King Solomon's Curse

  She pulled the lever. Metal creaked – then the section of wall bearing the inscription moved slightly, one edge inching outwards.

  ‘Ouvrez-le,’ Mukobo ordered. His men pulled it wider. Another passage was revealed beyond. ‘Ah! We are getting closer to the treasure!’ Almost as an afterthought, he signalled for Lydia to be released. Her captors let go, the New Zealander dropping to her knees in tears. Fortune went to help her, daring any of the Insekt Posse to stop him. None were willing to try.

  ‘Well done, Nina,’ said Ziff, relieved. ‘Well done. I would never have thought of that. It seems that Solomon liked to play word games.’

  ‘Perhaps his next challenge will be a Sudoku puzzle,’ Brice remarked snidely. ‘Well, you’ve got us this far, so let’s hope your luck doesn’t run out.’

  ‘It already did,’ said Nina, looking sadly at Kimba’s body. She closed her eyes in silent tribute to his bravery and sacrifice, then – at Mukobo’s menacing urging – led the way through the door.

  18

  The passageway descended deeper into the palace. Nina was sure they were nearing the mysterious ‘Mother of the Shamir’ that Solomon had constructed the great building to conceal. A huge structure with only one, hidden entrance; lead-lined walls; death traps guarding the way – whatever it was, the king had taken extreme measures to keep it from the world. Yet the fact that there was a way through all these hazards suggested that he still wanted it to be accessible if necessary. What could it be?

  A new chamber opened out ahead. ‘There’s something else here,’ she reported, surveying it with her flashlight.

  More Old Hebrew inscriptions told her that Solomon had set another challenge. She would have to wait for Ziff’s translation to get its full meaning, but another frieze offered a strong clue. This showed what she guessed was Solomon himself, seated upon a throne. Before him stood two women – and directly between them, a small child.

  ‘The Judgement of Solomon,’ she whispered.

  Mukobo stopped beside her. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It’s his most famous parable,’ said Brice, before Nina could answer. ‘Two women came before him, each claiming to be the boy’s mother. Nobody could tell which was telling the truth – until Solomon found a way.’

  ‘He decreed that since neither woman would give up the boy,’ Ziff continued, ‘he should be cut in two and one half given to each woman. One of them immediately surrendered her claim, so Solomon knew she was the real mother. She would rather lose her child than let him be harmed.’

  Mukobo nodded, though he seemed unimpressed by the tale’s moral. ‘Then what is the test?’

  ‘Something to do with that, would be my guess.’ Nina directed her light across the room. Set into the far wall was what appeared to be an exit – but simply walking out of the chamber was not an option. Immediately beyond the opening was a small circular antechamber with a cage-like wall of hefty metal bars running around its perimeter. There was a way in . . . but no apparent way out. She guessed that once Solomon’s challenge had been successfully completed, the cage would rotate through a half-turn so that anyone inside could leave via another doorway on the far side.

  That challenge somehow concerned what sat beside the entrance. A round dais about a foot high and six across stood proud of the floor. Directly above it hung a huge cylinder of stone, suspended from the ceiling by thick chains. ‘David, what does the text say?’

  ‘It’s another message from Solomon.’ A pause as Ziff digested the ancient words. ‘It says, “The Judgement of Solomon stands as an example. Heed the lesson of the mother, and you shall reach the heart of the Palace Without Entrance.”’

  ‘Another fucking riddle,’ muttered Eddie. ‘Where’s Batman when you need him?’

  ‘If we figure out what the lesson of the mother actually is, we should be able to get through,’ Nina assured him. ‘So . . . what is it?’

  ‘Always follow the better judgement of men, perhaps?’ offered the smirking Brice. Mukobo laughed.

  Nina shot the Briton a look of disgust. ‘Not helping. Asshole,’ she added.

  The rest of the group advanced into the chamber, though none of the Insekt Posse were willing to go too far. Fortune risked a look through the exit. ‘I cannot see anything on the far side. But there is another big stone hanging above the cage.’

  ‘So they’re both booby traps?’ said Lydia. She sounded numbed, having passed beyond horror to resigned surrender. ‘How are you supposed to get through?’

  ‘Solomon must have left a way,’ said Nina. ‘Something to do with “the lesson of the mother”. It’s about a mother giving up her child in order to protect it. There are two traps there, the cage and the column, so maybe it’s about . . . sacrifice.’ A grim possibility dawned. ‘For somebody to get through the cage, someone else has to stand under that pillar as it falls.’

  ‘There’s nothing stopping them from just stepping out of the way, though,’ said Eddie.

  ‘I know – and that’s the worst part. Whoever does it has to voluntarily sacrifice themself to save the other.’

  A nasty smile spread across Mukobo’s face. ‘If this is the last test before we reach the treasure . . . then I know who will take that test.’

  Eddie jerked a thumb at Brice and Luaba. ‘Cockface and Tooler here, maybe?’

  ‘No.’ The warlord pointed at the cage. ‘Put Chase in there!’

  Guns came up at the Yorkshireman. ‘All right, I’m fucking moving,’ he said as Luaba shoved him towards the cage.

  ‘You come with me,’ Mukobo said to Nina, forcing her to the dais. ‘If one of you dies, or both of you, I do not care . . . but you will open that door.’

  Luaba pushed Eddie into the enclosure. His weight tripped something – and with a shrill screech the cage made a quarter-turn, its open section grinding around to face the antechamber’s blank inner wall. He tried to push it back to its original position, and then towards the opening opposite, but it wouldn’t move. He was trapped.

  There were no bars around Nina, but she felt trapped too as Mukobo brought her to the circular dais. It was not flat; a raised lip a few inches deep surrounded a recessed slab. She looked up at the stone cylinder. It was the same width as the recess rather than the whole rostrum, but whether that was significant she had no idea.

  She had no time to think about it either. ‘Get on,’ ordered the Congolese.

  ‘Please, don’t,’ she begged. ‘I might be wrong about what we’re supposed to do.’

  ‘Then you will both die. Get on!’ He aimed his gun at her, driving her on to the dais with his other arm.

  As with Eddie, her weight triggered a mechanism. Dust showered her as the suspended column jolted. Mukobo hastily stepped back. The deep grumble of a giant cog reluctantly waking from its three-thousand-year slumber filled the room – and the pillar started to descend.

  As did the ceiling above her husband.

  Eddie pressed back against the bars, but the gap between the cage and the steadily lowering block was barely an inch. ‘Nina!’ he yelled. ‘Get off that thing, save yourself!’

  She held her ground despite her fear. ‘If I do, you’ll be killed! That’s the whole point of Solomon’s story – it’s about sacrificing yourself to protect someone else!’

  He angrily shook the cage. ‘No, that’s bollocks! She offered to make the sacrifice, but in the end she and her little boy stayed alive – and stayed together! There’s got to be another option.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t know what!’ The column above her was still rumbling downwards – slightly faster than Eddie’s. It would reach her first. Solomon would have designed the test to work that way on purpose – but why?

  ‘Then get off it! There’s no point both of us dying!’

  Nina’s heart raced, but her mind was working even faster, desperately trying to find an answer – the right a
nswer. She was convinced that Solomon had not set an impossible challenge. The map room in the First Temple, the eagle puzzle on the palace’s roof, both the previous traps – all had a solution.

  So what was this solution?

  Heed the lesson of the mother. Solomon’s own words, his instruction to those accepting his final test. What was the lesson?

  The column’s base was less than a foot above her head. In a moment it would reach her, and she would either have to duck – or step off the dais. Doing the latter, she was sure, would doom Eddie.

  The lesson of the mother. The phrase rolled around in her head. She had given up the most precious thing in her life to keep it safe—

  No. Eddie was right. She had been willing to give it up. Intent, not action. They were not the same thing . . .

  The answer came to her – she hoped.

  If she was wrong, she would be dead in seconds. ‘I love you, Eddie!’ she cried . . . then closed her eyes.

  ‘Nina!’ he shouted, but she didn’t respond, instead using every scrap of willpower not to jump clear as the pillar finally touched her head. She flinched, but stayed in place. It ground relentlessly downwards, forcing her to bend, then crouch.

  Eddie was still pleading for her to move and save herself, his voice becoming more strained as he too was forced down by the descending ceiling. But she could barely hear his words over her panicked breathing as she was pushed lower and lower, pain rising as she was squeezed between the unyielding stones—

  Fear finally overcame her. The terrified animal part of her brain tried to break free – but too late. She couldn’t escape, the falling column squeezing the air from her lungs, crushing her bones . . .

  Something moved.

  For a moment she thought the pillar had stopped. But the agonising pressure didn’t lessen—

  Realisation hit her. The dais was moving, the recessed disc being driven into the floor. Her own body was acting as a shock absorber, painfully taking the weight of the stone piston above – and transmitting it to the platform beneath her.

  A waft of cool air blew around her. She was being pushed into another chamber below!

  The column shuddered, then stopped with a crunch – and rose slightly. Nina slithered sideways, falling off the platform to flop on to a solid floor. Panting, she brought up her flashlight.

  A tunnel led out of the new room. Off to one side, a flight of steps led upwards – to the antechamber in which her husband was trapped. ‘Eddie?’ she gasped.

  ‘Nina?’ His relieved and bewildered voice came from the top of the stairs. ‘Where are you? I thought you’d been fucking squashed!’

  ‘There’s another room underneath the chamber.’ She staggered up the stairs to emerge behind the circular antechamber. The pillar above Eddie was rising back to its original position, the Yorkshireman straightening beneath it. ‘The platform I was standing on got pushed down into it. You were right.’

  ‘About what?’ He took hold of the bars, which to his surprise moved. The lock had been released, allowing the metal cage to rotate freely.

  ‘About the mother. It was her offer of a sacrifice that mattered, not the sacrifice itself,’ she said as he hauled the open section of the cage around. ‘Her willingness to give up her son to save him ended up bringing them back together.’

  ‘Just like this.’ He stepped out and embraced her.

  ‘Ow, ow,’ she protested. ‘Don’t squeeze so hard! I just had a couple of tons of stone pressing down on my back!’

  ‘It wasn’t pressing down on your mouth, was it?’

  ‘No, why?’

  He kissed her. ‘That’s why.’

  Relief flooded through her, though tempered by the knowledge that they were still in danger. ‘There’s an exit down there,’ she told him. ‘It must lead to the Mother of the Shamir.’

  ‘Whatever that is.’ Raised voices from the other side of the cage warned that their survival had been noticed. ‘If they didn’t still have Fortune and the others, I’d say we run on ahead and make sure Mukobo and those other bastards never get their hands on it. But . . .’

  She nodded, grim. ‘I know.’

  ‘Chase!’ the warlord shouted, directing his light through the bars. ‘Dr Wilde! How did you get out?’

  ‘Long story,’ Nina said. ‘But everyone can come through now. I think that once someone proves willing to sacrifice themself for someone else, the trap stops.’

  Mukobo pulled at the bars, turning the cage. ‘And the treasure?’

  ‘At the end of the next tunnel, I guess.’

  ‘Good. At last!’ He entered the antechamber, keeping his gun on the couple. ‘Where is that boy with the camera? I want him to film me as I find it!’ Howie was pushed to the front of the group as Mukobo rotated the cage again and emerged from the enclosure. ‘So, Dr Wilde, we have overcome the tests of King Solomon. And now, it is time to claim my reward!’

  Eddie and Nina exchanged looks of despair, then started down the steps, the gloating warlord behind them.

  19

  The final tunnel was not long. ‘Do you feel that?’ said Ziff. ‘There is a breeze.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nina replied. ‘But we must be almost in the heart of the palace, so I don’t know where it’s coming from.’

  ‘We’ll find out in a second,’ said Eddie as they reached an elaborately carved archway. ‘Doc, there’s some more text. What does it say?’

  Mukobo halted impatiently as Ziff read the inscriptions. ‘Another message from Solomon,’ he reported. ‘No, actually . . . a welcome. “In reaching here, you have proven you possess the wisdom of Solomon. The Imashamir awaits you. Those who wish to use it, do so with the same wisdom.”’

  ‘Wisdom, wisdom,’ scoffed Mukobo. ‘A true leader knows that power is worth more than wisdom! And whatever Solomon hid here, I will now have its power!’ He snapped his fingers at Howie, ordering the young man to film him, then marched through the entrance.

  The others followed, torch beams sweeping outwards to probe the huge new chamber – and finding more than they had imagined. ‘All right,’ said Eddie, trying to hide his amazement. ‘Wasn’t expecting this.’

  High above was the underside of the palace’s vaulted roof, the dull expanse of lead camouflaged by a sweeping decorative filigree in gold leaf. The walls bore ornate pillars that Nina imagined were designed to evoke the original architecture of Zhakana before its fall.

  But it was not what lay above that drew everyone’s attention.

  The pathway continued downwards – into a gaping chasm. Steeply sloping bridges criss-crossed the abyss, linked by equally precipitous stairways carved into the cliff faces on each side. Nina went to the edge and peered down. Structures were dimly visible on terraces far below. Whatever lay at the bottom was beyond the range of her flashlight, however.

  There was something else too: not seen, but heard. Or felt. An unsettling vibration, just below the limit of hearing, but undeniably there . . .

  She turned to Lydia. ‘Do you hear that? Is it the same noise you picked up outside?’

  The chance to focus upon something technical drew the other woman out of her shell-shocked lethargy. She donned her headphones, adjusting her equipment’s controls. ‘Yeah, I hear it,’ she said. ‘It’s definitely the same sound – but it’s much louder here.’ She aimed her microphone into the chasm. ‘It’s coming from down there.’

  ‘Then that is where we will go.’ Mukobo went to the first bridge, then had second thoughts as he saw that not only was it very steep, but also lacked any kind of safety barriers. The only thing between a person traversing it and a very long fall was an ankle-high parapet with a deep groove carved into it. ‘Dr Wilde!’ he said. ‘You are the archaeologist – go first and tell me what you see.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ she said, but the odd architectural feature had already caught her atten
tion. There was a large stone bowl at its top, a small hole in the base feeding into the channel. Stacked near it were several pottery casks, narrow necks sealed with dark wax or tallow. She went to investigate them.

  ‘Ah, Dr Wilde? The bridge is that way,’ said Brice, pointing.

  ‘You said you wanted me to tell you what I see,’ she told the frowning Mukobo. ‘And I want to see if this is another trap.’ She examined the casks. One was cracked, stained where its contents had drained out. She cautiously probed inside, finding a sludgy residue. ‘It’s oil.’

  ‘What is it for?’ asked Fortune.

  ‘I think it’s how they illuminated this place. They poured oil into this big bowl here and let it drain down the gutters, then set it alight.’

  ‘Ingenious,’ said Brice, not sounding remotely impressed. ‘Fortunately, lighting technology has advanced since Solomon’s day.’

  Mukobo shone an example at the bridge. ‘You are wasting time. Now go.’

  Nina reluctantly started over the crossing. With no guardrails, she quickly felt a dizzying sense of vertigo. She fixed her gaze upon its far end, taking the descent step by step. As she neared the chasm’s other side, she realised it was not a natural feature – at least, not in its present form. There were patches of raw rock, but most of it seemed to have been carved out of the ground. By the natives of Zhakana, or those who came after them?

  She stepped on to the ledge at the bridge’s foot with great relief. ‘It’s safe.’

  Mukobo led the others after her. She moved down the steps cut into the cliff to make room, looking back up at the bridge. It was an elegant arch, the stone blocks supporting their own weight just like the roof high above. Each piece had the same precision-cut appearance as those in the Palace Without Entrance and the First Temple – a level of accuracy far beyond what archaeologists had previously thought the people of that era capable of. The chasm had been excavated in the same way. Maybe there was something to the legend of the Shamir being able to split stone . . .