concerns.

  "Did Lyle tell you anything of his plans today?"

  "Yes, yes. He was to lunch with his friend, and bring me his sister for the evening meal, though I do not doubt that some obstacle would promote itself." He smiled, but ran a hand over his close-cut beard worriedly. "He has met a bad thing, there is no doubt. The Lyle, he is a very scrupulous boy. When he does what he can for his Alba, he will tell me 'these things, they serve my interests', as if I do not know that! He does not like the vampires, though, and yet he has gone into a place of theirs. No small reason could drive him. Look, the friend has news."

  Evelyn was returning, trailed by a bird-framed elderly woman with a powder-pink complexion.

  "He has been here," Evelyn said, without preamble. "He made a booking in Lord Msrah's name for two this afternoon."

  "I thought it an unusual time for the Nomarch to attend," said the woman, pale eyes curious but friendly.

  "This is Dama Wishart, the Black Pyramid's Day Custodian," Evelyn said, well-trained manners kicking in. "Dama Wishart, Dama Seaforth, and His Highness Prince Gustav."

  As soon as the polite murmur of responses had passed, Evelyn went on. "There were also two missing...the tour groups are counted in and out, and before lunch one group came up two short."

  "The attendants checked, of course," Dama Wishart said. "It's a frequent problem with the tours, and we're quite experienced at making a thorough sweep. We concluded that they'd simply left early—some get quite overwhelmed, you know, by the sensation of being within one of the larger pyramids."

  "There's no description of the two absentees, but the timing surely can't be coincidence." Evelyn moved restively on the spot. "But what now? Where do we go from here?"

  "Inside," Rian said, adding to Dama Wishart: "Even if it's been checked already, it can't hurt to look again. Unless it's in use?"

  "There's time enough for a thorough tour, if you think that it will help in any way," Dama Wishart said, clearly more than happy to see what developed.

  "Then we go," Prince Gustav said, and started toward the stair, gesturing for his returning driver to follow.

  Past Ma'at's wings, a painted entry hall offered them three choices. Briskly, Dama Wishart led them directly ahead along an upward sloping corridor to the central chamber, where the celestial forces would be concentrated: a large an
d carefully undecorated room with a single monumental chair facing the open doors. In the forest, the space was almost clear of trees, but for one massive trunk rising from floor and through ceiling, exactly where the throne-like chair was set.

  For Rian, even entering the pyramid had required steeling herself to manage simple matters like walking in a straight line, and not sitting down in a corner to gasp. The central chamber brought a faint stagger to her step, and she had to stop and breathe deeply. Dama Wishart's bright curiosity burned as a small sun beside her, while Evelyn's confusion and fear gathered in a grey fog ahead. Even Prince Gustav, striding buoyantly around the room, became less opaque to her, sparking with determination, excitement, and an undernote of concern. The god-touched resistance of his connection to the Aesir was not proof against her new senses in this place where Amon-Re, above all others, held sway.

  Fortunately, they did not spend more than a minute in the central room, eliminating it for sake of form before returning to the entry hall and making a quick circuit of the tight ring of offering rooms located at the level of the top of the stair. Then they went down to the crypts.

  The weight of the structure would not support large open spaces, but as vampirism had spread through Egypt, and the pyramids had ceased to focus on a single exalted tomb, a design involving a honeycomb of crypts had been perfected. The corridors were narrow and dimly lit, but Dama Wishart had drafted one of the attendants, and a couple of powerful torches, which played across walls painted with images of the lives of vampires gone to rept, their names recorded in a mixture of Egyptian cartouches and Prytennian writing.

  "It's been decades since there's been a new internment at the Black Pyramid, of course," Dama Wishart said cheerfully, as the attendant and Prince Gustav's driver blocked two vital junctions, and she directed them through the method of ensuring no-one was lingering around the many corners. "Completely full, and Green near capacity. But the design is quite efficient, with the weight-bearing blocks each surrounded by a set of tombs—rather like bookshelves, really. They're sealed and inscripted after the internment. The only variation are the Nomarches' tombs, right at the centre. While Shu vampires don't have quite the primacy here as they do in Egypt, they're also rarer, longer-lived, and the most powerful outside the Amon-Re." Dama Wishart smiled. "So they rate a larger shelf."

  Tenement housing for ba. Vampires, could, of course, have their rept forms maintained anywhere, but Rian quite understood why they would want to share in the uplifting effect of large and expensive pyramids. Here their transformed souls had a far greater chance of gaining the strength for the grandest of ambitions, becoming a ruling star rather than simply another soul in the Field of Rushes under the dominion of Osiris. Besides, the Egyptian Otherworld was difficult to reach, and required high standards of virtue to enter.

  The torch dazzled Rian's night-efficient eyes, but she did not need to see to know there was no-one in the area they were searching: there were no unexpected rivers of blood lurking around a corner. Gustav had progressed far in his guesswork, and was clearly looking for intrusion rather than missing Albans, gaze constantly straying to any hint of damaged masonry. Rian saw no sign of more than wear, but she had not expected to.

  "There we go," Dama Wishart said, sounding disappointed as the last of the search quadrants proved as empty as the first. "No-one here, not even a forgotten coat or umbrella. I am sorry not to have been able to help more."

  "What then next?" Prince Gustav asked, still eyeing the stonework.

  "There must be someone we can speak to about accessing the rail tunnels."

  Evelyn's voice was hoarse, reminding Rian that he had already lost one old friend, a bare few weeks ago. Delia Hackett's life had changed on the same night as Rian's, but in a markedly different way, and Rian could only hope that Dama Hackett's soul had successfully reached the shores of Annwn, and that some disporting had been achieved, though the islands were not known for their sun-kissed beaches.

  But there were other lives changing now, and Rian was suddenly, urgently convinced that the Blairs were not currently occupied in setting up an opportunity to rob her.

  "Evelyn, as part of being Bound, you're aware of living people, yes? You can sense those nearest you?"

  "Yes, of course," Evelyn said, distractedly.

  "Then don't you…Evelyn, I'm sure there's someone beneath us."

  The tall man stared at her, and then at the flagged stones of the floor.

  "You think the thing from the Burning Circle dragged them down?" asked the helpful attendant, with ghoulish interest.

  "So faint," Evelyn muttered, took several long strides down the corridor, paused, and then moved again. "Here. Directly below here." He dropped to his knees, running his fingers around the edge of the flag. "Only a short way down. Ten feet perhaps."

  "But there's nothing permitted beneath the pyramids," Dama Wishart said, blankly. "Not even drains."

  "What was he planning to do?" Evelyn muttered, attempting to dig his fingernails into the tiny cracks between the close-fitted flags.

  Rian handed him her chisel, but Prince Gustav stepped to the fore. He was holding an axe that had certainly not been in any belt-pouch, with a haft nearly six foot in length, and long, tapering double blades. A thing of the Aesir's, according to Princess Leodhild.

  "Stand away," the prince said brusquely, and gripped the axe in both hands, the position ceremonial, with the haft down and the blades before his face.

  He struck the centre of the flag sharply, a single blow that rang like the Tintarel Bells, and the heavy stone square split neatly in two. Evelyn bent to pry up one edge of the flag, and Rian and Gustav's driver were quick to help him, especially when it became clear that there was an open space beneath, a shaft, with neatly-cut handholds up one side.

  At the bottom lay Lynsey Blair.

  Twenty-Nine

  "Go get a Thoth-den and the police," Rian told the attendant tersely, as Evelyn lowered himself down the shaft. "Run."

  "Lyns?" Evelyn, voice tight with distress, lifted the Alban woman carefully. "She's so cold."

  "Then hand her up, man!" Prince Gustav said.

  Rian climbed swiftly down to join Evelyn, glancing from a wadded bloodstained cloth to the trail of dark red smears decorating the floor of a downward sloping tunnel leading from the shaft. The blood was tacky, crusted. Lynsey had crawled to this point, then collapsed.

  "I'll prop, you lift," she told Evelyn, and wasted no time in doing just that, with Gustav and his driver hauling from above.

  Climbing back up, Rian said: "Stabbed, I think. I can tell that her heart's still beating, but it's very weak."

  "Where is the nearest Thoth-den?" Evelyn asked Dama Wishart, managing to stand cradling the tall Alban woman in his arms. "We can't wait here."

  "I'll show you," Dama Wishart said. "Not far, thankfully—we are at a pyramid, after all."

  "Good, good," Prince Gustav said. "Go without delay, as will I. The sound it will have carried, the rats they will run. But they do not escape."

  Taking the torch from Dama Wishart, he leapt into the hidden tunnel, his driver quickly dropping down after him.

  Evelyn wavered, but Rian took his shoulders and turned him toward the exit.

  "I'll look for Lyle," she said. "Go."

  How would Lyle feel, knowing that only vampiric intervention was likely to save Lynsey? Climbing back into the shaft, Rian decided she would not ask him if she found him.

  Gustav and his driver had already disappeared around a curve, two rivers rapidly gaining distance. Rian shook her head, wondering what diplomatic consequences there would be for Prytennia if one of Sweden's princes, and Alba's current Lord Protector, met a messy end in London.

  Had she become someone who protected Prytennia's interests? It was an odd thought, as strange as the idea of living a thousand years in the service of Cernunnos and the Trifold. But to do that she needed to survive now, and so did not race immediately after the Swedes, taking the time to read
y her pistol and strain her senses, feeling for other rivers ahead. Nothing seemed to be in range.

  The tunnel was neatly cut but narrow, close enough to brush elbows on either side, though she did not need to bow her head, and could manage a brisk pace without making a great deal of noise. Height and her Makepeace-given senses allowed her to gain on Gustav, so that she was within sight of him when he stopped, outlined by a dim glow.

  A reverent curse drifted back to her, and the two men spoke softly before moving forward at a much more cautious pace. They had not progressed more than a few feet by the time Rian reached the entrance of a long chamber lit by several fulgite lamps.

  Work tables, camp beds, and corpses. It was a slaughter house, reeking.

  Rian recognised the head of a man lying on the ground to her right. He had been with Felix, coming from a meeting with Princess Leodhild. His body was several feet away, meaty chunks. She looked hastily around for Felix and Lyle, not spotting them immediately, counting five bodies, three men and two women, all torn apart.

  Prince Gustav had found a sixth, the one that mattered above all others. Gleaming in dull purple tones, it was spread in countless crystalline fragments on one of the tables amidst a collection of the tools used to break it down. But enough was intact to be damning: a forearm, part of a foot, an entire hand.

  "So it is true!" Gustav said, picking his way toward the table. "I guessed but did not believe, because the stone of rept does not at all resemble the crystal of fulgite. But I see the way of it. Look here, this is used."

  He had found a machine, resembling a tall drum or barrel, which opened up to reveal a scarred interior and a partially shattered fulgite person.

  "So, it is fulquus itself they use," Prince Gustav said. "Not a special thing that Rome alone controls." He threw Rian a vastly entertained glance. "The cat, the pigeons, yes?"

  No understatement. Egypt's Otherworld was not easily reached, and even those who did not strive to become stars relied upon a well-preserved body to house their ba while it gathered strength to make the journey to the Field of Rushes. To destroy the body of an Egyptian was, potentially, to leave their ba homeless, without any choice but to attempt that journey immediately. Unlike Prytennia, where efforts were made as soon as possible to sever the tie between body and soul by breaking the body down, or the Nordic lands where the soul was sent on by means of fire, there was nothing more dreadful to the Egyptian than to interfere with the preserved bodies of the dead.