Above the hands was a strange drawing in the same blue ink. It was very crude, and it took James a few moments to puzzle out what was happening. It depicted a man standing tall and proud. In one hand, he held a headless snake, the body hanging limply from his grip. In the other was a round object, unmistakably the Chintamani Stone. Somehow, its ink seemed to glow brighter than the rest. The man stared down at the stone, triumph on his face.
The tip of a sword protruded from his chest. Its holder—a smaller man, slightly hunched over—stood behind him. He had evidently stabbed the man through the back. Oddly, the first man didn’t seem bothered; his eyes were transfixed on the stone.
“Grisly,” Rocky said, eyeing the drawing.
“What do you think it means?” Katie said.
James stepped forward and ran his hand over the ink. It was completely smooth. “I have no idea.”
“You know, this one kind of reminds me of you, James,” Rocky said, pointing to the hunched-over man holding the sword.
“What? How?” James peered at the crude figure. The only similarity was that they both had short hair.
“Check out the nose and the chin. And look, he even has bad posture. His shoulders are rounded like yours.”
James straightened, pulling his shoulders back. “I don’t have bad postu—”
“Will you guys stop?” Katie hissed, and they fell silent. “This must mean something. We just have to figure it out.”
“I don’t have bad posture,” James muttered, and Rocky flashed a grin.
They stared at the wall painting in silence. James imagined the ancient people stepping up to this wall, pressing their hands to it one by one, leaving a mark of their humanity that would persist long after they perished. For what purpose, James didn’t know.
“So we’ve got a bunch of hands reaching up like they want something,” Rocky said slowly. “And we’ve got a guy with the stone, and another guy stabbing him in the back. Seems like bad business to me.”
“Thank you for explaining, Detective,” Katie said dryly. “But that doesn’t help us much.”
James pointed at the decapitated snake. “And what the hell is that?”
“Dead snake?” Rocky said helpfully.
“But what does it mean?”
“Maybe he killed the snake, then got the stone.” Rocky pointed at each in turn. “So we’ve just got to find a snake, kill it, and then we’ll get the stone. Easy.”
He’d clearly said it as a joke, but James’s eyes slid from the wall as he spoke, wandering to the rest of the room. To the burning troughs of flames illuminating golden tracks on the ground. They all flowed toward the middle of the room, toward the brazier, in that same wave-like pattern. Almost like...
“Snakes,” James said aloud.
“What?” Katie said.
“We kill the snake,” he muttered. “Cut its head off. You’re a genius, Rocky.”
“I know. But what are you talking about?” Rocky said.
James explained, pointing to the patterns in the flames and on the floor, the bodies of the snakes that all led to the same place. The brazier. The head.
He strode to the brazier, excited. It was a large, stone cauldron with a square base. He put a hand on it. The stone was warm beneath his fingers, but not burning hot. Carefully, he pushed against it.
The stone moved a fraction of an inch.
“Help me with this!” he said.
Together, Katie, Rocky, and James threw their shoulders against the cauldron, heaving with all their strength. Slowly, very slowly, it moved. The stone scraped loudly against the ground, protesting its decapitation. A hole appeared where the cauldron had been sitting.
When the cauldron was completely out of the way, James stood, panting, with a triumphant smile. “Actually, I’m the genius.”
“We can all be geniuses. Or geniusi,” Rocky said, wiping his hands on his pants.
Katie peered into the hole. “There’s a ladder. I can’t see the bottom, though.”
James grabbed the torch and stood at the edge of the hole. “This has got to be it, right? No more hoops to jump through?”
“Do you think Derek’s down there?” Rocky said.
James wasn’t sure what to think. If not here, then where? Another spot in this underground city, hidden by even more puzzles?
“One way to find out,” James said, and he swung his leg onto the ladder. Holding the torch in one hand and the ladder in another, he descended into what he hoped was the end of this long, strange journey. One final room, he told himself, and everything would be made clear.
Or so he hoped.
Chapter 25
It was a short descent.
After only a few seconds of climbing, they dropped into a new room.
James stumbled as he stepped off the ladder and something shifted beneath his feet. It felt like an uneven bed of stones. He took another step and heard a crack. He swept the torch before him, revealing what lay beneath his feet. It wasn’t rocks.
It was bones.
The entire floor was covered in human bones shining white in the torchlight. They were scattered about as if they’d been discarded down here, hundreds of them, some completely whole, others fractured. He saw femurs, hip bones, rib cages. Several skulls lay on top, staring at James through sightless eyes, laughing through open mouths.
James took a step back, horrified.
“Nope,” Rocky said as soon as he stepped off the ladder and saw the bones. “Nope, nope.” He tried to climb back up the ladder, but Katie blocked the way as she descended.
“What is it... Oh,” Katie said as she stepped down. “Well, that’s horrifying.”
James stared at the field of bones stretching across the entire room before them. He could make
