The Seventh Scroll (73 page)

"Did Taita do it deliberately?" The colour was returning to her cheeks, and she was recovering swiftly.

I don't know, but those baskets and jars are suspicious.

er that question when we have had a I will be able to answ chance to examine their contents." He touched her cheek tenderly. "How are you feeling? How is your headacheT

"Better. What do we do now?"

he to

"Clear the gas from the chamber, Id her, "and as soon as possible." He used a candle from his emergency pack to, test for-the gas level in the shaft. With it burning in his right hand he went back down the steps, holding it low'to the floor, descending a step at a time. The candle flame burned brightly, dancing to the movement of air as he went down. Then, abruptly on the sixth step above the floor level of the chamber, the flame turned yellow and snuffed out.

wall in white chalk, and He marked the level on the shaft, "Well, at called up to Royan at the head of the still here. Must be carbon least it's not methane. I am dioxide."

"Pretty conclusive test," she laughed. if it goes boom, it's methane." the blower fan," Nicholas Hansith, bring down shouted to the big monk Holding his breath as though he were snorkelling under water, Nicholas carried the fan down the lower steps and set it up on the floor of the chamber. He set the fan speed at "High' and immediately retreated up the shaft, drawing a huge breath as soon as he was above the chalk mark on the wall.

"How long will it take to clear the gas?" asked anxiously, looking at her wrist-watch. Royan

"I will test with the candle every fifteen minutes.

It was an hour before the gas had dispersed enough to enable him to reach the floor of the chamber again, and breathe the air down there. Then Nicholas ordered Hansith to bring down a bundle of firewood and build a fire in the centre of the stone floor, to heat and circulate the air more rapidly.

While he was doing this, Nicholas and Royan examined one of the baskets that stood against the wall.

"The crafty old ruffian!" Nicholas Muttered half in exasperation and half in admiration. "It looks like a mixture of manure and grass and dead leaves, the same as a compost heap."

They crossed the chamber, turned one of the pottery jars on its side, and studied the powder that spilled out of it. Nicholas took up a handful and rubbed it between his fingers, then sniffed it warily.

"Crushed limestone!" he muttered. "Although it has of acid. Vinegar, perhaps, or even Isoonakgedagitowdirtihedsoomuetfoarnmd lost any odour, Taita probably urine would have done the trick. As it broke down the limestone, it formed carbon dioxide."

"So it was another deliberate trap," Royan exclaimed.

"Even so many thousands of years ago, Taita must have understood the processes of decay. He knew what gases those mixtures would produce. Amongst all the other accomplishments he boasts of, he must also have been a nifty chemist."

Furthermore, he must have known that without a draught or any movement of air, these heavy inert gases amber indefiould hang here in the bottom of the ch agreed. "I expect that this shaft is designed like nitely," she

' she pointed a ,trap. I bet that the passage rises again at the mysterious doorway in the far wall, "in fact I can see the first steps even from here."

"We will soon find out if you are right," he told her, because that's exactly where we are heading right now up those stePS."

apper had placed caims of stones at the water's edge to monitor the river level. He watched es his ticker them the way a stockbroker watch tape. It had been six hours since the last rain squall had passed. The clouds over the valley had burned away in the Ithough they still hung densely over hot, bright sunlight, a the northern horizon. Their great dun'coloured thunderheads reared to the heavens, menacing and ominous, fonning their own mighty ranges that dwarfed the mountains beneath them. At any time the downpour might ed, begin up there in the highlands. Once that happen Sapper wondered how long it would take the flood waters to reach them here in the Abbay gorge.

He dismounted stiffly from the tractor, and went down the bank to inspect his stone markers. The water level had fallen almost a foot in the past hour. He forced himself not to let his optimism bubble over - after all, it had taken only fifteen minutes for the river to -rise the same amount. would come.

The final outcome was inevitable. The rains rst. He looked The river would spate. The dam would bu at the dam wall, and shook his head with fill downstream resignation.

He had done as much as possible to delay that moment. He had raised the level of the dam wall almost four feet, and packed in another buttress behind the wall to strengthen it. There was nothing further for him to do, and he could only wait.

Climbing up the bank, he leaned wearily against the yellow steel of his machine and looked across at his team of Buffaloes, strewn along the bank like casualties on a battlefield. They had worked for two days to hold back the waters, and now they were exhausted. He knew that he could not call on them for another effort; the next time the river attacked, it would overwhelm them.

He saw some of the men stir and sit up, and their faces turned upstream. He heard their voices faint on the wind.

Something was exciting their interest. He climbed up on to the tractor and shaded his eyes, The unmistakable figure of Mek Nimmur was coming down the trail from the direction of the escarpment, stocky and powerful in his camo fatigues, his gait determined. He was accompanied by two of his company commanders.

Mek hailed Sapper from a distance. "How is your dam holding?" he called in Arabic, which Sapper did not understand. "Soon it will rain on the mountains, You won't be able to hold out here much longer." But his gestures towards sky and river were immediately intelligible to Sapper.

Sapper jumped down from the machine to gr,6et him, and they shook hands cordially. They had recognized in each other the qualities of strength and professionalism that they both admired.

Mek seized his company commander, who spoke English, by the arm, and the man fell into his by now familiar role of interpreter.

"It is not only the weather that troubles me," Mek confided in a low voice, and the interpreter relayed the information to Sapper. "I have reports that the governMent troops are moving into position to attack us. My intelligence is that they have a full battalion moving down this way from Debra Maryam, and another force low the monastery at St. Frumentius, moving up the be Abbay river."

"Pincer movement, heyT said Sapper.

Mek listened to the translation and nodded gravely. "I am heavily outnumbered and I don't know how long I will they attack. My men are be able to hold them when gueff illas. It is not our role to fight set-piece battles. It is the war of the flea for us. Hit and run. I came to warn You at short notice."

to be ready to Pull out Sapper grunted. , "Don't worry too much about am a sprinter. Hundred yards dash is my speciality. It's Nicholas and ROYan you should be thinking of, them in that ruddy rabbit warren of theirs." but I wanted to arrange

"I am on my way to them now a fall'back position. if we get cut off from each other in the the monastery.

fighting, Nicholas has cached the boats at That is where we will assemble."

okay Mek---2 Sapper stopped speaking and all three I the trail, where there was a fresh of them looked bank. "What's disturbance amongst the men along the going on?"

Mek one of my patrols coming in narrowed his eyes.

"Mere must be some new development." He stopped not understand speaking as he realized that Sapper could him, and then his expression changed as he recognized the small, slim figure that was being carried on a rough litter by thing-_ men of his patrol.

towards, her and sat up weakly Tessay saw him running her to the ground and Mek on the litter. The men lowered the litter and placed both went down on his knees beside They held each other in silence for a his arms airoun(:

her face in his Mek gently cupped long moment. Then features. hands and examined her swollen and arre Some of the burns had become infected, and her eyes were slits beneath the bloated lids.

"Who did this to you?"he asked softly.

She mumbled incoherently through her black-scabbed lips. They made me No! Don't try to talk." He changed his mind as her lower lip cracked open and a droplet of fresh blood welled up and glistened like a ruby on her skin.

"I have to tell you," she insisted in a broken whisper.

"They made me tell them everything. The numbers of your men. What you and Nicholas are doing here. Everything. I am sorry, Mek. I betrayed you."

"Who was it? Who did this to you?"

"Nogo and the American, Helm,' she said, and although he embraced her as gently as a father with his infant in his arms, his eyes were terrible.

/4P--I he lowed chamber of the tunnel was cleared of gas at last. Hansith's fire burned bright and steady in the middle of the floor, the rising hot air wafting away the noxious vapours and dispersing them through the upper levels of the maze, where they mingled with the'cleaner oxygen-rich air and lost their toxicity. By this time Royan had fully recovered from the physical effects of the gassing, but her confidence was shaken, and she allowed Nicholas to lead the way up the steps that rose from the far side of the chamber.

"It's the perfect gas trap," Nicholas pointed out to her as they climbed cautiously. "No doubt at all that Taita knew exactly what he was doing when he built this section of the tunnel."

"Surely he must have expected any interloper of his period to have either succumbed to his hellish devices, lost his way in the maze, or given up and turned back by now," she reasoned.

"Are you trying to convince me that this was Taita's last line of defence, and that he has no more tricks in store for us? Is that it?" Nicholas asked as he took another step upwards.

"No. Actually I was trying to convince myself, and not having much success. I just don't trust him one little bit any more. I have come to expect the worst from him. I expect the roof to collapse on me at any moment, or the floor to open and drop us into a fiery furnace or something worse." They had descended forty steps down into the se they were now climbing was a chamber, and the stairca mirror image of that. It rose at the same angle and the tread of each step was the same depth and width. As their heads rose above the fortieth step, Nicholas played the beam of the lamp down the spacious, level arcade that ened before them, and they were dazzled by a riot of OP

colour and pattern, bright and lovely as a field' of desert blooms after rain. The paintings covered the walls and ceiling of the arcade, stunning in their profusion, wondrous in their execution.

"Taita!l Royan cried in a voice that quivered and broke. "These are his paintings. There is no other artist like him, I could never mistake it. I would know his work anywhere."

stood on the top step and gazed around in They wonder. When compared to these, the murals in the long gallery seemed pale and stilted, the tawdry sham that they the work of a great master, a timeless really were. This was genius, whose art could enchant and enrapture now just as readily as it had four thousand years ago. involuntarily, They moved forward slowly, almost down the arcade. It was lined on each side with small ntal bazaar. The entrance chambers, like the stalls in an orie ched up to the to each was guarded by tall columns that rea roof. Each column was a carved statue of one member of the pantheon of gods. Between them they held the high vaulted ceiling suspended.

As they drew level with the first two stalls, Nicholas stopped and squeezed her arm.

"The treasure chambers of Pharaoh he whispered.

The stalls were packed from floor to ceiling with wonderful and beautiful things.

"The furniture store." Royan's voice was as reverential as his as she recognized the shapes of chairs and stools and beds and divans. She went to the nearest chamber and touched a royal throne. The arms were twining serpents of bronze and lapis lazuli. The legs were those of lions with claws of gold. The seat and back were chased with scenes of the hunt, and wings of gold surmounted the high back.

Stacked behind the throne was a great Profusion of other furniture. They recognized a screened divan, its sides enclosed in an exquisite lacework of ebony and ivory. But there were dozens of other items besides, most of them broken down into their separate Parts so that it was not possible to guess what they were. They gleamed with precious metals and coloured stones in such confusion and variety that it was too much to take in in a single glance.

Both the alcoves on either side of the arcade were stuffed with these marvelous collections. Royan shook her head in wonder, and Nicholas led her on. The walls that separated the alcoves were decorated with panels illustrate in the Book of the Dead, and the journey of Pharaoh through the pylons, the dangers and the trials, the demons and the monsters that awaited him along the way.

"These are the paintings that were missing from the mock tomb in the long gallery," Royan told him. "But just look upon the face of the king, You can see he was a real person. Those are perfect royal portraits." The mural beside them depicted the great god Osiris leading Pharaoh by the hand, protecting him from the crowded close on either hand, waiting thei monsters that showed the face of the king as he chance to devour him. I with a kind and gentle, if must truly have been, a man rather weak, face.

"Look at the figures," Nicholas agreed. "They are not forward with the right stiff wooden dolls always stepping foot. These are real men and women. They are anatomic and had cally correct. The artist understood perspectiv studied the human body."

They came to the next pair of alcoves, and paused to peer into them.

"Weapons," said Nicholas. just look at that chariot The panels of the chariot were covered with a skin of old leaf, so that it dazzled the eye. The harness and traces the horses that would draw it into seemed only to await and the quivers strapped to the side panels behind battle, elins. The each tall wheel bulged with arrows and jav was emblazoned on the side panels.