Crown of souls, p.23
Crown of Souls, page 23
“Professor?”
His head jerked up. He peered at the screen as if he’d forgotten they were there. “I have an idea, but I must talk with Tzivia again. If she will listen.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Tox knew the half-Israeli beauty was long on opinions and attitudes but short on good manners.
“She is not the only expert I know. And if this is what I think”—he grunted—“trust me, we will want answers before we go after it. Or it may be the last thing we go after.” He removed his glasses. “Pray that this is not what I suspect. Because even Thefarie of Tveria could not recover it, and an entire nation was lost.”
23
— DAY 24 —
NIMRUD, IRAQ
Nothing could have prepared her for the devastation.
Grief and anger strangled Tzivia as the car pulled up to the chain link fence. She dragged herself from the SUV and stepped into the heat of the day, which paled in comparison to the heat of the anger she felt as she surveyed the destruction. In the spring of 2015, ISIL had blown up this cultural heritage site. Through time it had been known by many names, including Kalhu—or Calah, as the Bible likened it. The centuries-old city had been renamed Nimrud in modern times, after the biblical hunter, Nimrod.
She wished to be a hunter, to find those responsible and dispatch them!
A man strode toward her, his sweat-stained shirt dirtied and his tactical pants dusted from his work. “Horrific, isn’t it?” Mehdi Jaro asked with a grim smile as he turned from her and glanced back over the field. “I’ve worked here for months, and still the tragedy robs me of breath.”
Rubble. Nothing but rubble—chunks of rock covered with cuneiform script jutted from piles of dirt that had once been the palace. “Fools,” Tzivia hissed, but diverted her attention. “You said you found something big.”
“Come.” He started back the way he’d come, his steps jagged as he negotiated the debris. “Faeza is anxious to see you!”
It was good, Tzivia thought as she made her way across the rubble, that most of the artifacts had already been removed, or they would have been destroyed and lost forever. Nimrud’s Assyrian artifacts were displayed around the world, keeping history alive—despite ISIL’s attempts—through the reliefs of Shalmaneser, Ashurnasirpal II, and the legendary winged bulls with human heads—the lamassu.
“Why did you drag me out here?” Tzivia asked. Not that she was complaining. Tox didn’t want her, so she needed some distraction. Climbing over a knee-high chunk of stone, she saw the carved reliefs in it and stumbled. She paused and knelt, tracing the broken piece of history. Grief wrapped long, barbed claws around Tzivia’s heart and constricted.
Replicas could be fashioned from videos, photographs, even the reliefs, so tourists could peek back in time, but there had been something profound about staring at or touching a stone, stele, or artifact that been handled centuries earlier. Tzivia always imagined the hands of time reaching through the artifact and touching her. Ram would taunt her if he knew. So she could not believe in God, but she could believe in some faceless brickmaker or artisan crossing time to touch her?
“Sad, is it not?” Faeza Bendakir trudged toward them, wiping her hands. “But out of the rubble rises glory.”
Tzivia frowned, indignant. “Glory? You call this—”
“No. Come see,” Faeza said.
She and Faeza had met on their first dig and cemented a friendship amid reliefs, lamassu, inferno-style heat, and passion for the history of this very site.
“There is more to see at the Old Palace and the ziggurat.”
“I’m surprised there’s still anything here,” Tzivia bit out as they entered a small section of the palace.
“If it had not been for the authorities, I’m not sure there would be,” Mehdi said. “When the most recent attack happened, much was destroyed. Irreplaceable pieces reduced to dust. Some to rubble that will take years to reassemble, but”—his shoulders bounced as he trudged down some stone steps—“we will rebuild it.”
Tzivia wanted to cry. Wanted to rage at someone. “Why am I here, Mehdi?” Her heart skipped a beat as daylight was absorbed by dim mustiness inside the palace. A whisper of unease tickled her nape as she realized tombs of the dead surrounded her. “When I asked after anything unusual, a crown or diadem—”
“Patience, Tzivia. You never were good with that.” Mehdi vanished around a corner. Ten years her senior, he’d enjoyed taunting her as much as pushing her to do better. “The attack also opened a new window into the past.” He slipped beneath a tent, surprising her as darkness swallowed them. “And down into that past we go.”
“He is still good with dramatics, no?” Faeza sighed as she produced a flashlight and rolled her eyes.
“Would it have been so hard for him to tell me what’s down here on the phone?” Tzivia turned a dark corner. A light bobbed ahead.
“Yes,” Faeza said with a giggle. “That is Mehdi. If he tells you everything, maybe you wouldn’t come. Or—”
“You know me better than that.” Tzivia paused, breathing out and expelling her frustration over everything she’d seen so far. “He knows that. So what’s this really about?”
“He . . . he was afraid the phones might be monitored. He is so paranoid about this dig staying secret.” She winked. “And you? You must see to believe.”
“I must see to understand,” she corrected. “Do you know why Mehdi wanted me to come?”
Faeza smiled. “He—we want Dr. Cathey’s help.”
“For what?”
“Getting a grant, money to put up security around this place as we work to see what’s here.”
Tzivia hesitated. Glanced down the steps again. “He could’ve told me on the phone.”
“Not everything can be understood. Especially this,” Faeza said as she guided Tzivia deeper below the ancient city. Her beam of light swept to the ground. “Careful—a step.”
Tzivia slowed, surprised. “What is this?”
“A passage. Secret, we believe. There are no sconces or braces for torches—”
“It’s quite compact.” And was the air thinner? It almost seemed the walls were closing in. Tzivia took a steadying breath, shoving out the memories of the explosion in Jebel al-Lawz that had buried her in rubble. She’d worked excavations for a decade, but since that collapse . . .
Tzivia paused, swaying slightly on her feet. Glanced ahead just as Mehdi’s light winked out. She hauled in a breath, disbelieving her eyes. Where had he gone? There weren’t any doors.
“More dramatics,” Faeza said with a sigh, motioning to the darkness. “The passage narrows until you must squeeze through. I call it the armpit.” Her laughter echoed in the tunnel.
So it hadn’t been Tzivia’s imagination that the walls were closing in. Though she knew that now, each of the twenty paces to the “armpit” made breathing a little more difficult in the ever-tightening space. Anxious for a rush of air and openness, Tzivia sucked in her stomach and courage. Pushed through quickly.
And dropped into darkness.
The ground she’d expected wasn’t there, pitching Tzivia forward and down a few inches. She stumbled but caught herself, straining to see.
Mehdi laughed. “Quite a shock, isn’t it?”
Light exploded through the room, throwing shadows over a—
Tzivia’s breath backed into her throat. She blinked. “A stele.” She rushed forward, Faeza right behind her, and stared at the pictorial fragment. It wasn’t massive, but at three feet tall and a foot wide, angling upward and narrowing to a point, it was impressive. “It’s like the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III.”
“Complete with five panels on each of the four sides and a cuneiform script that captions each panel,” Mehdi agreed. “But this one is red granite, not black.”
“Obviously.” Tzivia scanned the perimeter of the first panel. Her skills with ancient Akkadian lacked the expertise of Dr. Cathey, but she could probably work out its meaning. “‘Four gave’ . . .” She hesitated, working through possible meanings.
“‘Their souls,’” Mehdi offered.
“Mm, that might work. ‘Four gave their souls’”—she moved to the next script—“‘to the’ . . . something . . . ‘and were no more.’”
Mehdi shifted in between her and Faeza to point at a symbol. “This is ‘iron of heaven.’”
Tzivia scrunched her nose. “Where do you get that?”
“Over here.” He shifted to the side and pointed. “This panel shows something falling from the sky. It calls it the ‘iron of heaven.’”
Her pulse sped up. “So the stories are true.”
“That a meteor fell from heaven?”
If that much was true, was the rest? Yes, perhaps. “‘And these four gave their souls to the iron of heaven and were no more. Give not your soul to the iron of heaven.’” With a smile, she turned. Her gaze lit on a winged sun disc, the symbol of the god Ashur. Her fingers danced next to an eight-pointed star, a representation of Ishtar, goddess of fertility, love, sex, and war. “So . . . Neo-Assyrian?”
But then something caught her eye on the panel below it. “This . . .” She squinted closer. “Faeza, bring your torch.”
“Older,” Mehdi said. “The cuneiform.”
Tzivia’s heart skipped a beat. “Middle, then?”
Faeza angled the torch so light played with the contours of the script. The beam was harsh, its glow pulling at the back of Tzivia’s eyes.
“But this . . .” Her fingertips hovered over a strange depiction. “I’ve never seen this.” Tzivia eased back, trying to get a better overview of the panel. “There are four rulers depicted below this strange marking.”
“Push it.”
The anticipation and excitement in Mehdi’s voice made Tzivia glance at him over her shoulder. “Push?”
Beside her, Faeza smiled as she stood. “It’s okay. But you’ll want to be up here when you do.”
Confused and wary, Tzivia rose. Peered at her friends, then reached for the strange marking. Unease slithered across her nape, sending a shiver down her spine. Don’t be ridiculous, Tzivia. She pressed two fingers against the symbol.
Cold stone surrendered, sinking flat against the relief with a soft click.
Whoosh! Thump!
Heart in her throat, she whirled. Caught only the plume of dust that erupted at the base of a barrier that had slid into place, effectively sealing them into the tomb. Not a tomb. Hidden room, she reminded herself.
“Let the fun begin.” Mehdi pointed behind her with a broad smile.
The shadows had lifted their hem and revealed a space equal in size to the one that had just been sealed off on the opposite side. She glanced back, then to the newly opened area.
Though uncertainty wound a tight cord around her throat, Tzivia’s insatiable curiosity drew her into the narrow passage. As Mehdi and Faeza walked a few paces ahead, she could not stop imagining a wall slamming between herself and them, entombing her.
“How do you know it won’t seal us off?” she asked, her voice echoing against the nearly untouched reliefs lining the passage. Reliefs! She surged forward, compelled by the discovery. Though faded, some of the pigment still offered a hint of the old colors used. “What is this?”
“We only discovered it last week,” Mehdi said. “There hasn’t been enough time to catalog or even fully explore it, though we’ve been here nearly every day from sunup until sundown.”
“Sometimes later,” Faeza said with a smile.
“Also, we’ve had to hire more security to protect us from ISIL, or they would blow it up.”
Shadows lengthened, her friends hurrying on. Tzivia grunted, wanting to linger and study the reliefs. Annoyed that Mehdi wasn’t stopping. “Wa—” Awe struck her as she watched his retreating light. If he was brushing past these amazingly preserved reliefs without a blink . . . what was he heading toward? Something more incredible?
Faeza and Mehdi slipped through an opening on the right. Tzivia followed. Carved around the door’s edges were more depictions of the meteor that fell, along with— “Nergal,” Tzivia breathed, eyeing the many panels of him with various persons, rulers, and priests. “But he was the god of war and pestilence. Sometimes also represented as the sun of noontime.”
“And the summer solstice that brings destruction,” Faeza reminded her.
“But wait,” Mehdi said, his words quiet. “Tzivia, come inside.”
She lowered her gaze from the doorframe to her two friends in the many-sided room.
Mehdi’s dark eyes bore excitement, but also something else. “Remember that Nergal also presided over the netherworld and stood at the head of the special pantheon assigned to—”
“The government of the dead.” Mind buzzing and stomach twisting in dread, Tzivia entered the room, which held nothing but a cage.
“But who?” she asked, circling the cage. “Who did this? Who made those reliefs—”
“We found an inscription on the stele that refers to the ‘King of Sumer and Akkad,’” Faeza said.
Tzivia froze. “That could be a number of Assyrian rulers.”
“But within these walls, built by Shalmaneser, then rebuilt by Ashurnasirpal?”
With a sigh, Tzivia nodded, again eyeing this cage. Was the air different in here? Plaster and sandstone consumed the walls. The cage was composed of two-inch-thick iron bars that ran from the floor straight up into—and through—the ceiling. “Iron of heaven,” she muttered quietly. Circling it, she noted there were no locks. No mechanisms. “How does it open?”
“No idea.”
Within it rested an eight-sided pedestal, mirroring the walls of the room itself, inscribed in cuneiform.
“We have no idea what was in there, but it would seem the builders didn’t want anyone getting it,” Faeza said.
On her tiptoes, Tzivia peered at the top of the pedestal and saw the distinct imprint of whatever had been removed. A nagging hum pulled at her. Maybe it was the thought of being shut into a hidden room within a hidden passage far below the surface. Maybe it had been the narrowing walls. No windows. How were they even getting air down here? Were they getting air?
When had she become so pathetic?
Back on track, Tzi. She nodded to the impenetrable cage. “So when I asked if you knew of something stolen or missing . . . this made you call me.” She shrugged and folded her arms. “Well, that and using me to get Dr. Cathey’s help.”
“You know how hard it is to get grants.”
Tzivia reached toward the bars, feeling a distinct thrum bouncing between her palm and the iron.
Mehdi caught her arm. “Careful.” He nodded to Faeza. “Show her.”
Faeza bent and lifted a handful of dust from the floor. She tossed the grains just outside the cage.
All around the perimeter of the cage, swords sliced from the ceiling and the floor, clamping together. The sound of steel scraping steel buzzed the air as the powerful jaws snapped out of sight just as fast. A split second.
Tzivia hauled in a long breath and held it. If anything or anyone stood too close to the cage, they would be instantly killed. She could’ve been killed. Her head throbbed.
“Pressure plates, is our guess,” he said.
“Very sensitive ones,” Faeza added. “At least there aren’t any flying spears or massive boulders,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“How did you know about the trap?” Tzivia asked, pointing at the ceiling and taking a step back at the same time.
“The day it was discovered, we . . . lost a worker,” Faeza said. “And we’ve had a hard time getting anyone to work the site since.”
“Not to mention the price we had to pay to keep things quiet. The family—let’s just say they won’t have to worry about money for a long time.”
“Even still,” Tzivia whispered, “word will spread.” It always did. “No wonder they carved Nergal all over this. It wasn’t to invite people in. It was to warn people to stay out.”
“No,” Mehdi said, ferocity in his expression and word. “Next week, we’ll have very good equipment. We’ll x-ray the rooms and make sure there are no more traps. Then excavation will resume.”
Tzivia’s gaze fell to the pedestal again. Then retreated to the space where the jaw-like swords had disappeared. The cage bars. The pedestal. “If something was stolen from here,” she said, shaking her head, “how did the thief survive? The jaw-swords and those bars don’t look like they’d easily surrender. Are there markings or depictions of a crown anywhere?”
That was an absurd question—there were many rulers depicted here and in the forechamber with Nergal and other deities.
“Beyond the four rulers, we’ve found nothing else. But something was taken.” Mehdi bobbed his head and circled the cage. “And recently.”
Tzivia nodded, eyeing the pedestal and the mark in the dust left by whatever had once sat there. Circular. Perhaps big enough for a crown. Perhaps not.
She shrugged. Maybe it was enough proof. But probably not. Not enough to tell Tox and Ram she knew where the crown had come from. Or its meaning or origin.
“And this.” Mehdi lifted a coin. “Not exactly Middle Assyrian.”
Tzivia rubbed her forehead as she studied the silver coin with a crown-like carving in it. Her stomach churned. Head ached. “My head . . .”
“Oh, that’s the iron, we think.” Faeza pointed to the bars. “They’re humming or something. You get used to it eventually.”
“We’ve noticed the vibration but can’t guess its source. Another reason we need Dr. Cathey’s help and backing—to sneak in experts.”
“You’re not subtle at all,” Tzivia laughed.
“Can’t afford to be right now.”
Vibrating iron. Strange. But that seemed to go with the territory. If that vibration was bothering her head from several feet away and the crown had been made from the same material, what would it do to the wearer?
She eyed the reliefs again, and suddenly the four kings took on new life beneath Nergal. Maybe Mehdi had been onto something about the government of the dead.
