Indiana Jones and the Secretof the Sphinx (18 page)

Indy took a few steps into the passage and held the torch in front of him. The stairs were covered with a fine red dust, and led down into darkness.

The walls of the passage were plain, but there were hieroglyphics on the lintel.

"The hieroglyphs," Sallah said. "What do they say?"

"They urge the wise to proceed and the foolish to turn back," Indy said.

"You never took advice before," Sallah said.

"You're very funny," Indy said. "You're also coming with me."

"But Indy," Sallah stammered. "Who will protect the women?"

"You want to stay up here with Faye and that stick?"

Sallah looked uncertain, then hurried to join Indy.

"I hope I have made the right choice," he said.

"We'll know soon enough," Indy said as he handed him a torch. "Stay behind me. Don't touch anything unless I tell you to."

The steps descended sharply into the earth, then leveled out into a narrow room decorated with colorful and elaborate paintings. The goddess Nut, with lines of stars running down her sides, spanned the ceiling. On the walls were reliefs depicting priests preparing a pharaoh for his journey to the underworld. The ankh, the Egyptian symbol of eternal life, was repeated again and again. Two clay vases filled with rolls of papyrus were on either side of the entrance to the room.

"This is the second passage," Indy said. "So far, the chamber is following a rather standard layout, common to most royal tombs."

Indy picked up a papyrus roll and carefully unfolded it a few inches. It was written in a cursive form of hieroglyphics known as hieratic.

"Do you have any idea how old this labyrinth is?" Sallah asked.

"No," Indy said. The edges of the papyrus he held began to crumble to dust. He replaced it in the vase and picked out another one, which also began to crumble when he unrolled it. "These are testimonials of the priests who apparently restored the chamber at intervals of several hundred years. This one dates back to the time of Rameses II, thirteen hundred years before the birth of Christ. It says this spot is old beyond reckoning, and is the place of the glorious First Time."

"The First Time," Sallah said. "The time when the gods came to earth. I thought it was just a fable. Now, here, it seems more real than life itself. What do you think, my friend?"

"I think this isn't the time to debate theology," Indy said. "The ancient Egyptians had a much different view of reality than we do. They took it as fact that their pharaohs were direct descendants of the gods."

Indy replaced the papyrus and brushed the dust from his palms.

"I'm not going to look at any of the others for fear of destroying irreplaceable texts," he said. The weight of ages seemed to be pressing down upon him.

"If only there were time," Sallah said.

"But there's not," Indy said. "Ironic, isn't it?"

"I hate irony," Sallah said. "It usually leads to trouble."

"Come on," Indy said. "We're safe enough in this chamber, I think. It will be this next one where things start to get a little dicey."

"I hate dicey," Sallah said.

Indy stopped at the top of another series of steps. He thrust the torch into the darkness. On either side of the steps, in alcoves cut into the limestone walls, shone golden statues about half the size of a human being.

"The third passage," Indy said. "And the sanctuaries in which the gods of the east and west repose. Let me go first."

"If you insist," Sallah said.

Indy took a cautious step down, and then another.

"So far, so good," Indy said over his shoulder. "When you follow, step in the prints left by my boots in the dust."

Indy took another step.

On the left, the gods of the east gleamed in their alcoves, and they were matched on the right by the gods of the west. They were all fierce-looking monsters, many of them half human and half animal, each of them with a part to play in the ancient Egyptian pantheon: Horus, the avenger, with a falcon's head; Anubis, god of the underworld, with the head of a jackal; Ammon, the patron of the pharaohs, with a ram's head; Hathor, the goddess of childbirth, with the head of a cow.

Indy felt the tread he was standing on sink a fraction of an inch.

"Oh, no," he said.

The golden jaw of the jackal-headed figure of Anubis dropped open, revealing rows of gleaming ivory teeth. Indy rolled forward as a copper-tipped dart shot from its throat and embedded itself in the limestone wall.

As Indy rolled down the remaining steps, a fusillade of darts followed, a fraction of a second too late to hit their mark. Indy was expecting the pit at the bottom of the steps, and by the time he reached it, the whip was out and its tip was wrapping around the cornice of a stone column in the next room.

Indy dropped the torch and swung with both hands from the handle of the whip. He watched as the torch landed in the sand twenty feet below, sending dozens of scorpions scurrying away from it.

Then the stone column, dislodged by Indy's weight, toppled over. It bridged the pit, but dropped Indy low enough that the toes of his boots were scraping the sand.

His hat fell into the pit.

"Indy, my friend!" Sallah called. "Are you all right?"

Indy retrieved his hat, then scurried hand-over-hand up the whip to the column.

"Yes," he called as he took another torch from the canvas bag and lit it with a match he struck on the column. "Come on, and be careful crossing."

Sallah walked carefully over the stone column to join Indy on the other side of the scorpion pit, then picked a scorpion off the crown of the fedora and threw it back into the pit.

"Thanks," Indy said.

"They won't kill you," Sallah said, "but for a day or so they make you wish they had. Where are we now?"

"The room of the two guardians," Indy said, then held the torch aloft. "Meet the guardians."

The desiccated corpse of a warrior was tucked into a niche in the east wall. His skin had shrunken against his bones, his armor was tarnished, but his spear was still tightly grasped in a skeletal hand.

On the opposite side was a priest. His white tunic had rotted away, and his head had fallen backward from his shoulders, while his jaw had dropped down to rest on his sternum. Yellowed teeth bristled from the gaping mouth. In his hand he held a copper adze.

"How do we proceed?" Sallah asked.

"Very carefully," Indy said.

Indy stepped forward, paused, then took another step forward.

"Anything?" he asked.

"Nothing," Sallah said.

"Good," Indy said, taking two more paces. "How about now?"

"Everything seems... too easy," Sallah said.

"You're right," Indy said.

The torch flickered, its flame kissed by the slightest of breezes.

"Get down!" Indy shouted.

Indy hugged the floor as a copper disk with razor-sharp edges dropped from the ceiling. The disk swung low enough to slice through the back of Indy's leather jacket, then swung up over Sallah's arched back and returned to the ceiling.

"You okay?" Indy asked as he picked up the torch.

"I think so," Sallah allowed.

"Good," Indy said. "The next chamber, the fifth, should be a well room."

With Sallah at his heels, Indy walked cautiously down the passage to the entrance of the next chamber. As predicted, there was a pit in the middle of it, surrounded by four massive, square pillars. The pillars were decorated with stylized depictions of crocodiles and baboons.

Indy sat on his heels for a moment while he studied the room. Then he took a pebble from the floor and tossed it into the pit.

A few feet down, it bounced sharply on stone.

"We walk across it," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"Don't touch the pillars or the floor," Indy said as he stepped down into the pit and walked across the flagstones to the other side.

"What will happen if I do?" Sallah asked.

"I don't know," Indy said, "but it won't be good."

Indy stepped up on the other side of the pit, then waited for Sallah to join him.

"In a typical tomb," Indy said, "the next chamber would be the burial chamber—unless the tomb was extended to a second course, in which case the chamber would become the 'Chariot Hall,' a sort of war memorial."

They stepped into the next room, which was a large chamber decorated with scenes of warfare: phalanxes of soldiers, thundering chariots, rows of decapitated enemies. In the middle of the room, centered among the pillars, was a flat-topped stone monument with rows of ankhs on each side. Unlike the previous rooms, there was no obvious exit.

"There must be a second level," Sallah said.

"All we have to do is find the entrance without killing ourselves," Indy said.

"A worthy goal," Sallah said.

Indy searched the floor and the walls by the light of the torch. There was a confusing array of paintings and reliefs and, along the north wall, a series of oval cartouches containing the names of pharaohs.

"Look at this," Indy said.

"The names of every king to rule Egypt since Menes in the First Dynasty," Sallah said as he held his torch close. "And look, the names go all the way back to the Thirtieth Dynasty in the Late Period."

"That's impossible," Indy said incredulously. "This labyrinth could not have been built before the Middle Kingdom."

"Yet," Sallah said, "here are the names. Even I can read them."

"They must have been carved here during the restorations," Indy said.

"Let us hope so," Sallah replied. "The alternative is too frightening to contemplate."

Indy turned from the wall to examine the stone monument in the center of the room.

"Perhaps this is a burial chamber after all," Sallah suggested.

"This is too small to hold a mummy," Indy said.

"What if it holds the body of a child?" Sallah asked. "Or a temple animal, such as a baboon?"

"I don't think so," Indy said as he rapped it with his knuckles. "It sounds solid. Say, how far do you think we've gone?"

"Into the earth?" Sallah asked.

"No," Indy said. "Distance."

"It is hard to say," Sallah replied. "I was not counting the steps, but I would say it has been several hundred meters, at least."

"And in which direction?" Indy asked.

"Southwest," Sallah said.

"That's what I thought," Indy said as he jumped up on the flat surface of the stone monument. "We're underneath the Great Pyramid. We don't go down—we go up!"

Indy held the torch close to the ceiling and probed with the fingers of his other hand. Then he pushed with his palm, and the ceiling seemed to give upward.

"Help me," Indy said. "I think it's cantilevered."

Sallah clambered up the other side of stone monument and, holding the torch between his teeth, put both of his meaty palms against the ceiling and pushed.

With a creaking groan, the ceiling swung open as a fine layer of red dust sprinkled down. A narrow flight of steps led upward.

"Another first corridor," Indy said as he pulled himself into the atticlike space. Then he extended a hand down and helped Sallah struggle up into it.

"I've never seen anything like this," Sallah said, excitement showing in his eyes for the first time. "What did the ancients call it?"

"I don't know," Indy admitted. "This is a new one for me. But we have gone deep within the earth, and now we are starting our ascension—it must have religious connotations. Let's call it the Shaft of Redemption."

"What do you suppose we will find at the end?" Sallah asked. "Think of Carter's discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen—and he was a minor king! Think what we might find here!"

"I'm afraid to," Indy said. "Be careful—these stairs are steep, and the dust makes them slippery as well."

After thirty steps, with no landing yet in sight, Sallah braced himself against a wall and wiped the sweat from his face with a kerchief.

"I'm sorry, my friend," he said. "My wind is failing me."

"No problem," Indy said, pausing. "I can use a rest myself. Let me know when you're ready to go on."

Sallah held a finger to his lips.

"Did you hear that?" he asked. "A rustling, almost as if someone were following us."

"These tombs sigh and moan like living things after they're opened," Indy said. "It's the change in atmospheric pressure, and the limestone drawing moisture from the air."

"This was something else," Sallah said. "Footsteps, I believe."

"Your ears are more sensitive than mine," Indy said.

"It is the Bedouin in me," Sallah said and smiled. "You go ahead. I am going to remain here for a few minutes, to make sure that we are not being followed."

"I'd feel better if—"

"Indy?"

There was a light at the bottom of stairs, and Mystery climbed lithely into the corridor. She was holding a battery-powered lantern, and she still had the coil of rope slung over her shoulder.

"Up here," Indy called. "Be careful."

When she had joined them, Indy told her: "Next time you go tomb-hopping, carry a torch with you. The flame will tell you when you've hit a pocket of bad air."

"I don't plan on a next time," Mystery said.

"Is your mother all right?" Indy asked.

"She sent me to check on
you,"
Mystery said. "It seems like you've been gone an awfully long time. But seeing the darts and the pits, I can understand why."

"You shouldn't have tried to negotiate them alone," Indy said in his best adult voice.

"I'm here, aren't I?" she asked.

"Well, you're just going to have to come along," Indy said. "I'm not sending you back by yourself."

"Go on," Sallah said. "I need my rest, and you need to work as quickly as possible. Dawn is not so far away. If there is trouble, I will shout out."

Indy clasped his old friend on the shoulder. Then he turned to Mystery. "Follow me," he said, "but do so carefully." With that, he resumed his ascent of the stairway.

Faye saw Jadoo's shadow, cast by the light of the full moon low in the sky, on the sand at her feet. She pushed the sleeves of her robe back to reveal her arms, brushed her dark hair away from her face, then turned to face the surprised magician.