The passage suddenly opened onto a large cavern with a vaulted ceiling. Piaquay looked up and thought he saw the stars. He blinked and looked again.
"The sky?" asked Roberto to no one in particular. "No, some kind of shining stones." What a place is this, he thought to himself.
After what seemed like several leagues the passage forked. Piaquay knelt, holding his torch over the ground, looking for tracks or some kind of disturbance that marked recent passage. The cave floor was rocky, but he saw arrangements of pebbles that indicated shuffling feet had passed. He examined the walls of the entrance to the passage. Again, the sign. They were following the sign. He led the way down a steep passage strewn with large boulders. The way was more difficult. They had to weave around the large stones, squeezing between some and climbing over others. His torch burned low, and he stopped and lit another one, then proceeded, listening, always listening. His heart beat faster at the thought of avenging the deaths of those he loved and removing these evil demons from his land.
The rocky passage opened into a cavern so large their torches lit only a short distance. It was colder here. Wind blew from somewhere. Another entrance? Carried on the wind he heard a cry. He listened. Was it the demons he followed or something else, or simply his own imagination?
"We must split up here and follow the walls to look for a passage," he said.
It was Roberto who found the opening. Piaquay checked for the mark before lie led the way into yet another twisted passage. We are getting close, thought Piaquay, as he followed the winding route to the room of the snake.
The passageway Esteban Calderon followed terminated at a great stone. In the flickering light of his torch he saw an ancient carving of a serpent with wings, horns, and what looked like rays coming from a large crystal in the middle of its forehead. Calderon's heart raced as he stood before the stone. He touched the engraving, tracing it with his fingers.
"This is it," he whispered. "This is it. Move it, move the stone." He held the torches as his men gathered around the stone and pushed. It was heavy. "Harder," ordered Calderon, "harder."
The men grunted and groaned as they pushed on the heavy boulder.
"It's no use," said Diego, but just then the stone shifted.
"It's moving. It's moving. Push harder. Put your backs into it."
The stone moved little by little, revealing a dark opening.
Lindsay thought that she had been climbing downward for hours. She wished her watch hadn't broken. She knew that with no objective markers the passage of time could be deceiving. Her legs ached. Her head felt as if it was in a vise. She tried to think of nothing but each step as she picked her way through the rubble. With some footsteps, rubble loosened and boulders slid down the passage. When that happened, she stood still and prayed. Surely this shaft wouldn't go down forever. When she reached the end of it, she would reward herself with a piece of the nutri-bar in her pack. She was thirsty. Water, she hadn't thought of water. Surely, there would be water somewhere. Maybe she would find an underground stream or pond. But maybe it was a dry cave and she would die of thirst, maybe the batteries would run out, maybe ... She stepped on a rock and started another slide.
"Oh, please," she whispered. "I'll pay attention, I promise."
The sliding stopped and she continued. Just ahead, the tunnel curved. As she reached the curve she realized that it wasn't as steep. Suddenly she stepped out of the narrow sloping passage into a large chamber. She sighed with relief. Rest. She would rest here.
She shone her flashlight around the chamber. It was huge, bigger than an airplane hangar. In fact, the entire Atlanta airport would have fit. There could be a hundred passages leading from this room, she thought with dismay. Don't think about that now, she told herself. Rest. She walked a distance from the shaft she had emerged from to get past the rubble that had accumulated in front of it. She sat down on a large boulder, breathing heavily. She was dead tired. The batteries. She switched off the light. Darkness. It continued to surprise her how utterly black dark could be.
Lindsay took off her backpack, then switched on the light again. She pulled out a candle, matches, and a piece of the aluminum foil. She put the foil around the candle to catch the melting wax and stood it up by supporting it with rocks. She lit the candle and turned off the flashlight. There was a surprising amount of light, and it shone all around on the rocks and floor, not just forward like the beam from the flashlight. It was comforting. She unwrapped one of the nutri-bars and broke off a fourth of it. She took a small bite and chewed slowly, savoring it.
She could use the candle in some of the passages. It would save the batteries. That was a joyful thought. Lindsay finished the allotment of food and rewrapped the rest, tucking it safely in the backpack. She was exhausted. She wondered if she should try to sleep. How long had it been since she became lost? An hour? Two hours? Three? A day, even? In a place where nothing moved, no daylight, no shadows, it was hard to tell how fast time was passing. No, no sleep now. It was better to make as much progress as she could while she was still in good condition. She still had to locate water. And she was at a much lower level than when she entered the cave. She had to find a way up. She stood up and put on her backpack. She would travel close to the wall so that she could look for a passage and take the first one that led up. This would get her out. Always go up. Then she had a thought. This is a mountainous area. There might be an entrance to the cave at a lower level. Of course, how stupid of her. Any tunnel might be a way out. Which one? No, she thought. Don't confuse yourself. Going up is a good plan. She needed a rational plan or she would just be wandering around in the cave. She took the candle and walked from the center of the chamber to the rocky wall. It seemed like a long distance. She watched for signs that animals had been here, but saw none. There were more signs of life on the moon, she thought.
Lindsay found a passageway quickly. It led upward to a dead end. She retraced her steps and followed the wall until she found another passage. She used the candle to light the way. She wound her way through the tunnel and emerged into another large room as big as the one she left, from the looks of it. She switched on her flashlight and shone it around. She let the light linger on several rock formations that looked familiar. It was the same room. She had circled about and gone nowhere. All that time and energy wasted! She used the flashlight to try to find another passage, shining it along and up and down the wall. She walked a long way, looking. Nothing. She shone the light behind her and out into the cavern. She had a sense she had reached the other side of the room and was going along the opposite wall. Like space curving back on itself. At this rate, she would be back to the steep tunnel she had descended from. She felt as though she was in the far reaches of space, cut off from time and humanity. But the terrible reality was that time did pass; her body felt the effects of gravity, stress, and the lack of water, and it would get worse as time went on. Don't think about that, she chided herself. Push on.
She came to another tunnel. It occurred to her that she should have been marking her trail in some way, that she should have been making a map of her travel through the cave. Mark it how? Smoke. Smoke from the candle. She would mark her progress with an X in smoke. Her next rest stop she would draw a map as nearly as she could remember, but she had no idea how to judge distance. Harley enjoyed mapping the caves he explored. She wished he had taught her how.
Lindsay smoked a large X beside the opening and entered the passage. It was a wide tunnel that led upward. This is good, she thought. The candle was burning low, and she thought she could make better time now with the flashlight. She constantly swept the beam of light from the floor to the walls and, when she thought of it, to the ceiling. Caves are three-dimensional. It was like traveling in space-the path she needed to take could be up or down, as well as left or right.
Lindsay walked at a comfortable pace for what seemed like miles. She didn't know how long. She wondered if she could fix the watch. She desperately needed a sense of time. If only
she could make the hour hand work, that would help. She was thirsty. She wondered if people really drank their urine to conserve water in their bodies. The thought repulsed her. That was good; maybe she wasn't that desperate yet. Surely, she would find water soon. She didn't think she could pee, anyway. She stopped abruptly.
There was a choice to be made. Three separate passages opened up before her. Damn, she thought. She didn't want to have to make a choice; she wanted to be lost in a linear cave. She shone her light into each tunnel and took the one that had the steepest angle up. Go up, that was her plan; always go up.
She walked only a few feet when she came to a ninetydegree turn and another choice of three. Again she took the high road. Again and again she was met by choices of either two or three ways to go. She was in a maze. "No, please, no," she whispered. "Don't make this so hard." She wanted to sink down and cry. Maybe she should sleep now, she thought. Maybe with a good hour's sleep she would feel better. Sleep on what? The hard cave floo? That would make her feel great when she awakened. Instead, she lit a candle and smoked an arrow on the wall of each passage she took. She needed a compass. Why couldn't her kidnappers have given her a compass in the pack? Don't cavers carry them? Damn them, damn them.
She came to a passage that went on for several hundred feet with no turns, no choices. Maybe she was out of the maze. Harley had said something about mazes. What? What? She couldn't remember. "You have to know what kind of cave it is in order to explore it safely," he had said. "The arrangement of the passages depends a lot on how the cave was formed." Great, what type was this? Chemical dissolution. Like a neon sign, it flashed in her head from a longago geology class. Caves formed through chemical dissolution had almost all types of passage structures. Impossible to predict, at least for her. Would nothing break her way? Lindsay came to an abrupt stop. The floor of the cave disappeared just in front of her. She shone the flashlight into the void. It might have been the Grand Canyon. A dome pit, a vertical shaft that went up and down, stretched out before her. It was so big she couldn't see the other side. She couldn't even see the bottom. She threw a rock over the edge and listened and counted, but she never heard it hit. She shone the light above her. She saw no ceiling. She stepped back, sank to the floor, and cried.
Chapter 13
HURRY," SHOUTED CALDER6N. "Hurry!" The men cursed and pushed the stone. It slowly ground aside, unblocking the opening. "Stop!" he said. "I can fit through. Stop!"
Gladly the men stopped pushing on the huge boulder and stepped back, leery of the gaping black hole revealed by the shifted stone. Calderon, however, was not so timid. He rushed through the opening and fell into a chamber below, dropping all but one torch.
Calderon stood up, holding the torch out so he could see. At first he saw nothing. He stepped farther into the chamber and, suddenly he saw a myriad of tiny reflections of his flickering torchlight. "It's here! It's here!" he shrieked. "Thousands of diamonds! Thousands!" His exclamation brought the others rushing into the chamber with their torches.
The additional light revealed pots of sparkling gems sitting on a stone slab that resembled a stage. In the center stood a large earthen jar incised with the winged serpent. The men sucked in their breath. Calderon approached the treasure, his eyes flashing with excitement. He was thinking about how he could keep all of it. His eyes shifted from the pots filled with gems to the tall jar.
"This is where the large stone is," he said.
He took out his sword and broke the jar. A large bundle of deer hide fell to the floor. Calderon rushed to it and began cutting through the leather straps that held it together. "Bueno Dios," he exclaimed as the unfolded hide revealed a large faceted crystal as clear as clean est water. "Look, look Diego." He held it up for him to see.
Diego, however, was not looking at Calderon. He held his torch over one of the jars of gems and ran his fingers through them.
"Esta cuarzo, necio! It's only quartz. Not diamonds. Quartz!" He threw a handful and they scattered over the floor of the cave.
"What are you doing?" cried Calderon.
The other men examined the crystals. "Diego's right. They're not diamonds at all. They're worthless," said one of the soldiers, spitting on them.
"Fools!" cried Calderon, "Don't you think I can see through your scheme? You want them for yourselves. But they are mine." Calderon was barely intelligible with his damaged mouth and his excitement.
"You are an idiot!" Diego cried. "Why I have followed you this long, I don't know. You can have these worthless pieces of glass if you want them. I'm leaving this place and making my way back to Santa Elena."
"Go, then, go! I can carry these myself. "
As Diego turned to go, he felt a pain in his leg. He looked down, puzzled at the arrow sticking out of his thigh. The soldier beside him was felled with another arrow. Diego looked up and saw two Indians, bowstrings drawn back to their ears. Arrows flew through both of the other soldiers and through Diego. He lay on the floor, his sword lying too far away. His harquebus and matchcord were outside the chamber by the stone. He heard Calderon screaming.
"No, no! Get out of here! You won't take my treasure!"
Diego saw Roberto walk through the entrance behind the Indians. So the old madman was right all along. Roberto was in with the Indians.
Calderon was backed up against the wall, holding the crystal to his bosom. "Roberto, I knew you had survived. So you, too, want this treasure?"
"This is no treasure, you fool. Don't you know quartz when you see it? No, I don't come to take anything from you but your life, like you tried to take mine."
"What ?"
Piaquay and his brother listened. Piaquay intended to allow Roberto his say before he finished the devil Calderon.
"It took me a long time." Roberto rapped his head with his knuckles. "But I finally figured it out. You sent your cousins, Sancho and Ruiz, to kill me so you could marry my Cristina."
"No, I-I'll share, I'll share the diamonds."
"There are no diamonds." Roberto picked up Diego's sword and advanced on Calderon, who stubbornly clutched his "diamond" and slid his back against the wall of the cave trying to get away from him. Roberto raised his sword. Calderon cringed. The sword hung in the air, ready to strike. Piaquay looked at Roberto.
"I can't," said Roberto. "There is no satisfaction in killing a madman." He dropped the sword to his side.
Piaquay took an arrow, raised his bow, and pulled back the string in one fluid motion. He did not hesitate to shoot into Calderon's breast. Piaquay turned as his enemy sank to the floor.
"Come," he said to Roberto.
"Where is the other one?" asked Tesca.
Piaquay looked to the spot where Diego had lain wounded, but was now gone.
"Diego," said Roberto. "Where did he go?"
As Lindsay cried, she wondered how much water she was losing through her tears. Mingled with the sound of her own sobs, she heard another sound, easing into her mind. She didn't know why she hadn't heard it sooner. The cave had been so silent, but there was now a white sound in the background. What? She listened. Water? Was it water? Lindsay rose and walked to the edge of the gorge. She listened and shone the light where she thought she heard the noise. She saw glittering flashes in the beam. It was water flowing from a hole in the wall of the cave, and it fell-fell to who knows where in the darkness below.
It was a small waterfall. But a trickle would be all she needed to drink from. It was to the right, she guessed, about thirty feet. Just above the fall, about twenty more feet, was a wide opening. Lindsay could see the scalloping inside the walls of the opening where water once flowed long ago.
The wall of the cavern was rocky and almost vertical. A rock climber could climb it. The thought came unbidden into her head. A rock climber would have no problem climbing it. She was not a rock climber, but she was strong. Lindsay made it a point to be strong. Archaeology was tough, hard work. But if she fell, she would fall into the rocky shaft and die, or maybe just fall to-where?
Lindsay didn't want to die. She didn't want Derrick and her parents to always wonder what had happened to her. She wanted to get married and have a family one day. She wanted to find whoever did this to her. She wanted to yell at her parents for making her break up with Harley. She wanted to live.
She was still in good shape, she reasoned. Tired, but in good overall shape. As time went on, she would deteriorate, become weaker, dehydrated, disoriented. She was also losing body heat. It was only a matter of time until she developed hypothermia in the coolness of the cave. She couldn't go back and start over. She had to do what she could to save herself while she still had strength, while she still had light from her flashlight. A rock climber could make the climb, but she had never done that kind of thing before.
Lindsay stepped back into the cave. She took off her backpack and sat with her back against the wall. She fished for the rest of her nutri-bar and ate it slowly, thinking.
There are enough handholds and footholds.
But what if they are unstable?
I will fall.
What if I can't make it up the side of the shaft?
It's not that far, no more than fifty feet altogether. A rock climber could make it.
But what if I can't?
I can climb down. Down must be easier than up.
But down is longer and deeper into the earth.
There will be passages along the way.
What if I just can't?
I can't stay here forever. I can't start over. I can't backtrack.
Why?
I just can't.
Lindsay closed her eyes, then snapped them open. No. Don't do that. Don't close your eyes, you'll fall asleep. Do what you have to do now, or don't. Lindsay rose and slung her backpack over her neck and shoulder. Cavers preferred to carry their packs by their side. She remembered that now. It could get caught if it was carried on her back.
LC 02 - Questionable Remains Page 17