The Lost Labyrinth

III

Gaille's euphoria at seeing Knox was almost instantly extinguished as Mikhail grabbed his Mauser and turned it on him. Knox had no time to reach him or even flee, so Gaille twisted her wrist free from beneath Mikhail's foot, reached up and grabbed the Mauser's strap and tugged down hard just as he fired, the bullet crashing into the rock floor and then ricocheting harmlessly away.

Knox seized the moment she'd bought him, charging down the passage with a full-throated roar, swinging the sledgehammer in a wild arc at Mikhail's head, forcing him to use the Mauser as a staff to defend himself. It cracked and splintered in his hands, the barrel coming loose from the stock, yet still holding sufficiently to save him from the sledge, though his knees buckled and he stumbled backwards. He threw away the broken gun and grabbed the sledgehammer's head instead, wrestling Knox for it, using his greater strength to swing Knox around and against the wall of rubble, tearing the hammer from him as he do so.

Mikhail took it by the shaft and went straight after him, swinging like a baseball batter aiming for the bleachers. Knox ducked in time and it slammed into the rubble behind him, dislodging some of the smaller stones that cascaded away down the other side, making Petitier's hole a fraction bigger. Mikhail cursed and briefly let go of the shaft, his hands fizzing from the impact, then swung a second time. Knox tried to duck beneath it again, but Mikhail was expecting it and lowered his arc just enough for the head to clip Knox's temple as it passed, before smashing like a wrecking ball into the rock behind, sending more stones crashing, creating a thin but distinct gap at the top. With Knox dazed and down, Mikhail raised the sledgehammer for the kill, but Gaille thrust the Mauser's splintered stock at his face, making him lose his footing on the scattered stone marbles, and fall backwards. She grabbed Knox's hand and dragged him up and over the shrunken mound, then they were fighting their way through the rubble, pushing it aside as they went, scrambling down the other side, coughing and blinking from the thick dust.

They found themselves near the top of a wide flight of steps, looking out over the floor of a huge gallery, vast and dark as a night-time cathedral. The only thing Gaille could see clearly was the thin crevice in its high domed roof, its jagged edges overgrown with vegetation, the walls beneath black with dirt and guano. A few bats, disturbed from their roosts, flapped around so high above them they looked like specks of dust. On the wall beneath the crevice, a little weak sunlight glittered on waterfalls of quartz that fell in frozen cascades, and threw shadows on ridges of stalactites and stalagmites, so that they looked for all the world like the pipes of some grotesque church organ.

There was grunting and cursing behind, as Mikhail came after them. Knox still looked disoriented; she led him briskly down the steps to the cavern floor. A narrow flight of steps led up to a circular dais on which sat a marble throne, glowing palely in the darkness. A pair of golden rings set with rough-cut stones lay in the thick dust upon the throne's seat, while a golden headband with two gilded horns lay beside it, along with a golden goblet; and just for a blink Gaille had the strongest image of a man sitting here millennia before, and perhaps even dying here.

Something on the throne's high back caught her eye. A sheepskin robe, only woven from the finest imaginable thread that gleamed beneath its coat of dust as only one metal could. Her breath caught in her throat as she touched it. 'Jesus!' muttered Knox groggily. 'Is that…'

'The golden fleece,' whispered Gaille. 'So he found it after all.'

Footsteps on the cavern floor. Mikhail was coming. A narrow walkway led away from the dais along a colonnade of double axes. They fled down it to a second, larger platform. Her eyes had adjusted a little to the intense gloom, and she could see that this new platform was shaped like a giant rosette, with the largest stalagmite that Gaille had ever seen at its heart, thrusting almost obscenely upwards. It had a shallow basin at its foot for libations and sacrifices, as though it had once been worshipped as some great deity come to earth; and now she drew close enough that with a shock she realised what deity it was, for it looked just like a gigantic bull rearing up on its hind legs above her; and it wasn't merely imagination playing tricks, but a deliberate likeness of a bull sculpted from an original accident of rock. Elephant tusks had been set upon its head, and its shoulders had been smoothed and shaped, and the limestone ridging of its torso had been exaggerated to create the impression of a coat, creating a Minotaur to stand immortal guardian at the heart of this natural labyrinth. Only its base had been left unshaped, perhaps out of reverence, or perhaps because the whole stalagmite stood at a slight angle, and they'd feared to weaken it, lest it topple and shatter.

And that wasn't the end of it. On the platform at either side of the massive column, and behind, an extraordinary array of artefacts had been gathered. Most were rendered unrecognisable by thick coverings of dust and debris, though others had been sheltered by chance or the topography of this great chamber. They'd evidently once been arranged in groups divided by a grid of lanes, but so many of them had fallen over or disintegrated over the millennia that they'd made an obstacle course of themselves. Bowls of gems and semiprecious stones had scattered on the floor. A pink marble statue of a goddess, her arms raised in benediction, lay aslant across their path. A golden pendant of bees circling the sun lay in the dust. There was ancient weaponry too, shields and swords and axes; but all too pitted and fragile to be of use. She stooped for an ivory figurine of a young woman with an almond-shaped skull, cousins to the ones she and Knox had recently discovered in Akhenaten's tomb. She slapped it against her palm, but it was too light to do any proper damage, so she set it back down.

They ventured deeper and deeper into the treasures, putting distance between themselves and Mikhail, and it was then that they came across their most astonishing discovery yet: a towering golden statue of a bearded charioteer being drawn up into the sky by six winged horses. And her heart twisted with sadness for Iain, despite everything he'd done, that he'd not lived long enough to see it.

'What?' asked Knox, sensing something in her manner.

'Atlantis,' she told him.