“I’m sorry,” I said. “Look, you go back. Tell Mum and Dad where I’m going. They listen to you, Pan.”
I reached to help her up, but she slapped my hand away. “I’m not letting you go on alone!” she insisted. “You’re not thinking, Jake. That’s what you’re usually so good at, thinking and making plans. But you’re so angry about Mum and Dad, you’re not using your brain right now.”
“I am, Pan. That crack is—”
“That crack is not a plan! You might die. Do you think Sami would want that? We could have died half a dozen different ways since we’ve been in the jungle. Sometimes you act like this isn’t actually dangerous. And you wonder why Mum doesn’t trust you.”
I glared, as if this time she was the one who had attacked me. I’d always known that Mum trusted Pan and not me. She let her help decipher the markers, and asked her questions about the Aztecs. She saw Pan as a real treasure hunter, but not me. I knew that, but hearing my sister say it still felt like a punch to the gut.
Pan sighed and reached out her hand. I finally helped her up.
“Mum’s just scared, Jake.”
“Scared I’ll mess up.”
“No, scared that you won’t mess up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” Pan explained, “me being clever isn’t a worry. I read books, look at pictures, learn a language. Mum can handle that. But you doing what you do best is different. You’re at your best when things are at their most dangerous. If Mum trusts you, that means willingly letting you into all sorts of danger. She was pleased to see you fail in the simulator back home because it helped convince her that you weren’t ready. It gave her a reason to keep you out of danger.”
“I’m not here to get into danger, though. We’re here to save Sami. That’s worth the risk.”
“To you, but not to Mum or Dad, and probably not Sami. Not to me either, Jake.”
I didn’t know what to say. I understood; I just didn’t agree. We were closer than ever to the tomb. We couldn’t give up now.
“I promise we’ll be careful,” I said. “Take it slow.”
Pan looked back to the hole we’d crawled through, and then at the crack we were about to climb into. She closed her eyes and groaned.
“I’ll help you up,” she said.
Getting into the crack wasn’t easy. In the end we had to gather rocks from around the cavern and stack them in a pile so we could reach and pull ourselves into the tight space. Climbing it was simpler, and actually something we’d trained for back home. We wedged ourselves in, backs pressed against one side of the crack and feet hard against the other, and started to shimmy up.
We heard a voice, distant and echoey. “Jake! Pandora!”
Pan yelled back so loud that bugs scuttled up the wall in fright, but we didn’t hear a reply.
“Mum and Dad are looking for us,” Pan said.
“There’s an opening ahead,” I grunted.
My feet almost lost their grip as I wriggled faster and reached for the ledge at the top of the crack. I was forgetting my training, taking no precautions before entering an unknown chamber. At the very least I should have thrown a few stones up there to alert any animals that I was coming. I didn’t, even though Pan hissed at me to do it. I reached and pulled myself up into the chamber, flashing my torch around the darkness.
“Pan!” I gasped.
I helped her up and we stared along a passage with stone gargoyles jutting from the walls – dozens of them, sticking out in rows on either side. They were the same creatures I’d seen decorating the mountain-top temple, the grinning snake with the swirling eyes and feather collar.
“Quetzalcoatl,” Pan breathed. “Jake, we must be close.”
We rushed along the passage, following the line of snakeheads and the shaky beam of torchlight from my goggles until we reached an opening to another split in the core of the mountain. This wasn’t just a crack – it was a chasm, a huge crevasse running as far as we could see up into the mountain and down into darkness. Three long ropes made from twisted vines stretched across it, tied at either end to wooden stakes wedged into the rocks. One of the ropes was at foot level, while the other two were at waist height and sagged slightly in the middle.
“It’s a monkey bridge,” Pan said.
I gripped one of the lines, surprised by how strong they remained even after five hundred years. We’d been taught about these bridges in training. They were the simplest type of crossing, with the lower rope for our feet and the upper two as handrails. Only, they usually had safety netting at the sides to stop you from falling if the bridge leaned with your weight – which happened a lot when you tried to cross these things…
The rope bridge stretched fifty metres across the chasm, to a square entrance on the other side. Even from so far away we could see that the opening was carved all around with Aztec patterns.
“That’s it, Pan,” I said. “That’s the entrance to the tomb.”
“Jake…”
I knew what she was thinking, and she was right. It would be easy to fall off this bridge, and stupid to cross it without some sort of safety line. I reached to my waist, feeling the remaining gadgets holstered on my utility belt.
“We can use the climbing clips,” I suggested. “They’ll fix us to the ropes in case we fall.”
“Jake! Pandora!”
The cry echoed around the chasm, so loud that at first we couldn’t tell where it came from.
“Up here!”
My torch spotlight swept up the chasm until it found them – Mum and Dad. They were leaning from a ledge higher up on the other side of the chasm, about thirty metres above the end of the bridge.
“We’ve found it,” I called. “The entrance to the tomb is there, across the bridge.”
“Just stay there,” Mum shouted. “We’ll find a way to reach you.”
“It’s right here, Mum!” I yelled. “We can get across.”
“No, Jake, do not cross that bridge.”
“Why? We’ll get the emerald tablet, and then get to you. We can cut the bridge from the other side, and throw the rope so you can lift us up the wall.”
“It’s not safe,” Dad bellowed.
“We’re already well past safe,” I replied.
“This whole mountain is one big trap, Jake,” Dad said. “Every single part of it is designed to kill us. The Aztecs wouldn’t just build a bridge to take you to the tomb. The bridge is a trap. Everything is a trap. You have to trust us on this.”
“You have to trust me,” I insisted. “The tomb is right there.”
“Jake…” Pan said.
“No, Pan! They don’t want us getting in because if we do that proves we’re good enough. We will have found the tablet where they couldn’t, so they’ll have no excuses anymore to stop us from being treasure hunters.”
“Use your head!” Pan protested. “Do you really think there won’t be another trap at the end of this bridge? The Aztecs want us dead. It would be suicide to go across.”
I wish I’d remembered my training, that I’d breathed in and controlled my emotions. They were right; I know that now, and had I just paused for a moment, then maybe I might have seen the sense in their warnings. But that volcano was rising in me again… I was convinced Mum and Dad didn’t want me getting to the tomb first, simply because that would prove them wrong and that I was good enough.
I did know that Mum was right about one thing. The bridge was obviously a trap. But I’d seen something else when I looked over the edge of the chasm…
There was another opening, fifty metres below the supposed entrance to the tomb. It wasn’t just a crack in the rock; it was definitely an entrance, although it wasn’t decorated with sculptures like the one at the end of the bridge.
“Jake, we can’t walk across this bridge,” Pan said.
“We’re not going to walk across it,” I replied.
“Good,” Pan said. “Now you’re thinking straight. Maybe we can go—”
“We’re going to swing across it,” I added.
“What?”
“Look down there. That’s the real entrance to the tomb. The one at the end of the bridge is a trap. But look at the distances. If we cut this rope, we can use it to swing right through the real entrance down there.”
“You’re joking, right?”
I shook my head. I don’t think I’ve ever looked less like I was joking.
“Jake, you’ve lost it. You’ve finally lost it.”
“We’re working on a way to get down to you,” Mum called. “Jake, do not cross that bridge.”
“I’m not going to cross the bridge,” I promised.
“He’s going to swing across it!” Pan yelled.
I grasped one of the vine ropes and tugged, pulling in just enough slack to twist my wrist around the line and get a grip. The moment I cut the rope it would shoot out, yanking me with it as it swung.
“Jake!” Mum screamed. “Just stay there. We can talk about this.”
I slid the laser cutter from my utility belt. It was made for slicing stone, so should cut through this rope like it was tissue paper.
“Jake!” Dad roared. “You listen to your mother.”
My hand trembled as I held the cutter to the line. I looked up and smiled at my parents.
“I know you don’t trust me. I know you think I’m not up to this. But you’ll see that I am. I’ll bring back the tablet.”
“Jake, don’t!”
I don’t know which of them shouted the last warning; they were all yelling now, even my sister. I blocked out the sound, breathed in and held the breath, calming my nerves and controlling my fear.
Then I cut the rope.
I knew it would yank me from the ledge, but not how hard it would yank me, or that Pan was going to jump onto my back as I cut the line.
“No, Pan!” I wailed.
I should have known she would come; I would never have left her to go on alone either. She clung on tight as we dropped into the abyss, and then began to swing, flying across darkness towards the entrance to the tomb.
Then, suddenly, the line jerked, as if something else had grabbed hold. That was impossible, unless…
I looked up. “What are you doing?” I cried.
Mum and Dad had jumped from their ledge too! They had timed their leap perfectly, so they were just able to grab the rope as we swung across the chasm.
“Jake,” Mum snapped. “You’re grounded.”
“Grounded?”
“Look out for the wall!”
The extra weight had swung us off course. Instead of swinging to the entrance, we were going to hit the rock wall ten metres to its side.
“Hold on!”
I managed to twist so we slammed sideways against the chasm wall, dislodging rocks and knocking the wind out of us. My grip slipped and I was about to fall, taking Pan with me, when Mum did the most incredible thing I have ever seen. She must have anticipated us letting go because she did too, a fraction of a second earlier. She dropped about ten feet, grasped hold of the rope again just above Pan and me, and then used her legs to pin us back into the wall.
It was amazing – the timing, the awareness – I see that now. But as I grabbed the rope again I just felt annoyed. She’d assumed I would mess it up. She hadn’t trusted me.
“Hold on,” she grunted. “The rope will swing us to the entrance.”
Pan tightened her grip on my shoulders as the rope slid across the cliff to the hidden opening. Mum, Pan and I tumbled inside, but rocks dislodged as Dad climbed down, and he slipped back into the darkness. Again, Mum acted crazy-fast – dropping low and snatching hold of his hand, so Dad clung on and dangled below the entrance. Pan got down too, gripping Mum’s waist so she, too, was anchored to the ledge.
I should have helped. I know that now. We were supposed to be a team, but at that moment, when they needed me, I wasn’t even looking at my family. I had turned, guiding the light from my goggles deeper along the passage from the entrance. There were more carvings on the walls here, more leering snakeheads. We were so close. What if there was another trap, with some sort of timer – what if we only had moments left to find the coffin? Mum and Pan didn’t need my help saving Dad; they had that covered.
Was that really why I left them, and ran off? Partly, maybe. I did genuinely think we needed to keep moving. But it wasn’t just that. I still wanted to get there first, to show Mum that I could do it without her – that I could be trusted. No, “wanted” isn’t the right word. I had become obsessed.
I heard Mum call out, but didn’t look back as I stumbled from the passage into another chamber.
I stopped.
“Treasure!” I gasped.
It was everywhere I looked. Stone shelves displayed gold beakers, gold plates and small gold statues of gods. Wicker baskets overflowed with jewellery: dangly gold earrings, chunky jade bracelets, necklaces with turquoise snake pendants. Lifelike gold masks stared at me from another shelf, and there were skulls, of course. The Aztecs loved skulls. But these were different to any skulls I’d seen so far. They were real, with real teeth, but covered in a mosaic of polished turquoise, and with shiny black stones for eyes. Below them, Aztec weapons stood propped against the wall – spears, bows and quivers full of arrows, a shield covered in gold and turquoise…
“Jake!” Mum called. “Stay right there.”
I kept moving, breathless with excitement, following my torch beam from the treasure chamber and through a square doorway. I stopped again, confused at first by what I saw, and then horrified.
Stone stairs led down into a square room sunken into the rock, but I could only see the first two steps. The rest of the floor was covered with bones. Piles of human skeletons filled the chamber, stacked right to the top of the steps. I couldn’t see any skulls; just arm bones and leg bones and rib cages and spines, thousands of them, like a gruesome ball pool filling the sunken space.
I’d heard enough about the Aztecs to know these were the remains of the sacrificial victims whose skulls we’d already seen on display. Some of the bones were still covered with the ragged remains of clothes; ribcages of others had been forced open when the Aztec priests cut out their hearts. It was totally gross, but right then I didn’t care. My torchlight had settled on something else. In the middle of the skeleton pit, rising from the dusty heaps of bones, was the top of a stone plinth with snakeheads leering from its corners.
On the plinth was a coffin.
“It’s here!” I cried.
“Jake,” Mum called from back along the passage. “Stay there. Don’t move.”
For a moment I couldn’t move. I had seen coffins almost identical to this one, in Egypt, but I was still mesmerized by the sight. It wasn’t because of everything we’d gone through to find it; it was just that it was so beautiful. It was made of solid crystal, its sides carved with symbols I recognized from the emerald tablet, but which even my parents hadn’t been able to decipher, signs that looked like maths equations mixed with ancient pictograms. But we knew the symbol cut onto the coffin’s lid well enough. It was carved on the chamber ceiling too, directly above the coffin – a snake, curled in a circle and eating its own tail. It was the symbol of the ancient people who were buried in these crystal coffins around the world, and whose civilization had been wiped out.
The coffin was ten metres away. To reach it I just had to walk over the top of the skeletons, which wasn’t such a big deal, right? I reached a foot over their surface, and pressed it down. The bones creaked and snapped, compacting beneath my weight. The surface was wobbly, uneven, but it seemed strong enough to walk on.
I breathed in and took another step. A few bones slipped out from under my feet, but others crushed more tightly together. I took another shaky step, and then another, holding my arms out for balance. As I got closer to the coffin, my goggles’ torchlight could just make out a blurred shape of the figure buried inside, and the green glint of an object that the person was holding.
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br /> “The emerald tablet,” I breathed.
My boot broke through a ribcage, and suddenly I sank into the bones until my boots hit the floor of the pit and I was up to my neck in skeletons. I cursed and tried to shove the things aside to climb back up, but more headless skeletons fell in their place, wrapping me in gruesome hugs. I gave up trying to get back to the top and instead tried to force a passage through the bones to the plinth and the coffin.
I managed another step, but the ground sank a little. A grinding sound echoed around the chamber. All around me the bones began to tremble.
I knew immediately what I had done – the realization was like a knife to my chest, so sharp that I cried out, staggered back, tumbled into skeletons. All around me the bones rattled harder.
“No…” I gasped. “Please…”
I had stepped on a trigger stone beneath the bones. I had set off a trap.
I scrambled around the chamber floor, shoving aside bones, trying to find the trigger stone, but it was too dark and there were too many bones. Panic took hold and I thrashed at the skeletons, somehow managing to haul myself back up to the surface of the pit. I looked back and saw a stone slab begin to slide down over the entrance to the burial chamber. It was going to seal me in!
I moved instinctively – not to the exit, but to the coffin – and ran my hands around its sides. I could see the emerald tablet through the casket’s thick crystal lid. It was right there! But I knew from Egypt that only the People of the Snake knew how to open these coffins. I glanced back and cried out again in a mix of anger, fear and frustration as the slab slid even lower. There was no way I’d get this coffin out of the chamber in time.
For a second I knelt on the bones, staring at the dull green object beneath the crystal. Sami’s life was right there, and my family’s happiness. It was so close…
Leave the coffin! Get out of here!
I turned and tried to run back to the entrance, but sank again up to my neck in the bones. I shoved them away, digging frantically.
Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God Page 19
