Текст книги "Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Burton, who'd identified points of cover among the rocks ahead, shouted instructions back to them.

They ran.

Herbert Spencer hobbled along, scraping his stump over the hard ground. A spear clunked into his hip and stuck there.

“Yow!” he cried. He yanked it out and threw it aside.

Another clanged off his head.

“Bloody hell! Bloody hell!”

He reached the sidewall, where it bulged outward, and collapsed into its shadow. He lay there, groaning.

“Herbert,” Swinburne called. “For the umpteenth time: it's all in your mind! You can't feel pain!”

“Ready for more dodging?” Burton called.

“Wait a moment!” Trounce shouted. A spear tip had scooped a furrow across his thigh and blood was flowing freely. He tore off one of his shirtsleeves and used it to bind the wound. “All set!”

Another mad dash, more spears-but far fewer this time-and they reached the space beneath a leaning slab without further injury.

“They must have stolen every spear from every village they pillaged,” Swinburne noted. “Either that or they have a portable pointy-stick factory with them.”

A wailing scream suddenly echoed and a body thumped into the gorge near to where they squatted. It was a white man, blond-haired and blue-eyed and dead. An arrow, striped red and black, was sticking out of his chest.

Shouts and screams sounded from above.

“They're being attacked!” Burton exclaimed.

“Who by?” Swinburne asked.

“Let's not dally to ponder that! Come on!”

They dashed out of their hiding place-the king's agent giving support to Trounce, and Swinburne to Spencer-and hurried along the cleft, leaving the embattled Prussians behind.

After they'd traversed perhaps two miles, the ground angled steeply upward. It was tough going.

Burton's stomach rumbled. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose.

He tried to remember what it felt like to sit in his old saddlebag armchair by the fire in his study.

“We're gettin' close, Boss,” Spencer announced. “I can feel the Eye's presence.”

The group struggled on through the fissure. By mid-afternoon, its walls had opened out and they emerged onto a low summit. The temperature plummeted, and suddenly they were shivering. The low mountains and hills they'd trekked through humped away to the rear; to either side, a long ridge zigzagged away to rising snow-covered peaks, which jaggedly heaped into the distance; and ahead, a long slope of crumpled strata plunged steeply downward and was split by a second shadowy crevasse.

Footing became precarious now; the ground was very uneven, with patches of loose slate-like rock that slipped from beneath their feet and rattled away down the incline.

They reached the fracture in the mountain's side and entered it. Darkness closed around them. Sheer rock faces soared up to the left and right, reaching such a height that the sky was reduced to nothing but a thin line of serrated blue.

They stopped for a moment while Burton rummaged in the pack for the oil lamp. Its glass was broken but it was functional. He struck a lucifer, put it to the wick, and moved on, illuminating the cracks and irregularities in their path.

“That's rummy!” Swinburne muttered. “No echoes!”

It was true: their footsteps and voices, the knocks and scrapes of displaced stones-every sound was sucked into an overwhelming silence.

The eerie atmosphere increased as the party moved ever deeper into the gloom.

“If Speke went on ahead while the Prussians tried to stick us with spears, then surely we must be hot on his heels by now,” Trounce whispered.

Burton clenched his jaw and fists.

After a while, they found themselves catching swift movements from the corners of their eyes-indistinct things flitting through the shadows-but when they looked, there was nothing to see.

The thread of sky was so far away that the darkness was almost complete. Burton raised his lamp. It illuminated men, naked but for loincloths and necklaces of human finger bones, standing dark and motionless against the cliffs to either side. Their faces were scored by networks of scars, making their skin resemble the segmented hide of reptiles; they were holding bows fitted with red-and-black-striped arrows, and their eyes were fixed on Herbert Spencer.

“How many?” Swinburne hissed.

“Hard to tell. A lot,” Burton replied. “Chwezi. It was obviously they who attacked the Prussians.”

“Look at the way they're all a-gogglin' at me,” Spencer said.

“I'm not surprised,” Swinburne responded. “With all those dents and scratches, you're quite a sight!”

“Thank you, lad. But it ain't that. I reckons they can feel the diamonds what's in me head.”

“They're closing in to the rear,” Trounce warned.

The others looked back and saw a number of the Chwezi slowly moving toward them.

“But they've left the way ahead open,” Swinburne observed. “Seems to me like they're here to escort us. Or do I mean herd us?”

“To the Eye?” Burton asked.

“It's in this direction, Boss,” Spencer confirmed. “The emanations are very strong now.”

“Then I suggest we allow ourselves to be guided.”

The king's agent continued on along the narrow path, and Swinburne, Trounce, and Spencer trailed after him. The Chwezi stood in eerie silence, not moving until the Britishers had passed, then falling in behind.

Untouched by the sun, the mountain air grew increasingly frigid, and the men's breath clouded in front of their faces. Snow, piled at the sides of the crevasse, reflected the light of Burton's lamp, stark white in the black shadows, and ice glittered on the walls.

“This fault line,” Swinburne said, “we climbed up through it on the other side of the mountain, and now we're descending through it on this. It's as if the whole peak has been split down its centre. What unimaginable energy must have caused that?”

“Not volcanic,” Burton mumbled, distractedly. “This is metamorphic rock. You can see from the angle of the strata how subterranean pressures have pushed it upward.” He frowned and looked up at the thin strip of blue sky high overhead. “You're right, though, Algy. There are very powerful geological forces at work here!”

Half a mile farther on, the chasm suddenly opened out to form a broad, bowl-shaped arena into which the sun shone, warming the air dramatically.

“Look!” Trounce said softly, and pointed ahead.

Across the space, the high wall was cut through as the great crack in the mountain's side continued, the mouth of it blocked by more of the silent Chwezi. Burton glanced about. He and his companions were surrounded.

“There's a cave,” Spencer announced. He pointed to the right, at a gap in the ranks of encircling warriors, where a shadow in the rock concealed a blacker patch of darkness.

“Bombay said the temple was underground and accessible through a cave. I suppose that's it,” Burton said. “And our escort obviously wants us to go down there.”

He moved warily to the opening and extended his lamp into it, illuminating a deep hollow at the back of which he saw a narrow opening.

“Come on,” he called, and ushered the others in with a wave of his hand. They filed past and he followed, stepping through the aperture in the rear wall while watching to see if the Chwezi were going to come in after them. They didn't.

He turned and saw a smooth rocky passage.

“Wait,” he instructed. His friends stopped and he squeezed past them until he was in point position.

They moved on, following the irregular tunnel. It descended, bending to the right and to the left.

There were no sounds of pursuit.

After a while, the detective became aware of something peculiar. He ordered a halt and blew out his lamp's flame. By degrees, a faint bluish luminescence became apparent.

“What's that?” came Swinburne's whisper.

“Some sort of phosphorescent fungus or lichen, by the looks of it. Let's proceed without the lamp. Our eyes will adjust.”

Gingerly, measuring every step as the passage inclined more steeply, they inched onward. As they did so, the glowing fungus became more prevalent until, a few yards farther on, it covered the walls entirely, lighting the way with a weird, otherworldly radiance.

The crooked corridor veered sharply to the left and plunged downward at a severe angle. They struggled to maintain their footing, slipping and stumbling until they were moving faster than they could help. Almost running, they plunged down and out onto the level floor of a fantastical chamber-a large domed grotto-so filled with ambient blue light that its every feature stood out in sharp focus.

They gasped, astonished at the spectacle.

Stalagmites, ranging from tiny to huge, rose from the floor, stretching toward stalactites of similar proportions, which hung from the high roof. Many of them had met and melded together to form massive asymmetrical pillars, giving the chamber the appearance of a gigantic organic cathedral.

Veins of glittering quartz were embedded in the walls, and serrated clumps of the crystal rose from the floor. On the far side of the chamber, a small fountain of clear water tinkled as it bubbled up from its underground source, spreading into a pool, roughly oval in shape and about twenty feet across at its widest point. Draining from it, a narrow stream had cut a channel through the stone floor to the centre of the cavern, where the kidney-shaped forty-foot-wide mouth of a sinkhole opened in the floor. The stream plunged into the darkness of this cavity, disappearing back into the depths of the Earth.

A number of tall wooden posts with roughly spherical masses stuck at their tops stood around the hole.

At the base of the walls, mushrooms-probably white but appearing pale blue in the light-stood clustered in groups; mushrooms of wildly exaggerated proportions, many of them more than twelve feet tall.

Trounce gasped: “Somebody pinch me!”

“Incredible!” Swinburne spluttered. “If an emissary of the fairy nation stepped forward and, on behalf of his monarch, welcomed us to his kingdom, I wouldn't be a bit surprised!”

They moved farther into the grotto and peered into the well. Trounce picked up a rock and dropped it in. They waited, expecting to hear a crack or splash echoing up from the darkness. Neither came.

“A bottomless pit,” the Scotland Yard man muttered.

The men stepped over to the pool. Burton knelt and lifted a handful of water to his lips.

“Wonderfully pure,” he said. “Thank heavens!”

They slaked their thirst.

“Boss,” Spencer said.

Burton looked at the philosopher and saw that he was pointing at the nearest of the upright poles. The king's agent examined it and let out a gasp of horror.

The lump at its top was a desiccated human head. Though wrinkled and shrunken, it was unmistakably that of a European.

There were seven poles and seven heads. Burton examined them all. He recognised one. It was Henry Morton Stanley.

“These others must be the five men who travelled with him,” he said. “Which leaves one extra.”

A harsh voice rang out: “Ja, mein Freund!It is the head of poor James Grant!”

They whirled around.

Count Zeppelin stepped into view from behind a thick stalagmite. He was a tall and portly man with a completely bald head and a big white walrus moustache. His hands were gripped tightly around the neck of a second individual. It was John Hanning Speke. The vicious-looking claws at the end of Zeppelin's fingers were pressing against, but not yet piercing, the skin of the Britisher's throat.

“Es ist sehr gut!”said the count enthusiastically. “We have reached the end of our journey at last!”

“You bastard!” Swinburne hissed. “You've the blood of Tom Bendyshe and Shyamji Bhatti on your hands!”

“I do not know those people,” Zeppelin answered. “And I do not care.”

Burton whispered to Spencer: “Herbert, if you can make your revolver work, now is the time. On my command, draw it and shoot him.”

“Rightio, Boss.”

“And what is the death of one man,” Zeppelin was saying, “or two, or even a hundred, when we-how do you say it, Herr Burton? – wenn wir mit der Welt spielen?”

“When we are gambling with the world. I would say the death of one man might make all the difference, Count Zeppelin. Hello, John. Your erstwhile ally seems to have you at a disadvantage.”

Bedraggled and skinny to the point of emaciation, with his beard grown almost to his waist, Speke's pale-blue right eye was wide with fear. The left was a glass lens-part of the brass clockwork apparatus that had been grafted to his head, replacing the left hemisphere of his brain. It was a prototype constructed by Charles Babbage, designed to process the electrical fields stored in two fragments of the Cambodian Eye of Naga. Those diamonds had been stolen before the scientist could properly experiment with them, so he'd passed the device over to a cabal of Technologists and Rakes, and they'd fitted it to Speke in order to gain control of him. Later, Babbage had constructed a much more sophisticated version of the device, and that now sat in Herbert Spencer's head, along with all seven of the Cambodian stones.

“Dick!” Speke gasped. “It wasn't me! It wasn't me! I didn't do any of it!”

“I know, John. You've been the greatest victim of them all.”

“Please! We have to get out of here! They'll come for us!”

Zeppelin grinned. “He believes there are monsters in this place.”

“I see only one,” Swinburne snarled, stepping forward with his fists raised.

“Remain where you are, kleiner Mann,” Zeppelin growled.

Burton said, “Let's not waste any more time. Now, Herbert.”

The clockwork philosopher drew his revolver, aimed it at Zeppelin's head, and did nothing.

Burton sighed. He turned to William Trounce and asked, in an exasperated tone, “Have you noticed how he winds down at the most inconvenient of times?”

“I have!” the Yard man grumbled.

Count Zeppelin laughed nastily. “Your clockwork toy has become a statue. Sehr gut!Now, let us get to business. I want your little assistant to go around the rock behind me. He will find there a pack, and in it some lengths of rope. Have him fetch them, if you please.”

“Up yours, you murdering git!” Swinburne spat.

“It would be more convenient for me to keep the lieutenant alive for a while longer, Herr Burton, but I am prepared to inject him with venom now, if necessary. It will cause him to transform in a most painful fashion. He is your enemy, ja?But he was once your friend. Are you prepared to watch him die?”

The count applied pressure to Speke's neck. The Englishman started to choke.

“Stop!” Burton barked. “Algy, fetch the ropes.”

“But, Richard-”

“Just do it, please.”

Swinburne hesitated, then stamped past Zeppelin and his captive, found the pack, retrieved the coils of rope, and returned to his former position.

“Don't-” Speke began, but was cut off and shaken hard.

“You will be quiet!” the count said. He looked at Trounce and demanded: “You there! Who are you?”

Trounce scowled. “I'm Detective Inspector William Trounce of Scotland Yard.”

“Ha-ha! A policeman in Africa! Most amusing! You will kneel down and the little man will bind your wrists.”

“I'll not kneel for you!”

“You are of no consequence to me, Detective Inspector. If you allow yourself to be tied, I give you my word that I will leave you here alive. Perhaps you will manage to free yourself and make your way out of this cavern, ja?But if you resist, I shall most certainly kill you like a dog.” Zeppelin transferred his attention to Burton. “Do not doubt that I can defeat all three of you, Herr Burton!” He took his right hand from Speke's neck, held it up, and flexed his fingers. His claws gleamed in the phosphorescent light. “It takes but one scratch!”

“William,” Burton said, quietly. “Do as he says, please.”

Trounce looked shocked. “We can overpower him!” he hissed.

“The risk is too great. As he says: one scratch. I would prefer to keep you alive while this affair plays itself out.”

“Kneel with your back to me, Herr Policeman. I wish to see that the rope is made tight.”

Trounce slowly obeyed, his face livid with anger.

Burton said: “Go ahead, Algy.”

The poet, whose eyes were also blazing with fury, squatted behind Trounce and began to tie his wrists.

“Nein! Nein!”Zeppelin shouted. “Das ist einslipknot! Ich bin kein Narr!Do not try to deceive me! Do it properly!”

Swinburne cursed under his breath and started again.

When he'd finished, the count ordered the poet to rejoin Burton. He then dragged Speke forward, still holding him by the neck with just his left hand, and inspected the handiwork.

“Das ist besser!”he exclaimed.

He pulled a revolver from his belt and pointed it at the back of Trounce's neck.

“No!” Swinburne shrieked.

Burton looked on, his face mask-like.

Zeppelin noticed the explorer's expression and grinned at him. “You think perhaps that my pistol is useless, ja?”

He received no response.

“You are wrong, Herr Burton. Observe!”

The Prussian sliced the weapon upward into the bony side of Speke's head. The lieutenant slumped, and the count let him slip senselessly to the ground.

“Effective, do you not think?”

Zeppelin reversed the weapon and held it in his left hand like a club. He stepped closer to Trounce, pressed his knee between the detective's shoulder blades, and, with his right hand, reached down over the Yard man's face. He curled his fingers under the bearded chin and levered Trounce's head back until his spine was agonisingly arched and the Prussian's claws were pressed dangerously into the skin of his neck.

“Now, Herr Burton, you too will kneel and your assistant will tie you. If you do not do this, I will break this man's back.”

“You gave your word!” Swinburne shrilled.

“I gave my word that I would leave him here alive. I did not say anything about the condition of his spine.”

“Damn the man!” Burton muttered. He knelt, facing away from Zeppelin.

“As before, little assistant. None of your tricks!”

Swinburne bent over Burton and began to bind his wrists.

“What's the plan, then, Richard?” he whispered eagerly.

“I was hoping you'd tell me, Algy.”

“Be quiet!” Zeppelin commanded.

Swinburne finished the job and stood back.

The count released Trounce. “Das war einfach!”he said. “It is more convenient to kill a man when he is on his knees, nein?”

He raised the revolver over Trounce, still holding it like a club, looked at Swinburne, and asked, “Do you wish to say goodbye to your friends?”

The poet's mouth fell open.

“Your word, Zeppelin!” Burton yelled.

The count laughed. “Who heard it except the men who will die here today? I will leave this place, by myself, with the Eye of Naga in my hand and my honour intact! I will be a hero to the Germanic people!”

He swung the pistol up and back.

Swinburne let loose a scream of rage and flung himself forward. The Prussian turned and swiped at him, but the poet, with astonishing speed, ducked and rolled through Zeppelin's widespread legs. Snatching up a lump of quartz, he bounded to his feet and threw it with all his might into the side of his opponent's head.

Zeppelin staggered and groaned. He turned and hit out, blindly. Swinburne was already scampering clear and scooping up a fist-sized stone. He threw it and it cracked off the bigger man's kneecap, causing him to scream with pain.

“Bravo, lad!” Trounce cheered.

“Your aim is improving, Algy!” Burton called.

“I was trying to hit his nose!”

“Oh!”

“Come here!” Zeppelin roared, hopping on one leg.

“Not bloody likely!” Swinburne answered. Maintaining his distance, he picked up more crystals and rocks and started pelting the count with them.

“Gott im Himmel!”Zeppelin cried out. He backed away, coming perilously close to the lip of the sinkhole.

“Send him over the edge, lad!” Trounce urged.

In desperation, the Prussian hurled his revolver at Swinburne. It flew wide of the mark.

“Ha!” the poet squealed. He aimed at Zeppelin's uninjured knee, and, putting all his strength behind it, launched another stone. It caught the count in the middle of his forehead. The big man groaned and sat down hard, his eyes glazing over. Blood poured down his face.

Swinburne bent and lifted a large serrated lump of amethyst, heaved it over his head, and staggered toward the Prussian, intending to crack it down onto the man's skull.

“Algy!” Burton yelled. “Stay away from him!”

His assistant, oblivious to all but revenge, ignored the command and reached his opponent's side. He swung the amethyst higher.

Zeppelin's fist lashed out and caught him in the stomach. The crystal shattered on the rocky ground as Swinburne dropped it and doubled over. The count grabbed him by the neck and dug his claws in. He pushed himself to his feet and, standing behind the poet, yanked him around to face Burton and lifted him into the air.

Swinburne's eyes bulged. His face began to turn blue. He jerked and kicked in Zeppelin's grip. Black lines of venom crawled under his skin as the talons sank in.

“Don't!” Burton screamed.

“He is very irritating to me, Herr Burton!” Zeppelin explained, shaking his victim.

Swinburne's tongue protruded. His eyes started to roll up into his head.

“Let him go!” Trounce bellowed.

“I will be certain to do so, Herr Policeman-when he is dead! But see! He has a little life left in him still! How he kicks!”

With his last vestiges of strength, the poet reached into his jacket and pulled from it Apollo's gold-tipped arrow of Eros. He jerked it upward and backward over his shoulder. The point sank into Zeppelin's right eye.

With an agonised shriek, the Prussian reeled back, teetered on the edge of the sinkhole, and plunged into it, dragging Swinburne with him.

Suddenly: silence.

Burton and Trounce knelt, staring, unable to comprehend that their companion was gone. An incalculable interval passed; perhaps a moment, maybe an hour; to the two men, it felt as though time wasn't moving at all; then John Speke moaned and shifted and everything snapped back into focus.

“I say, chaps!” came Swinburne's voice. “Culver Cliff!”

Burton loosed a bark of laughter. On a previous occasion, when his assistant had been dangling over a precipice and holding on by his fingertips, he'd referred to that youthful escapade of his, when he'd climbed Culver Cliff on the Isle of Wight. It had become a symbol of his apparent indestructibility.

“Hold on!” Burton called. He struggled to his feet, his wrists still bound behind him, paced over to the lip of the well, and knelt beside it. Swinburne was just below, hanging on to a narrow shelf with both hands. His neck was bruised purple, and blood flowed from the puncture marks in it.

“William!” Burton snapped. “Get over here, put your back to me, and untie these confounded knots. Can you hang on there for a little longer, Algy?”

“Yes, Richard. But I feel jolly peculiar.”

It was no wonder: the capillaries of the poet's face were black and appeared to be writhing beneath the skin. Small white buds were pushing through at the corners of his nose, and, even as Burton watched, leaves started to open amid his friend's long hair, like a laurel wreath.

“Hurry, William!” he hissed as he felt Trounce's fingers getting to work.

The whites of Swinburne's eyes suddenly turned green.

“I'm thirsty,” he said.

“Almost there!” Trounce grunted.

“And my arms are aching,” the poet added.

“Got it!” the Scotland Yard man announced, and Burton felt the ropes loosen. He yanked his wrists free, threw himself on his stomach, and reached down to his assistant.

“Grab hold!”

Hanging on to the ledge with just his left hand, Swinburne stretched the right up toward Burton.

“My hat!” he exclaimed and drew his hand back a little, for a bright-red flower had suddenly bloomed from the back of it. “It's-it's a poppy, Richard!”

His fingers slipped from their hold.

Swinburne dropped into darkness.

“Have you got him?” Trounce asked.

Burton didn't reply.

“Richard?”

The Yard man crawled around on his knees to face the explorer.

“Richard? Richard? Do you have him?”

The king's agent remained still, his tears dripping into the void beneath his face.

“Oh no,” Trounce whispered huskily. “Oh no.”

Burton untied Trounce.

John Speke stirred and sat up.

“Dick,” he groaned. “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for everything.” He touched the babbage embedded in his skull. “It was this damned thing. Every time I wound it up, it forced decisions upon me. I've been like an opium addict with it. Unable to stop!”

“But now?” Burton asked, dully. He felt remote. Disengaged. Broken.

“It was all about coming here,” Speke responded. “The wretched thing was designed to make me fetch the black diamond for the Technologist and Rake alliance. When you killed the madmen behind that scheme, the compulsion to come here remained, but I had no sponsor, so it forced me to find one.”

“The Prussian government.”

“Yes. I guided Zeppelin here, and as soon as I set foot in the place, the device, having realised its purpose, stopped working.”

An expression of sheer torment passed over his face.

“I still have the addiction, Dick. I'm on fire with the urge to wind it up again! But Babbage booby-trapped it. If I use it even once more, a timing mechanism will activate and it will explode!”

Herbert Spencer broke his pose and stepped forward. He spoke in an uncharacteristically precise voice: “The man you refer to was rather precious about his contraptions, wasn't he? I understand he booby-trapped them all to prevent others from discovering the secret of their construction.” He aimed his pistol at the king's agent. “This revolver will operate perfectly well while it's in my grasp, Sir Richard. Don't you think it rather regrettable that destructive forces must so often be employed to achieve one's ends?”

Burton gasped and clutched at Trounce's arm for support.

Spencer made a piping noise that may have been a chuckle. “Pretending to have lost motive energy is by no means an original trick but it is an effective one. As you can see, I have power in my mainspring.”

“What-what are you playing at, Herbert?” Burton stammered. “Why didn't you help us?”

“The song must be sung in the proper manner.”

“Song? What are you talking about?”

“The Song of the Naga. Let us not stand here discussing it. A demonstration will be far more effective. If you would all please step over to that outcrop of blue crystal-” The brass man gestured with his revolver toward the wall of the cavern where a tall formation of amethyst hunched up from the floor. They moved to it. There was a low opening in the wall behind, a space big enough for a man to crawl into.

Spencer said, “Go in first, please, Mr. Speke; then you, William; and you last, Sir Richard.”

One by one, they entered what proved to be little more than a winding tube. Patches of phosphorescence illuminated its length.

Burton fought to quell his rising panic. He had an irrational fear of enclosed spaces. The passage into the grotto had been bad enough, but this was far worse.

As they inched along, flat on their stomachs, the clockwork man explained: “The fact of the matter is that I'm not Herbert Spencer and never have been. When he died in close proximity to the Cambodian diamonds, his mind was imprinted onto them, just as you thought, but it never had the power to motivate this mechanical body. It was I who did so, using his personality as a bridge-or a filter, if you will-through which to interact with you. Spencer is, I'm afraid to say, thoroughly suppressed. The poor man! I can feel his frustration, his eagerness to help you!”

“Then who are you?” the king's agent asked, fighting to keep his voice steady.

“I am K'k'thyima, high priest of the Naga.”

Burton, whose mind had barely functioned since the loss of Swinburne, struggled to make sense of this revelation.

“I dreamt of you. You sounded different.”

“As I said, I employ the mind of Herbert Spencer in order to communicate. I could chin-wag more like what he bloomin' well does, if'n it'll make you feel more comfy, like.”

“I'd prefer it if you didn't.”

“A little farther, gentlemen. We're almost there.”

Moments later, the three men wormed their way out of the tunnel and got to their feet. They stood paralysed, with hearts hammering and eyes popping.

What confronted them was virtually incomprehensible.

They were standing on a ledge, hundreds of feet above the floor of a vast cavern, which was ablaze with the strange azure radiance; and if the previous vault had seemed magical, then this one appeared miraculous!

A megalithic temple rose from the centre of the massive space. Its soaring walls, spires, and columns were decorated with complex geometrical designs and friezes. The men gazed in awe at its sweeping arches and curving arcades; at the many gargoyles and representations of lions and oxen and other, extinct, animals; and at the thick round central tower that rose to the distant ceiling and merged with it.

The entire temple complex-for there were many outbuildings squatting around the base of the edifice-was hewn from solid rock, and for many minutes, Burton, Trounce, and Speke stood silent and confounded, wondering what manner of tools had been employed to achieve this eighth-and foremost! – wonder of the world.

As the brass man scraped out of the tunnel behind them, Speke whispered, “I never knew! I never got this far! Both times, when I reached the grotto, the things came and dragged me out of it.”

“Then when did you see the Eye?” Burton asked.

“I didn't. Not physically. But I had a clear vision of it.”

“What?All this we've been through began with nothing but a vision?”

“I planted it in Mr. Speke's mind,” K'k'thyima said.

“Things?” Trounce interrupted. “You said thingsdragged you out, Speke?”

“Yes. They were-they were-”

“They were the Batembuzi,” the brass figure interjected. “Long ago, they served the Naga and had an empire that covered all of the Lake Regions, but now this-” he swept out his arm to indicate the temple, “-is their home.” He gestured to their right with his revolver. “The ledge goes down here and slopes around the wall to the floor. Follow it, please.”

They walked slowly, as necessitated by the condition of the clockwork man's left leg.

The ledge narrowed for a stretch, and they had to press themselves against the cavern wall to navigate along it.

“Allow me to tell you a little of the Naga,” K'k'thyima said. “Long, long ago, we lived where the three Eyes had fallen: here, and in South America, and on the continent of Kumari Kandam-and though our colonies were separated, we bonded in a Great Fusion through means of the diamonds.”