“Do any of these paintings depict monsters? Animals with human heads?”
“No. You mean like a sphinx?”
“Exactly like a sphinx,” Gabriel said.
“Well, most of them have been lost—the paintings were done directly on the side of the rock more than fifteen hundred years ago, and there are only twenty-two remaining out of what we think were something like five hundred originally. The ones that are left are mostly images of women—bare-breasted concubines, that sort of thing. But who knows what the ones that were lost depicted.”
“Are there any sculptures, by any chance?”
“One,” Dayani said. “Halfway up, there’s a shelf with two monumental stone paws—lion’s paws, each one taller than a man. And there’s a flight of stone steps between them, leading further up the rock. But that’s all that’s left—the rest of the figure is missing. Clearly there used to be a head there, probably made of fired clay or brick; to get to the top you’d have had to climb up into the lion’s mouth. But it’s all long gone. There’s no record of what it looked like.”
Or whether it was a lion’s mouth at all, Gabriel thought. As frightening as it might have been to ask visitors to allow themselves to be swallowed by a giant stone lion, how much more so would it have been to ask them to climb into the mouth of a man with a lion’s body?
Just the thing to set the proper tone for foreign emissaries coming to the Cradle of Fear.
“Has the site been thoroughly explored?” Gabriel said.
“Depends what you mean by thoroughly,” Dayani said. “It’s rather enormous. The upper surface has been mapped and the grounds around it, but the rock itself is riddled with caves—monks were using it as a shelter for nine hundred years before King Kasyapa ever built the palace on the top, and after his death they used it for nine hundred more.”
“Only monks?” Gabriel said.
“Why? What else did you have in mind?”
“Breeders,” Gabriel said. “Animal breeders.”
“Well, monks in Sri Lanka often did raise animals,” Dayani said.
“Not the kind I’m thinking of,” Gabriel said.
“And what kind’s that?”
Gabriel shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dayani. The less you know, the better. There are men coming here who have already killed at least nine people in pursuit of a relic of some sort that’s connected to Sigiriya. I don’t want them to have a reason to come after you.”
“Gabriel,” Dayani said patiently, “if they find out I drove you, they’ll have all the reason they need. You may think you’re protecting me, but you’re not. At worst you’re endangering me and at best you’re annoying me.” She swerved onto the shoulder to give a wide berth to a truck that had loomed up out of nowhere. Honking, she swerved back on once it was past. “So for the sake of all that is holy, mon âme, would you please just tell me what the hell is going on?”
Sheba put down the towel. “Oh, I like this one, Gabriel,” she said.
So he told her—the whole story, starting with the call from Jim Kellen in Dublin and the midnight flight to Hungary, then the abduction in New York and the plane ride to Egypt, the secret chamber deep inside the Sphinx and the cavern beneath Anavatos. He told her about the two sculptures he’d found and the two coins, and the two maps, too, with their inscriptions pointing to ancient Taprobane. Dayani listened to it all without any change in her expression, concentrating on her driving, until finally she pulled to a stop in a lot behind the Golden Temple, put on the parking brake, and turned the keys in the ignition. The car’s engine grumbled once and was silent.
“Gabriel,” she said, turning to face him over the back of the seat, “that’s the craziest story I’ve ever heard. It’s madness—sheer madness. Grown men chasing about, getting killed, over a fairy tale about monsters and treasures…how could anyone believe anything so, so détraqué?”
“You asked,” Gabriel said. “You wanted to hear it. Now you’ve heard it. Maybe it’s crazy and maybe it’s not. But it’s true—I can promise you that. The men who are looking for this treasure are real, and the bullets in their guns are real, and they’re all of—” He checked the unit in his pocket. “—ninety-one miles away. Which probably means they’ve just landed in Colombo. We’d better get going again.”
“You can’t even wait for the rain to let up?” Dayani said.
“They won’t,” Gabriel said.
She looked over at Sheba. “Have you tried to talk some sense into him?”
“Hey,” Sheba said, “you spend some time with a gun to your head or a sword at your throat, sister, and then you can talk.”
Gabriel saw Dayani’s eyes blaze and he put a hand up between the women. “We don’t have time for this. Dayani—can you let us borrow the car? Actually,” he said, “I guess I should start by asking whether you can even get there by car.”
“You can get pretty close,” Dayani conceded after a moment. “You’ll have to walk the last half mile or so.”
“Then you’ll let us borrow it?” Gabriel said. “Please, Dayani. It’s important.”
Dayani stared into Gabriel’s eyes half regretfully, as though she could read there some terrible future consequences of her decision. “You think I can say no to you?” she said. “Just be careful, for heaven’s sake. Bad enough to get yourself killed over something real, something that matters. To die for a rich man’s fantasy…”
“Many have died for less,” Gabriel said.
“Oui. And many have died for nothing. But I don’t care about many. I care about you.” To Sheba she said, “Close your eyes, dear. You won’t want to see this.”
Sheba didn’t close her eyes as Dayani planted a palm on each of Gabriel’s cheeks and pressed her lips to his, but when the kiss lasted past the ten-second mark, she turned to look out the window. At twenty seconds she said, without turning back, “Maybe you can enlighten me, Gabriel, on just what we do and don’t have time for.”
“Sorry,” Gabriel said, pulling away.
“Be safe,” Dayani whispered. “You, too,” she said to Sheba, and gripped her hand briefly. Then she was out of the car and heading through the pouring rain toward the back door of the administrative building by the Temple’s side. She looked back once, then went inside.
“All of us,” Gabriel said, and he climbed into the front seat.
Chapter 23
The readout of the tracking unit, which Gabriel had propped upright between them, was slowly counting down. When they’d gotten back onto the highway it had said 83SW; now it was down to 77.
The pitch-black sky overhead was lit suddenly by the jagged forks of a lighting strike, followed seconds later by a monstrous crack of thunder and the sound of a tree smashing through branches and leaves to the jungle floor. It sounded just yards away, and Gabriel half expected to see a portion of the tree’s massive trunk drop into view in their path. The car’s headlights illuminated only a few feet ahead of them; it felt like anything might be out there, just out of sight, a collision waiting to happen.
He felt the slope of the road increase as they went, the little car’s brakes straining harder to grip the surface, its engine straining to make some of the steeper climbs. It was a Tata Motors import from India, the best Dayani could afford, no doubt, on the amount UNESCO paid her, and it probably did fine for ferrying her to and from work. It was waterproof; the windshield wipers worked. But it had surely never been tested under the sort of stress cars regularly were forced to endure under Gabriel’s hand, and he very much doubted this one could take the punishment. Just as well, then, that they’d be leaving it at a safe distance from their destination.