CHAPTER 18
The blackness weighed heavily on the three explorers as they descended ever deeper into the mountain. This darkness was more than a mere absence of light; it was dense, smothering, an oppressive force that even the light of Shamash's sword struggled to penetrate.
They walked in silence. Step after step after step; Indy had tried to keep track of the number of stairs they'd paced down, but his mind wouldn't focus and he kept losing count. It could have been fifty, it might have been five thousand. The blade lit just a few steps ahead, the unchanging scene like a flickering projector on loop.
Time evaporated, it had no meaning in this dark, eternal place. Had a lifetime passed, or was it just a few minutes? Reality itself felt less real, less tangible. Indy found himself questioning if he was awake, or was this just another nightmare? Dread and uncertainty gnawed at him. He wondered if the others felt it too, but reasoned that it was better not to ask. Fear spreads like a cancer, and he needed to keep a handle on it, for all of their sakes.
Time and reality returned as the sword's glow fell upon a towering arched doorway, its twenty foot high stone double-doors stood closed. There was no handle, no knocker. Just two great enormous slabs of stone.
Indy passed Talia the sword and walked up to the doors. He placed both palms flat on the stone and heaved. Nothing.
He looked to Mutt. "Gimme a hand."
Mutt hurried beside his father as Indy counted down, "Three... two... one... push!"
The pair shoved with all their strength. The doors didn't budge. Mutt tried ramming them with his shoulder; once, twice, but he might as well have been trying to shift a mountain.
"It's not a door," Indy caught his breath. "It's a goddamn wall!"
Mutt glanced up the stairs. "So, what? We go back?" he shook his head defiantly. "No, no there's got to be another way!"
Talia shone the sword's light across the grey stone of the doors. Just about visible, faintly etched into the stone, were small cuneiform indentations.
"There's writing here!" She handed the sword back to Indy. Talia took a steadying breath, closed her eyes, then traced her fingers slowly, delicately across the ancient markings.
"Perform the ancient rites. Only then are you worthy to speak the Queen's name."
"The ancient rites?" Mutt asked. "What does that even mean?"
"In the Sumerian legend, The Descent of Ishtar," Indy recalled, "to enter the Palace of Ganzir, the goddess Ishtar was made to perform some sort of... ritual."
"OK," said Mutt. "So, what did she have to do?"
Indy sighed. "She had to... remove all her clothes."
"What? Really?" Mutt glanced to Indy, then to Talia. "OK!" He shrugged. "Sure, why not." Mutt started to pull off his shirt.
"Wait," Talia said. "As thrilling as the prospect is of seeing you in your boxers."
Mutt paused.
"I don't think it's necessary." Talia smirked, shaking her head. "So put your shirt back on, will ya? The act of undressing is symbolic, the rites are about offering yourself fully. Without pride." She glanced to Indy. "Without ego."
Talia knelt before the door. She offered out the sword, it lay across both her palms. She bowed her head in submission, and spoke the Queen's name.
"Ereshkigal."
Indy and Mutt dared not breathe; a gently ominous, breeze whistled down the stairs behind them. Indy and Mutt spun around in fearful expectation, and then... nothing happened.
"Well that didn't work."
Talia glanced at Mutt in annoyance. "Shhh!" She repeated the name, this time louder, with more conviction.
"Ereshkigal!"
A stronger gust howled down the stairs.
Talia called out again.
"Eresh-kigal!"
The ground shook and a deep, earthy rumble reverberated through the chamber. And then... the doors juddered and slowly began to open inward.
Indy glanced to Talia, and then to Mutt, a heady mix of hope and despair coursing through him. Their destination revealed.
The Palace of Ganzir.
A circular hall of staggering proportions, stretching several hundred feet in every direction. As they entered the palace, statues of the hideous Gallas stared down at them—demonic creatures responsible for torturing Irkalla's less righteous inhabitants. Great stone pillars repeated at intervals, dozens, hundreds, of them, holding aloft the spectacular vaulted ceiling which rose up at least a hundred feet above their heads. Mounted on the pillars, torches flickered with dim, eerie blue flames.
Indy, Talia and Mutt moved cautiously into the palace, the sword's light cast long, shifting shadows. They were entranced by the hall's immensity, but equally snared with a deep sense of unease. This was a dark place, not meant for the eyes of the living.
They looked back to the towering wall which they'd just emerged through. Looming steles ran around the perimeter of the hall; gigantic stone carvings depicting hundreds of naked men and women—some entwined in ecstasy, others contorted in tortuous agony, while others still soared above them majestically.
"What do they all mean?" Mutt asked.
"That not all fates are equal," Talia replied.
"You reap what you sow." Indy turned to Talia. "Guess the Bible got that bit right."
Dwarfed by the gigantic stone columns, they paced to the center of the hall. Here, a huge circular pattern was carved into the smooth stone floor. It was the symbol of Ereshkigal; an eight pointed star with the goddess' all-seeing eye in its center. Around the edge was etched cuneiform text.
Talia read aloud. "Here lies the gateway to Irkalla." She glanced to the others. "Land of the dead."
Faint whispers blew through the hall, the sound of subtle movement in the shadows.
Mutt gasped. "What was that?"
Indy glanced around slowly. "We're being watched."
"By who?"
Indy fixed his son, he didn't think either of them wanted that question answered.
Mutt swallowed hard, then buried his fear. "Let's get this done. For Mom."
Indy nodded softly. He admired his son's clarity of vision, his optimism. He envied it. But he'd been around long enough to know that these things never work out the way you think. He hoped to God that he was wrong, but a deep sense of foreboding was eating away at him. He was certain something was gonna happen, and he was equally certain that he wouldn't be ready for it when it did.
Mutt reached out to take the sword from his father.
"Here, let me—"
"No!" Indy snatched the sword away. "I'll do it."
Talia had moved to the symbol's eye. There was a slight crack in the center of the pupil. She looked warily to Indy. "This is it," she went on, "the exact spot where Gilgamesh smashed open the gateway and freed Enkidu."
Indy paced across Ereshkigal's symbol. "You two, stand well back." He looked down to the center of the eye, directly before him. He positioned the Sword of Irkalla so that the blade was pointing downward. Then he gripped the weapon tightly with both hands and raised it above his head. Indy looked over to Mutt and Talia, tightly gripping each other's hand. Tears gathered in his son's eyes. Indy felt his own moistening; a surge of emotions—love, anger, fear, guilt. He readied to plunge the sword downward and whispered "This is for you, Marion."
And then...
"Why Doctor Jones! I knew we'd make a believer of you."
Cavendish's slender silhouette strode from the shadows behind Mutt and Talia.
"And Doctor Wells," Cavendish stepped into the flickering blue torchlight. "My dear, how saddened I am that you opted to cut short our partnership."
"Why you sick son-of-a-bitch!" Talia took a swing at the professor, but her arm was blocked by Karl, who roughly yanked it behind her back. Talia cried out in pain.
"Let her go!" Mutt lunged for the soldier, but a revolver to Talia's head stopped him in his tracks. He put up his hands. "OK, OK, take it easy!"
Indy watched as a second CEDADE soldier stepped into the blue light, and the bastard had a machine-gun aimed at Mutt.
Cavendish moved toward Indy. "This cat and mouse pursuit has been invigorating, Doctor Jones. But I'm afraid it must come to an end." Cavendish held out his hand. "Give me the sword, or you and your companions will be enjoying a more... permanent trip to the next world."
Indy looked over to the others and weighed up his options. Sadly, it seemed the scales were tipped squarely in this Nazi megalomaniac's favour. He thrust the sword into the German's hands with a sneer. "You wanna be careful with this thing."
Cavendish gasped at the sword's icy kick, then smiled menacingly. He whipped the sword's tip to Indy's jugular.
"Toss the gun."
Indy slowly reached into his holster and pulled out his Webley; he held the gun up—letting its muzzle hang loose—and threw it to the ground.
"Please," Indy's tone was sincere, "don't make the same mistakes as your father."
Cavendish's eyes burned into Indy's, but then he retracted the sword tip. Indy raised his hands and backed away from the professor.
Cavendish straddled Ereshkigal's all-seeing eye and lifted the sword. Then he proclaimed in Sumerian, familiar words which Indy had heard his father utter four decades earlier.
"I shall smash open the gates of Irkalla. Let a million souls rise!" Cavendish plunged the sword into the ground.
A shard of ghostly blue light shot vertically upwards from where the sword had cracked through the all-seeing eye. An earsplitting shriek filled the hall. The entire palace rocked as a distant rumbling gathered deep beneath their feet. The monstrous groan grew ever louder and nearer.
Cavendish staggered back, his expression frozen halfway between blind fear and exultation.
Indy glanced to Mutt. "I've got a bad feeling about this."
The symbol of Ereshkigal began to splinter and fragment; more blue energy soared up from the cracks, slamming into the palace's ceiling.
The rumbling reached a deafening intensity and suddenly the stone symbol exploded upward as an almighty tornado of blue plasma-like energy surged up from beneath the ground. A shockwave pulsated through the hall, knocking everyone from their feet. The Gateway to Irkalla was open.
The swirling blue column throbbed violently. Distorted voices—screams, sobs, laughter—echoed out from deep within its core. Vague shadows and shapes twisted eerily within the immense vortex of writhing energy.
Indy pulled himself up. He glanced to the soldier roughly dragging Talia to her feet, and then to Mutt who was attempting to stand while being prodded angrily with the second soldier's machine-gun.
Cavendish scrambled to his feet. He approached the convulsing column of energy, he reached out and let his fingertips touch its ever shifting outer wall. An awestruck smile crossed his face.
Cavendish bellowed in German, "Come forth from the shadows!" He raised his arms above his head. "Let a great army rise!"
Amongst the cacophony of dread bleeding from the column, the distant rhythmic thud of marching slowly began to build. Almost imperceptibly quiet at first, but then louder and louder. The sound of hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers goose stepping ominously towards them. The synchronised drumming of the footfall shook the hall. Indy glanced to the two CEDADE soldiers, their gaze fixed expectantly on the swirling blue mass.
Within the twisting energy a terrifying block of dark grey shadows moved in unison. The silhouetted figures drifted into ever clearer focus as they got closer and closer. An army of the dead.
Indy rested his hand over his whip. He wasn't sure how much use it would be against hundreds of undead Nazi's, but he'd seen off enough living ones with it to know it was worth a try.
Cavendish called out in German, "Come forward!" He could barely contain his euphoria. "Come forward and reclaim the Earth!"
The army were about to break through. Indy looked to Talia and Mutt, their faces awash with fear. Cavendish laughed. But then...
Within the vortex, the marching silhouettes were besieged by a multitude of contorting, shadowy figures. Agonising shrieks and wails accompanied the sound of tearing flesh as the soldiers were consumed by the writhing phantoms.
"No!" Cavendish cried. "No...! No...! My army!" Then...
Several pale, wiry human arms whipped out from the vortex and clawed at Cavendish's face, his arms and legs. The German let out an agonised scream as bony fingers dug into his flesh and the sinister limbs began dragging him toward the fiery gateway.
But the professor managed to painfully yank himself free from their deadly grip. He ran toward Indy, but more arms flew out from within the raging blue fire; abnormally long tentacle-like limbs which sunk their fingers into Cavendish and began to hoist him back. The professor grabbed hold of Indy's arm and started pulling Indy towards the vortex, too.
Cavendish pleaded, "Save me Jones! Save me!"
More and more nightmarish limbs reached out from the deathly maelstrom, dozens of the horrific tendrils slicing their digits into the shrieking German and hauling him—and Indy—closer and closer to Irkalla's hellish gateway.
The pair were yanked from their feet as Indy tried to wrestle free from the German's grasp. He grabbed a hold of Cavendish's collar. "You're not takin' me with you!"
Then, the German was wrenched from Indy. Hand after blood-soaked hand sunk deep into Cavendish's flesh, ripping the professor to pieces as he was hauled screaming through the monstrous, surging gateway.
Seconds later and the shadowy wraiths retreated, the agonised wails from within the vortex disappeared. Cavendish and his army were no more.
Indy looked to his hand; he'd torn off a piece of the professor's collar. And there, resting in his palm beneath the blood soaked scrap of fabric, was Eric the Red's sun compass. Here, at the gates of death, Indy had recovered his prize. The amulet's jewels gleamed spectacularly.
But then, a wriggling arm flicked from the vortex and brushed against his leg; Indy scrabbled backwards until he was safely out of range, and the limb retreated into the pulsating energy. In the same instant the vortex began to collapse in on itself. The Gateway to Irkalla was closing.
Indy heard Talia cry out. He spun and saw the spooked CEDADE soldier backing away, dragging Talia by her hair. The other soldier threw Mutt to the ground in panic, he aimed his machine-gun at the kid and started barking in German. It was in this moment that Indy spotted his trusty Webley lying within arms reach.
A gunshot. Then a second. Both CEDADE soldiers were dead before they hit the floor. Dark, amorphous spirits rose from their corpses, and Indy watched as these tormented phantoms were pulled into the swirling blue column, which continued to get narrower and narrower. The stone floor around the closing gateway somehow reconstructed itself, rebuilding—like new—the carving of Ereshkigal's symbol.
Indy noticed the Sword of Irkalla on the ground; it was being dragged by the vortex's forcefield toward the closing gateway. Mutt noticed it too. He ran and grabbed its handle.
"No son don't—" But Indy's words came too late.
A hideous arm whipped out from the slender column of light that remained; it grabbed the sword and pulled it—and Mutt—into the retreating blue energy. A heartbeat later and Irkalla's gateway was closed, sealed beneath the stone of Ereshkigal's all-seeing eye.
It took Indy a moment to process what had happened. Then it hit him.
His son was gone.