He did. Thinking: optical illusion, has to be…but wondering, all the same. Because—it was just so clear, so defined, rucking Hynde’s skin as though something was raising it up from inside. Like a letter from some completely alien alphabet; a symbol, unrecognizable, unreadable.
A sigil, the same tiny voice corrected. And Goss felt the hairs on his back ruffle, sudden-slick with cold, foul sweat.
It took a few minutes more for ‘Lij to give up on the sat-phone, tossing it aside so hard it bounced. “Try the radio mics,” Goss heard him tell himself, “see what kind’a bandwidth we can...back to Gebel, might be somebody listening. But not the border, nope, gotta keep off that squawk-channel, for sure. Don’t want the military gettin’ wind, on either side...”
By then, Camberwell had been gone for almost ten minutes, so Goss felt free to leave Hynde in Journee’s care and follow, at his own pace—through the passage and into the tunnel, feeling along the wall, trying to be quiet. But two painful stumbles later, halfway down the tunnel’s curve, he had to flip open his phone just to see; the stone-bone walls gave off a faint, ill light, vaguely slick, a dead jellyfish luminescence. He drew within just enough range to hear Camberwell’s boots rasp on the downward slope, then pause—saw her glance over one shoulder, eyes weirdly bright through a dim fall of hair gust-popped from her severe, sweat-soaked working gal’s braid.
Asking, as she did: “Want me to wait while you catch up?”
Boss, other people might’ve appended, almost automatically, but never her. Then again, Goss had to admit, he wouldn’t have really believed that shit coming from Camberwell, even if she had.
He straightened up, sighing, and joined her—standing pretty much exactly where he thought she’d’ve ended up, right next to the well, though keeping a careful distance between herself and its creepy-coated sides. “Try sending down a cup yet, or what?”
“Why? oh, right...no, no point; that’s why I volunteered, so those dumbasses wouldn’t try. Don’t want to be drinking any of the shit comes out of there, believe you me.”
“Oh, I do, and that’s—kinda interesting, given. Rings a bit like you obviously know more about this than you’re letting on.”
She arched a brow, denial reflex-quick, though not particularly convincing. “Hey, who was it sent Lao and what’s-his-name down here in the first place? I’m motor pool, man. Cryptoarchaeology is you and coma-boy’s gig.”
“Says the chick who knows the correct terminology.”
“Look who I work for.”
Goss sighed. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s in the well?”
“What’s on the well? Should give you some idea. or, better yet—”
She held out her hand for his phone, the little glowing screen, with its pathetic rectangular light. After a moment, he gave it over and watched her cast it ‘round, outlining the chamber’s canted, circular floor: seen face on, those ridges he’d felt under his feet when Hynde first brought him in here and dismissed without a first glance, let alone a second, proved to be in-spiralling channels stained black from centuries of use: run-off ditches once used for drainage, aimed at drawing some sort of liquid—layered and faded now into muck and dust, a resinous stew clogged with dead insects—away from (what else?) seven separate niches set into the surrounding walls, inset so sharply they only became apparent when you observed them at an angle.
In front of each niche, one of the mosaicked figures, with a funnelling spout set at ditch-level under the creature in question’s feet, or lack thereof. Inside each niche, meanwhile, a quartet of hooked spikes set vertically, maybe five feet apart: two up top, possibly for hands or wrists, depending if you were doing things Roman- or Renaissance-style; two down below, suitable for lashing somebody’s ankles to. And now that Goss looked closer, something else as well, in each of those upright stone coffins...
(Ivory scraps, shattered yellow-brown shards, broken down by time and gravity alike, and painted to match their surroundings by lack of light. Bones, piled where they fell.)
“What the fuck was this place?” Goss asked, out loud. But mainly because he wanted confirmation, more than anything else.
Camberwell shrugged, yet again—her default setting, he guessed. “A trap,” she answered. “And you fell in it, but don’t feel bad—you weren’t to know, right?”
“We found it, though. Hynde and me...”
“If not you, somebody else. Some places are already empty, already ruined—they just wait, long as it takes. They don’t ever go away. ‘Cause they want to be found.”
Goss felt his stomach roil, fresh sweat springing up even colder, so rank he could smell it. “A trap,” he repeated, biting down, as Camberwell nodded. Then: “For us?”
But here she shook her head, pointing back at the well, with its seven watchful guardians. Saying, as she did—
“Naw, man. For them.”
—
She laid her hand on his, half its size but twice as strong, and walked him through it—puppeted his numb and clumsy fingerpads bodily over the clumps of fossil-chunks in turn, allowing him time to recognize what was hidden inside the mosaic’s design more by touch than by sight: a symbol (sigil) for every figure, tumour-blooming and weirdly organic, each one just ever-so-slightly different from the next. He found the thing Hynde’s rash most reminded him of on number four, and stopped dead; Camberwell’s gaze flicked down to confirm, her mouth moving slightly, shaping words. Ah, one looked like—ah, I see. Or maybe I see you.
“What?” he demanded, for what seemed like the tenth time in quick succession. Thinking: I sound like a damn parrot.
Camberwell didn’t seem to mind though. “Ashreel,” she replied, not looking up. “That’s what I said. The Terrible Ashreel, who wears us like clothing.”
“Allatu, you mean. The wicked, who covers man like a garment—”
“Whatever, Mister G. If you prefer.”