She took in a slow, deep breath. Closed her eyes and exhaled. “I’m two months pregnant. My lover doesn’t even know. Heck. I only guessed when I read Nostradamus’s note. I didn’t believe it. But things are changing. I haven’t seen a doctor yet, but I can tell you for certain, with the knowledge of a mother — I’m pregnant and I want my child to live.”
Chapter Eighty
Zara held her breath. She waited for a response from either Sam or Tom. She’d betrayed their trust. But how could she have told them any earlier? She had gambled the lives of every living person on the planet, because she thought it was better to have the possibility of extending the time-line for the human race and in doing so, had jeopardized two hundred years of it.
“All right,” Sam said. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying the future has already changed?”
Zara nodded. “Yes. Like I’ve said before, Nostradamus can’t see everything. He has visions and these visions are like scenes in a movie or chapters in a book. They are very clear and provide lots of information about a specific event, but not necessarily the time and date of the event. In this circumstance, the original data that Nostradamus was working on has changed. As it is set now, he believes I’m on course to destroy humanity.”
Sam nodded vacantly, and started looking around the room. She wasn’t sure if he’d heard what she had to say, and was ignoring her completely, or whether he was now simply focused on something entirely different. Either way, he looked like he was miles away, and uninterested in her confession.
She turned to Tom, instead. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Call me selfish, but I’m still more concerned with getting out of here and surviving to my next birthday than the predicted life-expectancy of the human race after the next century. I think I’ll go have another look around outside. See if there’s a way to reach the surface.”
Zara nodded as he left. She then turned to watch Sam study the empty walls, the sides of the sarcophagus, the doors, everything. Despite the catastrophic news he’d just received, Sam’s face displayed his normal level of insouciance, which she simultaneously admired and despised. He smiled, like he was hearing the score of a game of social lawn bowls.
Zara asked, “Did you hear a word I said?”
Sam smiled. “I’m not sure. I think so. I definitely might have. I’m sorry, I got distracted. Where did you finish?”
“Where did you get to?”
“You inadvertently sped up the extinction of the human race.” Sam continued to slide his hand along a small crevice between two sections of the empty wall. His face appeared intrigued and curious, without a hint of concern. “Did I miss anything important, after that?”
“No. That’s about the gist of it.”
Sam smiled. “Good. Well that’s settled then.”
Zara followed him, suddenly aware that he was neither perturbed, nor interested in the news that Nostradamus had left her. She glanced at his face. “What are you looking for?”
“Answers.”
“To what?”
“The next clue,” Sam said, shaking his head, as though it were obvious. “The next step. Think about it. If Nostradamus went to the trouble of doing all this to save the human race from extinction, why would he stop now and write a message informing you that you’d failed and now the entire dark future was going to occur two hundred years earlier?”
She asked, “So what are you saying?”
Sam said, “I believe Nostradamus is still trying to help you find the one thing he never had. The only aid that could possibly allow you to correctly change the future.”
“The Nostradamus Equation!”
“Exactly.” He then stopped at the pedestal. “Ah, and here it is.”
“Here what is?” she asked.
“The next clue.”
Zara stared at the pedestal. It looked out of place in the holy room where the last survivor of the Kingdom of Sands had been laid to rest by Nostradamus himself.
She suddenly grinned. There was another note. It was written in the same scrawl she’d recognized as coming from the hand of Nostradamus.
Searching for answers?
Place the key into the pedestal and learn the truth.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Is this another note by Nostradamus?”
“I think you’re clutching at straws. It’s an old circular pedestal with a remarkably similar shape to your medallion, but nothing more.”
“So you think I shouldn't bother?”
“No. You may as well try. I’m just saying, don’t expect anything to happen.”
Zara nodded. She carefully withdrew the brass medallion from beneath her tank-top and placed it in the water. A single drop of water fell on to it from above, but nothing happened. The truth, it would appear, was avoiding her.
“What did you think would happen?” Sam said.
“I don’t know. Anything. Something. Not nothing.”
Zara reached towards the medallion to remove it from the water and then stopped — because the water began to change color and fizz violently.
Chapter Eighty-One
Zara watched for a minute, mesmerized by the suspense. She was going to know the truth. Nostradamus had been right. He knew everything. He knew she would end up inside this ancient city. Everything would be revealed to her. All she had to do was wait.
It was the acrid smell and caustic smoke that awoke her to her mistake. The pedestal wasn’t designed for her medallion. It was designed as a means of torture, or punishment to see who was truly fit and ordained to be king. A test of strength and will.
And now the acid was burning her only hope to find the truth!
Zara quickly pulled on the back of the chain and ran toward the old Garamante baths, which held slowly flowing water. She washed her medallion. The brass appeared to have weathered its misuse, but tiny weaknesses in the metal work had begun to show as the acid continued to eat its way through. There was nothing she could do to counteract the damage as the acid found every tiny fault from the original metallic design. By the time the acid had dissipated she was staring at a medallion with many holes through it. Small, but large enough to allow light to pass.
Sam said, “Okay, Zara. Whatever it is, we’re not going to find it here. We need to get out of here, before we starve and become too weak to escape.”
She nodded. It was the truth, but still she couldn’t understand what Nostradamus had wanted her to see by entering the room.
Tom entered the room again. “I think I’ve found a way to the surface.”
Sam nodded and turned to Zara. “We have to go.”
“I know. But one day, we’ll come back and find the truth.”
Tom led them to another room. It had a series of steps carved into the limestone to form a basic ladder. The room was narrow like a chute and ascended more than a hundred feet above. Every twenty or so feet, the steps crossed over and changed sides with a small landing area in-between. The result was that the maximum distance they could potentially fall never exceeded about twenty feet.
Tom climbed first. She followed and Sam climbed last. It was strenuous and after a few days of relative inactivity, little rest, and no food, her legs burned as she climbed. On the top of the eighth section, after ascending a total of a hundred and sixty feet, they stopped at a dead end.
This landing area was slightly larger than the others, but not big by any stretch. All three of them could stand without falling down the opening where the ladder stood, but there wasn’t enough room for them to do much more than that. Above them was solid limestone where she’d expected a hatchway or an opening to the surface.