‘Wait!’ Bin Sadr said. ‘Don’t shoot them! See? We must step where they do!’ He was watching me as carefully as I watched Astiza. Then he leapt, landing where I had. The bridge held firm. ‘Follow me!’
It was a bizarre, mincing dance, all of us mimicking the hops of the woman. Another Arab missed and fell shrieking as still another block gave way, transfixing us all for a moment. ‘No, no, that one!’ Bin Sadr shrieked, pointing. Then the deadly game commenced again.
At the centre of the span I couldn’t see a bottom at all. What kind of volcanic throat was this? Was it this navel that the pyramid had been built to seal?
‘Ethan, hurry,’ Astiza begged. She was waiting for me to make sure I stepped on the right star stones, even though it gave Bin Sadr time to spy them as well. Then she was finally at the wet stairs, swaying from the tension, and I made a final leap, landing on the polestar. With a triumphant stride I made the granite stairs and turned, holding Bin Sadr’s snake staff in readiness to stab him. Maybe he’d make a mistake!
But no, he came on implacably, eyes gleaming. ‘There’s nowhere left to run, American. If you give me my staff, I’ll save you to watch while we have the woman.’
He was only steps away, his three surviving men bunched behind him. If they rushed me, it was over.
The Arab stopped. ‘Are you going to surrender?’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Then shoot him now,’ Bin Sadr ordered. ‘I remember the last stars to touch.’ Muskets and pistols began to be levelled.
‘Here then,’ I offered.
I threw the staff up in the air, high, but so he could catch it. His eyes widened, gleaming. Instinctively he stretched, leant, snatched it with the quickness of a reptile, and in the course of doing so unthinkingly moved his left foot for balance.
A keystone piece at the end of the bridge gave way.
The Arabs froze, listening to it smash as it ricocheted into the pit below.
Then there was a groan, a sound of rock splintering, and we looked down. The missing block had begun a disintegration. The bridge’s connection with the granite stairs was dissolving as blocks popped out, the untethered end beginning to dip remorselessly into the pit. Bin Sadr had made a fatal misstep. The Arab’s henchmen cried out and began to stampede back the way they had come. As they did, heedless of where their feet were, more stones gave way.
Bin Sadr leapt for the wet granite stairs.
Had he let go of his staff, he might have made it, or at least got a hand on me and dragged me down with him. But he held his favourite weapon too long. His other arm was still wounded and weak, his hand slipped on the wet rock, and he began sliding down into the abyss, trying to hold both himself and his staff. Finally he let go of the rod in time to grip a knob of stone to arrest his slide. The staff fell out of sight. He was dangling at the precipice, a skein of water streaming down past him to dissolve into steam, his legs kicking. Meanwhile his companions behind screeched in terror as the bridge rotated downward with a roar, collapsing toward hell, taking them with it. They plummeted, limbs flailing. I watched them disappear into the fog.
Bin Sadr hung grimly, looking at Astiza with hatred. ‘I wish I’d butchered this whore like I did the one in Paris,’ he hissed.
I took out my tomahawk and crept down toward his fingers. ‘This is for Talma, Enoch, Minette, and every other innocent you’ll meet on the other side.’ I lifted the hatchet.
He spat at me. ‘I’ll wait for you there.’ Then he let go.
He plunged down the side of the pit, struck a steep slope of sand, and tumbled, soundless, into the dim red mist below. Small rocks rattled with him, tracing his slide. Then there was silence.
‘Is he dead?’ Astiza whispered.
It was so quiet that I feared he’d somehow find a way to climb back out. I peered over. Something was moving down there, but for a while we could hear nothing but the roar of the water at the top of the wet stairs. Then there came, faint at first, the sounds of a man beginning to scream.
By this time I’d heard more than my share of screams, both in battle and among the wounded. There was something different about this sound, however, an unworldly scream of such absolute terror that my stomach clenched at whatever unseen thing or things were prompting it. The screams went on and on, rising in pitch, and I knew with grim certainty that it was the voice of Achmed bin Sadr. Despite my enmity for the man, I shuddered. He was experiencing the terror of the damned.
‘Apophis,’ Astiza said. ‘The snake god of the underworld. He is meeting what he worshipped.’
‘That’s a myth.’
‘Is it?’
After what seemed an eternity the screams sank to an insane gibbering. Then they stopped. We were alone.
I was shivering from terror and cold. We hugged each other, all retreat impossible, the pit’s red glow our only light. Finally we started up the wet staircase, its waterfall smelling of the Nile. What underworld test would we face next? I didn’t have the energy – the will, as Napoleon would say – to go much farther.
We reached a trough that ran across the top of the stairs. Nile water was racing from a pipe-like opening in the cave wall to fill the stone canal to the brim, and then disappearing in another tunnel at the other end of the stairway. The current was pouring out with such force that there was no possibility of ascending it. Our only exit would be to go the direction the water was running, into a dark drain.
There was no room, I saw, for air.
‘I don’t think Moses came this way.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘Moses was an Egyptian prince who knew how this chamber was constructed,’ Astiza said. ‘He didn’t trigger the granite plugs like foolish Silano. He left by one of the shafts.’
‘And at low water, this trough might be a possible escape route,’ I said. ‘But at high water, the only time that door to the pyramid would open, it’s full to the brim. There’s no air. If you get in you have to use the correct exit to get out or it’s a trap.’
‘But why, then, a bridge that tests your knowledge of the constellation?’ Astiza asked. ‘It must be possible to leave this way, but only for men who know its perils. Maybe this was a last resort for the architects, in case a mistake left them trapped. Perhaps it’s a test of faith that we can get out of here.’
‘You can’t be planning to try to ride this sewer to the Nile.’
‘Worse than waiting for a slow death in here?’
She did have a way of getting to the heart of things. We could sit on the wet stairs for eternity, contemplating the broken bridge and the granite plugs high above, or take our chances in the sluiceway. Maybe Thoth had a sense of humour. Here I was, fugitive, the medallion used and broken, beaten to a fabled book by a desert prophet some three thousand years before, tired, sore, in love, and – if I could ever use the metal hanging on my body – fabulously wealthy. It’s a wonder what travel will do for you.
‘Suffocation is quicker than starvation,’ I agreed.
‘You will drown if you don’t get rid of most of that treasure.’
‘Are you joking? If we’re supposed to jump into this sluiceway, maybe the ceiling opens up ahead. Maybe the outlet to the Nile isn’t that far away. I haven’t come this far to come away with nothing.’
‘And what do you call nothing?’ Her smile was mischievous.
‘Well, except for you.’ It seemed we were a couple; you can always tell when you start tripping over what you say. ‘I just meant it’s nice to have a financial start in the world.’
‘We have to save the world, first.’
‘Let’s start by saving ourselves.’ I looked at the dark rushing water. ‘Before we try, I guess I’d better kiss you. Just in case it’s the last time.’
‘A sensible precaution.’
So I did.
She was so good at returning the favour that it gave me all kinds of ideas.
‘No.’ She pushed my paws aside. ‘That will be your reward on the other side. Believe
in me, Ethan.’ And with that, she vaulted herself over the low wall, dropped with a splash into the water, pointed her feet downstream, and let go. In a flash she was where the ceiling touched the water. She took a last breath, dipped her head, and was gone.
By the spurs of Paul Revere, the woman had pluck! And damned if I was going to stay in this tomb alone. So before I could philosophise about it further I plunged in myself – but instead of floating like a cork I sank to the bottom of the trough like a lead sinker.
It was the treasure, you see.
I was helpless as a rat in a pipe, or a bullet in a barrel. My hand reached up to scrape a wet ceiling, looking for air, and couldn’t touch it. I was bouncing along the bottom as if I’d tied on an anchor. Cursing my luck, or stupidity, I began clawing at golden pendants, emptying my pocket of precious gems, and shedding my arms of bracelets. Off came a belt worth a king’s ransom, an anklet I could buy a country estate with. Rings I dropped like bread crumbs. As I tugged each one off it was lost forever, or at least lost to the mud of the Nile or the belly of some crocodile. Yet with each frantic discard I became more buoyant. Soon I was off the bottom and slithering near the top of this insidious culvert, hands scraped raw, hoping against hope for a pocket of air as my lungs began to squeeze and burn. Don’t breathe! I silently screamed at myself. Just one moment more. And one moment more …
And more.
And still more as I thrashed to rid myself of wealth.
The last treasure came off.
My lungs burnt, my ears felt close to bursting, and I was sightless in the dark.
One thing I especially feared was colliding with the lifeless body of Astiza, which would have caused such despair that I’d suck the Nile into my lungs. Conversely, it was the thought of her waiting ahead that kept me determined to stick it out. Believe!
I put my arm up one last desperate time, expecting to feel wet rock, and encountered …
Nothing!
My head burst the surface just as my breath burst from my mouth. Air! It was still pitch black but I gasped for a lungful. Then I collided with the ceiling again with a painful bang and was sucked further down the seemingly endless, relentless, underground pipe. Air, air, just one more lungful, lord, how I ached, I couldn’t take much more … and then I was weightless, pitched into nothing, the water falling away beneath me. I gasped in surprise and terror, tumbling as I fell, my stomach gone, before crashing into a dark pool. I came up sputtering, eyes blinking, seeing I was again in a limestone cavern. I could breathe! Even more amazing, I could faintly see. But how? Yes! There was light coming from the water at the far end of the cave, a glimmer of outside! I dove and kicked to swim with all my might.
And surfaced at the edge of the Nile.
There was Astiza, floating on her back, her dark hair in a fan, her wet clothes translucent, her body pale, in a shallow of papyrus reeds and lotus blossoms. Was she dead, drowned?
She rolled and treaded water, looking at me with a smile.
‘You shed your greed, and the gods gave you air,’ she teased.
Trading breath for the wealth of Croesus. Thoth does have a sense of humour.
We paddled into a shallow by some reeds, resting on the muddy bottom with just our heads above water, considering what to do next. Somehow the entire night had passed and it was just after dawn, the warming sun on our faces and a haze of smoke over Cairo. We heard the pops and bangs of skirmishing. The city was still in open revolt and Bonaparte was still determined to suppress it.
‘I think I’ve overstayed my welcome in Egypt, Astiza,’ I wheezed.
‘The pyramid is locked and the Book of Thoth is gone. We can do no more here. But what was lost remains a potent weapon. I think we still need to learn its fate.’
‘Wasn’t it last seen with a fugitive Jew named Moses three thousand years ago? With no mention of it since?’
‘No mention? And yet Moses raised his arm to part the sea, healed the sick with a bronze snake, found food from the sky, and talked with God. Everyone knew he was a magician. How did he learn such powers? And was it solely the Ten Commandments the Hebrews carried in the Ark of the Covenant that won them their victories, or did they have another aid as well? Why did they spend forty years in the desert before invading their promised land? Perhaps they were mastering something.’
‘Or perhaps they had no magic at all and had to do things the old-fashioned way, by building an army.’
‘No. What is the book but another source of the same knowledge you and the other scientists are seeking to uncover right now? That book could give the savants of any nation the knowledge to dominate the world. Do you think Silano and Bonaparte haven’t guessed that? Do you think they don’t dream of a sorcerer’s powers or an angel’s immortality?’
‘So you want us to spend forty years in the desert looking for it?’
‘Not the desert. You know where the book must be, just as the Romans and the Arabs and the Crusaders and the Templars and the Turks knew, and always looked: Jerusalem. That’s where Solomon built his temple, and where the Ark was kept.’
‘And we’re supposed to find what they could not? The temple was destroyed by the Babylonians and Romans three or four times over. This Ark, if not destroyed, high-tailed it into the wilderness. It’s as mythic as the Holy Grail.’
‘Yet we know what we are looking for. Not a grail, not a treasure, not an ark.’
You know how women are. They grab an idea like a terrier and won’t let go unless you can figure a way to distract them. They don’t understand the difficulties, or they figure that you’ll do the heavy lifting if you run into a snag. ‘Capital idea. Let’s look for it, right after we settle my affairs in America.’
Our philosophic discussion ended when the crack of a musket shot sent up a little geyser of water just feet from our heads. Then another, and another.
I looked up the riverbank. On the crest of a dune was a patrol of French soldiers and, lively as a stag in heat, Count Alessandro Silano. While his henchmen had run down into the pyramid of death, he’d prudently decided to stay outside.
‘The magicians!’ he shouted. ‘Get them!’
Well, hell. The bastard seemed indestructible – but then he was probably thinking the same thing about us. And of course he had no idea what we had, or rather hadn’t. Astiza still had the medallion’s disk, and I realised I still had the cherubim from Moses’ staff, if that’s what it was, tucked uncomfortably in my loincloth. Maybe I’d make a dollar out of this after all. We launched ourselves into the river and began swimming hard for the Cairo bank, letting the current widen the distance. By the time the soldiers had run down to the edge of the riverbank to take better aim, we were out of effective range.
We could hear Silano ranting. ‘To the boats, you fools!’
The Nile is half a mile wide at the pyramids, but it seemed like half an ocean in the condition we were in. The same current giving us some distance from Silano was carrying us closer to the fighting in downtown Cairo. As we thrashed the last weary feet across the river’s breadth I could see a battery of artillery deploying outside the city’s walls, and one of Conte’s balloons hovering a few feet off the ground. It was being inflated to be used again as an observation post. It was a pretty thing, a patriotic red, white, and blue, with stones hung from bags on the side for ballast. The balloon gave me an idea, and since I was as winded as a Virginia congressman invited to give a few remarks, it might be our only chance.
‘Have you ever wanted to fly away from your troubles?’
‘Never more than now.’ She looked like a half-drowned kitten.
‘Then we’re going to take that balloon.’
She blinked water from her eyes. ‘You know how to operate it?’
‘The first French aeronauts were a rooster, a duck, and a sheep.’
We dragged ourselves from the Nile and crept along its bank, working downstream toward Conte. I looked back. Silano’s soldiers were pushing hard on the sweeps of their boats. The cou
nt was shouting and pointing to call attention to us, but all eyes were focused on fighting in the city. It would be a close thing. I took out my tomahawk, the other piece of metal I’d saved in my long sluiceway tumble. It was starting to look hard-used.
‘Now!’
We charged. If anyone had bothered to look in our direction, we would have looked like two half-naked lunatics: wet, sand-plastered, wild-eyed, and desperate. But the fighting gave us the moment we needed to cross the verge and interrupt Conte just as his gasbag reached full inflation. An artilleryman was climbing into the wicker basket.
Astiza distracted the famed scientist by bounding up into his view like a dishevelled harlot, more of her charms on display than either of us would have preferred. Conte was a savant, but he was also a man, and he gaped in stupefaction as if Venus herself had popped from the half-shell. Meanwhile, I darted by and collared the artilleryman, somersaulting him backward out of the rising basket. ‘Sorry! Change of assignment!’
He reared up to argue the point, obviously confused by my remnants of Egyptian clothing. To settle the issue, I clouted him on the forehead with the butt of my tomahawk and climbed into the basket in his place. Several French soldiers had disembarked from their boat and were lining up to give me a volley, but their aim was blocked by a charging Silano.
‘I’m sorry, Nicolas, we must borrow your airship,’ Astiza said to Conte as she jerked the peg holding its anchor rope out of the ground. ‘Bonaparte’s orders.’
‘What orders?’
‘To save the world!’ The balloon was rising, the rope skidding along the ground, and I was already too high to reach her. So she jumped and grabbed the tether, hanging below the basket as we rose off the earth. Conte, running after us with arms waving, was butted aside by the sprinting Silano. Just as the writhing rope kicked up a last tendril of dust and climbed into the air, the count leapt and grabbed too. The sudden weight sent us sagging, the basket only fifty feet off the ground. Silano began climbing the tether with sheer arm strength, tenacious as a bulldog.
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