the candle over it, and saw his face reflected, as if it were glowing with a deep red aura. Then he remembered what the muttadar had told him. The priest augurs the future in a bowl of blood. He looked again, but saw only the yellow flicker of the candle. He shifted slightly, then he saw something, gasped, dropped the cylinder again and let his right hand fall heavily into the liquid. It was thick, congealing, warm. He pulled his hand out and shook it hard, splattering gobs of red over the walls of the tunnel, then wiped it on his uniform. “I just saw the most ghastly apparitions,” he said hoarsely. “Tigers, devils, scorpions.”
“They’re on the ceiling above you,” Wauchope said.
Howard raised the candle and looked up. Of course. There were more etchings on the rock. He had seen reflections. He took a deep breath, and peered ahead. “That must be it. The shrine itself There seems to be some kind of altar in the center.” He picked up the bamboo tube again, and stepped carefully over the basin. Through the flickering candlelight he saw figures that were more rounded, sculptures in relief, front-facing masks and dancing limbs. “I recognize these,” he murmured. “My ayah used to take me to cave temples like this when I was a child in Bihar. That’s Parvati, wife of Shiva. And Vishnu, striding across the wall, vanquishing a demon.” He moved forward into the main chamber, where the walls were barely discernible in the candlelight. “But these ones are different. They look like warriors. I need to inspect them more closely.”
“Pass me the candle, would you?” Wauchope had crouched down beside the altar-like structure in the middle, a raised rectilinear shape that had clearly been sculpted out of the living rock. Howard carefully handed over the stub of candle. Wauchope held it close to one side of the stone.
“Good God.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an inscription. I can read it.”
“What language?”
Wauchope did not reply. Howard watched the yellow orb of light move quickly along the side of the rock, and then back again. He could just make out shapes, carved lettering. Halfway along the fourth row the candle sputtered and went out. They were in near darkness, the only light a dull gray coming through the passage from the entrance. “Quick,” Wauchope said excitedly. “Strike a light. I think I can read one of the lines.” Howard put down the bamboo tube by the altar and hurriedly took out his flint and steel, striking over and over again in the damp air until a spark lit the cord. He cupped his hand over it until there was a flame, and passed it carefully over. Wauchope dangled the flame close to the rock and moved it along. The flame reached his fingers and he dropped it, gasping in pain. There was a hiss as the cord hit the wet floor and they were in near darkness again.
“That’s it,” Howard said. “Well?”
Wauchope was silent. Howard saw the silhouette of his form, nursing his hand, stock-still and staring blindly at the stone. Then Wauchope swiveled toward him, and Howard could just make out his bearded face in the pale illumination from the entranceway.
“It’s Latin. Sacra iulium sacularia. Guardian of the celestial jewel. There’s more, but that’s all I could make out.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Howard whispered. “Some memory from my childhood, from my ayah. The celestial jewel. The jewel of immortality.”
There was an immense rumble outside, then a clap of thunder. Lightning lit up the interior of the shrine like a flash of gunpowder, revealing for an instant a surging mass of forms that seemed to be crowding in on them, gods and goddesses and demons and glowering tigers, faces contorted in agony and fear, terrifying riders looming above them like the horsemen of the apocalypse. Howard thought he saw Romans. Roman legionaries. He felt as he had in the jungle when the noise of the beasts erupted. He put a hand to his forehead. It was burning, and his hand was shaking. He crouched beside Wauchope and they made their way back toward the entrance. The pounding of the waterfall behind the boulders had increased, and they could see the rain lashing down now, giant droplets that spattered into the passageway. Howard realized he was hearing something else, the insistent sound of drumbeats, coming from all sides, sometimes discordant but then steady and rhythmic, just as he had heard that morning from the riverbank. Fear rose in him. He peered into the downpour, searching for the muttadar, and then saw a crumpled form, a forest of arrows sticking out of it and a dark stain seeping over the mud. The rain was pulverizing his body, and it seemed to be disappearing before their very eyes. The two men crawled back into the main chamber. Howard pulled out his revolver, and Wauchope did the same. They knelt up in the confined space and shook hands.
“God be with you,” Howard said.
“If we ever make it out of here, this place is our secret,” Wauchope replied. “I saw something more in that inscription.”
“If we rush toward the boulder where we left the sappers, we could make it.”
They turned back toward the entrance. Howard reached into the darkness on top of the altar slab and lifted something he had seen earlier, a brass gauntlet with a fist in the shape of a tiger’s head, a rusted blade protruding from the tiger’s mouth. He felt his own sword pommel, then thought better of it and slipped his right hand into the gauntlet, curling his fingers round the crossbar inside. The head of the tiger looked like the image he had seen on the boulders of the shrine, with a grimacing mouth and slanted eyes. “Tigers seem to be the one thing they’re afraid of,” he said. “If it’s in the shrine, this thing must be some kind of sacred object. Might put the fear of God into them.”
“I’ve got an even better idea.” Wauchope picked up the bamboo tube and held it in front of him. “You kept your side of the bargain. You brought the muttadar’s precious idol back to the shrine. But I think now that he’s past caring, we can borrow it for a little longer. If they see that we still have it, the rebels might hold off as they did before.”
Through the pounding rain and drumbeats they heard the sharp crack of Snider rounds, then screams. Howard took a deep breath. At least the rebels would not be able to use their matchlocks in the rain. An immense crash suddenly shook them, not thunder this time but the reverberations of an earthquake. They braced themselves. Somewhere behind them was the sound of falling rock, and the boulder above them seemed to shift. Howard remembered the roar of the tiger, and wondered whether it was out there, waiting. He remembered his son. He remembered what he had done. He cocked his revolver and held the sword at the ready. For a split second he felt detached from his own body, as if he were standing back and watching the two of them go forward, disappearing through the veil of rain into history. He took a deep breath, and glanced at Wauchope. “Let’s do it.”
8
Bay of Bengal, India, present-day
Jack reached out with his left hand and pulled the tiller of the outboard engine toward him, bringing the Zodiac broadside-on to the shore and powering down the throttle. Ahead of them, somewhere behind the shoreline, lay the Roman site of Arikamedu. Romans, in southern India. It seemed virtually inconceivable, in a setting so completely at odds with all the preconceptions of classical history. Jack snapped back to reality. The wave they had been riding caught up with them in a burst of foam and wake, and the boat pitched sideways in the swell coming from the Bay of Bengal. Costas was sitting on the pontoon opposite him and Hiebermeyer and Aysha clung to either side farther forward. Rebecca was crouched in the bow holding the painter line, her dark hair streaming in the wind. They were all wearing orange IMU survival suits and life jackets. Jack peered at the palm-fringed beach, now only a few hundred yards distant, and saw where the swell rose over the shallows. He gunned the throttle and the sixty horsepower Mariner engine lifted them along the crest of a wave, pushing them back over deeper water as they headed south parallel to the coast and left the gray form of Seaquest II farther behind.
“That must be it, over there,” Costas shouted above the noise. He gestured toward shore with his GPS unit while holding on to the fixed rope around the pontoon with his other hand. “It looks like the river entrance.”
Jack nodded and powered down again, turning the bow toward land and maneuvering between two lines of breakers that marked the outer reef about two hundred yards offshore. The sea went calm, and he throttled back to idle. “We should be okay if we keep to the channel between the buoys, but keep a sharp eye out from the bow in any case.” Rebecca turned and made the okay sign at him. For the first time since leaving Seaquest II, Jack allowed himself to relax and look around. They had passed the harbor of Pondicherry and the ruins of the old East India Company fort some twenty minutes before, and were now off the dense green fringe that continued some two
