The Eye of the Serpent (28 page)

He remembered the first time he had come here as a child – how he had stood at the edge of the chasm and gazed down into the darkness: he'd known, even then, that Apophis slept down there in the bowels of the earth, and that one day he, Sonchis, would be the one to call him back to the surface. He had been anticipating this moment ever since. Now there were a few
necessary rituals to perform and everything could begin. The first step was the initial sacrifice. He turned to the mummy carrying Madeleine.

‘Set the woman down,' he said. The creature obeyed him and Madeleine groaned and rolled onto her side. Her eyes opened and she looked up at Sonchis. It took her a few moments to realize where she was.

‘Why have you bought me here?' she whispered, and he saw fear in her pretty blue eyes.

‘You are going to help me achieve my ambition,' he said. ‘Here is the lair of Apophis. Now, there are rituals to observe, spells to cast and finally a sacrifice to be made.' He saw her expression turn to one of terror and he waved a hand at her. ‘Oh, don't worry, it's not your turn yet. No, first we offer our initial sacrifice.'

He beckoned to the nearest of his disciples. The creature shambled forward and stood looking calmly at its master.

Sonchis smiled. ‘This man was once my friend,' he said. ‘We spent many long hours talking together, advising each other. But of course, now, wasted and wizened as he is, I cannot even tell which particular friend he might be. I suspect that he is a man called Selim,
once my closest and most trusted ally . . . but of course, I cannot be certain. It is of no consequence.' He reached out a hand and placed it on the mummy's shoulder. ‘Goodbye, my loyal servant,' he said. And with one swift movement, he threw him over the edge of the crevasse.

Madeleine gasped in horror as the flailing bandaged figure fell silently down into darkness. She waited for the sound of a thud but it did not come for a very long time; when it finally did, it was barely audible.

Sonchis turned away from the edge with a smile of satisfaction.

‘Now,' he said. ‘Let us prepare.'

BY THE TIME
they reached the biplane, they were sweating and gasping for breath after a frantic half-mile dash along the road. Wasting no more time, Ethan clambered up into the pilot's seat and Alec, still lugging the petrol can, climbed into the passenger cockpit in front of him. He stowed the canister by his feet and put on the goggles and leather helmet he found hanging on a hook beside him.

‘Alec, what the hell do you think you're doing?' snapped Ethan. ‘You promised Coates you wouldn't go up with me.'

Alec glanced back over his shoulder. ‘I'm not
letting you go on your own,' he said. ‘You'll need all the help you can get.'

Ethan looked down at Mickey. ‘Maybe you should come instead?' he suggested.

Mickey's face turned pale and he shook his head. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Wade, I'm terrified of heights. I wouldn't go up in one of those things for a hundred pounds.'

Ethan scowled. ‘Great,' he said. ‘I don't know about this, Alec. This plane is totally new to me. Supposing something happens to you?'

‘Never mind about that. We've got to think about Madeleine. If Sonchis is planning to summon Apophis, I feel sure that part of that ceremony will be a human sacrifice.'

Ethan stared at him. ‘You really think so?' he said.

Alec held his gaze.

Ethan considered for a moment, then nodded. ‘Then I guess we have no choice,' he said. ‘OK, belt yourself in.' He put on his own goggles and helmet and started fiddling with the unfamiliar controls. ‘It's all in French,' he complained. ‘I think this is the magneto' – he threw a switch – ‘and this looks like it should be the fuel pump . . .' He turned a tap on briefly and then
switched it off again. Then he looked down at Mickey. ‘Now, we need to prime the engine,' he shouted. ‘Grab the propeller and turn it once.'

Mickey ran round to the front of the plane and did as he was asked. ‘Now what?' he asked.

Ethan flicked another switch. ‘Contact!' he said. ‘OK, Mickey, I want you to grab that propeller and spin it as hard as you can, anticlockwise. And make sure you jump out of the way of it.'

Mickey nodded. He reached up, grabbed the propeller and gave it a try. It turned a couple of times, spluttered, threw out a puff of smoke, then stopped.

‘I need to re-prime it,' shouted Ethan. He flicked more switches, opened the fuel valve again, then shouted, ‘Contact!' Mickey tried a second time. This time the propeller actually spun a few times before coming to a halt and spilling out a bigger cloud of smoke.

Mickey looked up at Ethan and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘It's not working, Mr Wade!'

‘No, trust me, we're getting there,' yelled Ethan. Again, the maddening fiddling with the controls,
then: ‘Try it again, Mickey – hard as you can!'

Mickey took hold of the propeller and spun it with all his strength. The engine nearly caught but died again after a few seconds.

Ethan said something very colourful and slammed his fist against the plane's dashboard. ‘OK,
this
time!' he bellowed. He set the controls and yelled, ‘Contact!' Mickey spun the propeller: it belched out a big cloud of black smoke and then started spinning in earnest. Ethan opened the fuel pump and revved the engine to a thunderous roar. He lifted a thumb to Mickey.

‘Chocks away!' he yelled.

Mickey looked up at him, not understanding.

‘The chocks!' yelled Ethan. ‘The wooden blocks in front of the wheels!'

Mickey scrambled to pull them aside and the plane immediately began to move towards the road.

Ethan leaned out of the cockpit. ‘We're heading for the Gates of Apophis,' he yelled. ‘The cave system due west of here. You know where that is?'

Mickey nodded.

‘Get help to us. As soon as you can – I don't
care how you do it, but send help. We may need it.'

Mickey gave Ethan the thumbs-up, then lifted a hand to wave.

‘What do we do for a runway?' shouted Alec over the roar of the plane's rotary engine.

‘We're already on it,' Ethan bellowed back at him. He aimed the snout of the biplane at the horizon, opened the throttle and they accelerated along the bumpy dirt road, while he struggled to master the unfamiliar controls. In moments, the plane was moving at an alarming speed but showed no sign of leaving the ground.

‘We're not going up!' yelled Alec.

‘Yeah, I'm working on it!' Ethan was hunched down, trying to work out how to deploy the flaps.

Then Alec saw something on the road ahead of them. At first it was just a series of shimmering images in the rising heat of morning, but as the plane drew nearer, the shapes became more distinct and Alec saw to his horror that an Arab drover was leading a small herd of camels along the road towards them.

‘Ethan!' he cried. ‘Ethan, ahead of us!'

But Ethan was intent on the controls, trying to work out how to lift the Caudron from the ground.

Alec could only sit and stare at the potential disaster awaiting them. They were closing on the camels at incredible speed.

‘ETHAN!' he screamed, and this time the American looked up. He said something, but whatever it was, it was lost in the rush of wind around them. Alec could now clearly see the look of terror on the drover's face as he saw what was approaching him along the road.

‘Get out of the way!' roared Alec, gesturing frantically, but the man just stood there, frozen to the spot, his eyes huge in his sunburned face, his mouth hanging open. Behind him, the camels seemed to be mimicking his expression.

Ethan slammed down the wing flaps and the plane finally began to rise from the ground, but the camels were looming up fast. Alec wanted to close his eyes but he could only stare, his heart pounding in his chest, as the plane rose gradually higher . . . higher . . .

At the last moment the drover ducked and the wheels narrowly missed the heads of a couple of his prized camels; and as the plane skimmed over them, Alec was aware of the terrified creatures veering off the road in all directions and stampeding into the desert.
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the drover had turned and was waving his fist at the departing plane.

‘What an idiot!' shouted Ethan. ‘Who brings a herd of camels down a main highway?'

Alec shook his head. He considered saying,
That chap down there
, but decided against it. For one thing it was difficult to talk with the wind pounding into his face, snatching his breath away; and for another, he was all too aware that Ethan needed to concentrate on what he was doing. How, for instance, were they going to change direction? No sooner had this occurred to him than the plane banked suddenly and, making a wide sweep to the left, headed out across the desert.

Alec looked down and was shocked to see how high they were already: the great dunes below them looked like the surface of a child's sandpit beneath the rapidly lightening sky. He felt a strange mingling of emotions within him. A sense of exhilaration, because he had never flown before and had always wanted to; apprehension, because he liked Madeleine immensely and was aware that she was in great danger; and, most of all, the feeling that he was
asleep and all this was some fantastic dream, prompted by the things that had happened to him over the past few days.

And then another thought occurred to him. The Gates of Apophis were out in the middle of the desert. Putting the biplane down on the bumpy surface of a road would be hard enough, but the cliffs where the cave was located would be surrounded by sand dunes.
How were they ever going to land?

Sonchis was kneeling at the edge of the great chasm. He had just begun speaking the words of reawakening when he felt something stirring down in the bowels of the earth; something huge and incredibly powerful. But another sensation had interrupted his thought processes: something was coming.

He stood up and walked back to the cave entrance, staring out across the desert at the early morning skies. Yes, something was wrong. He concentrated, closed his eyes and saw a strange, bird-like machine speeding towards him, closing the distance much faster than the automobile had done. The parts of him that were the spirits of the recently departed gave him
the machine's name – an aeroplane. It wouldn't take long to reach him.

He opened his eyes, turned away and gazed up at the cavernous roof, where hundreds of his minions roosted. He knew it was against their instincts to leave the cave by daylight but he concentrated his powers and willed them to obey him.

The creatures began to stir and flap their leathery wings. A couple of them released their grip on the craggy rock and fluttered towards the cave entrance, intent on obeying the high priest's commands. Then more of them followed, and more and more, until there was a great stirring mass of them, speeding out into the pale sunlight and arcing upwards into the sky, seeking out the thing that Sonchis wanted them to destroy.

He turned to watch them go, saw them receding into the distance like a twisting, swirling sand devil stirred by the wind; and then in the distance he heard an unfamiliar sound: the snarl of the plane's engine as it sped to its destruction.

He allowed himself the ghost of a smile. Then he turned back to the chasm and resumed his kneeling position. He became aware of somebody staring at him and saw that the woman was now
fully awake. She was lying on her side, her hands securely tied behind her back.

‘You . . . you made those bats leave 'ere,' she said. ‘You must also 'ave sent them to attack us that time.'

Sonchis bowed his head slightly. ‘From childhood I have been able to make certain creatures do my bidding,' he said. ‘So as soon as I emerged from my burial place in the body of another man, I called to them to help me. My scarabs came instantly. The hyenas took longer because they had to travel so far. And the bats have always lived here in the lair of Apophis. Sending them against you was good practice for me . . . a way of seeing if I could still command the creatures of the earth and air to do my bidding. But now, if you'll excuse me . . . there is one more creature I must summon from his sleep.'

Madeleine laughed. ‘You cannot believe that this is going to work,' she told him. ‘A giant snake? It is preposterous.'

He looked at her for a moment. ‘And if somebody had told you only a few days ago that a man who had lain entombed for three thousand years would get up and walk – would you have thought that preposterous also?'

She gazed at him, the expression on her face telling him that she had no ready answer for him.

‘The great serpent
will
rise,' he assured her. ‘And I shall be lord of all Egypt. You can depend on that.'

They were getting close now. On the far horizon, Alec could see the limestone cliffs rising from the sand, tiny at first, but rapidly growing in size as they approached. He looked back over his shoulder and pointed at them. Ethan nodded: he had seen them too.