“Damn, but we don’t have time!” Dahl sounded frustrated and worn and harassed. “Let’s go. We have no idea how many Gods may be buried down here.”
Kennedy frowned at Drake, and looked along the ledge as it disappeared into the blackness. “That’s a fragile track of rock we’re following, Matt. And I bet my 401K the God count ain’t just one or two.”
“We can’t trust anything now,” he said. “Only each other. C’mon. The Germans will be coming.”
They filed out of Mars’ burial chamber, each person stealing a longing, backward glance at its relative safety and incalculable significance. The void beckoned once more, and now Drake began to feel a dull ache in his ankles and knees, a by-product of their slow ledge shuffle. Poor Professor Parnevik and young Ben had to be in real pain.
More rumblings shook a far-flung cave and echoed around their own. Drake looked up, and he fancied he could see a similar ledge far above him. Bollocks. This damn thing could wind up and around all night!
On the plus side, they had heard no signs of pursuit as yet. Drake guessed they were a good hour in front of the Germans, but knew the confrontation was almost inevitable. He just hoped they could neutralise the world-threat before that happened.
A second ledge appeared ahead, and beyond it a second magnificent niche set back into the mountain. This one was adorned by rank upon rank of gold objects, the side walls fairly glowing with golden light.
“Ohmygod!” Kennedy breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Who is that? The God of treasure?”
Parnevik squinted at the rock-carving that dominated a massive sarcophagus. He shook his head for a moment, frowning. “Wait, are those feathers? Is that God clothed in feathers?”
“Could be, Prof,” Ben was already looking past the niche and into the stretch of black night that awaited them. “Does it matter? It’s not Odin.”
Parnevik ignored him. “That’s Quetzalcoatl! The Aztec God! Which makes all this…” he gestured at the shining walls.
“Aztec Gold.” Wells breathed, awestruck despite himself. “Woah.”
“This place…” Kennedy was practically hyper-ventilating, “is the greatest archaeological find of all time. You get that? There’s not just one civilization’s deity here, but many. And all the traditions and treasures that accompany them. This is… staggering.”
Drake glanced away from the depiction of Quetzalcoatl, adorned in feathers and brandishing an axe. Parnevik was saying that the Aztec god had been known — by accepted clerical sources — as the God-ruler, an expression intimating that he had indeed been real.
“Quetzalcoatl means ‘flying reptile’ or ‘feathered serpent.’ Which is-” Parnevik paused for effect, then seemed to realise that everyone else had filed back towards the ledge, “a dragon,” he said to himself, pleased.
“Does he have anything in common with Mars?” the lone SAS soldier — a man called Jim Marsters — asked.
Drake watched Parnevik step out onto the ledge with a purse to his lips. “Hmm,” his breathy speculation carried past everyone on the ledge. “Only that they can, and have at some time, both signified death.”
A third niche, and this one equally as breathtaking as the last. Drake found himself staring at a carving of a stunning naked lady.
A fortune in statuettes lined the walls. Dolphins, mirrors, swans. A necklace of sculpted doves large enough to span the Statue of Liberty’s neck.
“Well,” Drake said. “Even I know who that is.”
Kennedy made a face. “Yeah, you would.”
“The original slut,” Parnevik said harshly. “Aphrodite.”
“Hey,” Wells said. “You’re calling the God, Aphrodite a slut? Down here? This close to her Tomb?”
Parnevik rushed on with typical prep-school bullishness: “Known to have slept with Gods and men, including Adonis. Offered Helen of Troy to Paris, then sealed the deal by inflaming Paris’ ardour the moment he laid eyes on her. Born near Paphos from Uranus’s newly castrated testicles. I have to say she’s a-”
“We get the message,” Drake said drily, still staring at the carving. He smiled when he noticed Kennedy shaking her head at him.
“Jealous, love?”
“Sexually frustrated much?” She pushed past him to be second in line after Dahl.
He stared after her. “Well, now that you mention it….”
“C’mon, Matt,” Ben slipped by him too. “Wow!”
His exclamation made them all jump. They turned, to see him scrambling back on all fours, terror etched in his face. Drake wondered if he’d just seen the Devil Himself borne up on wings of demons, straight from the cookhouse of Hell.
“This niche — ” he gasped. “It’s on a platform… floating in air… there’s nothing on the other side!”
Drake felt his heart freeze. He remembered Mimir’s Well and its false floor.
Dahl jumped a few times. “The damn rock feels sturdy enough. This can’t be the end of the line.”
“Don’t do that!” Ben squeaked. “What if it breaks away?”
Stillness reigned. Everyone stared back at each other with wide eyes. Some ventured a glance back along the way they had come, the safe way, Wells and Marsters among them.
At that moment, at the furthest range of hearing, a faint clattering sound was heard. The sound of a stone dropped down a well.
“That’s the Germans,” Dahl said with conviction. “Testing the depth of the shaft. Now, we either find a way off this platform, or die anyway.”
Drake nudged Kennedy. “See up there,” he pointed above them. “I’ve been keeping an eye out. I think there must be another set of niches or caves above us. But see… see how the rock edge seems to curve.”
“Right.” Kennedy hurried to the edge of Aphrodite’s niche. Then, hugging the jagged rock, she leaned around the corner. “Some kind of structure here… Jeez! Oh, man.”
Drake held her shoulders and peered into the dark. “I think you mean — fuck me!”
There, stretching away beyond the reach of their lights, was a thin ledge that turned into an even thinner spiral staircase. The staircase stretched up above them, heading for the next level.
“Talk about vertigo,” Drake said. “This just took the biscuit and the jar.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
The spiral staircase felt solid enough, but the simple fact that it wound through empty air above an endless pit, not to mention that its architects had failed to fit any kind of banister, made even Drake’s well-trained nerves judder faster than a flea on a vibrator.
One complete circle led them about a quarter of the way up Aphrodite’s niche, so Drake figured they had four or five circuits to do. He moved up a step at a time, following Ben, trying to keep his fear at bay by taking deep breaths and always looking ahead to their goal.
Sixty feet up. Fifty. Forty.
When he neared thirty feet he saw Ben stop and sit for a moment. The boy’s eyes were petrified with fear. Drake sat gingerly on the step below him and patted his knee.
“No time to start composing the new Wall of Sleep track, dude. Or dreaming about Taylor Momson.”
Then the SAS soldier’s voice echoed up from below them. “What’s going on up there? We’re shittin’ ourselves down here. Get movin’.”
SAS soldiers, Drake thought. Didn’t make ‘em like they used to.
“Take a break,” he shouted back. “Just be a mo’.”