The Covenant of Genesis (55 page)

‘It’s not just a temple,’ said Nina, realising its purpose. ‘It’s a
fort
. The Veteres built it to protect something, just like they blocked off the tunnels into the cavern. Another line of defence.’

‘So did they block everything off from the outside . . . or the inside?’ Chase said. He pointed at the plateau behind the statue. ‘Are they still up there?’

‘Let’s go see.’ Nina led the way up the pile of broken stone to the damaged wall. She peered over it at what lay below. ‘Oh . . .’

It was another library, rank after rank of clay tablets and cylinders containing the knowledge of the Veteres. But unlike the carefully arranged archive in the Antarctic, this was chaotic, thrown together. Some of the tablets, those nearest the base of the statue, were carefully stacked, but the majority were simply piled up, increasingly randomly the closer they were to the outer wall. Some had fallen - or been knocked - over, smashed pieces littering the narrow pathways through the crammed collection. The whole place was covered with dirt, damp with dripping water, creeping plants laying claim to every surface.

‘God, what happened to it?’ Chase asked.

Nina felt a pang of sadness, recognising the growing desperation of the people who had made it. ‘It was their last stand,’ she said. ‘They wanted to preserve all of this, just like they did in Antarctica . . . but they were running out of time. They must have been building the wall around it even as they brought everything in.’ She indicated the stacks closest to the statue. ‘When they started, they tried to keep everything organised, but at the end, all they had time to do was just dump the tablets and hope not too many of them broke. Once they had as much as they could, they finished the wall. The knowledge of an entire civilisation, sealed in here . . . for ever.’

‘Presumably they took the most important records with them,’ said Sophia. ‘Like the audio cylinders, the voices of their prophets. As long as they had those, they knew they could eventually make copies.’

‘But they must still have lost so much.’ Nina contemplated the remains of the library for a long, quiet moment. Then she climbed through the wall.

 

Through binoculars, Zamal watched the three figures drop out of sight into the temple. After entering the vast cavern and overcoming his initial awe, the first thing he had done was get a sense of the topography of his new battle zone - and while surveying the landscape from a rise near the tunnel mouth, he had spotted the fugitives moving along a lake, heading for the enormous blasphemy that was the statue at its far end.

He and his men gave chase, running along the edge of the ravine splitting the chamber until they found a log bridge. Quickly traversing it, they moved as swiftly as they could through the jungle to the lakeshore - now only minutes behind Wilde and the others.

‘We have them,’ he said with a malicious smile.

 

Like its smaller counterpart in the Antarctic, the statue had a low passageway at its base, requiring anyone going through to prostrate themselves at the feet of their god. Unlike the ice-encrusted opening, however, this was teeming with life, insects scuttling out of the way as Nina crawled through the layer of filth that had built up over thousands of centuries. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t bring that machete,’ she said to Chase, behind her, as she ripped vines aside to reveal a taller, wider passageway beyond. Holes in the arched ceiling let in an indirect twilight cast, creepers hanging through them. ‘There’s a corridor, and what looks like a bigger room at the end of it. It must lead to the stairs up the cliff.’

She stood and brushed off the muck as Chase and Sophia emerged, then shone the flashlight down the passage. The sheen of copper and gold reflected back at her. ‘That’s new. There wasn’t anything like that at the other site.’

She moved down the corridor, directing the beam round the walls of what was revealed as a large circular chamber. ‘There was something like those, though.
Exactly
like those.’ The light fell on four metal bowls of different sizes arranged in a line directly across from the entrance - beside the spindle and copper horn of one of the primitive gramophones.

‘Is that a door next to it?’ Chase asked, walking past her, about to enter the chamber - before freezing in astonishment at what came into view. ‘What the hell are they?’

Nina and Sophia were equally amazed. The objects greeting their gaze were three statues - but unlike the other Veteres sculptures they had seen these were metal, not stone. They stood close to fifteen feet tall, elongated figures with their arms held out from their bodies, reminding Nina of the pose of the giant statue behind them . . . but where that had its hand open in generosity, these held a long, dangerous blade in each.

It was not the weapons that made the statues so startling, though. It was their
faces
- plural. Each figure’s head had four faces around it, looking in different directions. The one facing forward was similar to the long, stylised features of the Veteres’ god figure, though with its almond-shaped eyes narrowed threateningly. To its right was what seemed to be the face of a lion, teeth bared in a snarl; opposite this was the horned head of a bull. One of the statues was angled away from the entrance, revealing that the remaining face was an eagle, beak open, ready to attack.

Sprouting from each figure’s back were what looked like wings, formed from copper plate and gold filigree, stretching straight up to touch the metal-plated ceiling. Another set, similar in design but smaller, extended downwards from the statues’ chests to the floor between their four feet, which resembled the hooves of a cow. The legs themselves were wrapped in narrow bands of copper.

Chase was the first to speak. ‘Just to check that I haven’t just gone completely mental - those wings . . . they’re meant to be angels, right?’

‘They’re more than just angels,’ said Nina. ‘They’re
cherubim
. “And he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims . . .” ’

‘ “And a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life”,’ continued Sophia. ‘If I remember correctly.’

‘Genesis, chapter three.’ Nina turned her light to the metal floor. There were scrapes and indentations, as though something heavy had moved across it.

‘Okay,’ said Chase, taking out the Browning, ‘why am I suddenly getting a really bad we-just-walked-into-a-deathtrap feeling?’

‘Probably because we just did.’ The torch beam settled on something lying on the floor. It was little more than dust, decayed fragments giving a hint of its former shape.

A human shape.

‘There’s another one,’ said Sophia. Nina illuminated a second long-crumbled form. People had once entered the chamber . . . and somehow fallen to its guardians.

‘Oh, great,’ Chase snorted. ‘I always thought cherubim were little fat angel kids playing trumpets, but now you’re telling me they’re like God’s bouncers?’

‘Those are
putto
,’ said Sophia. ‘They appeared a lot in Renaissance art. You can blame Donatello and Raphael for the confusion.’

‘What, the Ninja Turtles?’

Both Nina and Sophia sighed as one. ‘A lot of traditional art - not just in the Abrahamic faiths, but earlier ones like Babylonian as well - portrays cherubim as having four faces and four wings,’ said Nina. ‘And often the legs of an animal as well.’ She lit the nearest statue’s feet. ‘Although I’ve seen some medieval illustrations that show them standing on a wheel . . . or a
bearing
.’ She crouched, seeing that the hooves didn’t quite touch the floor; the bottom of a sphere was visible in the narrow gap.

‘They move?’ Sophia exclaimed sceptically.

‘Don’t sound so surprised - you’ve seen similar things yourself, in the Tomb of Hercules. The traps that were used to protect it from robbers.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ Chase muttered.

‘I don’t see how,’ said Sophia. ‘Those had machinery moving them. These are just sculptures. Even if those swords somehow turn, there’s plenty of room just to walk around them.’

‘Dusty there probably thought that too,’ said Chase, gesturing at the nearer of the remains.

‘Maybe he did - a hundred thousand years ago. Do you seriously think anything could possibly still be in working order after all this time?’

Nina extended a hand towards the statues. ‘You want to test that? Be my guest.’

‘I think I will.’ With a dismissive shrug, Sophia stepped through the entrance on to the metal floor. Nothing happened. ‘You see?’ she said, turning to face Nina as she backed off a low step circling the room’s perimeter. ‘Absolutely nothing to—’

The chamber flooded with light.

Lightning bolts flashed across the room, crackling round the wings of the cherubim where they touched the copper-plated ceiling. Sparks crackled from the statues, a sharp ozone-like tang filling the air. With a hideous grinding noise, the blades began to move. The sculpted hands of the statues were actually part of the swords, turning at the wrists and rapidly picking up speed to form a circle of death like an aircraft propeller - and then the statues’ arms moved too, swinging back and forth in scything arcs.

Another metallic groan, a great weight shifting—

One of the statues jolted out of the indentations its bulk had pressed into the floor over the untold centuries and advanced on Sophia. The others did the same, swords whirling.

Sophia gasped, about to run back to the entrance - when she saw something at the other end of the passageway. ‘Eddie!’

Chase whirled - to see silhouettes crawling through the low tunnel beneath the colossal statue.

The Covenant had found them.

‘
G
et inside!’ Chase shouted, pushing Nina into the chamber. She resisted, even as she saw the danger behind. ‘What about the statues?’

‘They’re slower than bullets! Go on!’

They ducked round the corner of the entrance, Sophia running to the other side. The statues continued their grinding advance, sparks cracking from their wings where they brushed along the floor and ceiling, but at less than walking pace.

Their slowness didn’t make Nina feel any safer, though. There was an inexorability about them, a feeling that they would keep on coming until their targets were dead.

But how were they moving? What was making them work?

Chase leaned round the corner, firing the Browning. The first Covenant soldier, movement restricted by the confined tunnel, had no chance to dodge, the bullet hitting his forehead. He slumped into the dirt, dead. The figure behind him rapidly scrambled backwards, pulled out by one of his comrades.

‘Eddie!’ Sophia called, holding up both hands. He tossed her the Lee-Enfield. ‘How many are there?’

Chase saw movement on both sides at the other end of the bottleneck. ‘At least three.’ All it would take was one of the soldiers to fling a grenade into the chamber to kill them all.

And there were other dangers, getting closer. ‘Uh, I think we should move,’ said Nina, tugging his arm. Two of the statues were bearing down on them, the third angling towards Sophia.

Chase fired another shot at the nearest statue’s head. There was a ringing clang, a dent appearing between its frowning eyes as the bullet bounced off, but it was otherwise unaffected.

‘Eddie, can you not waste bullets trying to kill the inanimate objects?’ Sophia chided.

‘They look pretty fucking animate to me!’ He followed Nina as she ran round the outside of the room. The cherubim changed direction, tracking them, but did so without turning, the heads of the bulls now facing in the direction they were moving.

‘They’re like dodgems,’ Nina said, looking up at the ceiling. Chase regarded her as if she had gone mad. ‘The way they work, I mean. The floor and ceiling must have different polarities - the wings complete the circuit and make them move.’

‘How? And where are they getting the power?’

‘“Earth sky-fire” - that’s what that inscription meant. It’s earth energy, it must be! All those things made of copper above the statue? They’re antennas, energy collectors - just like the ones we saw in Russia.’ The Veteres had been able to harness the lines of energy running through the earth itself, using them to power crude - but effective - electric motors, in Antarctica working the recording devices, here both moving the statues and spinning their swords. The blades themselves were aglow with an eerie blue light, suggesting to Nina that they had the same nigh-unstoppable cutting edges as Excalibur. ‘Keep away from the swords!’

‘How
ever
would we manage without your advice?’ said Sophia with understandable sarcasm.

They were almost at the chamber’s rear doors, and the metal bowls. Chase looked at the entrance. The Covenant were still holding back on the other side of the tunnel, but he was sure they would be trying to find good sniping angles.

He saw Sophia crouch and lean round the corner to search for targets through the rifle’s scope - and the third cherubim’s blades getting dangerously close to her. ‘Soph! Watch out!’

Fear flashed across her face as she saw the threat and dived out of the chamber to land on the stone floor outside. The cherubim shuddered, then reversed direction, now heading for the nearest other person - Nina.

But Sophia was still in danger. Gunfire echoed up the passage, bullets chipping the floor as she rolled. She reached the opposite wall and threw herself back into the chamber - only for the retreating cherubim to change direction once more and head back towards her.

‘They’re homing in on us!’ Chase yelled. ‘How the fuck are they doing that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nina, seeing familiar symbols painted on the bowls, ‘but I know what to do with this!’ She reached into her pack for the clay cylinder she had taken from the map room in Antarctica and pointed at the inscription round its top. ‘It’s the same words - “the song of the prophet”! We need to play it.’