Reed instructed one of the other mummies to relieve Gideon of his sword and the rest of them of their guns, which were spent of ammunition anyway, then they were shepherded through the doorway and along a short, dark corridor into a large square room lit by flaming torches ranged along inward- sloping walls that merged into a dark point far above them. They were finally inside the pyramid, Gideon realized. Before them were twin thrones, ornately carved from flaking yellow stone, set upon a raised dais. On the wall behind the thrones was a series of ancient paintings, surrounded by hieroglyphics. Two huge statues reared up behind the thrones, sporting the same horrific frog faces as the Children of Heqet. There was a pool, or a bath, fed by a constant flow of clear water, and a table groaning with fruits and vegetables. On an open fire with a metal grille mounted on bricks, an animal Gideon couldn’t identify roasted in its own juices. He could almost hear Bent salivating beside him. And it was a tomb, as Reed had said; before the thrones were laid two sarcophagi carved with impassive faces, one female, one male. He had a sense there were doorways and arches that led off into other rooms, but his eyes were drawn to the right and a curious sight: what looked for all the world like the prow of a small boat, perhaps fifteen feet from the nose to the flat back. There was a wooden throne within it, and some kind of hood or canopy was open above it, giving it the look of a yawning mouth—just like that crocodile they had seen from the submersible, thought Gideon.
Reed nodded to this strange boat- shape, and the two Children of Heqet dragged Maria toward it and stepped over the rim. The outside of the structure shone dully in the torchlight— some kind of metal, realized Gideon. Brass. They sat Maria heavily in the wooden seat and stood sentry at either side. Gideon caught her eye and she gave him a tight smile that seemed to say
Wait. Bide your time.
“What’s the meaning of this, Reed?” demanded Gideon. “What are you doing with Maria?”
“John?” asked Trigger. “Is he right? Are you really the villain?”
Reed made a face. “What’s a villain, Lucian? What’s a hero, come to that?” He paused, as though lost in some reverie, then shook his head a little and looked up. “Who are your friends, Lucian?”
Trigger introduced them all one by one. Reed’s gaze lingered on Gideon, and he said, “Gideon Smith. That name . . . a madman once told me a Gideon Smith would destroy the world.”
“Takes one to know one,” muttered Bent, then said more loudly, “Ah, Dr. Reed, you mentioned food . . . ?”
Reed gestured toward the table and Bent stepped forward, shrinking back as the nearest mummy bared its teeth.
“It’s all right, let him get food. Let them all get food, if they want it,” instructed Reed, and the creature fell back.
“They obey you,” said Gideon. “They understand you?”
Reed nodded. “And I them.”
“Impossible,” said Stoker, helping the weakened Countess Bathory, who hung on to his shoulder. “Their language has not been heard for two thousand years or more. You could not have learned it, no matter how long you have been in here.”
“I didn’t need to.” Reed smiled. He delved into his satchel and withdrew a small ball shining brightly in the reflected torchlight.
“The Golden Apple of Shangri-La,” breathed Gideon.
God gifted mankind the golden apple, which removes the barriers of language. It was kept here in Shangri-La, to which it also gives the bounty of lush protection from the Himalayan winter. When mankind is ready, the golden apple will once again unite the nations of the world in one tongue.
Reed nodded. “You are familiar with my adventures, Mr. Smith.”
“And I recall you climbed to the peak of Everest to recover the apple from Von Karloff,” said Gideon. “You didn’t return it to Shangri-La. The valley must have died.”
Reed looked into the shining apple. “Poor Shangri-La. It was the nearest I will ever come to paradise, I think. And now . . . a snowy wasteland. Once I realized Walsingham had dispatched Von Karloff there, I couldn’t leave the apple in Shangri-La.”
“Even though removing it would mean the valley would die, and all the people in it?” asked Gideon.
“Even though they would all die,” agreed Reed, focusing on Gideon and the others. “That was when I knew. When I realized.”
“Realized what, John?” asked Trigger.
“
Cui bono,
” said Gideon quietly.
Reed smiled at him. “Very good, Mr. Smith.
Cui bono
. To whose benefit? It was then I realized John Reed was being taken for a fool. And it was not going to continue. Lucian, I expect you have many questions. I owe you answers, at least.”
“You can tell me on the way home,” said Trigger briskly. “Louis Cockayne and Rowena Fanshawe are waiting up above us with a dirigible. Let’s get you back to London.” He shook his head. “You’ve really been down here all this time? For a year?”
“A year? Has it been that long?” Reed pinched his nose. “Time seems to pass differently here.”
“John,” said Trigger softly. “You are . . . you do not seem well. Let us return to London at once.”
“London, yes,” said Reed. “London, of course.” He smiled. “But I think I shall make my own way. By dragon.”
Bent shook his head, tearing into a hunk of roasted flesh. “I thought this lot was effing bonkers, but you take the biscuit, Reed.” He chewed thoughtfully. “What is this, anyway?”
Reed shrugged. “Some kind of lizard, I imagine. The Children of Heqet bring my food.” He paused. “Where to start . . . ?”
“At the beginning,” suggested Stoker.” I always find that best.”
“The cycle of life has many beginnings,” said Reed. “But, to choose one . . . I set off from London in search of the fabled Rhodopis Pyramid, and riches beyond my wildest dreams. I could not have guessed what I would find here. I found freedom. The shackles that had been forged for me dropped away, the scales fell from my eyes. I found
enlightenment
.”
Reed stood up from the chair and strode toward Maria, still seated in the high-backed wooden chair on the strange boat. He said, “It started off as many adventures do. A journey across the skies with the Belle of the Airways. A chance meeting with a friend, Louis Cockayne, in the mélange of the Alexandria souk. Whispered rumors, introductions. Okoth, and his vows to bring me to the pyramid.” Reed smiled crookedly. “I imagine your reaction to seeing the small peak of the pyramid, poking through the sand.” He looked up, where the sloping walls of the chamber converged in the darkness. “Foiled, I returned to Alexandria, knowing there must be another way inside.”
“Did you know what you’d find?” asked Gideon. “These creatures? These murderous things?”
Reed frowned. “They do not act out of malice, Mr. Smith. They merely do what they were created for, what they waited for over long millennia.”
“Tell that to my father,” said Gideon. “And his crew. Those creatures killed them and picked his bones clean.”
“I am genuinely sorry if that is the case, Mr. Smith,” said Reed. “The Children of Heqet are very . . . single-minded when it comes to fulfilling their purpose.”
“Which is?” asked Gideon.
Reed held up his hand. “My research in Alexandria revealed another possible entrance beneath the surface of the Nile, and I employed Mr. Okoth and his submersible. I found the secret tunnel and avoided the traps.” He smiled. “I see you were resourceful enough to do the same, Lucian.”
“Others weren’t so lucky,” said Trigger. “We found the body of Walton Jones.”
Reed raised an eyebrow. “Jones? He always was an idiot. And Walsingham is twice the idiot if he employed him. But even Jones’s failure means Walsingham is getting closer to the pyramid . . . it is fortuitous you arrived when you did.”
Gideon felt suddenly sick. He had delivered Maria straight to Reed. His stupid thirst for adventure and heroism had ruined everything. But what was Reed planning?
“You found the Children of Heqet here?” he asked. “Are they the weapon you made mention of in your notes?”
“You are shrewd and intelligent, Mr. Smith,” said Reed. “No, they are not the weapon. And I did not find them—they found me. In the turning room.”
Reed’s face darkened. “I have no idea how long I was there. Days, surely. I had no food, and my body ached for that which enslaved me.”
“The opium,” whispered Trigger.
Reed nodded. “I had only a ball of kef, procured by Okoth. In desperation, curled on the floor, little more than an animal, I ate it. And achieved my enlightenment. My ascension.”
“You ate a whole ball of hashish?” said Trigger. “You must have been out of your mind.”
“I was,” agreed Reed. “I stepped out of my mind, out of the prison I had built for myself. The kef liberated my mind and opened it up to the truth.”
“Which was?” asked Gideon.
“That Walsingham, and the Crown, had taken me for a fool. That they had set me to work as if I were little more than a dog.”
“But you were the Hero of the Empire!”
Reed grinned without humor. “That’s what I said. Unfortunately, truth and fiction diverged somewhat radically around the time of the Shangri-La incident. For all Lucian’s talent with the quill, he could not write a happy ending for me. Once I realized Von Karloff was in the pay of Walsingham, up there on the frozen peak of Everest, my world came crashing down. If Walsingham could play us all off against each other so easily, sending Von Karloff on one little errand and Walton Jones on another, myself on a third . . . well, what was the point? We thought ourselves free spirits, roaming the globe at will. We were merely puppets. And once I realized that, I saw I was being betrayed at every turn. I gave my life to the British Empire, and traveled the world on Walsingham’s command. And how did they treat me? As though I were a mere errand boy, a foot- soldier in their endless quest to know everything and rule all.”
Reed paused thoughtfully. “Lucian, before I set off for Egypt, Walsingham called me in to Whitehall. He wanted to retire me.”
“Would that have been such a bad thing?” whispered Trigger. “To sit at home, with me, in Mayfair?”
“
Retire
me,” said Reed. “As though I were merely some employee. Thank you for all your years of service, Dr. Reed. Have a meager pension and the thanks of a nation. Not only that, Lucian, but they sought to impose
conditions
. I was not, in my retirement, to adventure any further. Not to, in their words, feather my own nest.” He barked a laugh. “They all but called me a buccaneer. Said I no longer fit the sort of image England wanted to project.” He shook his head.
“So you came here,” said Gideon. “One last hurrah. Fill your coffers with the treasure of the Rhodopis Pyramid for your retirement.”
“At first, yes.” Reed nodded. “But a . . . bigger picture emerged. Thanks to the Children of Heqet.”
“Why did they not kill you?” asked Stoker. “Forgive me, but you were a mere tomb robber to them.”
“Because of this,” said Reed, touching the pendant hanging at his pale chest. “Because they recognized it.”
So did Gideon. “The amulet from Arkhamville University,” he said.
Reed smiled at Trigger. “He really is good, isn’t he? Yes, Mr. Smith. The amulet. They recognized it for what it was, and thanks to the Golden Apple of Shangri-La I was able to converse with them.” He paused. “Can you imagine, talking to things that remembered ancient Egypt?”
“So why not leave?” asked Gideon. “Why sit in here for a year?”
“In truth, I don’t think they would have let me, even if I had wanted to,” said Reed. “They are simple creatures, with one sole purpose. My possession of the amulet—” He smiled. “Do you know of the
ka,
which the ancients believed is the life-force inside every man, and continues on his eternal journey once his body is turned to dust? I think the Children of Heqet feel me to be some kind of reincarnation of their master, the Pharaoh Amasis II.”
“I still do not understand,” said Bathory, her voice ragged. Gideon turned to look at her, leaning on Stoker’s shoulder. She looked pale and weak, her eyes fluttering. “Your creatures . . . they attacked Castle Dracula. Slew my husband. For what?”
Reed took the amulet from his neck and placed it on a low stone table. He reached into his bag and withdrew a golden scarab. “For this, Countess.”
He placed it alongside the amulet and took out a small stone idol, fashioned roughly into the shape of a man. Gideon said, “The
shabti
stolen from the British Museum. By the Children of Heqet, we presume?”
Reed nodded. “The same one I confronted in Faxmouth. It is dead, now, battered against Cleopatra’s needle.” He paused. “A fitting death, I suppose.” His eyes narrowed. “That was you, wasn’t it?”
“It attacked us,” said Trigger.
“As I said, driven by a sole purpose,” said Reed. He took a small box made of some precious metal, engraved and inlaid with jewels, from his bag. “Hidden beneath the rocks on the Yorkshire coast,” he said.
“And for that my father died,” said Gideon.
Finally, Reed removed a ring, inset with a huge ruby. He held it up to the light, turning it as it caught the flickering flames. “Taken from the finger of a mutilated body on the banks of the Thames.”
Maria gasped and Bent said, “Annie Crook!”
Reed shrugged. Gideon said, “But what are all these things? What do they mean?”
“Together with what is in the clockwork girl’s head, they mean everything,” said Reed. “They mean I can finally leave this place.”
Reed laid the ring down and surveyed them all. The ring, the
shabti,
the amulet, the scarab, the box. He sighed and said, “You will have to indulge me. Allow me to tell you a story.” Reed stroked his beard. “Mr. Smith, you echoed the words of my erstwhile colleague Jamyang earlier.
Cui bono.
To whose benefit?”
“Walsingham,” said Gideon. “Walsingham‘s benefit. That’s what you discovered in Shangri-La. That’s why you’re here now. Why we’re all here.”
Reed nodded. “That
was
the answer. Things have changed.”
“What do you mean?” asked Gideon.
“To whose benefit?” asked John Reed. “
Mine,
Mr. Smith. It is all to my benefit now.”