David Sakmyster - The Pharos Objective

“But why?” Lydia asked. “Why build the trap that way? Surely there has to be an easier way past the seal?”

“Yes, but you have to think like they did. Egyptian mystery schools had a different way of teaching-through intuition and experience, symbolism and reason. Imagine an initiate going through this ordeal. Surviving such a watery onslaught would be a transformative, cleansing experience. It would prepare him for the next stage in the process of enlightenment. Think of people who survive a tsunami, clinging to trees, watching their lives, their whole history, wash away. They can’t help but to be transformed by it.”

Lydia licked her lips. “Only the worthy,” she murmured. “So what comes first?”

“I hate to say this, but I bet there’s a fire-oriented trap we need to prepare for. Remember the legend about the Muslims who were tricked into almost destroying the lighthouse? The Arab treasure hunters released the tide of seawater and were swept into the harbor, but the few survivors described other horrors: fire, the floor falling away…” He thought about it. “I’m sure they didn’t even try the symbols; they just attempted to break down the door.”

“And maybe that sets off all the traps in sequence?” She walked up behind Caleb and slid her hands around his waist. She pressed her lips to his neck and he smelled figs, along with a hint of her ever-present jasmine perfume. His skin danced with excitement, both from this new revelation and from Lydia’s touch. “Can’t you try to RV the chamber? See the fire defense?”

Caleb’s throat tightened as if choking on a thick crust of bread. “No, I don’t think so.” It was one thing for visions to visit directly, but quite another to actually invite them in. It wasn’t a step he wanted to take just yet.

“So we’ll just chance it?” Lydia asked. “Get a rope, or a bungee or something, a harness. And then just pray we’re worthy enough?”

“I’d rather do this by myself,” Caleb said. “I don’t know if two of us can make it through, and…”

“And,” Lydia gave him a gentle squeeze, “you haven’t forgiven yourself yet for Phoebe.”

Or Nina.

Or any of the others.

Caleb tried to pull away but she held him close. “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. “And now’s your chance to make it up to her. We’ll get through that door, you and I. But you’ll need my help. I’ll bring cameras and flashlights, and you’ll have another set of eyes to catch anything you might miss, and-”

“And it will be twice the danger,” Caleb said, relenting. “But I know you won’t give up. Besides, I don’t really want to go alone.”

She smiled with him. “So what are we waiting for?”

“Nightfall.” From his occasional visits after a walk about the city, he knew Qaitbey had become a major tourist site of late, and guards patrolled regularly during the day. At night it was lit up from all angles to provide a visible backdrop of its imposing strength, but Caleb figured they could still slip into the courtyard, hug the shadows and get in to the mosque if they were careful. But they had no special connections this time, so they would have to use bolt cutters on the padlock.

“Good,” Lydia said. “Then we have time.” She pulled him away from the wall, toward the bed.

It was a moonless night, the air still thick with humidity, resisting the Mediterranean breezes. The stars shone fiercely above the waves, and as Caleb and Lydia crept through the arch in the sandstone wall, Caleb glanced up at the constellations, imagining for a moment he was a Roman soldier storming the great lighthouse, marveling at its flaming beacon thirty stories overhead. He could picture dozens of statues and winged creatures perched on ledges and atop windows punctured into the face of the great tower. And the simple, cunning dedication greeting visitors: Sostratus of Cnidos dedicates this lighthouse to the Savior Gods.

As silently as possible, he and Lydia stayed in the shadows and ran along the wall to the inner citadel. Four silent cannons observed their approach, and Caleb could almost hear their muffled explosions, subdued echoes from the conflicts of a bygone age. At the back gate, he rummaged through his bag for the bolt cutters, but paused as Lydia knelt by the padlock and told him to give her some light. “We don’t want them posting a guard in case we need to get back down there in the future.” A few twists and gentle stabs with two pins held in her nimble fingers, and the lock clicked open.

“Where did you learn that?” Caleb asked.

She merely smiled and winked.

He heard a noise-a soft, padded footfall-and his heart lurched. Pausing at the threshold, he looked back but saw nothing moving in the starlight-speckled courtyard.

“Come on,” Lydia said, and glided through the sandstone halls with a purpose, like this was all second nature. Caleb’s sense of unease returned. First, the incident in St. Mark’s Square, then the lock-picking, and now this feeling that somehow she’d been here before.

“Are you seeing someone? A girl with green eyes…?”

He put his imagination behind him and followed Lydia’s flashlight beam, which steadily led the way. She climbed to the second floor, and when he joined her he peered out the arched, barred window to see the sparkling lights of the city and the brilliant floodlights around the new library. After a moment’s reflection, they made their way to the great mosque. The heavy waterproof backpack, stocked with all their supplies weighed him down, and when he switched shoulders, he saw something white fluttering above, against the red brick dome.

Ahead, in the darkness before a bend in the corridor, he heard his name. It sounded so much like Nina’s voice. Suddenly Caleb was overwhelmed with the sense of foreboding he’d felt before, the same dread that far below his feet the secrets of the Pharos slumbered without a care, secure behind its defenses.

Again, that lone dove flew around and around the dome overhead, flirting with the trembling beam of light. Caleb’s mouth hung open and it happened again. A shift in perspective, a jaunt into a different medium where everything was a little more real, a touch colder, his senses sharper. He saw a man…

… in flowing white robes. “Come, Demetrius. It is time for you to see.” Two great Egyptian statues flank the entrance to a grand chamber lit by a half-dozen torches inside glass lamps set high on the walls. A pair of long chains rest on the floor, one hooked to the wall above the inscribed door, the other clamped to the feminine statue’s moon-shaped headdress. Four slaves are securing the chains and preparing a large, circular harness that could hold several men. “This is why you have come.”

Demetrius, out of breath, holding his side, moves past the enormous onyx statues. “What is that?” he asks Sostratus, pointing to a pit in the floor.

“Drainage vent.”

“And that?” He faces the great wall ahead, observing the pair of winged snakes coiled three times around the staff with an inscribed sun symbol above their heads. Six other arcane symbols surround the staff.

“The great seal.” Sostratus turns and points to a spot on the ground. “Stand there.”

In the flickering torchlight, Demetrius only now notices the symbols on the floor. One following the other, seven symbols painted and carved on seven large granite blocks leading to the sealed door. He steps onto the first block and reads the sign. “Lead?”

“We both will stand here,” Sostratus says as he joins him. “Then we shall move forward, block by block. At the next stone we will be secured by these chains.”

Demetrius looks to the next sign, two feet closer to the seal. “Tin?”

Sostratus lowers his head. “You will understand.”