The Thrones of Eden 3 (Eden) (8 page)

He turned to Demir, his face registering the fact that he wasn’t too happy about the commando striking him with an intentional low blow and playing upon his guilt. He then looked at the Ankh, at the crystal foundation, knowing that they had a fifty-fifty chance of surviving should they make the wrong decision as to which direction to turn it. “If we’re going to do this,” he finally said, “then we need to come to a logical conclusion as to which direction we need to turn the base.”

Hillary stepped forward with his finger raised. “This Ankh,” he stated, “is the Key to Life, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“When we put a key into a lock, in any lock, what direction do we normally turn it in order to open a doorway?”

“To the right,” said Alyssa.

“Precisely. We usually turn the key to the right in a clockwise direction.” He looked at the structure, at the magnificent display of crafted work that was nearly perfect in its shape and form. “We turn the Ankh to the right, to the East.”

To Savage it sounded solid. Then to Alyssa: “What do you think?”

This was a difficult choice for her as she examined the faces of Demir and the ministers who seemed to wait with subdued anticipation and dread at the same time, with each one looking at her as if she was an oracle who knew what the immediate future would hold—good, bad or indifferent. “It’s . . . logical,” she finally said.

Savage picked up the lack of confidence in her tone. “But?”

She shrugged. “It’s still a fifty-fifty chance.”

“But taking into consideration the rational approach in regards to the Ankh being the symbol representing the
Key
of Life—logically speaking, of course—then turning the
Key
in a clockwise direction makes the most sense here. Don’t you concur?”

Savage had to agree. Eden was filled with riddles—and sometimes riddles within riddles. But everything seemed to fit . . . logically speaking.

“OK,” said Savage. “If we’re going to move on, if this place has something more to show us, then I’m sure turning this structure is the key to opening the next gateway or passage.”

Hillary walked around the Ankh, admiring it. “Of course I’m a man of age who does not have the strength.” He let this hang like bait, which Demir quickly accepted.

“My men are more than capable,” he said. Then he motioned to two of his Berets with a hand gesture to leave their posts along the amphitheater’s wall and join them by the Ankh, both beefy soldiers with broad shoulders and thick arms, men of obvious strength. Demir then proffered orders in Turkish, speaking in a quick clip while pointing to the crystal base.

The men quickly maneuvered into position and inserted their fingers into the indentations, the men now on their knees and looking as if they were clawing the foundation with the tips of their fingers deeply embedded inside the foot of the crystal.

On the given command, they began to turn the Ankh in a clockwise direction, finding it immoveable at first, the men straining, the veins in their necks sticking out like cords, their teeth gritting. Then suddenly the structure started to give. The Ankh, the base, began to turn slowly with the sound of stone grating against stone, their efforts now becoming paramount as the base turned faster and with more ease, unlocking a gate, a passageway.

Eventually the Ankh clicked in place with a sound that was loud and definite.

The air was still and tomblike. Not a breath could be heard.

And once again the world began to shake.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Weights and balances that could not be seen with the naked eye moved with the Key’s turn, causing stone and silica formations to shift and alter like doors opening and closing, giving entrance to new venues while sealing off others.

The concentric circles of seating were the first to go, the rows sinking into the slanting floor until the ground surface was flush and smooth, the amphitheater now shaped like a funnel, the floor converging downward to the central point of the Ankh at a steep angle, the Ankh itself sinking into the floor, and then gone, leaving a gaping hole that was as black as pitch.

John reached out for Alyssa and caught her by the forearm. Then he clung to her as he pressed himself against the floor, the angle not as steep by the hole, but still steep enough as her feet dangled over the edges of the maw as she kicked for purchase but found no traction. With great effort he pulled her back from the brink, away from the drop, the cordlike muscles in his arm becoming well defined.

Hillary stayed close to the floor where the angle was almost a flat plane, his face horrifically twisted as he lay there with paralytic terror.

Demir, however, fought for the survival of his men. He was leaning over the edge, the bottom unseen, with a soldier in the grip of each hand. The men had slipped when the Ankh broke through the floor, the silica giving beneath their feet. But Demir’s holds were beginning to weaken as his men kicked madly for the purchase of a foothold, their combining weight beginning to pull Demir over the edge.

Savage grabbed Demir’s ankle and tried to anchor him.

But the weight was too great. Demir was going over.

“Don’t let go!” yelled Savage, holding Demir with one hand while pinning Alyssa down with the other. “Hang on!”

But Demir couldn’t as the grip of one man began to slip from his grasp, the hand slowly riding down Demir’s wrist until they clung by the points of their fingertips, and then he was gone, the soldier’s arms pin-wheeling as he fell into the depths of the abyss and into darkness, his cries fading to a whisper. 

Demir reached over and took hold of the remaining soldier by grabbing the man’s wrist with both hands, and called out to Savage for assistance. “Pull me back!”

Savage grit his teeth and made an attempt to do so, but the weight was too great, the slight angle making matters worse, like trying to keep a boulder from rolling downhill. “I can’t!”

The hanging soldier’s eyes grew to the size of communion wafers as an undercurrent of terror coursed through him like something cold and electric.

“Saaaavaaaage!” Demir’s struggles beginning to fail him, the man at the end of his arm growing heavy beyond imagination.

The room continued to shake dramatically. And the men standing sentinel along the upper tier where the angle was greatest lost their footing and fell, their bodies sliding along the downward angle of the funnel-shaped floor toward the hole, their speed picking up momentum the further they slid, each man clawing for something, anything, but finding nothing. Some turned onto their bellies and scratched at the surface, each trying to slow the impetus of their slide.

Some were able to brake, using the points of their boots to anchor them.

Others, however, continued to pick up speed and flew off into the abyss, their screams fading to cold silence.

When everything stilled, when everything became silent, with Savage holding onto Demir, the clinging soldier reached up and grabbed the edge with his free hand. And with adrenaline-fueled effort, he pulled himself out of the hole and laid along the edge with an arm dangling over the abyss, his chest laboring for calm.

As the commando regained himself, Demir gave a quick examination of his men and noted the sudden shift of the amphitheater’s configuration. The room had changed to something cone-shaped, the downward angles of the floor leading to the choke point of the pit’s mouth.

By his estimate he lost four men. The one who lost his grip and the three that slid into the abyss. In a moment that lasted less than a minute, he had lost a quarter of his team. Demir slowly closed his eyes, suppressed welling emotions, and said a silent prayer for those he considered to be brothers forever lost.

Beside him the ministers, as well as Hillary, John and Alyssa, got to their feet and aided the soldiers who were clinging to the angled siding to gainful footing along the surrounding edges of the hole.

Eighteen were left.

“Now what?” asked Hillary. He flashed his light against the surfaces of the room, the light reflecting off the black silica walls. There were no openings, no passageways, at least nothing that he could see. The wall had shifted when the amphitheater closed the doorway where they had entered.

There was no way out.

“Four men,” was Demir’s response. It was a whisper meant only for him as he cast his eyes into the abyss. “Good men.” But the mention did not go unheard.

Savage knew exactly what Demir was feeling, the moment of remorse. It was never easy to lose men under one’s command.

Demir, however, regained himself by raising his chin and straightening his back, the showmanship of a strong leader when situations were not always at their best.

“Now what?” Hillary repeated, wanting to be heard like a child spoiling for attention. “There’s no way out.”

Savage walked the circular edge that surrounded the void. “There is a way out,” he said.

Hillary looked into the hole, then at Savage. “Are you crazy? That’s a bottomless pit.”

Savage raised his forefinger and waved it, as if admonishing Hillary but making a point instead. “It’s an opening,” he answered. “And it’s the only one in the room.”

Alyssa moved beside him. He was right, she thought. It
was
the only opening in the room. “The fifty-fifty chance was
our
ability to survive the shift,” she said. “We either live through the challenge or we don’t. And for those who did are granted the right to move ahead to the Chamber of the One. And since there’s no other outlet . . .” She stared at the opening.

After Hillary picked up on her line of sight, he said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Alyssa shrugged. “There
is
no other way,” she told him. “This
has
to be it. This has to be the way to the Chamber of the One.”

Hillary, now bordering on hysterics, tried to climb the angled floor but found the incline too steep and the surface too slick. In his efforts he whimpered like a lost puppy, realizing that the climb was becoming insurmountable. When the reality of his undertaking appeared hopeless, he surrendered by sitting on his backside like a petulant child.

Savage had to wonder if Hillary was exhibiting what everybody else was feeling: panic. So he raised his hands and patted the air to promote calm. “Look,” he said. “There’s a solution to everything.”

Hillary finally spoke. “Four men just died by falling into that hole. And you think there’s a solution by climbing into the abyss when there’s no other way out? Seriously? Is that what you’re telling us?”

“I’m saying there’s a solution to everything.” 

“And your solution is to kill ourselves?”

Savage ignored him as he circled the edges of the abyss, looking for that solution a moment before holding his hand out to Alyssa. “In my backpack,” he said, “there’s a flashlight.” He turned so that she could rummage through it.

She looked through the pack’s pockets, found it, and handed it off to Savage. Its luminosity proffered a feeble cone of light that could only penetrate twenty feet of darkness. He then went to his knees and flashed the light into the hole beneath the surrounding edges. On the other side of the opening and about a foot beneath the rim, his light reflected off something that had an oily sheen to it, something that looked wet and glossy. Panning the light back and forth, he came to realize that it was a ladder made from black silica, its color camouflaged by the surrounding darkness making it nearly invisible to the naked eye. Even after 14,000 years, he thought, the rungs appeared strong and sturdy. “There,” he said, pointing to a location opposite his position. “There’s a ladder just beneath the edge.”

Demir joined Savage and redirected his shoulder lamp, spotlighting the ladder. He then tracked the length of the ladder until his lamp could penetrate about fifty feet down, the ladder continuing to descend into the depths and eventually disappearing into darkness that was as black as pitch. “That’s a long climb down,” he said.

“Maybe so. But that ladder has to go somewhere, right?”

Savage turned to Hillary.
There’s the solution.

Hillary leaned over the edge. Even against the flash of his light it was difficult to see the ladder.

Savage gestured his hand toward the opening, and then to Hillary.  And with a smile that showed even rows of teeth, he said, “After you.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

But Hillary refused to be the first to descend into the depths of the abyss.

Instead, Alyssa took the lead. She was tethered by a 100-foot nylon rope as she descended the ladder, the rungs as thick as rolling pins as if they were built to accommodate something larger and heavier, the distance of the steps farther apart than the normal placement of rungs on a ladder. As she descended she gripped a small flashlight between her teeth, pivoting her head to access better fields of vision. The surrounding walls were flat and made of black silica, and reflected back the light like mirrors. As far as she could tell, for as deep as the light would shine, the walls led to the bottom of the abyss, however deep it may have been.

Amazing
, she thought,
all that black silica
.
And to engineer it in a way that was seamless and never-ending.

“Are you all right,” Savage called down. He was holding the rope.

She shot him a thumbs-up.
Everything’s A-OK
.

He allowed her slack as she continued to descend the ladder.

Sixty feet down—the walls looked the same, black and glossy and looking as if they were newly created.

More rope.

Along the walls Alyssa noted several bas-relief carvings of creatures, as well as the blending of archaic script with cuneiform. She traced the light over them, the carvings of scarabs, a common beetle—the writings, however, were lost to her.

When she reached her 100-foot limit of rope, Savage carefully tied an additional length of rope by securely knotting the ends together.