The Thieves of Darkness (54 page)

Busch and KC continued through the holy place and raced into a wide corridor that abutted a two-way juncture.

“This is where we split up,” KC said as she came to a halt.

“There is absolutely no way I am letting you out of my sight,” Busch whispered.

“That way,” KC pointed, ignoring Busch’s protest, “leads toward a series of simple rooms; they’re holding the monks down there. There are two guards. It loops around on the far side. We’ll meet up there.”

“KC, this is a bad idea,” Busch said as he gently took hold of her arm for emphasis.

“I’ll be fine,” KC said as she held up the pistol. “I do know how to use it.”

“I have no doubt, but that’s not what worries me. It’s your buddy,
Iblis. I don’t care how many bullets you have, I don’t think he can be stopped.”

“If there is one person in this building right now that I can handle it’s him.” KC tilted her head up and pecked a quick kiss on Busch’s cheek. “Thanks for caring.”

And she took off down the hall.

Down Michael went, the two guards, Silviu and Gianni, a step behind, descending upon uneven rocks; the ceiling fell and rose above him. Michael could feel the heat rising, and he understood that he was near an earthen vent, the steam heating the walls around them. Deeper into the earth they traveled, his hand running along the rail-less wall. Five minutes they walked, the grade of descent waxing and waning until they finally came out into a large earthen room,

Michael held the torch high, illuminating an enormous cavern of stone. Natural steam baths of superheated mud bubbled in pools along the wall, the smell of their sulfur heavy in the air, their temperature enough to boil a man alive.

A voice echoed, its direction lost in the great space. Michael turned about, looking for its source. It was a whisper, the words indiscernible. He eyed the guards, who appeared unaware.

Michael shook it off and walked deeper into the cavern. Torches protruded at forty-five-degree angles from the wall. He lit them in succession, eight in all—though there were far more that continued along the never-ending space—and the lost world was brought into the orange glow of twilight, the light of the flames dancing and flickering, casting animate shadows about.

The ceiling was uneven and craggy, dotted with stalactites, some
of which had long since connected with their stalagmite partners to form dozens of thick calcite columns that appeared to be holding up the world.

A gasp erupted from Silviu, and Michael spun to find the large man recoiling from a heavy shadow that flickered along the near wall. Michael walked closer, unconsciously holding his breath.

Lying on the ground was a skeleton, its head tilted back, its jaw wide open in a death scream. Protruding from its left eye socket was the hilt of a knife, clutched tightly in a death grip of white bone. Whoever it was had killed himself in the most hideous of fashions. Michael leaned over the corpse, surprised to find it lying upon a tattered leather blanket. Michael reached out, and as he touched it he realized his mistake. It wasn’t made of leather, or wool, or cloth. It was human skin—the person’s skin that had fallen from his body. Michael examined the corpse up close. With the heat of the cavern and the rate of natural decay, there should be no remains. Insects and bugs should have laid waste to the body after its own internal decay process had begun. In this warm, humid atmosphere there should have been nothing left after only a few days. But this body was old, centuries old. Its cotton shirt was wide open, mottled and stained with death. Its tattered gray pants were loose-fitting and thick, though their woolen material should have also disintegrated over time.

Michael realized he was looking at one of Kemal Reis’s men, a corsair, a man of the sea who couldn’t be farther from his aquatic home, a man who was devoted to his admiral until his last breath.

And it occurred to Michael that there was no life down here, no bugs or insects to eat the flesh, to promote decay. Bacteria, flies, ants, worms, and vermin exist miles down in the earth, and all of them would have feasted on this body, yet here there was no life.

As Michael stood, he saw Gianni shining his light on more skeletons. Some had been run through, grasping their own swords in a seppuku fashion. Others held rudimentary flint pistols, their skulls half missing.

“Why did they kill themselves?” Silviu blurted out in accented English.

“These are Turkish corsairs,” Michael said. “Some of history’s toughest men, they were pirates, men of the sea, unafraid to face their demons, yet down here…” Michael let his words hang as they looked at the bodies.

“What is down here?” Silviu asked.

“Didn’t Iblis tell you?”

Gianni finally spoke. “He said money and books.”

“Really.” Michael couldn’t help laughing. “Do either of you speak Arabic?”

“I’m Italian, for God’s sake! Why ask such a stupid question?”

Silviu merely shook his head.

Michael nodded.

And Michael heard the voice again, this time louder, sending an icy chill through his heart.

“What is that?” Silviu said as he spun about, his gun held high, searching for a target.

“That’s the sound of madness, the sound of evil,” Michael whispered.

Michael’s eyes fell on the stone wall to the rear of the stairs they had descended, and he spied a large wooden door. It was black as night, made of polished ebony that shimmered under the torchlight’s glow. It was strapped along its base, crown, and center with iron bands for support. A large, tarnished gold ring dangled upon a heavy hasp anchored in the door. Its frame and seams were sealed and coated with pitch. The black tarlike substance not only provided fuel for torches but was the initial moisture barrier used in ships and barrels to keep out all forms of water. Made from a dry distillation of wood and resin, it was what allowed the initial seafarers of the world to travel far and wide.

“Hold this,” Michael said, handing Silviu the torch. He grasped the golden handle and tugged. The door didn’t budge, the heat having swollen the wood into the frame. Michael raised his right foot, placing it against the wall, and with enormous force, ripped the door open.

Michael gazed into the room, his shadow dancing in the de minimis torchlight that washed into the dark space. He took a tentative step
into the room, pausing to allow his eyes to adjust. The air was dry and odorless compared to that of the humid cavern behind him. He could make out piles of metal, their sheen refracting the little light that fell upon them into twinkling stars. Skeletal bodies scattered the ground, ancient and shattered. The crewmen of Kemal Reis had killed one another and killed themselves; they lay with sabers in hand, strewn about the earthen floor.

As Michael headed deeper into the shadows, the cloak of darkness enveloping him, the voices began: soft, a murmur at first, sounding like a distant party, no words discernible, no tone sounding human.

And as the voices grew, they tugged at his sanity. Michael tried to keep his mind balanced, holding the voices at bay, but no matter what he thought about, no matter how he tried to clear his mind, the voices increased.

“Michael … remember me?”
a malevolent voice whispered
. “Years ago you thought you could rid the world of me, buried me, hid me away in the German forest, but I can never be destroyed.”

Michael longed for a light, the torch, anything that would drive the darkness away. He felt like a child terrified of what lurked behind the dark. He felt the primordial fear rising, like an instinct telling him to run. He understood full well the monk’s words of warning about remaining in the light, about the power of darkness.

“Michael,”
a new voice cried. He hadn’t heard it in several years. It was a voice that used to bring comfort but now sounded angry, resentful.

“I die and you replace me with a new father,”
the voice of his adopted father, Alec St. Pierre, cried.
“You destroy my memory in hopes of creating a better one. Mary died and now you are burying her memory, replacing her like you did me.”

And Michael suddenly knew the voices were but a lie; they tapped into and manifested his fears, they were his unconscious screaming for release from the bonds of rationality, trying to suffuse his mind with guilt and shame, to plant seeds of paranoia that would consume his intellect. But no matter how he fought himself, the voices would not diminish. His psyche felt as if it had become an asylum run amok.

But then, finally, he focused on the one thing that brought peace to his mind; the one thing that could overcome his deteriorating balance rose from within him.

His heart.

KC had awakened it, had filled it with her own heart. Michael allowed that warmth to pour into his mind, into his soul, washing away the voices, balancing the fragility of his thoughts. He allowed KC’s image to fill his mind; he held tight to the shine of her long blonde hair, to her eyes, which echoed the purity of her soul. He buried himself in the thought of their embrace, of making love, of her soft skin and tender touch.

Still the voices grew louder, on the verge of maddening screams, fighting against the balance that KC had brought to Michael’s conscience.

But Michael knew how to defeat the exploding madness that blossomed in his head. He held tight to KC’s image; he reached into his pocket and grasped the locket that she had returned to him with her letter. He seized it in his palm and began to step back from the room, heading away from the shadows that danced about, heading back toward the light. He crushed his fingers around the locket, willing KC to be the only thought and image before him. His departure was far more difficult than his casual entrance. His body struggled as his mind fought not to come apart at the seams; all that held him together was the thought of KC.

He finally turned and made his way back into the light, out through the ebony doorway. The voices died away as if they had never been there, as if his mind had slipped into a pool of insanity only to emerge dry as a bone with no recollection.

“What’s in there?” Gianni demanded, stepping forward.

Michael looked at the two guards, wondering if either could survive a minute in the dark, within the godforsaken room.

Silviu took a step back while Gianni took a step forward and shone his light inside to reveal a hoard of gold and jewels piled upon one another, spilling against the walls, their golden hue refracting the beam
of light. Piles upon piles of coins and goblets, ingots, cups, and armor, chests of jewels and boxes of gems. A virtual ship’s worth of treasure that had somehow been stolen from this place and traveled the high seas only to be returned here to this hidden cavity high upon the earth by Kemal Reis and his men.

There were several enormous tarps, gray and tattered, folded up, stacked high against the wall, seeming incongruous with the treasure in the room. Michael finally realized what they were: sails, enormous canvas sails, gray, torn, and aged.

Michael wondered what the nautical items were doing so far from the sea, but as he looked upon them he realized they were what Kemal and his men had used to carry the gold up the mountain and through the temple and caverns.

And, finally, in the corner, were the books, scrolls, parchments, and tablets, sitting upon a wooden pallet, dust-covered and hidden from the world—hundreds of documents rendered in the respective mediums of their times: animal hide, vellum, stone, leather, and paper. The purpose of the pitch that had been used to seal the door became obvious; it kept out moisture and protected the paper, protected the skins and hides from deteriorating, preserving them by creating a dry environment away from the humid hell outside. Michael didn’t need to examine the documents up close to know what they were. He had read the tags upstairs in the library where these items had once been kept; he knew what they spoke of, what they revealed.

Michael understood the wealth of this room was not in the precious metals and exquisite jewels that captivated the guards but in words and information, an accumulation of knowledge that would lay bare the mysteries of darkness, its power and capabilities, its sources and secrets.

“Oh, my God,” Gianni muttered, his eyes upon the piles of gold and gems.

Michael took the torch from the guard, resolving to go nowhere in these subterranean confines without illumination.

“I think it’s safe to say God has nothing to do with this.” Michael paused. “You can tell Venue we found what he’s looking for.”

Gianni disappeared up the stairs to get Venue, leaving Silviu guarding Michael.

“Do you want to take a look?” Michael asked, pointing at the room filled with treasure.

Silviu held tight to his Heckler & Koch MP7 rifle and ignored the question. He had no desire to enter the room. He suspected the room was the root of the evil that permeated this underworld. He knew what this place was—it had filled him with fear since the moment they began their descent—but he wasn’t about to show that fear to Michael. Silviu had grown up in Romania, and despite his life of crime and lack of Sunday observance, he still clung to his Catholic roots. The image of this cavern before him reflected his childhood image of hell, its reddish walls dancing with firelight, wisps of steam floating up from pools of molten earth. Though he knew in his rational mind that he stood on earth and not in some spiritual realm, he couldn’t shake the feeling of evil in the air. It was in the shadows, lurking just beyond the throw of light as if waiting for him, like a wild animal in the bush stalking its prey.

As he watched Michael walk back into the room of books and treasure, he felt the world closing in on him, as if the cavern finally knew he was alone. He turned about, flicking on his flashlight as if it would somehow protect him, somehow hold the evil at bay.

He longed for Gianni to return with Venue; he prayed that his mounting paranoia would subside. Time seemed to drag, his isolation like a weight that grew heavier by the moment, until finally, the pain of solitude outweighed the fear of the room that Michael had walked into.