“What do you see?” Remi asked.
“A very dark tunnel. About two feet by two feet.”
He dropped to the ground and they knelt beside the slab. He plucked the water bottle off his belt and dumped half the contents onto the face, washing away the dust.
Stamped into the stone was a cicada.
CHAPTER 57
They donned their headlamps and climbing harnesses, then Sam boosted himself up the slab and shined his lamp into the entrance.
“It’s straight and level for ten feet then widens out,” he said. “Can’t see any ledges.”
He wriggled feet first into the tunnel, then leaned over and helped Remi up. Once she was perched atop the slab he continued backing inside, Remi crawling after him until they reached the wide part, where he turned around. The ceiling was three feet tall and covered in “popcorn,” tiny clusters of calcite.
Ahead a funnel-shaped hole in the floor was partially plugged by a stalactite. They saw no other openings. They crawled ahead and Sam peeked down the hole. “There’s a platform about six feet below.”
He rolled onto his back and kicked the stalactite until it broke loose from the ceiling. He shoved it away from the hole. “I’ll go,” Remi said, then scooted forward and slipped her legs through. Sam grabbed her hands and lowered her down until her feet found the platform. “Okay, feels solid.” He let go, then a moment later dropped down beside her, reaching up and manhandling the stalactite into the hole after himself. With a grating sound it fell into place. He took a rock screw from his belt and wedged it between the stalactite and the edge of the hole.
“Early warning system,” he explained.
Slightly canted, the platform was ten by six feet and ended at a ledge; over this they saw a thirty-degree diagonal chute. Under the glow of their headlamps it curved down and to the right.
Sam pulled a coil of nine-millimeter climbing rope from his pack, clipped a carabiner on the end, then dropped it over the ledge, letting it clink down the chute. After he’d let out twenty feet of rope the carabiner came to a stop.
“Another level spot,” Sam said. “What we don’t know is how wide.”
“Lower me,” Remi said.
He reeled in the carabiner and secured the rope to her harness. Feet braced against the wall, Sam lowered her down into the chute, letting out slack at her command until she called a halt. “Another platform,” she called up, her voice echoing. “Walls to the left and directly ahead, and a ledge to the right.” Sam heard her boots scuffing over loose rock. “And another diagonal chute.”
“How wide is the platform?”
“About the same as the one you’re on.”
“Move against the wall. I’m coming down.”
He dropped the coil over the edge, then lowered himself down until his feet touched the chute, at which point he dropped onto his butt and slid down to the platform. Remi helped him to his feet. The ceiling was taller, two feet above Sam’s head, and dotted with inch-long “soda straw” stalactites.
Sam walked to the ledge and shined his headlamp down into the next chute. “I’m sensing a trend,” he told Remi.
For the next fifteen minutes they descended, following a series of winding platforms and chute formations until finally they found themselves in a barn-sized cavern with a stalactite-spiked ceiling and walls covered in mottled brown-and-cream-colored flowstone. Barrel stalagmites jutted from the floor like gnarled fire hydrants.
Sam pulled a chem-light tube from his pack, cracked it, and shook it until it glowed neon green. He dropped it behind a nearby barrel so it couldn’t be seen from the platform above.
Directly ahead lay a dead-end wall; to their right were three tunnels, each a vertical fissure in the wall. To their left a curtain of dragon’s-teeth stalactites dropped to within a foot of the floor.
“We’re at least a hundred feet underground,” Remi said. “Sam, there’s no way anyone could have gotten the Karyatids down this way.”
“I know. There must be another entrance. Farther down the pass, I’m betting. Do you hear that?”
Somewhere to their left beyond the dragon’s teeth came the sound of rushing water. “Waterfall.”
They walked down the curtain, stopping to peek beneath it every few feet. At the midpoint they found a section of dragon’s teeth had broken off, creating a waist-high gap. On the other side lay a four-foot-wide rock bridge spanning a crevasse; halfway across a thin curtain of water tumbled into the chasm, sending up a cloud of mist that sparkled in the beams of their headlamps. Barely visible through the waterfall they could see the dark outline of another tunnel.
“It’s incredible!” Remi called over the rush. “Is it from the lake?”
Sam put his mouth beside her ear. “Probably snowmelt runoff. It probably won’t be here in another couple months.”
They walked back the way they’d come.
Somewhere in the distance came a metallic ping, followed by silence, then a series of pings as Sam’s rock screw bounced down the chutes above.
“It may have just slipped,” Remi said.
They crept back to the platform and stood still, listening. A minute passed. Two minutes, then an echoing voice: “Lower me down.”
“Damn,” Sam muttered.
The voice was unmistakable: Hadeon Bondaruk.
“How long do we have?” Remi asked.
“He’ll have more people. Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”
“He must think we’re on the right track,” Remi said. “He’s come to claim his prize.”
At that moment there was only a handful of people who knew this cave was the likely hiding place for the columns: Sam and Remi, and Bondaruk and whoever was with him. Bondaruk couldn’t allow them to get out alive.
Sam said, “Then he’s going to be disappointed. Come on.”
They zigzagged their way through the stalagmites to the opposite wall and checked each tunnel in turn. Down the first tunnel and the middle tunnel they could see nothing but darkness. The third one jogged left after six feet. Sam looked at Remi and shrugged. She shrugged back and said, “Coin toss.”
They slipped through the fissure and followed the bend. Remi tripped and fell; she rolled onto her butt, rubbing her knee. Sam helped her up. “I’m okay,” she said. “What was that?”
An object on the floor glittered in her headlamp. Sam walked past her and picked it up. It was a straight, narrow sword about two feet long. Though heavily tarnished, spots of bright steel showed along the blade.
“This is a
The tunnel continued on for another fifty feet, turning this way and that until merging with a three-way intersection. “Left is the middle tunnel, I think. Leads back to the cavern,” Sam said.
“No, thanks.”
After twenty feet the tunnel began sloping downward, first gently, then more dramatically until they were sidestepping and groping the walls for handholds. The minutes ticked by. They turned a corner and Sam skidded to a stop, sliding a few feet before bumping into a wall.
“Dead end,” Remi said.
“Not quite.”
Where the wall met the floor there was a horizontal split. Sam crouched down and shined his headlamp inside. It was barely eighteen inches high. Cool air gushed from the opening.
