Tom and Genevieve stepped onto the bridge.
He ran his eyes across the empty walls, sweeping them with the beam of his flashlight in giant swathes from end to end. The light reflected vividly off the walls like a giant mirror.
Tom scrunched up his face, tasting the disappointment, spreading his hands. “I don’t get it. Elise told you the place was left in its original form after the raid in 1975…”
“But it’s clearly been wiped clean.”
The ground beneath them dropped suddenly with a jolt, maybe an inch or two. Not much. Their weight appeared to have caused it to descend. He listened to a series of mechanical cogs grinding together as the bridge continued its descent.
They glanced at each other. Stay or go?
“Stay,” Tom said, defiantly.
“Okay, we stay,” Genevieve replied, cradling her MP5 in defense.
The obsidian bridge slowly made its way to the bottom of the sphere. At the epicenter of the sphere, a pedestal now rose in contrast to the bridge, eventually coming to rest at a height of approximately three feet.
Nothing happened for two or three seconds.
There was a distinctive clicking sound and everything changed.
Something flashed in Tom’s eyes. He shook his head and tried to blink away the incredulity of his vision.
His eyes narrowed and he swallowed hard. “What the hell is that?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The sphere filled with a blue unnatural glow.
Tom had seen the same technology used in one of the previous Master Builder temples. The weighted pedestal had triggered some sort of UV light, which now projected across the walls of the entire sphere, causing thousands of ancient markings to phosphoresce in a myriad of colors. Pictographs came alive in hues of blue, green, purple, and red.
Genevieve’s eyes were already raking the strange language. She squinted as she examined the closest pictograph. There was a slight furrow in her forehead, but she remained silent.
“What is it?” Tom asked.
“I can’t read this.”
“But you grew up in Russia. I thought you could read the language?”
“I can,” she said, glancing at another set of unusual writings. “But this isn’t Russian.”
“It isn’t?”
“Now.”
Tom ran his hands through his hair. “Okay, but Elise definitely said it was a Russian terrorist cult that was working in here, making no reference to the Master Builders.”
“That’s right,” Genevieve confirmed. “Elise said the writings were definitely Russian.”
Tom knew Elise didn’t make mistakes. She was robotic in her accuracy. She dealt pedantically with exact names, events, figures, and locations. Therefore, the terrorist group was Russian and they were making written notes in the Russian language.
Ergo, all they needed to do was find those notes.
Tom let out a sigh. “All right, so let’s find it then.”
All in total, it took another fifteen minutes to locate the mess of garbled Russian text. It was made using local quartz, which etched the writings into the softer obsidian. That explained why they hadn’t picked it up at first. The fluorescent pictographs and ancient texts — presumably written by the Master Builders — stood out in the UV light, whereas the white etchings became more concealed.
The various styles of texts spiraled their way up the sphere with the lower levels all pictographs, followed by the indecipherable codex of the Master Builders, and eventually, along the upper sections were Russian scripts etched and superimposed on the original ancient language. The entire sphere was speckled with the various texts, with one exception — roughly two thirds of the way along the ceiling was a small section, maybe a few feet in diameter that appeared conspicuously vacant.
Tom asked, “What do you think happened there?”
Genevieve shrugged. She wasn’t an archeologist and was never fond of guessing. “Beats me. Maybe they finished their project? Who knows.”
“Okay. Where do you want to start?”
“There!” She fixed the beam of her flashlight on a space about halfway up the wall of the sphere. “That’s the lowest section with any Russian text. So, let’s start at the beginning.”
Tom nodded. It seemed like the best plan.
Genevieve climbed the first eleven steps up the spiral staircase. She studied the inscription. A wry smile formed on her supple lips. “That’s strange.”
Tom kept his eyes focused on the tunnel through which they had entered. The last thing he wanted was to get caught off guard. “What?”
“The first note refers to something called the Phoenix Plague.”
“Okay,” Tom said, still not really following. “Does it say what that is?”
“No, but it does make a reference to recommencing the project and then a date — 1434 — two years before the Solovetsky monastery was built!”
“That can’t be a coincidence.”
“No, but I can’t see the connection yet, either.”
Tom suppressed a smile. “I don’t suppose any of the terrorists were connected to the monastery?”
She shook her head. “Not that we know of.”
“All right, let’s keep going.”
Genevieve nodded and climbed a few more stairs to the next note. Tom left her to make her own notes. There were a lot of markings throughout the sphere and if they stopped to discuss each one of them it might increase the difficulty of an already time-consuming process. Better, he figured, that she made her translations and then they sat down together to discuss their meaning.
While she worked, Tom carefully made a digital recording of the entire sphere. He had no doubt that Sam or Elise would be able to find some sort of useful information from the Master Builder’s texts.
Directly above him he spotted a small, almost round section of ceiling with no words on it. He kept his flashlight focused on the blank space and said, “Hey Genevieve, what do you make of this?”
She looked across from where she was on the staircase and said, “Maybe they ran out of things to write about? Who knows, the Master Builders were a people from long ago. Sam and Elise profess to understand them, but I certainly don’t.”
“All right, I’ll take some more pictures, see what Sam and Elise think of it once they get a chance.”
Genevieve fixed her flashlight up toward the upper section of the dome. “There’s some more Russian text there, but I can’t get close enough to read it.”
Tom glanced at the twin obsidian stairwells. One on each side of the sphere, each one leading the way from the base to the ceiling in an opposite direction, ascending like a spiral that hugged the natural curvature of the spherical room, right up to the apex.
There were fine marks throughout the dome which suggested something had scraped along the wall at one time or another.
Were there another set of stairs?”
The two staircases were joined by the base of the obsidian orb at the center of the sphere. Tom studied the strange pedestal for a moment.
There were multiple pictograms that meant nothing to him.
At the base was one shaped like a cloud with three human figures floating above. He pressed the cold ornament, which moved inward.
A moment later, the entire staircase lifted an inch off the ground, levitating. It could have been achieved through magnets, or machinery, or some type of ancient technology long forgotten. Tom didn’t know and didn’t care.
He just needed to work out how to move the stairs.
“Can you please come down here, Genevieve. I think we might be able to move the platform.”
“Sure.”
Genevieve stepped down with the brisk athleticism of a gymnast.
She stepped off the last stair.
Tom said, “I pressed something over there on the orb and now the entire thing has shifted off the ground. I’m hoping we can move it.”