could cause paralysis and even death, given enough exposure.”
“Twenty masks,” Renee said, counting them.
I only hope Montross and Nina are likewise prepared, Caleb thought.
“We have extra,” he said. “Can we leave some for Montross and my son? If they come this way?”
Renee narrowed her eyes at him.
“Please.”
“Fine, drop three. Only because I think you may be right, and we may need your son.”
Orlando took a mask, making sure he got his before they were all accounted for, then moved closer to the edge to examine the boats. “Sturdy bastards. Looks like iron plating and reinforced wood. Very little decay. Maybe the mercury helped.”
“How did this water get so contaminated?” Phoebe asked.
“On purpose, I believe,” Caleb said. “He may have just been copying, but like Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Genghis Khan may have also come to believe in mercury’s alchemical powers. For centuries, mystics used mercury-also known as quicksilver-as a combining reagent to induce elemental changes, attempting to turn lead into gold for example, but it was also believed to be a source of a great many cures. And possibly, if mixed just right, an elixir for immortality.”
“No thanks,” Orlando said, fitting on his mask after coughing into his hand. “That’s the crap they used to put in dental fillings.”
Phoebe groaned through her mask. “Here we go. Conspiracy time. Let me guess, dentists are all part of some master plan to monitor our thoughts, weaken our resistance, make us sick-”
“Scoff if you like.” Orlando shined his light into his open mouth. “But I’m a brushing fanatic, not one cavity.”
“That’s because you’ve never been to the dentist.”
He smirked. “At least I’m confident that my mind is my own.”
“Trust me, no one else would want it.”
“Please shut up,” Renee snapped. “And let’s get moving.”
Afraid to move, Phoebe stared at the water. “So emperors actually tried drinking this stuff?”
Caleb nodded. “It was what killed Qin Shi, if the legends are true.”
“Enough talk,” Renee said with her mask on. “Get in the boats. Eight in each. Chang, you’re with us. And two of your men will row. You keep an eye on Qara. Caleb, Phoebe and Orlando, remote view the path ahead. I want no surprises.”
“Best to do it here, on the shore,” Caleb said, tightening his mask. Phoebe did the same.
“No, in the boat,” Renee replied. “I believe you will perform better in the thick of things. Urgency sharpens your need.”
“Aren’t you suddenly the expert?” Phoebe quipped.
“Get in, and get to work.”
They settled into the two boats. Caleb’s team left second, after the boat full of soldiers pushed off. Phoebe and Orlando sat on one side, at the stern, with Caleb and Qara facing them while Renee stood at the prow, her. 45 still in her hand, scanning the shadows ahead.
It all looked surreal and mythical: two gondolas carrying men and women wearing gas masks along a silvery river into a dark tunnel. Caleb thought it would have made a great Salvador Dali painting, an interpretation of Charon ferrying the dead into the waiting embrace of the Underworld.
“iPad,” Phoebe said after a minute of intense focus. She held her hand out to Orlando, who quickly passed it over. “I think I’ve got the next leg of this map.”
She leaned in to Caleb and whispered, “Just keep faking it, big brother. I’ve got you covered.”
“You’re the best,” he replied. “I’m trying but…”
“Nothing?”
“I keep seeing her. Lydia. But it’s not like our visions. They’re just memories.”
“Ah. Worse, then.”
Caleb nodded. But maybe just as important. A catharsis, perhaps. A flood of images played against the back of his eyelids every time they closed. Meeting her for the first time at the book signing in SoHo; their growing connection on the book tour, working together on research trips to exotic ancient locations, the steamy nights under the stars, or under the cool sheets in five-star hotels; the reunion after he had thought her dead, the moment her emotions cracked through and she revealed he had a son.
All these memories swam in his thoughts, clouding the psychic pathways like arterial blocks, suffocating the power he kept trying to access.
He couldn’t fight it any longer, and didn’t want to. She was there, in his mind, living in the only place left for her. Part of him hoped that he was seeing all this because she was trying to show him one more thing, to force him to understand some vital aspect of himself he needed to learn.
Or else, it was only his guilt.
He had killed her. As surely as if he’d pushed her off a cliff. By his silence and distrust. By his arrogance in thinking he alone could own and protect the Emerald Tablet. It was a guilt he needed to accept and overcome if he was to move on.
It’s up to you now. Her last thought, he was sure of it, was about their son. But how could he save Alexander when his hands were tied? He could only stand by, watching and hoping the others could do what he couldn’t.
Someone coughed. He heard the soldiers’ raspy breathing over his own. Every sound was amplified in the cavern, the slightest movement roaring in his ears, explosions rattling in his head. The splashing of the oars echoed off the walls, and it was easy to imagine the flashlight beams scraping the ceiling or the sides, and eliciting sounds like nails on a chalkboard.
Phoebe sighed, the sound grinding in her ears as well. She took a deep breath of hot air and began drawing, expanding the previous sketch, filling in the right side of the diagram. Renee moved closer, stepping around the men rowing so she could watch.
“What’s that?” She pointed to the bottom of the screen where Phoebe had drawn the terminus of this river passageway that ended at the boundary opening up into a larger section: broad at the far end, but peppered with dots. Phoebe kept jabbing at the screen, creating the dots in a haphazard pattern until it began to look like an actual formation.
“Don’t know,” Phoebe replied. “I saw faces. White faces. Hundreds of eyes. Thousands, maybe.”
Qara made a snickering noise.
“What?” asked Renee, turning in the boat, then peering ahead. The flashlight’s glow had bounced off her mask, amplifying a mix of fear and excitement beyond the plastic. “What’s up ahead?”
“Death,” Qara said. “And I don’t need to be psychic to see that. We’re all-”
“Shut her up,” Renee snapped. “Phoebe, elaborate on what you saw.”
A gasp, and Phoebe dropped the stylus pen, causing Orlando to jump for it, and scramble at the bottom of the boat before they lost it. She shook her head, blinked and stood up. Ahead, the flashlight beams speared around, barely penetrating the thick gloom hanging over the silvery river.
She squinted, rubbed her faceplate, and tried to peer through the unresolved shadows. “Wait! There’s something before we reach the shore, something-”
But that’s when an iron sphere as large as a refrigerator came swinging down from the cavern’s roof on a steel chain, crashing into the first boat.
Soldiers scattered like bowling pins, two of them taking direct hits, bones shattering, bodies crumpling. The hull cracked and the boat capsized, spinning to the left and upturning the whole team.
“Duck!” Chang yelled as the sphere swung all the way back up, just missing the prow of the second boat. Everyone ducked low and his men paddled sideways, moving the boat out of the reach of the sphere’s downswing.
One member of the first craft wasn’t so lucky. A soldier had scrambled back into the boat after flipping it, and just stood, dripping and coughing, when the ball swung back and caught him in the chest, bringing him along for the ascending trip. A hideous crunching sound echoed off the ceiling, and his body splashed down in the darkness.
