Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth

11

Drake looked around for something to lower himself down into the shaft. He glanced at Sully and Jada, saw the gleam of discovery in their eyes, and knew they didn’t have a moment to lose. Henriksen might be there any moment, with the authority to throw them out or even have them arrested. Whatever the dig turned up would be his to do with as he wished. There would be restrictions-the Egyptian government would see to that-but wealth had a way of bypassing rules. If the secrets Luka had sought were here, not to mention treasure, they needed to hurry.

“Welch, I need a rope or a ladder and a light,” he said.

Melissa had been bent over, shining a heavy-duty flashlight into the shaft, examining the painted Minotaur on the interior wall. Now she glanced up sharply, and she and Guillermo exchanged an uncomfortable look.

“Sorry, Professor Merrill,” Melissa said to Drake, shaking her head. “You’re an observer. We can’t allow you to-”

“Guillermo,” Welch interrupted, staring at the shaft. “Run out to the breach and get one of the ladders the workers use.”

Even the photographer, Alan, seemed surprised. “Dr. Welch, you’re not going to let him descend the shaft?”

They were all hesitating. Welch turned toward Guillermo and gestured for him to hurry.

“Go quickly. Come on, move it!”

With a worried look toward Melissa, Guillermo dashed away. They heard his footsteps echoing along the corridor. The tension between Welch and his associate was palpable. Melissa looked as if she wanted to speak to him in private, but there was no privacy to be found in such a cramped space. Even if they went out of the worship chamber and around the first corner, whispers carried in this place like the voices of ghosts.

Alan set up his camera and started to take photos of the open shaft and the paintings in its gullet. Sully had continued to investigate the antechamber, searching for any other secrets the place might hold. Jada gave Melissa an awkward, apologetic look, and Welch only stood, vibrating with anticipation and the need for Guillermo to be swift. The way things had turned out, he would never be able to hide the fact that Jada Hzujak had been here or cover the lie about Sully and Drake being from the Smithsonian. He might be able to pretend he had been duped by them, and if it would help, Drake would be happy to back up the lie. But chances were good that unless they could uncover the truth about Luka and Cheney’s murders, Ian Welch had destroyed his career today. If there were secrets below, he was damn well going to get them before Tyr Henriksen did.

“Listen,” Drake said to Melissa, “we’re not amateurs. Once we’re in the chamber down there, you can pretend we’re shadows on the wall. We won’t get in the way.”

Melissa gave him a look normally reserved for alcoholic circus clowns and reality TV stars with delusions of grandeur. “Really?” she asked. “You’re not amateurs? Then what do you call the crap you just pulled?”

Drake winced, glancing at the shaft and thinking about the vase and other priceless artifacts he’d probably just destroyed. He saw Jada give a single nod as if to say, She’s got you there.

“I call that discovery,” Drake replied, trying for a charming smile, an effort that obviously fell short. “You had no idea the shaft was there. This could be the breakthrough you’ve been waiting for.”

“And we could’ve waited another few days while we explored this chamber properly,” Melissa said, her irritation only growing. She turned to Welch. “Ian, please. I know these people are your friends, but-”

“That’s enough, Melissa,” Welch said coldly.

“Ian-”

Welch rounded on her. “That’s enough!”

It brought her up short. His voice echoed in the chamber. Alan’s flash went off and they all blinked the brightness away, but the tension did not dissipate. Melissa stared at Welch, clearly wondering what had come over him. This was not the demeanor she had come to expect from any colleague, but it was clear she’d had particular affection for Welch, which was now shattered.

Then she glanced from Welch to Jada, from Jada to Sully, and then to Drake. He could actually see the moment when suspicion entered her eyes.

“What’s this about?” she asked, pushing her dusty, unruly ginger hair from her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Welch seemed about to crumble with regret. “Melissa-”

“Hey!” Sully interrupted.

He had sunk down onto his belly in much the same position Drake had been in when they’d pulled him out of the hole. The photographer glared at him impatiently, waiting for him to move out of the shot, but Sully wasn’t budging. Shifting on the sand, unmindful of priceless antiquities that might be breaking beneath it, he pulled himself a little farther, his head dipping into the shaft.

“Does anyone else see light down there?”

“Of course there’s light,” Alan snapped. “It’s coming from up here, reflecting off the walls of the shaft.”

Sully swiveled his head to shoot the guy a look that silenced him. “I’m not an idiot,” he growled. “You’re the photographer. Aren’t you supposed to know a thing or two about light sources and angles? Get down here and have a look at this.”

The fight looming between Welch and Melissa had been short-circuited. Drake glanced once into the worship chamber, wondering what was taking Guillermo so long with the ladder and then realizing that the tunnels would be hard for him to navigate-especially with any speed-carrying a stepladder under his arm.

They all watched Alan set his camera aside and move gingerly into place beside Sully.

“This shouldn’t be happening,” Melissa said. “Their weight on the sand could-”

“I know,” Welch said. When she glanced at him, he reached out a hand to touch her arm, his eyes pleading for understanding. “I know, Melissa. But there are forces at work here that you’re not aware of yet.”

“What forces?” she asked. “Talk to me, Ian. We’re throwing protocol all to hell.”

“Melissa,” Alan said, looking up from the shaft. “He’s right. There is another light source.”

“How can that be?” she asked. “The only light sources possible down here are our lights and the sky, and you can be damn sure it’s not sunlight or we’d have found that point of entry already.”

Alan stood up, brushing off his pants. Sully stood as well but didn’t bother.

“It’s your light,” Sully said, and he pointed into the worship chamber. “The angle’s from in there.”

“There must be another shaft,” Jada said.

“Spread out,” Sully barked, and no one argued about who was in charge.

All six of them worked their way through the worship chamber, running their hands over the walls and floor. In less than a minute, Jada called out.

“Here! I think I’ve found it.”

Drake turned to see her kneeling in front of the altar. A sliver of a gap existed between the base of the altar and the floor. He spun and saw the lights hung from the wall behind him and nodded to himself.

“Everywhere else there’s either a tighter seal or some kind of mortar,” Jada said, glancing up at Welch. “But it looks like the altar is just resting here.”

Melissa crouched on the other side, and they all heard her swear under her breath. “There are scrapes on the stone here.” She rose quickly and glanced around, argument forgotten. “Keep looking. There’s got to be a trigger.”

“You think there’s a shaft under the altar?” Sully growled.

Welch grinned. “Don’t you?”

“I love the ancient Egyptians,” Drake muttered to Jada as he joined her, the two of them running their hands all over the wall. “Sneaky bastards.”

Long minutes passed during which the air in the worship chamber seemed to become thinner and dustier, and the rock and sand over their heads closed in, growing heavier, until Drake thought the whole thing might come crashing down on top of them if something didn’t break the silence and the renewed tension of their search. Alan and Melissa had no idea what the hurry might be, but they felt the urgency and acted accordingly. Melissa apparently had decided that since Welch was technically her boss, she would let his boss worry about breaches in protocol. Drake thought it had a lot to do with her own sense of discovery. The urge to see what was beneath their feet was powerful.

“Come on,” Jada whispered.

She turned and stared at the altar, causing Drake to do the same thing.

“What?” he asked.

“There’s got to be some clue. Something Daedalus put in so that anyone coming from one of the other labyrinths to this one could find the trigger for whatever mechanism moves the altar.”

Welch froze. He hurried to the altar and put his hand on the symbol in its center-the etching of three interlocking octagons within three circles.

“I’ve seen this somewhere else here. I’m sure of it.” He turned to Jada. “If there’s any symbol here that hints at Daedalus’s presence, his design, it’s this. The rest is all Egyptian, but this is clearly meant to represent his three labyrinths.”

“I feel like I’ve seen that, too,” Alan said.

“Look around,” Sully rasped. “And be quick about it.”

They stopped testing every stone in the room and started examining the images and symbols instead. Drake watched them, frowning, certain that if the symbol had been in this room, they would have noticed it in their search just now. He stepped outside the worship chamber and studied the door frame and lintel and saw nothing like the triple-octagon symbol. A thought occurred to him, and he reentered but passed through and into the antechamber.

It took him only seconds to locate the symbol, carved into the bottommost stone in the exposed corner of the room. Drake used the toe of his boot to put pressure on it and frowned when nothing happened. He tried again, pushing harder, hands braced on the wall. Frustrated, he dropped to his knees and began to feel around the edges, and he felt it give a little on one side.

The stone hadn’t been built to slide inward. The architect had installed it to turn.

He pushed hard on the left side of the stone, and it shifted, turning clockwise. The stones on either side had been carved at sharp angles to allow for the freedom of movement of this keystone. Drake rotated it a quarter turn until it clicked into place again, this face of the stone carved with the same symbol.

A heavy, grinding thump resonated through the chamber. He felt it in the stones under his knees.

“That’s it!” he heard Melissa say. “Who did that?”

“Nate?” Sully called.

Drake peered around into the worship chamber. “I think I found it.”

“Damn right you found it,” Jada said.

They were all gathering around the altar, and Drake joined them. The entire altar, base and all, had shifted two inches toward the rear wall of the chamber, away from the door. The scrapes on the floor had been from the base dragging across it, though obviously some kind of stone wheel mechanism was in place for the altar to roll on.

The gap had widened, only darkness visible within. Alan knelt down and put his hand in front of the opening, then looked up at Welch in surprise.

“There’s a draft,” he said, glancing at the door. “The air coming from outside-it’s slipping right through here.”

“What does that mean?” Jada asked.

“Means there’s air circulation,” Sully said. “If it’s going in here, it’s gotta be going out somewhere down there. Whatever this is, it’s not just a room. It goes somewhere.”

“Come on,” Drake said, putting his hands on the altar and getting ready to push.

Welch and Melissa joined him, but there wasn’t room for them all to push. They had to be careful. If there was a shaft underneath the altar, none of them wanted to tumble into it. But when they pushed, the altar would give only a little.

“It’s stuck on something,” Melissa said.

“Sully, come on,” Drake said.

He joined them, and the four of them tried again. Drake pushed, low to the ground, putting all his weight into it. He felt his muscles strain with the effort.

“Come on,” Sully grumbled. “It feels like it’s giving a little.”

“Something’s blocking-” Alan began.

With a grinding snap, the altar began to shift. The four of them pushed, keeping to the sides as they uncovered the darkness below. The rumble and scrape of its movement echoed through the chamber, and then it was open.

They stood around the edges of the hole. Melissa shone her worklight downward, and Drake jerked back in surprise at the sight of the skeleton that lay on the granite stairs.

“This is incredible,” Melissa said, her voice hushed. “Alan, get your camera.”

Welch descended the first step, examining the skeleton and the way its arms were extended, lying on the upper stairs. The fingers of both hands were broken off, the small bones missing. Welch took out a small but powerful flashlight and studied them closer.

“Fresh breaks,” he said, frowning. He sighed, then glanced up at Sully. “This is what was in the way. This poor guy had his fingers stuck. We just broke them off.”

“What, he got caught like that?” Jada asked.

“More likely trapped down there,” Drake said. “He died trying to dig his way out or get a grip on the altar base to try to move it aside.”

Jada looked at Alan. “But you felt air moving past. Sully said it meant another way out.”

“Another way for air to get out,” Sully said, stroking his mustache thoughtfully as he studied the bones on the stairs. “Not for this guy, apparently.”

Melissa stared at him. “Sully? I thought your name was-”

“Nickname,” Sully said, brushing her off as he stepped nearer the secret stairwell. “Nate, what do you think? This guy looks bigger than the typical Egyptian to me.”

Drake nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. For the standards of the time, he was huge. I’ve never seen a sarcophagus big enough to fit him.”

Welch ran his flashlight over the bones. “Nor have I. And there’s something more. His skull is-misshapen.”

“Like, The Elephant Man misshapen?” Jada asked as they all crowded closer to the top of the hidden stairs, trying to see past the crouched Dr. Welch.

“I’m no biologist,” Welch said, shifting aside to give them all a better look. “But something like that, yes.”

The skull seemed inordinately large, with a jutting jawbone and several raised areas that looked rough and pitted.

“This guy was a monster,” Drake said. “Look at the size of him.”

The second the words were out of his mouth, he glanced at Sully.

“Wait a second,” Drake went on. “Are you all thinking what I’m thinking?”

“If you’re thinking this is the Minotaur, then yeah,” Alan said.

“Where are the horns?” Jada asked. “He could just have been big and ugly. Besides, we don’t even know it was a man. It could have been the Mistress of the Labyrinth.”

“Maybe,” Welch said slowly. “Maybe.”

But the weirdness of the skeleton lingered, and Drake knew they were all curious enough to ponder it for a while.

“We don’t have time for this,” he said.

“What?” Melissa snapped, incredulous. “You don’t have time for what might turn out to be evidence of the existence of a man who might have been the historical antecedent of the Minotaur legend?”

Drake shrugged. “Sorry, but no.”

“He’s right,” Welch said. Standing, he began to pick his way down the stairs, careful not to disturb the skeleton on his way down. “We’ve wasted too much time already. We’re being stupid.”

“Wasted?” Melissa asked, and now she laughed in disbelief.

At that moment, they heard shuffling out in the tunnel, a few bumps and thuds, and then Guillermo came carefully around the corner and stood at the entrance to the worship chamber, the ladder under his arm. He looked sweaty and pale from the effort.

“Got it,” he said.

Drake waved him off. “Yeah, thanks. We’re all set.”

Guillermo saw the open stairwell and slumped against the door frame. “Seriously?” he said to no one in particular. “Someone couldn’t have come to tell me?”

“We’ve been a little busy,” Alan said, snapping photos of the skeleton and the open stairwell.

“Holy crap,” Guillermo muttered, coming into the chamber and staring at the bones.

“I know, right?” Alan agreed.

Drake had spotted a rack of industrial flashlights like the one in Melissa’s hand when they had first entered. Now he snapped a couple off the rack and tossed them to Sully and Jada, then took a third for himself. Melissa and Alan stared at him, but neither made a move to stop him, perhaps because it was so clear that he had Welch’s blessing.

He started down the stairs after Welch, and Sully and Jada followed, all of them treading very carefully.

“Ian, please, you have to stop,” Melissa pleaded. “If you do this, I’m not going to be able to cover for you.”

“Trust me,” Welch called back up to her. “You’re better off. Just stay up there. I’m sure Hilary will be along shortly.”

Drake cast a glance over his shoulder and saw Melissa pacing, tugging at a lock of her coppery hair. She wanted so badly to be with them, to see what secrets might lie below, but she knew that if she went any farther, her job might be forfeit. She started for the stairs.

“Melissa,” Guillermo said.

“Shut up!” she snapped at him.

But it stopped her. She cursed loudly, first in general and then down into the darkness at Welch. By then, Drake couldn’t see her anymore and had lost interest. The labyrinth’s secrets awaited.