The Hermaphrodite's Curse Ch. 26

PART FOUR - BODRUM

- 4 -

"What is it?" asked Gabe staring down into the darkness of the newly discovered tunnel as they stood amongst the fallen stonework of the Castle wall, "Where does it lead?"

"I believe it is a ley tunnel," Dr. Gerard replied, "I've read and heard a lot about them, but never seen one for real."

"What's a ley tunnel?"

"Tunnels running along leylines, important lines of mystical significance, were a common feature amongst Templar architecture," he revealed, "They were used to hide the secrets of the Order. With many Templar secrets turning over to the Hospitallers, I guess we should not be surprised at them using the same techniques. Many ley tunnels linked strongholds like this Castle with other important locations."

"Like the Mausoleum," Saphy chipped in.

"Like the Fountain of Salmacis," Gabe added, excitedly.

"Well, I guess there's only one way to be sure," Dr. Gerard replied, stepping toward the dark and dusty tunnel steps.

"Come on, we're not getting left behind now, not when we're this close," Saphy said, grabbing Gabe by the arm as Dr. Gerard descended to the bottom of the steps.

The tunnel was filled with a filmy layer of dust, undisturbed for perhaps centuries. Gabe could feel it clogging up his lungs as he and Saphy descended the stone steps together to join Dr. Gerard. As they reached the bottom of the steps, they looked on ahead of them and could see nothing of where the tunnel headed, just pitch black. All three stood, hesitantly wondering which would be the first to step away from the last shaft of hot Turkish sunlight and enter the dark world of the unknown.

"Wait a second," Gabe suddenly said, "I've got a light."

He was still carrying his heavy bag full of camera equipment. He began to fish around in the bag until he pulled out a square flashlight that he sometimes attached to the camera to take photographs on dark days without having to use the camera's flash. Flicking the switch on the flashlight suddenly illuminated the dark, dusty tunnel before them. It was built with strong timber supports like a mine shaft, but so much older. The timber was thick and heavy, but worryingly rotten in places. Even with the beam of bright torchlight, it was difficult to see any end to the tunnel.

The light reassured the three of them a little, but even so, Gabe felt his heartbeat speed up with the first step that they took, all in unison, down the dark ancient tunnel. He had to fight strongly against a childish urge to reach out and hold onto Saphy's hand for reassurance. He got the feeling that this would not have been met by a similar response in his companion. For her part, Saphy, as ever, had a determined expression set on her face as she walked alongside him. The strong, harsh stare of Dr. Gerard, however, remained unreadable in the long shadows the tunnel cast across his face.

It was probably only a couple of minutes of walking silently side by side before they reached the end of the tunnel, but to Gabe it felt very much longer. It was hard to believe that up above them there was a modern Mediterranean beach resort, full of happy, relaxed tourists. Down here in ancient dark, it felt like time was completely unrelated to the world outside, that they had utterly left the 21st century behind and had entered a different dimension where time did not progress, and had not since the time of the old gods.

Now, however, they found themselves on the threshold of something new. The narrow, dark tunnel ended and they moved on into a larger chamber. While the tunnel had been dry and dusty, there was a sense of damp in the air of this room. All three could hear the sound of dripping water. Part of the chamber was illuminated by a beam of light coming not from Gabe's flashlight but from the Turkish sunshine in the world up above. As their eyes adjusted to the dark, Gabe, Saphy and Dr. Gerard began to take in what it was that the light shaft showed up.

Right in the middle of the room was a pool of stagnant water, obviously once built of elegant stone but now covered in dark green slime. On a ledge above the pool, there was a reclining classical statue in decaying bronze, illuminated by the beam of golden sunlight like the altar of some ancient temple.

Even in the dim light of the chamber, the figure was instantly recognisable to Gabe. It was one that he had been seeing a lot of recently, in reality, in paintings, even in his dreams. By now, he felt like he knew every inch of the figure's soft, sensual curves, from the little mounds of its breasts to the small penis nestling between its smooth thighs. Even with the years of decay, the statue's face retained that look of sensual yearning that had so entranced generations of poets and artists and even now captured Gabe's imagination.

"You don't think...That's not the original is it?" Saphy broke the silence, her educated diction hushed in awe.

Gabe barely heard her, however. He was so focused on what he was seeing, it was as if some other part of his mind had taken over and his usual conscious thought had been pushed out of the way. He did not even fully understand that the water that he saw before him could be the answer to what they had been looking for from the start. For him, it felt like an answer to a far older, deeper need within.

Later on, he would be completely unable to explain what he was thinking at that moment. He just knew that he had to do what he did. As soon as he saw that sludgy, stale water in the damp room, he was drawn in to it. Before Saphy and Dr. Gerard could really notice that there was something a little off about their companion, Gabe had let his heavy bag of camera equipment drop to the floor and had rushed across the room and plunged his whole body into the pool.

After years in this dark chamber, the water was freezing and the cold hit Gabe like a slap to the chest, knocking the breath completely out of him. For a moment, he was utterly disorientated with the dirty water in his eyes, filling his mouth with its dank taste. His mind was swirling wildly all over the place and he felt as if his body was no longer quite in his control, as if something strange was about to happen to it.

After a second, however, he surfaced, feeling cold, wet and dirty, but otherwise pretty much himself. Saphy had rushed over to the side of the pool and was leaning over to pull him out. She was staring at him with a curious expression on her face as if trying to figure out just what had been going through his mind.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked incredulously.

"I don't know...I thought...Well, I don't really know what I thought," Gabe replied, starting to shiver from the cold, starting to feel pretty stupid.

"Well, stop being such a bloody fool and let's have a look around," Saphy told him, holding out her hand to help him out of the pool, "The statue must mean something, must mean that we're close. Although I guess we can see from you that the water's only magical transformation powers are to turn someone into a quivering idiot."

"Yeah," Gabe replied, wiping the slime off his shirt and stepping across the pool to climb out, "It was kind of stupid of me to think that there might really be something to it. That the water might really – ow!"

Gabe stopped mid-sentence, just as he was about to climb up out of the pool, and clutched at his foot. In the dark of the water, he had stood on something sharp and it had punctured his sneaker, pricking him on the foot.

"Damn it!" he cursed, "The floor here is really broken up and uneven. It's not easy to walk on."

Saphy let go of Gabe as he pulled himself up out of the water. She had brought over his camera bag and was now using the light to scan the bottom of the pool, looking at the sharp spot where Gabe had stood while he nursed the pain in his punctured foot.

"I don't think this is age," she said, "I think this is what it's supposed to be like. These peaks and dips, it's designed like that. There's something very familiar about these shapes."

"How do you mean?" said Gabe, his interest in his injured foot instantly switching to an interest in Saphy as she revealed her latest discovery, the latest clue in piecing the mystery together.

"Don't you think it kind of looks like a map?" she said, excitedly, "It's kind of a relief of an area of land. That point could be the peak of a mountain," she pointed out different areas with the flashlight, "This line could be the sea. That other bumpy bit there, that could be an island. And I'm sure it's one I recognise."

"That really is some smart observation. If only you would have remained at Cambridge, you could have made something of yourself," they had almost forgotten the presence of the middle aged academic and both were kind of surprised to have their usual deductions interrupted like this, "Mr. Herrison, I believe you have got yourself a good one there. Her suspicions are always so accurate."

There was something a little off in the manner that he said this, not like he was paying a compliment at all. There was an edge to his usual slightly superior manner that made Gabe and Saphy both look up with concern to see Dr. Gerard standing at the entrance to the chamber. He was not, however, alone. Two bright lights either side of the Cambridge academic revealed themselves as being flashlights attached to the handguns held by two men in black robes. On each robe, Gabe could see the white crosses that they had seen carved into the tower above them, the same he had seen in the cell back in Cambridge.

"What was it now that she said?" Dr. Gerard went on, "'Doesn't it seem a little convenient, showing up at the Castle right when you did?' Maybe you should have listened more to that thought. 'Be on your guard', I think she mentioned. Good advice, I would have thought." There was an unpleasant note of triumph in his slightly foreign accent, "Don't you realise that the sole reason that you are still alive is because I have allowed you to be?"

"I don't understand," Gabe replied.

"In Cambridge, I had to ensure that those two eunuch assassins did not kill you as they had Jane Cavendish. You should be grateful to me for that, it took all my power to do it. After that, you two proved yourselves quite the little code crackers. I decided that we would be better off using your skills rather than keeping you out of the way. And you certainly have more than lived up to our hopes for you."

"In Cambridge? But, you're a university professor. How do you have the power to call off assassins? Who are you?"

"They're Hospitallers," Saphy responded, "Or at least, they like to think that they are."

"The Priory of Villeneuve represents the original ideals of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller," Dr. Gerard replied with a note of anger and aggression in his voice, "We seek to heal the ills of the world, to bring order and righteous Christian morality. By any means necessary. The Knights Hospitaller in their glory days had access to this weapon of incredible power and they were too scared to use it. They hid it away beneath their stronghold, but now we have the power to set that right."

"The Fountain of Salmacis is a weapon?" Gabe asked, feeling strangely disturbed by the idea.

"Think about it, the ability to reduce the mightiest of your enemies to a weak and feeble woman," Dr. Gerard replied.

"Weak and feeble woman?!" Saphy sprang forward angrily, "I'll show you a fucking weak and feeble woman."

She was quickly brought to a halt however as the two robed men stepped forward and gestured significantly with their pistols. Seeing this, Saphy came to her senses and took a step back, even whilst her posture remained defiant, glaring with her fierce, piercing eyes at the Cambridge academic and secret Grand Prior of a mediaeval holy order.

"We have allowed you to live thus far, Miss Cross, make sure that you don't seem to outlive your usefulness," Dr. Gerard said, carefully pronouncing each word as if to leave no doubt as to the nature of his threat, "Robert White was very useful to us at first, but in the end he proved a liability."

"Wait! It was you?" Gabe exclaimed, shocked to have one of the many mysteries that they sought to uncover resolved so simply and bluntly, "You knew all along where White was, what had become of him. You knew because it was you that killed him!"

"I'm afraid not. We did not kill Professor White," Dr. Gerard replied, "Robert had been my mentor many years ago and I was reluctant to make that final necessary decision, once we had gained all we could from him. Fortunately, that decision was taken out of my hands. Yes, I do know just what happened to Professor White. You see -"

However, Dr. Gerard had no chance to finish his sentence. He was interrupted just at the moment when both Gabe and Saphy were just coming to listen intently to all he was about to reveal them. As the crucial words were just about to leave his lips, just at that very moment, he span round in surprise to see the hooded black figure behind him slump to the ground. A white feathered arrow was embedded in his back.