The Seventh Scroll tes-2

by Wilbur Smith

  grasshopper. He tossed the insect on to the surface of the pool, and as

  it kicked weakly and floated towards the exit a long dark shadow rose

  from the bottom. There was a swirl and a mirrorlike flash of a scaly

  silver belly, and the grasshopper disappeared.

  "Ten'pounder,'Nicholas lamented. "Why didn't I bring my rod?"

  Tamre was crouched near Nicholas on the pool bank, and suddenly he

  lifted his hand and held it out. Almost at once one of the circling

  butterflies settled upon his finger.

  It perched there with its velvety black and yellow wings fanning gently.

  They stared at him in astonishment, for it was as though the insect had

  come to his bidding. Tamre giggled and offered the butterfly to Royan.

  When she held out her hand, he gently transferred the gorgeous insect to

  her palm.

  "Thank you, Tamre. That is a wonderful gift. Now my gift to you is to

  set it free again." She pursed her lips and blew it softly into flight.

  They watched the butterfly climb high above the pool, and Tamre clapped

  his hands and laughed with delight.

  "Strange," Nicholas murmured. "He seems to have a special empathy with

  all the creatures of the wilderness. I think that Jali Hora, the abbot,

  does not try to control him, but lets him do very much as his simple

  fancy dictates.

  Special treatment for a fey soul, one that hears a different tune and

  dances to it. I must admit that, despite myself, I am becoming quite

  fond of the lad."

  It was only another fifty feet higher that they came to the source.

  There was a low cliff of red sandstone, from a grotto at whose foot the

  stream gushed. The entrance was screened by a heavy growth of ferns, and

  Nicholas went down on his knees to pull them aside and peer into the low

  opening.

  "What can you see?" Royan demanded behind him.

  "Not much. It's dark in there, but it seems to go in for quite some

  way."

  "You are too big to get in there. You had better let me go in."

  "Good place for water cobra," he remarked. "Lots of frogs for them to

  eat. Are you sure you want to go?"

  "I never said that I wanted to." She sat on the bank while she unlaced

  her shoes, then lowered herself into the stream. It came halfway up her

  thighs, and she waded forward against the flow with difficulty.

  She was forced to bend almost double to creep under the overhanging roof

  of the grotto. As she moved deeper in, her voice came back to him.

  "The roof gets lower."

  "Be careful, dear girl. Don't take any chances."

  "I do wish you wouldn't call me "dear girl"." Her voice resonated

  strangely from the cave entrance.

  "Well, you are both those things, a girl and dear. How about if I call

  you "young lady?

  "Not that either. My name is Royan."There was silence for a while, then

  she called again. "This is as far as I can go. It all narrows down into

  a shaft of some sort."

  "A shaft?" he demanded.

  "Well, at least a roughly rectangular opening."

  "Do you think it is the work of humans?"

  "Impossible to tell. The water is coming out of it like the spout of a

  bath tap. A solid jet."

  "No evidence of any excavation? No marks of tools on the rock?"

  "Nothing. It's slick and water-worn, covered with moss and algae."

  "Could a man get into the opening, I mean if it were not for the water

  pressure?"

  "If he was a pygmy or a dwarf."

  "Or a childT he suggested.

  "Or a child," she agreed. "But who would send a child in there?"

  "The ancients often used child-slaves. Taita might have done the same."

  "Don't suggest it. You are destroying my high opinion of Taita," she

  told him as she backed out of the entrance of the grotto. There were

  pieces of fern and moss in her hair, and she was soaked from the waist

  downwards. He gave her a hand and boosted her back on to the bank. The

  curve of her bottom was clearly visible through her wet trousers. He

  forced himself not to dwell upon the view.

  "So we have to conclude that the shaft is a natural flaw in the

  limestone, and not a man-made tunnel?"

  "I didn't say that. No. I said that I couldn't be sure.

  You might be correct. Children might have been used to dig it. After

  all, they were used in the coalmines during the industrial revolution."

  "But there is no way that we would be able to explore the tunnel from

  this end?"

  "Impossible." She was vehement. "The water is pouring out under enormous

  pressure. I tried to push my arrn up the shaft, but I did not have the

  strength."

  "Pity! I was hoping for some more irrefutable evidence, or at least

  another lead." He sat down beside her on the bank, and ferreted in his

  pack. She looked at him quizzically when he brought out a small black

  anodized instrument and opened the lid.

  "Aneroid barometer," he explained. "Every good navigator should have

  one." He studied it for a moment and then made a note of the reading.

  "Explain," she invited.

  "I want to know if this spring is below the level of the entrance to the

  sink-hole in Taita's pool. If it is not, then we can cross it off our

  list of possibilities."

  He stood up. "If you are ready, we can move on."

  "Where to?"

  "Why, Taita's pool, of course. We need a reading up there to establish

  the difference in altitude between the two points."

  nce Tamre knew where they were headed he showed them a shortcuts so it

  took them just under two hours from the fountain head to the top of the

  cliff face above Taita's pool.

  While they rested, Royan remarked, "Tamre seems to spend most of his

  days wandering around in the bush. He knows every path and game trail.

  He is an excellent guide."

  "Better than Boris, at least," Nicholas agreed, as he fished out his

  barometer and took another reading.

  "You look particularly pleased with yourself." Royan watched his face as

  he studied the instrument.

  "Every reason to be," he told her. "Allowing one hundred and eighty feet

  for the height of the cliff below us, and another fifty feet for the

  depth of the pool, the entrance to the sink-hole is still over a hundred

  feet higher than your outlet through the fern grotto on the other side

  of the ridge."

  "Which means?"

  "Which means that there is a distinct possibility that the streams are

  one and the same. The inflow is here in Taita's pool and the outflow is

  from your grotto."

  "How on earth did Taita do it?" she puzzled. "How did he get to the

  bottom of the pool? You are the engineering marvel. Tell me how you

  would do it."

  He shrugged, but she persisted. "I mean, there must be some established

  way of doing things like that, of working under water. How do they build

  the piers of a bridge, or the foundations of a dam, or - or - or how did

  Taita himself build the shaft below the level of the Nile to measure the

  flow of the river? You remember the description that he gives of his

  hydrograph in River God?"

  "The accepted technique is to build a coffer da
m " Nicholas said

  casually, and then broke off and stared at her. "My oath, you really are

  a corker. A dam! What if that old ruffian, Taita, dammed the whole

  flipping river!"

  "Would that have been possible?"

  "I am beginning to believe that with Taita anything is possible. He

  certainly had unlimited manpower at his disposal, and if he could build

  the hydrograph on the Nile at Aswan, then he understood very clearly the

  principles of hydrodynamics. After all, the old Egyptians' lives were

  completely bound up with the seasonal inundations of the river and the

  management of the floods. From what we have gathered about the old man,

  it certainly seems Possible."

  "How could we prove it?"

  "By finding the remains of his dam. It had to be a hell of a work to

  hold the Dandera river. There is a good chance that some evidence of it

  remains."

  "Where would he have built the dam?" she asked excitedly. "Or let me put

  it another way, where would you site the dam if you had to do it?,

  "There is one natural place for it," he answered promptly. "The spot

  where the trail leaves the river and detours down the valley, and the

  river falls into the chasm.

  They both turned their heads in unison and looked upstream.

  "What are we waiting for?" she asked, and sprang to her feet. "Let's go

  look-see!

  Their excitement was infectious, and Tamre giggled and danced ahead of

  them along the trail through the thorns and then up the valley to the

  point where it rejoined the river. The sun had lost the worst of its

  heat by the time they stood once again above the falls where the

  Dandera. river plunged into the mouth of the chasm, and began its last

  lap in the race to join the Nile.

  "If Taita. had thrown a dam across here - " Nicholas made a sweep of his

  arms across the mouth of the gorge, he could have diverted the river

  down the side valley here."

  "It looks possible," she laughed. Tamre giggled in sympathy, not

  understanding a word of what they were saying, but enjoying himself

  immensely.

  "I would need a dumpy level to take some shots of the actual fall of the

  land. It can be very deceptive, but with the naked eye it does look

  possible, as you say." He shaded his eyes and looked up the bluffs on

  each side of the waterfall. They formed two craggy portals of limestone,

  between which the river roared as it plunged over the lip.

  "I would like to climb up there to get a clearer picture of the layout

  of the terrain. Are you game?"

  "Try and stop me,', she challenged him, and led the climb. It was a

  heavy scramble, and in some places the limestone was rotten and

  crumbling dangerously. However, when they came out on the summit of the

  eastern portal they were rewarded with a splendid overall view of the

  ground below.

  Directly to the north, the escarpment rose like a sheer wall with its

  battlements crenellated and serrated. Above and beyond it there was a

  dream of further mountains, the high peaks of the Choke, blue as a

  heron's plumage against the clearer distant blue of the African sky.

  All around them were the badlands of the gorge, a vast confusion of

  ridges and spines and reefs of rock of fifty different hues, some

  ash-grey and white, others black as the hide of a bull buffalo, or red

  as his heart blood. The river in bush was green, the poisonous vivid

  green of the mamba in the treetop, while further from the water the

  scrub was grey and sear, and along the spines of the broken kopjes stood

  the stark outlines of ancient drought-struck trees, their tortured limbs

  twisted and black against the sky.

  "The picture of devastation," Royan whispered as she looked around her,

  'untamed and untaniable. No wonder Taita chose this place. It repels all

  intruders."

  They were both silent for a while, awed by the wild grandeur of the

  scene, but as soon as they had recovered from the exertion of the climb

  their enthusiasm resurfaced.

  "Now you can get a good picture of it." Nicholas pointed down into the

  valley below them. "There is a clear divide at the fork of the valley.

  You can see the natural fall of the ground. There, from that side of the

  gorge to that point below us, is the narrowest part. It is a neck where

  the river squeezes through - the natural site for a dam." He swivelled

  and pointed down to the left of where they sat.

  'it would not take much to spill the river into the valley.

  Once he had finished whatever he was up to in the chasm, it would taken

  even less to break down the wall of the dam and let the river resume its

  natural course again."

  Tamre watched their faces eagerly, turning his head to each speaker in

  turn, uncomprehending, but aping Royan's expression like a mirror. If

  she nodded he nodded, when she frowned he did the same, and when she

  smiled he giggled happily.

  "It's a big river." Royan shook her head, while Tamre wagged his from

  side to side in sympathy and looked wise.

  "What method would he have used? An earthen dam?

  Surely not?" i "The Egyptians used earthen canals and dams for a great

  many of their irrigation works,'Nicholas mused. "On the other hand, when

  they had rock available to work with ..", they used it extensively. They

  were expert masons. You have stood in the quarries at Aswan."

  "Not much topsoil here in the gorge," she pointed out.

  "But on the other hand, there is plenty of rock. It's like a geological

  museum. Every type of rock that you could wish for."

  "I agree," he said. "Rather than an earthen wall, Taita would most

  probably have used a masonry and rock fill.

  That is the type of dam the ancients built in Egypt, long before his

  time. If that is the case, there is a chance that traces of it have

  survived."

  "Okay. Let's work on that hypothesis. Taita built a dam of rock stabs,

  and then he breached it again. Where would we find the remains of it?"

  "We would have to start searching on the actual site," he answered.

  "There at the neck of the gorge. Then we would have to search downstream

  from there."

  They scrambled down the slope again, with Tamre picking out the easiest

  route for Royan, stopping to beckon her whenever she faltered or paused

  for breath. They came out in the neck of the valley and stood on the

  rocky bank of the river, looking about them.

  "How high would the wall have been?" Royan asked.

  "Not too high. Again, I can't give you a precise answer until I have

  shot the levels." He climbed a little way up the side of the wall. There

  he squatted and turned his head back and forth, looking first down the

  length of the valley and then towards the lip of the waterfall that

  dropped into the mouth of the chasm.

  Three times he changed his position, on each occasion moving a few paces

  higher up the slope. The cliff became steeper the higher he climbed. In

  the end he was clinging precariously to the side of it, but he seemed

  satisfied. Then he called down to her.

  "I would say this is about it, where I am now. This would be the he
ight

  of the dam wall. It looks about fifteen feet high to me."

  Royan was still standing on the bank, and now she turned and stared

  across at the far bank of the river, estimating the distance to the

  limestone cliff rising above it.

  "Roughly a hundred feet across," she shouted up to him.

  "About that," he agreed. "A lot of work, but not impossible."

  "Taita. was never one to be daunted by size or difficulty." She cupped

  her hands around her mouth to shout up to him. "While you are up there,

  can you see any sign of works? Taita would have had to pin the dam wall

  into the cliff."

  He scrambled along the cliff, keeping to the same level, until he was

  almost directly above the falls and could go no further. Then he slid

  down to where Royan and Tamre waited.

  "Nothing?" she anticipated, and he shook his head.

  "No, but you can't really expect that there would be anything left after

  nearly four thousand years. These cliffs have been exposed to wind and

  weather for all that time. I think our best bet will be to look for any

  surviving blocks from the dam wall that might have been carried away

  when Taita. breached it to flood the chasm again."

  They started down the valley, where Royan came upon a chunk of stone

  that seemed to be of a different type from the surrounding country rock.

  It was the size of an oldfashioned cabin trunk. Although it was

  halfcovered by undergrowth, the uppermost end - the one that was exposed

  - had a definite right-angled corner to it. She called Nicholas across

  to her.

  "Look at that." Royan patted it proudly. "What do you think of that?"

  He climbed down beside herand ran his hands over the exposed surface of

  the stab. "Possible," he repeated. "But to be certain we would have to

  find the chisel marks where the "old masons started the fracture. As you

  know, they chiselled a hole into the stone, and then wedged it open

  until it split."

  Both of them went over the exposed surface carefully, and although Royan

  found an indentation that she declared was a weathered chisel mark,

  Nicholas gave her only four out of ten on the scale of probability.

  "We are running out of time," he said, enticing her away from her find,

  'and we still have a lot of ground to cover."

  They searched the valley floor for half a kilometer further, and then

  Nicholas called it off. "Even in the heaviest flood it is unlikely that