His cleats made a crunching sound as he stepped from the bare stone onto a more forgiving substrate. He crouched and shined his light at the ground. Sand. He scooped up a handful and allowed it to cascade between his fingers. The grains were small and powdery, as though individually they had no substance at all, like the sand from a tropical beach or the most remote desert. Whatever the case, it definitely wasn't from around here. He again thought of the cuneiform and its Arabian origin as he stood and followed Pascual deeper into the mountain.
* * *
The tunnel opened into a chamber much smaller than the last, perhaps the size of a two-car garage, but the ceiling was much higher. As with all of the others, the walls were covered with the cryptic writing. A mound of sand filled the room, drifted against the far wall, as though a dune had been magically transported into this one cave.
Nelson flashed his camera. Ladd glimpsed what had to be thousands of bats suspended overhead between the stalactites. They wavered from side to side as though blown by a breeze only they could feel.
Their flashlight beams crisscrossed the cave like spotlights at a movie premier, showing them random pieces, but never the whole.
'There's another passage over here,' Pascual said.
Ladd turned toward where Pacual stood in the opposite corner, silhouetted by his flashlight, which diffused into another pitch-black corridor.
'How in the world did all of this sand get in here?' Nelson whispered.
'I feel a faint breeze,' Pascual called. His voice echoed from the orifice. 'At least we know we're heading in the right direction.'
Ladd skirted the edge of the dune. His reluctance to walk on it was irrational, he knew, and yet he simply couldn't bring himself to step on any more of it than absolutely necessary. There was something unnatural about it. Not the sand itself, per se, but the fact that it simply shouldn't be here. He felt a swell of relief when he ducked out of the room and into the tunnel.
'Amazing,' Pascual said from somewhere ahead, his voice hollowed by the acoustics.
'What is it?'
'You have to see it to believe it.'
Ladd wasn't in the mood. The feeling that he needed to get out of this mountain this very second nearly overwhelmed him.
The stone corridor opened into another domed cavern. Pascual stood in the center, directing his light at the walls as he slowly turned in circles. Another dark channel exited the far side.
Ladd followed the beam with his eyes. The walls weren't covered with writing. Hundreds of recesses had been meticulously carved into them instead, small arched shelves separated by a finger's width of granite. They were barely large enough to accommodate the skulls wedged inside them. More shadowed eye sockets than he could count stared directly at him.
'It's an ossuary,' Ladd said.
'Of sorts. There aren't any other bones. Only the skulls.' Pascual's voice positively trembled with excitement. 'Notice anything interesting about them?'
Ladd directed his light at the nearest arch to his left and stumbled backward in surprise.
'Jesus.'
'Tell me about it. I've never seen anything like them on a hominin. A Great Ape, maybe, but not on a proto- human.'
'What in God's name do you think---?'
'Ramsey!' Rivale shouted from behind him. He spun toward the tunnel leading back to the room with the sand. 'Ramsey!'
Something in her voice awakened the panic inside him. He took off at a sprint, made awkward by his crampons. Something was definitely wrong. Everything was wrong. They shouldn't be here. No one was ever meant to be here.
Ladd burst into the cavern to find Rivale kneeling beside Nelson on one of the dune's peaks, waving her hand, palm-down, over the sand. He hurried to her side. She glanced up at him, eyes wide.
'Hold your hand right here. Just like this,' she said. 'Can you feel it?'
Ladd removed his glove and waved his hand over the ground just as she had. The tip of a reed reminiscent of the stalk of a cattail stood several inches above the sand at a slight angle. Warm air caressed his palm when he passed over it.
'What is it?' he asked.
'I don't know. Nelson found it. And several more just like it.'
'At least four more,' Nelson said.
'There's something under here.' Ladd brushed the sand away from the base of the thin reed, only to find that it extended deeper than he had suspected. The fine grains slid back into place. 'What could possibly---?'
'Quit screwing around and just do it already,' Pascual said. He shouldered Ladd aside and shoved scoops of sand away from the reed. 'For someone in such a rush to get out of here, you're sure taking your sweet time about it.'
Ladd glanced back toward the tunnel through which they had initially entered. Suddenly, the prospect of descending the sheer, icy face of Mt. Belukha wasn't nearly as intimidating, even blindly in the darkness and the blizzarding snow.
'Stop, Carlos.'
'I can feel something down there.'
'For Christ's sake, stop digging! Let's get out of here while we still---'
'What the hell is that? Someone. Give me some more light.'
Rivale shined her beam into the bottom of the foot-deep hole as Pascual brushed away the grains that trickled back down the sides. He jerked his hand back and scrabbled away.
Ladd saw a prominent brow over eyelids dusted with sand, the ridge of a slender nose, a pair of lips pursed around the base of the reed.
'It's too late,' he whispered.
The eyes snapped open at the sound of his voice.
