Authors: Pamela Hegarty
Braydon checked out the next passage. “I’m pretty sure this is Mars,” he said, “a circle with an arrow slanting upwards.”
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Mars’s shield and spear,” she said, already finding the next symbol. “Jupiter’s thunderbolt,” then, “Saturn.” She was rushing now, out of breath. “A circle with a point in its center, the sun,” she called from the next passage, then, at the final opening, “Mercury’s winged helmet.”
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If you start at the Sun, the order of the planet symbols on the seven doorways go around the perimeter of this chamber in order of distance from the Sun, starting with Mercury, ending at Saturn,” said Braydon.
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The guardian’s armillary sphere was state of the art for the mid-1500s. Copernicus had just come out with his model of the Sun being the center of the universe, rather than the Earth. Very radical at the time. ” She shone her flashlight around to all seven entryways. “But where do we start?”
A thudding sound rumbled from above them. They both looked up, but could see nothing through the small opening to the plateau in front of the ruins. Christa listened as the distant sound grew louder. “Thunder?”
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Chopper,” said Braydon. “No doubt commandeered by Homeland Security. Your tax dollars at work. With a chopper at their disposal, they won’t take the time to climb up from the valley floor. They’ll just rope down from above like they did before.” He grabbed the timber and twine ladder, yanked it down and tossed it aside.
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What are you doing?” she said. “These tunnels could be dead ends. That could be our only way out.”
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We go up there, that’s a dead end, if you catch my drift, and the bad guys get the sacred stones we already have,” he said. “We can’t let that happen.”
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The key has the Earth symbol,” she said. “We could start there, but then what.”
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Luna’s sphere was Copernican,” he said, “with the Sun as the center of the universe. The center of Luna’s universe was that Turquoise. We start with Saturn, follow it to the Sun, the center. That’s where we’ll find the Yikaisidahi.” Without waiting, he ducked into the opening.
CHAPTER
56
Christa wedged into the tunnel marked with the symbol for Saturn. She swallowed back her fear. Those beasts had to come from somewhere and a dark, dank tunnel fit the bill. She found herself pressing against Braydon, only partially because of the confined space. “Your decisiveness is both enviable and exasperating,” she said.
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It had better be the right decision,” he said. “We won’t get a second chance.”
At the split of the passageways, she shone her light on the symbols carved into the rock just inside. “Jupiter to the right, Earth to the left.”
Braydon crouched and crabwalked down the right-handed passage. The tunnel looked as if it had been hewn out of the solid sandstone. Good thing the floor was rock, not sand. Their footsteps left no prints. Even if Rambitskov’s men deduced what tunnel they had entered out of the confusion of footprints they left behind in the main kiva, they could only follow them so far before having to divvy up their hunting party. “I think we’re headed downhill,” she said, “a good sign,” but the darkness before and behind them was complete. They had gone at least fifty yards before they reached the next split. “Mercury to the right. Mars to the left,” she whispered. Shouts channeled through the tunnel from the plateau in front of the ruins above them.
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To boldly go where few men have gone before,” said Braydon, heading to the left.
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Going,” she said, “but not boldly. In fact, my knees are shaking.”
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That’s just strain from the climb up the cliff face,” he said.
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No, it’s the weight of the mountain pressing down on top of us.” She sniffed. “Does the air smell stale to you?” It was growing difficult to breathe. Rather than the baking heat of the sun, a damp chill permeated the tunnels, as if it emanated from another, darker world.
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Smells like the catacombs under Paris,” Braydon said.
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You mean where they buried their dead.” Lovely thought.
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I chased a jewel thief down there,” he said. “Beneath Paris are two hundred miles of passageways brimming with skeletons. The guy got lost. Started leaving a trail of diamonds, like bread crumbs. He never was seen again. I figured he died down there. I got the diamonds, though.”
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If you’re trying to take my mind off those beasts that might be stalking ahead of us, waiting to make sure we don’t come out alive, it isn’t working.”
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Actually, I was trying to take your mind off those beasts behind us” he said. “There are worse places to be.”
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I’m sure there are,” she said. “I just can’t think of one.”
Despite the confined space, Braydon quickened his pace and she hurried to keep up, her heart beating faster as they delved deeper into the tunnel system. Each footfall sounded like thunder in the complete silence. Every few yards, a patch of pebbles would break loose from the vibrations of their steps, pelting her head. If any section of the tunnel collapsed, they’d be trapped.
They followed the Earth, Venus and Mercury tunnels in rapid succession. Whispers of splashing water gurgled towards them. As they descended, it grew louder, more distinctive. Braydon stopped. She plowed into him. He flicked off his flashlight.
By the single light of her flashlight, she could see that Braydon was looking heavenward, his lips parted in wonder. She followed his gaze. Above her was a night sky filled with stars, too many stars. It was like no night sky she had seen before, even on a moonless night in the desert, away from any glare of civilization. “I may be clairvoyant, but I didn’t see this coming,” she said. “How can we have found our way to the outside of the cliff? And how can it be the middle of the night?”
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They aren’t stars,” said Braydon. “They’re glow worms. We’re in an underground cave.”
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If we’re still underground,” said Christa, “why does the air smell fresh and cool, like the desert night?”
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I’ve seen these bioluminescent bugs before,” he said.
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Tracking another jewel thief?”
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In Alabama,” he said. “I found him hiding out in Dismals Canyon, same place Aaron Burr hid for a couple days after killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Jesse James hid out there, too, so they say. At night, these glowing bugs they call Dismalites line the canyon walls like stars. And where there’s bugs,” he began. He flicked his flashlight back on and shone it at the ground in front of them, only it wasn’t ground. The flashlight beam reflected a vast pool of water so still it looked like a solid mirror, but for a tiny ripple expanding from below them. Their tunnel ended about twelve feet above the surface of the pool, as if they stood on the lip of a waterfall that had gone bone dry. Just above them and to their left, her flashlight beam illuminated another tunnel like theirs, but with a slender waterfall trickling down from it into the pool. “There’s water. We’ve reached the end of the trail.”
She scanned the cave with her flashlight beam. It barely penetrated the dark. “How long must it have taken a little waterfall like that to carve out an underground lake this size?” she wondered aloud.
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Longer than five hundred years, I hope,” said Braydon, “or the Turquoise could be underwater.”
She traced the shore of the lake with her light. When Braydon merged his beam with hers, she could just make out the opposite shore. A large, natural opening in the rock waited like a gaping mouth, at least twenty feet wide and high, its lower lip just sipping at the water’s surface. A small stream flowed out of the underground lake down the cavernous passageway. “Turn off your light,” she said. Although she had spoken in hardly more than a whisper, her voice seemed to boom across the cavern.
With both their lights off, the sparkling universe of glow worms above was even more magnificent. She blinked to coax her eyes to adjust faster to the near darkness. “Do you see it?” she asked, pointing, although she was sure Braydon couldn’t even see her hand in the dark. “Look across the lake, towards the cavern opening on the opposite shore.” She could make it out for sure now, a distinct golden glow penetrating the darkness.
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The sun,” said Braydon. “That opening across the lake must lead to the outside and to the Turquoise, if our luck holds. That young cop outside Saint Patrick’s accused us of being creatures from the underworld. I’m beginning to feel like one.”
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Well, I don’t see Charon pulling up in his boat to give us a ride,” said Christa. She could see just enough by the glow of the worms to see Braydon’s raised eyebrows. “The guy in Greek mythology who carted dead people across the river Styx to Hades,” she explained. By his smirk, she gathered he had already known that.
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Then I guess we’re getting wet,” he said. He jammed the flashlight into his pack, put it on and lowered himself out the end of the tunnel. “I found a couple toeholds,” he called up. She leaned over to see him and heard a splash. She flicked on her light. He shielded his eyes against its sudden brightness. “Refreshingly brisk,” he said, “and only a couple feet deep.”
He pulled out his flashlight and shone it on her as she followed him down. When her foot plunged into the water, the cold snapped her breath away. “We’d better move fast before our feet numb up,” she said.
Braydon pushed ahead of her through the water. The splashing noises seemed like a corruption to the pure silence of the cave. Her sodden hiking boot sucked her foot downwards and the water seemed more viscous than normal. The bottom of the lake was slick, with the occasional drop or rise that fooled her in the dark and almost tripped her. At any moment, an unexpected drop-off could plunge her into a frigid, life-sapping black. She found herself reaching for Braydon’s hand. He held hers, tightly, until they reached the opposite shore.
He didn’t let go of her hand as they followed the trickling outflow from the underground lake down the passageway, their flashlight beams searching the walls as the passageway narrowed. Before long, she had to fall in behind him because the space was too constricted to walk two abreast. He squeezed her fingers. The tunnel continued to brighten. Then, as they curved around a smooth, undulating bend, the rock walls glowed with a stunning golden red. Above her, a circular tube led up from the stone ceiling through twenty feet of solid rock to reveal a circle of indigo blue sky above. A shaft of light from the setting sun beamed down upon them. “I didn’t think I’d be so glad to feel the heat of that desert sun again,” she said as the beam fell upon her shoulders.
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That’s not the heat that worries me,” said Braydon. He nodded towards the direction they were heading. Their passage dead ended about hundred yards ahead. It was blocked by a tumble of rocks and downed tree trunks interlaced with thorny scrub brush.
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We can’t get out that way,” she said.
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And we can’t go back the way we came. Rambitskov’s men might have night vision goggles, heat sensors. It won’t take them long to find us.”
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We’ll have to find the Turquoise, double back, find another tunnel that leads outside to the valley.”
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Then where the hell is the Turquoise?” He opened his arms and turned slowly. “This is it, the place of the sun. We’ve got to be standing right on top of it.”
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Or right below it,” she said. She pointed up the shaft. About twelve feet up, just where the shaft narrowed into a smooth tube of a chimney, a niche had been chiseled out of the rock. In the niche, the sun glinted on a wrought iron strongbox.
CHAPTER
57
Christa stepped back from the sunbeam that shone down into the narrow tunnel like a spotlight. She craned her neck for a better look at the strongbox in the niche carved out of the smooth tube to the sky above. “The strongbox looks sixteenth century,” she said. “Wrought iron, not much rust. And,” she fingered the key in her pocket, “it has a keyhole.”
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Good thing Luna is dead,” said Braydon, “or I’d punch the guy. Why did he have to place it so high up.”
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It probably wasn’t so high five hundred years ago,” she said, splashing the stream at their feet with the toe of her boot. “Water erosion.”
“I’ll hoist you up,” said Braydon. He stooped down. “Get on my shoulders.”
She hooked her legs around his shoulders, intimately aware of his hands clasping her bare thighs. She wasn’t cold anymore. In fact, heat flushed her cheeks. She steadied herself by walking her palms up the cool, stone wall as Braydon balanced himself beneath her, straightening his legs and raising her up. “I can almost reach it,” she said, stretching one arm. “Get closer.”
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Happy to oblige,” he said, clasping his hands tighter on her legs. “It’s real smooth down here,” he said, “the wall, I mean.” He edged in even closer to the wall. “Makes me wonder.”
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How a tunnel through a solid mountain could erode so quickly, even given five hundred years.” She fished the key out of her pocket and shifted her weight forward. “That stream at your feet isn’t very strong.”
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You said a thunderstorm in the distance can send a flash flood down a slot canyon,” he said, “wipe out everything in its path.”
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More powerful than dynamite,” she said, straining to reach higher, clenching the key between her forefinger and thumb. “I’m almost there.”