“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.”
“Until Brahmin Kaundinya came along,” Burton murmured.
“Ah, of course, you have studied the legend. Yes, your spy Kaundinya broke the Kumari Kandam Eye into seven fragments, causing the physical death of all the Naga on that continent. Their essence lived on in the stones, of course, but now they were isolated, for the other two Eyes were whole, whereas theirs was shattered.”
“Your Great Fusion requires the three Eyes to be in the same state?”
“It does.”
The group was now about halfway down the path. Speke led the way, self-absorbed and tormented; Trounce followed, listening to what he considered a fairy tale; Burton was third in the line; and the clockwork man hauled himself along behind, holding his pistol aimed steadily at the back of the explorer's head.
K'k'thyima continued: “When a Naga completes its lifespan, the Great Fusion offers the choice of true death-which many prefer-or a transcendence. Kaundinya's act of betrayal denied us all these options, and condemned us to eternity and eventual madness. Obviously, this is a situation that has to be corrected.”