The Last Priest Read online

  “If the -” Henrik began.

  “Then why did we get satellite images of it, huh?” Duncan continued. “The magic tomb was okay with revealing itself then, but not now? Crap, that's one indecisive tomb! Someone really ought to have a word with it! What's next, are you going to start believing the stories about the mighty Ah-Shalla rising from his sarcophagus?”

  “Let's just calm down,” Chris said firmly. “I'm sure there are other explanations.” He sighed, but after a moment silence fell upon the group, as if each member was considering his or her own private frustrations.

  In a nearby tree, a ruffed lemur stopped for a moment and glanced down at the humans, before continuing on its way.

  “Charley still didn't answer,” Martha said suddenly.

  Everyone turned to her.

  “We were in the middle of another vote,” she continued, “and Charley didn't answer yet.”

  Everyone turned to Charley.

  “I...” Charley began, thinking again of home, and of the chance to take her dog Walter for a long walk by the river. “I mean, I can see both sides...”

  “Can the spiel,” Martha said, interrupting her. “What's your vote?”

  “I think...” Taking a deep breath, Charley tried to decide. “I think we should keep going,” she said finally.

  “Fuck,” Duncan said, turning and walking away.

  “For now,” she continued. “Just for now! We should vote again in the morning, though!”

  “You're unbelievable,” Duncan replied, stopping and turning to her. “You just can't do it, can you? You can't do the right thing!”

  “It's what I really think!” Charley told him.

  “Bullshit.”

  “We've wasted enough time,” Chris said with a sigh. “We need to keep moving and, as Charley suggested, this matter should be considered closed until the next vote in the morning.”

  As the others hauled their backpacks onto their shoulders, Charley was keenly aware of the bad atmosphere, and in particular of the fact that Martha was staring at her. She felt as if she'd become the focal point for everyone's frustration,

  “I can't work you out,” Martha said eventually. “Are you just stubborn, or do you actually think we should keep going? I mean, who are you trying to impress here? Daddy?”

  “No, I -”

  “The rest of us?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then who?” She paused for a moment. “Yourself. You're trying to impress yourself.”

  “The satellite images don't lie,” Charley pointed out. “The tomb's here.”

  “Waiting for the right person to find it?” Martha asked, with a smile that made her skepticism more than clear. “You don't really believe that crap, do you? I thought you had a rational scientific mind.”

  “I believe in finding the tomb,” Charley told her.

  “Well, you've got guts,” Martha continued, as they got moving, bringing up the rear of the group. “Most people would've caved and given in to peer pressure just now.”

  “I know you think I'm just doing this to make my Dad proud,” Charley replied, “but you're wrong. I genuinely believe we can find the tomb.”

  “I almost respect you for holding your ground,” Martha replied. “Almost.”

  “That's fine,” Charley told her. “I don't need your -”

  Before she could finish, she tripped and stumbled for a few steps before the weight of her backpack sent her crashing down onto the forest floor, landing hard on her knee and causing her to let out a gasp of pain.

  “You okay?” Martha asked, hurrying over to help her up.

  “Yeah, I just -” Looking down at her right knee, she saw a deep, thick cut, with blood already running down the side of her leg. “Damn it.”

  “Okay, we need to get this fixed,” Martha said, dropping her backpack to the ground. “In this climate, you can't take any chances with an open wound. Even a small scratch can come back to bite you.”

  “Great,” Duncan muttered, “now we're gonna be even slower.”

  “It's not her fault,” Martha replied as she took out the first aid kit.

  Looking over her shoulder, Charley listened to the silence for a moment. “Where are all the animals?” she asked finally.

  “You want creepy sounds?” Martha asked, as she continued to clean the wound.

  “No, but there's nothing,” Charley continued. “All around us, it's like suddenly there are no other sounds in the jungle or -” Before she could finish, she let out a gasp of pain.

  “Sorry,” Martha said with a smile, as she used a cotton swap on the wound.

  “It must have been a tree root,” Charley said, looking around for some sign of the culprit. “I guess I -” Stopping suddenly, she saw something dark glistening beneath the leaves. Reaching out, she realized that her knee had landed on a piece of rock that was now covered in blood. Pulling more of the leaves away, she ran her hand over the rock and felt to her surprise that the surface seemed to be smooth and carved, as if at some point it had been deliberately fashioned. “Chris, look at this,” she said, pulling a few more leaves back.

  “It looks like some kind of marker,” he said, kneeling to examine the rock. “Whatever it is, it's old.”

  “But it's man-made, right?” Charley asked. “It looks like -” Before she could finish, she let out another gasp of pain and turned to see that Martha was applying some disinfectant solution to the wound on her knee.

  “Sorry,” Martha said, clearly amused. “It's gonna sting a little.”

  “There's lettering on here,” Chris continued, taking a piece of paper from his pocket and placing it over the rock, before using a piece of charcoal to shade the surface. After a few seconds, several markings began to show through, and as the others headed over to take a look, it became increasingly clear that the rock contained some form of text.

  “Do you understand what it says?” Charley asked.

  “No,” Chris replied. “Anyone else?”

  “I've never seen anything like it,” Duncan said, crouching to take a closer look. “I'd need an internet connection to be sure, but just off the top of my head, I can't think of another language that resembles this, although...” He paused for a moment. “Maybe... I guess it could be related to some of the primitive Yucatan language sets.”

  “So what's it doing out here?” Charley asked. “I mean...” She paused. “You said it was a marker. If it was put here deliberately -”

  “Let's not get carried away,” Chris said, glancing around the clearing. “I don't see anything else in the area.”

  “I already took a look,” Duncan replied. “There's nothing.”

  “Are you sure?” Charley asked.

  He turned to her. “Well yeah, duh, I think so. Definitely no massive pyramids, anyway.”

  “We need to keep an eye on this,” Martha said as she finished cleaning the wound on Charley's knee. “I don't think it needs to be covered with anything more than a light protective gauze.” She started packing the first aid kit away. “As long as you keep it clean and we disinfect it several times a day, you should be fine, but if you feel any pain at all, you need to let me know immediately.”

  “Thanks,” Charley muttered, getting to her feet. Testing the knee, she found she could put weight on it, although there was a little discomfort.

  “We'll take things slowly,” Chris told her.

  “No, I'm fine,” she replied, grabbing her backpack and putting it over her shoulders. The extra weight made her knee ache, but she was determined not to slow the group down. Forcing a smile, she turned to the others. “See? I'm absolutely fine.”

  “We need to work out what this marker means,” Chris continued, as he took several photos of the stone. “On its own, it doesn't help a great deal, but it definitely shows that we're on the right path.”

  Taking several steps away from the group, Charley continued to test her knee. The pain wasn't enough to stop her walking, but it felt bad enough that she w
as starting to wonder how much longer she could keep going. With another vote scheduled for the following morning, she felt that an injured knee might be enough to tip her over the edge and cause her to change her decision. Limping across the clearing, she tried to tell herself that she'd be fine, but she was also worried about developing an infection. Before leaving England, she'd seen enough hideous online images of infected body parts to know that jungle conditions could make the injury very bad, very quickly.

  “Hey,” she said suddenly, stopping as she spotted a raised section of stone poking out from a high bank of soil. She limped forward and took a closer look, only to realize to her astonishment that she'd found what seemed to be part of an old wall, fashioned out of dark stone and decorated with inscriptions that looked similar to those on the rock. She reached out and pulled some vines away, finally seeing that the wall was several meters high.

  Taking a deep breath, she realized her heart was racing.

  “Hey!” she shouted, unable to stop staring at the wall. “Over here!”

  “You okay?” Martha asked, making her way over to join her. “What are you -” Stopping suddenly, she saw the wall. “What the hell?” She turned to the others. “Guys! You have to see this!”

  “I already checked this part,” Duncan replied, heading over to them. “There's nothing -” He stopped as soon as he saw the section of wall.

  “There's more,” Charley said, pulling another mass of vines away to reveal another set of inscriptions. “It's like it runs out of the ground and all the way over to the crest of the hill.”

  “No way,” Duncan continued, clearly shocked and struggling to understand. “I checked over here just a few minutes ago and there was no goddamned wall!”

  “Well, it's here now,” Martha whispered, clearly stunned by the discovery.

  “No!” Duncan said firmly. “This doesn't make any sense!”

  “It's right where it should be according to the map,” Chris said, checking the coordinates. “If the satellite images are correct, this should be one of the outer sections of the tomb.”

  “I looked here,” Duncan continued. “I swear to God -”

  “It's okay,” Chris replied. “We all believe you.”

  “I'm not an idiot,” Duncan told him. “Do you seriously think I wouldn't have noticed a three-meter wall running through the jungle?”

  “The heat can play tricks on you,” Chris told him. “The conditions -”

  “Bullshit,” Duncan continued, making his way along the wall, as if he was still struggling to accept that it was real. “Look at this thing, it's huge! You'd have to be blind to miss it!”

  “Let's not get caught up in that right now,” Chris continued. “The important thing is that we've found something. This is the first real proof we've seen that the map is right, in which case...” He paused for a moment, as if he was overcome by the prospect of exploring further. “We have to head around this thing and see what else there is.”

  “Do you think we've found it?” Charley asked, turning to him. “Have we found the lost tomb of Ah-Shalla?”

  “Let's not get carried away,” he told her. “Let's be calm and methodical about this.”

  “Bullshit,” Duncan said, standing a few meters away and staring up at the wall. “This was not here a few minutes ago.”

  “Maybe it didn't want to be found back then,” Henrik said, stopping next to Charley before turning to her. “Maybe something changed, or maybe it wanted to be found in a certain way, by a certain...” He paused, leaving the sentence unfinished.

  “It was just luck,” Charley told him. “It was just dumb luck that I happened to trip and then...”

  “This way,” Chris said, with the map in his hand as he hurried past them, heading along the wall and toward the edge of the clearing. “Everybody follow me!” he called back to the others. “If the map is right, we must be only a few hundred meters from the edge of the main section! There should be a clearing somewhere nearby.”

  “Not bad,” Martha muttered, nudging Charley's arm as they began to follow. “You sure you're okay to walk on that knee?”

  “I'm fine.”

  “Liar.”

  “It doesn't hurt that much. Come on, we have to keep up.” Increasing her pace, Charley made her way past Martha and then overtook Henrik, determined not to get left behind as Chris hurried through the jungle up ahead.

  “This wasn't here,” Duncan muttered. “I swear -”

  “Forget it,” Martha told him, “it doesn't matter now.”

  “It matters to me,” he continued. “I'm not blind and I'm not an idiot. There was not a three-meter tall wall in the middle of the jungle, not when I was here a few minutes ago.”

  “Then how do you explain it?” Henrik asked.

  “Obviously the -” Pausing, Duncan seemed to have no answer. “Maybe the maps were screwy,” he said finally, as they made their way up the incline that led past the wall. He lowered his voice, so that Charley wouldn't hear him. “Think about it. Maybe Chris intentionally gave us bad maps so that Charley could be the one who'd supposedly make the discovery. The whole thing was staged so that she could have the big ta-da moment. Maybe that was part of the deal that secured her father's funding.”

  “Paranoid, much?” Martha asked.

  “I'm serious! It's the only thing that makes sense! Or would you rather believe that the tomb can really hide itself and then decided to reveal itself to some spotty postgrad research student? The kid probably isn't even in on it, Chris probably tricked us all! This is pure theater!”

  “Careful,” Martha told him, “if you keep thinking like that, you're gonna lose your freaking mind.”

  “Hurry!” Chris shouted, having stopped a little way ahead, at the top of the hill.

  “Have you found something?” Charley asked, stumbling a little under the weight of her backpack as she hurried to catch up to him. “Did you -”

  Stopping as she reached him, she stared ahead and blinked a couple of times, as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing.

  “What's up?” Martha asked as she, Duncan and Henrik caught them. “Are -”

  The five of them stood in silence for a moment, each unable to say a word as they surveyed the scene. Spread out before them was a vast clearing, with a section of wide-open space running for a few hundred meters before a huge stepped pyramid that rose up from the ground, towering several hundred meters high.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Chris said after a moment, “I think we've found the lost tomb of Ah-Shalla.” He turned to them with a smile. “Big enough for you?”

  Chapter Three

  “It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,” Chris said a short while later, as the five of them reached the edge of the grass and stopped before the huge stone steps that rose up to the first layer of the pyramid. “It's even more majestic than I imagined.”

  The stepped pyramid had five distinct levels, each with its own small plateau running around the perimeter. Each side of the pyramid was several hundred meters long, and the peak rose high above the surrounding trees, so high that it almost looked to be touching the roof of the world.

  “Think about it,” Martha said after a moment. “No human being has been here for a thousand years.”

  “That's not quite true,” Henrik pointed out. “No-one's been here and lived to tell the tale. A little different, don't you think?”

  “Harold Cathcart was here and got away again,” Duncan added. “There's hope for us yet.”

  “Harold Cathcart went mad and shot himself,” Henrik reminded him.

  “Don't let your superstitions get to you now,” Chris replied with a faint smile. “This is the twenty-first century. We're better than that.”

  “Are we sure this is the right place?” Charley asked, taking a step forward. “I mean, it seems pretty much completely undisturbed, but is it really the tomb of Ah-Shalla?”

  “It fits the general coordinates,” Chris replied, “and don't forget, we
have a few contemporary descriptions. Look at the top. Most stepped pyramids in this region have a structure right at the top, but it was always said that the pyramid of Ah-Shalla eschewed that design, which is one of the things that separated it from the others. I don't see anything on the top of this one apart from maybe a venting system, so all the main chambers must be deep inside the pyramid itself. The odds of it being anything else -”

  “It's Ah-Shalla, alright,” Duncan called over to them. Crouched next to one of the other walls, he was examining some markings that had long ago been carved into stone. “This text basically confirms it,” he continued, running his fingers across the carvings. “It's an ancient variation of the core Yucatec languages. I've never seen anything exactly like it, but there are enough similarities for me to get the gist of what it's saying. There's a specific warning about this being the tomb of the great warrior king Ah-Shalla, along with the usual warnings about entry being forbidden.”

  “This is the place, alright,” Chris continued. “We've found it.”

  “Big deal,” Martha muttered.

  The others turned to her.

  “What I mean is, it's one thing to find the place. Other people have found it. Not many, but some. The tricky part seems to be getting back to civilization with the news and then getting a proper excavation set up. I mean, Harold Cathcart probably stood on this exact spot and thought he'd hit the jackpot.” She turned to Charley. “Didn't do him much good, did it? You know the story of Harold Cathcart, right?”

  “Of course,” she replied defensively. “He's the guy who was sent by Charles Ravenscroft in 1887 to find the tomb. Two years later he returned to London and claimed he'd been successful, but he killed himself before he could tell anyone the exact location.” She paused for a moment. “He had three other people with him, didn't he? They didn't make it out alive.”

  “Impressive,” Martha replied with a faint smile. “You did your homework.”

  “I spent the past six months doing nothing but reading up on this place,” Charley told her.

  “Let's not start fighting again,” Chris said firmly. “I guess we won't need to conduct any more votes. Now we've found the place, we'll stick to the original plan.”