I hoped they could swim.
The dim light grew as we climbed, and stars reflected in the black water. I found a rib or two that hadn’t spilled out of my vessel and unceremoniously pitched them overboard, reasoning I wouldn’t really care what happened to my bones once I didn’t have need of them anymore. Up and up until I indeed saw a silvered disk, reflecting light from a slanted shaft. And on that shaft were sandstone stairs! I stood in my wobbling coffin, stretched for the first step, and boosted. Solid rock! Behind me, the water was still rising.
Then there was a thump, the water burped, and with a sucking roar it began falling, my coffin boat spiraling down with it. The lid that plugged the stream had cracked under the pressure and given way. Back out of sight the water swirled, pouring again out its drain, but I’d no time to watch it. I mounted the stairs, realizing this was the same well shaft we’d found in the ruined temple. We hadn’t noticed the reflection from our angle, and if we hadn’t cast aside the boards I would have had no light down there at all. I emerged between the stone walls, clambered over rubble, and raced back across the causeway to the base of the pillar where we’d first descended. “Ned! Mohammad! Are you alive!”
“By the skin of our teeth, guv’nor! That whole funnel filled with water and we was about to drown like rats! Then the water went down again!”
“How did you get up there, effendi? What’s going on?”
“I just wanted to give you boys a bath is all.”
“But how did you get out?”
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“Ferry boat.” I could see their upturned faces like little moons.“Wait.
I’ve got an idea to try to get you up.” The base of the fallen column, you will recall, had pivoted out of the way of the star-shaped paving to start the platform descending. Now I pushed it back, there was a click, and sure enough, the platform below began to rise up its star-shaped shaft, Ned and Mohammad hooting in joy like madmen.
Once they were up I got their help to shove the base back onto its rightful place, sealing the entry again. Then Ned hugged me as if I were his mother. “By Davy Jones, you is a wizard, guv’nor! Always you jump clear like a cat! And did you get the treasure?”
“There’s no treasure, I’m afraid.” Their faces fell. “Believe me, I looked. Just a Templar grave, my friends. Oh, and this.” Like a magician, I pulled out the golden cylinder. They gasped.
“Here, feel its weight.” I let them hold it. “There’s enough gold here to set all three of us up in decent style.”
“But effendi,” Mohammad said, “what of your book? Is it here? Is it full of magical secrets?”
“It’s in there, all right, and it’s the most peculiar thing I’ve ever seen. I’m sure we’ll do the world a favor to keep it away from Silano.
Maybe a scholar can make sense of it someday.”
“A scholar?”
“I’ve finally got it, by the labors of Hercules, and I can’t read a word.” They looked at me with consternation.
“Let’s go get Astiza.”
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The level exit from the City of Ghosts would take us past Silano’s camp, which I dared not do. Instead, as the stars faded and the sky blushed, we first put the well’s board back in place in the temple—I didn’t want a falling child on my conscience—and then retraced our laborious route up and over the High Place of Sacrifice, pausing only at Ned’s insistence to let him uproot a small, wizened pine tree. “At least it’s a club,” he explained. “A nunnery has more firepower than we has.” While we hiked he peeled off branches with his meaty paws like a Samson to shape it. Up, over, and down we went, winded and weary by the time we reached the canyon floor at the ruined Roman theater. A mile or more behind us, I could see a campfire glow where Silano was camped. If Astiza had crept away, how long before her absence was noticed? To the east the sky was glowing. The higher peaks were already lit.
We hurried back up the city’s main canyon toward the sinuous entry slit and came again to the façade of the first great temple we had seen, the Khazne. As the others knelt at the small brook to drink, I bounded up its stairs and into its dark interior.
“Astiza?”
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Silence. Wasn’t this to be our rendezvous?
“Astiza!” It echoed as if mocking me.
Damnation. Had I misread the woman again? Had Silano tumbled to our plan and held her captive? Or was she simply late or lost?
I ran back outside. The sky was brightening from gray to blue, and the tops of the cliffs were beginning to glow. We had to leave before the count realized I’d directed him to an empty hole! But I wasn’t going to trade the woman I loved for a scroll I couldn’t read. If we left without her, I’d be tortured with regret again. If we stayed too long, my friends might be killed.
“She’s not here,” I reported worriedly.
“Then we must go,” Mohammad said. “Every mile we put between ourselves and those Frankish infidels doubles our chance of escape.”
“I feel she’s coming.”
“We can’t wait, guv’nor.”
Ned was right. I could hear faint calls echoing down the canyon from Silano’s group, though whether of excitement or outrage yet I couldn’t tell. “A few minutes more,” I insisted.
“Has she bewitched you? She’s going to get us all caught, and your book!”
“We can trade away the book if we have to.”
“Then what in Lucifer’s privy did we come here for?” Suddenly she appeared from around the bend, hugging the rock to minimize her chance of being seen, face pale, ringlets of dark hair in her eyes, breathless from having run. I rushed back to her.
“What took you so long?”
“They were so excited they couldn’t sleep. I was the first to go to bed, and it was agony, waiting all night for them to quiet. Then I had to crawl in the canyon wadi past a sleepy guard, for a hundred yards or more.” Her dress was filthy. “I think they’ve already noticed me gone.”
“Can you run?”
“If you don’t have it, I don’t want to.” Her eyes were bright, asking.
“I found it.”
She gripped my arms, her grin like a child’s waiting for a present.
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w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
She’d dreamed of the book far longer than I had. I pulled the cylinder out. She sucked in her breath.
“Feel its weight.”
Her fingers explored it like a blind man’s. “Is it really in here?”
“Yes. But I can’t read it.”
“For Allah’s sake, effendi, we must go,” Mohammad called.
I ignored him, twisted the cylinder open, and unrolled part of the scroll. Once again I was struck by how alien the characters appeared.
She held the book with both hands, bewildered, but reluctant to give it back. “Where was it?”
“Deep in a Templar tomb. I gambled there was a twist to their clues, and they required seekers to use pyramid mathematics to prove their knowledge.”
“This will change the world, Ethan.”
“For good, I hope. Things can’t get much worse, from my perspective.”
“Guv’nor!” Ned’s shout broke us from our mutual trance. He had his hand to his ear, pointing. It was the echo of a gunshot.
I grabbed the book from her, twisted the cylinder shut, thrust it back in my shirt, and ran to where the sailor was looking. Sunlight was beginning to flood down the face of the temple, turning the cliff and carvings a brilliant rose. But Ned was pointing back the way we had come, toward Silano’s camp. A mirror was winking as it tilted.