Silver Tomb (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 2) (9 page)

“Hold on a minute,” said Lazarus. “We don’t know what’s down there.”

“Oh, come on, Lazarus,” said Petrie, fastening the rope around his waist. “All the guards are either sleeping or loitering around the entrance. And you heard Mohammed say that only Lindholm and Rousseau dare to go down below. Or is it the evil spirits you are afraid of?”

“Very well,” said Lazarus, pursing his lips at his friend’s sarcasm. “Just have your revolver ready should anything happen down there. What about light?”

“You’ll have to pass down a lamp once I reach the bottom. I don’t have a free hand.”

Lazarus began lowering Petrie while Katarina unpacked a lamp and got it lit, shielding it with her satchel so that the glare would not be noticed from the other end of the city. Lazarus grimaced as the form of his friend was swallowed by the blackness. The rope suddenly went slack.

Petrie’s voice called up from the chamber, closer than Lazarus had anticipated. “Send down the lamp, quickly! I can’t see a blessed thing down here!”

Lazarus hauled up the rope and tied the lamp to it before lowering it back down. They waited while Petrie made his preliminary investigations of whatever room they had dropped him into.

“Get down here, you two!” he called up at last. “This is fabulous!”

After some bickering about who was going to lower whom, Lazarus let Katarina down into the chamber, and then fastened the rope around the base of a pillar and climbed down, wincing at the burning of his palms as he slipped a few feet.

He found himself in a wide chamber the corners of which could not be illuminated at one time by Petrie’s lamp. They stood in a basin that looked like it had been built to contain water. A block stood in the centre of it with a hole in the middle that had been used to receive a pole of some sort, probably the polished bronze mirror that had been used to direct the light of the moon. Petrie was over by the far wall examining the paintings and the hieroglyphics with acute interest. Lazarus joined him.

“Magnificent!” Petrie was saying, over and over again. “Look at the style! It’s Amarna period to a tee!”

Lazarus could indeed make out the images of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and their children in the distinctive realist style of their reign. The crescent disc of the moon hovered above, shining down its rays, just as images of the sun did at Akhetaten. But whereas those rays often ended in little hands or ankhs symbolizing the life given by the sun, these rays of the moon ended in the symbol of the
amenta
, representing the western horizon and the taking away of life. “If there was ever proof needed that we are in the city of death, then this is it,” remarked Lazarus.

“Can you two drop your scholarly interest for once and think about what we’re here to do?” said Katarina, showing uncharacteristic nervousness.

“Actually this is what I’m here to do,” said Petrie. “But I suppose my job will be easier if you two get rid of that American fellow and Mademoiselle Rousseau. Here’s a doorway, my goodness, it goes off in two directions. Which to take?”

“It’s probably a bloody maze down here,” said Lazarus, peering down each of the dark corridors. “What’s the plan? Split up?”

“Of all the stupidest ideas you’ve had since I met you, Longman,” growled Katarina, “that is the worst.”

“Surely you’re not scared down here, Katarina?” Lazarus asked, knowing that she could make out the grin on his face even in the dim light. “You have two strong men here to protect you.”

Katarina’s face turned to one of rage as she snatched the lamp from Petrie and headed off down the left corridor, her pistol cocked and held out, ready to shoot anything that got in her way.

“Well, at least she’s not pointing it at me,” Lazarus mumbled.

Chapter Nine

In which the experiments of Dr. Lindholm are revealed

Lazarus was reminded, with a certain degree of trepidation, of the labyrinthine tunnels beneath the lake in Arizona that connected the seven golden cities of Cibola. But whereas those tunnels were rough and hewn from the living rock, these were lined with well-cut bricks which made every turn sharp and angular. They passed through a series of rooms, richly decorated and clearly used for priestly functions. Nowhere were there images of deities common in other Egyptian temples—Anubis, Hathor, Osiris and Ra—only the image of the moon and its rays, bouncing off the walls in geometric lines.

“Stop!” hissed Lazarus, grabbing Petrie and motioning Katarina to halt her steady march into the unknown.

“What is it?” she demanded, holding the lamp up to his face. As she did so, she became suddenly aware that she no longer needed it. Lamps had been set up at regular intervals down the corridors.

“I think we’re nearing the viper’s lair,” Lazarus said. “Proceed carefully.”

There came a sound from the far end of a corridor that branched off to the right. It was a kind of scuffling, stomping sound, not slow, but fast and juddering. Lazarus was sure he was not the only one who was put in mind of a giant beetle scuttling down the passageway towards them.

The corridor was cloaked in blackness, but the three of them became very aware of a threat edging closer and closer. There was a slow hissing, as of a snake, that galvanized the trio into action, sending them fleeing in the opposite direction. Whatever was coming towards them, they did not want to try and find out if bullets could harm it.

They took passages at random, hoping to throw whatever it was that was following them off their scent, and eventually emerged in what appeared to be a dead end.

“We’re trapped!” said Katarina.

“Wait a minute,” said Petrie, forgetting his fear for a moment. “What’s this?”

There was a sarcophagus in the center of the room, surrounded by silver ushabtis that were set out like a toy army at its feet. The lid, if the sarcophagus ever had one, had been removed. There was an open coffin within, also lidless, containing a mummy. It was a sad, shriveled brown thing with a silver mask fashioned in the features of a woman.

“Now who can this be?” said Petrie, approaching the sarcophagus.

“For God’s sake, man, this is no time to be examining mummies!” said Katarina.

Indeed, the shuffling sound was approaching the chamber, growing closer and closer, like footsteps in the sand.

“Now we’re for it!” said Lazarus. “Get ready to open fire. You too Petrie!”

But Petrie wasn’t listening. He was crouched by the sarcophagus examining the hieroglyphics inscribed on its sides. “This is fabulous! Do you know who this is?”

“No one cares, Petrie!” Lazarus shouted, the footsteps very close now.

“This is Kiya! The very same woman whose kohl container I found at Akhetaten. This is her mummy right here!”

“Really?” asked Lazarus, momentarily interested.

“God, not you too!” shouted Katarina. “Keep your eyes on that doorway, Longman, and your mind on shooting whatever comes through it!”

“Right! Sorry.”

A shape emerged from the gloom. Both Lazarus and Katarina raised their pistols and put their fingers on the triggers, but halted just in time.

“Oh, please don’t shoot me!” cried a woman’s voice.

As the figure moved into the light, Lazarus instinctively lowered his weapon. Katarina kept hers trained on the woman, not trusting anything or anyone right now.

“I heard voices and was intrigued,” said the woman. “Tell me, how did you three come to be down here?”

She was beautiful, and her voice hinted at exotic parts. Her hair was black and fell loosely over slender shoulders. Her dress was not so different to Katarina’s, being attire suited to a female in rugged terrain, and as in Katarina’s case, this was in no way unflattering. But it was her eyes that caught Lazarus’s attention. They were dark and heavy-lidded, a smoky hazel color.

“Mademoiselle Rousseau?” Lazarus hazarded.

“Yes,” she replied. “And yes, that is indeed Kiya in the sarcophagus, poor woman.”

“Mmm?” answered Petrie who had not even turned around to take note of the newcomer, so infatuated he was with his discovery. “Oh? Yes. Fascinating! Fascinating!” He then seemed to remember himself and spun around before bowing low. “Mademoiselle Rousseau, it is an honor to finally meet you. Your work at KV55 had me green with envy, positively green. It is a great pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”

Eleanor Rousseau seemed amused by the young man and smiled. “The honor is mine, Mr. Petrie.”

“Oh? Ah! You seem to know me… but how?”

“Your stupendous work on the pyramids at Gizah has ensured your immortality amongst us Egyptologists,” she replied. “And your excavations at Akhetaten have captured my heart for that place is so dear to me.”

“My dear,” said Petrie, “your work in uncovering this city of the moon has far surpassed anything I have done or could ever hope to achieve.”

“But I am unacquainted with your two associates,” said Rousseau.

“Allow me to introduce them! This is my good friend Lazarus Longman, a fellow Englishman and fellow Egyptologist, although that is but one of his many areas of expertise. And this is Miss Katarina Mikolavna, a Russian traveler who is a friend of Longman’s.”

“Charmed to meet you both,” said Rousseau.

“Likewise,” said Katarina without a smile. Lazarus instantly detected the tension in the Russian. He knew Katarina far too well to hope that she might get on with the likes of Eleanor Rousseau.

“But what on earth are you all doing down here?” Rousseau asked. “Don’t you know that this area is off limits to everybody but those Dr. Lindholm gives special permission to?”

“As Dr. Lindholm has not even applied for a concession with the Antiquities Department,” Petrie said, “I find it a bit much that he forbids anybody else to come here. And those fellahs guarding the entrance! What is he doing here, raising his own private army?”

“You have no idea how close you are to the truth in saying that,” she replied. “He is truly a monster. But you must go! Immediately! Your lives are in the greatest peril!”

“Very well,” said Lazarus. “But you are coming with us.”

“I cannot,” said Rousseau. “My work here is too important.”

“But you just said that Lindholm is a monster,” said Lazarus.

“Even so, he will not hurt me. He needs my knowledge, and I must remain to ensure the safe removal of Kiya and the other artifacts in this tomb.”

“You do not understand the situation,” said Lazarus. “I am acquainted with your husband, Henry. We worked together for the Royal Archaeological Society when we were younger. We did not part on the best of terms but that is no longer relevant. I have since been employed by Her Majesty’s government as an agent. My mission is to bring you safely home.”

“What?” he heard Katarina exclaim behind him. “You’re here for her?”

He ignored her. “Please, Eleanor, see that you must come with me. We’ll let the Russians deal with Lindholm. Katarina here is under the Tsar’s orders. Once he is gone I am sure you can return here and continue your work, free from all this danger and secrecy.”

“You are sweet, Mr. Longman,” Eleanor replied. “But I fear that it is you who does not understand the situation.”

She did not say any more, for they could all hear the shuffling, stomping sound they had heard before, rustling, scraping and hissing as it came closer and closer.

“For God’s sake, go, all of you!” said Eleanor. “Don’t let it trap you in here!”

“What is it?” Lazarus asked her.

“One of Lindholm’s creations.”

“I won’t leave you here with it.”

“It won’t harm me, but it will tear you three apart!”

“Even if we flee now, I’ll still come back for you, Eleanor. That’s my mission and by God, I’m going to fulfill it.”

“You mustn’t come back! Lindholm occasionally lets me come into Cairo to organize supplies and deliver paperwork. I can meet you if you like and we can discuss things further. Where are you staying?”

“Longman, we need to get moving!” warned Katarina, her revolver pointed at the darkness from which the sounds were coming.

“Shepheard’s Hotel. Look, I really don’t…”

“Now, Longman!”

“I think we’d better go,” agreed Petrie.

“Cairo, then,” said Lazarus to Eleanor by way of parting, and they headed out into the corridor.

Katarina’s gun spoke out twice, filling the hallways with a deafening sound and lighting them up with brief orange flares. In those short bursts of light, they finally saw the thing that was advancing on them.

It was tall—taller than a man, but clearly not a man. It had parts of a man, and from the yellowed bandages and brown, shriveled flesh, Lazarus knew exactly where Lindholm had got those parts. One leg was a bandaged spindly thing, but the other was a mass of gears and pistons that elicited the occasional jet of hot steam. Its arms were mechanical too, ending in viciously serrated pincers like those of a giant crab, and powered by pistons that looked like they could crush a man’s skull with ease. Two things in the bandaged abdomen of the creature stood out in the darkness. One was where the heart should be, but was a glass orb filled with a misty greenish vapor fitted into a brass grommet. The other was the furnace below its ribcage that heated the boiler it no doubt carried on its back. Lazarus knew this, for he had encountered similar creatures in America. And like those, this one’s furnace glowed with the purple light of burning mechanite.

They opened fire on the creature. Bullets pinged off metal surfaces, some thudding into the mummified flesh and when those did not halt the creature, Lazarus understood why Lindholm had become so fascinated with Egypt.

“We can’t kill it!” he shouted. “Just get out of here! Run!”

They stopped firing, turned, and pounded down the hallway, not knowing where it might lead them. The creature stomped after them, one metal leg thudding down into the sand and one mummified leg shuffling along to catch up.

They skidded around a corner and dived down a flight of carven steps, to find themselves in another tomb, or at least what had originally been a tomb. It had recently been converted into a workshop of sorts. Trestle tables had been set up and every surface was littered with tools, gadgets and partially completed tinkerings; arms, pincers and joints fashioned in brass which caught the light of the gas lamps, their oily surfaces glittering like gold.

It was then that they noticed the moving things. In every corner there lurked a creature—small, but beetling about like oversized cockroaches. They pointed their guns in all directions, each of them trying to assess where the greatest threat lay.

“They’re just animals,” said Katarina. “Not dangerous.”

Indeed they were animals, or had been once. There were two mummified cats with their hindquarters replaced by mechanics dozing on a workbench, while a jackal nosed around under a table, futilely sniffing the ground through its bandaged nostrils. A bird of some sort flapped its metal wings on its perch high up near the ceiling. Each of them had the miniature boiler and mechanite furnace, as well as the green orb enclosing the heart, no bigger than golf balls in the cat’s cases.

“Lindholm’s experiments?” said Lazarus.

“How on earth has he reanimated the dead?” Katarina asked.

“It’s like he is the Modern Prometheus from Shelly’s
Frankenstein
,” murmured Petrie.

“I’m not one for believing in magic,” said Lazarus, “even the ancient Egyptian kind, but I just don’t see how science, even the mad science of Dr. Lindholm could have achieved this.”

“Maybe it’s a combination of both,” said Petrie. “The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul resided in the heart, not the brain. That is why the heart was the only organ left in the body during mummification. All of these creatures seem to have some gadget fitted around the heart. I don’t pretend to understand it, but there it is.”

“But the brain,” said Lazarus, unconvinced, “the nervous system…”

“It’s found us!” said Katarina.

They could hear it coming, clanking down the steps that led into the workshop. They scurried for cover, diving behind tables. Lazarus shooed away the jackal which looked at him dejectedly, then loped off to find something else to sniff at.

The mechanical monster stomped into the room and halted. It looked around with blind eye sockets, its bandaged head craning forward as if sniffing them out. Lazarus rose up and leveled his pistol at the green orb in the creature’s chest. He squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet smashing through the glass. It exploded in a shower of splinters. He had expected, perhaps, a cloud of the green vapor to escape, but it was liquid that trickled forth; green and sluggish like blood of the wrong color.

The creature looked down at its ruptured chest, then touched the green substance that soaked its bandages and ran down its mechanical leg in rivulets. Its face seemed to look confused, or as near as was possible for a three thousand year old mummified face to express any emotion. It stumbled backwards, its mummified leg giving out. It toppled over and crashed to the stone floor to lay motionless, steam jetting out from its still functioning mechanics, like the soul escaping the corpse of the deceased.