The Lost Sisterhood (16 page)

Holding up the lantern, I looked more closely at the figure of the High Priestess. The plaster was chipped, but apart from her frightful headpiece I was almost certain she was wearing the same jackal-headed bracelet I had espied on the arm of the skeleton in the sarcophagus … not to mention the one I had on my own arm, hidden under my sweater sleeve.

But the skeleton, the priestess, and I were not the only women in the room with a bronze jackal in common. Walking around the entire sanctum with my flashlight trained to the walls, I counted at least eight other figures who wore similar bracelets. They were all robed in white, and although their hair was tucked into small, pointy caps, their bosoms and wide hips suggested they were female.

As I had done so many times before, I found myself wondering to what extent these white-clad women were related to the Amazon legend. Fiery warrior deeds aside, maybe I was looking at a more intimate, perhaps even secret, element of their lives, namely the rituals and beliefs that had bound them together in the first place, as a holy sisterhood. But then, if it was really so, why hadn’t they defended themselves against the invaders? Could I possibly be looking at the final hours of a dying Amazon civilization?

Or its beginning?

I still remembered Granny showing me her own bracelet and telling me that the jackal was immortal. Apparently, despite its stillness, the brazen canine was alive and extremely picky about its human hosts. “You can’t inherit it,” she had explained. “You must earn it. Only then will the jackal choose you.”

At the time I had taken it personally, thinking she was referring to me in particular, and had been somewhat miffed at the suggestion that I was not worthy of her jewelry. Well, fine, I had thought to myself, child that I was. Who wants to be chosen by a jackal anyway?

But, in fact, it appeared that this was precisely what had happened: Granny’s bracelet had chosen me as its host. Whenever I tried, I was
unable to wrest it from my arm; neither soap nor oil would do the trick. Obviously, it had been the first thing on my mind after seeing the skeleton in the coffin; I knew I had to make sure Nick did not spot my bracelet and wonder about the connection. Even in the flurry of everything else that was going on, I kept trying to take it off … only, I couldn’t.

It seemed to be one of those eerie, irreversible things: Once the bracelet was on, it stayed on. Or perhaps the heat of the desert had made my tissue swell. Then again, down here in the temple I was always cold, but that didn’t seem to make the slightest difference. I had put on the bracelet on a whim, and now I was stuck with it.

Had the same thing happened to Granny?

If she had been part of an archaeological team in her forgotten youth, working to decipher this unknown language, it was not unthinkable she had imbibed some of the rituals of the ancient culture she had helped to uncover. Perhaps she had donned a newly excavated bracelet in jest, only to find that she, too, could never take it off again. Or perhaps she had not wanted to.

Walking over to the sarcophagus, I put the lantern on the floor and tried once again to manipulate the stone lid. But, of course, I couldn’t. Not even Nick had been able to move it on his own.

All those solitary hours spent in this room over the past few days … so close to the skeleton, but physically unable to confirm whether the bracelet on its arm was exactly identical to my own. And now I was going home….

A strange, faint scratching noise interrupted my speculations. Standing still for a moment, I tried to make out the origin of the sound, but couldn’t.

One by one, all the little hairs on my arms stood up with dread. Ever since my first visit to the temple six days ago, I had been afraid the whole thing would come crashing down on top of me. But the sound I heard now was not one of mud brick caving in, I decided. It was more of an organic noise, as if someone, somewhere, was dragging a heavy sack across the floor.

As I stood, listening intently, I almost convinced myself I heard voices, too. Not the deep, decisive voices of Craig or Nick, but a faint, ghostly murmur that coiled around me until I could barely breathe.

Too frightened to stay where I was, trapped in the inner sanctum, I crept out into the main temple, just a few tentative steps. I had never been comfortable in that enormous room, with all its umbrage and echoes, and had always kept a wide berth of the square black hole in the floor, which—according to Craig—led down a narrow stone staircase into the unknown.

Pointing my flashlight this way and that, I tried to determine whether I was truly alone. But all I saw were endless rows of columns and shadows, playing hide-and-seek with my beam.

I called out anxiously at the darkness beyond. No response.

From the first time I entered it, the titanic temple building had filled me with dread. And whenever I had returned to work on the inscription, I had always hastened into the relative comfort of the inner sanctum. It was as if the people who had once lived and died here had left contorted, demonic imprints in the air all around—images waiting to spring out at me as soon as I let down my guard. No number of visits had lessened my discomfort with this cold, Cimmerian void that held so many secrets. And now, as I slowly walked through the large gallery with my collar up, chasing elusive sounds, I was so chilled with terror I had to clench my teeth to stop them from chattering.

In my agitation I went farther than I had ever gone before, far beyond the rope exit and down the entire nave of the temple. Craig had told me there was a large double door at the other end, presumably the original main entrance, but I had never actually seen it.

For all his big gestures, Craig had not done the door justice. It was so enormous you could have passed through it riding a camel, and it dwarfed everything around me—not least my presumed knowledge of ages past. What manner of world had once existed outside this door? Had it been inhabited by people like me, or by a stronger, more capable, race? I had no idea.

As I stood there, once again shocked by the engineering capabilities
of this lost civilization, it occurred to me there was something odd about the door. It was not the fact that it had so obviously been broken and repaired, but that it was locked in place with an enormous beam.

Barred from the inside.

Whoever had done this, thousands of years ago, had clearly made the choice to remain inside the temple to protect its secrets. Had it been some grand suicidal gesture, I wondered, for the good of the bracelet sisterhood? Or was there another way out of the temple that I didn’t know about?

Craig had told me the underground was a labyrinth of caves, and that he had not been able to persuade his men to follow any one of them to its end. Even the drill site roughnecks had been spooked by the place, and I was left to wonder what exactly they had found down there.

Was that where the sounds were coming from? The temple basement?

Once again, I listened intently.

And then I heard footsteps. Right behind me.

Swirling around with a shriek, I raised my flashlight, ready to smash it down on the intruder’s head.

“It’s me!” barked Nick, his hand clamped around my wrist. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard something—” I began, my voice shaking.

“Come!” He took the flashlight and started toward the rope exit, pulling me along. “Time to go.”

My fear morphed into irritation. “I need my jacket.”

Running through the darkness, all I had to guide me was the faint shine of the lantern I had left behind in the inner sanctum. Behind me, I could hear Nick yelling at me to stop, his tone increasingly uncivil. But Granny’s notebook was in my jacket pocket, and I needed that book more than his good opinion.

When I finally reached the inner sanctum, everything was exactly as I had left it. Except …

“Diana!” Nick was right behind me. “We don’t have time—”

“It’s so strange.” I picked up my jacket and made sure the notebook
was still there while my eyes scanned the room. “Something happened here—”

“Come on!” Nick tried to take the jacket from me. “Let’s go.”

“Wait!” I suddenly felt all my nerves snapping to attention. “Look!” I pointed at the sarcophagus. “It’s open! Someone opened it!”

Nick didn’t even look. He simply took me by the arm and pulled me along, his forehead furrowed with worry.

As we ran from the inner sanctum, I heard a frightful sound that took my brain a few breathless seconds to process. It was of a muted explosion, not far away, and of mud brick collapsing.

Women are nothing alone; no Ares is in them.

—A
ESCHYLUS,
The Suppliant Maidens

A
S SOON AS WE REACHED THE BOTTOM OF THE CHUTE, NICK GRABBED
the dangling rope and showed me the carabiner attached to it—the carabiner I already knew well from my many previous trips up and down. “In a moment,” he said, “you are going to hook this to your harness. I will be up there”—he pointed to illustrate—”and I will pull you up. Do you understand?”

I felt another prickly invasion of panic. “Why can’t the guards—?”

“There are no guards.” Nick pulled off his baggy shirt and glanced upward with apprehension. “Now give me a minute.”

Only when he wiped his palms on his trousers did I realize he was going to crawl up the rope, leaving me behind. “Wait!” I exclaimed, my fear mounting. “What’s going on? Why are the guards not there?”

He took me by the shoulders and gave me a little shake. “You’ll be fine. I promise. Just keep breathing.”

His words were followed by a distant rumble, and I could see in his eyes that he, too, was unnerved by the sound. Without another attempt at calming me, Nick started up the rope. There were no knots to give him purchase; all he had was the strength of his hands and arms and what little foothold he could create by twisting the rope with his feet.

I had never felt as abandoned as I did when he eventually disappeared into the steel tube. Hooking the carabiner onto my harness with trembling fingers, I looked around in the darkness, feeling very keenly
that danger was closing in on me from all sides. For every time I took a breath as instructed, it seemed to me there was another sudden rush of rubble falling somewhere beneath me or on the other side of the wall … it was impossible to tell which.

Equally unnerving was the faint but growing rumble that made the floor vibrate beneath my feet. In my growing panic, I could almost imagine that a prehistoric monster had been stirred to anger somewhere in the caverns beneath this colossal building, and that this fearsome beast was now making its way toward me, one lumbering footstep at a time.

When I finally felt a firm pull on the rope attached to my harness, hoisting me abruptly into the air a foot or so, I cried out with relief. Evidently, Nick had reached the surface and was now doing his utmost to pull me to safety.

Just as I was dangling in midair, there was another explosion, this time closer. Instinctively, I covered my face while my entire body was blasted by pinpricks of flying sand.

When I dared open my eyes again, all I saw was dust and darkness. Breathing through my bundled-up jacket, I tried to make out the faint shine of the lantern we had left behind in the inner sanctum, but it was gone. Nor could I see the assuring dot of daylight at the far end of the tube above me.

Desperate to speed up my escape from the collapsing temple, I grabbed the rope and tried to pull myself up, but of course I couldn’t. All I accomplished was to make Nick drop me a whole hard-won foot, and I heard him yelling at me through the pipe.

For what it was worth, the sound of his voice had a calming effect, and I did my best to stop squirming. Moments later I was safely above ground, and Nick was unhooking my harness, his eyes tight with worry.

“Are we—” I began, but whatever I had intended to say was cut short by the sound of yet another underground explosion.

“Hurry!” Nick pulled me from the tent into the blinding sunshine. We ran toward a lonely horse tied to a post. “I’ll get up first.” He quickly untied the reins and straddled the skittish animal. “Put your foot here.” He let me use the stirrup to climb up behind him, and as soon as my
arms were clasped around his waist, he spurred on the horse with ferocity.

As we galloped away, a series of explosions ripped through the ground right behind us; it was as if we were being strafed by an invisible airplane. In its panic the horse stopped and reared up, throwing us both heavily into a peaked dune in a jumble of arms and legs.

“Good grief!” I groaned, my head full of sparkles and my mouth full of sand. “Are you all right?”

But Nick was already up, doing his best to calm the horse. And then I saw it, right behind him: the Bedouin tent collapsing and disappearing, sucked into a thundering funnel of sand. “Look!” I cried. “We’ve got to—”

As soon as Nick saw what I meant, we both scrambled up the dune, not even trying to get back on the horse. Behind us, the roar of destruction rose in a terrible crescendo, and when we finally reached the crest and I dared look back one last time, all I saw was an omnivorous crater of rushing sand. Everything was gone—the tent, the chute, the scattered drilling equipment; the entire valley had become a giant mouth, hungrily sucking in every bit of the here and now, in order to fill the void of lost millennia.

W
HEN NICK HAD DONE
his rounds and made his phone calls, he found me precisely where he had left me: sitting on a bench in the empty cantina, staring into a cup of tea. “Feeling better?” he asked, sitting down across the table with a mug of coffee. He looked calmer now, almost at peace. Or maybe he was just pretending, to cheer me up.

“I forgot to thank you,” I said, straightening, “for saving my life.”

Nick nodded. “My pleasure.”

“You didn’t have to, you know,” I went on, turning the teacup around and around. “I haven’t exactly been your … favorite person. Have I?”

He took a sip of coffee. “I don’t want any trouble with the Moselanes.”

I was stunned. “Excuse me?” Only then did I realize he was joking.
As always, Nick’s beard kept blurring my perception of him, like a ring of thorny bushes around his true self. I shook my head, suddenly exhausted. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

He shrugged. “Someone decided to blow up the temple—”

“Someone?”

Avoiding my gaze, Nick leaned back and scratched his neck. “Craig got an anonymous call. A bomb threat. That’s why I decided to evacuate the guards. And good thing I did, or I wouldn’t have known you were down there.”

“But that’s preposterous!” I exclaimed. “Who would do that? Why?
How,
for heaven’s sake?” The possibilities swirled around in my head, and I had to take a few deep breaths to keep down the nausea. “It’s madness,” I went on, more quietly. “Whoever they were, they must be dead now, mustn’t they?”

Nick shrugged. “They probably set it off by remote control.”

“But the sounds I heard—”

He shrugged again. “There’s no point in speculating. We’ll never know.”

“Honestly!” I stared at him, desperate for answers. But he merely drank the rest of his coffee in one gulp, pushed aside the mug, and took out a wad of cash. Only when he started counting out bills on the table between us did I realize what he was doing, and I felt an irrational anger at his composure. To Nick, apparently, it was still nothing but business. Bombs, ropes, bruises … just another day at the Aqrab Foundation.

“Ten thousand dollars,” he said at last, pushing the money toward me. “I believe that is what we owe you.”

“Why, thank you,” I said, rather fiercely, transfixed by the ridiculous pile of bills. “I suppose that is all I get. No explanations?”

Nick stood up, his eyes completely void of emotion. “We could keep talking. But you would miss your plane.”

W
E LEFT THE DRILL
site in the golden light of late afternoon. Despite everything that had happened, Nick was still determined to get me back
to Djerba in time for my flight to Gatwick the next morning—so much so that he was prepared to drive through the night.

As I sat in the car beside him, too exhausted to feel much beyond a welcome numbness, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and said, “I thought you might like to know that an environmental group has taken responsibility for the bombing. They sent a fax just before we left—the usual brain-dead anticapitalist bullshit.”

I looked at him. The sun was setting behind us, and his face was—as always, it seemed—cast in shadow. “How convenient,” I said, surprised by my own sarcasm. “That explains everything.”

Nick glanced at me. “You’re not buying it?”

“Did you expect me to? You don’t believe it, either, do you?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I was hoping it might make sense to
you.
”

“Let’s see.” I settled back into my seat, appreciating the unexpected invitation to discuss the incident that had nearly killed us both. “You go all the way to Algeria to protest a drill site, but instead of chaining yourself to the drilling rig, or spraying your slogans on the trailers, you crawl through tunnels infested with unmentionable creatures in order to blow up a world heritage site? No, it makes no sense to me. Whoever sent that fax is trying to cover up the truth.”

Nick hesitated. “So, what
is
the truth?”

I looked out on a passing oasis, or rather five lonely palm trees huddled against the vast nothingness bearing down on them from all sides. “Good question. I suppose the only thing we can say with any certainty is that whoever did it is a friend of neither of us. After all, friends don’t let friends blow up in subterranean temples. Right?”

“I guess,” said Nick, without sounding too convinced.

“And while we’re at it—” I took off my boots and put my stocking feet up on the dashboard. “I’m still waiting to hear why it wasn’t some other philologist who got the privilege of nearly blowing up. Why did Mr. Ludwig come for
me
? God knows
you
never wanted me in the temple. All his talk about the Amazons … where did it come from?”

Nick shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “John is a bit of a joker.”

“You mean, a jester,” I corrected him, determined not to be brushed
aside. “A jester has one purpose only: to please the king. So tell me—since you belong to the same court—why did your mighty king tell his jester to goad me on with talk of the Amazons?”

When Nick did not respond right away, I poked him with my left foot. We were, after all, mere hours away from parting forever, and I knew that if I wanted to complete the puzzle of my trip, this was my chance. “Oh, come on,” I said, trying to be chummy, “you can’t let me dangle like this.”

Nick smiled, but rather grimly. “You’re assuming the mighty king confides in his lowly knights. Well, he doesn’t.”

“Then why don’t you take that knightly cellphone of yours and call some duke or prince who
does
know?”

“It’s Sunday. The office is closed.” He gave me a sideways look. “Why are you so interested in the Amazons, anyway? Isn’t it enough that you are the only philologist in the world who had a go at an undeciphered alphabet?”

“Which is now lost beneath ten billion tons of sand.”

“But still—” Nick took one hand off the steering wheel to count on his fingers. “You have the photos. The text. The narrative. Not to mention ten thousand dollars in your pocket. What more do you want?”

I sighed out loud, frustrated that we were still on square one. “I want an explanation!”

Nick’s jaws tightened. “Well, you’re barking up the wrong guy. I’m just a gofer. All I can tell you is that the fax from the environmental group was sent from an Internet café in Istanbul.” He glanced at me, and I thought I saw suspicion in his eyes. “What do you know about Grigor Reznik?”

I was so surprised by the question, I started laughing. “The collector? Not much.” I paused to summon my knowledge, then said, “I’ve written to him once or twice, asking for access to an ancient manuscript he purchased last year, the
Historia Amazonum.
But he never replied.”

Nick frowned. “That’s usually what happens when you confront a thief about his loot.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Reznik deals in antiques,” said Nick, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel again, “it’s usually at the point of a gun. Where did the manuscript come from? Who sold it to him?”

Nick’s questions made me uncomfortable. My mentor Katherine Kent had said something similar when I made the mistake of mentioning my letters to Reznik, but I had brushed aside her concerns as unfounded hearsay. “All right,” I said, yielding to what was apparently majority opinion, “so Reznik is a little unconventional—”

“To say the least!” Nick shot me a look of reproach. “He’s a crook! Don’t close your eyes to that just because he happens to have something you want.”

I was terribly tempted to use this as a segue to confront him about his employment with the Aqrab Foundation, but decided to leave that particular arrow in my quiver for now. “Well, some claim Reznik has had a moral awakening,” I said instead. “Apparently, he lost his son in a car crash last year and was absolutely devastated—”

“Let’s not put ‘Reznik’ and ‘moral’ in the same sentence,” said Nick, cutting me off. “And as for his son, Alex, take it from me: The little Satan had it coming. Does ‘snuff film’ mean anything to you?” Seeing that it did, he nodded grimly. “That vicious punk deserved so much more than a car crash. Makes you want to believe there
is
a hell.”

“Sounds as if you knew him?” I said.

“I know
of
him. That’s more than enough. In some circles he was known as ‘the Bone Saw,’ to give you an idea.”

“Thanks for that image,” I said.

“You’re welcome. Now, the more interesting question is why Grigor Reznik bothers with an old manuscript. He is not an intellectual. Explain that to me, please.”

“Why? Because you think he was behind the bombing?”

Nick shrugged. “I’m just trying to piece it all together. The fax was sent from Istanbul. Reznik is in Istanbul—”

“But he’s not an idiot,” I countered, holding up a hand against the dust as we passed a truck on the road. “If he really
did
send that fax, wouldn’t he have sent it from somewhere else?
Anywhere
else?”

“Maybe. Or it could be the sender wanted to implicate him. Why?”

“All I can tell you,” I said, “is that the
Historia Amazonum
is believed to hold information about the fate of the last Amazons, and the legendary”—I waved my hands in the air to add a little drama—”Amazon Hoard. Not ‘hoard’ as in a horde of people, but as in a stockpile of valuable objects.”