The vibration began to die down. All he had to do was hold everything in place and endure the noise for as long as it took for the machine to run out of air—
A clanging shudder ran up the length of the pipe as the pressure rose - then rippled back down it. A blast of compressed air hit the mouth like a sledgehammer blow, firing the blockage out of the slot and bowling Eddie to the floor. With a ground-shaking whump like the clearing of the world’s mightiest throat, the terrifying bass note resumed - at full volume. Plaster splintered from the walls, even the paving cracking.
The noise was so overpowering that Nina could barely think. The beam of her dropped flashlight illuminated the bottom of the pipes. Blocking the mouth had failed, but there had to be another way . . .
Something Eddie had said forced its way through the disorientation.
Two pipes, a piston in one, forcing the air ahead of it as it dropped. The air itself acted as a cushion slowing its fall - there was only one relatively small hole through which it could escape, and the hourglass-shaped pinch at the bottom of the organ pipe restricted it further.
She knew what to do.
She grabbed a mallet from Eddie’s discarded gear. With her ears exposed, the sound became unbearable - she screamed, but couldn’t even hear it. A piece of falling stone hit her arm. More debris crashed around her, a crack leaping up the wall—
She swung the mallet.
It hit the pinch, tearing the metal. A piercing shriek escaped from the rent. Nina hit it again, and again - and the pipe ripped apart.
Air blasted out, the awful bass note dropping in volume. She whacked the pipe again, trying to close off the section producing the sound. The metal bent across the torn hole.
The note faded.
Head ringing, Nina stepped back. The escaping rush of air was still roaring like a jet engine - and there was another sound, a metallic clung-clung-clung rapidly getting louder—
Eddie threw her backwards as the bottom of the other pipe blew apart, something inside it hitting the ground so hard that it smashed a crater into the flagstones. The piston. With air now freely able to escape from the pipe, there had been nothing to slow it, and it had plunged downwards as fast as gravity could take it.
A last few fragments from high above hit the floor, then the rain of debris stopped. The quiet and stillness was almost shocking. Nina brushed dust from her face, then looked at Eddie. His mouth moved silently.
Oh, God, she was deaf—
‘Just kidding,’ he said, grinning.
She hit him. ‘You son of a bitch!’
‘Hey, we’re okay. I think.’ Concern crossed his face as he clicked his fingers beside one ear. ‘Shit, that doesn’t sound right.’
‘You’re surprised, after that?’ She retrieved her flashlight, finding Macy. ‘Are you okay?’
Macy slowly took her hands from her ears. ‘Jeez. My mom and dad were right - you can play music too loud.’
Nina helped Eddie up. ‘Let’s try those gates.’
He went to the exit and strained to lift the gate. It was heavy, but it moved. When they had recovered their gear, he hauled the gate up high enough for Nina and Macy to get underneath, then they supported it as he slid through. He looked back at the wreckage of the trap. ‘Five down, two to go.’
‘Yeah, but the last two sound really nasty,’ Macy pointed out. ‘The Hewer-in-Pieces and the Cutter-off of Heads? Not good.’
‘We can beat them,’ said Nina, oddly buoyed by their survival. ‘And then . . . we’ll meet Osiris.’ They set off down the next passage.
Over two hundred feet above, Osir led his expedition to the Lady of Tremblings. Dust drifted through the room, stirred up by the sound from the massive pipe. ‘I think we’ve found where that noise came from,’ he said, directing a powerful torch beam across the shaft.
The rest of his group followed him on to the ledge. Although there were several men in military-style uniforms, wearing equipment webbing and carrying weapons, they were not soldiers: Khaleel, though accompanying Osir out of curiosity, had chosen to leave his men aboard the hovercraft. The troopers were members of the Osirian Temple, Shaban’s personal security force.
Shaban gazed at the long drop below. ‘Some sort of trap. Wilde and Chase, and the girl - they must have triggered it.’ He smirked malevolently. ‘I’m in two minds, brother. It would be amusing if they died setting off a trap that we then walked through safely, but I’m also hoping they survive - so I can kill them myself.’
‘All that matters is that they can’t get out,’ said Osir. He turned to Berkeley. ‘What do you make of this room?’
‘The hieroglyphs in the entrance chamber definitely suggested that each arit is booby-trapped.’ Berkeley pointed at one of the large cogwheels. ‘This would be the Lady of Tremblings, at my guess. Wilde and the others must have activated it when they crossed - and survived.’
‘They didn’t fall?’ asked Hamdi.
‘That noise? I think it’s safe to assume that was the Goddess of the Loud Voice, which is the fifth arit. They got that far, at least.’
‘Which means they’ve cleared the way for us,’ said Osir. He stepped on to the bridge.
‘Are - are you sure it is safe?’ said Hamdi nervously.
Osir took another step. The bridge stood firm. ‘Either the trap has been sprung, or it’s broken.’
‘Lead on, Khalid,’ said Shaban as his brother negotiated the crossing. Once he reached the other ledge, he signalled the others to follow.
The cogwheel creaked, the stone jamming it shifting slightly, but nobody noticed.
Another set of columns marked the sixth arit.
‘Okay,’ Nina said, pausing outside. ‘Hewer-in-Pieces in Blood, huh? I think we’ll need more than a few Band-Aids if this goes badly, so let’s figure out how to make it not go badly.’
She and Eddie directed their lights through the opening. The level passage ahead was decorated with the now-familiar disapproving Egyptian gods and grim warnings of the fate awaiting intruders . . . but there was also something new.
Something ominous. Set into the walls were numerous horizontal slots, lined top and bottom with rust-red plates of iron.
Eddie aimed his torch into the nearest slot. There was something within, another long piece of metal on a hinge at one end . . . but this was considerably thinner along its edge. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Blades inside the holes. I get it. We go down the tunnel and they spring out and chop us into chunks.’
‘They’re kinda rusty,’ said Macy. ‘Maybe they won’t work.’
‘You want to bet your life on that?’ Nina asked. Each slot was almost as long as the passage was wide, leaving no room to escape the blades by pressing against the opposite wall - though the sheer number of slots on both sides made finding any kind of hiding place almost inconceivable. ‘How the hell are you supposed to get through?’
Eddie took out the mallet, crouching with his arm outstretched to tap the floor just past the columns. Nina winced in fearful anticipation of a blade’s slicing out from the wall, but nothing happened. He edged closer and tried again, still with no result.
‘Trigger’s probably somewhere further along,’ he said, standing. ‘So you’re right in the middle when it goes off.’ The far wall was a good forty feet away - and even then it only marked a corner rather than the end, the tunnel continuing to one side.
‘There’s got to be some way through without setting it off,’ said Nina.
Eddie hefted the mallet. ‘Let me try something.’ He tossed it through the columns to land a few feet inside the entrance. The blades remained in place. ‘Okay, so that far’s safe, at least. Probably.’ He stepped forward to retrieve it.