Simon Toyne - The Key

There were of course others in the Citadel who would put themselves forward and stand a chance of election. Father Malachi, for example, was well respected and a definite candidate, but Athanasius felt sure he could forge some kind of alliance with him. As chamberlain to the previous Abbot, he knew the workings of the Citadel more than most and was therefore a useful ally.

But Axel was a different case. The best way to deal with him was to keep him isolated in his candidacy and hope his staunch adherence to the old hierarchy would alienate the large moderate faction within the mountain. The Sancti were gone, and there were many who did not mourn their passing and would relish their return even less. These were the people Athanasius would appeal to. These were the key to the Citadel’s future.

‘Hold steady!’

He looked up as the second distance marker rose from the darkness, indicating that the Ascension platform was nearing the top. Axel stopped pacing and stepped forward to peer over the lip of the tribute hatch, withdrawing his gun from his sleeve as he did so. Then he gasped and stepped away, levelling his gun at the darkness. The rest of the guards followed his lead, just as the supporting ropes rose, bringing the platform level with the floor.

Standing in the middle of the platform was a man, dressed in the apparel of a priest. Red eyes stared out at them from blackened skin and his lips curled in a parody of a smile as he regarded them coolly. ‘Such a welcome for an old friend,’ it said, in a voice that was ragged but familiar. ‘Have I really changed that much?’

It was the syrupy Slavic voice that made Athanasius realize who was standing before them. Brother Dragan, youngest of the Sancti, now returned from the dead and risen back into the mountain, his bloody eyes scanning the faces of the assembled men like Death seeking out the weakest.

‘Fetch me my robes,’ he commanded. A guard scuttled off, tripping in his haste to obey. ‘And send word to the Abbot that I have returned.’

Axel cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid that will not be possible. Brother Abbot has sadly passed.’

Dragan shuffled forward stiffly and stepped off the platform on to the solid rock floor of the tribute cave. ‘Send word to the Prelate then.’

‘Again, that will not be possible. I regret that he too is no longer with us.’

‘So who is the most senior monk remaining?’

Axel turned to look at the heads of the guilds, huddled by the spindle in the centre of the room. ‘We have been running things democratically until such time as elections provide new leaders.’ He turned back to Dragan. ‘But now that God has seen fit to bless us with your return, you are the most senior monk in the Citadel.’

Dragan nodded and his lips curled in another ghastly smile. ‘In that case, take me to the Prelate’s quarters and spread the word throughout the mountain that, by the grace of God, a Sanctus has returned.’

And with that he walked past everyone into the darkness of the mountain, dragging Athanasius’s dreams of reform with him.

Badiyat al-Sham, Al Anbar Province, Western Iraq

There was nothing on earth like being in the desert at night.

The same thin air that offered so little protection from the hellish daytime sun let in the absolute cold of space when darkness fell to steal the heat away again. And then there were the stars: billions of them, filling the sky with pinpoints of light and casting a microscopic glow over everything. The Bedouin used the stars to travel at night, their desert eyes accustomed to levels of light that city dwellers could never perceive. The Ghost used this skill now to pick his way over the stony ground and gravel paths, following the line of the dragon’s back into the place the Bedouin called the land of thirst and terror.

The Syrian Desert was over half a million square kilometres of nothing. It spread across the land like a crusted sore, spilling out of Syria into northern Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There were no settlements in the heart of it and no proper roads. During the Iraq War the insurgents had fallen back here, using the prehistoric brutality of the desert environment as their main defence against the technological might of the modern war machine. And it had worked; machinery broke down, dust storms grounded all air support, even hi-tech thermal-imaging systems could be rendered blind by the simple strategy of lying under a blanket on a warm rock. It was impossible to fight people when they had the land and nature on their side.

The insurgents had used the desert as their main base of operations, resupplying themselves with men and equipment that flowed over the leaky and unpatrolable border with Syria. It was only when the invaders had taken all the towns that they moved back to the cities to harry the new government with the more traditional terrorist tactics of roadside bombs and the ever-present threat of kidnap. So the desert was empty again — and yet, as the Ghost rode on through the night, he began to sense that he was not alone.

He saw the first signs of something out of place a few hours before dawn when the cold had chilled the air to crystal clarity and the moon began to rise. It was a dark shape, away in the distance, stretching across the otherwise flat horizon. Dismounting, he approached it on foot, keeping low to the ground so that any watching eyes with thermal-imaging scopes would not be able to see his hot outline against the cold sky.

As he drew closer he saw that the dark shape was actually a shadow, cast by the rising moon and a large mound of rocks and dirt that had been piled high next to a hole in the ground. He dropped lower and crawled towards it, stopping every now and then to listen to the empty silence broken only by the intermittent whisper of night breezes flowing around the jagged edges of the pile of rocks and earth.

The hole next to it was only a metre or so deep, far too shallow to account for the size of the pile that cast such a long shadow. In the middle of the hole a rock the size of a car had been partly excavated, then abandoned, as if whoever had been working there had suddenly lost interest. He moved to the spill pile and carefully picked his way up the side until he was high enough to have an elevated view of the surrounding terrain.

There were several other holes dotted around, each about the same size and depth as the first, each with a large rock semi-uncovered at the bottom. It was as if some huge beast had been digging around for something it had lost. One of the holes was significantly wider and deeper than the rest. He slid down and made his way over to investigate.

The hole was about one storey deep, with a ramp of earth spiralling to the bottom, wide enough for a horse to walk down. At the bottom of the pit was a ragged patch of blackness marking the entrance to a cave. It was one of the quirks of the Syrian Desert that large parts of it were honeycombed with extensive, subterranean cave systems, carved millions of years ago by water flowing through the sedimentary rock. You could hide whole battalions of men and equipment in the caves if you knew where they were. It was one of the reasons the Ghost had evaded capture for so long. If whoever had dug these holes was still around, this was where they would be, sleeping in the cave, away from the biting cold of the desert night.

He watched for a while, but saw no movement other than the creeping line of moonlight as the world slowly turned. There was no telltale tang of woodsmoke in the air to suggest people were there. Whoever had dug these holes, and for whatever purpose, they had gone. The Ghost skirted the edge of the crater then made his way down the ramp, his night-adjusted eyes probing the velvet blackness of the cave as he approached. Once inside, he listened to the deadened sounds, then took a penlight from his pocket and turned it on.