Indeed, what Mr. Bing said was true, Lara realized a couple of days later. She had read the entire diary for three times already, and was quite positive that something important was in question.
"I cannot say where we were or what our expedition was," wrote Jeremiah Carter. "I cannot even say the continent, as the location of this sanctuary must remain secret. Only the people who have true valor and empathy could ever figure out where the sanctuary is, as the selfish and ambitious lack the necessary ability to figure it out. I will tell everything I know about it, but I cannot tell where it is, as it is very, very dangerous.
We were on an expedition, looking for something which had nothing to do with what we found. It was an ancient sanctuary, a small temple hidden in a cavern with waterfalls. Sixteen large pillars circle the altar, with a strange copper contraption in its middle. There is a lever on each pillar, but you don't know which one is safe... There are skeletons under each of them. Ancient runes (or similar symbols or letters) could be seen on frescoes and tablets around the temple. I wrote down some of these symbols in my diary, you'll find them on last pages.
After we got back to the surface, I asked the people living in nearby villages about their oldest legends. They told me about a brother and a sister who appeared in the wood (just near the cave) out of thin air, dressed in alien clothes, who spoke strange language and claimed that they came from the future. On another occasion, a shepherd with his entire herd disappeared and reappeared ten years later, not a day older, along with his sheep. He claimed that nothing had happened, that he took his sheep out to the field, took a nap, woke up and returned home to see that he was a father of a ten-year-old son. There is also a legend about three riders, dressed in ancient armors and armed with ancient weapon, obviously from a very distant land, who ride into the village totally confused and speaking a language so odd, that no-one could understand it.
Also, from what I could find in ancient manuscripts and letters, there is a time portal in this area. People can travel through time if they can open it and use it. It is so treacherous, that no-one wanted to talk about it at all. No-one wanted to write down or forward the secret of using it. But it is there, wide open for anyone to find it... And figure it out..."
The rest of the confession was similar, Carter described in detail how he tried to decipher the inscriptions, then he listed all the stories and legends with their full content, and even provided a drawing of the sanctuary... Sixteen pillars form a circle... The moment Lara saw the drawing, she knew she had seen this place somewhere... She knew, if she tried to force the memory out to the light, it would take forever. If she gave it a rest, it would soon surface by itself.
So, she read through the entire paperwork of Jeremiah Carter. It took her three following days to sort them all. Letters, invoices from the barber and for electricity, diaries about his beloved Annabel, a mysterious girl who seemed to have died when they were young, diaries he wrote before he died (the most promising ones, Lara realized), ancient court orders and decisions, customs charges and tax returns... It was an entire mountain of papers, revealing an entire life of a human being. All that remains after we leave this world, no matter how famous and adventurous we were, is a pile of papers...
"I wish I could return to the gate of times," Carter wrote just a few weeks before he died. "I would have done some things differently... I would have saved a couple of lives, and most importantly, I would have saved Annabel's life... Why didn't I do it then, when I was there at the gate? Why did it not occur to me that I could go back in time and kept her from going out into that storm? Why was I so honest? No, I was not honest, I was afraid..."
Lara suddenly jumped from her chair and start walking around her library desk. These words woke up a tide of her own guilt in her and she was incapable of calming it down. What if...? No, she dismissed the thought before even formulating it in her mind. That's crazy! Impossible and totally ridiculous! No... It would be totally immoral... Wouldn't it?
After all, Alister did not have to die at all, his death was totally meaningless and could have been prevented. It was also an unfair fight, because Lara's doppelganger was superhuman combat machine, and Alister was not even a beginner in boss fights and acrobatics. Could his death be prevented? she asked herself even against her will. No, she added quickly, which sounded in her mind as a command to her own self.
She went to bed that evening, but she could not sleep. Around two o'clock, Lara decided to take a swim and maybe get herself tired enough to sleep.
The water of her indoor pool was a bit colder than usual, as the heating system had not yet been installed after the renovation. But it did her nonetheless good. Freshness and tender touch of the water helped her calm her nerves a bit. After she got out of the pool and wrapped herself in a big towel, Lara went upstairs to take a warm shower.
When she returned to her bed one hour later, the first thing that occurred to her was the memory she was looking for... The old pagan temple in a small village in Greece... It was some fifteen years ago, on her vacation after she had beaten professor Willard, and she spent two days there during her long hike through northern Greece towards Khalkidhiki. In the hill behind the village she found an underground temple, in a small cave with waterfall, with sixteen pillars in a circle around a copper bowl and some other gadgets around it. Although this center piece did look quite interesting, the entire sanctuary (or whatever it was) seemed rather dull. Sixteen stone pillars, damaged by moisture and time, but still standing, with no top or any other ornament. Only some inscriptions here and there, and Lara suddenly remembered: it was Aramaic! Jeremiah did not recognize it and did not render it correctly in his diary. It was twisted Aramaic, but Aramaic nonetheless! She remembered how out of place that language seemed to her back then, when she was there the first time. It'll be a piece of cake to decipher the inscriptions once there, she thought.
Although Lara had no idea about it, Winston was right. That peculiar visitor really woke Lara up from her depression, and more important, boredom.