by Sam Christer
He probes and pokes until he’s sure there’s no fragmentation in the wound, no shattered bone that has ripped up masses of muscle tissue. He tries to stand, but it’s hard to balance. Difficult to straighten his leg and painful to put any weight on it. He leans against the wall and pulls the cord belt from around his waist. He loops it around and pulls a tight tourniquet. It’s a temporary fix but good enough for now.
He’s risking nerve damage. Better that though, than to bleed to death. He looks down and sees the sticky puddle of blood and brain matter that has seeped from Draco. No point even checking for a pulse. In his peripheral vision he notices the flickering lights from the candles in the crypt. He hears his son shouting. Shouting to the woman to hurry up.
He dips in the deep pocket of his robe. Feels the sacrificial hammers and the ceremonial knife.
Enough to stop them.
Enough to fulfil the ritual.
178
Gideon reluctantly leaves her slumped and twitching in her faint. He carries the torch high and quickly makes his way around the crypt. He has to find the clue. Some proof that he hasn’t made a fatal mistake.
From the dozens of inclined coffins, empty eyes in skinless skulls seem to follow him. They trail him like ghosts. He can feel their wispy hands on his neck, cold like a dead-of-night shiver down his spine.
Egyptians ensured the dead who they honoured were surrounded by their most prized possessions. From what he can see, it seems to be the same with the Followers of the Sacreds. But the Egyptians equipped their tombs with something else. Secret passages into the afterlife. Long tunnels that allowed the reborn kings to rise again and rejoin their people.
Gideon tries to think of everything he knows about the pyramids. Of the modest structure honouring young Pepi II. The stepped Pyramid of Djoser. Sneferu’s Red Pyramid. And Giza – built two thousand five hundred years before Christ, around the same time as some of Stonehenge, and just after the completion of the Sanctuary. The Great Pyramid had chambers similar to those now surrounding him. Mysterious shafts stretched from the King’s and Queen’s chambers to the outside world. Secret corridors allowed freed spirits to escape to the heavens.
Gideon moves the coffins. Stirs the dead. Hears their bones grumble discontent. Cobwebbed skeletons creak and crack as he searches behind and beneath the caskets for trapdoors or concealed passageways. There are none.
He hears Caitlyn moan and walks over to her, stoops and holds the flame so he can see her face. She is coming round but she’s deathly pale. Glassy eyed. Her energy is spent.
He touches her shoulder reassuringly. ‘You’re all right. You fainted.’
Her eyes flick from him to the horrors of the room. Coffins. Skeletons. Candles. Her nightmare isn’t over.
He thinks back to his studies, to the dusty files of his research, his academic past. His mind tries to see beyond the obvious. A fleeting memory of a massive maze. It is that of Amenemhet. Reputedly an architectural work that surpassed the great pyramids, hundreds of rooms, passageways, corridors, false chambers, star shafts and hidden trapdoors.
There had been a hidden exit in the ceiling. Concealed by a stone trapdoor. A small hole opened up into a series of hidden rooms and passageways. An exit route filled with decoy chambers and deadly shafts. But still an exit route.
He remembers Scandinavian archaeologists discovered that the symbol of the maze represented the spring equinox, the time the sun was supposed to escape from the winter’s blackness. He looks up. His gaze drifts to the top of the giant cube of artefacts in the room’s centre. Even if they climbed it, they couldn’t reach the stone blocks above their heads. But it looks like the only possible way out.
He hopes Caitlyn is strong enough to make it.
‘We have to get moving, come on,’ he grabs her wrist and leads her to the giant stone block. Gideon starts to climb and then pulls her up the first set of stone shelves.
‘Hang on.’ He places her fingers on the edge of the giant sandstone cube. ‘Grip tight. I need to climb up another level, then I’ll—’
The words shrivel in his mouth.
He can see what she can’t. See the shape behind her.
179
Gideon moves too late to stop the stone blade slicing into Caitlyn’s calf.
She screams and almost loses her hold on the giant sandstone cube. Gideon grabs her arm and hoists her up a level.
The Master sweeps the knife again. Too low. It misses. He pushes himself closer. Slashes again. He’s closer now but not close enough. He ignores the pain in his leg and hoists himself on to the bottom layer of the archive cube.
Gideon is pushing Caitlyn up and around the side of the block. Edging her out of harm’s way. He’s looking the wrong way. The knife slices into his shoulder. He tumbles from the cube.
The Master lurches after him. This is personal. Pride. Honour. Everything to live – and die for. He attacks again with the blade.
The gun is back on the cube and Gideon has no chance of reaching it. His eyes are locked on the lethal blade in his father’s hand.
The Master hobbles and stabs. It’s an unbalanced lunge that falls short of its target. Gideon sees the weak spot. Blood is dribbling down the Master’s right leg. He launches a wild kick.
The Master howls with pain. The knife drops. Gideon could finish him. He could go back for the gun and shoot him. He doesn’t.
He turns and climbs up towards Caitlyn.
‘You’re a fool!’ shouts the Master, lying on the stone floor clutching his leg. ‘There’s no way out. You can’t get away.’
Gideon pulls himself up on to the top of the centrepiece and helps Caitlyn climb the last half metre. As they stand on the apex of the giant sandstone block, he sees that his father is right. There is no way out.
180
The Master hobbles back from the Crypt of the Ancients. He knows there is still time. If he can reach the Bearers, the Lookers, then the sacrifice can be recaptured. The hour is late but it is not yet impossible to complete the ritual.
He’s weak, dizzy, losing too much blood. His thigh is twitching and cramping. He stops, quickly refastens the tourniquet. Already nerves are deadening. Every step up the sloping passageway is a form of torture. But as he reaches the middle landing, he sees Grus with three Lookers.
‘Here! Over here!’ It’s the best he can manage as he slumps to the ground.
‘Get a medic, quickly,’ shouts Grus. He turns to two of the men. ‘Help me get him to his chamber.’
‘No,’ protests the Master. ‘My son and the sacrifice are in the Crypt of the Ancients. Get her. Get her now.’
‘Watch him,’ says Grus to one of the Lookers. ‘Don’t let him pass out.’ He looks down at his friend. ‘There’ll be a doctor here any minute.’
‘Go!’ shouts the Master. ‘They were climbing the centrepiece. Do whatever you have to, to bring the girl back.’
181
The Master is laid out on a stone table in his chamber.
‘You’ve lost a lot of blood,’ says the man tending him.
‘I know that,’ he snaps. ‘Just fix me.’
The medic nods. He waits for the ice and alcohol to come from the fridges in the operational area. He’s going to have to cauterise the wound with heated metal. Battlefield improvisation. Something he’s done before.
The Master’s mind is elsewhere. If he can’t complete the ritual, there will be repercussions. The power of the Sacreds will wane. Perhaps critically. It will be disastrous for so many people.
But if the sacrifice and his son escape? He shudders.
The Craft will be exposed. He cannot let that happen. He will have no option but to take the ultimate sanction. One that has been prepared. One that only his word can execute.
182
The top of the centrepiece in the crypt is solid. Gideon feels no break in the giant sandstone except for a thin square shaft that runs straight down the middle. He can see no obvious use for it. Was it designed to let some
thing out? Drain away water or gasses? Or let something in?
He looks down the bottomless hole. Did it once house an even taller centrepiece that connected to the roof of the crypt? The shaft is about the width of a waterwell. It’s barely wide enough for him to fit into. But it’s all there is. There’s no sign of anything else that could constitute an exit.
At the edge of the block, Caitlyn sits nursing the gash to her leg. He looks again down the shaft, down into the terrifying darkness. The Lookers will be in the room any second. He sits and dangles his legs into the void.
Caitlyn stares at him incredulously. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know. Ancient structures seldom make sense. You just have to feel your way around them to discover their purpose.’ He lowers himself into the hole, so he is resting on his elbows. His gashed shoulder barks pain.
Gideon scrapes a foot against the wall. He can feel something. A tiny foothold. A gap in the sandstone. He wriggles his bare toe in and stretches his other leg down, searching for a second foothold. After arcing it back and forth, he finds one.
Caitlyn watches him disappearing into the shaft and drags herself over. She’s not going to be left here alone. Only his fingers are now visible from the top. He calls to her. ‘There are cut-outs in the side of the walls. It’s like climbing down a ladder. Feel your way down.’
His hands disappear and in the dim light she can only just see the top of his head. She gets on her knees and lowers herself into the blackness. Back into the dark hole. Her mind rebels, her body freezes. She can’t do it again. She can’t go into the hole.
But she has to. She has to follow Gideon. Has to trust him.
Her once-beautifully manicured toes rub against the rough sandstone until she finds the gaps and descends into the dark unknown.
Her left foot hits an unusually solid foothold, a knob of stone that protrudes from the wall. It enables her to shift her weight from her gashed leg and move down more confidently.
As soon as she’s done it, there’s an awful noise. A sound like a train trundling through a tunnel above her head.
‘What’s that?’ Gideon shouts from below.
She has no idea. She looks up.
Something is sliding across the top of the shaft. A stone disc cutting off the remaining light. Caitlyn watches it fill the gap above. There’s a clunk. A deathly halt.
They are sealed in. Trapped.
183
As the medic ties off a wrap of elasticised bandage around the Master’s wound, Grus repeats his awful news: ‘The crypt is empty. We searched it from top to bottom. If they were there, they’re not now.’
‘They were on the centrepiece.’ His voice is thinned by pain. ‘They were in there, I saw them climbing it.’
‘Do you think I ignored you?’ says Grus. ‘We searched everywhere. Including the centrepiece.’
‘I climbed it, Master,’ adds one of the Lookers. ‘To the very top. The roof above is unreachable. There is no way anyone could have escaped from up there.’
The Master swings his legs down from the stone table and sits up. The rush of blood makes him dizzy. ‘Then they’re still in the room.’
Grus leans close to his old friend. ‘Believe me, they are not. We would have found them.’
‘Then they must have slipped out of the crypt behind me.’ He stands down and flinches.
‘You should really rest,’ says the medic. ‘The cauterisation is fresh and you shouldn’t traumatise the wound any more.’
The Master ignores him. ‘Sweep the area one more time. Once more and then we are finished.’ An expression of defeat washes over his face. ‘Grus, you know what must be done, don’t you?’
He nods. He understands. Understands perfectly.
184
For a few seconds neither of them move. Frozen in the suffocating dark. They can see nothing. They hear nothing in the hot, still air. Only their own stilted breathing. The scrape of their feet on the stone.
Caitlyn starts to panic. ‘We’re going to suffocate. Oh Jesus, no!’
‘Stay calm.’ Gideon climbs up several notches in the stone well. ‘Caitlyn, stop it.’ He reaches out, finds her foot with his hand. Touches her. Makes contact. The shaft is too narrow for him to get any closer. ‘Please calm down. We have to think our way out of this.’
She shuts her eyes. Tries to squeeze out the stinking blackness of the shaft with her inner blackness. She breathes in slowly through her nose. Out slowly through her mouth.
Gideon hears the deep rhythm building above him. He waits, then asks, ‘What happened? Did you pull something, stand on anything?’
‘I stood on something.’ She sounds tearful. ‘I’m sorry. It’s near my knee now. It was some kind of ridge that stuck out.’
It figures.
He knows ancient tombs were often rigged with devices to stop thieves plundering them. He pulls himself up a little further and feels for the ridge. The stone is smooth. Innocuous in size and shape. It’s a strategically placed block counterbalanced by another lodged deeper in the structure. Any sizeable pressure on it, such as a person, shifts the counter weight, which in turn slides the stone disc above across the mouth of the shaft. Simple. Simple and deadly.
‘We’re trapped, aren’t we?’ She is trying to sound calm but shaking with dread.
‘There’s no going back, that’s for sure.’ Gideon doesn’t give her time to dwell on it. ‘We need to continue downwards. Don’t tread on anything else that sticks out. If you feel another of those trigger ledges, tell me. Okay?’
She takes another deep and calming breath. ‘Okay.’
She feels and hears him moving away from her. Finds it hard now to hold on. Knows the strength of her limbs is giving out. She’s losing the ability to grip securely.
‘Stop. Stop!’ His cry halts her in her tracks.
‘I’ve found another one.’
He runs his toe across it. There’s no doubt that it is a trigger ledge. But what exactly does it trigger? An opening? Or another seal? Perhaps one that will trap them in the shaft for eternity.
Or is it just a decoy?
Should they ignore it and press on? But then again, doing nothing could prove fatal.
Gideon’s mind spins. The very bottom of the shaft may also be a trigger plate. It’s not impossible that standing on it could unleash an avalanche of hidden sand, lime and chalk, or even rocks.
They could be buried alive.
185
‘Nothing,’ says Grus. ‘They are nowhere to be found.’
The Master sits with his wounded leg elevated. ‘You are sure?’
Grus nods. ‘We have swept it systematically, chamber by chamber, passageway by passageway.’
‘Then they are gone,’ says the Master. ‘That can be the only conclusion. They must have somehow slipped past the Lookers on the surface.’
Neither of them can see how that can possibly be, but there is no other logical conclusion. Grus is reluctant to say what’s on his mind, but he has to. ‘We are out of time to complete the ritual. We must give instructions to disperse the Cleansers, the Bearers, the Lookers. Our foreign brothers must be alerted. All precautions have to be taken.’
The Master struggles painfully to his feet. ‘You are right. We have failed the Sacreds.’ He corrects himself. ‘I have failed them. Failed you all.’
Grus knows there is no time for reassurances, forgiveness or sentimentality. ‘Do I have your permission to cancel all other activity and revert to the back-up protocol?’
‘You do.’ He opens his arms to his friend and they embrace. ‘Make sure the Sanctuary is cleared within the next ten minutes. I will attend the Sacreds, then use the passageway.’
Grus nods. ‘It is the only way.’
186
‘What’s happening?’ shouts Caitlyn. ‘What are you going to do?’
Gideon doesn’t know.
His heart is beating way too fast.
‘Just taking a breather,’ he lies as he sl
ides his toes away from the trigger ledge. He finds another foothold and relaxes a little. ‘Be careful coming down, there’s another one of those traps.’
‘Okay.’ Her fingers slip. She leans back against the side of the shaft and jams herself against the walls before she falls. All that time immured inside the Sanctuary at last has some use.
‘You all right?’
‘Lost my grip.’ She feels the walls and is relieved to find another finger hold. ‘I’m fine now. It’s all right. Go on.’
He can’t.
Gideon has reached the bottom of the shaft. He pulls his foot back.
Uncertainty hits him again. He tries to calculate how far down they have climbed. At least five times his height, that’s five times 1.8 metres. They’re a good nine metres down. From what he can remember, the centrepiece was about five metres high, so they are already well below the floor level of the crypt.
The thought gives him comfort. Enough for him to put one foot down and then the other.
Nothing happens.
It’s safe.
But there is no way out that he can see.
There is a noise above him. Suddenly, he feels a crushing blow, a great weight thudding into his shoulder, driving him down the thin shaft, making his legs give way. It’s Caitlyn. She’s fallen on him.
The ground beneath him has opened up. The extra, sudden weight has triggered another trap. The stone floor slab tilts and falls away, and they slide entwined down the slope, sandpapered by the rough surface of the rock. For a few heart-stopping seconds they drop into nothing. Then the slope bottoms out, they slow, then stop.
They’re still alive. Alive and excited. There can only be one reason for the final drop. It is a passageway to the outer world. Gideon suddenly understands the centrepiece. It was designed to be filled with the spirits of the ancients. When the shaft was full enough with the weight of the spiritually reborn, it would trigger the opening to a final passageway that would allow them to exit.