The Kingdom

9

CHOBAR GORGE, NEPAL

The lack of treads on the boot’s sole told Sam and Remi they weren’t looking at a modern piece of footwear, and the skeletal toe poking through a rotted patch in the boot told them the owner had long since departed the earthly plane.

“Is it strange that this sort of thing doesn’t shock me anymore?” Remi said, staring at the foot.

“We’ve stumbled across our fair share of skeletons,” Sam agreed. Such surprises were part and parcel of their avocation. “See any trip wires?”

“No.”

“Let’s take a look around.”

Sam braced his legs against one wall, his back against the other, and let Remi use his arm to pull herself up. He made his way up the slope and over the hump in the floor. After panning his headlamp around the space, he called, “All clear. You’re going to want to see this, Remi.”

She was beside him in an instant. Kneeling together, they examined the skeleton.

Protected from the elements and predators, and entombed in the relative dryness of the cave, the remains had partially mummified. The clothes, which appeared to be made mostly of laminated and layered leather, remained largely intact.

“I don’t see any obvious signs of trauma,” Remi said.

“How old?”

“Just speculating . . . at least four hundred years.”

“In the same range as the spear.”

“Right.”

“This looks like a uniform,” said Sam, touching a sleeve.

“Then that makes more sense,” replied Remi, pointing. Jutting from what had once been a belt sheath was the hilt of a dagger. She panned her headlamp around the space, then murmured, “Home sweet home.”

“Home, perhaps,” Sam replied, “but sweet? . . . I suppose everything’s relative.”

A few paces from the flat area on which the skeleton lay, the tunnel widened into an alcove of roughly a hundred square feet. In several hand-carved niches in the rock walls were the stubs of crude candles. At the base of one wall, nestled in a natural hollow, were the remains of a fire; beside it, a pile of small animal bones. At the far end of the alcove were the remains of what looked like a bedroll, and, beside it, a sheathed sword, half a dozen crudely honed spears, a compound bow, and a quiver containing eight arrows. A scattering of miscellaneous items occupied the remainder of the floor: a pail, a coil of half-rotted rope, a leather pack, a round wood-and-leather shield, a wooden chest . . .

Remi stood up and began walking around the space.

“He was definitely expecting unfriendly company,” Sam observed. “This has all the signs of a last stand. But to what end?”

“Maybe it has something to do with this,” Remi said, and knelt down beside the wooden chest. Sam walked over. About the size of a small ottoman, the chest was a perfect cube made of a dark, heavily lacquered hardwood, with leather carrying straps on three sides and double shoulder straps on the fourth. Sam and Remi could find no hinges, no locking mechanisms. The seams were so well formed, they were nearly invisible. Engraved into the top of the chest were four intricate Asian characters in a two-by-two grid pattern.

“Do you recognize the language?” Sam asked.

“No.”

“This is remarkable,” Sam said. “Even with modern woodworking tools it takes incredible skill to create something like this.”

He rapped on the side with his knuckles and got a solid thud in return. “Doesn’t sound hollow.” Gently he rocked the chest from side to side. From within came a faint rattling sound. “But it is. Fairly light too. I don’t see any other markings? You?”

Remi leaned down and from side to side, examining it. She shook her head. “Bottom?” Sam tipped it. Remi checked, then said, “Nothing there, either.”

“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to build this,” said Sam, “and it looks like our friend here was prepared to give his life to protect it.”

“It may be more than that,” Remi added. “Unless we’ve stumbled onto the mother of all coincidences, I think we may have found what Lewis King was looking for.”

“If so, how did he miss this? He was so close.”

“If he didn’t make it across the pit,” Remi replied, “could he have survived?”

“Only one person knows the answer to that.”

They turned their attention to documenting the contents of the cave. Not knowing how soon they would return, and unable to take with them but a fraction of the artifacts, they would have to rely on digital photographs, drawings, and notes. Luckily, Remi’s background and training made her well equipped to do just this. After two hours of painstaking work, she proclaimed the job done.

“Wait,” Remi said, then knelt beside the shield.

Sam joined her. “What is it?”

“These scratches . . . the light caught them. I think . . .” She leaned over, took a deep breath, and blew on the shield’s leather surface. An accumulation of rotted leather dust scattered.

“Not a scratch,” Sam observed, and blew clear some more dust, then again and again until the shield’s surface was exposed.

As Remi had suspected, the scratches were in fact an etching burned into the leather itself.

“Is that a dragon?” Remi asked.

“Or a dinosaur. Probably his crest or that of his unit,” Sam guessed.

Remi took a couple dozen shots of the etching, and they stood up. “That’ll do it,” she said. “What about the chest?”

“We have to take it. My gut tells me it was why our friend had barricaded himself in here. Whatever’s inside was something he thought worth dying for.”

“I agree.”

It took only a few minutes for Sam to jury-rig a web of straps that allowed him to piggyback the chest on his own pack. They took a last look around the cave, nodded a good-bye to the skeleton, and departed.

In the lead, Sam crawled up to the lip of the pit and peeked over. “Now, that’s a problem.”

“Care to be more specific?” Remi said.

“The rope’s given way at the other end. It’s dangling into the pit.”

“Can you rig a-”

“Not with any confidence. We’re above the other opening. At this angle, if I try to cinch the slipknot into place, it’ll just slide off. There’d be no way to take up the slack.”

“That leaves only one option, then.”

Sam nodded. “Down.”

It took but a minute for Sam to secure himself to the line. As he did, Remi set up a second belay point by hammering a piton into a crack just below the opening. Once it was set, Sam began a slow rappel, walking himself over and around the jutting stalagmites, while Remi kept watch from above, occasionally telling him to pause and adjust position to minimize the rope chafing on the protrusions.

After two minutes of careful work, he stopped. “I’ve reached the other cam. Good news: the cam tore free.”

If the rope had parted, they would have had to splice their remaining line onto the loose end. Now he had sixty feet of line beneath him. Whether that would be enough to reach the bottom was still an unknown. If what awaited them was the icy cold water of the Bagmati River, they would have fifteen minutes at most to find a way out before succumbing to hypothermia.

“I’ll take that as a good omen,” replied Remi.

Foot by foot, careful step by careful step, Sam kept descending, his headlamp receding into a small rectangle of light.

“I can’t see you anymore,” Remi called.

“Don’t worry. If I fall, I’ll be sure to give out an appropriately terrified scream.”

“I’ve never heard you scream in your life, Fargo.”

“And, cross fingers, you won’t this time.”

“How’re the walls?”

“More of the-Whoa!”

“What?”

No response.

“Sam!”

“I’m okay. Just lost my footing for a second. The walls are getting icy. Must be mist from the water below.”

“How bad?”

“Just a thin coating on the walls. Can’t trust any of the stalagmites, though.”

“Come back up. We’ll figure out another way.”

“I’m continuing on. I’ve got another thirty feet of rope to play with.”

Two minutes passed. Sam’s headlamp was a mere pinpoint now, jostling back and forth in the pit’s darkness as he maneuvered around the stalagmites.

Suddenly, there came the sound of shattering ice. Sam’s headlamp began spinning, winking up at Remi like a strobe light. Before she could open her mouth to call to him, Sam shouted, “I’m okay. Upside down but okay.”

“More description, if you please!”

“Got turned around in my harness and flipped. Good news, though: I’m staring at the water. It’s about ten feet below my head.”

“I hear a ‘but’ coming.”

“The current’s fast-three knots at least-and it looks deep. Waist-high, probably.”

Though three knots was slower than a fast walking pace, the depth and temperature of the water multiplied the hazard. Not only would it take only one minor misstep to be swept away but the exertion it would take to stay upright would speed up the hypothermia process.

“Come back up,” Remi said. “No arguments.”

“Agreed. Give me a second to . . . Hold on.”

From the darkness came more cracking of ice, followed by splashes.

“Talk to me, Fargo.”

“Give me a second.”

Another thirty seconds of cracking, then Sam’s voice: “Side tunnel!”

After ten minutes of detailed work, Sam shouted, “It’s good-sized. Almost tall enough to stand in. I’m going in. Give me a minute to set up a belay.” If Remi went into the subterranean river, this measure would give Sam a fighting chance to reel her back in-provided there weren’t rocks downriver ready to bash Remi into pulp.

Once this was done and Sam was braced and ready to take slack, Remi started her descent. Lighter and a bit more agile than her husband, she covered the distance in less time, pausing only to allow Sam time to take up slack through the piton’s belay point.

At last she descended into view and stopped even with the side tunnel’s entrance. Headlamps shining into one another’s faces, they shared a relieved smile.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Sam said.

“Damn!”

“What?”

“I had a mental bet you were going to go with ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a nearly bottomless pit like this?’”

Sam laughed. “Okay, you’re going to have to go Superman in your rig and push off the opposite wall. I’ll catch you.”

Remi took a few moments to catch her breath and then made the appropriate adjustments to her harness until she was hanging perpendicular in the pit. Flexing her body, she slowly built up a swing until she could toe-push off the opposite wall. Three more of these allowed her to fully coil her legs and push off. Arms extended, she swung forward, hands grasping. The side wall rushed toward her face. She ducked her head. Her arms slipped into the tunnel. Sam’s hands clamped on hers, and she jolted to a stop.

“Got you!” Sam said. “Wrap both hands around my left wrist.”

She did, and Sam used his right arm to slowly release some slack in the rope so Remi could climb up his arm. Once her torso was inside the tunnel, Sam began back-crawling until her knees were also inside. He fell back and let out a relieved sigh.

Remi started laughing. Sam raised his head and looked at her.

“What?”

“You take me to the nicest places.”

“After this, a nice hot bubble bath-for two.”

“You’re singing my song.”

Though twice as wide as their shoulders and tall enough to allow them to walk stooped over, the tunnel’s floor was Swiss cheese-so riddled with potholes that they could glimpse the river’s roiling black surface rushing beneath their feet. Plumes of cold air and ice crystals shot up through the gaps, creating a fog that glittered and swirled in their headlamps. Like the pit behind them, the tunnel’s walls and ceiling were coated in a membrane of ice. As they walked, pencil-thin icicles broke from the ceiling and shattered on the floor like sporadic wind chimes. Though mostly clear of ice, the heavily rutted floor forced them to brace themselves as they walked, adding to the exertion.

“Not to be a wet blanket,” Remi said, “but we’re assuming this leads somewhere.”

“We are indeed,” Sam replied over his shoulder.

“And if we’re wrong?”

“Then we turn back, scale the opposite side of the pit, and leave the way we came in.”

The tunnel twisted and turned, rose and fell, but, according to Sam’s compass bearings, it maintained a rough easterly bearing. They took turns counting steps, but without a GPS unit to measure their overall progress, and only Sam’s sketched map to go by, they had no idea how much distance they were actually covering.

After what Sam guessed was a hundred yards, he called another halt and found a relatively solid section of tunnel and plopped to the ground. After sharing a few sips of water and a quarter of their remaining jerky and dried fruit, they sat in silence, listening to the rush of the water beneath their feet.

“What time is it?” Remi asked.

Sam checked his watch. “Nine o’clock.”

While they had told Selma where they were heading, they’d also asked her not to press the panic button until the following morning local time. Even then, how long would it take the authorities to arrange a rescue party and mount a search? Their only saving grace was that this tunnel had not branched; if they chose to turn back, they’d have no trouble finding the pit again. But at what point did they make that decision? Was an exit around the next bend, or miles away, or nonexistent?

Neither Sam nor Remi spoke of any of this. They didn’t need to. Their years together, and the adventures they’d shared, had put them on the same wavelength. Facial expressions were usually enough to convey what each was thinking.

“I’m still holding you to that hot bubble bath promise,” Remi said.

“Forgot to tell you: I’ve added a relaxing massage to the pot.”

“My hero. Shall we?”

Sam nodded. “Let’s give it another hour. If a red carpet exit doesn’t materialize, we’ll turn back, have a rest, then tackle the pit.”

“Deal.”

Accustomed to hardship, of both the mental and the physical variety, Sam and Remi fell into a rhythm: walk for twenty minutes, pause for two minutes to rest, take a compass bearing and update the map, then onward again. The remaining time of their journey passed quickly. Left foot, right foot, repeat. To conserve light, Remi had long ago turned off her headlamp, and Sam had set his to its lowest setting, so they found themselves moving in the faintest of twilights. The cold air gushing through the floor seemed colder, their footing harder to maintain, the tinkle of falling icicles jarring to their numbed brains.

Suddenly Sam stopped. Her reactions at half speed, Remi bumped into him. Sam whispered. “Do you feel that?”

“What?”

“Cold air.”

“Sam, it’s-”

“No, in our faces. Ahead. Will you dig the lighter out of my pack?”

Remi did so and handed it to him. Sam took a few steps forward, looking for a solid section of floor between plumes. He found a suitable spot, stopped, and clicked on the lighter. Remi squeezed herself in next to Sam and peered around his arm. Flickering yellow light danced off the icy walls. The flame wavered, then steadied and stood straight up.

“Wait.” Sam murmured, eyes on the flame.

Five seconds passed.

The flame wobbled, then shot sideways, back toward Sam’s face.

“There!”

“Are you sure?” Remi asked.

“The air feels warmer now too.”

“Wishful thinking?”

“Let’s find out.”

They walked for ten feet, stopped, checked the lighter’s flame. Again it angled backward, this time more strongly. They proceeded twenty more feet and repeated the process, with the same result.

From Remi: “I hear whistling. Wind.”

“Me too.”

Another fifty feet brought them to a fork in the tunnel. Lighter held before him, Sam proceeded down the left tunnel, without luck, then down the right. The flame quavered, then a sudden gust nearly blew it out.

Sam shed his pack. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a flash.”

He switched his headlamp to its brightest setting and disappeared into the tunnel. Remi could hear his feet scuffing along the floor, the sound growing fainter by the second.

Remi checked her watch, waited ten seconds, checked it again.

“Sam?” she called.

Silence.

“Sam, answer-”

Ahead in the darkness his headlamp reappeared.

“Sorry,” he said.

Remi let her head drop.

“No red carpet,” Sam continued. “But would daylight do?”

Remi raised her head, took in Sam’s wide smile. She narrowed her eyes at him and gave him a punch in the shoulder. “Not funny, Fargo.”

As Sam had promised, there was no red carpet, but after twenty feet of walking he brought her to something even better: a set of natural steps winding up a shaft at whose top, some fifty feet away, was a fuzzy patch of sunlight.

Two minutes later Sam pushed himself off the top step and found himself peering down a short sideways tunnel. Instead of rock, the sides and floor were earth. At the far end, through a tangle of grass, was sunlight. Sam crawled toward it, shoved his arms through the opening, then dragged himself out. Remi appeared a few moments later, and together they lay back in the grass, smiling and staring up at the sky.

“Almost noon,” Sam remarked.

They’d been underground all morning.

Suddenly, Sam sat up, his head turning this way and that. He leaned over to Remi and whispered. “Radio static. A portable radio.”

Sam rolled over, crawled to a berm a few feet away, and peeked his head over the side. He ducked down and crawled back. “Police.”

“A rescue party?” Remi asked. “Who would’ve called them?”

“Just a guess, but I’d say our erstwhile exploratory escorts, the King twins.”

“How-”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Let’s play it safe.”

They stripped themselves of anything that would indicate where they’d been and what they’d been doing-helmets, headlamps, backpacks, climbing gear, Sam’s map, Remi’s digital camera, the box they’d retrieved from the tomb-and shoved it all back into the tunnel, then packed grass over the entrance.

With Sam in the lead, they headed east, following a ravine and ducking between trees, until they’d put a quarter mile between themselves and the tunnel. They stopped and listened for radio static. Sam tapped his ear and pointed north. A hundred yards away they could see several figures moving through the trees.

Sam whispered, “Put on your best forlorn face.”

“Not much of stretch at this point,” replied Remi.

Sam cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hey! Over here!”