Land of the Gods

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“My God,” said Hawke as he swept his flashlight across the chamber and struggled to take in what they were seeing. “This is bloody unbelievable. I’ve never seen so much carved stone in my life.”

“Is this the entrance to the Citadel?” Zeke asked.

“No.” Qasim stepped forward. He had recognized the meaning of the carvings at once. “This is some kind of temple, and without a doubt, the entrance to the Citadel. The symbols are vaguely redolent of the much later cuneiform script of the Sumerian civilization, and like those these are certainly phonograms, and very complex ones.” He shook his head, sweeping the flashlight beam along the length of the smooth rock. “These have been carved with some sort of stylus, possibly bone, and yet their symmetry is almost too perfect.”

Lea leaned in and shone her flashlight on the beautifully carved symbols. “I see what you mean, Dr al-Hashimi.”

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” he said. “But like the cut of the rocks themselves, they’re just so accurate. It’s as if they were carved yesterday using laser technology. This is incomprehensible, my friends.”

“So is half of what you just said,” Ali said.

Mohamed laughed, but the mirth was cut short when Qasim gasped, drawing the attention of everyone in the chamber.

Hawke broke the stunned silence. “Problem?”

The archaeologist shook his head in disbelief and took a step away from the wall. “I… this is impossible!”

“What is?” Scarlet asked.

“I’m not entirely familiar with the way this civilization is dating their epochs, but there are strong similarities with the way the Sumerians did it, not to mention later civilizations, including even us.”

“You’ll have to elaborate,” Lea said.

Qasim looked like he was starting to panic; sweat beaded his forehead as he licked his lips and muttered to himself. Overwhelmed by the information in front of him, he was struggling to make sense of it all.

“I need you to focus, Qasim,” Hawke said. “Our time is growing thin.”

“I know… I know, but…” he reached a trembling hand out and traced his fingertips along the carved grooves, tears forming in his eyes. “The Babylonian calendar was based on the Sumerian one, and that one appears to have been based on this. If I am right in my interpretation, the Citadel beyond this temple is… no, it can’t be!”

“What can’t be?” Scarlet asked.

Qasim paled as he turned to face them. “At the time these carvings were made on this rock, the Citadel was already hundreds of thousands of years old. I don’t think we’re even capable of understanding just how old this civilization was, but we’re talking millions of years. An entirely different civilization rising and falling right here in our world.”

“Well, fuck a duck and call it Daisy,” Zeke said. “And I thought Windsor Castle was old.”

Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Coarse, but saved by your charisma… and the accent doesn’t hurt.”

He smiled at her. “You think I’m charismatic?”

“Don’t push it, Tex.”

“So what happened to them?” Lea asked.

Another shake of the head. “Something must have wiped them out.”

“A plague, perhaps?” Reaper asked.

“Or a war,” Lexi said.

Hawke felt his heart quicken. “Or some sort of out of control doomsday weapon.”

“Wait,” Qasim said. “It also speaks of three gates.”

“Three gates?”

He nodded, staring wildly at the carvings. He ran his fingers over them as if his mere touch might help translate them. “Only he who passes the three gates may enter the Citadel.”

Hawke looked around the tiny chamber. “Must be through that door then, because there’s no sign of any gates from where I’m standing.”

“Joe’s right,” Lea said. “There’s nothing here. It’s all dead now,” Lea said, looking at the ruins with a mix of awe and raw contempt. “Nothing left but dust and bones.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that…”

Hawke spun around just in time to see the Oracle’s withered, gaunt face move out of the shadows of the entrance they had used to enter it. Behind him, Ryan’s face also moved into the light of their glowsticks. What must have been a hefty whack to his face had produced a substantial black eye, and an inch-long cut snaked up from his top lip toward his nose.

“Mate!”

“Ry!” Lea said.

“Still alive and kicking,” Ryan said, trying to smile.

The Oracle placed the muzzle of his handgun on the back of Ryan’s skull. “Hand your guns over, or I’ll put a bullet through his head within three seconds.”

Giving his friends an apologetic look, Hawke’s shoulders visibly slumped. “I’m sorry, but we have no choice.”

“A heartfelt apology, I’m sure,” cackled the Oracle.

Massively outgunned, he ordered the team to surrender their weapons. Seeing Nikolai, he wandered over to him and cursed. “The filthy traitor from the monastery.”

“Go to hell, Wolff.”

“No, you’re the one going to hell. I will kill you personally on the Citadel’s altar. My first sacrifice to the gods in their very own temple.”

“I bet you don’t get bored at weekends,” Scarlet said.

“Silence!” he yelled, and then to everyone’s horror he turned to Ali and Mohamed. “My thanks to you both for providing the images of the rings.”

Hawke looked at Ali with disgust. “What?”

An expression of realization spread on Ryan’s face. “I knew it! So they’re the traitors.”

“I don’t understand,” Lea said.

“I do,” Hawke said bluntly. “Back when we packed the gear into the trucks at the chopper landing site. They took the rings away to admire for a few minutes and that’s when they must have taken the pictures.”

“And that’s not all,” the Oracle said, beaming with pride at the deception. “Ali here also told me about the location of Mokrani’s yacht as well. He has been a good servant.”

“I’m so sorry, Joe,” Ali said.

“But why?” Hawke demanded.

“The money. I have massive gambling debts.”

“But we’re paying you a million dollars!”

“And he’s paying me ten million,” Ali said.

“Wrong,” the Oracle said. “I am paying you something much more valuable than a mere ten million dollars. I am paying for your journey into the afterlife.”

He raised his submachine gun and aimed it at the two brothers.

“No!” Lea screamed.

It was too late. The rounds raked through Ali and Mohamed as if they were made of butter, and dropped both their corpses to the floor, dead on arrival.

“My God!” Zeke said.

The Oracle smiled. “They betrayed you. They were scum. Now, you take us through that door to the three gates,” the Oracle said, his voice calm and in command. “And when we get there, you will pass through them first in order to ensure they are safe. Then, I will take what has been rightfully mine for several thousand years.”

Passing through the temple’s other door, they entered another world of twisting tunnels and caves. Stalagmites and stalactites turned harmless caverns into snapping jaws, and the drip-drip-dripping of underground water reminded them of a ticking clock, counting away the last few moments of their lives.

The tunnel took them into the center of the mountain, and the walk was long and arduous. Winding tunnels, narrow ledges giving way to bottomless chasms and eerie underground lakes became their universe for the next hour. Exhausted and almost broken by the mission, Ryan tripped and slumped down against the side of a boulder, his legs collapsing beneath him. He searched through his bag for his water and took a long drink. “I’m about ready to drop.”

“You just did drop,” Scarlet said, glancing over her shoulder at their captors.

“Why is my pack getting heavier?” Lexi sighed and dropped her bag to the sandy ground before collapsing beside Ryan. She snatched his water and took a drink.

“Hey!”

“Mine ran out back there, boy.”

“That’s my nickname for him,” Scarlet said, grabbing the same water bottle from Lexi’s hands and finishing it off. “Anyone else using it is just taking the piss as far as I’m concerned, right boy?”

“I’m too tired to argue.”

Absalom walked over and kicked Ryan’s legs hard. “Get up.”

Hawke pushed the Athanatoi monk away, but his show of resistance was met by the sound of multiple cocking handles and the sight of half a dozen submachine gun muzzles. “Back up!”

He followed the orders, hauling Ryan up as he went. Lexi staggered up after him. Hawke never said it, but he was concerned by what the trek had taken out of the team. As a former SBS man, he knew that the most common end result to a long, forced-march through tough terrain was usually a bloody gun battle, or even a hand-to-hand, close-quarter knife fight, but Ryan looked like he was just about ready for bed. When it was time to take out the Athanatoi things were going to get nasty. Was his team up to it?

“Move on!” Ignatius yelled.

Another lengthy march down the sloping incline as they moved deeper inside the range, all the time covered by the small arsenal in the hands of the Athanatoi at their backs.

“Wait!” Ryan called out. “I see something up ahead.”

“He’s right,” said Qasim. “It’s another giant tablet.”

They approached the ancient warning.

“What does it say?” Lea asked.

Ryan stepped forward, Qasim a step to his right.

“It’s describing the three challenges, but the word they’re using literally translates as gates, as Qasim here read earlier.”

“Challenges?”

“Three trials that must be navigated successfully before we can access what they’re calling the Way of the Gods. The first of the three gates is called the Heart of the Gods, the second is called the Mind of the Gods and third is called the Eye of the Gods.”

“This is getting too real for me,” Zeke said. “What the hell are we doing in this place? We have no idea what we are doing, or what we’re going to find inside this mountain!”

The Oracle stepped forward, scowling. “What do we have to do, Bale?”

“Drop dead,” the young man said.

Absalom delivered a solid back-slap and knocked him off his feet.

“Bastards!” Lea said.

Ryan crawled back up. Hawke clamped a hand down on Ryan’s shoulder. “What does the first one say, mate?”

With a look of hatred at the Oracle, Ryan and Qasim began translating the second tablet in the ghostly light of the glowsticks and flashlights. Beside it, three narrow stone archways led to nothing but darkness.

“The first gate is the Heart of the Gods,” Ryan said at last, looking at Qasim for conformation. The Iraqi archaeologist nodded hurriedly, and Ryan carried on as he walked closer to the archways. Pointing to the carved symbols above each one, he said, “The symbol above this archway means something similar to library, the one above this one means temple, and the one above this one means school.”

“What else?”

“There’s a riddle here,” Qasim said. “It says something like, There is a room which you enter blind and leave with sight. What is it?”

“We want the temple,” Ignatius said curtly. “You go into a temple seeking enlightenment from the gods, and you get that through prayer.” Pushing Ryan out of the way, he stepped through the archway and turned to call the others to follow him. “This way!”

“No!” Ryan yelled, but it was too late.

A trapdoor covered in dust and dirt, impossible to see before, now gave way and sent the Athanatoi cultist tumbling down into a pit of such blackness, none of them had ever seen anything like it before.

The Oracle and the rest of his acolytes started with a jolt and readied their weapons. “What the hell just happened?”

“Your man tried to go to the temple,” Lea said. “And it didn’t work out too well.”

His screams were still audible. “Mon Dieu,” Reaper said. “He has been falling for ten seconds and we can still hear his terror. That pit must be hundreds of feet deep.”

“And completely impossible to go around as well,” Hawke said.

“We don’t want to go around it,” Ryan said. “This riddle gives us the answer, and it’s not a temple.”

“What is it, mate?” Hawke said with a grin.

“School.”

The Oracle peered down into the pit. “And you’re certain?”

“Yes, because it’s an old Sumerian riddle, am I right, Qasim?”

The Iraqi grinned. “Yes, you are. I recognized it too. Not surprising considering that we now know the Sumerian civilization inherited everything they knew from this one.”

“If you’re so sure,” the Oracle said. “You go first. Seems to me that a library is also a room that can enlighten you.”

“I said it’s school,” Ryan said angrily.

The Oracle lifted his gun. “Then, time to go to class.”

Ryan took a deep breath and walked to the arch marked school.