Robert Silverberg - The Seventh Shrine

Valentine said, “Is a guard posted here at the encampment at night?”

“No. There seemed to be no purpose in doing that,”

“And the dig site itself? It’s not fenced off, or protected in any way?”

“No.”

“Then anyone at all could have left the day-labourers’ village as soon as it grew dark,” Valentine said, “and waited out there in the road for Dr Huukaminaan to come out.” He glanced toward Vo-Siimifon. “Was Dr Huukaminaan in the habit of taking a walk before bedtime?”

“Not that I recall.”

“And if he had chosen to go out late at night for some reason, would he have been likely to take so long a walk?”

“He was quite a robust man, for his age,” said the Piurivar. “But even so that would have been an unusual distance to go just for a stroll before bedtime,”

“Yes. So it would seem,” Valentine turned again to Magadone Sambisa. “It’ll be necessary, I’m afraid, for us to question your labourers. And each member of your expedition, too. You understand that at this point we can’t arbitrarily rule anyone out,”

Her eyes flashed. “Am I under suspicion too, your majesty?”

“At this point,” said Valentine, “nobody here is under suspicion. And everyone is. Unless you want me to believe that Dr Huukaminaan committed suicide by dismembering himself and distributing parts of himself all over the top of that platform.”

The night had been cool, but the sun sprang into the morning sky with incredible swiftness. Almost at once, early as it was in the day, the air began to throb with desert warmth. !t was necessary to get a quick start at the site, Magadone Sambisa had told them, since by midday the intense heat would make work very difficult.

Valentine was ready for her when she called for him soon after dawn. At her request he would be accompanied only by some members of his security detachment, not by any of his fellow lords. Tunigorn grumbled about this, as did Mirigant. But she said—and would not yield on the point—that she preferred that the Pontifex alone come with her today, and after he had seen what she had to show him he could make his own decisions about sharing the information with the others.

She was taking him to the Seventh Pyramid. Or what was left of it, rather, for nothing now remained except the truncated base, a square structure about twenty feet long on each side and five or six feet high, constructed from the same reddish basalt from which the great arena and some of the other public buildings had been made. East of that stump the fragments of the pyramid’s upper section, smallish broken blocks of the same reddish stone, lay strewn in the most random way across a wide area. It was as though some angry colossus had contemptuously given the western face of the pyramid one furious slap with the back of his ponderous hand and sent it flying into a thousand pieces. On the side of the stump away from the debris Valentine could make out the pointed summit of the still-intact Sixth Pyramid about five hundred feet away, rising above a copse of little contorted trees, and beyond it were the other five, running onward one after another to the edge of the royal palace itself.

“According to Piurivar lore,” Magadone Sambisa said, “the people of Velalisier held a great festival every thousand years, and constructed a pyramid to commemorate each one. So far as we’ve been able to confirm by examining and dating the six undamaged ones, that’s correct. This one, we know, was the last in the series. If we can believe the legend—” and she gave Valentine a meaningful look “—it was built to mark the very festival at which the Defilement took place. And had just been completed when the city was invaded and destroyed by those who had come here to punish its inhabitants for what they had done.”

She beckoned to him, leading him around towards the northern side of the shattered pyramid. They walked perhaps fifty feet onward from the stump. Then she halted. The ground had been carefully cut away here. Valentine saw a rectangular opening just large enough for a man to enter, and the beginning of a passageway leading underground and heading back towards the foundations of the pyramid.

A star-shaped marker of bright yellow tape was fastened to a good-sized boulder just to the left of the excavation.

“That’s where you found the head, is it?” he asked.

“Not there. Below.” She pointed into the opening. “Will you follow me, your majesty?”

Six members of Valentine’s security force had gone with Valentine to the pyramid site that morning: the giant warrior-woman Lisamon Hultin, his personal bodyguard, who had accompanied him on all his travels since his juggling days; two shaggy hulking Skandars; a couple of Pontifical officials whom he had inherited from his predecessor’s staff; and even a Metamorph, one Aarisiim, who had defected to Valentine’s forces from the service of the arch-rebel Faraataa in the final hours of the War of the Rebellion and had been with the Pontifex ever since. All six stepped forward now as if they meant to go down into the excavation with him, though the Skandars and Lisamon Hultin were plainly loo big to fit into the entrance. But Magadone Sambisa shook her head fiercely; and Valentine, smiling, signalled to them all to wait for him above.

The archaeologist, lighting a hand-torch, entered the opening in the ground. The descent was steep, via a series of precisely chiselled earthen steps that took them downwards nine or ten feet. Then, abruptly, the subterranean passageway levelled off. Here there was a flagstone floor made of broad slabs hewn from some glossy green rock. Magadone Sambisa flashed her light at one and Valentine saw that the slabs bore carved glyphs, runes of some kind, reminiscent of those he had seen in the paving of the grand ceremonial boulevard that ran past the royal palace.

“This is our great discovery,” she said. “There are shrines, previously unknown and unsuspected, under each of the seven pyramids. We were working near the Third Pyramid about six months ago, trying to stabilize its foundation, when we stumbled on the first one. It had been plundered, very probably in antiquity. But it was an exciting find all the same, and immediately we went looking for similar shrines beneath the other five intact pyramids. And found them: also plundered. For the time being we didn’t bother to go digging for the shrine of the Seventh Pyramid. We assumed that there was no hope of finding anything interesting there, that it must have been looted at the time the pyramid was destroyed. But then Huukaniinaan and I decided that we might as well check it out too, and we put down this trench that we’ve been walking through. Within a day or so we reached this flagstone paving. Come,”

They went deeper in, entering a carefully constructed tunnel just about wide enough for four people to stand in it abreast. Its walls were fashioned of thin slabs of black stone laid sideways like so many stacked books, leading upward to a vaulted roof of the same stone that tapered into a series of pointed arches. The craftsmanship was very fine, and distinctly archaic in appearance. The air in the tunnel was hot and musty and dry, ancient air, lifeless air. It had a stale, dead taste in Valentine’s nostrils.

“We call this kind of underground vault a processional hypogeum,” Magadone Sambisa explained. “Probably it was used by priests carrying offerings to the shrine of the pyramid.”

Her torch cast a spreading circlet of pallid light that allowed Valentine to perceive a wall of finely-dressed white stone blocking the path just ahead of them. “Is that the foundation of the pyramid we’re looking at?” he asked.

“No. What we see here is the wall of the shrine, nestling against the pyramid’s base. The pyramid itself is on the far side of it. The other shrines were located right up against their pyramids in the same way. The difference is that all the others had been smashed open. This one has apparently never been breached.”