White Jade

Chapter Forty

"This is the same as you find in Crete."

Selena looked up at the symbol of the double axe carved on the pillars outside the temple.

"This is what the book was talking about. I never thought I would see it in this part of the world."

"It's a long way from the Aegean Sea."

The interior of the building was in gloom. There was something large in the middle of the chamber, a shape Carter couldn't quite make out.

"What more does the book say, Selena? Are there further directions?"

"After the part about the labrys there's a warning. Don't go in there, bad things will happen and only the initiated can pass. Pretty standard stuff."

"That would be priests?"

"Priests or cult members. There may be traps to prevent intruders from getting very far. The book warns that the pursuit of life will lead to death. Very dramatic."

"Yeah, and not very helpful." Ronnie looked up at the steep pyramid roof rising into the cold Tibetan sky.

"The text says only those who see the vision of the great bird will be able to pass. That's pretty much it, from what I've been able to translate."

Carter looked at the axes on the entrance columns and the garuda carved over the entrance. "The vision of the great bird. Must be referring to the garuda again. What does that mean?"

"It could be anything. The words could refer to spiritual vision. Or not."

They stepped into the temple. The pyramid ceiling had gaps and looked like it might be ready to fall at any moment. The floor was set with smooth, dressed stone. It was quiet and freezing cold. They clicked on their lights. Double-headed axes carved in stone lined the walls all the way around the room, spaced about ten feet apart and roughly the same height from the floor.

Dominating the center of the room was a towering statue of the garuda, standing almost thirty feet high. There were traces of color where it had been painted in red, yellow and silver. Radiating outward from the base were four deep channels cut into the floor. Carter thought they might mark the four directions. A quick glance at his GPS confirmed it. The head of the bird faced east, toward the direction of the rising sun.

The detail on the statue was carved with a master's skill. Every feather of the great wings looked ready to ripple in the wind. A huge serpent writhed in agony beneath its claws. The fearsome beak gaped open and the bird sat half back on its haunches, wings spread wide, head tilted back, ready to lift into the air. It looked alive. It looked dangerous.

Sun shone through an East facing opening in the roof, painting the feet of the statue in a narrow patch of light.

"I don't see anything except that statue." Nick set his pack down on the floor. The pain in his back had settled to a dull throbbing. He put it out of his mind.

"There has to be a hidden entrance into the cavern below." Selena shone her light around the dark interior. "We should look for some irregularity in the walls, or maybe the floor."

They began searching for something out of the ordinary. Nick inspected the base of the statue while Selena and Ronnie made a slow circuit of the walls. They covered the floor. Time passed. They didn't find anything. No hidden doors. No openings in the floor.

The sun worked its way up the statue, illuminating the ancient carving. Suddenly the eyes of the garuda glinted golden as the sun struck them.

"Why are the eyes shining like that?" Ronnie walked toward the statue and peered up at the bird's head. "It looks like they might be made of gold. I want a closer look." He climbed the back of the idol until he reached the level of the eyes.

"What do you see?"

"Pretty sure it's gold. Wait a minute. There's an opening here."

He placed his flashlight behind the bird's head. Two intense streams of light beamed out of the golden eyes and illuminated one of the carved axes circling the room.

"Look at that!" Nick said. "How did they get the light to focus like that?"

"The vision of the great bird," Selena said.

"You think it's that simple?"

"I don't know."

Ronnie climbed down and dusted himself off. They walked over to the wall and looked up at the labrys pinpointed by the eyes of the bird. It looked like all the others, one of many.

"How do we get up there?" she asked.

"I'll boost you up," Ronnie said. "See if there's anything unusual about that axe."

Selena stood on his shoulders, bracing herself against the wall as Ronnie straightened. She played her light over the carving. She reached up and felt around it.

"Nothing."

"Try pushing it." She leaned into it with both hands.

"I think it moved a little."

"Push harder."

She pushed. The carving slid into the wall, stone against stone. There was a harsh grinding sound. Something heavy moved and rumbled under the floor. The statue of the garuda turned in a ponderous half circle until it faced west. It hesitated, then moved forward along one of the channels, uncovering a dark opening in the center of the temple floor.

Carter walked over and looked down into the opening. A narrow flight of stone steps descended into blackness. A stale odor of ancient dust and decay drifted up from below.

"I'd say we just found the way in."

Selena shuddered. "It reminds me of a bad dream I had once."

"Do we have a choice about going down there?"

"No, I guess not. What if that statue moves back and seals the entrance?"

"If the entrance was closed they had to have some way to open it from below, or another exit."

"Yeah," Ron said, "but this stuff is old. What if it doesn't work anymore?"

"Then we'll blow it open." Nick patted his pack. He had enough C-4 to take out the entire temple.

They started down the stairs. The steps were steep and narrow. They descended to whatever waited below. Black, cold rock absorbed the light.

At the bottom they stepped onto a ledge hanging out over a bottomless abyss. To the left, a wide passage led into the mountain, cut straight and square and lined with white stone. Another labrys was carved over the opening. Wooden torches, long cold, jutted at intervals along the walls in heavy, dark brackets that might have been iron or blackened bronze. The business ends were tarred with a sticky, brown substance.

"We might be able to use these," Carter said. He took out matches and pulled a torch from the wall. "Save the batteries."

The torch lit easily. It burned bright and made little smoke. The light of the flames threw an eerie, flickering glow back from the white walls of the hallway. Nick handed it to Selena, took down two more. One for Ronnie, one for himself. He was about to start along the passage, but Selena stopped him.

"This would be a good place for a trap."

"Why?"

"It's too easy. Anyone who made it past the statue and down the stairs would think the hard part was over. That's a good time to spring something."

"What kind of trap?"

"Spear traps were popular in the ancient world. You step on the trigger and a mechanism throws spears or arrows at you. Before you know what's happening, you're dead. Sometimes there's a false floor. It drops away and you land in a pit full of poison spikes or some other nasty surprise. Another trap makes something big and heavy fall on you or roll over you or seal you in somewhere. The Egyptians liked those. We'd be squashed like a bug."

"What do you suggest?" He eyed the innocent looking corridor.

"The spear traps should be relatively easy to spot. There have to be openings in the walls or the ceiling or even the floor, although they might be concealed. It's the floor traps or ceiling drops that worry me. If we can see a trap, we can probably trigger it or find a way through it. If not, we'd better be damn careful. Look out for ramps where something might come rolling down, or anything different about the walls or ceiling or floor."

"You make it sound like walking through a 3D minefield."

"That's a good way to think about it."

They entered the passage. Puffs of white dust rose from their footsteps and Ronnie sneezed. It echoed down the ancient passage.

Carter was strung tight. There was a sour taste in his mouth. This was Afghanistan all over again, except the enemy had been gone for thousands of years and the technology was from another time. It was old, but it could kill you as fast and as dead as anything from today's whiz-bang arsenals.

They moved slowly, scanning the floor, ceiling and walls for signs of traps. Every fifty feet he lit a torch, trying to dispel the feeling he was walking in a dark dream.

The passage curved. "Think we have a trap?" Ronnie said.

Three skeletons lay on the floor ahead. Fragments of old cloth and leather hung from yellowed bones pierced by thin wooden spears. More spears lay scattered and splintered about. Those bones had been there a long time.

Selena pointed at the walls on one side. "You can see the openings where the spears came out. They're all at knee height or above."

"What set it off?" Ronnie got down on all fours and crawled closer. "If you look hard you can see a difference in the floor. There's a thin line in the mortar. I think they stepped on these stones and that did it."

He lay down, reached forward and pressed on the floor. The stone moved. A half dozen sharp wooden shafts whistled out of the walls and splintered against the sides of the passageway. A flat, clacking noise came from behind the walls.

Ronnie inched back. "Automatic feed and reload. Pretty slick."

"If these two found their way in, how come the statue was still covering the entrance?" Selena asked Nick.

"Maybe somebody put it back and left the bodies here as a warning. We'll worry about the statue later if we have to."

They crawled under the kill zone and past the trap. They turned a corner. Ahead was a black opening and the end of the passage.

"We're getting close." Nick gestured at the opening.

He took two more steps and the floor fell away under his feet.