Temple of the Gods

but instead curved away, drawn towards the shadows.

Nina joined him. He was correct; there was a definite flow of air down the lava tube, and it was at odds with the prevailing wind outside. But she had no clue how to explain it. ‘At least we won’t have to worry about being gassed if we go down there.’

‘If?’ said Eddie with a knowing smile.

‘Yeah, we’re going down there. I just wanted to, y’know, preserve the illusion of choice.’

His smile broadened. ‘That vanished the moment I married you.’

‘Hey!’

He winked, then became more serious. ‘There should be a couple of torches in that bag. Let’s have a look.’

Nina found the pair of flashlights and gave one to her husband as she switched on the other and shone it down the passage. The curving walls were slightly ridged, producing the unsettling impression of being inside the ribcage of a snake. The lava tube changed shape as it progressed, its cross-section undulating from a teardrop to a squashed ovoid, but the volume of molten rock that had formed it seemed consistent; the ceiling was never lower than eight feet high. ‘Do you think it’s safe?’

Eddie placed a fingertip to his forehead as if channelling psychic powers. ‘Lemme consult my massive knowledge of volcanoes and say… I don’t have a fucking clue.’ She stuck out her tongue, making him grin again. ‘There isn’t molten lava gushing up it, so that’s a good start. And so long as the wind’s blowing down into it, we should be able to breathe okay. If it changes, though… We should have brought a canary in a cage.’

‘Poor birdie.’ She aimed the light at where the tunnel coiled out of sight. ‘Should we get the rest of the gear?’

He shook his head. ‘You’ve got the basics, and I’ve got the bombs. If we need anything else, we can always go back for it.’

‘Let’s hope we don’t need anything else.’

‘You think we’re going to find this meteorite just lying there?’

‘It’d be a nice change, wouldn’t it?’ She started down the shaft.

Eddie walked alongside her. ‘So, let me get this straight. This priestess, Nantalas, basically sinks Atlantis when she cocks up how to use earth energy, and the meteorite shoots off like an ICBM. She convinces the king not to kill her, but instead uses the statues to find it.’

‘Right. So they could make sure nobody ever tried to use the power of the gods again.’

‘Well, we know they were here. But just blocking off the entrance doesn’t seem like their usual way of doing things. The other Atlantean places we’ve found… they were big on booby traps, weren’t they?’

Nina stopped suddenly. ‘Oh, you had to remind me, didn’t you?’

‘Better now than when there’s a giant scythe swinging at your head.’

More cautiously, using the torch to check the curved walls above as well as the floor, she set off again. The entrance disappeared round a bend, dropping them into darkness as they continued deeper into the mountain. ‘I don’t know how much effort the Atlanteans who came here would have put into building their defences, though. They would have had other things on their mind.’

‘Like getting back home to save their families before Atlantis went glug-glug-glug.’

‘Yeah. Still, they obviously put some work into sealing the entrance — they could have just filled the tunnel with rocks, but they went to the trouble of constructing a wall.’

‘If they thought the meteorite was sent by the gods, maybe they thought it’d piss them off even more if they didn’t show respect by building a proper barricade,’ Eddie suggested.

‘I really am rubbing off on you! That’s exactly what I was thinking. So, when are you going to enrol for a degree course?’

‘The twelfth of never.’ They continued their descent, Eddie licking a finger and holding it up to check that the breeze was still blowing from behind them. It was. ‘So, they built a wall — did they build anything else down here?’

They rounded another bend — and halted as their torch beams fell upon something ahead.

Nina’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘I’d say… yes.’

33

The twisting lava tube opened out into a chamber cut from the volcanic rock — by human hands, not molten magma. The space was circular, about thirty feet in diameter. Offset from the entrance on the chamber’s far side was an imposing pair of tall stone doors. A metal plate was fixed upon one of them, glinting with the reddish-gold tint of orichalcum.

The doors were not what stopped Nina and Eddie in their tracks, however. It was what hung above them.

A giant hammer.

Its head was a single huge block of stone over fifteen feet across, one side matching the curvature of the wall. The handle was a thick beam crossing the entire chamber from a slot chiselled into the rock: a pivot. The entire massive object was designed to pound down and crush anything in front of the doors into a very thin paste.

‘I guess they did have time to build a booby trap,’ Nina whispered, as if afraid that her voice alone would trigger it. She shone her torch around the rest of the chamber. The walls, the lower parts coated by a layer of plaster, were covered with inscriptions: Atlantean texts. Near the entrance were several niches containing dusty objects.

Bodies.

She looked more closely. The corpses were tightly wrapped in cloth shrouds, heads left exposed. Empty-eyed skulls leered back at her.

‘Who are this lot?’ Eddie asked in distaste.

Nina knew the Atlantean language well enough to pick out a familiar name crudely marked in the stone above one particular nook. ‘It’s Nantalas!’

He directed his light at the shrivelled head. ‘Ha! Maybe you really are related.’ The beam picked out some surviving strands of distinctly red hair.

‘Very funny.’ She didn’t recognise the names over the other bodies, but understood the gist of an inscription nearby. ‘These must be her acolytes, I suppose. They died with her.’

‘How?’

‘Poison. It says that once the new Temple of the Gods was completed, they took their own lives in atonement for Nantalas’s blasphemy. Then I guess the other Atlanteans who came with them walled up the tunnel.’ She read more of the texts. ‘They took the statues with them — they were going to hide them in the empire’s farthest outposts so they could never be brought together again.’

‘That worked out well,’ Eddie said sarcastically. ‘Why didn’t they just smash the things?’

‘The same reason they didn’t destroy the meteorite. They thought it was sent by the gods, so smashing it would just have made Poseidon and co. even madder. And speaking of gods…’ She perused one particular section of text, then looked up at the suspended hammer. ‘I was right about them interpreting the volcano as being the forge of Hephaestus. They built this thing to honour him, by having his symbol protect the stone.’

‘So it’s a trap, right?’

‘Oh, yeah. Only someone who deserves to enter the Temple of the Gods can get through the doors. Anyone else… well, whoever wrote this was big on smiting.’

‘This isn’t the temple?’

‘No, just an antechamber. The actual place is through there.’ She indicated the doors… then, her curiosity fully aroused, started to cross the chamber to examine them.

‘Whoa, whoa!’ Eddie pulled her back. ‘Smiting, remember?’