He told me we were moving through the roads of Rostau and once more called the plateau the Highland of Aker. We finally arrived at a chamber deep beneath the Earth. Inside was the most marvelous thing I have ever seen. Another huge Sphinx, this one made of black metal, b’ja, the divine metal, Kaji called it. The Black Sphinx was large, if not larger than the stone one on the surface. This one was guarded by a statue of shemsu horus, a guardian of Horus with red hair, red eyes like a cat, mounted on a platform beneath the mighty paws.
We needed a key to get in, Kaji told me. And that was it. We didn’t have the key. And he had only promised to show me the Hall of Records, not what was inside. We left, going back along the Roads of Rostau.
But Kaji had deceived me. He had planned for me to die there, under the Earth, his secret still safe. But I foiled his plan, and he was the one who was mortally wounded while both of us were trapped in a chamber deep under the rock.
Before he died, he told me an incredible tale. He told me he was a wedjat, one of the eye, a Watcher. And whom did they watch? Ones Who Are Not Men. Airlia. Those who had come to Earth from the stars many, many years ago. He told how they fought among themselves and destroyed much in the process. How their minions have kept the fight all these years since. He told me little more before he died, but I have been able to find out more over the years.
I escaped. Kaji had told me there was a second gateway to the Roads of Rostau. I found the secret passage in the floor of the chamber we were trapped in. I opened it with his ring. A shaft beckoned. Cold air came from it and I heard the sound of water flowing, how close I knew not.
I had no other choice. I would not die in the dark with my tale. I would return to England, to my Isabel.
I climbed over the edge. I dropped, falling for a second, maybe two. It seemed like forever to me in that dark hole. Then I hit the side of the shaft and slid. It was curving from the vertical very slightly. I moved as quickly as I could along the stone, but it was cut so smoothly, inhumanly smooth as the other Roads of Rostau we had walked through.
I slid for a long time, how long I could not tell you now.
When I hit the water it shocked me. I was submerged, but came to the surface gasping for breath, only to be immediately swept by the current away from the shaft into a tunnel. Reaching up, I could feel stone less than two feet above my head. I prayed the ceiling didn’t drop as the water took me.
But it wasn’t the ceiling that came down, but the floor that came up, or rather the water level dropped as the tunnel must have widened. My feet hit stone as I tumbled and bounced, trying to steady myself. I was knocked down again and again, until finally I was able to get my feet, push back against the current, now around my waist, and hold still.
It was dark. A darkness I hope no man ever knows until the moment of his death. Carefully I moved with the water, hoping, as Kaji had said, it would come out at the Nile.
Turcotte stopped scrolling, excited. “That’s it!” He spun in his seat to Yakov. “That’s how we’re going to get to her. Through the Second Gateway to the Roads of Rostau, to the Hall of Records.”
“My friend.” Yakov’s voice was a deep, steady rumble. “Perhaps we should finish reading first. We do not know for sure that Mister Burton made it out exactly that way.”
Impatiently, Turcotte turned back to the screen. He hit the scroll.
I walked for perhaps a quarter mile. I knew my pace and had used it in the past when mapping unfamiliar territories. Of course, being waist deep in water certainly made the measurement questionable.
Be that as it may, it was some time before I realized I was not alone. I cannot tell you how I knew there was something else in that tunnel with me, but I have often had this feeling and it has always been right. Something moved in the tunnel behind me. A chill ran up my spine, the cold hand of death, as strong as I had ever felt it.
It — whatever it was — kept pace with me. I could hear a sound, a light clatter of metal on stone, but what caused it, I knew not.
I do not know why, but I felt that as long as I moved away from the Duats, as Kaji had called the chambers, it would let me go., But if I turned and tried to return, I was absolutely certain I would be struck down most grievously.
“What is he speaking about?” growled Yakov.
“His imagination was running wild,” Turcotte said. “He had just survived an attack on his life. He was in a pitch-black tunnel that led God knows where.”
“He was a brave man,” Yakov said. “A man who went where others feared to go. He would not have written this if it was only his imagination. He really felt something was following him.”
But Turcotte was already thinking ahead. “How far is it from the Giza Plateau to the Nile?”
“I don’t know offhand,” Yakov said.
“I’ve been there,” Che Lu said, “and it’s several kilometers at least to the river.”
“Good, we can—”
“Let us finish reading,” Yakov once more tried to douse Turcotte’s enthusiasm.
I went farther, the water level remaining relatively constant. I shouted, hearing my voice echo against the walls, trying to bolster my spirits. I didn’t stop to measure how far apart they were.
After a while, I felt that the threat was no longer close, that it was letting me go unscathed. But the water began to rise, moving more quickly. The tunnel was narrowing. Soon I bumped into the wall on the left. I kept my hand on it and continued to move forward. When the water rose to my chin and the roof of the tunnel was less than six inches above the top of my head and still declining, I realized that I would have to commit myself to fate once more.
I took several deep breaths, then threw myself into the surging water. The water filled the tunnel, top to bottom, side to side. I hit the wall several times, tumbling about until I had no idea which way was up.
I was growing faint, the air in my lungs used, when I felt a change in pressure in my ears. Light, blessed light hit my eyes.
I was out of the tunnel. I could see the surface above, light beckoning. I kicked for it, my head faint. I broke into air, sucking in lungfuls. My nostrils could catch the odor of the city, its foulness never smelling so wonderful.
I was in the Nile, just south of Cairo, north of Giza.
If you are reading this, then you must also be interested in the Hall of Records. It is well hidden. Going down from the Great Pyramid I must admit I was too overwhelmed to be able to give accurate information how to proceed. For that I apologize. An explorer should always keep his bearings.
But when Kaji led me out from the chamber that contained the Hall, I paid strict attention. I do not know how much help it will be, because it is only from the Hall chamber to the room I was trapped in — and there was not a way to open the stone door to the tunnel, but I will you give you what I know.
We went one hundred and twenty paces down the tunnel from the blackness that absorbed all light. On the left was a door, which Kaji opened with his ring. We turned right, two hundred and seventeen paces to one of the doors that only appeared when he placed his ring on the wall on the right side. Walk through that door and then seventy paces to the hidden door on the right, which guarded the chamber where Kaji tried to trap me. I have used my pace count on many mapping expeditions and have found that one hundred and sixteen of my steps equals one hundred meters.
“If this tunnel he escaped through comes out north of Giza,” Turcotte said, “then this underground river must begin somewhere south of there. That’s how we’ll infiltrate, with the current.”