The Chamber of the Gods
The smell was familiar.
After four years of sneaking into ziggurats, catacombs, mausoleum and old sewers, Chris Larabee knew immediately the smell of death. Whatever the original purpose of this construction, death had been a large part of it. Even if those interred here had been buried hundreds of years before, the stench of a post-decomposing body was unmistakable. Taking the lead, he descended the rough stone steps, carved hundreds of years before he or William Styles's was born and took the path the good doctor was so determined to hide.
Musty air assaulted him as he stepped through the doorway of crushed brick, leaving the main chamber behind. Perfectly aware that any entreaty to the women to stay behind would result in ten minutes of ear bashing about chauvinism, Chris opted to avoid the topic entirely and tell Vin to take up the rear. Using his torch to light the way, since the steps were narrow and steep, not to mention the walls flanking them were barely five feet apart. The texture of the surface was brittle and only slight contact with his duster caused them to break away and drift to the ground as loose dust. Overhead, cobwebs dangled from the ceiling in long threads or hung like streamers across their path.
In the dark, he could hear the universal sounds to make any woman twitch in revulsion, the skittering of insects as their hard carapaces scraped across the rock during movement. Once again, Chris cursed Mary Travis's presence here. Because he could feel her acutely, whether it was her breath against his neck, the accidental brushes of her body against his back or the slight whiff of whatever perfume she was wearing. It was damned distracting.
"I wonder how much there is of this place underground," Mary remarked, trying to ignore her discomfort at being in this stygian place with conversation.
"Difficult to say," Chris answered, "we've been in a few structures, especially in the Middle East, where the ground level structure was just the entrance into a larger dwelling underground."
"Like that place in Turkey," Vin remarked. "Hell, we almost lost Ezra in there. He was convinced there had to be treasure in every room."
"Was there?" Alex asked, fascinated by what Vin did for a living. Despite sharing an almost spiritual connection with the handsome sharpshooter she met barely a day ago, she realised she knew little about his life.
"Nah," Chris replied. "We were there to map the place. Some English university wanted to go exploring but didn't want their kids to get, so they paid us to go look at it. It was in Nevsehir and it was an underground city of eight levels, capable to hold 5000 people when it was occupied. We didn't get paid much for it, enough to cover our costs and time but we didn't mind. It was a favour to the Professor."
"Well he thinks very highly of all of you," Mary commented, sensing the affection in Chris's voice for her father.
"It's mutual," Vin replied, aware Chris wouldn't say it. "Gave us a purpose when we needed it and pulled us together again. I guess after hearing about how he lost his friends, I can understand why."
"Yes," Mary said sadly. "He misses them deeply. He and William were very close. Especially after what happened with Donald Avery and then Hank."
Chris didn't say anything to that because his recollections of Hank Connelly was not one of affection. The man never thought him good enough for Sarah and merely tolerated him. After her death, toleration became animosity and they barely spoke after that.
"I thought he moved up this way to be closer to your father," Alex said softly. "I was pleased because when I went to college, I didn't want him to be alone, wrapped up in his books." Instead, it had never been about being near to Orin Travis, but closer to this place, where he could keep watch on his cryptex. "I just wished he hadn't kept all this from me. I knew he always had an interest in the mythology of the Middle East, but I had no idea there was more to it than that."
A part of Alex was furious at her father for not telling her about the Erran and the danger they posed, even though she understood his desire to protect her. They always shared everything and she wished he told her if only to share its burden with him.
"He was trying to keep you safe," Mary said kindly, understanding Alex's chagrin. "It took ages for me to convince my dad to tell me what was going on. Once he did, I was able to do some investigation on my own into the Erran."
"Well we're going to have to deal with the situation eventually," Chris remarked as he aimed the torch and saw only more steps below them. Unsurprised by this because the builders had probably wanted their dead to be as far away from the main chamber as possible, he continued down the stone steps. "So far we've been reacting. If we're going to end this, we got to start acting."
The illumination of the flashlight in the narrow passageway seemed to cut into his vision when reflecting against a particularly smooth surface. Chris blinked away the spots and narrowed his eyes at where the offending gleam originated. It didn't take him long to find it. What he saw was one of the steps had been reinforced with a slab of flat dark stone. Due to its polish, light from the flash had reflected back enough to catch his attention.
At first, Chris thought this was where Doctor Styles had chosen to hide his cryptex, however, it seemed like too obvious as place.
"Hold up," he ordered, halting immediately.
"What is it?" Mary asked automatically.
Chris didn't answer her right away, he studied the sections of wall flanking that slab of stone. While it was just as rough and uneven as the rest of the carved passageway, his keen eyes spotted micro fissures in the rock. If one did not know better, they could have been small holes pockmarking the wall to be result of insects burrowing or even air holes. However, Chris was starting to buy into William Styles's paranoia and if the man was hell bent on protecting his daughter, he might have prepared for every contingency, including the possibility of the Erran finding this place.
"It seems Doctor Styles was prepared for unwanted visitors." He aimed the torch at the slab of rock.
"Whatever you do, do not touch that step," he instructed the others. "I've got a feeling we won't like it much."
"Oh my God!" Alex exclaimed aghast. "Are you saying my father built a trap?" It was so far removed from the kind man she knew all her life, not to mention the healer who hated violence.
"Your pa was trying to protect you Alex," Vin squeezed her hand gently.
"I know," Alex shook her head with disbelief. "But a death trap?"
Chris didn't blame the lady's surprise but nevertheless stepped over the slab and took a few more steps down and waited for the others to join him. Mary followed suit, her face scrunched in concentration when she stepped over the slab which was obviously the trigger mechanism of whatever resided into those bore holes on the wall. Chris offered her hand instinctively and to his surprise she took it without going on some feminist rant about chivalry being an outdated concept and most women in this day and age could take care of themselves.
She was awful pretty, he thought, but loud.
Once they were past the offending slab, they continued further down the passageway which seemed to take them deeper underground. This time however, Chris kept his eyes peeled because he wasn't convinced the trap they avoided was the only one of its kind. In fact, Chris was starting to develop a healthy respect for William Styles which made him doubly intent on taking the Erran to account over the man's death.
After what seemed like an eternity, the steps that felt like they led into the very depths of the world, came to a stop and instead of the crudely constructed chambers of earlier, they were confronted by something a great deal more sophisticated. Gone were the rough, mudbrick walls and floors. What lay before them now, could have been constructed by Montezuma's best artisans. The floors were now paved with sandstone slabs carved with the familiar geometric patterns favoured by the ancient Aztec.
The walls were similarly ornate, almost every surface adorned with the circular carvings etched from jasper, depicting aspects of Aztec symbolism, from their sun calendar to images of cosmic fire and fertility. At the centre of each one was a red jewel, like a blood red eye looking at them. At the end of the long hallway, was a smaller door that led to the rest of the place, a honeycomb of tunnels buried beneath the New Mexican earth.
In the corners, Chris recognised the gargoyle like statues of various Aztec deities. Tlaloc the god of fertility whose worship demanded the sacrifice of children, Quetzalcoatl the Serpent God, Tlaltechutli the monstrous earth goddess and finally, Huitzilopochtli the god of sun, war and sacrifice. They stood at each corner of the rooms, their mouth agape as if they were in silent exclamation at the intrusion of the new arrivals.
"Chris," Vin was shining his torch at the dust covered floor. It was thick enough to offer confirmation this underground catacomb had not been in use for centuries yet not entirely devoid of trespassers. The sharpshooter studied the patterns in the dust and recognised the swirls and indentations, for what they were. Footprints.
The tracks, indiscernible as they were to all but the Navajo trained tracker, travelled through the length of the hallway before disappearing beyond the range of his flashlight, presumably through the doorway Vin could see at the other end.
"Someone's been through here. Not too long ago, the dust ain't completely covered it up yet. Give it a couple of years or even months, it would probably be gone too."
"Styles," Chris guessed, glancing at Alex briefly. "They head through there?" He waved his torch towards the doorway.
"Yeah," Vin nodded. "He came down here alright and then through there. Probably did it before he walled this place up."
"I suppose if he wanted to hide the cryptex, this place would serve," Alex said, looking around the hallway with its grotesque and rather disturbing carvings in the sand stone walls. Seeing them made her shudder and she took an instinctive step closer to Vin. The sharpshooter saw her discomfort and slid the fingers of his free hand through hers, something Alex was inordinately grateful for.
Meanwhile, Mary was conducting observations of her own. She found the chamber quite fascinating, especially when it was such a departure from the chambers above. While those had been crude and unsophisticated in their design. This hallway was anything but. She could imagine ancient cultures, far more civilised than the Native Americans the first settlers encountered, moving about this underground community.
She approached one of the circular carvings and knew from her studies of Mesoamerican art, this was a sun calendar of some kind. A sun stone, the name surfaced in her mind and still found the carvings, depicting their deity, jaguar warriors and serpents quite hideous. Once again, the blood red stone, no doubt constructed of red beryl, had been chiselled to form the mouth of some Aztec god. Reaching for it, Mary only intended to feel it's texture.
What happened next, would be hers to suffer for years to come.
No sooner than her fingers contacted the red stone, it seemed to retreat further into the wall at the contact. Mary had barely exerted any pressure but even that light touch was enough. Later she would marvel at how efficiently the mechanism worked, despite the age of it. The stone signalled its retreat with a clarion call of grinding stone. Suddenly slabs of petrified wood descended so quickly across each doorway, Mary didn't know if it was its abrupt appearance or the startling sound of rocks slamming against the sandstone floor that made them all jump, but they did.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?" Chris bellowed once he realised what she had done.
"Nothing!" Mary looked blankly at him, horror cascading over her face as she realised she might have inadvertently triggered some ancient death trap. "I just touched this rock!"
Vin, who had made a run at the door, hoping to get to the other side it before it trapped them completely, reached it a fraction of a second after the loud,, teeth chattering sound of rock slammed against the floor. As they stood there, stunned by their sudden change of circumstances, a low, groan moved through the air, as an ancient mechanism, prompted to life from years of slumber, voiced displeasure with every grind of stone.
"I'm sorry!" Mary stuttered, feeling supremely stupid for her mistake.
"You'll be sorrier in a minute," Chris growled, shooting her a glare of genuine anger because what was coming next would not be pleasant. He was sure of it.
He wasn't wrong. A new sound invaded their prison and this one was all too familiar. From the open mouths of the pantheon of deities, strong jets of water spurted out in cascades of froth, quickly spreading water across the floor.
"Aw hell," Vin groaned, realising they were going to drown in the middle of a desert. God sure had a funny sense of humour.
"Did my father put this here?" Alex asked horrified as the water reached her boots. She shrank from it, almost as if preventing the contact would also lengthen her rapidly dwindling life span.
"I don't think he knew," Chris declared, thinking this was too elaborate even for Styles. No, this trap had been set long before anyone of them had been born, as a warning to anyone who attempted to desecrate the place by looting it. "If he did," he glared at Mary, "he wasn't stupid enough to trigger it."
Mary glared back at him. "I said I'm sorry!" She barked, angrier at herself than at this insufferable ass. "You're the expert! Do something!"
Chris whirled around about to tell her what she could go do with herself when he realised she was right. Goddamnit! They were not going through those doors and these things always had an escape, he just had to figure out what it was.
"You got any ideas pard?" Vin asked, aware by the silence, Chris was trying to figure a way out of this situation.
"I'm not sure," Chris asked, trying to ignore the swirl of water around his ankles and focus.
The water was rising quickly, swirling around their ankles but there was nowhere to go. Other than the statues, there was nothing in the room, nothing for them to stand on while the flow became a deluge around them.
As Vin tried unsuccessfully to move one of the statues, hoping to break its connection to the water source or at least create a fissure in the wall they could exploit, Alex waded next to him to offer him her help. Together, they tried to shift the ancient monument to no avail. The water was already up to their knees and showed no signs of abating.
"Where the hell is this water coming from anyway? We're in the middle of the desert!" She grimaced, examining her palms, stinging from where the rock had bit into her skin. .
"Could be ground water or an artesian basin," Vin suggested. "Doesn't really matter, it's still going to drown us if we don't get out of here."
Alex made a face at his stark assessment of their situation. "How is it, since I've met you, I've been kidnapped, shot at and now about to drown in an ancient Aztec whatever this place is?" She waved the torch around her. Still, despite her rising panic at what was happening, Alex was also starting to develop an odd sort of faith in Vin Tanner and his friends, not to mention their adeptness at being able to extricate themselves from perilous situations.
Vin who was still trying to move the statue of Tlaloc without much success looked up at her with a grin. "Well, you can't say it ain't been dull." He winked at her as she aimed the torch in his direction so he could use both his hands.
Shaking her head with a mixture of exasperation and affection, Alex managed a smile. "I suppose that's one way to put it."
The water was flowing faster.
Chris was convinced somehow it knew he was attempting to work the problem and increased the intensity of the flow into the chamber to prevent them from escaping. By now, they were waist deep in it, with no signs it was stopping anytime soon. He had a feeling that a lot of people met their ends in the same way over the centuries and supposed Styles was damned lucky to have not fallen into this trap. Then again, he didn't have a nosy dame with him either.
Speaking of said dame, she was standing next to him, trying not to show she was scared even though he could see through the glow of the flashlight she was holding, she was. He had to admire her attempts to keep her head despite the situation (which she caused), and not be reduced to panic like most women.
"Tell me what exactly did you do?" He demanded after he ordered her back to the carving that began this mess in the first place.
"Nothing!" She burst out and then felt supremely stupid because clearly, she did something. "Don't answer that!" Mary shot him a warning as she saw him about to respond. "I just touched the stone in the middle."
Chris turned to the sun stone or calendar as it was more commonly known. Aiming the torch at it, he saw the carved image of Tonatiuh, the Sun God, whose mouth was depicted by the stone Mary had inadvertently pushed. Clearly this was the mechanism to trigger the trap into springing.
"Okay, okay, so this is Tonatiuh," Chris thought quickly, "He's possibly their most supreme deity, god of the sun, fertility and sacrifice. This is the guy they killed all those virgins for. Makes sense that he'd be the one they used to trigger this trap."
Mary looked around her, starting to feel the chill of more than just water running up her spine. She had been fighting her fear but it was starting to get the better of her. "Okay, so where's the off switch then?" She challenged impatiently.
Chris gave her a look as Vin approached them with Alex following close behind.
"Any luck pard?" Vin asked, hoping Chris had some idea of how to get out of here because he could find no other way out.
"Just let me think!" Chris snapped, conscious of the water swirling around his ribs as he scanned the room and saw the other carvings on the wall. There were thirteen of them, he realised, which wasn't unusual. If JD were here, the kid would have rattled off a whole treatise about how the Aztec considered that a lucky number.
"Okay, thirteen carvings," he started thinking out loud. "Thirteen is a lucky number, each number had meaning. Some kind of magic, they believed."
"You think one of these carvings is the way out of here?" Vin asked, prompting Chris's thought processes further. After four years together, Vin had learned Chris was smarter than most people knew and could figure things out. You just had to give him room and a kick up the ass to get there.
"Yeah," Chris nodded and looked at Mary. "You pushed the carving for number two, that's water."
"So, what's escape?" She asked, still bristling in annoyance at her foolishness.
Chris shook his head. "Doesn't work like that! Spread out all of you! Go to each one and tell me what you see. I need to know what the centre carving is! For Christ's sake if there's a stone," he glared at Mary, "don't touch it!"
Mary made a face at him before she scattered like Vin and Alex, spreading across the room to study the carvings on the wall even as the water level was now past their breast bones. The flow was even stronger now, refusing to be denied the victims in its snare. As they scanned the carvings now half submerged in water, Chris heard them calling out their discovery.
"Two guys sitting across each other on what looks like a cross!" Vin shouted from the far end of the room.
The deluge was up to Vin's neck by now while Alex was clinging to one of the statues to keep herself afloat. Likewise, Mary was doing the same to the top edge of the carving nearest to her. The ceiling was looming closer and when the water pushed them up against that stone barrier, they would be out of time.
A cross? Chris stared at Vin for a second before his mind grasped what the sharpshooter was trying to describe to him. Two men seated across each other... a cross, no, not a cross but the crisscrossing lines that indicated direction, north, south, east and west. Facing each other, as equals. Balance. It was about balance and harmony, about travelling the correct path.
"PUSH IT VIN!" Chris shouted over the roar of water and winced when the stuff sloshed into his mouth. "Push the stone!"
Vin's eyes widened and dove under the water, since the stone in the centre of the carving was submerged by now. The torch no longer worked once the moisture got to it and in virtual darkness, the sharpshooter had to feel his way across the grooves that made up the carving, until he found the smooth blue stone, most likely of azurite and pushed. It retreated into the rock and suddenly the thunderous sound of the cascade, muted by the water, ceased.
Vin emerged to see the water flow had been cut off and the statues no longer spewed death from their open mouths. He met Chris's gaze and both started laughing, grateful for this victory, even if they still had to figure out how to get out of the chamber they were presently sealed in.
And then without warning, the floor beneath them opened.
