Empire of Ruins (27 page)

Then, just as Modo was about to give up, Tharpa pointed at something that looked at first like nothing more than a shadow. They stopped at a sheer cliff, and Modo saw a carved column that had been attacked by vines, rain, and time. But at the top he could make out the falcon-headed Horus! The god of life, Modo remembered, and that was what he felt as he looked at it—a sudden burst of life. This was the entrance!

“Is that it?” Octavia asked.

“It may be,” Mr. Socrates answered, a lightness in his voice.

They walked past the statue and arrived at an area where large rocks had fallen from the cliffside above. Behind these, they found the entrance to a cave.

“This is the route King took,” Modo said. “It must be.”

“Then lead us, Modo,” Mr. Socrates commanded.

The interior was black. Modo immediately took a few steps into the darkness. Though he worried that he was about to fall into an abyss, he didn’t want to disappoint Mr. Socrates.

“Wait, you overzealous fool!” Mr. Socrates hissed. He’d followed Modo into the cave. “Take this.” He rummaged in his haversack and pulled out two bull’s-eye lanterns. He struck a match and lit the wick of one of them, then slid open the blind. A bright light, magnified by the bulging
glass, lit his face, accentuating his wrinkles. He handed the lantern to Modo. “We couldn’t use these outside. They would have made us easy targets. Here we should be free from prying eyes. Don’t drop it.” He lit the second lamp.

Modo held his lamp as high as he could. The walls were rough, hewn by human hands, and weeping with water. He stooped to avoid banging his head and walked deeper into the cave. Judging by the bones and offal and guano on the floor, different types of animals had used the cavern as a shelter. As he moved forward, the walls gradually grew closer together and smoother.

He turned a corner and had to duck as several large gray bats flapped a few inches above his head. Octavia gave a bit of a shriek, followed by Lizzie’s laughter. Modo wanted to turn around to tease Tavia, but he thought better of it.

The tunnel grew so narrow that Modo had to get down and crawl on hands and knees, a tricky thing to do with the lamp in one hand. He was reminded of the London sewers, but at least there he didn’t have the entire weight of a mountain sitting above him. His shoulders brushed either side of the tunnel. If he got jammed inside would they be able to pull him out?

The passage widened and Modo emerged into a large square chamber, where he was able to stand, and soon everyone was there, gawking along with him. The room had been carved out of solid black igneous rock, once lava, the floors and walls now as smooth as glass. The ceiling, several feet above them, was embedded with hundreds of glittering jewels. He raised his lantern and the reflection from the gems blinded him. They were almost within his grasp. He reached
up and took a step without looking down. Someone grabbed him from behind and pulled him backward, nearly knocking him over.

“What the blazes,” Modo muttered, staggering to maintain his balance.

“It’s a long fall,” Mr. Socrates said, releasing Modo’s shoulder and pointing at the floor. “You’re much more useful to me in one piece.”

Modo saw that he was standing at the edge of a deep chasm, about three feet wide and stretching the length of the room. It was very difficult to differentiate it from the black polished-rock floor.

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

“Don’t thank me,” Mr. Socrates grumbled. “Please, pay attention to everything around you. The Egyptians designed this room to entice you to look up when you enter, thus distracting you from the crevasse and certain death. There’ll be more clever traps like this one.”

“So the hole is here to defend against grave robbers?” Octavia asked.

“That and, I presume, it prevents any rainwater from entering the main chamber of the tomb. Instead, it all runs into that crevasse. Who knows how deep it is?”

“So you believe this is a tomb?” Modo asked.

“It’s always about tombs with the Egyptians. They were, how shall I put it, obsessed in that way. I can guarantee you that there’ll be a king’s chamber somewhere in this mountain, and there we’ll find the God Face.”

He pointed his lantern at the wall on the other side of the crevasse, and the light suddenly brought to life white hieroglyphics.

“Well, well. What have we here?” said Mr. Socrates. “It says, ‘
Any man who shall enter this my tomb, an end shall be made for him. I shall break his neck like a bird’s.
’ Well, that’s good news for Octavia and Lizzie. Being women, not men, they should be safe from this curse and any neck discomfort.”

“You can read hieroglyphics?” Modo said.

“I’ve dabbled in Egyptology. A little hobby of mine.” Mr. Socrates sounded wistful, but then he looked down at Modo and narrowed his eyes. “Enough talk. Lead us forward.”

“Yes, sir.” Modo jumped the chasm easily, then walked into the tunnel on the other side of the room, followed by Mr. Socrates and the others. He was beginning to feel like the canary in the coal mine, but an order was an order. He would follow it.

The sides of the tunnel were just as smooth as the entrance chamber. Every few feet, brass torch holders poked out of the rock, the wooden torches long since rotted to dust. After a few minutes they arrived at an open space where the tunnel branched off in three directions. Modo stopped and looked back to Mr. Socrates for instructions.

“The middle one,” Mr. Socrates said without hesitation.

Modo led the way, wondering exactly how the Egyptians had been able to cut these passages through pure igneous rock. It would have taken a thousand years! It seemed like a crazy thing to do. Not to mention boring and dangerous. The tunnel gradually became smaller, and once again Modo and the others were forced to crawl. He sensed that the path was declining very gradually. They’d calculated that the cave was directly opposite the main entrance, and it was
safe to assume they were traveling toward the front of the temple.

The passage soon opened into another chamber. Just inside it, Modo stood up and walked down three stone steps. He shone his lantern across the room, and what he saw left him breathless. A sphinx carved out of solidified lava watched them with two gleaming ruby eyes. The red stones made its eyes appear alive in the most uncanny and unnerving way.

Mr. Socrates let out a surprised “Oh!” when he saw the sphinx. “We’d be the envy of all the world’s Egyptologists if we could just …” His voice trailed off; then he snapped back into action. “Forget the sightseeing. The room doesn’t have any obvious exits. Everyone feel along the walls. Let me know if you find anything unusual—levers or off-center stones, depressions—anything that might open a secret door.”

Modo shone the light directly on the floor to be sure he was stepping onto something solid, then took a few steps into the chamber. He swung the lantern around and ran his free hand up and down and along a section of the wall. The ceiling was low enough that Mr. Socrates could explore it. Tharpa was kneeling on the floor, looking there.

Some time later, Mr. Socrates checked his watch and put it back in his pocket. “This is taking too long. It must be a dead end! They always make a number of these to confuse grave robbers. We have to double back.”

Frustrated, Modo led them back, but when he emerged where the tunnels had branched out, he was confused. There were now four tunnel entrances!

“Are we back where we began?” Octavia asked.

“We must be, but there’s an extra passage now,” Modo replied.

“Ah, it just wasn’t visible until we approached from this direction,” Mr. Socrates explained. He looked at his pocket watch again. “Well past sunrise. Miss Hakkandottir will most likely be making her next move. We’ll have to split up. Modo, Lizzie, Octavia, you take that tunnel. Tharpa and I will explore this one.” He handed his lantern to Tharpa. “Synchronize our watches.” Modo did so. “Go as far as possible as quickly as possible and return here in twenty-five minutes.”

Tharpa and Mr. Socrates took the wider passage. As Modo was about to enter their cramped tunnel, Lizzie grabbed the bull’s-eye lantern from him and said, “I shall lead this time. I’m the oldest.”

Octavia and Modo glanced at each other, but before they could say anything Lizzie began crouch-walking into the tunnel. They followed, hurrying to keep pace. They advanced for a distance, splashing through pools of water, before they could stand up again. When they did, Modo pulled out his mask and put it on. The search needed all his energy; he couldn’t hold his transformation too much longer. He could feel his face and body shifting.

The passage ended near a ten-foot-square pit that seemed to have no bottom. On the other side was a plain igneous-rock wall with a foot-wide ledge. To get there was a longer and more dangerous jump than Modo would dare try.

“Another dead end!” Octavia said.

Lizzie held the lantern to light the opposite wall. “No hieroglyphics. So far it’s the most ordinary chamber we’ve encountered.”

“We should go back,” Modo suggested. “We still have time to explore the last tunnel.” He turned to leave, but what he heard stopped him cold.

“ ‘All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life hath sold. But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold.’ ”

“You know Shakespeare?” He tried not to sound incredulous.

“
The Merchant of Venice
was my father’s favorite play,” Lizzie answered. “This wall isn’t gilded on purpose. They wanted us to turn back.”

Modo felt stupid for not coming to that conclusion himself. “But it’s still too far to jump the pit safely. Perhaps they brought their own ladders. Or a plank.”

“Or they just pressed this,” Lizzie said. She’d been examining the wall beside the tunnel. Near the ceiling, a small boulder was set in the wall. She pushed on it. The sound of scraping stone echoed up from the bottom of the pit. They looked down into it, but nothing seemed to have changed. It wasn’t until Modo turned back to the tunnel that he saw what they’d done.

“We’ve just blocked the passage!” he cried out, and dove at the boulder, hitting it over and over, to no avail.

M
odo finally gave up on thumping the boulder and went to the door, shoving it so hard that he slipped and nearly fell backward into the pit. “We’re stuck,” he said, out of breath.

“Do you think the pit’s really that deep?” Octavia asked. Lizzie pointed the lantern into it, which allowed them to see that the walls were lined with shiny, black, jagged rock. A collection of white sticks lay on the bottom, about forty feet down. White sticks? Then it became clear to Modo what they were.

“Those are bones,” he said. “We’re not the first to be trapped here.”

“Bones?” Octavia’s voice cracked slightly. “What a horrible way to die.”

“It’s quick, at least.” Lizzie pointed the light away. “We won’t end up like them,” she said with such confidence that Modo desperately wanted to believe her.

“There must be a way across,” Octavia said.

“We have to think like the Egyptians,” Modo offered.

“Old and dusty?” Lizzie asked.

It was the first funny thing she’d said, and both he and Octavia shared a look, then began to laugh.

“Perhaps the answer is another trick,” he said. He bent down and felt along the top of the pit.

“There’s a flat rock here. Could you shine the light on it?”

Lizzie did, but even with the light he couldn’t actually see what he was touching. He leaned over, so far into the pit that Octavia gasped, “Don’t slip!”

It wasn’t until he sat up again, and the light fell at a particular angle, that he could see what was right in front of them. “There’s a bridge!” he exclaimed. “The stone is so dark that it doesn’t reflect light.” He stood up and moved toward it.

“Wait, Modo!” Octavia said. “How do we know it won’t collapse?”

“I’ll test it,” Modo said. “Just one of us at a time.”

“You’re far too heavy,” Octavia countered. “I should go. I’m light as a feather.”

“No. I have better balance and—”

Their light was gone. Lizzie had slipped past them and was already halfway across the bridge. She looked as though she were walking on air.

“Well, if she’s light enough …,” Octavia said, stepping onto the bridge.

Lizzie set down the lantern at the opposite side so it dimly lit the outlines of the bridge. “Come along, children,” she chimed as Octavia took several tentative steps across.

When she’d reached Lizzie, Modo took his turn. It was relatively easy to cross so long as he stared straight ahead.

Lizzie was already searching out possible lever stones. Finally, she found one and gave it a shove. The rock blocking their way slid aside quietly, revealing yet another tunnel.

“How long has it been?” Octavia asked.

Modo nearly slapped his forehead. Mr. Socrates had wanted them back in twenty-five minutes. He looked at his pocket watch. Thirty-five minutes had passed! It felt as if they’d been wandering for hours.

“We were supposed to be back by now.”