“There are also some of the Guides… like Al-Iblis… who travel among men, setting up in one place, then another. Recruiting men to do their bidding. They kill those of my order when they catch them. They kill The Ones Who Wait if they find them. We know only that they work from a place called The Mission.”
Burton frowned. In his travels to strange places he had heard rumors of a group called The Mission. “Where is this Mission?”
“It moves. Always going to a place where it can find humans willing to do its bidding. Where it can breed the evil that exists in men’s hearts. The Mission revels in the blackness of our nature. No one in my order knows where it is right now.”
“Did the Airlia build the stone Sphinx above us?”
“Men built the stone Sphinx on the surface to mark the location of the Hall of Records to those who would know the symbol,” Kaji said. “But they had help from these star creatures.”
“And the pyramids?”
“The same. They were built by men for these creatures from the stars. These others have influenced our development since before the dawn of time.” Kaji’s voice trailed off to a whisper.
“And all you do is watch?” Burton could not understand such a life’s mission. “We watch and prevent interference by men in the creatures’ war.”
“Then you are siding with the Airlia.”
Kaji shook his head. “No. We are preventing interference. The two sides of this ancient war seem to be in balance. If that balance is upset and one side is victorious, it is written in our scrolls that doom will come upon the planet. Then all will die.”
A bead of sweat dropped off Kaji’s forehead onto the stone floor. Burton could see that the tourniquet had almost completely closed off the circulation to the trapped arm. The skin in the forearm was a paler color, the cells dying from lack of blood. But he also knew that releasing the band would send a surge of blood to the smashed hand and finish bursting the vessels in the wrist, quickly killing the Arab. He could tell that shock was overwhelming the old man and it might be merciful to release, the constriction.
“There must be another way out,” Burton said. “Or a way to raise this stone. I can get you to a doctor if you show me.”
Kaji shook his head. “You can open this stone only from the other side in the tunnel we came through. And there is no other way out.”
Burton considered that. Why have a room that was a dead end? And Kaji had said he had seen only three of the Duats. There were three more somewhere. Kaji did not know all the tunnels, then.
“Ah!” Kaji let out a moan and dipped his head onto Burton’s wadded shirt.
Burton could see the rise and fall of the Arab’s chest, but he knew the man had not much longer to live. He got up and searched the chamber, holding the lantern close to the wall, searching for any marking.
The stone was smooth.
He walked across the chamber from Kaji’s body, to the far wall. Kaji had used the ring to open some of the secret doors… of that Burton had no doubt. He didn’t think that this was a dead end.
“Englishman.” The word was little more than a whisper.
Burton hurried to Kaji’s side. “Yes?”
The Arab’s eyes were closed, and Burton had to lean close to hear. “Remember, you gave your word.”
“I always keep… ” Burton began, but he saw that the Arab’s chest was still. He slid the shirt over the man’s face.
After a brief prayer for the dead that Burton had memorized from the Koran, he set the lantern on the floor and turned it to the dimmest setting possible. He pulled the ring off Kaji’s listless hand. The design was intricate, with a pyramid in the background. He turned it in the flickering light of the lantern… an eye within a circle, just like the medallion. The lantern had less than a quarter inch of kerosene in it; after that Burton would be in utter darkness.
Burton began searching once more for any sort of marking on the walls, moving quickly, but thoroughly, around the chamber. By the time he made it back to Kaji’s body, without success, the lantern was flickering. He forced himself, to sit still to think. Kaji had used the ring to open the doors. But the last door had been different. There had been no sign of it until Kaji had pressed the ring against it at a certain spot. That meant…
The lantern went out and a complete blackness, such as Burton had never experienced, consumed the room.
He pressed his palms against the wounds in his cheeks, the pain diverting him from the panic that threatened to overwhelm.
He remembered Kaji’s last words. Why would the Arab have been so concerned that he keep his promise if he was certain there wasn’t a way out? The answer was obvious to Burton… because there was a way. And Kaji had spoken of two gateways to the Roads of Rostau: one on land and one in the water. On hands and knees, he made his way to the far wall. Burton carefully slid the ring onto the middle finger of his right hand, turning the eye design palm in.
Then he began moving his hand along the wall, starting at the bottom right and working his way across.
There was no way for him to know how long it took, but he was certain when he finally reached the top left that he had covered every square inch of the far wall. He turned to his right and began on that wall.
An eternity later, Burton was next to Kaji’s body. The dead man’s flesh was cold, the body stiff from rigor mortis. That told Burton he had been trapped in this room over ten hours. He had experience with dead bodies from his time in India and knew the stages of death. There was no place for the ring on the walls.
Burton leaned back against the stone. There was more than the weight of the Great Pyramid above him. In fact, he was sure he was no longer under the Pyramid proper, but that made little difference. He could faintly hear the roar of the underground river somewhere not too far away.
He thought of beautiful Isabel, home in England, awaiting his return. The places he wanted to see that he had not yet. Overriding those two thoughts, though, were the words that Kaji had spoken. Of the Airlia, who were not men. Of their servants walking the Earth. An ancient war still being played out.
“I will not die in this place!” Burton yelled at the top of his lungs, feeling the pus and blood flow out of the wounds on his face. He felt power from that yell and the pain. He was still alive. There was still hope. As the sound of his voice echoed into silence, he was aware once more of the underground river. He pressed his ear against the wall, trying to tell in what direction the water was. After trying all four walls, he was still uncertain. Then it occurred to him. He lay on the floor… yes, the water was somewhere farther in the depths.
Burton began quartering the floor, right palm down, ring covering every square inch.
When he heard the rumble of stone moving, he froze. He felt a draft of cool air hit his face. Reaching with his hands, scuttling around the edge on hands and knees, he realized that a square, eight feet on each side, had opened exactly in the center of the chamber. He leaned over it, but there was still no light. Only the feel of humid, cool air striking him. The sound of the river water was louder now.
He put his arm down, but the shaft ran perfectly straight with no end within reach. It might drop ten feet or a hundred. It might end in a stone floor, or water, or stakes on which interlopers were to be impaled.
He slid over the edge and lowered himself as far as he could, stretching his long frame out, and his toes felt nothing. With a great effort he pulled himself back into the chamber and lay on his back, breathing hard, his strength still not back after the years of recovery from the cholera compounded by the wounds received at Berbera.
He knelt next to the opening and leaned over. “Hello!” he yelled, hoping to get an echo, but it was as if the darkness below swallowed up his voice. Or there was no bottom to the shaft. He had heard of such things. Of pits where a man would fall forever and… Burton forced his mind to slop racing. He bad to accept the inevitable reality.