Napoleon's Pyramids

by William Dietrich

  I stopped, stunned. Of course! The medallion was a map to a certain point on the pyramid! Face north. Imagine a shaft and door on the west or east faces. Remember pi. Look for a block valued pi under this ancient number game. Time it to Aquarius as the Egyptian used the sign, for the rising of the Nile, and … enter.

  If I was right.

  The western face of the pyramid glowed pink as we began to climb it. It was late in the afternoon, the sun low and fat, like Conte’s balloon. Our horses were tied below, and the sounds of gunfire in Cairo were muffled by the bulk of the monument between us and the city. As before, our climb was an awkward scramble, the blocks high, steep, and eroded. I counted as we climbed, trying to find the row and block that corresponded to pi, the eternal number codified into the dimensions of the pyramid.

  ‘What if the numbers refer to the facing stones, now gone?’ I said.

  ‘They would match these inner ones, I hope. Or close to it. This medallion would be directing us to a stone that led to the core.’

  We had just reached the fifty-third row, panting, when Astiza pointed. ‘Ethan, look!’

  Rounding the corner of the adjacent pyramid was a party of galloping horsemen. One of them spied us, and they began to shout. Even in the dying light I had no trouble making out the bandaged figures of Bin Sadr and Silano, lashing at lathered horses. If this didn’t work we were dead – or worse than dead, if Bin Sadr had his way.

  ‘We’d better find that stone.’

  We counted. There were thousands of blocks on this western face, of course, and when we came to the supposed candidate, it looked no different than its brothers around it. Here was a rock eroded by millennia of time, weighing several tons, and firmly wedged by the colossal weight above it. I pushed, heaved, and kicked, to no effect.

  A bullet pinged off the stonework.

  ‘Stop! Think!’ Astiza urged. ‘There has to be a special way or any fool could have stumbled upon this.’ She held up the medallion. ‘It must have something to do with this.’

  More shots pattered around us.

  ‘We’re like targets on a wall up here,’ I muttered.

  She looked out. ‘No. He needs us alive to tell him what we’ve discovered. Bin Sadr will enjoy making us talk.’

  Indeed, Silano was shouting at those who had fired and shoving their muskets down, instead pushing them toward the base of the pyramid.

  ‘Great.’ I fumbled with the medallion. Suddenly I realised the second pyramid was shadowing our own, its long triangle reaching across the sands and climbing the layers of stone to where we were standing, pointing at us. Its capstone was intact, its point more perfect, and its apex seemed to shadow a block a few to the right and several courses lower than where we were standing. Each day, as the sun marched along the horizon, the shadow would touch a different stone, and this was the date I’d surmised from the calendar. Was our count of the blocks off slightly? I bounded down to just above the shadow and held the medallion up to the sun. Light shone through the tiny perforated holes, making a star pattern of Draconis on the sandstone.

  ‘There!’ Astiza pointed. A faint tracery of holes, or rather chisel points, near the base of the stone, mimicking the constellation pattern on the medallion. And beneath it, the joint between our stone and the one below was slightly wider than the usual. I crouched and blew the dust away from this tiniest of cracks. There was the subtlest of Masonic signs chiselled into the stone as well.

  I could hear Arabs shouting to each other as they started to climb. ‘Gage, give it up!’ Silano called. ‘You’re too late!’

  I could feel a shallow breath of wind, air coming from some hollowness on the other side. ‘It’s here,’ I whispered. I slammed the stone with my palm. ‘Move, damn you!’

  Then I recalled what others had named the medallion since I’d won it. A key. I tried sliding the disc into the crack but it was slightly convex and its swell wouldn’t fit.

  I looked back down. Now Silano and Bin Sadr were climbing as well.

  So I reversed the pendant, easing in the linked arms. They stuck, I jiggled, they moved in farther …

  Suddenly there was a click. As if pulled by a string, the medallion arms jerked deeper into the stone, the disc breaking off and bouncing down the blocks toward Silano. There was the creak and groan of stone upon stone. The men below us were shouting.

  The stone had suddenly become weightless, lifted a fraction of an inch off the rock below. I pushed, and now it rotated in and up as if it were made of down, revealing a dark shaft that sloped downward at the same precarious angle of the descending corridor I’d explored with Napoleon. A ten-thousand-pound block of stone had become a feather. The key had disappeared into the rock as if swallowed.

  We’d found the secret. Where was Astiza?

  ‘Ethan!’

  I whirled. She’d climbed down the precipitous slope to nab the disc. Silano’s hand had closed on her cloak. She wrenched free, leaving him holding cloth, and scrambled back upward. I pulled out Ash’s sword and leapt down to help. Silano pulled out a new rapier of his own, eyes gleaming.

  ‘Shoot him!’ Bin Sadr shouted.

  ‘No. This time he has no trick with his rifle. He’s mine.’

  I decided to forego finesse for brute desperation. Even as his blade whickered through the air toward my torso, I yelled like a Viking and cleaved down as if I were chopping wood. I was a course higher than him, giving me a two-foot height advantage, and was so quick he was forced to parry instead of thrust. Steel rang on steel and his blade bent under my blow, not breaking but twisting against his wrist. It was still sore, I gambled, from when my rifle exploded. He turned to save his grip but the move cost him his balance. Cursing, he lurched and collided with some of the other brigands. The lot of them went spilling down, clutching at the rock to arrest their bumpy fall. I threw the sword like a spear, hoping to stick Bin Sadr, but he ducked and another villain took the point instead, howling as he tumbled.

  Now Bin Sadr charged up at me, a deadly point jutting from the end of his snake-headed staff. He thrust. I dodged, but not quite quick enough. The blade, sharp as a razor, shallowly sliced my shoulder. Before he could twist to cut deeper, a stone hit him in the face. Astiza, her hair wild as a Medusa, was hurling down broken pieces of pyramid.

  Bin Sadr was sore too, wielding the staff with one arm because of his bullet wound, and I sensed a chance to truly unsettle him. I grabbed the snake shaft, hauling upward, even as he desperately pulled it back, blinking against Astiza’s bombardment of rocks. I relaxed my grip for a moment and he tilted dangerously backward, unbalanced. Then I jerked again and he lost the staff entirely and fell, bouncing down several courses of stones. His face was bloody, his precious staff mine. For the first time I saw a flicker of fear.

  ‘Give it back!’

  ‘It’s firewood, bastard.’

  Astiza and I retreated to the hole we’d made, our only refuge, and crawled inside. Bracing ourselves against the walls of the shaft so we wouldn’t slide, we reached up and pulled at the entrance stone. Bin Sadr was scrambling up toward us like a madman, howling with rage. The block came down as easily as it had risen, but as it swung it retrieved its own weight, gaining momentum, and it slammed shut in the villain’s face with a boom like a great boulder. In an instant we were plunged into darkness.

  We could hear faint howls of frustration as the Arabs pounded on the stone door from the outside. Then Silano called out, in rage and determination, ‘Gunpowder!’

  We might not have much time.

  It was black as a bowel until Astiza struck something on the sides of the shaft and I saw the glint of sparks. She lit the candle she’d taken from Napoleon’s table. So dark was it that the shaft seemed to flare from this feeble light. I blinked, breathing hard, trying to collect myself for the next step. There was an alcove next to the entrance, I saw, and in it, jutting up to and connected by a hinged arm to the stone door we’d come through, was a shaft of glittering gold. The shaft was a stunning t
hing, at least two inches thick, the gold probably sheathing some base material from corrosion or rot. It seemed to be a mechanism to take up the weight of the stone door, moving up and down like a piston. There was a socket where it connected, and a long well that it descended through. I had no idea how it worked.

  I tried tugging the door. It was wedged like a cork, once more impossibly heavy. Retreat seemed impossible. We were temporarily safe and permanently trapped. Then I noticed a detail I hadn’t observed before. Ranked along the shaft wall, like a stand of arms, were dry brushwood torches, mummified by desiccation.

  Someone wanted us to find our way to the bottom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Once more the shaft seemed designed for the gliding of souls rather than the clambering of men. We half-slid, half-jammed our way down its slope. Why were there no steps? Had some kind of carts or sleds once ascended or descended here? Had the builders never expected to come this way? Or had these shafts been built for creatures or transport that we couldn’t imagine? In the first thirty metres we passed three voids in the shaft’s ceiling. When I lifted my torch I could see blocks of dark granite, suspended above. What were these ceiling pockets for?

  We continued our descent. At length the man-made blocks gave way to walls of slick limestone, still perfectly straight and dressed. We’d passed beneath the pyramid proper and entered the bedrock of the limestone plateau it was built on. Down we went, deeper into the earth’s bowels, far below the descending passage I’d explored with Jomard and Napoleon. The passage began to twist. A hint of air left a curl of torch smoke behind us. The smell was dusty rock.

  Suddenly the passageway levelled to a tunnel so low we had to crawl on hands and knees. Then it opened up. When we stood and lifted the torch, we found ourselves in a limestone cavern. A worn channel showed where water had once run. High above were the stumps of stalactites. While the ceiling was made by nature, the walls had been chiselled smooth and covered with hieroglyphics and inscribed drawings. Once again, we couldn’t read a word. The carvings were of squat, snarling creatures that obstructed twisting passageways filled with tongues of fire and drowning pools.

  ‘The underworld,’ Astiza whispered.

  Standing like reassuring and protective sentinels along the wall were statues of gods and pharaohs, the faces proud, the eyes serene, the lips thick, the muscles powerful. Carved cobras marked the doorways. A line of baboons made a crown moulding near the stone roof. A statue of ibis-headed Thoth stood near the far doorway, his beak poised like the reed pen he held, his left hand holding a scale to weigh the human heart.

  ‘My god, what is this place?’ I murmured.

  Astiza was tight to my side. It was cool in the cave, and she shivered in her diaphanous rags. ‘I think this is the real tomb. Not that bare room in the pyramid you described to me. The legends of Herodotus, that the true burial chamber is under the pyramid, may be true.’

  I put my arm around her. ‘Then why build a whole mountain atop it?’

  ‘To hide it, to mark it, to seal, to mislead,’ she theorised. ‘This was a way to keep the tomb forever hidden, or to hide something else within it. Alternately, maybe the ancients always wanted to be able to find where the cave was by marking it with something so huge it could never be lost: the Great Pyramid.’

  ‘Because the cave was the real resting place of the pharaoh?’

  ‘Or something even more important.’

  I looked at the ibis-headed statue. ‘You mean the prize everyone wants, this magical, all-knowing Book of Thoth.’

  ‘This may be where we find it, I think.’

  I laughed. ‘Then all we have to do is find our way back out!’

  She looked at the ceiling. ‘Do you think the ancients hollowed this space out?’

  ‘No. Our geologist Dolomieu said limestone gets carved by flowing water, and we know the Nile is close by. Sometime in the past, the river or a tributary probably flowed through this plateau. It may be sieved like a honeycomb. When the Egyptians discovered this, they had an ideal hiding place – but only if it could be kept secret. I think you’re right. Build a pyramid and everyone looks at it, not what’s underneath.’

  She held my arm. ‘Perhaps the pyramid shafts Bonaparte explored were simply to convince the ordinary workers and architects that Pharaoh would be buried up there.’

  ‘Then some other group built the shaft we just came through and carved this writing. And they came down here and returned, right?’ I tried to sound confident.

  Astiza pointed. ‘No, they did not.’

  And ahead in the gloom, just past the feet of Thoth, I saw a carpet of bones and skulls, filling the cave from one side to the other. Death grins and blank sockets. With dread, we walked to inspect them. There were hundreds of human bodies, laid in neat rows. I saw no mark of weapons on their remains.

  ‘Slaves and priests,’ she said, ‘poisoned, or with their throats slit, so they couldn’t carry secrets out. This tomb was their last work.’

  I toed a skull. ‘Let’s not make it ours. Come. I smell water.’

  We picked our way across the bone chamber as best we could, the dead rattling, and passed to another cave chamber with a pit in the middle. Here a ledge skirted the pit, and when we gingerly looked down it, our torchlight caught the reflection of water. It was a well. Rising out of the well and into a narrow hole in the ceiling was a golden shaft identical to the one I’d seen when we entered the pyramid. Was it the same? The cave could have twisted to lead us directly under the secret door, so that this shaft was the one that controlled the weight of the block we had entered past.

  I reached out and touched the shaft. It rocked gently up and down as if floating. I looked more carefully. Down in the well, the shaft stuck straight up from a floating golden ball the diameter of a man. The shaft would push up or drop down depending on the level of the water. On the side of the well was a chiselled water gauge. I grasped the cool, slick coating of the shaft and pushed. The ball bobbed. ‘Old Ben Franklin would have loved to guess what this is.’

  ‘The markings are similar to those on Nile metres used to measure the rise of the river,’ Astiza said. ‘The higher the rise, the richer that year’s crops, and the greater the tax assessment the pharaoh would impose. But why measure down here?’

  I could hear running water somewhere ahead. ‘Because this is connected to an underground branch of the Nile,’ I guessed. ‘As the river floods, this well would rise, and with it the shaft.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because it’s a seasonal gate,’ I reasoned. ‘A lock that is timed. Remember how the calendar pointed to Aquarius and today’s date, October 21st? Whoever created the stone door that we came through designed it so it could only be opened at the time of maximum flooding, by someone who understood the secret of the medallion. As the river rises, it lifts that globe, pushing this shaft upward. It must lift a mechanism above which can hold the weight of the stone block so that, with the medallion key, it can be opened. In the dry season this cavern is locked tight.’

  ‘But why must we enter only when the Nile is high?’

  I jiggled the shaft uneasily. ‘Good question.’

  We went on. The cave snaked so that I no longer knew what direction we were heading. Our first torches burnt to stubs and we lit the next. I’m not a man afraid of tight spaces, but I felt buried down here. Underworld of Osiris indeed! And then we came to a large room that dwarfed any we’d seen so far, an underground chamber so large that our torchlight could not illuminate the far side. Instead, it made a path on dark water.

  We stood on the shore of an underground lake, opaque and still, roofed by stone. In its middle was a small island. A marble pavilion, just four pillars and a roof, occupied its centre. Heaped about its periphery were chests, statues, and shoals of smaller things that even at this distance gleamed and sparkled.

  ‘Treasure.’ I tried to say it casually, but it came out as a croak.

  ‘It’s as Herodotus described,’ Ast
iza breathed, as if she still did not quite believe it herself. ‘The lake, the island – this is Pharoah’s real resting place. Undiscovered, never robbed. What a gift to see this!’

  ‘We’re rich,’ I added, my state of spiritual enlightenment not quite a match for commonsense greed. I’m not proud of my commercial instincts, but by heaven I’d been through hell the last few months and a little money would be just compensation. I was as transfixed by the valuables as I’d been by the riches in the hold of L’Orient. Their value to history didn’t occur to me. I just wanted to get at the loot, bundle it up, and somehow sneak out of this sepulchre and past the French army.

  Astiza squeezed my hand. ‘This is what the legends have been hinting at, Ethan. Eternal knowledge, so powerful that it had to be hidden until men and women were wise enough to use it. In that small temple, I suspect, we’ll find it.’

  ‘Find what?’ I was transfixed by the glint of gold.

  ‘The Book of Thoth. The core truth of existence.’

  ‘Ah, yes. And are we ready for its answers?’

  ‘We must safeguard it from heretics like the Egyptian Rite until we are.’

  I touched the water with my boot. ‘Too bad we don’t have a spell to walk on water, because it looks like a cold swim.’

  ‘No, look. There’s a boat to take Pharaoh to the sky.’