King's Crusade (Seventeen) Read online

  ‘Here, catch,’ said Goodwin.

  Reznak looked up in time to grab the yellow hardhat the scientist lobbed across the table. He stared at the plastic helmet.

  ‘Health and safety first,’ said the professor with a friendly grin, putting on his own hardhat.

  Reznak followed him out of the tent. Of course, there was also no point telling the scientist that if a rock were to fall on Reznak’s head and kill him, he would wake up a short while later as fresh as a daisy. That would, however, bring him one death closer to the final one, and with only seven more to go, he had mixed feelings about the idea.

  As they headed past the Jeep that had brought him to the site, two men clad in dark clothing fell into step behind them. Goodwin glanced at the bodyguards curiously but never said a word; he was used to them by now. A sigh left Reznak’s lips.

  All that the professor had been told about his employer was that he was the CEO of a large, private organization interested in funding difficult archaeological projects around the world for the benefit of furthering international academic and cultural knowledge. The fact that this organization appeared to have almost limitless resources and access to the latest state-of-the-art equipment to work with were enough to keep him content. The bodyguards had been assigned to Reznak the day he became a member of the Crovir First Council; it was unfortunately a condition of the job, one that the immortal found faintly insulting considering he knew he could take on both Hunters in a fight.

  Goodwin led them through a camp perched on a narrow shelf on the side of the mountain. The land fell away sharply to the west, giving way to endless miles of rolling sand dunes. They walked past the trailers that served as homes and mobile labs for the scientists before heading up a trail freshly carved into the earth by a digger. The yellow dust that covered the plains and peaks of the Eastern Desert whirled around their feet as the wind picked up. Reznak wiped his brow again, grateful for the breeze. Moments later, they reached the summit of the rise and stopped on the edge of a ridge some thirty feet away. The Crovir immortal shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun and stared into the narrow valley at their feet.

  The track they stood on followed the natural curves of the underlying rock face as it wound along a steep incline all the way to the floor of the canyon. A group of figures stood around a large excavator at the bottom. An improvised workstation and a machine that looked like a portable oil rig on caterpillar tracks sat close by; a loud, percussive hum emanated from the metal structure as it hammered into the ground.

  Even from a distance, Reznak could feel the palpable excitement in the air. He tried not to let it get to him moments later, when he reached the bottom of the valley with Goodwin. On closer inspection, the canyon resembled one of the hundreds of ancient, dry riverbeds that criss-crossed this part of the Eastern Desert. As he approached the helmeted scientists, he noticed the thick layer of dust that coated their skin and clothes. Although a low, restrained mumble ran through the group, he detected the expectant gleam in everyone’s eyes.

  ‘How long until we breach the roof of the tunnel?’ said Goodwin briskly. He had addressed a short, bearded man Reznak knew to be an immortal.

  ‘About a half hour,’ replied Russell Brennan, glancing at a radar gram attached to a GPR unit. The scientist gave a curt nod of acknowledgement to Reznak. Graham Walcott, a second immortal, stood next to Brennan; his gaze never left the complex control panel of the million-dollar mining drill several feet from him.

  More than half of the research team Reznak had assembled over the centuries for this quest were Crovir immortals. To keep their secret safe, the human colleagues who had joined them over the last two hundred years were only ever given fixed, five-year, non-renewable contracts on the project, with ironclad confidentiality agreements attached. So far, the safeguards appeared to have worked.

  A frown crossed Reznak’s face at that thought. There was one man who had gotten uncomfortably close to the truth about a decade ago. Had it not been for that particular individual’s constant prying and all-out insubordination, they would have progressed much further and faster in their venture, for he had been without a doubt one of the most intellectually gifted humans Reznak had ever encountered.

  ‘It’s strange, really,’ said Goodwin pensively as they listened to the sound of rock being pulverized into pieces.

  Reznak glanced at him questioningly.

  ‘We came across what seemed to be the primary tunnel leading to the first cave before we found the chamber itself,’ the scientist continued. ‘The passage appears to end abruptly after some thirty feet. The hyperbolic reflections on the radar gram suggest a collapse. We have yet to determine the exact location of the original entrance.’

  ‘Can’t you hazard a guess as to where it might have been by extrapolating on the direction and angle?’ asked Reznak.

  Goodwin smiled. ‘We’re scientists—we try not to guess. But you’re right. We did just that. Unfortunately, either our calculations are incorrect or the truth is seriously baffling.’

  ‘Why?’ said Reznak.

  ‘Because it would appear that whoever dug the tunnel started it a thousand feet up the vertical side of a mountain,’ Goodwin replied laconically. ‘I suspect they started excavating much lower down, with an ascending passage like the one in the pyramid of Giza.’

  Reznak was still frowning when a shout of jubilation erupted from the team of scientists. The mining drill had finally penetrated through the roof of the tunnel. It took several minutes to move the heavy, track-mounted machine out of the way. Everyone gathered around the edges of the rapidly darkening abyss.

  ‘Would you like to do the honors?’ asked Goodwin excitedly, glancing at Reznak.

  The immortal nodded and felt the first flutter of anticipation thrum through his veins. Of all the remote and inaccessible places he had excavated in Europe, Asia, and Africa in this seemingly endless quest, their current location held the most promise to date. Though the search had spanned centuries, the advent of space technology and satellite imagery over the previous two decades had finally helped narrow their target area to this part of the old continent; for the first time in a long time, Reznak felt confident they were on the right track.

  He waited patiently while a technician fitted a harness with a climbing rope to his waist. His two bodyguards shifted restlessly at the edge of the crowd, their expressions troubled; he had banned them from following him into the tunnel.

  He was finally lowered into the opening via a winch attached to the excavator. About ten feet down, the harsh desert light started to fade. After another ten feet, he was cast into pitch-blackness. He removed a glow stick from his belt and cracked it against the wall of the vertical shaft. The fluorescent green light washed across the tight confines of the hole and showed the roof of the tunnel some thirty feet below him.

  Moments later, he stepped carefully onto a mound of rubble and released the climbing rope from his harness.

  ‘Are you there?’ Goodwin’s tense voice came over the walkie-talkie strapped to his shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ said Reznak. He cracked another pair of glow sticks and threw one down either side of the rock pile before unhooking a torch from his belt.

  ‘What do you see?’ said the scientist animatedly.

  ‘A lot of darkness,’ Reznak replied calmly. The air was cool and dry, yet not as stale as he had expected it to be. The walls of the passage he stood in were roughly six feet apart and so smooth they might have been carved out by a machine. His voice bounced hollowly against the bare rock and the low ceiling. The stillness was otherwise deafening.

  By the time Goodwin followed him down the shaft, Reznak had already started to move south along the tunnel. The powerful light beam from his torch swept across the ground before him, exposing a layer of yellow dust covering the hard rock surface. If there had ever been footp
rints in the dirt, they had long since been erased by the passage of time. Some fifty feet later, the tunnel ended abruptly. He stepped through an arched doorway into a large chamber and froze.

  Reznak’s heart slammed against his ribs as he played the torchlight across the domed ceiling of a cave. Footsteps sounded behind him. Seconds later, Goodwin appeared at his side and rocked to a standstill, a gasp escaping his lips. Brennan and Walcott stopped next to the professor and gazed silently at the dark cavern. Walcott lit a powerful gas lantern and placed it carefully on the ground.

  Elation turned to disappointment when the interior of the cave was revealed in the harsh, white light. ‘It’s empty,’ Goodwin murmured in a dejected tone.

  Reznak studied the chamber and felt coldness spread through him. He glanced at the two immortal scientists and saw his own apprehension reflected in their faces. ‘No,’ he said somberly, a sudden sweat drenching his back. ‘It’s been ransacked.’

  The cave was approximately sixty by forty feet, with smooth, arched walls that joined to form a ceiling nearly twenty feet high at its peak. A perfect symmetrical oval in design, it was bare but for two large, rectangular, shallow depressions in the middle of the granite floor. They each measured eight by four feet and stood side by side. Reznak was willing to bet his entire fortune that they would be perfectly aligned in an east-west direction.

  A three-foot gap separated the two impressions. A small, rectangular imprint was visible in the center of the narrow space.

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Goodwin, his eyes widening.

  ‘There are fresh footprints in the dust,’ replied Reznak.

  Goodwin looked down for the first time, his mouth agape as he finally saw what Reznak and the two immortals had spotted within seconds of entering the cave. A flurry of faint shoe prints covered the ground. Most of them were clustered around the hollow impressions in the middle of the floor.

  Reznak walked to the center of the chamber. ‘I suspect there were two tombs here,’ he said stiffly, stopping in front of the first depression. Anger was replacing the dread in his gut. Who on this Earth had the resources and ability to discover these caves before he did? In all his centuries of searching, he had never crossed paths with—or even heard of—another individual or organization on a similar quest as his.

  The professor looked up from the floor. ‘You mean, like a pair of sarcophagi?’

  ‘No,’ said Reznak. ‘Not “like”. I believe they would have been the precursor to the ancient Egyptians’ coffin.’ He looked around the cave. ‘The question is, how did our looters get in here, and how did they remove the tombs?’

  They started to walk around the chamber, torchlight running across the smooth rock face while they searched for signs of the long-departed intruders.

  ‘I can feel a faint draft,’ said Brennan moments later from the east wall of the chamber.

  ‘So can I,’ said Walcott from the opposite side.

  Reznak watched the two men meet in the center of the south wall. Walcott stopped and studied the rock face with a frown. The faintest ripple suddenly disturbed the solid surface. The immortal’s eyes widened. He raised his hand and touched the wall gingerly. It gave slightly beneath his fingertips. He took a knife from his belt and stabbed the blade into the rock.

  They all stared in amazement when the surface ripped open smoothly.

  Walcott tugged the knife down a few inches. Then, together with Brennan, he grabbed the edges of the vertical slit and pulled. Both men staggered backwards as a large sheet of beige-colored canvas came apart in their hands.

  ‘What the—’ Goodwin stammered.

  Reznak swore and crossed the floor swiftly to the mouth of the tunnel concealed behind the stone-colored covering. The passage had been carved only recently; there was fresh rubble on the ground. Whoever had gone to the trouble of hiding the tunnel had obviously not wanted its presence to be discovered for a while.

  He raised his torch and shined it into the dark opening. ‘So that’s how they got in,’ he muttered. There were faded shoe marks in the dirt. He stepped inside the passage and headed into the gloom. Goodwin and the two Crovir scientists followed.

  Reznak came to a halt a minute later. The tunnel ended abruptly in a blind wall. He frowned. The draft was stronger here. He squinted at the edges of the passage and switched the torch off. They were plunged into darkness.

  ‘Why did you—’ Goodwin started.

  ‘Look ahead,’ said Reznak sharply.

  Goodwin’s gaze switched to the wall in front of them. ‘What is that?’ he murmured after a few seconds.

  A faint glow surrounded the edges of the wall. Reznak slid his fingers carefully along the top right-hand corner of the rock face until he felt the faintest gap. He removed a knife from his belt, stabbed it into the narrow space, and pulled down. Canvas ripped under the blade and fluttered outward in a strong breeze. Sunlight flooded the passage, dazzling them with its brilliance. Goodwin stepped eagerly past him.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Reznak. He grabbed the back of the professor’s shirt just before the man walked out into the nothingness before him. Goodwin uttered a strangled cry and jerked backward from the ledge.

  Reznak moved carefully to the edge of the opening that had been carved into the side of the mountain. Another peak loomed in the blue sky ahead of him. Four hundred feet below, a riverbed snaked along the floor of a valley. He studied the steep, almost vertical wall beneath him and spotted the steel struts embedded in the rock.

  ‘They used a crane,’ he said in a voice stiff with rising anger. ‘That’s the only way they could have gotten this high. A goddamned bloody crane!’ His words echoed down the walls of the canyon.

  He closed his eyes briefly, took a deep shuddering breath, turned, and stormed past the scientists. He entered the cave and stopped in the middle of the floor.

  ‘It doesn’t look like they found the second chamber; otherwise, we’d be looking at another hole in the ground,’ he said, struggling to mask his fury while he looked around. ‘They may not have known of its existence.’ He turned to Goodwin. ‘Where was the entrance?’

  It didn’t take long for one of the GPR units to be lowered from the worksite above them into the borehole where they had entered the tunnel. Twenty minutes later, Brennan muttered, ‘Bingo,’ under his breath. They crowded around him and studied the images on the radar gram.

  Ironically, the tomb raiders had dug their tunnel exactly five feet from the opening to the second cave. It was impossible to tell with the naked eye that a heavy stone slab lay next to the southwest wall; the edges were so well concealed they resembled the underlying rock.

  Another ten minutes with pickaxes finally revealed the entrance to the cave. Below it, a staircase chiseled out of the rock spiraled down into darkness. This time, Reznak descended the steps without ceremony. Fifteen feet beneath the main cave, he reached the bottom of the stairway and paused. As his torchlight washed across the space before him, his eyes slowly widened.

  Over the centuries of his existence thus far, Reznak had borne witness to some of the most incomparable wonders of this world. Yet, he had never beheld such a sight as the one that now lay in front of him. It took another pair of gas lanterns brought down by Goodwin and the two Crovir scientists for him to truly appreciate what they had discovered.

  Like the cave above it, the second chamber was a perfectly designed, symmetrical oval, measuring about thirty by twenty feet. Except here, the walls did not curve up to meet the ceiling, which in this instance was flat. Instead, they ran vertically around the space to form an almost continuous facade but for the opening to the staircase. From the appearance and color of the granite, the second cave looked to be in an entirely different rock formation.

  In the center of the floor stood two large, plain, circular pillars that rose to meet the ce
iling. Judging by their orientation, Reznak suspected they were positioned exactly beneath the impressions of the missing tombs in the cave above. Carved within each granite column, at about waist level, was an alcove that held a large clay pot. Although his heart was slamming against his ribs and his fingers itched to discover what the earthenware contained, Reznak could not stop his gaze from straying to the most impressive aspect of the room.

  Engraved into the walls of the chamber, untouched by time and man, complex pictographs covered the rock face from floor to ceiling, forming a huge, circular, ornamental scroll that looked as fresh as the day it was inscribed.

  ‘My god…these are cuneiform scripts,’ Goodwin whispered as he stepped to the nearest wall, his fingers shaking around the torch in his hand. ‘They must be—goodness—thousands of years old!’

  Though he was not an expert on ancient Sumerian-derived languages, Reznak was nonetheless familiar with the characteristic wedge-shaped writings on the walls; the oldest known Crovir and Bastian texts had been etched in the descendants of the original Sumerian script, namely Assyrian and Aramaic. The fact that the inscriptions looked to be from that period of history only confirmed that these caves were more than likely of immortal origin and design.

  ‘These may be older than the clay tablets found at Jemdet Nasr,’ said Goodwin in a dazed voice. ‘I think they’re in the original proto-writings that came before the Sumerian language.’ The scientist turned and stared at Reznak. ‘You do realize that this is the archaeological find of the century? We’re going to need an Assyriologist to translate this!’

  Impatience replaced awe in Reznak’s mind. He nodded briskly. ‘I know several. Now, let’s look at the pots.’

  He had to wait while more scientists brought containers of equipment from the campsite. Everyone who entered the second chamber had to don sterile suits so as to preserve the original environment of the site, a measure Reznak himself had insisted on since the technology had become available.