The Kingdom

Remi started laughing. Sam raised his head and looked at her.

“What?”

“You take me to the nicest places.”

“After this, a nice hot bubble bath-for two.”

“You’re singing my song.”

Though twice as wide as their shoulders and tall enough to allow them to walk stooped over, the tu

“Not to be a wet blanket,” Remi said, “but we’re assuming this leads somewhere.”

“We are indeed,” Sam replied over his shoulder.

“And if we’re wrong?”

“Then we turn back, scale the opposite side of the pit, and leave the way we came in.”

The tu

After what Sam guessed was a hundred yards, he called another halt and found a relatively solid section of tu

“What time is it?” Remi asked.

Sam checked his watch. “Nine o’clock.”

While they had told Selma where they were heading, they’d also asked her not to press the panic button until the following morning local time. Even then, how long would it take the authorities to arrange a rescue party and mount a search? Their only saving grace was that this tu

Neither Sam nor Remi spoke of any of this. They didn’t need to. Their years together, and the adventures they’d shared, had put them on the same wavelength. Facial expressions were usually enough to convey what each was thinking.

“I’m still holding you to that hot bubble bath promise,” Remi said.

“Forgot to tell you: I’ve added a relaxing massage to the pot.”

“My hero. Shall we?”

Sam nodded. “Let’s give it another hour. If a red carpet exit doesn’t materialize, we’ll turn back, have a rest, then tackle the pit.”

“Deal.”

Accustomed to hardship, of both the mental and the physical variety, Sam and Remi fell into a rhythm: walk for twenty minutes, pause for two minutes to rest, take a compass bearing and update the map, then onward again. The remaining time of their journey passed quickly. Left foot, right foot, repeat. To conserve light, Remi had long ago turned off her headlamp, and Sam had set his to its lowest setting, so they found themselves moving in the faintest of twilights. The cold air gushing through the floor seemed colder, their footing harder to maintain, the tinkle of falling icicles jarring to their numbed brains.

Suddenly Sam stopped. Her reactions at half speed, Remi bumped into him. Sam whispered. “Do you feel that?”

“What?”

“Cold air.”

“Sam, it’s-”

“No, in our faces. Ahead. Will you dig the lighter out of my pack?”

Remi did so and handed it to him. Sam took a few steps forward, looking for a solid section of floor between plumes. He found a suitable spot, stopped, and clicked on the lighter. Remi squeezed herself in next to Sam and peered around his arm. Flickering yellow light danced off the icy walls. The flame wavered, then steadied and stood straight up.

“Wait.” Sam murmured, eyes on the flame.

Five seconds passed.

The flame wobbled, then shot sideways, back toward Sam’s face.

“There!”

“Are you sure?” Remi asked.

“The air feels warmer now too.”

“Wishful thinking?”

“Let’s find out.”

They walked for ten feet, stopped, checked the lighter’s flame. Again it angled backward, this time more strongly. They proceeded twenty more feet and repeated the process, with the same result.

From Remi: “I hear whistling. Wind.”

“Me too.”

Another fifty feet brought them to a fork in the tu

Sam shed his pack. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a flash.”

He switched his headlamp to its brightest setting and disappeared into the tu

Remi checked her watch, waited ten seconds, checked it again.

“Sam?” she called.

Silence.

“Sam, answer-”

Ahead in the darkness his headlamp reappeared.

“Sorry,” he said.

Remi let her head drop.

“No red carpet,” Sam continued. “But would daylight do?”

Remi raised her head, took in Sam’s wide smile. She narrowed her eyes at him and gave him a punch in the shoulder. “Not fu

As Sam had promised, there was no red carpet, but after twenty feet of walking he brought her to something even better: a set of natural steps winding up a shaft at whose top, some fifty feet away, was a fuzzy patch of sunlight.

Two minutes later Sam pushed himself off the top step and found himself peering down a short sideways tu

“Almost noon,” Sam remarked.

They’d been underground all morning.

Suddenly, Sam sat up, his head turning this way and that. He leaned over to Remi and whispered. “Radio static. A portable radio.”

Sam rolled over, crawled to a berm a few feet away, and peeked his head over the side. He ducked down and crawled back. “Police.”

“A rescue party?” Remi asked. “Who would’ve called them?”

“Just a guess, but I’d say our erstwhile exploratory escorts, the King twins.”

“How-”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Let’s play it safe.”

They stripped themselves of anything that would indicate where they’d been and what they’d been doing-helmets, headlamps, backpacks, climbing gear, Sam’s map, Remi’s digital camera, the box they’d retrieved from the tomb-and shoved it all back into the tu

With Sam in the lead, they headed east, following a ravine and ducking between trees, until they’d put a quarter mile between themselves and the tu

Sam whispered, “Put on your best forlorn face.”

“Not much of stretch at this point,” replied Remi.

Sam cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hey! Over here!”

10

CHOBAR GORGE, NEPAL

The cell door creaked open. A guard peeked inside, scrutinized Sam for a moment as though he were about to make a dash for freedom, then stood aside. Clothed in a baggy light blue jumpsuit, auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, Remi stepped into the room. Her face was pink, freshly washed.