Still, nature took advantage of this sunless world. Rafts of fungi climbed the massive tree trunks. Pale mushrooms sprouted everywhere. Some rose waist high, with caps stretching a yard across, their undersides frilled by gills. Elsewhere, basketball-sized puffballs littered the dark floor.
“It’s like we’re in the world’s largest root cellar,” Benjie whispered. “One long abandoned and left fallow. I’ve never seen such huge examples of Psilocybe congolensis.” He pointed to a swath of knee-high yellowish mushrooms. “They normally only grow as big as my palm. They’re notoriously rich in psilocybins and baeocystin, powerful hallucinogenics.”
Kowalski drew closer. “So, African magic mushrooms?” He gazed around. “Don’t think we need them. Feels like I’m already high. Like I fell into Alice’s Wonderland.”
Benjie stared around. He found himself jabbering away nervously. “Did you know, a couple years ago, the fossils of the world’s oldest mushrooms were found in the Congo, not far from here?”
Gray glanced to him.
Kowalski simply shrugged.
Benjie nodded his head. “The fossils date back some eight-hundred million years. It’s believed that ancient fungi played a critical role in forming the first primordial soil, laying the groundwork, so to speak, for the first plants and later animals to colonize land.” He turned to Gray. “In fact, the oldest living organism is found in your country, in Oregon. Armillaria ostoyae, or the honey mushroom. It’s over eight thousand years old. It’s hyphae network extends three square miles, forming one organism, weighing thirty-five thousand tons. Making it also the world’s largest organism.”
Benjie forced himself to quiet down, knowing he was prattling on. His spectrum made it too easy to fall into a state of hyperfocus, to fixate on a single topic. Still, maybe this diatribe wasn’t entirely unwarranted. The team had come here searching for the source of a virus unlike any other, one that seemed capable of manipulating DNA, maybe of steering evolution.
Perhaps such details could prove important.
He was certainly right about another topic.
The group approached a tall stone arch that spanned the path, proving that the hundreds of pillars were indeed the remnants of ancient archways.
Similarly, as they had continued across the valley, the gravel underfoot had become flat cobbles set in an intricate pattern. The path was occasionally broken by roots of the surrounding trees, but there was no mistaking it.
Definitely an ancient road.
Benjie studied the archway as he passed under it. The rough-hewn bricks were black with age and covered in layers of moss, but a glinting caught his eye. Overhead, the centermost key brick was not stone. Unable to help himself, he reached over and guided Gray’s flashlight up.
Kowalski whistled appreciatively, recognizing it now, too.
It was a massive wedge of gold.
Benjie stared back along their trail, picturing the other hundreds of pillars. He tried to calculate the value of such a path, lined by arches topped in gold. Was this proof of Prester John’s wealth and maybe a connection to the legends of King Solomon’s mine?
Tyende turned to them, noting them lagging behind. His form was limned in torchlight, his gold circlet shining bright. “We are here,” he said.
8:03 A.M.
Gray hurried forward with the others.
Tyende stood at a Y in the road, where it split and diverged into two paths. Their guide took the fork to the right. As Gray followed, he glanced down the other trail. It vanished into the darkness, but he thought he caught a vague glimmer in the distance, nearly illusory. He rubbed his eyes, trying to discern its source. But it quickly dimmed as he continued after Tyende and Molimbo.
Gray focused forward again. They didn’t have far to go. The road ran for another hundred yards and ended at a cliff face. They came upon it abruptly as the forest abutted right against it, hiding the bluff nearly completely. The sheer rock was further masked by thick mats of damp moss, which served as the bed for a riotous growth of mushrooms and fungi.
Gray searched around, realizing that their trek had curved to meet the base of the valley wall. The cliff’s heights stretched to the right and left, disappearing into the darkness. He had no doubt it was an unbroken barrier. He frowned, unsure why Tyende had brought them here.
The old man must have guessed this question. He removed his circlet and examined it with a forlorn expression. “I am the last king of Utoto wa Maisha. Of Mfupa Ufalme.” He returned the crown to his head. “It is my burden. My penance to bear.”
Gray did not understand.
Tyende nodded to Molimbo, who turned and spoke to one of his tribesmen, the one carrying the second torch. The pygmy ran forward toward the cliff, clearly wanting to dispatch his duty quickly. Gray noted a few of the other hunters had reappeared but none drew any closer. Even the aardwolves hung back.
Faraji grabbed Gray’s sleeve and tugged hard. The boy pointed to the left, to a patch of mushrooms and a reef of fungi. Gray failed to spot what alarmed him and swung his flashlight in that direction. Only then did he spot the white glint among the pale growth.
“Mfupa,” Faraji warned.
Bones . . .
A skull glowed in his flashlight’s beam. Gray moved closer, recognizing that a skeleton lay buried among the mushrooms.
A gasp rose from Benjie, but the biologist was staring toward the cliff. The pygmy with the torch had come running back, but he no longer carried a flaming brand. He dashed past to join his brethren.
Back at the cliff, a fire glowed within it. As Gray watched, it swiftly spread outward, running along channels both inside and outside, pooling brighter for stretches, then extending again. Gray imagined thin troughs and gutters of oil fueling this fire.
As the flames spread, they revealed the truth hidden behind the moss and fungi. What appeared to be a sheer cliff was in fact a cityscape carved into the rock. The flames rose higher and to either side, revealing the true breadth of the place. It climbed tens of stories and stretched far to the right and left.
The firelight soon revealed how Gray had been mistaken a moment ago. The ancient city wasn’t cut into ordinary stone. Instead, the surfaces glinted and shone with a ruddy brightness. Gray took a step back, struggling to take in the scope hidden here. The city had been mined out of a giant vein of gold.
Kowalski swore, his face aglow with lust in the firelight. Gray couldn’t blame him. Even he had to fight down a twinge of avarice. Entire countries would be financed by what lay before them. The wealth here was incomprehensible.
Benjie pointed higher up the cliff. “Is that what I think it is?”
By now, the flames had crested higher, outlining a giant gold cross glowing above the city. Gray considered its presence here. Was the shape purely happenstance, or did it further support the myths of Prester John, a Christian king who founded an empire here?
Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing for sure.
Tyende noted their attention. “The Reverend Sheppard was equally disappointed to discover there was no lost kingdom still thriving here. It was as empty as you see it now, left to the ghosts of the past, those who only left their bones behind.”
Only now did Gray see the tumble of skeletons strewn about the base, as if washed against the cliff. He searched around and saw more skulls and jumbles of rib cages, leg bones, clawed hands. Some were yellowed by age, others polished white. Now spotted, more and more revealed themselves, all around them. They spread far and wide throughout the forest. Even more were likely layered under centuries of rotting leaves.
No wonder this place was considered cursed.
Even the pygmies knew to keep their distance.
“Over the decades,” Tyende said, “I tried to count the remains. I finally stopped when I reached fifty thousand.”