"Good." Gal leaned across and touched Richards shoulder. "I knew you would."
They remained in the café for a while and ate, Richard to regain the strength he had lost through that long day of spell casting and concentration, Gal to fortify himself against the sending yet to come. The sun dipped toward the western hills, and they both decided at the same time that they should not remain above-ground to watch the sunset. Much better to be on their way by then. They had flashlights, folded digging tools, and a crowbar packed into their rucksacks. They were used to breaking and entering, finding buried history. Richard sometimes felt that all the relevant moments of their lives had been spent underground.
He led them to a deep drainage ditch beside a park, filled now with discarded bicycles, clothing, cardboard boxes, and other refuse.
"Down there?" Gal said.
"Down there."
They began to dig through the rubbish, heaving it behind them and forging a path down to the base of the ditch. Richard cut himself on an old rusted baby carriage, Gal scraped his hand along the ragged mouth of a broken bottle, and they both gave blood to the land. Nobody came to see what they were doing. Whether they went unseen or people thought it best to keep to themselves, Richard was relieved.
"Here we are," he said at last, panting and sweating.
"There should be a stone slab in the base of the ditch. It'll be well fitted, might need to break it instead of lift it."
Gal set about prodding through the hardened silt along the bottom of the ditch with the crowbar, and right at the edge of the patch they had cleared, he uncovered a straight stone edge.
Fear and awe prevented Richard from saying anything. What in the name of hell are we doing? he thought, but it was too late for that now. Perhaps it had already been too late fourteen years ago, when they had uncovered the phoenix feather in Egypt. He often wondered when their lives had changed, and sometimes he marked a moment in case he thought the same way ten years down the line. Now, he thought. This could be the most important moment of my life. He looked up at the sinking sun and hoped he would remember.
It took Gal half an hour to expose enough of the stone slab for them to see what was written on it. "That's old Hebrew," Richard said. " 'Here lies chaos'."
"Comforting," Gal said. He hefted the lump hammer from his rucksack and started knocking the crowbar down beside the slab.
The sun was setting by the time Gal broke the stone. Richard had sat on the sloping side of the ditch, looking up now and then to see whether the noise of their efforts had finally attracted attention. All he saw was sky, birds, clouds smeared red by the setting sun. He thought it grew suddenly cooler, and then Gal gasped and said, "I'm through."
The slab fell away into the darkness below, a darkness untouched by light for many centuries. There was a heavy, long sigh as air pressures equalized — it seemed that a breath came out of the chamber rather than going in — and then Gal looked up and smiled. "Almost there," he said. "Rich, don't be scared. Father will be thrilled."
"I hope so," Richard said. Together, he and his brother descended into the long-forgotten tomb of a demon.
* * *