The Last Priest Read online

  “The man's certainly driven, I'll give him that.”

  “It's almost like he doesn't care.”

  “He cares,” Duncan replied after a moment, “just not about people. He cares about the task at hand, about getting into that tomb.”

  “Why?” Charley asked, looking up at him. “Don't tell me it's just curiosity. I feel like there's something in there, something specific, that he wants. Martha and Henrik felt the same, too. They told me just before...” Her voice trailed off; the words still seemed surreal.

  Reaching out a hand, Duncan watched for a moment as the rain battered his palm. “Feels good,” he said, before turning to her. “According to legend, Ah-Shalla was buried with some of the finest treasures known to mankind. We're not just talking about vast amount of gold here, I mean gold, screw gold, gold's just shiny. The real treasures in that tomb are greater than all the gold in the world put together, we're talking about things that...” He paused, before a faint smile crossed his face. “Damn it, I'm gonna start sounding like poor old Henrik now, but... Some of the legends said that Ah-Shalla was buried with records of certain types of knowledge. It's said that Ah-Shalla had mastered the divide between life and death. If you believe some of the more outlandish stories, the guy recorded his knowledge and had the stone tablets placed next to his body.”

  “And you think Chris really believes in stuff like that?”

  “I think...” He paused again. “I think he didn't, when I first met him a decade ago. I think maybe he's changed. And I think certain rich old men might believe in it enough to finance an expedition.”

  “You mean my father?”

  “The guy who invested, what was it, a billion and a half in various life-extension experiments? Didn't he start a company that was dedicated to studying telomeres and trying to use them to make people live longer? No offense, Charley, but it seems to me that your Daddy has spent most of his life chasing after this kind of thing. Who knows? Maybe he just got desperate enough to start thinking outside the box.” He watched as rain continued to hit his palm, before pulling his hand back in and wiping it dry on his shirt. “Meanwhile Chris gets the funding he needs in order to make the archaeological discovery of a lifetime. He always used to say that he wanted to be the first archeologist to win the Nobel Peace Prize for a single big discovery. This is probably his only shot.”

  Sighing, Charley saw another flash of Martha in her mind's eye, and then Henrik too.

  “Do you wanna see something creepy?” Duncan asked after a moment.

  “Not really.”

  “Come on,” he continued. “It means getting wet, but it's something I saw yesterday. I didn't mention it at the time, because I didn't want to feed into Henrik's irritating, holier-than-thou belief in kooky stuff, but what the hell, I feel like it's worth mentioning.” Stepping out into the rain, he turned to her. “I think you'll get a kick out of this.”

  Figuring that anything would be better than sitting and thinking about the events of the previous twenty-four hours, Charley hauled herself up and followed him out into the rain. Immediately soaked from head to toe, she followed Duncan along the plateau until they reached one of the other walls, where a series of pictograms had been etched into the stone a thousand years ago. With rain having already soaked through her clothes, she felt as if the sound of the storm was almost enough to drown out the thoughts in her head. But only almost.

  “See this one?” Duncan shouted over the sound of the storm, pointing at one specific pictogram. “And this one, and these?”

  Charley nodded.

  “They're a specific warning about breaking into the tomb,” he continued, raising his voice even more so he could be heard above the rain. “These lines here say that eventually a group of travelers will be stupid enough to try, and that they'll bring the full weight of the curse down on their heads.” He pointed at a set of small images that had been carved into the stone, showing a series of figures. “Five travelers,” he explained. “Seem familiar?”

  “That's just a coincidence,” she pointed out.

  “Sure, except...” He ran his fingers over the carvings for a moment. “Three men and two women. Now, given that this stuff was carved a thousand years ago, it's kind of forward-thinking that they thought women might be included in a proper archeological expedition, don't you think? Almost as if they weren't guessing... They knew.”

  “You're right,” she replied, “that does sound like the kind of thing Henrik would say.”

  “Maybe the old chap was right after all,” he continued. “I don't know, I'm just showing you what's on the wall. Take this, combine it with the warnings about death crossing the world from the west, moving toward the east -” He paused. “At least it's something to think about, huh? To be honest, I dismissed it at first, but during the night... Well, I guess I just wanted something to think about that wasn't the fact that I'd just seen two people die right in front of me. This is how those kind of things wriggle into your mind.”

  “So you think that a thousand years ago, the people who made these inscriptions somehow knew that the five of us would turn up and break into the tomb?”

  “I hope not,” he replied, “because if that's the case, they didn't seem to be very optimistic about the idea of us getting out of here.”

  “I guess we are stuck,” Charley muttered, turning and looking over at the rain-battered trees. “While this storm lasts, it'd be suicide to try to leave.”

  ***

  Making her way past the warrior statues, Charley finally spotted Chris at the far end of the chamber, still chiseling away at the stones that he believed would give way to the burial chamber. As she got closer, she saw that he was much further through than she'd expected, and he was working on widening the already substantial gap that he'd already created. He'd obviously worked non-stop during the night, never even tiring or flagging.

  Stopping for a moment, she realized he was so engrossed in his work, he hadn't even heard her approaching. She watched for a few seconds, amazed that after two days and two nights without sleep he was still able to keep going.

  Finally, she decided she needed to speak. “Hey -”

  “Jesus!” Mis-hitting the hammer, he dropped his tools and pulled back, clutching his hand.

  “Sorry,” she replied, stepping closer. “Are you okay?”

  “I'm fine,” he muttered, even though there was blood at the tip of his thumb.

  “Let me take a look.”

  “There's no need,” he told her, already picking up the hammer and chisel again, “it's just a flesh wound.”

  “Your nail's -”

  “It's nothing,” he muttered, looking at the damaged thumb for a moment before ripping the broken nail away and then getting straight back to work.

  “I didn't mean to startle you,” she continued. “I just thought I'd come and see how you're doing.”

  “I'm through,” he replied, indicating the hole he'd already made. “It's not quite wide enough for me to get through yet, but -” He paused, eying her up and down. “You might be able to fit.”

  “No way.”

  “Charley, you could just -”

  “No way,” she said again. “If you think I'm crawling into some burial chamber, you're out of your mind. Anyway, it looks like you'll soon have a big enough hole for you to get through yourself.”

  “Please, Charley, I've tried using the torch to look through, but it's hard to really see anything. If you could just crawl through the hole and double-check that it actually is the burial chamber, at least I'd know whether or not I'm wasting my time.”

  “I'm not doing it.”

  “But if -”

  “I'm not,” she said firmly.

  “Fine,” he replied, getting back to work. “I guess they were right about you after all.”

  “Who was right about me?” she asked, immediately feeling a sense of anger in the pit of her stomach.

  “Oh, just all the people who told me I'd picked wrong,” he contin
ued, chiseling away at more of the stones. “I only had five spots to fill on this expedition. A lot of people thought I should have given the fifth spot to someone who'd already proved themselves, but I was willing to take a risk. Of course, it didn't help that your father was pressuring me to bring you.”

  “But you said -”

  “You're a first year postgrad student,” he said with a sigh. “How many other first year postgrads get signed up for this type of expedition? I'll give you a clue. None of them.”

  She stared at him for a moment, realizing that her worst fears and doubts were coming true.

  “So if it wasn't for my father,” she said finally, “I'd never have -”

  “You knew all along,” he replied, interrupting her. “You might be inexperienced, but you're not naive. You had doubts, and I helped you to cover them up, but I guess you might as well know the truth now.”

  She knew he was winding her up on purpose, trying to get her to prove herself by climbing through the hole, but at the same time she felt that she had to show him that she was more than some dumb work-experience girl.

  “Get out of the way,” she told him, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him aside as she knelt by the hole.

  “You don't have to try to prove yourself,” he replied.

  “Actually yeah, I do.” For a moment, she thought back to the moment when Henrik begged her not to go any further. At the same time, she was determined to prove to Chris that she was more than just part of her father's price tag for funding the expedition. In the back of her mind she knew she was making a mistake, but she figured nothing too bad could happen. “I'll just take a look, okay?” she said finally. “I'm not going all the way in. It's just to let you know whether the burial chamber is really on the other side of this wall.”

  “Maybe I was wrong about you,” he replied, with a faint smile.

  “What about traps?” she asked.

  “There won't be any.”

  “That's what you said before!”

  “According to the culture of these people, the burial chamber itself was sacrosanct. It would have been an insult to the king to put traps in there, because it would have meant admitting that thieves might have got into the heart of the pyramid. I guarantee you, there are no traps in the chamber itself.”

  She paused, feeling her heart pounding as she considered pulling out. Staring at the hole that Chris had made, she began to wonder if she could even squeeze through, but she figured she'd said too much to back out now.

  “Okay,” she whispered, leaning down, “I guess this is it.”

  Taking a deep breath, she held the torch in her mouth. Reaching her hands into the hole, she immediately felt cold air on the other side. Leaning forward, she slipped her head through and then her shoulders, before starting to wriggle through into the darkness on the other side. She twisted and tried to turn, momentarily feeling as if she might be stuck before managing to get loose again. As she tried to heave herself all the way, she felt Chris putting his hands on her ass, pushing her, and finally she tumbled all the way through the hall, dropping a couple of feet down until she hit the cold, stone ground hard. In the process, she dropped the torch from her teeth and was powerless to stop it rolling away.

  “Charley?” Chris called through. “Are you okay in there?”

  “Yeah!” she called back, her voice echoing slightly. Feeling a pain in her knee from the injury she'd picked up a day earlier, she winced as she sat up and looked around at the darkness. Spotting her torch a few feet away, she crawled over and grabbed it, before turning and shining the light beam across the room.

  “What do you see?” Chris asked.

  She watched as light glinted off some kind of chest, and after a moment she realized that there were other items all around her. As she shone the torch around, she saw all sorts of statues and boxes: there were jars and caskets, and figurines and carved ornaments, and large bowls filled with jewelry. A moment later, the light from the torch hit a small metal face, and she felt a shiver as she realized that a golden statue was staring straight back at her.

  “They say great treasures are buried in the tomb,” she remembered Henrik telling her. “According to legend, the treasures can drive any man insane with greed.”

  “Charley?” Chris called out. “Talk to me!”

  “There's a lot of stuff in here!” she shouted back to him, her heart pounding as she realized she'd found the long-lost treasures of the great god Ah-Shalla. Reaching out, she ran a hand over the chest and saw that it was covered in jewels. She knew she shouldn't tamper with anything, but she couldn't help herself: fumbling with the clasp, she finally managed to get it open, only to find that the chest was filled to the brim with gold coins. For a moment, she felt as if she could think about nothing except the fact that she was in a room filled with some of the most priceless items on the planet. Reaching a hand into the chest, she ran her fingers through the coins, mesmerized by their touch. Turning, she watched as the light from her torch ran across statues made of solid gold, and all the thoughts seemed to fade from her mind as she imagined what it would be like to own everything around her.

  “You have to keep it all for yourself,” she remembered Henrik warning her. “You mustn't share it with anyone. It's yours and yours alone.”

  She paused, before realizing that the memory was false. Henrik hadn't told her to keep the treasures to herself.

  Finally, after a few minutes had passed, she realized she could hear a voice nearby. She had to focus hard, but after a moment she turned and realized that the voice was coming from the hole she'd just crawled through. It took a second before she snapped back to reality and remembered precisely what was happening.

  “Charley, for God's sake, say something!”

  “What?” she replied uncertainly.

  “Thank God,” Chris continued, “what's wrong? I've been trying to get you to say something for five minutes now.”

  “You have?” She paused, trying to work out why she hadn't heard him. “Sorry, I just... I'm here.” Getting to her feet, she shone the light from her torch across the room, until finally she spotted a large, dark chest in the center, and she immediately knew that she'd found the sarcophagus of Ah-Shalla. For a moment, all she could do was stare in stunned silence, aware of the weight of history on her shoulders.

  “Charley?” Chris called through. “Tell me what you see!”

  “It's here,” she replied, unable to tear her gaze from the sarcophagus.

  “What is?”

  “The tomb.”

  “Charley, I need you to tell me exactly what you see!”

  “The sarcophagus. It's here, it's Ah-Shalla.” Taking a few steps forward, she began to approach the sarcophagus, making her way past the various boxes and statues.

  “Oh thank God,” Chris said from the other side of the wall. “Okay Charley, I need you to come back through.”

  “It's so...” As she got closer to the sarcophagus, she saw that it was fashioned out of gold.

  “Charley, don't go over to it!” Chris shouted. “I want you to come back immediately!”

  “But it's...” Reaching out, she almost touched the side of the sarcophagus, keeping her hand just inches away. “It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,” she whispered, still daring herself to move her hand closer.

  “Charley, it's not safe in there! There are traps!”

  She shook her head, still staring at the face on the sarcophagus.

  “Charley, there are traps!” Chris said again. “I need you to come back immediately!”

  “There are no traps,” she replied, finally pressing the tips of her fingers against the edge of the gold sarcophagus. “You said it yourself. You're just trying to make me leave so you can get all of this for yourself.”

  “I was wrong,” he continued, starting to sound increasingly panicked. “Charley, get the hell out of there!”

  “He's in here,” she whispered, running her hand across the gold until she reached
the face. She stared for a moment at the painted eyes, before leaning directly over the sarcophagus so that the eyes were staring back at her. After a few seconds, she realized that in the very center of the eyes there were small holes, as if to allow the mummified body to see out.

  “Charley!” Chris shouted. “Get out! Now!”

  “He's been waiting for someone to come,” she continued, running her hand across the side of the golden face. “He's in here, still waiting...”

  She could hear Chris still calling out to her, but her voice seemed to be drifting away from her thoughts, as if he was completely unimportant. Instead, she stared down at the sarcophagus and felt a growing urge to tear the damn thing open, to get inside at any cost and finally see the face of the body within. Even as she heard a faint banging sound nearby, she focused entirely on the sarcophagus, and after a moment she set the torch down so that, with both hands, she could take hold of the lid's other side and start pulling. In the back of her mind, she could hear her father's voice urging her to make sure she took everything for herself, telling her for the first time ever that he was proud of her for -

  “No!” Chris said suddenly, grabbing her arm and pulling her back.

  Turning, she saw to her surprise that he was standing right next to her.

  “How...” She paused. “How did you get in?”

  “I've been calling to you for an hour,” he replied, clearly angry. “What the hell's wrong with you?”

  “An hour?” She looked back down at the sarcophagus. “No, it's only been a few minutes.”

  “Well, it was long enough for me to finish breaking through,” he pointed out, “so I think a few minutes might be stretching things.” He shone his torch around the room for a moment. “It's not safe in here, Charley. It's a miracle you didn't trip any wires.”

  “What are you talking about? You said there were no traps.”

  “I might have been wrong.”

  “But -”

  “Let's just try to calm down, okay?”