The Seventh Scroll tes-2

by Wilbur Smith

  any blocks would have been carried down this far. Let's go back and -see

  if anything was washed over the falls into the mouth of the chasm."

  They returned to the bank of the Dandera and worked their way down as

  far as the falls. Nicholas peered over.

  "It's not as deep here as it is further down," he estimated. "I would

  guess that it is less than a hundred feet."

  "Do you think you could get down there?" she asked dubiously. Spray blew

  back out of the depths into their faces, and they had to shout at each

  other to make themselves heard over the thunder of the waters.

  "Not without a rope, and some muscle men to haul me back out of there."

  He perched himself on the brink and focused the binoculars down into the

  bowl. There was a jumble of loose rock down the - small, rounded

  boulders, and one or two very much larger. Some of them were angular,

  and some with a little imagination could be called rectangular. However,

  their surfaces had been smoothed by the rushing waters, and were

  gleaming wet. All of them seemed partially submerged or obscured by

  spray.

  "I don't think we can decide anything from up here, and to tell the

  truth I don't fancy going down there - not this evening anyway."

  Royan sat down beside him and hugged her knees to her chest. She was

  dispirited. "So there is nothing we can be certain about. Did Taita dam

  the river, or didn't he?" Quite naturally he placed his arm around her

  shoulders to console her, and after a moment she relaxed and leaned

  against him. They stared down into the chasm in silence.

  At last she drew back from him gently, and stood up.

  "I suppose we should start back to camp. How long will it take us?"

  "At least three hours." He stood up beside her. "You are right. It will

  be dark before we get back, and there is no moon tonight."

  "Funny how tired you feel after a disappointment," she said, and

  stretched. "I could lie down and sleep right here on one of Taita's

  stone blocks." She broke off and stared at him. "Nicky, where did he get

  them?"

  "Where did he get what?" He looked puzzled.

  "Don't you see! We are going at it from the wrong end.

  We have been trying to find out what happened to the blocks. This

  morning you mentioned the quarries at Aswan. Shouldn't we consider where

  Taita found the blocks for his dam, rather than what happened to them

  afterwards?"

  "The quarry!" Nicholas exclaimed. "My word, you are right. The

  beginning, not the end. We should be looking for the quarry, not the

  remnants of the dam wall."

  "Where do we start?"

  "I hoped you were going to tell me." He laughed out loud, and

  immediately Tamre bubbled with sympathetic laughter. They both looked at

  the boy.

  "I think we should start with Tamre, our faithful guide," she said, and

  took his hand. "Listen to me, Tamre. Listen very carefully!" Obediently

  he cocked his head and stared at her face, summoning all his errant

  concentration.

  "We are looking for a place where the square stones come from." He

  looked mystified, so she tried again. "Long ago there were men who cut

  the rock from the mountains.

  Somewhere near here, they left a big hole. Perhaps there are still

  square blocks of stone lying in the hole?"

  Suddenly the boy's face cleared and split into a beatific smile. "The

  Jesus stone!the cried happily.

  He sprang to his feet without relinquishing his grip on her hand. "I

  show you my Jesus stone." He dragged her after him as he bounded away

  down the valley.

  "Wait, Tamre! she pleaded. "Not so fast." But in vain.

  Tamre kept up the pace and burst into an Amharic hymn as he ran.

  Nicholas followed at a more sedate pace, and caught up with them a

  quarter of a mile down the valley.

  There he found Tamre on his knees, pressing his forehead against the

  rock wall of the valley, his eyes shut tightly as he prayed. He had

  dragged Royan down beside him.

  "What on earth are you doing?"Nicholas demanded, as he came up.

  "We are praying," she told him primly. "Tamre's instructions. We have to

  pray before we can go to the Jesus stone." She turned away from

  Nicholas, closed her eyes and clasped her hands in front of her eyes,

  then began to pray softly.

  Nicholas found a seat on a boulder a little way from them. "I don't

  suppose it can do any harm," he consoled himself, as he settled down to

  wait.

  Abruptly Tamre sprang to his feet and performed a giddy little dance,

  flapping his arms and whirling around until he raised the dust. Then he

  stopped and chanted. "It is done. We can go in to the Jesus stone."

  Once again he seized Royan's hand and led her to the rock wall. In front

  of Nicholas's eyes the two of them seemed to vanish, and he stood up in

  mild alarm.

  "Royan!" he called. "Where are you? What's going on?"

  "This way, Nicky. Come this way!'

  He went to the wall and exclaimed with astonishment, "My oath! We would

  never have found this in a year of searching."

  The cliff face was folded back upon itself, forming a concealed

  entrance. He walked through the opening, gazing up the vertical sides,

  and within thirty paces came out into an open amphitheatre that was at

  least a hundred yards across and open to the sky. The walls were of

  solid rock, and he could see at a glance that it was the same micaceous

  schist as the block which Royan had found lying on the floor of the

  valley.

  It was apparent that the bowl had been quarried out of the living rock,

  leaving tiers rising up to the top of the walls. The recesses from which

  the blocks had been hacked were still plain to see and had left deep

  steps with rightangled profiles. Some scrub and undergrowth had found a

  precarious foothold in the cracks, but the open quarry was not choked

  with this growth and Nicholas could see that a stockpile of finished

  granite blocks remained scattered about the bottom of the excavation. He

  was so awed by the discovery that he could find no words to express

  himself. He stood just inside the entrance, his head slowly turning from

  side to side as he tried to take it all in.

  Tamre had led Royan to the centre of the quarry where one large slab lay

  on its own. It was obvious that the ancients had been on the point -of

  removing it and transporting it up the valley, for it was finished and

  dressed into a perfect rectangle.

  "The Jesus stone!" Tamre chanted, kneeling before the slab and pulling

  Royan down beside him. "Jesus led me here. The first time I came here I

  saw him standing on the stone. He had a long white beard and eyes that

  were kind and sad." He crossed himself and began to recite one of the

  psalms, swaying and bobbing to the rhythm.

  As Nicholas moved up quietly behind them he saw the evidence that Tamre

  had visited this sacred place of his regularly. The Jesus stone was his

  own private altar, and his pathetic little offerings were lying where he

  had laid them. There were old tej flasks and baked clay pots, most of

  them cracked and broken. In them
stood bunches of wild flowers that had

  long ago wilted and dried out. There were other treasures that he had

  gathered and placed upon his altar - tortoise shells and porcupine

  quills, a cross that had been hand-carved from wood and decorated with

  scraps of coloured cloth, necklaces of lucky beans, and models of

  animals and birds moulded from blue river clay.

  Nicholas stood and watched the two of them kneeling and praying together

  in front of the primitive altar. He felt deeply moved by this evidence

  of the boy's faith, and by his childlike trust in bringing them to this

  place.

  At last Royan stood up and came to join him. Together she and Nicholas

  began to make a slow circuit of the quarry floor. They spoke little, and

  then only in whispers as though they were in a cathedral or some holy

  place. She touched his arm and pointed. A number of the square blocks

  still lay in their original positions in the quarry walls. They had not

  been completely freed from the mother rock, like a foetus attached by an

  umbilical cord which had never been severed by the ancient masons.

  It was a perfect illustration of the quarrying methods used by the

  ancients. Work could be seen in progress in all the various stages, from

  the marking out of the blocks by the master craftsman, the drilling of

  the tap holes, the wedging of the cleavage lines, right up to the

  finished product lifted out of the wall and ready for transport to the

  dam site.

  The sun had set and it was almost dark by the time they came round to

  the entrance of the quarry again. They sat together on one of the

  finished blocks, with Tamre sitting at their feet like a puppy, looking

  up at Royan's face.

  "If he had a tail he would wag it,'Nicholas smiled.

  "We can never betray his trust, and desecrate this place in any way. He

  has made it his own temple. I don't think he has ever brought another

  living soul here. Will you promise me that we will always respect it, no

  matter what?"

  "That is the very least I can do," he agreed. Then, turning to Tamre, he

  said, "You have done a very good thing by bringing us here to your Jesus

  stone. I am very pleased with you. The lady is very pleased with you."

  "We should start back to camp now," Royan suggested, looking up at the

  patch of sky above them. Already it was purple and indigo, shot through

  with the last rays of the sunset.

  "I don't think that would be very wise," he disagreed.

  "Because it is a moonless night one of us could very easily break a leg

  in the dark. That is something not to be recommended out here. It might

  take a week to get back to any adequate medical attention."

  "You plan to sleep here?" she asked, with surprise.

  "Why not? I can whip up a fire in no time and I also have a pack of

  survival rations for dinner - I have done this kind of thing before, you

  know! And you have your chaperon with you, so your honour is safe. So

  why not?"

  "Why not, indeed?" she laughed. "We will be able to make a more detailed

  inspection of the quarry tomorrow early."

  He stood up to start gathering firewood, but then stopped and looked up

  at the sky. She heard it too, that now familiar fluttering whistle in

  the air.

  "The Pegasus helicopter once again," he said unnecessarily. "I wonder

  what the hell they are up to at this time of day?"

  They both stared up into the gathering darkness and watched the

  navigational lights of the aircraft pass a thousand feet overhead,

  flashing red and green and white as it headed southwards in the

  direction of the monastery.

  Nicholas built a small fire in the corner of the quarry nearest the

  entrance, and as they sat around it he divided the pack of dry survival

  rations into three parts. They nibbled them, and washed down the sweet

  and sticky concentrated tablets with water from his bottle.

  The fire threw ghostly reflections up the side of the ed the moving

  shadows. When a quarry wall, and enhanc.

  nightjar uttered it warbling cry from a niche high up the wall, it was

  so eerie and evocative that Royan shivered and moved a little closer to

  Nicholas.

  "I wonder if somewhere on the other side Taita is aware of our

  progress," she said. "I get the feeling that we have him a little

  worried by now. We have untangled the first part of the conundrum that

  he set for us, and I'll bet he never expected anybody to do that well."

  "The next step will be to get to the bottom of his pool.

  That will be really one up on the old devil. What do you hope we might

  find down there?"

  "I hesitate to put it into words," she replied. "I might talk it away,

  and put a jinx on us."

  "I am not superstitious. Well, not much anyway. Shall I say it for you?"

  he offered, and she laughed and nodded.

  He went on, "We hope to find the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.

  No more hints and riddles and red herrings. The veritable tomb."

  She crossed her fingers. "From your lips to God's ear!" Then she grew

  serious. "What do you think of our chances?

  I mean of finding the tomb intact?"

  He shrugged. "I will answer that once we get to the bottom of the pool."

  "How are we going to do that? You have ruled out the use of an

  aqualung."

  "I don't know," he confessed. "At this stage I just don't know. Perhaps

  we might be able to get in there with fullhelmeted diving suits."

  She was silent as she considered the seeming imposs' ability of the task

  ahead.

  "Cheer up!" He put his arm around her shoulders, and she made no move to

  pull away from him. "There is one consolation. If Taita has made it so

  tough for us, he has also made it tough for anyone else to have got in

  there ahead of us. I think that if the tomb is really down there, no

  other grave robbers have beaten us to it."

  "If the entrance to the tomb is at the bottom of the pool, then his

  descriptions in the scrolls are deliberately misleading. The information

  that has come down to us has been garbled by Taita, then by Duraid, and

  finally by Wilbur Smith. We are faced with the task of finding our way

  through this labyrinth of deliberate misinformation."

  They were silent again for a while and then Royan smiled in the

  firelight, her face lighting up with anticipation.

  "Oh, icky! It is such an exciting challenge." Then her voice descended

  an octave. "But is there a way? Is it possible to get in there?"

  "We will find out."

  "When?"

  "In due course. I haven't thought it out fully as yet. All I am certain

  of is that it is going to take a prodigious amount of planning and hard

  work."

  "You are still committed, then?" She wanted his assurance. She knew that

  she could never do it alone. "You aren't daunted by the project?"

  Nicholas chuckled. "I will admit that I never expected Taita to lead us

  on such a merry chase. I imagined simply breaking open a stone gateway

  and finding it all waiting for us there, like Howard Carter walking into

  the tomb of Tutankhamen. However, to answer your question, yes, I am

  d
aunted by what it's going to involve - but hell nothing could stop me

  now! I have the smell of glory in my nostrils and the gleam of gold in

  my eye."

  While they talked, Tamre curled up in the dust on the other side of the

  fire, and pulled his shaninut over his head. His rest must have been

  interrupted by dreams and fantasies, for he burbled and squeaked and

  giggled in his sleep.

  "I wonder what goes on in that poor demented head, and what visions he

  sees," Royan whispered. "He says he saw Jesus here in the quarry, and I

  am sure that he really believes that he did."

  Their voices became softer and drowsier as the fire burned down and

  Royan murmured, just before she fell asleep on Nicholas's shoulder, "If

  the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose is below the level of the river, then surely

  the contents will be water-damaged?"

  "I can't believe that Taita would have built his dam and spent fifteen

  years working on the tomb, as he says that he did in the scrolls, only

  to flood it deliberately and despoil the mummy of his king and ruin his

  treasure," Nicholas murmured, with her hair tickling his cheek. "No, t

  would have precluded Pharaoh's resu he that rrection in other world, and

  brought all his work to nothing. I think Taita has taken all that into

  his calculations."

  She snuggled closer, and sighed with satisfaction.

  A little while later he said softly, "Goodnight, Royan," but she did

  not' reply and her breathing was deep and even. He smiled to himself,

  and gently kissed the top of her head.

  Nicholas was not certain what had woken him.

  He took a few moments to place himself, and then he realized that he was

  still in the quarry. There was no moon but the stars hung down close to

  the earth, as big and fat as bunches of ripe grapes. By their light he

  saw that Royan had slipped down and was lying flat on the ground beside

  him.

  He stood up carefully, so as not to disturb her, and moved well away

  from the dead fire to empty his bladder.

  The night was deathly quiet. No night bird called, nor was there the

  sound of any of the other nocturnal creatures.

  The rocks around him still radiated the heat of the previous day's

  sunlight.

  Suddenly the sound that had woken him was repeated.

  It was a faint and distant susurration that echoed along the cliffs, so

  that he could form no judgement as to the direction from which it came.