Empire of Ruins (29 page)

M
odo’s eyes were wide as saucers. Mr. Socrates was standing there with his index fingers in his ears. Tharpa was pointing the elephant gun with one hand, a finger of the other hand stuck in his left ear. They looked absolutely ridiculous.

Octavia elbowed Modo in the ribs and he suppressed a guffaw. Lizzie laughed, hard.

“Well, we didn’t want to go deaf from the blast of the elephant gun,” Mr. Socrates tried to explain after he pulled his fingers out of his ears.

Tharpa lowered the gun.

“But never mind, we’ve found it!” Mr. Socrates exclaimed triumphantly. “I don’t quite know what to make of it, but it’s here. It’s here!” He pointed at something behind the sarcophagus.

“Mr. Socrates … Miss Hakkandottir!” Modo made a move toward the passage behind the sarcophagus. “She and
her men and her dogs are pursuing us. Their way will only be blocked for a short while.”

“Ah, that’s the gunfire we heard,” Mr. Socrates said. “Then we’d better be quick about this. Come along.”

Modo and the two women walked around the sarcophagus and found a statue of a man at least twice the size of a human, seated on a throne carved from what looked like obsidian. It had been set into the wall, facing the sarcophagus.

But what really took Modo’s breath away was the figure’s pitch-black head, its lapis lazuli eyes glowing like stars, the facial features twisted grotesquely.

“It’s my face,” he whispered.

He’d stared at his own ugly mockery of a human face for so many years that it was shocking to see something so similar, especially set in stone.

But there was something else about the God Face. Looking at it was making him queasy, as though it exuded a powerful force. The blue stone eyes were glaring directly into his own, as if searching out his darkest thoughts, his deepest doubts. He began to shake.

“Tharpa and I have been studying it for the last little while,” Mr. Socrates said. “It certainly does have a disconcerting effect—it seems to bring about nausea and doubt, and even saps confidence. Tharpa and I experienced all these things. I cannot say what it is about the shape, or perhaps about what’s in the rock itself, that causes this reaction, but I’ll admit it’s already made me tremble.”

“It’s my face,” Modo said to him.

“What did you say?” Mr. Socrates replied.

“The face on the statue … it’s almost exactly like my face.”

“No, Modo. I don’t see it. There’s something primeval about it, that’s all. Some symbol that makes our minds react the way they do.”

Octavia turned to Modo, looking pale and frightened. “I don’t see the resemblance either, Modo. It’s very hard to look at for any length of time.”

All along, Lizzie had chosen to keep her back to the statue. “I can’t look at it,” she hissed. “It’s cursing us!”

She took a few steps toward the tunnel, and Modo worried that she would flee. She stood, her arms crossed.

“Why haven’t we been driven insane like King?” Octavia asked.

“Perhaps we’re all made of stronger stuff than Alexander King,” Mr. Socrates suggested. “Our superior training has allowed us to overcome the effect the image has on us.”

And I
, Modo thought,
I can look. In some way I know this face. It cannot overcome me
.

A stone-on-stone grinding echoed down the passage. “It sounds as if we will momentarily have unwanted company. Well, I’ve grown tired of running. Tharpa, set up behind the sarcophagus. Lizzie, you join him. Modo, fetch the God Face and be quick about it. I have an idea.”

“You mean remove it from the statue?”

“Yes, those are my orders.”

“Yes, sir,” Modo said.

He climbed the side of the throne and stood on the legs of the statue. The sapphires encrusted in the walls reflected light directly onto the statue’s face. He averted his eyes as
he climbed closer to it; nonetheless, his muscles began to tremble and he grew weak, feeling he might fall at any moment. In order to find a way to pry the head off the body, he was forced to look at it.

For some reason he stopped trembling, and something like hope began to creep into his heart. Someone with a similar disfigurement had perhaps become a great pharaoh. Maybe that was why he had left Egypt. He’d come here to carve his own kingdom in the jungle.

It could be that I’m not such an oddity after all
.

“It’s me,” Modo whispered into the statue’s ear.

“Modo, don’t be superstitious,” Mr. Socrates called, “bring the God Face! Hurry.”

“There was another person like me,” Modo babbled to the face. What was making him speak to a rock this way? “He might have been a pharaoh.”

“Don’t jump to such conclusions! What if the Egyptians just hired a sculptor to create a statue to frighten away grave robbers? Bring it down to me, Modo.”

Modo twisted the head a little and it moved. He turned it again and pulled it from the socket. It gave Modo an awful feeling to remove the head from the body, as if he’d committed a sin. He imagined the ghosts of the pharaoh and all his slaves suddenly swirling around him, shouting their anger.

He shook his head and climbed down, surprised at how heavy and cumbersome the God Face was.

When he stepped down onto the floor and turned, he wasn’t surprised to see Miss Hakkandottir at the tunnel entrance, her soldiers lined up behind her. Despite his lack of surprise, he still trembled at the sight of her. He hugged the
God Face against his chest and pulled his cloak over to hide it from her sight.

“Ah, Modo. Mr. Socrates. So kind of you to save us so much trouble,” she said. “Please be so good as to give the God Face to me. Now.”

N
ulu stood beside the warriors and watched as the fire-haired woman, her dogs, and the gray men went into the mouth of the god home. The Rain People kept their distance, for they knew that the fire sticks could poke a hole in a man from far away. But this was dreamtime and now-time, and they wanted to see what was unfolding.

The warriors had returned to their village and hustled her back to the god home because they knew she could understand Moh-Doh. He was in that mountain; two warriors had come running to tell them they had seen him enter. And now the gray ones were entering too.

For generations only the bravest of warriors and shamans had entered that place, for all emerged changed after seeing the spirit world and the God Face. Sometimes they would return speaking only spirit words and would never speak the Rain People’s language again. It was the true test of any
chief, warrior, or shaman. And now these people who had fallen from the sky would face that test.

None of this had been predicted in the stories and dreams of the elders. These people who came out of the sky and walked like gods on the earth were here, but for what purpose?

The Rain People clutched their spears and waited. There were big things happening, clashes between gods and the servants of gods. And they were the little Rain People. The man with the God Face would signal them if he needed their help.

Until then, they would watch.

T
welve soldiers pointed carbines at them. Two more soldiers held the leashes on the mechanical hounds. The falconer carried the mechanical falcons on his arms.

Tharpa pointed the elephant gun directly at Miss Hakkandottir. She looked right through him.

“Ah, Ingrid, it’s only a stone head,” Mr. Socrates said. “A talisman. Useless. Not even made of gold.”

“I shall be the judge of that, Alan. Thanks to that head, I have lost several men to madness. Some have died. And yet you have seen it and you remain your old obstinate self. I wonder why?”

“We’re English,” he said.

Modo was impressed by his flippancy.

“Your Indian slave is not. Neither is your pilot. Perhaps the men I sent in here were just weak.”

Mr. Socrates shrugged. “We seem to have reached an impasse. Lower your gun, Tharpa.”

Tharpa did.

“Ah, these last many years have given you wisdom,” Miss Hakkandottir said. “Now, please, Modo.” She looked at him, almost pouting. “Stop trying to hide the head. Deliver it to me.”

Mr. Socrates nodded and Modo took a step forward. He lifted the head of the statue so that it was caught by the sapphire light. A soldier approached with his hands out to take it, but when Modo turned the face toward him, the man went white. He raised a hand to cover his eyes, then whimpered and stumbled backward.

“What is wrong with you!” Miss Hakkandottir shouted. But when she looked squarely into the carved face, even she fell silent. She lowered her gaze.

Modo took another step forward and they all moved back. More soldiers covered their faces. Miss Hakkandottir tried to raise her head, but failed. One soldier dropped his pistol and ran screaming back down the tunnel. He was followed by another, and another. Even the falconer cried out, and turned, carrying his birds with him. The hounds, confused, followed.

Miss Hakkandottir stood alone.

M
iss Hakkandottir had been taken by surprise. The God Face, caught in the light, seemed to have some otherworldly power. The ghosts of the dead Egyptians were speaking to her. Looking into the blue eyes of the God Face, she suddenly felt all the weight of the tomb above her. The past, her own past, began to sprout and grow wings inside her head.

In her peripheral vision she saw the first soldier flee. Then the next and the next, followed by Visser. But their minds were weak. Her own constitution was much stronger. She would win!

And yet, as she continued to look at the God Face, her mind began turning around like a gyroscope—
fear, flee, fear
. As Modo approached with the head, more voices began to speak to her. The people she had killed, they were all still there in her memory—soldiers, pirates, a multitude raised their voices. Then a childhood memory of the raised
hand of her father. Her crippled grandmother with a serpent’s tongue. Her sister, whom she had drowned in an icy river near her family’s sheepherder hut. All of them screamed at her in a maddening chorus.