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“I have no knowledge of the specific plan,” Dharel replied, “but as I understand it, there were only a few dozen Sentinels. Upon evacuation, each of them was to leave the city carrying a chest, a chest designed to confuse invaders. In one of the chests was to be the disassembled remains of the Theurang.”
Sam and Remi exchanged sideways smiles.
Dharel added, “Only a select few in the military and government knew which Sentinel carried the genuine remains.”
Sam asked, “And inside the other chests?”
Dharel shook his head. “I do not know. Perhaps nothing, perhaps a replica of the Theurang. At any rate, the plot was designed to overwhelm any pursuers. Equipped with the best weapons and the fastest horses, the Sentinels would race from the city and separate in hopes of dividing the pursuers. With luck and skill, the Sentinel carrying the Theurang would escape and hide it in a predetermined location.”
“Can you describe the weapons?”
“Only generally: a sword, several daggers, a bow, and a spear.”
“There’s no account of whether the plan succeeded?” asked Remi.
“None.”
“What did the chest look like?” said Remi.
Dharel retrieved a pad of paper and pencil from his desk and sketched a wooden cube that looked remarkably similar to the chest they recovered from the cave. Dharel said, “As far as I have found, there is no description beyond this. The chest was said to have been of an ingenious design, the hope being that each time an enemy recovered one of them he would spend days or weeks trying to open it.”
“And in the process, buy more time for the other Sentinels,” said Sam.
“Exactly so. Similarly, the Sentinels had no family, no friends an enemy could use against them. They were also trained since youth to withstand the worst kinds of torture.”
“Amazing dedication,” Remi remarked.
“Indeed.”
“Can you describe the Theurang?” asked Sam.
Dharel nodded. “As I mentioned, it is said to have man-like features but an overall . . . beastly appearance. His bones were made of the purest gold, his eyes made of some kind of gem—rubies or emeralds, or the like.”
“The Golden Man,” Remi said.
“Yes. Here . . . I have an artist’s rendering.” Dharel stood up, walked around to his desk, and rummaged through the drawers for half a minute before returning to them with a leather-bound book. He flipped through pages before stopping. He turned the book around and handed it to Sam and Remi.
After a few seconds, Remi murmured, “Hello, handsome.”
Though highly stylized, the book’s rendering of the Theurang was nearly identical to the etching on the shield they had found in the cave.
An hour later, back at the hotel, Sam and Remi called Selma. Sam recounted their visit to the university.
“Amazing,” Selma said. “This is the find of a lifetime.”
“We can’t take credit for it,” Remi replied. “I suspect Lewis King beat us to it, and rightly so. If he had, in fact, spent decades hunting for this, it’s all his—posthumously, of course.”
“You’re assuming he’s dead, then?”
“A hunch,” Sam replied. “If anyone else had found that tomb before us, it would have been announced. An archaeological site would have been set up and the cont
ents removed.”
Remi continued: “King must have explored the cave system, set those railroad spikes, discovered the tomb, then fell while trying to recross the pit. If that’s what happened, Lewis King’s bones are scattered along some underground tributary of the Bagmati River. It’s a shame. He was so close.”
“But we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Sam said. “For all we know, the chest we found was one of the decoys. It would still be a significant find, but not the grand prize.”
Selma said, “We’ll know if—when—we get it open.”