temple. Parts of the building appeared to have been cut out of a cliff face, its summit just below the ice. She looked over her shoulder at the dam. Had it been built to a particular height specifically to cover whatever lay behind the temple?
She put the thought on hold; she was almost at the ground. ‘Okay, nearly there,’ she said into the walkie- talkie. ‘Slow it . . . okay, I’m down.’ Her boots bumped on the ground, which crackled under her crampons. Everything was covered with a layer of glinting ice and frost, surface water having rapidly frozen as the lake drained away. She unfastened the harness. Breath steamed from her nostrils; it was much colder than on the surface. ‘All right, I’m down and safe.’
‘What’s it like down there?’ Chase asked.
‘It’s . . . it’s kinda
He laughed sarcastically. ‘Right, that helps. If you have to get a new job after all this, don’t bother trying to be a tour guide.’
Sophia was lowered down, almost as awed by the sight of the lost city as Nina. The sled came next, followed by Chase. ‘So, you absolutely sure this wasn’t built by aliens?’ he asked Nina, indicating the glittering, blue-lit buildings. ‘’Cause that’s usually what stuff buried in the Antarctic ice turns out to be. Just ask Kurt Russell.’
‘I don’t know,’ Sophia said. ‘It has a certain Lovecraftian air, if you ask me. Perhaps we’ll meet a Shoggoth.’ A beat. ‘Lead the way, Nina.’
Chase chuckled, though Nina was unamused. ‘No aliens, no Elder Things, no . . . no flying spaghetti monsters,’ she said impatiently, going to the sled. ‘This was built by people just like us. They just happen to have been around a lot earlier than anyone thought. And if we can get on with it, please, that’s what we’re going to prove.’ She unfastened the straps and began taking equipment from the sledge.
Chase picked up the heavy-duty, spike-tipped tripod she had just unloaded. ‘We’re not going to cart this around with us, are we? That’s why I brought the sledge in the first place - so we wouldn’t have to!’
‘Oh, yeah. Duh,’ Nina said, replacing the rangefinder that the tripod had been designed to support. ‘We can do a proper laser survey when we come back. I don’t think we need to know the cavern’s exact dimensions right now. “Damn huge” is near enough.’
‘You’re
‘Over there.’ Nina pointed towards the plume of steam rising from the nearby labyrinthine area. ‘We’ll start with what’s closest and work our way up to the temple.’ She switched on a powerful flashlight to test it. The brilliant beam sliced through the sapphire-blue glow of the cavern like a laser. Satisfied, she clicked it off again; now that her eyes had adjusted to it, the light permeating the ice above was more than bright enough to see by.
‘Okay, Matt,’ Chase said into the radio, ‘we’re setting off.’
‘Got you,’ came the reply. ‘So what’s it like down there?’
Chase took in the sight of the frost-crusted temple dominating the city. ‘Nina got it right. It’s kind of . . .
Trulli snorted. ‘Fat lot of use you are. You better bring me some awesome photos, okay?’
‘Will do. Talk to you soon.’
They crossed the short distance to the walled edge of the maze, Chase towing the sledge. Nina looked towards the dam, picking out the dark spot of the drainage shaft drilled through it. Even though it had been less than an hour since the water level had finally dropped below its bottom edge, the surface was already frozen, shimmering glassily. Given another hour in the frigid cavern, it would be thick enough to walk on.
The steam rising from behind the wall told her there were warmer conditions ahead, however. Finding an opening, they went through. ‘What the hell’s this?’ Chase asked. The outer wall enclosed an excavated area, inside which had been built a grid-like series of walls, a marked contrast to the curves found elsewhere. The pit had remained full of water as the lake drained, now frozen over . . . but it was obvious from the metal bars covering each chamber that whatever had once been inside them was meant to stay there. ‘A prison?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sophia said thoughtfully. ‘It looks more like the hypogeum at the Colosseum in Rome. Remember? The area under the arena where the gladiators and animals were kept before contests.’ Chase nodded.
‘You’ve been to Rome?’ Nina asked him. ‘With her? You never mentioned that before.’
‘I’ve been to loads of places I haven’t told you about, and can we not get into this again? But yeah, it does look like it.’ The underground area at the centre of the Colosseum was made up of small, high-walled chambers connected by narrow corridors, and the structure before them followed a similarly functional pattern. ‘So what did they keep in here? Gladiators?’
‘Or animals,’ Sophia said. ‘Beasts.’
Nina shone the light into the nearest chamber, but could make nothing out through the milky ice. Instead, she directed the beam across the pit. Walkways and stone bridges criss-crossed it, intersecting at what she took to be guardhouses. Steam rose beyond them. ‘That must be where the volcanic vent is. Let’s take a look, then head into the city.’
They crossed a bridge into one of the squat guardhouses, the first fully intact construct of the Veteres Nina had entered. Disappointingly, it was empty except for what appeared to be a coiled whip hanging frozen on one wall, though its design still told her something; the slit-like windows round the room would have given the guards a view of the chambers below while keeping them hidden from the occupants, a primitive panopticon.
But who, or what, had they been watching?
Chase went to the little building’s other entrance, ice crunching with each step. ‘If they used the volcanic vent to get hot water, they’ve still got plenty.’
Nina and Sophia joined him, looking out across the pit. The layout of the walls changed, the cell-like chambers becoming larger. Some were even roofed rather than being open to the elements. But what Chase had called their attention to was natural rather than man-made. Somewhere beneath the pit, the heat of the vent was still warming the water . . . and it had kept flowing from its source even as the rest of the trapped lake froze around it, carving weaving gullies through the new ice.
‘It’s like a maze,’ Chase remarked. One section of the pit was more open than the others, and the hot streams had gradually melted their way to it, eating twisting, steaming gouges out of the ice.
Nina was more interested in the walls surrounding it. ‘If this was a hypogeum, that space might have been an arena.’ She crossed a bridge over a passage, peering into the cramped cells below in the hope of spotting some revelatory detail, but seeing only ice and stone. ‘Maybe there’s a way down where the hot water’s melted the ice.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ sighed Sophia. ‘Hypogeum, prison, slave pens, zoo - whatever it is, it’s not going to hold anything more important than the temple. And time’s become an issue.’ She pointed at the cavern’s ceiling. ‘Haven’t you noticed?’
‘Noticed what?’ Nina began, before it struck her. Literally. A fat drop of falling water burst on her shoulder. Others plopped down around them, the frequency slowly increasing.
‘Shit!’ Chase said, realising what was happening. He raised the walkie-talkie. ‘Matt, we might have a problem. The steam from the volcanic vent’s starting to melt the ice. I don’t know how long it’ll take before there’s any danger, but it might be worth moving the plane away from the hole. And I wouldn’t sit around it, either.’
‘That could screw up the radio,’ replied Trulli, his voice already distorted.
‘Have to chance it.’
‘Could it really collapse?’ Nina asked nervously.
‘I dunno. The ice is pretty thick. But some bits might fall off, and ten pounds of falling ice’ll fuck you up as much as ten tons from that height. Sophia’s right - we ought to get moving.’
Nina reluctantly accepted his advice, crossing another bridge to bring them through the outer wall near the rest of the city. Away from the rising steam, the dripping stopped. They tromped across a patch of open ground, where she noticed the remains of vegetation under the ice. ‘God punished them by sending the cold to kill the trees . . .’ she said, remembering the inscription in Australia.
‘Know what it reminds me of, Eddie?’ asked Sophia, smiling. ‘The Yorkshire Moors.’
‘Tchah,’ said Chase, jokily dismissive. ‘At least Yorkshiremen don’t run off to a different continent when it gets a bit nippy. This lot were wimps!’
They reached the first structure. Nina estimated the ‘igloo’ to be roughly eleven feet tall, and around twenty
