The walkie-talkie crackled. ‘You okay?’ asked Chase.
‘Fine, thanks. How deep am I?’
‘Fifteen metres. You should be coming out into the open soon. If you start swinging, let us know and we’ll slow down.’
‘Will do.’ But eagerness had already overcome any discomfort. The bottom of the shaft drew closer, closer . . .
She was through.
The cavern opened up around her, her eyes adjusting to the strange lighting conditions. The dome-like ice ceiling was glossy, lumps and bumps smoothed out where rising warm water from the volcanic vents below had gnawed away at it. Looking down, she spotted drifting steam. For one worrying moment she thought she was dropping right into the vent, before she saw it was off to one side.
Her excitement rose as she made out structures below in the half-light. The lake had mostly drained. There were still some areas of water that had pooled below the level of the shaft cut through the dam, already freezing over, but most of the cavern was clear.
Which meant, she realised as her descent brought her below the icy ceiling, that she would be able to see what lay at the other end of the chamber.
She twisted on the line, turning round . . .
The sight took her breath away.
Illuminated by the soft, impossibly pure cyan light coming through the ice above, the city looked unreal. Almost below her was some kind of multi-level construction, small buildings and bridges spanning a maze of catacombs dug out of the ground. A paved road led past it, heading uphill from the dam into the heart of the settlement. Smaller roads split off from it on either side, themselves dividing to form an almost tree-like pattern. The ‘branches’ were surrounded by clusters of igloo-shaped stone buildings - just like the ones she’d seen in Indonesia and Australia.
Except these were intact.
They weren’t the only structures that had survived their long entombment. Following the line of the main road, which seemed to be lined with statues, her gaze fell on the temple she had glimpsed on video. In real life it was even more spectacular. Like the other buildings it was circular, but much taller, requiring elegantly curved buttresses to support the walls. Its roof was so high that it actually disappeared into the cavern’s icy ceiling, making it at least sixty feet tall, possibly more - all she could make out through the ice was a vague shadow.
High, thin windows were spaced out on two levels around its circumference, and the main door was equally elongated, close to twenty feet tall. Darkness waited beyond it, ominous - and tantalising. The heart of the city, the secret of the Veteres, was somewhere within.
There was something else about the temple, which she dismissed as mere decoration before realising how complex and extensive it was. What appeared to be long lines of copper plate ran up the temple walls from the upper windows, like the road expanding into a tree-like pattern - not only flat along the wall, but also outwards from it. The strange arrangement also disappeared into the overhanging ice. What its purpose might be, she had no idea.
But something she could determine was that there was something else behind the temple. Parts of the building appeared to have been cut out of a cliff face, its summit just below the ice. She looked over her shoulder at the dam. Had it been built to a particular height specifically to cover whatever lay behind the temple?
She put the thought on hold; she was almost at the ground. ‘Okay, nearly there,’ she said into the walkie-talkie. ‘Slow it . . . okay, I’m down.’ Her boots bumped on the ground, which crackled under her crampons. Everything was covered with a layer of glinting ice and frost, surface water having rapidly frozen as the lake drained away. She unfastened the harness. Breath steamed from her nostrils; it was much colder than on the surface. ‘All right, I’m down and safe.’
‘What’s it like down there?’ Chase asked.
‘It’s . . . it’s kinda wow.’
He laughed sarcastically. ‘Right, that helps. If you have to get a new job after all this, don’t bother trying to be a tour guide.’
Sophia was lowered down, almost as awed by the sight of the lost city as Nina. The sled came next, followed by Chase. ‘So, you absolutely sure this wasn’t built by aliens?’ he asked Nina, indicating the glittering, blue-lit buildings. ‘’Cause that’s usually what stuff buried in the Antarctic ice turns out to be. Just ask Kurt Russell.’
‘I don’t know,’ Sophia said. ‘It has a certain Lovecraftian air, if you ask me. Perhaps we’ll meet a Shoggoth.’ A beat. ‘Lead the way, Nina.’
Chase chuckled, though Nina was unamused. ‘No aliens, no Elder Things, no . . . no flying spaghetti monsters,’ she said impatiently, going to the sled. ‘This was built by people just like us. They just happen to have been around a lot earlier than anyone thought. And if we can get on with it, please, that’s what we’re going to prove.’ She unfastened the straps and began taking equipment from the sledge.
Chase picked up the heavy-duty, spike-tipped tripod she had just unloaded. ‘We’re not going to cart this around with us, are we? That’s why I brought the sledge in the first place - so we wouldn’t have to!’
‘Oh, yeah. Duh,’ Nina said, replacing the rangefinder that the tripod had been designed to support. ‘We can do a proper laser survey when we come back. I don’t think we need to know the cavern’s exact dimensions right now. “Damn huge” is near enough.’
‘You’re right!’ Chase shouted as he returned the tripod to the sled. Faint echoes came back to them from the depths of the space. ‘So, where are we kicking off ?’
‘Over there.’ Nina pointed towards the plume of steam rising from the nearby labyrinthine area. ‘We’ll start with what’s closest and work our way up to the temple.’ She switched on a powerful flashlight to test it. The brilliant beam sliced through the sapphire-blue glow of the cavern like a laser. Satisfied, she clicked it off again; now that her eyes had adjusted to it, the light permeating the ice above was more than bright enough to see by.
‘Okay, Matt,’ Chase said into the radio, ‘we’re setting off.’
‘Got you,’ came the reply. ‘So what’s it like down there?’
Chase took in the sight of the frost-crusted temple dominating the city. ‘Nina got it right. It’s kind of . . . wow.’
Trulli snorted. ‘Fat lot of use you are. You better bring me some awesome photos, okay?’
‘Will do. Talk to you soon.’
They crossed the short distance to the walled edge of the maze, Chase towing the sledge. Nina looked towards the dam, picking out the dark spot of the drainage shaft drilled through it. Even though it had been less than an hour since the water level had finally dropped below its bottom edge, the surface was already frozen, shimmering glassily. Given another hour in the frigid cavern, it would be thick enough to walk on.
The steam rising from behind the wall told her there were warmer conditions ahead, however. Finding an opening, they went through. ‘What the hell’s this?’ Chase asked. The outer wall enclosed an excavated area, inside which had been built a grid-like series of walls, a marked contrast to the curves found elsewhere. The pit had remained full of water as the lake drained, now frozen over . . . but it was obvious from the metal bars covering each chamber that whatever had once been inside them was meant to stay there. ‘A prison?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sophia said thoughtfully. ‘It looks more like the hypogeum at the Colosseum in Rome. Remember? The area under the arena where the gladiators and animals were kept before contests.’ Chase nodded.
‘You’ve been to Rome?’ Nina asked him. ‘With her? You never mentioned that before.’
‘I’ve been to loads of places I haven’t told you about, and can we not get into this again? But yeah, it does look like it.’ The underground area at the centre of the Colosseum was made up of small, high-walled chambers connected by narrow corridors, and the structure before them followed a similarly functional pattern. ‘So what did they keep in here? Gladiators?’
‘Or animals,’ Sophia said. ‘B
easts.’
Nina shone the light into the nearest chamber, but could make nothing out through the milky ice. Instead, she directed the beam across the pit. Walkways and stone bridges criss-crossed it, intersecting at what she took to be guardhouses. Steam rose beyond them. ‘That must be where the volcanic vent is. Let’s take a look, then head into the city.’
They crossed a bridge into one of the squat guardhouses, the first fully intact construct of the Veteres Nina had entered. Disappointingly, it was empty except for what appeared to be a coiled whip hanging frozen on one wall, though its design still told her something; the slit-like windows round the room would have given the guards a view of the chambers below while keeping them hidden from the occupants, a primitive panopticon.
But who, or what, had they been watching?
Chase went to the little building’s other entrance, ice crunching with each step. ‘If they used the volcanic vent to get hot water, they’ve still got plenty.’
Nina and Sophia joined him, looking out across the pit. The layout of the walls changed, the cell-like chambers becoming larger. Some were even roofed rather than being open to the elements. But what Chase had called their attention to was natural rather than man-made. Somewhere beneath the pit, the heat of the vent was still warming the water . . . and it had kept flowing from its source even as the rest of the trapped lake froze around it, carving weaving gullies through the new ice.
‘It’s like a maze,’ Chase remarked. One section of the pit was more open than the others, and the hot streams had gradually melted their way to it, eating twisting, steaming gouges out of the ice.
Nina was more interested in the walls surrounding it. ‘If this was a hypogeum, that space might have been an arena.’ She crossed a bridge over a passage, peering into the cramped cells below in the hope of spotting some revelatory detail, but seeing only ice and stone. ‘Maybe there’s a way down where the hot water’s melted the ice.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ sighed Sophia. ‘Hypogeum, prison, slave pens, zoo - whatever it is, it’s not going to hold anything more important than the temple. And time’s become an issue.’ She pointed at the cavern’s ceiling. ‘Haven’t you noticed?’
‘Noticed what?’ Nina began, before it struck her. Literally. A fat drop of falling water burst on her shoulder. Others plopped down around them, the frequency slowly increasing.
‘Shit!’ Chase said, realising what was happening. He raised the walkie-talkie. ‘Matt, we might have a problem. The steam from the volcanic vent’s starting to melt the ice. I don’t know how long it’ll take before there’s any danger, but it might be worth moving the plane away from the hole. And I wouldn’t sit around it, either.’
‘That could screw up the radio,’ replied Trulli, his voice already distorted.
‘Have to chance it.’
‘Could it really collapse?’ Nina asked nervously.
‘I dunno. The ice is pretty thick. But some bits might fall off, and ten pounds of falling ice’ll fuck you up as much as ten tons from that height. Sophia’s right - we ought to get moving.’
Nina reluctantly accepted his advice, crossing another bridge to bring them through the outer wall near the rest of the city. Away from the rising steam, the dripping stopped. They tromped across a patch of open ground, where she noticed the remains of vegetation under the ice. ‘God punished them by sending the cold to kill the trees . . .’ she said, remembering the inscription in Australia.
‘Know what it reminds me of, Eddie?’ asked Sophia, smiling. ‘The Yorkshire Moors.’
‘Tchah,’ said Chase, jokily dismissive. ‘At least Yorkshiremen don’t run off to a different continent when it gets a bit nippy. This lot were wimps!’
They reached the first structure. Nina estimated the ‘igloo’ to be roughly eleven feet tall, and around twenty feet in diameter. The neighbouring buildings, abutting it at the base, appeared identical. ‘No windows . . . no doors, either. How do you get in?’
They moved round the group of structures, finding that they were arranged in a circle. Other domes nearby were clustered in the same way, between seven and ten to each group. Eventually they came to a paved road, one of the small branches Nina had seen coming off the main route running through the centre of the city; a gap between two of the buildings led into a kind of courtyard. Smaller domes, presumably for storage, filled the gaps between the clustered groups, the entrances of which were finally revealed: tall, thin archways facing the centre of the courtyard.
It was Chase who realised the logic behind the design. ‘It’s for shelter,’ he said. ‘Valley like this, near the coast, you’d get a lot of wind blowing through it. Put ’em all together in a circle and you get some protection.’
‘They’re houses,’ said Nina. ‘Maybe each cluster was for one particular family group.’ She went to one of the archways and switched on her flashlight, moving cautiously inside. The entrance was over seven feet high, but somehow it still felt cramped.
‘Anything inside?’ Chase called to her.
‘Nothing.’ The interior, like the guardhouse, was empty, puddles frozen on the stone floor. The Veteres had apparently taken everything with them when they made the long voyage back to Australia. ‘Doesn’t look like we’re going to find anything here,’ she had to admit, turning back. ‘Let’s try that main road.’
They moved along the side road, passing more groups of domes before emerging on the central route bisecting the city. The first things that caught their attention were the statues along its sides. The larger than life figures were oddly stylised, tall and thin with high foreheads, long necks and small mouths. ‘They look like African tribal art,’ said Nina.
Chase nodded. ‘Like that ugly bugger you used to have.’
‘It was a lot nicer than your stupid Fidel Castro thing,’ she said defensively, aiming her torch at another statue across the road. The first had been male; this was female, a woman holding what looked like one of the clay cylinders they had found in Australia. It stood on a small plinth - with writing on it. ‘Now, what does this say?’ she wondered, crossing the road for a closer look.
Sophia came with her. ‘That’s the word for “prophets”,’ she said, pointing it out. ‘The other word is “keeper”, or “holder”.’
‘Keeper of the prophets? A priest?’ Nina turned. Uphill, the temple rose imposingly, the cold light glinting off the copper strips at its summit.
They continued, passing more statues. Men and women, some holding objects that apparently denoted their role in the ancient society while others simply stood in poses of authority, but all clearly figures of great importance. The line came to an end at a high, free-standing archway; some sort of ceremonial gate, Nina guessed. Beyond it, they followed the road to the temple. More statues lined it, apparently representing the same people as the ones further downhill - but this time, they were not in poses of authority. Quite the opposite.
‘What’s wrong with this lot?’ Chase asked, leaving the sledge to regard the bowed, kneeling figures with curiosity. ‘Lost their contact lenses?’
‘They’re praying,’ Nina said. She looked to each side of the road, seeing only open land. ‘No more houses. This whole section of the city’s devoted to their religion. The statues are people the Veteres considered important in their society . . . but even they bow to their god.’
She tipped her head back to take in the full height of the temple. Even with the torch beam, she still couldn’t tell how much of the building was buried within the overhanging ice. She brought the circle of light down to the massive open doors. It disappeared, swallowed by the darkness within.
‘Maybe he’s still inside,’ said Chase. ‘You know, their god. Frozen.’
‘I hardly think these people would take every last chair, plate and spoon with them but leave their god behind,’ Sophia said.
Nina walked to the entrance. ‘Only one way to find out.’
Chase and Sophia switched on their own torches as they followed her. The
sound of ice crunching beneath their boots changed as they moved inside, echoing from the inner walls of a large, high space.
Nina suddenly stopped, flashlight aiming upwards. ‘Eddie?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You know you said their god might still be in here?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You were right.’
23
The other two torch beams moved upwards to join Nina’s. ‘Christ on a bike,’ said Chase, amazed. ‘That’s a big fucking statue.’
The stone figure before them was at least sixty feet tall, a giant standing against the back of the high circular chamber, reaching almost to the domed ceiling. It was male, carved in the same elongated, blocky style as the statues outside, but on a much greater scale. Its right arm hung down by its side, holding what looked like a sickle; the left was extended across the chamber, palm upturned as if scattering seeds. It wore a necklace of copper, or possibly gold, the style reminding Nina of an ancient Egyptian menat necklace of the kind worn by the pharaohs, though with several long metal counterpoises extending down over its chest. A similarly ornate belt ran round the statue’s waist, a long copper loincloth descending from it.
And between its feet, at floor level between the statue’s heels, was a low opening, less than three feet high, leading to another chamber behind it. The rest of the room before the mighty figure was empty, an open space in which the faithful could worship.
Nina directed her light at the statue’s head. It had the same high forehead and narrow jaw as the smaller statues outside. She was about to look at the necklace when something else caught her attention - not on the statue, but just behind it. ‘That remind you of anything?’ she asked.
‘It’s a stained-glass window,’ said Sophia unenthusiastically, more interested in the gold adorning the statue’s accessories.
‘No, I don’t mean the window itself - I mean its shape.’
Chase saw what she meant. ‘Lofty’s got a halo.’ The window was circular, lines of coloured glass radiating outwards. It was unmistakably a representation of a light or fire surrounding the figure’s head.
The Covenant of Genesis Page 26
