“How can there be a sacred place,” asked Valentine, “in a city that had a curse pronounced on it?”
“The shrine is sacred nevertheless,” the khivanivod said obdurately.
“Even though no one knows what may be inside it?”
“I know what is inside it,” said the khivanivod.
“You? How?”
“I am the guardian of the shrine. The knowledge is handed down from guardian to guardian.”
Valentine felt a chill traveling along his spine. “Ah,” he said. “The guardian. Of the shrine.” He was silent a moment. “As the officially designated successor, I suppose, of the guardian who murdered a Pontifex here once thousands of years ago. The place where you were found praying just now, so I’ve been told, was the tomb of that very Pontifex. Is that so?”
“It is.”
“In that case,” said Valentine, allowing a little smile to appear at the corners of his mouth, “I need to ask my guards to keep very careful watch on you. Because the next thing I’m going to do, my friend, is to instruct Magadone Sambisa and her people to proceed at once with the opening of the seventh shrine. And I see now that that might place me in some danger at your hands.” Torkkinuuminaad looked astounded. Abruptly the Metamorph shaman began to go through a whole repertoire of violent changes of form, contracting and elongating wildly, the borders of his body blurring and recomposing with bewildering speed.
But the archaeologists too, both the human ones and the two Ghayrogs and the little tight-knit group of Shapeshifters, were staring at Valentine as though he had just said something beyond all comprehension. Even Tunigorn and Mirigant and Nascimonte were flabbergasted. Tunigorn turned to Mirigant and said something, to which Mirigant replied only with a shrug, and Nascimonte, standing near them, shrugged also in complete bafflement.
Magadone Sambisa said in hoarse choking tones, “Majesty? Do you mean that? I thought you said only a little while ago that the best thing would be to leave the shrine unopened!”
“I said that? I?” Valentine shook his head. “Oh, no. No. How long will it take you to get started on the job?”
“Why—let me see—” He heard her murmur, “The recording devices, the lighting equipment, the masonry drills—” She grew quiet, as if counting additional things off in her mind. Then she said, “We could be ready to begin in half an hour.”
“Good. Let’s get going, then.”
“No! This will not be!” cried Torkkinuumaad, a wild screech of rage.
“It will,” said Valentine. “And you’ll be there to watch it. As will I.” He beckoned toward Lisamon Hultin. “Speak with him, Lisamon. Tell him in a persuasive way that it’ll be much better for him if he remains calm.”
Magadone Sambisa said, wonderingly, “Are you serious about all this, Pontifex?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. Very serious indeed.”
The day seemed a hundred hours long.
Opening any sealed site for the first time would ordinarily have been a painstaking process. But this one was so important, so freighted with symbolic significance, so potentially explosive in its political implications, that every task was done with triple care.
Valentine himself waited at surface level during the early stages of the work. What they were doing down there had all been explained to him—running cables for illumination and ventilating pipes for the excavators; carefully checking with sonic probes to make sure that opening the shrine wall would not cause the ceiling of the vault to collapse; sonic testing of the interior of the shrine itself to see if there was anything important immediately behind the wall that might be imperiled by the drilling operation.
All that took hours. Finally they were ready to start cutting into the wall.
“Would you like to watch, majesty?” Magadone Sambisa asked.
Despite the ventilation equipment, Valentine found it hard work to breathe inside the tunnel. The air had been hot and stale enough on his earlier visit; but now, with all these people crowded into it, it was thin, feeble stuff, and he had to strain his lungs to keep from growing dizzy.
The close-packed archaeologists parted ranks to let him come forward. Bright lights cast a brilliant glare on the white stone facade of the shrine. Five people were gathered there, three Piurivars, two humans. The actual drilling seemed to be the responsibility of the burly foreman Vaathimeraak. Kaastisiik, the Piurivar archaeologist who was the site boss, was assisting, just behind them was Driismiil, the Piurivar architectural expert, and a human woman named Shimrayne Gelvoin, who also was an architect, evidently. Magadone Sambisa stood to the rear, quietly issuing orders.
They were peeling the wall back stone by stone. Already an area of the facade perhaps three feet square had been cleared just above the row of offering-alcoves. Behind it lay rough brickwork, no more than one course thick. Vaathimeraak, muttering to himself in Piurivar as he worked, now was chiseling away at one of the bricks. It came loose in a crumbling mass, revealing an inner wall made of the same fine black stone slabs as the tunnel wall itself.
A long pause, now, while the several layers of the wall were measured and photographed. Then Vaathimerak resumed the inward probing. Valentine was at the edge of queasiness in this foul, acrid atmosphere, but he forced it back.
Vaathimeraak cut deeper, halting to allow Kaastisiik to remove some broken pieces of the black stone. The two architects came forward and inspected the opening, conferring first with each other, then with Magadone Sambisa; and then Vaathimeraak stepped toward the breach once again with his drilling tool.
“We need a torch,” Magadone Sambisa said suddenly. “Give me a torch, someone!”
A hand-torch was passed up the line from the crowd in the rear of the tunnel. Magadone Sambisa thrust it into the opening, peered, gasped.
“Majesty? Majesty, would you come and look?”
By that single shaft of light Valentine made out a large rectangular room, which appeared to be completely empty except for a large square block of dark stone. It was very much like the glossy block of black opal, streaked with veins of scarlet ruby, from which the glorious Confalume Throne at the castle of the Coronal had been carved.
There were things lying on that block. But what they were was impossible to tell at this distance.
“How long will it take to make an opening big enough for someone to enter the room?” Valentine asked.
“Three hours, maybe.”
“Do it in two. I’ll wait above ground. You call me when the opening is made. Be certain that no one enters it before me.”
“You have my word, majesty.”
Even the dry desert air was a delight after an hour or so of breathing the dank stuff below. Valentine could see by the lengthening shadows creeping across the deep sockets of the distant dunes that the afternoon was well along. Tunigorn, Mirigant, and Nascimonte were pacing about amidst the rubble of the fallen pyramid. The Vroon Deliamber stood a little distance apart.
“Well?” Tunigorn asked.
“They’ve got a little bit of the wall open. There’s something inside, but we don’t know what, yet.”
“Treasure?” Tunigorn asked, with a lascivious grin. “Mounds of emeralds and diamonds and jade?”
“Yes,” said Valentine. “All that and more. Treasure. An enormous treasure, Tunigorn.” He chuckled and turned away. “Do you have any wine with you, Nascimonte?”
“As ever, my friend. A fine Muldemar vintage.”
He handed his flask to the Pontifex, who drank deep, not pausing to savor the bouquet at all, guzzling as though the wine were water.
The shadows deepened. One of the lesser moons crept into the margin of the sky.
“Majesty? Would you come below?”
It was the archaeologist Vo-Siimifon. Valentine followed him into the tunnel.