Uncharted
Page 30
“We’ll have to choose our time very carefully. If either of us get shot, the nearest hospital is eight hours away even with my pilot.” Still, escape suddenly seemed entirely feasible.
“Then we’d better not get shot. Just be ready.” Chase wrapped her hand around Rayne’s wrist. “I won’t put you in danger, but I’ll risk everything to make sure you’re safe.”
Rayne swallowed against the ball of rising emotion in her throat. Was this what love was? Caring for someone so strongly that they’d put everything on the line for the woman they loved? Did Chase actually love Rayne or was it simply her heroic proclivities rising to the fore?
Rayne pulled her arm away and motioned toward the temple entrance. She’d ask Chase soon enough, but she didn’t want to share such an intimate and petrifying moment with Owen as their audience. “It’s K’awiil again.” The double doors to the temple were six feet tall and six feet wide, and K’awiil was intricately carved across the entire expanse of heavy stone. Even with the light covering of moss, the god was easy to distinguish. This time, his serpent leg stretched across the base of the doors to come up at their center where a handle or door opening would usually be located. Again, its jaws wrapped around another odd shaped hole.
Chase opened her backpack on the ground and pulled out the clay and maize artifacts from the second and third trees. They were both identical to the naked eye.
“Clay or maize?” Chase asked as she held one in each hand as if she were trying to ascertain their weight.
Rayne didn’t hesitate. “It has to be clay. If all of these artifacts are keys, the order appears to be the same as the order in which the Mayan gods tried to create humans. They succeeded with a dough made from yellow and white corn, so it makes sense that the corn artifact will be the final key to the Trinity once we’re inside the temple.” She reached out and touched both of them. “Can you feel any difference in the weight?”
“Yep. The clay is solid. It’s substantially heavier.” Chase placed the artifacts on her backpack and used her flashlight to investigate the hole in the door. She tentatively placed her fingers inside.
“You probably shouldn’t do that. You won’t be much good to me if they get chopped off.”
Chase laughed and shook her head. “I could still cuddle you.” She withdrew her hand anyway.
“That just wouldn’t do.” Rayne wiggled her eyebrows. “I need it all.”
“I think there’s a lever just here.” Chase pointed a few inches below the hole. “We drop the clay sculpture through the hole, and its weight will set off a chain reaction to open the door. It’s probably set so that only the exact weight will begin the process.”
“And clay wouldn’t increase or decrease in weight since its creation.” Rayne picked the clay artifact from the ground and gave it to Chase. “Your turn.”
Chase proffered the sculptured shape to the hole and pushed it in. Rayne heard it drop onto the latch Chase had identified, and sure enough, ancient machinery clicked and clunked into place. Owen and Larry approached them just as the doors began to open.
“You girls are doing amazing.” He and his buddy laughed. “We’ll wait here until you’ve finished the job for me.”
Neither she nor Chase responded to his patronizing comment, and Chase picked up her backpack. Rayne’s heart was pounding hard against her chest, and she could barely breathe as the doors fully opened. The enormity of what they were in the midst of achieving became tangible. This was no longer just another adventure following a map. This was the greatest undiscovered treasure in the history of the world. She and Chase had been the ones to figure it out.
They used their flashlights to check inside. If there were once jaguars in here protecting the Trinity, Rayne was confident they were long gone. Nor was she expecting any seven-hundred-year-old Mayan priests to come stumbling out of the temple brandishing an obsidian dagger trying to kill them. She’d raided enough tombs and discovered enough hidden treasures to know that stone creatures coming to life once you removed their token were the folly of fictional characters and movies alone.
She and Chase stepped into the darkness cautiously. Rayne shivered like an ice-cold blanket had been wrapped around her. “Do you feel that?”
Chase nodded. “The temperature change? Yeah, I feel it.”
Rayne tracked her flashlight over the ground and the walls. “Look at these carvings,” she said, her light focus on the 3-D sculpted columns along the walkway. “I can’t believe they did this over and over to relocate the Trinity.”
“Maybe that’s what some of their original temples were for. This could be the one and only temple built beneath the ground. As their civilization became more unstable with the constant battles between city-states, perhaps underground was their safest bet.”
Rayne approached the wall and traced her hand along the bodies of the gods and imagined how many years of hard work had gone into creating each sculpture, let alone the whole temple.
“Be careful,” Chase said. “This is usually the part where the spears shoot out and the walls start moving in.”
“Let’s hope they save that until Owen and his ridiculously-named friend come in.”
Chase laughed. “You’ve got something against that name.”
“I didn’t until I met this guy.” Rayne walked back to the path. “This temple doesn’t look big in the scheme of Mayan temples. Could it be that it goes deeper underground?”
Chase focused her flashlight on another door, singular this time. “I guess we’ll see soon enough.”
“Three holes, three keys.” Rayne waited while Chase dipped into her bag to retrieve the final artifact molded from corn. “This has all been reasonably easy, don’t you think?”
Chase stopped what she was doing and looked up at Rayne, an incredulous expression on her face. “Easy? Cutting into ancient trees, rappelling down a cliff side, and falling down a giant sinkhole. You’re calling that easy?”
“You know what I mean.” Rayne shoved Chase’s shoulder gently. “Given that the Trinity has remained undiscovered for so long, I was kind of expecting a whole line of the dead bodies of previous treasure hunters somewhere, you know? I’ve read about plenty of people who tried to get here and were never seen again.”
Chase smiled. “Maybe they were dealt with by the head bashers or the arrow people. Remember that the old women took some convincing that they needed to get out of the way of these guys. And we were the only ones who ever had the map. No one else could’ve gotten this far.” Chase pulled the final artifact from her bag. “Do you want to do this one together?”
Rayne placed her hands over Chase’s. “Here’s to discovering the most famous treasure in the history of treasure hunting…together.”
Together. Rayne liked the sound of that. They pressed the maize sculpture into the hole, felt it drop, and listened to the lever catch and the door mechanism begin to heave itself open. After all the centuries of inertia, that it moved so smoothly amazed her. Chase reached for Rayne’s hand and grasped it tightly as the door began to slowly open to reveal its long-held secret.
Chapter Thirty-six
Walls covered with stucco. Previously bright paintings in primary colors faded but not lost. All of the symbols Chase had seen on the stones, the map, and the artifacts replicated in multitude around the whole area. In the very center of the room positioned on a thick column sat a giant sculpture of K’awiil on his back, his serpent leg stretching to reach the ceiling as if holding it upright. In his right hand was a dagger, and his left hand held a small bowl. The statue wasn’t stone; it was verdigris, indicating that it was made from copper. Around the column was nothingness. Chase walked into the room slowly, checking her footing on the stone floor as she did. There was only ten feet of ground before a gaping abyss beckoned between the edge of their walkway and the column. She snapped a glow light and dropped it into the black pit. Its bright luminescence swiftly disappeared, and Chase heard nothing to indicate it hit the floor. Chase let ou
t a deep breath and shook her head. “So not the last key then.” She felt Rayne’s hand on the base of her back, hot against her wet shirt and cool skin.
“And not so easy.”
Chase turned back. She could see Owen and Larry hovering around the opening of the temple and wondered why they hadn’t ventured in. Maybe they’d watched too many inaccurate archeologist adventure movies and were expecting to be chased down a tiny corridor by a gigantic circular stone. “Owen. I need the other climbing rope.”
“Come and get it.”
Chase glanced back at Rayne. “The guy can murder three people in as many minutes, but he’s afraid of a dark underground temple. Are we calling that irony?”
Rayne shrugged. “Or cowardice.”
Chase jogged back to the entrance of the temple and took the rope from Owen.
“Wait. What’s up there?” he asked.
“Why don’t you come and take a look?”
Owen pulled the gun from his waistband then hung his arm by his side. “Answer the question, Stinsen.”
Chase acknowledged the quiet threat with a shrug. “The room is empty but for a mammoth statue in the center. I need the rope because there’s twenty to thirty feet of fresh air between the entrance to the room and the column holding the statue, which I’m assuming I have to get to in order to reveal where the Trinity actually is.”
Owen dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Off you go.”
Chase raised her eyebrow at him and then looked at Larry, who shrugged. Clearly, he didn’t understand why Owen wouldn’t enter the temple either. She turned and headed back to Rayne.
“Is he still not coming in?”
Chase shook her head. “No, he’s staying put like something’s spooked him.”
Rayne looked vaguely amused. “What’s the new plan?”
Chase pointed to the door. “We’re going to tie one end of the rope through the keyhole of that door, then I’m going to lasso any part of the god’s body that will hold under tension of me crawling across the rope.” She pulled her scarf across the back of her neck and mopped up the sweat she attributed to the environment rather than any tension or nerves. “Sound good?”
“As long as everything holds, it’s a solid plan.”
Chase pulled off her cap, threw it to the ground, and ran her hand through her hair. “Then let’s do it.” Chase took one end of the rope, threaded it through the hole where they’d placed the final artifact, and locked it off loosely with a bowline knot. At the other end, she tied a honda knot, making the loop large enough for the statue’s head.
“You’re very impressive with all the knots,” Rayne said and winked. “Do you ever use them…at home?”
“You mean, to tie someone up with?”
Rayne nodded. “Yes…” she said, her voice dropping a little husky.
“I don’t need to tie my lovers up.” Chase jutted her chin. “They tend to stay willingly.”
Rayne grinned. “Still…could be fun.”
Rayne raised her eyebrow the way that drove Chase wild. “Okay.” She turned away after quickly, squeezing her thighs together to repress her response. “I need to concentrate now.”
Chase nailed the head after three attempts and pulled the loop tight. She went back to the door, untied the bowline, and dragged the excess rope through the hole to ensure a taut line before retying the knot. Chase walked to the edge of the abyss then stepped back, slipped her arm around Rayne’s waist, and pulled her into a kiss. When they parted, Chase said, “Just in case something goes wrong, I want you to be the last thing on my mind and my lips.”
Rayne raised the back of her hand to her forehead and bent her knees slightly. “Swoon.” Then she struck Chase across the chest. “Nothing will go wrong…I won’t let it.”
Chase released Rayne and took hold of the rope. She hitched both her ankles over it and began to work her way toward the column. “You should probably step back to the entrance in case that walkway collapses.”
Rayne said nothing but did as instructed, and Chase worked her way toward the column one hand at a time. By the time she felt the stone of the column beneath her back, her forearms were ablaze with tension and about as stiff as the stone itself. She unhooked her feet and rubbed at her lower arms, trying to loosen them up. She finally stood and edged around the statue three hundred and sixty degrees to take it all in.
“What do you see?” Rayne called from the doorway.
“One second.” Chase held up her hand as she translated the writing and logograms on the god’s belly. “Divine blood. Life-giving. Abundance. Blood is our blood.” Chase followed the god’s arm to the dagger she’d seen from the walkway. From there, it had looked as though it were part of the statue, but this close, Chase could see it separated from the god and was made from obsidian rather than copper. “So, in true Mayan style, I have to do a little bloodletting ritual.” Chase checked the bowl in the god’s other hand and saw there was a small hole in the bottom. The god’s hand cupped the bowl. Chase figured she had to put her blood into the bowl and it would drain off somewhere until a required weight was reached to set off the mechanism as it had with the doors. Simple. Except she had no idea how much blood, and the inscription was strangely reticent on that score.
“You’ve got to what?”
“Give the god my blood in exchange for the Trinity. Seems like a fair trade to me, don’t you think?” Chase grasped the hilt of the dagger and slowly removed it from the god’s hand. She wasn’t going to use it. She had a field blood transfusion kit in her pack, but it could be that the lack of weight in that hand might also contribute to the process.
“I suppose it makes sense,” Rayne said. “Is the dagger made of obsidian or is it a shaped shark’s tooth?”
“It’s obsidian. Why? Would that tell me something I need to know?” Chase flipped through her mental notes on Mayan culture and couldn’t recall anything about the importance of either material.
“Nope. I was just curious…How much blood do you have to part with?” Rayne stepped forward as if she were going to approach the edge but pulled back.
“It doesn’t say.” Chase sighed. “Another leap of faith. How much blood can I lose before I lose consciousness?” Chase climbed up onto the belly of the god, shoved her shirtsleeve up, and held her arm over the bowl. She leaned her chest against the other arm to see if she could fall unconscious and still stay in position for the blood to fall where it was needed.
“People donate one pint easy enough, so I’d guess at two. I can’t say for sure, Chase.”
Chase thought about the Mayan rituals. Bloodletting and sacrifice were a huge part of their culture. Would they expect all the blood from one person, or even two or more? There was no way of predicting it. Nothing in the map or on the stones gave any hint as to this final process.
“Be careful, Chase.”
“Sure thing.” Chase placed the dagger on the bowl, pulled the first aid kit from her backpack, and tossed the pack to the ground. She removed the transfusion kit and placed it in the bowl. She pushed the elastic band over her hand and up onto the widest part of her left forearm. The vein she always donated blood from responded immediately and pushed up to the surface. Chase fitted the tubing to the needle and used the dagger cut the tubing to a more reasonable length. She used a small piece of tape to secure the open end of the tubing to the edge of the bowl before replacing the unused portion of the kit into its bag and dropping it to the ground on top of her backpack. She paused. She’d given blood religiously every four months almost her whole life, even if she was in another country. Every time, she watched with fascination as her vein came to attention obediently and the nurse gently pushed the sharp needle into it. And every time, she tried to push out a pint faster than she had on the previous occasion. Her personal best was eight minutes and three seconds. She had this. Plus, Noemie had given her an emergency lesson on doing a full blood transfusion before she’d left the city. How hard could it actually be on herself?
Chase glanced across the pit and couldn’t see Rayne. “Where are you?”
“Right here, baby.”
She sounded too close. Chase peered over the belly of the god to see Rayne inching toward her on the rope. She was already close to the column. Chase sighed. There was no telling this woman what she could and couldn’t do. “I thought you were staying at the doorway in case the walkway fell away.”
“And I decided that the safest place would be here with you. Also…if this contraption needs more blood than you can give, we’d better be prepared.” Rayne hitched up and gave Chase a quick peck on the cheek. “And lastly, if this whole place collapses, I want to be right by your side.”
“So if we die, we die…together?”
Rayne shook her head. “No. Because we’ll have a better chance of surviving if we work together.”
Chase smiled. “You’re so romantic.” She refocused on pumping the blood from her system and keeping an eye on the time.
Rayne leaned against the statue and placed her hand on Chase’s thigh. “I’ve got you.”
Chase closed her eyes and rested against the god’s arm. She’s got me.
Eight minutes passed. Then ten. At twelve, Chase began to feel a little dizzy but a quick protein bar seemed to right the problem. Rayne was beginning to look a little concerned when, as Chase’s watch indicated it had been fifteen minutes, something loud dropped deep within the belly of the statue. Gears clunked, the god vibrated, and the whole column started to shake.