The lever only went one way, down, and when I shifted it into position, the sound of running liquid reached my ears. I moved quickly to see clear liquid pouring into the empty canals via holes that sat below the level of the walkways. My heart leapt for joy, thinking the liquid was water. When I reached down to dip my hand into the flow, the liquid felt oily and smelt nearly as bad as the insect oil used in our torches. I hurried back to the lever and raised it, and the liquid ceased to flow.
Disappointed, I wandered back to the white annexe to take another look at the Star vial.
As I stood wondering why the vial wouldn’t release, I touched it and it floated up into my grasp. I chuckled, rather pleased with myself, until I heard the rising hum of a swarm of insects. It sounded rather like locusts, but as the din intensified I realised it was not an airborne swarm: the sound was more like a scratchy scampering. ‘Scarabs!’ My heart filled with dread as I approached the annexe opening and saw masses of beetles swarming into the canals. I could have attempted a dash to the tunnel, but at the rate the canals were filling I wouldn’t make it past the crossroads.
‘That’s what the liquid is for!’ I threw my arms up, frustrated that I’d solved the puzzle too late. I tried placing the Star vial back in its setting, but that didn’t stop the advancing army of bugs. When the beetles began to overflow onto the red pathway I climbed up on the tablet’s plinth.
To my great surprise the beetles did not enter the annexe, but continued to pile up beyond the doorway. Maybe they couldn’t sense me if I wasn’t standing on the ground? I lowered a foot to the floor, but still no reaction.
‘Clarissa!’ Hamilton rarely called me by my first name—he was fearful for me indeed, and I him.
‘Hamilton! The lever!’ I cried and ran to the door, from where I could see Hamilton wielding his torch around his feet.
‘The locals are right about this repellent. It does keep the bugs at bay,’ he joked, having shuffled his way to the lever.
Just the sound of the mechanism being thrown was enough to send the beetles into an even wilder frenzy.
‘I suspect the liquid is—’ Before I could say ‘flammable’, my husband had lowered his torch to meet with the liquid pouring into the outer canal and fire erupted all through the canals in the central chamber. Seemingly blinded by their own fear, the scarabs fed themselves to the flame in their panic to escape it. The next thing I knew, Hamilton was running down the red path, between the walls of fire, toward me.
As soon as he reached me, my husband hugged me for dear life.
‘I’m fine,’ I assured him, holding up the Star vial. ‘I got it out.’
‘So I gathered.’ Hamilton glanced at the chamber, ablaze, beyond the annexe. ‘How much would you like to wager that we need the Fire vial to get the next chamber open?’
Sadly, I had to back his theory. ‘Time to depart then.’ I took hold of his hand, having had enough adventure for one day.
We decided to take the vial with us, in case the thief returned and stole it too. If fate would have it, perhaps we could track down the other vial and return both to this mount in the not-too-distant future? On the way out of the chamber, my husband returned the sword he’d borrowed from the dead knight and thanked him for the loan.
It wasn’t until we were outside once again that Hamilton hit me with the bad news; the thief had taken half of our supplies, and two of our camels. Our guides had packed the animals ready to depart this afternoon, so all the thief had to do was climb on and take off. The camels loaded with our supplies had been tied up to our riding camels.
I didn’t even ask Hamilton what we were going to do. I knew he intended to make the journey anyway. He saw himself as a bit superhuman and arguing would prove a waste of energy. Besides, what choice did we have but to try and make our way back to civilisation?
My husband joked briefly about sprinkling some of the levitating powder on a carpet and flying me home, only he had to confess that he could not think of how one would steer such a transport. Still, it was a good giggle in an otherwise very sobering moment.
The sun was low in the sky and we were considering leaving before dark to make the most of the cool night, when the most unusual sound met our ears—it was like metal buckling under great pressure. The sound emanated from the entrance we had opened that day, and before our very eyes the entrance to the tunnel was reconstituted into the metal door that had originally barred our entry.
‘Praise the heavens we got out by sunset.’ I realised how easily we could have been trapped, and the knowledge shocked me to the core.
‘Indeed,’ Hamilton agreed. ‘We should leave before our luck runs out and a sirocco blows up.’
‘Don’t even joke about it,’ I warned him, as the odds were against us surviving the journey as it was. Still, we had beaten the odds many times before.
As our two remaining camels carried us down Mt Serabit, we had no idea that it would be the last time we would ever be permitted to return there. And although I suspected that the journey home would be taxing, I did not expect that it would cost me my life!
Anyone reading this journal must now be asking, ‘But how did Lady Hamilton pen this memoir if she perished on the journey home from Mt Serabit?’ Since I have raised the question, perhaps you have guessed the answer. Nevertheless I will tell what I remember.
Two days short of the closest well, our water was all but gone and our camels were dehydrated. We’d kept the water for our own consumption, praying that the camels’ bodily stores would maintain them until we reached a water source. They were now too weary to carry us. We freed them of everything that was not essential to our journey home. Except for our tools, books, food, water, personal papers and a few little treasures, we left all our other possessions in the desert.
When the weaker of our two camels collapsed later that day, I pitied the animal and envied its release. Even under my umbrella, over which I had draped a long piece of fabric, the heat was relentless and I was burning to a crisp. My lips were so blistered that it was agony to wipe my tongue across them, and the whole of my body itched from the heat rash that was irritated by my tight clothes and perspiration. I had never felt so wretched and
