The cool air of the passageway provided a welcome respite from the sun which had begun to beat down uncomfortably on the rock outside. For those who had not yet seen it, their first view of the audience chamber with its vast domed ceiling far exceeded anything they had imagined. With all evidence of Aslan gone, the chamber was pristine, the thrones standing empty as if awaiting the return of the high priests who had vacated them more than seven thousand years earlier.
The chimney was now dormant, the last of the rainwater having dissipated overnight, and instead of a vapour plume a brilliant shaft of sunlight illuminated the dais like a theatrical spotlight.
For a few moments there was silence. Even Hiebermeyer, not usually at a loss for words and accustomed to the splendours of ancient Egypt, took off his misted-up glasses and stood speechless.
Dillen turned to face them.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we can now take up where the text left off. I believe we are one step from the supreme revelation.”
Jack never ceased to be amazed by his mentor’s ability to switch off from the excitement of discovery. Wearing an immaculate white suit and bow tie, he seemed a throwback to another age, to a time when effortless elegance was as much a part of the scholar’s tools of trade as the sophisticated gadgetry of his students’ generation.
“We have precious little to go on,” Dillen cautioned. “The papyrus is a tattered shred and the Phaistos disc is equally elusive. We can infer from the entranceway inscription that Atlantis refers to this citadel, this monastery. To outsiders it probably meant the city as well, but for the inhabitants it may have specifically denoted their most sacred place, the rocky slopes and caves where the settlement began.”
“Like the Acropolis in Athens,” Costas ventured.
“Precisely. The disc implies that within Atlantis is a place I translate as ‘place of the gods,’ Katya as ‘holy of holies.’ It also mentions a mother goddess. As far as I can tell none of your discoveries fits this bill.”
“The nearest would be the hall of the ancestors, the name we gave to the cave painting gallery,” Jack said. “But that’s Palaeolithic and contains no representations of humans. In a Neolithic sanctuary I’d expect to see anthropomorphic deities, a grander version of the household shrine we saw in the submerged village at Trabzon.”
“What about this room, the audience chamber?” Efram Jacobovich asked.
Jack shook his head. “It’s too large. This space is inclusive, designed for congregational gatherings like a church. What we’re looking for is something exclusive, hidden away. The holier the place, the more restricted the access to it. Only priests would be allowed entry, as befitted their status as intermediaries with the gods.”
“A tabernacle,” Efram suggested.
Katya and Aysha appeared on the ledge beside the ramp. While the others had been talking they had carried out a quick reconnaissance of the doorways surrounding the chamber.
“We think we’ve found it,” Katya said, the excitement of once again exploring and discovering the secrets of Atlantis pushing aside the nightmare of the last few days. “Altogether there are twelve entrances. Two we can discount because they’re the passageways we know about, one from outside and the other coming up from below. Of the remainder, nine are either blanks, false doorways leading nowhere or passageways leading down. I assume we’re going up.”
“If this is truly the mother of all peak sanctuaries,” Jack replied, “then the higher the better.”
Katya pointed towards the door at the western extremity of the chamber, directly opposite the entrance passageway. “That’s the one. It also happens to be capped by the sign of the outstretched eagle god.”
Jack smiled broadly at Katya, glad to see her beginning to recover from her ordeal, and turned to Dillen.
“Professor, perhaps you would lead us in.”
Dillen nodded courteously and walked beside Jack towards the west door, his dapper form a striking contrast to his former student’s weather-beaten appearance. They were followed by Katya and Costas and then by the other four, with Efram Jacobovich unobtrusively bringing up the rear. As they neared the entrance Jack glanced back at Costas.
“This is it then. A gin and tonic by the pool awaits.”
Costas cast his friend a crooked smile. “That’s what you say every time.”
Dillen paused to inspect the carving on the lintel; it was an immaculate miniature of the spread-winged eagle god the others had seen in the hall of the ancestors. Jack and Costas switched on their flashlights and shone them into the darkness ahead. Like the walls of the submerged passages, the basalt had been polished to a lustrous hue, its mottled surface sparkling with mineral inclusions which had welled up from the earth’s mantle as the volcano formed.
Jack stepped aside to let Dillen take the lead. About ten metres in he suddenly halted.
“We have a problem.”
Jack came alongside and saw that a massive stone portal blocked the passageway. It melded almost seamlessly with the walls but close up they could see it divided into two equal halves. Jack aimed his beam at the centre and saw the telltale feature.
“I believe I have the key,” he said confidently.
He reached into his IMU overalls and extracted the copy of the golden disc which he had rescued from the dais after Aslan’s abrupt departure. As the others watched, he slotted it into the saucer-shaped depression. The instant he withdrew his hand the disc began whirling clockwise. Seconds later the doors sprang open in their direction, the accumulated patina providing little resistance to the weight of the slabs as they pivoted on each side of the passageway.
“Magic.” Costas shook his head in amazement. “Exactly the same mechanism as the door on the cliff face and still functioning after seven and a half thousand years. These people would have invented the computer chip by the Bronze Age.”
“Then I’d be out of a job,” Efram chuckled from the back.
The odour that greeted them was like the musty exhalation of a burial vault, as if a draught of stale air had wafted through a crypt and brought with it the very essence of the dead, the last residue of the tallow and incense which had burned as the priests made their final ablutions before they sealed their hallowed shrine forever. The effect was almost hallucinogenic, and they could sense the fear and urgency of those last acts. It was as if two hundred generations of history had been swept away and they were joining the custodians of Atlantis in their final desperate flight.
“Now I know how Carter and Carnarvon felt when they opened the tomb of Tutankhamun,” Hiebermeyer said.
Katya shuddered in the chill air. Like the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings, the passage beyond the doorway was unadorned, giving no hint of what lay beyond.
“It can’t be far now,” Costas said. “According to my altimeter we’re less than thirty metres below the summit.”
Dillen suddenly stopped and Jack stumbled into him, his beam flailing wildly as he righted himself. What seemed another doorway was in fact a ninety-degree turn to the left. The passageway angled upwards in a series of shallow steps.
Dillen moved forward and stopped again. “I can see something ahead. Shine your beams to left and right.” His voice was uncharacteristically edged with excitement.
Jack and Costas obliged and revealed a fantastic scene. On either side were the front quarters of two enormous bulls, their truncated forms cut in bas-relief and facing up the stairway. With their elongated necks and horns arched high overhead, they were less composed than the beasts in the underwater passageways, as if they were straining to break free and leap into the darkness above.