Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [107]
But this incredible natural feature had been modified by the hand of man—thus lifting it out of ‘incredible’ and into the category of ‘wondrous’.
A pathway had been hewn into its outer flank—in some sections it was flat and curving, while in others it took the form of short flights of steps. This path spiralled up and around the exterior of the great stalactite, rising ever higher, heading for the ceiling of the cavern.
Dotting this path were nearly a hundred semi-circular archways, each archway containing vines and shrubs and trees and flowers—all of them overgrown to excess, all hanging out and over the edge of the stalactite, dangling precariously 300 feet above the world.
It defied belief.
It was stupendous.
A truly hanging garden.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
As the others joined him, West noticed the wall soaring into the upper reaches of the supercavern immediately above and behind them.
While it was made of densely-packed bricks, West could make out at its edges the traces of another earlier structure, a structure that had been trapezoidal in shape and huge—300 feet high—like a giant doorway of some sort that had been filled in with these bricks.
West grabbed Zaeed’s sketch from his pocket—the drawing of the great stalactite (shrouded in scaffolding) visible from outside the mountain through a window-like trapezoidal archway:
At that moment, he remembered a reference from the Nazi Hessler’s diary. He pulled the diary from his jacket pocket and found the page:
1ST INSCRI PTION FROM THE TOMB OF IMHOTEP III:
WHAT AN INCREDIBLE STRUCTURE IT WAS,
CONSTRUCTED AS A MIRROR IMAGE,
WHERE BOTH ENTRANCE AND EXIT WERE ALIKE.
IT PAINED ME THAT MY TASK—WHAT WOULD BE MY LIFE’S
MASTERWORK—WAS TO CONCEAL SO MAGNIFICENT A STRUCTURE.
BUT I DID MY DUTY.
WE SEALED THE GREAT ARCHWAY WITH A LANDSLIDE.
AS INSTRUCTED, THE PRIESTS’ ENTRANCE REMAINS OPEN SO THEY
MAY TEND THE SHRINES INSIDE—THE PRIESTS HAVE BEEN
INFORMED OF THE ORDER OF THE SNARES.
‘“We sealed the great archway with a landslide”,’ West read aloud. ‘Imhotep bricked up the archway and then triggered a landslide to cover it. But he wasn’t done. Then he diverts a river outside to cover the whole thing. My God, he was good. . . ’
‘The Third Great Architect was indeed a master,’ Zaeed said, coming alongside West.
Beside them, the others were arriving and taking in the awesome sight.
Lily’s mouth hung open.
Stretch’s eyes were wide.
Even Avenger was impressed enough to fall silent.
It was Pooh Bear who summed up their mood: ‘So this is why they call them Wonders.’
But they weren’t there yet.
The wide lake of quicksand still lay between them and the ziggurat—the only means of getting up to the Hanging Gardens.
Halfway between them and the ziggurat, seemingly floating on the surface of the sand-lake, there stood a small roofed structure that looked like a gazebo. Made of stone, it was hexagonal in shape and roughly the size of a single-car garage, but it had no walls, just six pillars holding up a heavy-looking stone roof.
A dead-straight path barely an inch above the surface of the lake stretched out from their position directly toward this hexagonal gazebo—only to end abruptly thirty metres short of the structure.
The path re-emerged nearer to the gazebo, its submerged centre section presumably consumed by the quicksand sometime in the distant past.
As West looked more closely, he saw more paths.
Radiating out from the hexagonal sides of the gazebo, creating a star-shaped pattern, were six stone paths that were also virtually level with the surface of the lake.
Each of these paths also ended abruptly about fifteen metres out from the gazebo.
‘How do we get across?’ Pooh Bear asked. ‘The paths have long been swallowed by the quicksand lake.’
‘Can’t we just follow the straight path?’ Avenger said. ‘Surely it continues just beneath the surface.’
‘Yes. Let’s do exactly that and why don’t you lead the way, you stupid fool Israeli,’ Zaeed said.