"We did hear that, yes. It is making accomplishing our task here somewhat more - complex. Of course we suspected as much, given the length of his silence."

"Is there any sort of documentation of his death, or were any of his belongings recovered? The university never received any records and still has him listed as current faculty."

"Those pinheads at the CMC cut off our supplies and we had to travel back up the railhead to Mersa Fatma to talk some goddamn sense into them. We heard of the eruption after having spent a completely pointless day negotiating with company men — the whole site destroyed, fallen to the bottom of a crater thirty yards across, awash in lava. Gone. Our associates dead, some of the laborers apparently blaming us for the whole fiasco, as though we could cause a volcano to erupt. Like I have control over the goddamn geology. Ayers told me he had to see the site for himself, so he went back up the railway." Long drink of whiskey. "Never saw or heard from him again. No sense speculating what happened to him. A thousand things meant us all ill by that point. Take your pick. Angry laborers, bad supplies, lava floes, the hottest place on the goddamn planet."

"--Wait, was Ayers not at the site when the volcano erupted?"

"He was not. We were dealing with those numbskulls at--" Acuna slips into Spanish.

"Those numbskulls at?"

"That idiot at the CMC with his fourteen wives."

"Federico Acquaronte?" But she thinks he only had three..?

"Yeah. Complete moron." Acuna looks prepared to begin a rant about the perfidity of the CMC.

"He did seem like, ah, not the most competent person who could possibly have been placed in his position. I was beginning to wonder whether we would ever run into anyone who knew the first thing about what happened. We're lucky that you returned for another dig."

"Can't say I was much impressed with him either. Ayers was dealing with him?"

"We both had to work on those idiots if we wanted to get anything. Kept canceling our goddamn supplies. It's the way it is. We're stuck here in Adua because some numbskull got two contradictory orders and now I have nothing to do but drink for weeks. As soon as they put someone in charge of a bureaucracy they cut out their goddamn brains."

"They're not letting you return to the obelisk?"

"Not until they sort out the infantry marching orders," he says with obvious contempt for the concept. Infantry marching orders, Acuna seems to believe, were invented exclusively for the purpose of keeping him from doing archaeological work.

"Well, I hope you'll be able to get back soon? You don't think the site will be damaged in the mean time, do you, from the fighting or from exposure?"

"It's stuck around for the past two thousand years, I imagine it'll hold for another few weeks."

"Sure. As long as they didn't get you caught in an awkward place. I guess around here there's less threat of rain washing things away while you're halfway done than there is in some places, anyway. What exactly is it, do you know yet?"

"The city of Axum is filled with stelae. The Obelsik of Axum is the oldest, about a thousand seven hundred years old. It was toppled onto its side and shattered into five parts during the sixteenth century. Could be an earthquake, could be because of the war. My research focuses on an ancient text that had been acquired by the Università di Roma, where I work, the Revelations of Dagon. Based on my study of the text, I believe that one or both of the “false” doors at the base of the Obelisk actually conceal a real entrance to a chamber hidden within the Obelisk."

Could be an earthquake, could be because of the war, could have been something else.

She jots that down. "But the chamber wasn't revealed when the structure broke?"

"It was not. They built it strong.The other stelae in Axum were used to mark underground burial chambers. They were modeled on the Obelisk of Axum, but the Obelisk’s purpose was different. According to my research, it was built to serve as a sort of earthly pillar for the wall behind which the Prisoner of Dagon was imprisoned."

"The Prisoner of Dagon?"

"A legendary figure. I know very little about him."

Dagon is... a place? Some kind of saint? Has a church order or something? Mordred said the Order of Dagon was some campus Christian group, he's pretty sure.

"A figure that they must have thought would need a very strong wall to contain. it would seem. Why build a chamber into it, though, I would think that would interfere with its function as a piece of a strong wall? Perhaps if their building techniques were advanced enough that this didn't seem like a problem - and given the evidence, they might well have been right about that - "