Artifact Read online

  Chapter 2

  He went around the entire perimeter, sliding his hand along the stone to feel any discrepancy that could indicate a door or an opening of some kind. When he came full circle to his own footprints he turned around and did the same thing in the opposite direction. This time he detected a barely discernible discrepancy and when he looked closely he saw a hole the size of a large pin. When he shone his light directly into it a door-sized section of the wall swung away, revealing another round chamber, this one only ten feet across.

  There was nothing in the chamber except a small round platform of polished stone, almost like a pedestal, and sitting on the platform was a gleaming, golden cone three feet high, with a frosty, milky-white crystal set in the peak. He walked around it twice, and the second time around he saw some small, irregular impressions on opposite sides of the base of the cone. Moving closer he saw in the shifting reflections of his lantern that the impressions were hand-shaped, and he felt an immediate urge to fit his hands into those depressions.

  He set the lantern on the sandy floor and reached with trembling hands for the cone, not knowing what to expect, but all he felt was cold metal. He shifted his hands slightly, felt something slip under his palms, and information flooded into his head. No, it was only a bit of information being fed into his head, but the method of communication was so intrusive it felt like a flood.

  The upshot of the deal was that now he knew he needed light to activate the artifact. He turned up the lantern as bright as it would go and put his hands in the impressions again. This time the message was less intrusive and more informative; he needed more light, lots more light, as much as he could generate.

  He went back to the other chamber, gathered all the surviving glowstones, and brought them back, then he went to the descent basket and got all the unused glowstones too. He set them all up where he thought they’d be most effective, then activated them all to maximum brightness. At that level they would only last five or ten minutes but he prayed it would be enough.

  Squinting against the intense light he reached for the cone. As soon as he touched it he felt information pour into his head, visions of what the artifact could do for him, the changes he could make, the power he would have, the amazing things he could do. He felt engines of ancient alien technology coming to life inside the cone, felt forces reaching out, accessing other dimensions, and he felt the power flowing into him, power such as he had never dreamed of possessing, power he could use to do anything he imagined.

  Then it all slipped out of his grasp as the glowstones dimmed, their entire store of energy depleted seconds before the contacts could be completed, and he screamed out his anguish in a wordless curse to all the gods that ever were.

  When he quit screaming to inhale he realized the only light in the pit was the glow of his lantern, and the thought of being stranded down here with no light at all jolted him back to sanity. He turned down the light to conserve the battery.

  If he needed more light, he would get more light, even if he had to go all the way back to the Ten Cities to get it, though that was a last resort because it would increase the risk of discovery before he succeeded, which would probably result in his painful and prolonged death.

  He climbed into the basket, activated the switch that connected his microphone to the speaker at the surface, and said, “Pull me up.” They were his most loyal servants but he had not told them why he had come here, so there was no way for them to know he had failed, and no reason for him to tell them that.

  Darby waited half a minute, then repeated the command. Still no response. Knowing his life would be in their hands during the descent he had brought his most trusted servants, and now he needed them to bring him back up because the artifact didn’t work for him, but they were not answering.

  With a thump a heavy object landed behind him, shattering part of his basket, and he jumped out just as another object crashed down right where he’d been standing. His guts clenched when he saw that it was the bodies of two of his servants, and while he wondered what had become of the others they dropped in to join the party, thumping down on the sand.

  A bell chimed to indicate the communicator had been activated and an unknown voice with a peculiar accent said, “Did you really think the artifact was unguarded?”

  The line went dead and before he had a chance to wonder who or what might have said that he heard the tension go out of the cable. Although incredibly light-weight for its amazing strength, a cable two miles long still weighed upwards of a thousand pounds, and if it landed on him he could easily be killed, injured or trapped.

  The falling cable hissed as it piled higher and higher in the middle of the chamber, spreading in random coils and loops toward the walls, leaving the artifact’s chamber the only place for him to avoid getting crushed by them, and he had no sooner closed the door than the cable piled up against it, trapping him inside.

  He sighed, leaned his back on the door and slid down to sit on the floor. What did it matter anyway? Without water he would be dead in a matter of days.

  A shifting rustling noise came through the door and when he tried to open it he was surprised to discover that he could. The heap of cable sank slowly into the floor, getting noticeably smaller while he watched. The sand seemed to vibrate and reach up to grab the cable, to consume it, taking away any hope he had of recovering any food or water from the meagre supply in his basket.

  When the cable was gone a total silence descended and he noticed that his lamp was getting dimmer. Deep-seated despair washed through him, draining him of strength, and he slumped to the sand against the wall, so exhausted he fell asleep without even realizing. When he awoke the lantern was dark and cold.

  Straining his eyes against the unrelenting darkness for what seemed like days but could have been less than an hour, he began to doubt that he would die of thirst before he went mad in the oppressive darkness.

  A crack of light appeared across from him and to his amazement a door he hadn’t suspected was there slid wide open, revealing a slim silhouette that could have been a man or a woman. She revealed her sex when she spoke.

  “You came for ultimate power, but that was denied you, and your servants paid the price. What of you? I can leave you here to suffer alone in the darkness, dying of thirst in four or five days, or I can offer you life.”

  Desperate though he was, Darby knew there had to be conditions to the offer, but he also knew in the pit of his stomach, that he would accept them, whatever they were, because there simply wasn’t any other offer coming. “What kind of life?”

  “You will get adequate food, comfortable quarters, a bit of leisure time, and you will not be worked beyond your endurance.”

  On close examination the offer was not very attractive; adequate food could be bland and unappealing, standards of comfort varied, a bit didn’t sound like much, and just how close to his endurance would he be worked? “That sounds a lot like slavery to me.”

  “Indeed it does. Now come. We have lots of work for you to do.”

  He climbed to his feet as fast as he could and broke into a clumsy run, desperately afraid she had only been teasing about giving him a choice, but the door stayed open until he was through, standing dim light, before it closed, shutting out the darkness behind him.

  END

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