The Seventh Scroll tes-2

by Wilbur Smith

  from the sinkhole in the other. Nicholas worked at the rock-fall with

  the gang of Buffaloes, led by Hansith. It was hard, messy and dangerous

  work, for each piece of rubble had to be doused with water before it

  could be levered out of the pack and passed down the chain. The

  staircase was soon running with muddy water and the steps were

  treacherous underfoot. The fallen rock was loose and unstable, and there

  was always the danger of a secondary collapse.

  So many men working in the confined spaces of the gallery and tunnel

  taxed the ability of the little blower fan to recirculate the air, and

  it was hot and oppressive. The men stripped to loincloths and their

  bodies glistened with sweat. The rubble passed back down the tunnel was

  dumped into the sinkholes Even that large volume of material made no

  difference to the level of the black waters. It was simply swallowed up

  into the depths without trace.

  Nicholas found the crowded workings so humid and claustrophobic that at

  the change of the first shift he had to escape into the open air, if

  only for a few minutes. Even the dark and forbidding chasm of Taita's

  pool was a relief after the close confines of the underground workings.

  Mek Nimmur was waiting for him when he climbed out over the wall of the

  coffer dam on to the ledge beside the pool.

  "Nicholas!" Mek's handsome dark face was grave. "Has Tessay returned

  from Debra Maryam yet? She should have been back yesterday."

  "I have not seen her, Mek. I thought she'was with you." Mek shook his

  head. "I wanted to make certain that she had not returned without my men

  seeing her, before I send a patrol up the trail to search for her."

  "I am sorry, Mek. I did not anticipate any danger in sending her up the

  escarpment." Nicholas felt a stab of guilt.

  "If I had thought there was any danger, I would not have allowed her to

  go," Mek agreed. "I have sent men to search for her."

  But Tessay's absence was another worry for Nicholas.

  It I urked at the edge of his mind during the days that followed, as the

  clearing of the long funeral gallery proceeded too slowly for his

  satisfaction.

  Royan spent as much time at the face as Nicholas did, and both of them

  were as filthy with mud and dirt as the Buffaloes who were labouring

  there beside them. She mourned over each fragment of the shattered

  murals.

  Before they were carried away to be thrown into the sinkhole, she tried

  to retrieve those on which significant portions of the paintings were

  still intact. There was one jagged piece of plaster on which the lovely

  head of Isis was still in one piece, and another on which the entire

  figure of Thoth, the god of writing, was preserved. However, most of the

  paintings were destroyed beyond any hope of ever restoring them, and

  sadly they were consigned to the pit.

  There was no sense of time in the long gallery, and they could not tell

  night from day. It was always a surprise to leave the precincts of the

  tomb and find that the stars were shining in the narrow strip of sky

  that showed above Taita's pool, or to find the bright African sun

  burning hotly down out of the cloudless blue. They ate and slept only

  when their bodies demanded it, not according to the passage of the

  hours.

  Re'entering the tomb after a few hours' sleep in their shelters beside

  the pool, they were crossing the causeway over the sink-hole when a wild

  cry reverberated down the shaft ahead of them. Immediately there was a

  hullabaloo of query and answer, and excited shouts from the men working

  in the upper levels of the tunnel.

  "Hansith has found something," Royan cried. "Dammit, Nicky, I knew we

  should have stayed-' She began to run, and he hurried after her.

  They came out on the landing in front of the gallery to find it crowded

  with chattering, gesticulating, half-naked workmen. Nicholas forced his

  way through them with Royan on his heels. They realized that Hansith had

  cleared the gallery as far as where the shrine of Osiris had once stood.

  The roof above them was jagged and broken, and lying amongst the rubbish

  on the ruined agate tiles of the floor Nicholas made out the remains of

  the mechanism which Taita had placed in the roof, and which they had

  brought crashing down when they had activated the device.

  The main part of this was an enormous stone wheel, resembling a mill

  wheel and weighing many tons. Nicholas stopped to give it a cursory

  examination.

  "When you read River God, you realize that Taita had an obsession with

  the wheel," he told Royan. "Chariot wheels, water wheels, and now this

  must have been the balance wheel of his booby-trap. VA-ten we moved the

  levers, we toppled the wedges that held this monstrosity in place. Once

  it started rolling, it tumbled all the drop-stones that he had stacked

  above the ceiling of the gallery." He glanced up at the shattered roof.

  "Not now, Nicky!" Royan was hopping with impatience. "Time for your

  lectures later. Taita's deathtrap is not what has excited Hansith. He

  has found something else. Come on!'

  They pushed their way through the pack of workmen until they reached

  Hansith's tall figure.

  "What is it?" Nicholas shouted over the heads of the others. "What have

  you found, Hansith?"

  "Here, effendi," Hansith shouted back. "Come quickly."

  They pushed their way to the face, and stopped beside the monk at the

  end of the blocked gallery.

  "There!" Hansith pointed proudly.

  Nicholas went down on one knee in the shattered remains of the shrine.

  Small pieces of the painted plaster still adhered to the fractured rock

  wall. Hansith pulled a slab out of the collapsed face, and pointed into

  the space it had left. Nicholas peered into it and felt his pulse begin

  to race. There was an opening in the side of the gallery, Even at first

  glance he realized that it was the mouth of another tunnel leading off

  at right-angles from the long gallery. It had been concealed behind the

  plaster-covered image of the great god.

  As he stared into it with awe, he felt Royan's hand on his arrn and her

  warrii breath on his cheek. "This is it, Nicky. The entrance to the true

  tomb of Mamose. This gallery was a bluff. Taita's red herring. This is

  the veritable tomb."

  "Hansith!" Nicholas called to him in a voice that was hoarse with

  emotion. "Get your men to clear this doorway."

  As the workmen moved the rocks Nicholas and Royan hovered close behind

  them, so that they were able to watch the shape of the doorway as it was

  fully revealed. It proved to be a dark rectangle, of the same dimensions

  as the tunnel leading up from the sink-hole, three metres wide by two

  high. The lintel and the door jambs were of beautifully cut and dressed

  stone, and when Nicholas shone his lamp into the opening he saw a flight

  of stone steps rising before him.

  They moved the cables and the lights into the gallery and arranged them

  at the entrance to this new doorway, but when Nicholas set foot on the

  first step he found Royan at his side.

  "I am co
ming with you, she told him firmly.

  "It's probably booby-trapped," he warned her. "Taita is lying in wait

  for you around the first bend."

  "Don't try that. It just won't work, mister! I am coming."

  They went slowly up the steep steps, pausing on each one to survey the

  walls and the way ahead. Twenty steps from the bottom they reached

  another landing. A pair of doorways led off it, one on either side.

  However, the staircase continued climbing directly ahead of them.

  Which way?"Nicholas asked.

  "Keep going up," Royan urged him. "We can explore these side passages

  later."

  Cautiously, they continued climbing. After twenty more steps they came

  out on an identical landing, with a doorway on each side and the

  stairway in front of them.

  "Keep going up," Royan ordered, without waiting for him to answer,

  Twenty more steps and there was another landing with the familiar

  openings on either side and the stairway straight ahead.

  "This isn't making sense," Nicholas protested, but she prodded him in we

  should keep going on upwards," she told him, and he did not protest

  further. They passed another landing and then yet another, each of them

  the exact image of those that they had passed lower down.

  "At last!" Nicholas exclaimed when they came out at ay on each the top

  of the staircase,,with the expected door.

  "This is as far side but now a blank wall in front of them. as it goes."

  she asked. "How man

  "How many landings are there? altogetherr

  "Eight he answered.

  "Eight," she agreed. "Isn't that a familiar number

  nowr lamplight. "You He turned to stare down at her in the mean-'

  "I mean the eight shrines in the long gallery, these the bao board."

  eight landings, and the eight cups of They stood silent and undecided on

  the top landing looked about them.

  an Okay," he said at last, "if you are so damned clever, tell me which

  way to go now."

  she recited. "Let's try the

  "Eeny'meeny-miny-moe,'

  t'hand doorway." righ and passage only a short They followed ri t

  distance before they were confronted by a Tjunction - a blank wall with

  identical twin passageways on each side.

  "Take the right one again," she counselled, and they followed- it. But

  when they came to the next T junction Nicholas stopped and faced her.

  "You know what is happening here, don't your he demanded. "This is

  another one of Taita's tricks. He has led us into a maze. If it were not

  for the cable, we would be lost already."

  With a bemused expression she looked back the way they had come, and

  then down the unexplored passages to their right and left.

  "When he built this, Taita could not have anticipated the age of

  electricity. He expected any grave robber to be -quipped the same way he

  was. Imagine being caught in here without the electric cable to follow

  back the way we have come," Nicholas said softly. "Imagine having only

  an oil lamp for light. Imagine what would happen to you when the oil

  burnt out and you were lost in here in the utter darkness."

  Royan shivered and gripped his arm.

  whispered. "It's scaring!" she "Taita is beginning to play rough,'

  Nicholas said softly.

  "I was developing rather a soft spot for the old boy. But now I am

  beginning to change my mind."

  She shuddered again. "Let's go back," she whispered, "We should never

  have rushed in here like this. We must go back and work it out

  carefully. We are unprepared. I have the feeling that we are in danger -

  I mean real danger, the same as we were in the long gallery."

  As they started back through the twists and turns, picking up the

  electric cable as they retreated down the stone passageways, the

  temptation to break into a run became stronger with each step. Royan

  hung tightly to Nicholas's arm. It seemed to both of them that some

  intelligent and malignant presence lurked behind them in the darkness,

  following them, watching them. and biding its time.

  The army truck carrying Tessay drove back through the village of Debra

  Maryam, and then turned off on to the track that followed the Dandera

  river downstream towards the escarpment of the Abbay gorge.

  "This is not the way to army headquarters, Tessay told Lieutenant

  Hammed, and he shifted awkwardly on the seat beside her.

  "Colonel Nogo is not at his headquarters. I have orders to take you to

  another location."

  "There is only one other place in this direction," she said. "The base

  camp of the foreign prospecting company, Pegasus."

  "Colonel Nogo is using that as a forward base in his campaign against

  the shufta in the valley," he explained. "I have orders to take you to

  him there."

  Neither of them spoke again during the long, bumpy ride over the rough

  track. It was almost noon when at last they reached the edge of the

  escarpment and turned off on to the fork that brought them at last to

  the Pegasus campThe camouflage'clad guards at the gate saluted when they

  arrived. The truck drove through the gates, recognized and parked in

  front of one of the long Quonset huts within the compound.

  "Please wait here." Hammed got down and went into the hut, but was gone

  for only a few minutes.

  "Please come with me, Lady Sun." He looked "awkward and embarrassed, and

  could not meet her eyes as he helped her down from the cab. He led her

  to the door of the hut, and stood aside to let her enter first.

  She looked around the sparsely furnished room, and realized that it must

  be the company's administration centre. A conference table ran almost

  the full length of the room, and there were filing cabinets and two

  desks set against the side walls. A map of the area and a few technical

  charts were the only decorations on the bare walls. Two men sat at the

  table, and she recognized both of them immediately.

  Colonel Nogo looked up at her, and his eyes were cold behind his

  metal-framed spectacles. As always, his long, thin body was immaculately

  uniformed; but his head was bare. His maroon beret lay on the table in

  front of him.

  Jake Helm leaned back in his chair with his arms folded.

  At first glance his short-cropped hair made him look like a boy. Only

  when she looked closer did she see how his skin was weathered, and

  notice the crows' feet at the corners of his eyes. He wore an

  open-necked shirt and blue jeans that were bleached almost white. His

  belt buckle was of ornate Indian silver, the shape of a wild mustang's

  head.

  The sleeves of his cotton shirt were rolled high around his lumpy

  biceps. He chewed upon the dead butt of a cheap Dutch cheroot, and the

  smell of the strong tobacco was rank and offensive.

  "Very well, lieutenant," Nogo dismissed Hammed in Amharic. "Wait

  outside. I will call you when I need you." Once Hammed had left the

  room, Tessay demanded, "Why have I been arrested, Colonel Nogo?"

  Neither man acknowledged the question. They both regarded her

  expressionlessly "I demand to know the reason for this high'handed

  treatment," she persisted.

 
"You have been consorting with a band of notorious terrorists," said

  Nogo softly. "Your actions have made you one of them, a shufta."

  "That is not true."

  "You have trespassed in a mineral concession in the Abbay valley," said

  Helm. "And you and your accomplices have begun mining operations in the

  area which belongs to this company."

  "There are no mining operations," she protested.

  "We have other information. We have evidence that you have built a dam

  across the Dandera river-'

  "That is nothing to do with me."

  "So you do not deny that there is a dam?"

  "It is nothing to do with me," she repeated. "I am not a member of any

  terrorist group, and I have not taken part in any mining operations."

  They were both silent again. Nogo made an entry in the notebook in front

  of him. Helm stood up and sauntered across to the window behind her

  right shoulder. The silence drew out until she could bear it no longer.

  Even though she knew it was part of the campaign of nerves they were

  waging against her, she had to break it.

  "I have travelled most of the night in an army truck," she said. "I am

  tired, and I need to go to a lavatory."

  "If what you need to do is urgent you can do it where you are standing.

  Neither Mr Helm nor I will be offended." Nogo ditered in a surprisingly

  girlish manner, but did not look up from his book.

  She looked over her shoulder at the door, but Helm crossed to it and

  turned the key in the lock, slipping the key into his pocket. She knew

  she must show no weakness in front of these two, and, though she was

  tired and afraid and her bladder ached, she feigned an air of confidence

  and assurance and crossed to the nearest chair. She pulled it from the

  table and sat down in it easily.

  Nogo looked up at her and frowned. He had not expected her to react this

  way.

  "You know the shufta bandit Mck Nimmur the accused abruptly.

  "No," she said coldly. "I know the patriot and democratic leader Mek

  Nimmur. He is no shufta."

  "You are his concubine, his whore. Of course, you will say this."

  She looked away from him with disdain, and his voice rose shrilly.

  "Where is Mek Nimmur? How many men does he have with him?" Her composure

  was beginning to rattle him."

  She ignored the question, and Nogo scowled at her furiously. "If you do

  not cooperate with us, I will have to use stronger methods to make you