The Thrones of Eden 3 (Eden) (15 page)

Mercifully, the man never knew what hit him as he hung as lifeless as a doll.

People were beside themselves as chills and nausea coursed through their bodies, as utterances and cries filled the room.

And John did all he could to calm matters. “People, please! The path is there! All you have to do is take your time! Take! . . . Your! . . . Time!”

But his words were of little consolation when a man recently crucified hung suspended as his blood dripped to the tile beneath him.

“Hillary! Have the Beret take charge over there! Have him direct the next man forward! Translate!”

Hillary did.

The commando ushered the remaining minister forward, the man giving him hardship and refusing to move on.

Hillary bracketed his hands around his mouth. “He’s refusing!”

Damn
.

They had to press forward.

“Keep trying!”

But the minister continued to refuse, his fear now paramount.

Hillary shook his head:
a lost cause
.

“Then we have no choice but to move on without him,” said Savage.

The minister, for whatever reason, seemed to understand Savage without an interpreter, and became increasingly animated by forbidding the soldiers and Hillary to leave his side.

“We’ll send someone back for him!” John cried. “Tell him that! Tell him that we’ll send someone back!”

But when Hillary relayed the message it was to no avail. The man then became savage in his mannerisms by suddenly grabbing a soldier and pulling him away from the checkerboard pattern with the intent of driving everyone back to the direction they came from.

But the soldier hauled off and hit the man with the stock end of his weapon, the soldier losing his patience as the minister fell to the floor with his hand to the side of his head.

John could feel this unit falling apart—could feel all sense of reasoning and compassion fall to the wayside as self-preservation kicked into a higher gear. “Enough!” he yelled.

The soldier fell back, looking down at the sobbing man he had just brought to his knees.

Suddenly a passing thought that was spoken so softly in John’s mind, a voice that sounded so completely exhausted and defeated, said:
enough
.

The two Berets then took the initiative by leaving Hillary and the minister behind, which brought a look of umbrage from the senior archeologist.

They carefully navigated across the tiles and joined Savage by his side, flanking him, the men now waiting on Hillary and the minister.

“Let’s go Hillary,” said Savage. “You need to get him moving if you can.”

Hillary hunkered down by the minister’s side, pleading with the man. But the minister shook his head vehemently, refusing to take a bold step forward. Hillary stood up, looked at Savage, then raised his shoulders and held his hands outward in a gesture of surrender.

“Tell him to stay put, then,” Savage called. “Tell him he’ll be safe right where he is! We’ll send help!” But Savage knew his words sounded hollow.
We’ll send help
. . .

But how can we help him if we can’t help ourselves?

Savage beckoned Hillary to join them. “C’mon, Hillary, time to go home!”

Hillary leaned over and spoke to the minister in a hushed tone, causing the minister to become so animated that he reached out to grab Hillary’s hand but seized his forearm instead. Then he wrenched the senior archeologist to his knee, refusing to let go.

A struggle began to ensue and Hillary was on the losing end, the man drowning in fear in which Hillary was the buoy. Hillary clawed a hand toward Savage for help, his eyes growing to sheer whites as the minister wrapped an arm around the archeologist’s throat, choking him, the minister lost in the terror of being left behind. Even if he choked the life out of Hillary’s body, a corpse is still better than complete abandonment.

Savage yelled out to no avail, his voice echoing throughout the chamber. Then he started to make his way back to Hillary, back to the minister, his mind becoming kaleidoscopic with fragmented thoughts as he attempted to recall the proper tiles to take on the return trip.

Then a shot rang out, the echo a series of discordant cracks from a single gunshot.

The minister’s head snapped back, his eyes wide with surprise, and then he fell backwards, hard, with his arms outstretched in mock crucifixion as a halo of blood pooled around his head.

John was stunned as he watched Hillary get to a sitting position to massage his throat, then turned to the soldiers behind him. The Maroon Beret on the left remained emotionally neutral as a ribbon of smoke rose from the barrel-end of his gun.

 “What the hell are you doing?” Savage was in a rage. “I could have handled that!” As he approached the commando that was far too aggressive, the soldier directed his weapon at Savage.

The message was clear:
don’t even think about putting your hands on me
.

Savage stopped. Then in a measure that was without emotion, he said, “I could have handled that.”

The commandos didn’t understand him. Nor did they seem to care. Savage had been rendered powerless. In the viewpoint of the Berets, the soldier acted accordingly by firing upon a man who turned savage enough to take away the life of an innocent person.

“I could have gotten to them,” he added. “I could have saved them both.”

The soldier on the left dismissed Savage by looking beyond him and to Hillary. In Turkish he called out to the archeologist who responded with a feeble wave of sincerity. Hillary then labored to his feet and began to cross the tiles by taking precise and calculated steps, the man always reminding himself that each step might be his last if not careful.

He walked across the floor with his arms out to his sides for balance, like the wings of a plane, constantly steadying himself as he took the proper path. When he made it across he fell to his knees in relief and began to sob.

Mintaka allowed him to live.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The moment Alyssa passed underneath the archway and into the chamber; the entire atmosphere seemed to have a certain thickness to it. If evil had its place, if evil had a tangible quality to it, then this area was it since an awkward pall carried heavily enough to weigh them down emotionally.

“You feel that?” she asked.

“It’s an odd feeling,” said Demir.

They moved deeper into the chamber and came upon a crystal podium. To the left of the podium was an ancient scale reminiscent of the Scales of Justice, with seesawing balances with one scale tipped downward by three stones of predetermined weight.

She traced her fingertips over the lettering upon the podium, which was in black silica to contrast against the glass clearness of the crystal. “It’s a riddle,” she said.

“To what?”

She looked ahead, but could only see shadows and darkness. “Shine your lights against the far wall,” she told him.  

When Demir did his team followed his lead, congregating their beams to a single point.

Against the far wall were two doors.

Of course, she thought. These are the two doors that led to the interweaving corridors in the schematic, one that led to Darkness, the other leading to Paradise.

Choose your door wisely
.

She looked at the ancient script scrawled upon the podium.

найстара
পৃ
বিশ্বকোষ
жытным
থীবীর
і

তালিকা
হয়েছে।
ўяўленьнямі бпа
২০০৭
 
ўц
তারিখে

чанась
উইকিপিডিয়া
, ці дасканал
যাতে
ась
মুক্ত
ціцудаў

жанр 
প্রকাশিনির্মিত

бпа
২০০৭
 
ўц
তারিখে
ці дасканал
যাতে

жытным
থীবীর
і
তালিকা
হয়েছে।
ўяўленьнямі

“Can you decipher what they say?” asked Demir.

She nodded. “It’s a riddle of multiple choices, providing me with six possible questions to ask the Guardians of the Gates.  One door will lead us to Paradise. The other one will lead us to certain death.” She lifted her head and pointed to the far wall. “Place the lights on the doors, if you will.”

On the door to the left was the symbol of the First Guardian, the symbol ╗. On the door to the right was the symbol of the Second Guardian, the symbol ╚.

“Do you note the symbols on the doors?” she asked.

He nodded.

“They’re symbols representing the complete opposite of one another, since they both face in the opposite direction from each another. One represents Truth, the other Lie. But the riddle is to determine which one will lead us to Paradise.”

“OK.”

“So what we’re looking at here is a variation of the ‘guarded door riddle’ where one Guardian always tells the truth and the other always tells a lie. One door will lead us to Paradise, the other to certain Death. In order to get to Paradise, then we must ask the Guardian the correct question from one of the six questions offered here on the podium.”

“And how do you ask a door a question?” he asked. “It’s an inanimate object.”

“With these,” she said, pointing to a row of crystal stones lined up beneath the scale, all of various sizes and weights. Each stone had a carving of the question engraved onto the crystal so that the weight of the stone corresponded to the question. “Everything about Mintaka is about balances and weights,” she added. “By determining to ask the correct question from the questions provided on the podium, we then have to place the corresponding stone onto the balance, assuming that the correct stone to the correct question asked is also the correct weight that will open the correct door. Get it?”

“That’s a lot of ‘corrects.’ Six questions with two stones per question, one ‘yes’ and one ‘no.’ That’s roughly a nine percent chance of getting it right.”

“Roughly.”

Demir then translated to his team, the ministers then gesturing wildly with their hands, demanding that their minds be the determining factor as to the proper question to be asked while Alyssa stood aside only to witness and be without a voice. Alyssa didn’t need an interpreter for the sexist banter that was going on between them.

This was simply a cultural divide where the men still insisted that a woman’s decision was immaterial. Alyssa, however, would have none of it. So she challenged them with that good ol’ American female exuberance by offering them a hard glare that spoke volumes:
don’t even think of saying what you’re thinking
.
Don’t even begin to challenge me.

The ministers fell silent, their words trailing into quiet submission.

Eventually, Alyssa turned back to the writing upon the podium and read the characters.

The questions were as follows: 

Will this door lead us to Paradise?

Will you tell me that the other door leads us to Paradise?

If I asked you which door leads to the city of Paradise before, was ‘yes’ your answer regarding the door on the left?

Does this door lead to Death?

Will the other Guardian tell me that this door leads to Paradise?

Does the other door lead to Paradise?

She read them out loud and Demir translated. She was trying to make this a group effort. But everyone remained quiet, their minds working as Alyssa examined the crystal stones. There were two rows of six beside each hand of the balance. Six beside the right balance, signifying the left door, and six stones situated on the right for the right door. They were evenly spaced and their sizes were marginally larger or smaller from the one beside it, their weights so precise that a wrong decision, even with a crystal that was more or less in weight by mere milligrams, could prove costly. 

She picked up the first crystal on the left side and studied the answer beneath it, the answers were either ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ But on the underside of this crystal, the one with the engraved question on its topside,
Will this door lead us to Paradise?
was the engraved answer ‘No.’ She laid the stone back down. Then she went through this process with every crystal on both sides, trying to determine the
best
answer to the questions offered.

But it wasn’t until she picked up the third crystal on the right that something clicked. Math was the universal language, and everything tied to Eden and Mintaka had certain mathematical configurations from precise angles, placements and geometrical forms which ultimately governed everything the temples did.

John would be proud of me!

She cocked her head, her mind making sense of a mathematical tie between the question and the answer to this particular stone.

If I asked you which door leads to the city of Paradise
before
,

was ‘yes’ your answer regarding the door on the left?

The answer etched to the bottom of the stone that was situated with the grouping of crystals on the left side was ‘No.’

If the Guardian to the Left answered ‘Yes,’ then following the logic of the question with the keyword being
before
, and if the question was asked
before
and the Guardian first answered ‘Yes’ but this time answered ‘No,’ as stated by the answer on the stone, then he is the Guardian who Lies since his answer was not the same as before. So mathematically speaking, a positive and a negative equal a negative; therefore, it would have been the wrong door.

But this third crystal on the right side, the one corresponding to the question, said ‘Yes.’