Christopher Cartwright
The Third Temple
Prologue
It was just before midnight when Harper Smith climbed to the final rise of the highest sand dune. The air smelled richly of salt, giving him hope the coast was near. By his calculations they should have reached it before nightfall. If he’d made a mistake with his navigation there was no way they would survive long enough to see it corrected. He was badly winded. The muscles of his calves and thighs were hot with pain. He breathed heavily and peered out into the distance to where the Atlantic Ocean should have been. Instead, beneath the silent moonlight he saw nothing but the majestic rolling sand dunes of the Namibian desert.
He swore loudly, cursing his greed. It had already claimed the lives of twelve members of his original party. He felt no guilt at being responsible for their deaths. They knew the risks before they became involved in his treacherous and evil business. The rewards would never have been so high if their task had been less dangerous. Besides, his punishment would come in the morning, when the scorching new sun would send him to his grave — that was, if his pursuers didn’t reach him first.
Smith remained at the crest until midnight so that he could take a reading of the South Celestial Pole using his kamal. The device consisted of a small parallelogram made of intricately carved ivory, roughly one inch by two inches wide. It had a single string inserted through its center, with a series of knots evenly spaced along its length. It was a simple device, but it measured latitude accurately. He’d traded for it three years ago with a small Arab man in Istanbul, who said that his people had used the device for celestial navigation since the ninth century.
The air was bitterly cold, but he didn’t feel it as he searched the sky above for the Crux — the cross-shaped constellation that would later become known as the Southern Cross. He didn’t feel much at all above the pain. Smith and his remaining party had been traveling west for seven days. Now, fatigue, piled upon the end stages of dehydration, had pushed him long past any sense of pain and left him physically as well as mentally numb. It was time to know the truth, even though it would do little good for him now.
Smith bit the end of the string with his crooked teeth and held the other end of the kamal up toward the horizon. He slowly moved the ivory card along the string until it was positioned so the lower edge became even with the horizon, and the upper edge occluded the Crux. He then calculated the angle by counting the number of knots from his teeth to the card. Each knot was precisely the same distance along the string, and each one represented approximately 1.5 degrees of latitude. He wasn’t interested in any of the regular knots. Instead, there was one mark noted with a single old bronze coin. Smith adjusted the card until his hand reached the metal and then stopped.
His brother shared an identical kamal. Many weeks earlier, before he’d entered the wretched desert in search of the damned temple and its God-forsaken relic, he and his brother both added an additional knot on the string of each of their kamals by tying it around an old bronze coin so that it would be impossible to mistake. That way, when Smith and his party set out into the desert, all he needed to do was head west and maintain the same point along the kamal. The point identified the precise latitude along the African west coast, where his brother would be waiting for him aboard the Emerald Star.
He stared at the result and swore a violent oath. He took the sighting again and achieved the same result. It had been three days since he’d been able to take a reading. On the first, he thought he could hear the echo of his pursuer’s war cry. Sound, he later realized, traveled miles across the open sand dunes of the Namibian desert. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that he’d imagined it, either. Not that it mattered, the fact was it had sent a shiver of fear through his soul, which made him unwilling to delay their movement, even for a minute. On the second night, cloud cover had prohibited a sighting of the Crux, which meant that tonight was the first night he could get an accurate reading. He just hoped it wasn’t twenty-four hours too late.
The coin had moved downward, which meant he and his party had somehow drifted north of their intended latitude. He mentally recalled the shape of the African coastline. It steered westward as they traveled north. If he’d maintained the correct latitude he would be staring at the Atlantic Ocean by now and the Emerald Star. Instead, he was staring at more sand dunes. It confirmed what he already knew — they were a long way off course. Despite the cold, sweat dripped and stung his eyes. He took out the compass from his right breast pocket and carefully took a bearing to the south-east. There was no way to know how much longer it would take.
It didn’t matter. Without more water, they would all be dead long before they reached it. He’d gotten it wrong, but how he didn’t know. Not that it mattered anymore. Fact was that he wasn’t anywhere near where he was supposed to be. He glanced at the remaining men from his party. He should have told them, but he couldn’t face it. Only two of the original fifteen men were left, and they had chosen to follow him because their greed had given them the image of a future where they were extremely rich.
The remaining two members of his party approached slowly. As though each step caused an immense pain, and they had to make the conscious decision to either overcome it and keep going or lie down and die. Jack Baker, who, at the age of twenty was by far the youngest of the group, and Thomas Hammersmith, who was nearly forty, and as greedy and selfish a man as he’d ever met.
Jack Baker stopped next to him. His wide dark brown eyes stared imploringly up at him for any good news. “How much longer do you make it, Smith?”
“Not long now, boys,” Smith lied. His eyes fixed on theirs. His face, hardened by a lifetime of exploration, softened as he spoke. “Another twelve hours, at most and we’ll be on board the Emerald Star — and very rich men.”
Hammersmith swore. “Twelve hours! I may as well lie down here and die.”
Smith shrugged, and said nothing. It didn’t make any difference to him. They could follow him if they wanted, or they could give up and die. It was their choice. There was only one way to survive and that was to grit their teeth and keep walking. If they didn’t have it in them to do so, they didn’t deserve to make it.
Smith had no intention of letting Death win so easily. He clenched his teeth, glanced at his compass, and started to walk again. This time, he turned from a predominantly western direction and headed due south. He had to be quick. If the other members of his party lost momentum and stopped for more than a few minutes, they could never be cajoled into moving again. It’s a rare thing to see a man so fatigued that he should rather lie down and rest, than keep walking and live. Smith took the first painful step. He felt his legs burn.
They walked on through the night without stopping again. Smith knew their movement was slow, but they had to keep going. If they didn’t their pursuers would almost certainly catch up with them. He shuddered at the thought of what they would do to him and his men.
No, it was far better to push them hard and die of thirst than to get captured.
In the morning the sun crept steadily higher until it reached directly overhead. Once there, it appeared to linger and remain for eternity. The temperature soared a few degrees above a hundred Fahrenheit. He stopped, unable to continue without a rest, just before three o’clock.
Smith cursed another vicious oath and dropped his carry pack in the sand. He opened it and looked at his pitiful remaining inventory. He removed each item and placed it next to the bag in the sand, carefully making a mental note of the weight and value of each one. There was a single leather flask, almost entirely bereft of water, one sharp knife, his precious journal, and his Lazarino Cominazzo wheel-lock rifle. He glanced up at the sun. It burned with such heat that it would undoubtedly kill them all before it set.