“Malcolm!” Lydia’s cry took him back in an instant to her bedside at the hospital. “Help me.”
“It’s not real,” Malcolm said. He shouted it to the ceiling of the cavernous room. “It’s not real!”
“Your arrogance is awesome,” the voice intoned, “if you presume to state what is and is not real.”
“My wife is dead. You cannot change that. No one can.”
“Perhaps. But can the dead not also suffer?”
And from the altar came a shriek of purest terror, of anguish beyond measure. He saw only the giant’s broad back, stooped over the bound figure, saw the hugely muscled arms, streaked with sweat, rock as he gently worked the knife.
“Stop it,” Malcolm said. “Please stop.”
“Why, if it is not real?”
Malcolm had to struggle to keep his voice under control. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can, child, and because it is my pleasure. It is my pleasure that my power be revealed, that men may know a god of might still walks among them, that they may bend their knees in supplication.”
“You want me to kneel?” He dropped to his knees, spread his arms out. “Please.”
“Kneeling is more than a matter of being on your knees. I will spare her for you—and then you will kneel to me in earnest, you will bow to me and do my bidding, as your blind man does in spite of himself. And in time you will speak my name with true reverence rather than with deceit in your heart.”
The men surrounding the altar stepped away, and Malcolm saw that Lydia was still bound to it, her face smeared with blood. He ran to the altar. She was shaking and pale, her torso covered with sweat, and he took her hand gently. One of the priests held a square of silk out to him. He took it and carefully wiped the blood around her eyes.
“My darling,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me.”
So, Burke, he thought, here’s your golden calf. I understand now. There’s a thing you love and crave, and you had it once, too briefly, and now you ache to have it back. Yes, I know how you ache. There is no way you could leave it behind in the desert: you’re bound to it for life, you are its slave. Even if it no longer exists outside your imagination.
I crave, too, Malcolm thought. You’re not the only one; my imagination is no less troubled. But I am not blind, Burke, and I have not your capacity for blind faith.
“I left my wife in Glasnevin,” he said softly, “and I’m going back to her there.”
He let go of her hand, stepped back from the altar, and walked as rapidly as he could toward the corridor through which he’d entered. Behind him, the voice thundered.
“If you go, you will never see her again.”
He kept walking.
“You will never speak to her, touch her, hear her voice.”
He bit back tears.
“She will suffer torments you cannot conceive!”
And then she screamed, a shattering, curdled scream that seemed to contain more pain in it than any body could bear. Malcolm ran from it, tore through the first chamber and the iron gate and the entry hall, pursued by the sound of it. The flames of the candles lining the walls all at once were snuffed out, and at the far end of the corridor he saw the stone wall slowly swinging closed.
“Coward! You will curse the day you abandoned her to me.”
The hall seemed endless, the band of light beyond the wall shrinking as he ran toward it. He bent forward and strained for extra speed, for the last desperate dregs of energy that would carry him through, and he reached the wall at last when only inches remained. He squeezed through sideways, scraping against the rock on either side. From inside, a final angry whisper came, one he could only barely make out.
And then the wall slammed shut.
He leaned against it, breathing heavily, sobbing freely. What have I done, he thought. What have I done?
It was twilight outside and dry and hot. He had little water and less food, and seven miles between him and the nearest source of either. There was nothing for it. He started walking.
I’ll make it, he told himself. I’ll make it home. I’ll tell Burke nothing—let him think I died, let him send other men after me, I don’t care. Just let me make it back.
An image came unbidden into his mind: the shackles, the altar, the woman writhing upon it.
It wasn’t her, he told himself. It wasn’t. The dead don’t walk, or speak, or feel pain, or beg you not to leave.
But it looked—her touch, her voice, it was all—
Rubbish. It was an illusion, a dream, a bit of desert madness.
In his jacket pocket, where he’d crammed it as he ran, he felt the crumpled square of silk, still damp. He took it out, turned it this way and that in the fading light. It was real, and the blood on it was real—not a dream, not an illusion. But what did that mean? Something had happened in the temple, something terrible; but not to Lydia. That wasn’t possible.
Are you certain? a voice in the back of his mind whispered.
Yes, damn it. I am certain.
Then why are you so frightened?
Because—because—
Because you saw her with your own eyes, you held her in your hand, and now you’ve gone and left her behind…
It wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been.
No, no, of course not. It couldn’t. But you’ll never know that for sure, will you?
And he remembered Molekh’s final, whispered imprecation, the words hissed out at him just before the stone walls ground together. You may leave this place, the voice had said, but you will never escape it.
The Jebel Akhdar was barely visible at the horizon. He marched on, and the night closed in around him.
And now—
a sneak preview of the next Gabriel Hunt adventure:
HUNT AT WORLD’S END
Gabriel Hunt had taken a lot of punches to the face over the years. He’d come to think of it as an occupational hazard, dealing as he often did with criminals, pirates, gangsters, brawlers and all kinds of thugs who let their fists do the talking, and he usually gave as good as he got. But this time was different. This was the first time the guy throwing the punches was wearing a big, sharp silver ring in the shape of a horned stag’s head.
The punch stunned him, knocked him back into one of the large elephant tusks flanking the fireplace of the Discoverers League lounge. The tusk wobbled on its base, and Gabriel, feeling wobbly himself, dropped to his knees. Blood trickled along his cheek where the stag’s horns had cut him. He looked up at the slender blond man standing over him in a gray houndstooth blazer and gray slacks. He was wearing a crooked sneer. Glancing at his hand, he wiped a spot of blood off his ring.
“We can continue this as long as you wish, Mr. Hunt,” he said. “I have nowhere else I need to be. But you see my friends back there? They don’t have as much patience as I do.”
Behind the blond man, three men clad all in black stood with guns in their hands. One revolver was trained on Wade Boland, the weekend bartender, where he stood behind the bar. The second was pointed at Clyde Harris, a retired cartographer in his seventies who came to the League every Saturday to partake of his two favorite pastimes, drinking and swapping tall tales. He sat on his usual barstool at the end of the counter and stared at the gun unblinking. Neither Wade nor Clyde looked particular frightened by this turn of events, though they kept their hands dutifully raised above their heads.
But the third revolver was leveled at Katherine Dunlap, and she was a different story. The willowy redhead sat trembling at the table she’d been sharing with Gabriel before the blond man and his cohorts had stormed in and started waving their guns around. Her fingernails dug into the plush arms of the red leather chair, and her pale green eyes were as wide as soup bowls. It was obvious she’d never had a gun pointed at her before. Gabriel had only met her that morning, on his flight back from Brazil to New York City. Seated next to her in first class, he’d passed the hours answering her questions about his just-completed expedition along the banks of the Amazon, and once they’d landed he’d invited her back to the Discoverers League for a drink. She clearly hadn’t expected their date to end in violence. Of course, neither had he.