‘Think we found our Lady of Tremblings,’ said Eddie. ‘The weight drops down on the chain and turns the cogs - and they bang against those lumps on the bridge and make it shake.’
‘So what sets it off?’ Macy asked.
Nina smiled grimly. ‘We do. There must be a trigger on the bridge - too much weight, and there’s a whole lotta shakin’ going on.’
‘How do we get across, then?’
‘By holding on really tight,’ said Eddie, taking a rope from his pack. ‘There’s only so much chain, so once the weight gets to the end, it’ll stop. If I tie myself to the bridge, I should be okay.’
Nina wasn’t so sure. ‘And what if the entire bridge falls and takes you with it?’
‘Then I’ll die like Captain Kirk!’ Seeing that she was still unhappy, he went on, ‘It’s either that or stand here wishing we’d brought a twenty-foot plank.’
‘You’d better hold on really, really tight, okay?’
Eddie looped the rope’s end round the bridge, then tied it to his body. ‘Okay, here we go,’ he muttered, putting a wary foot on the slab.
Nothing happened. It seemed secure and solid. Kneeling, he pushed the rope a couple of feet across the span before crawling to catch up, then repeating the process. Nina watched nervously.
Halfway across, three-quarters . . .
The slab shifted.
‘Oh, shit,’ he gasped, clinging tightly to the stone as the chain rattled—
And stopped, the links chinking before falling silent.
‘What happened?’ an anxious Nina called.
He raised his head. ‘Dunno, but I’m happy about it!’ He quickly crossed the last few feet, then untied himself and looked round. A large crack ran up one wall. Several chunks of stone had broken loose, and one had come to rest wedged beneath a cogwheel’s tooth, preventing it from turning. He tested the stone to see if it was secure. It moved slightly, but the weight bearing down on it held it in place.
‘Crawl across one at a time,’ he said. ‘And slowly.’
Nina crossed first, followed by Macy. ‘Earthquake damage?’ Nina mused, examining the crack. ‘Or maybe it’s just structural stress.’
‘Egyptian builders,’ Eddie joked, helping Macy up.
‘As opposed to British builders?’ she said indignantly. ‘What have you got that’s stood up for thousands of years?’
‘Stonehenge?’
She pouted. ‘Okay, I’ll give you that. But it’s still not as cool as the pyramids!’
Nina saw another descending passage beyond the exit, this one with a sloping floor rather than steps. ‘What was in the next arit?’
‘The Lake of Fire,’ Macy remembered. ‘Or the Devourer by Fire.’
‘Either way, fire,’ said Eddie. ‘Great. Just what we want in a confined space.’
‘The last trap was broken,’ Nina said, indicating the rock jamming the mechanism. ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky again.’
He groaned as he started down the slope. ‘Why’d you have to say that? You’ve just jinxed it!’
The incline was steep enough to be awkward, slowing their progress. The passage made more ninety-degree turns; Nina realised their descent followed a roughly spiral path, making her wonder if the copper pipes in the shaft were connected to another chamber below. Eventually, more ornate pillars marked another room.
Eddie sniffed the air. ‘Funny smell. Not sure what, but I don’t like it.’
He illuminated the chamber. It was large and rectangular with another exit at the far end, the walls sloping inwards to the roof about fifteen feet above. There were several holes in the ceiling. One of them was large and chimney-like, but it was the smaller ones that immediately made him suspicious: something was clearly supposed to drop out of them.
Except for a relief of a greyhound-faced god watching from one wall, the only objects in the room were several large globe-shaped copper bowls near the entrance. Directly ahead was a square hole in the dusty floor, about three feet across, which turned out to be a pool of some liquid; there was a matching pool by the far doorway. The rest of the floor between the two pools was fractionally lower than the section where they were standing, the perfectly flat expanse stretching the entire width of the chamber.
‘Oh, something is so wrong with this picture,’ Nina said. It was obviously another booby trap, but she couldn’t see the danger. ‘Where’s the fire?’
‘Maybe it went out,’ Macy offered hopefully, advancing for a better look at the snarling god.
‘Stay still,’ Eddie warned as he crouched by the pool and hesitantly dipped a finger in the liquid. ‘Just water.’ He shone his torch into it, noticing that the pool was only walled on three sides.
‘Four feet deep, maybe. Looks like it connects to the hole at the other end.’
‘A tunnel?’ said Nina. ‘Weird. Why not just walk across?’
‘You really think it’s going to be that easy?’
‘Not even for a second. What’s that?’ She turned her flashlight to something between the hole and the lowered area, a bow-taut length of fine black twine running from floor to ceiling.
‘Something I’m not planning on touching,’ said Eddie. He directed his light into the tunnel. ‘It’s threaded across it. You want to go through, you’ve got to break it.’
‘Which I think would be an extraordinarily bad idea, don’t you?’ Her attention switched to the expanse at the room’s centre, where she noticed more threads reaching up to the ceiling - and an absence of something. ‘You see what’s missing?’
‘What?’ Macy asked, moving to the edge of the small step.
‘Gaps. There aren’t any lines marking the edges of different slabs. It’s like one giant block of stone.’
Eddie examined the walls. ‘Biggest blocks here look about six feet by ten. But that floor’s easily thirty feet long. It can’t be all one slab, can it?’
‘I don’t see how.’ Nina looked round - to see Macy about to take an experimental step. ‘No, wait—’
Macy put her foot down on the floor - and it went through it.
She yelped, almost pitching forward before Nina grabbed her. ‘What the hell?’ Macy gasped as she hopped back, glutinous strands stretching from her boot’s sole to the sluggishly rippling ‘hole’ in what a moment ago had looked like solid stone. She tried to scrape the substance off. ‘Gross! What is this?’
‘Oil,’ said Eddie, coming over. He dipped his hand into what was now revealed as a large pool, disguised beneath a layer of sand. The same thick goo dripped slowly off his fingers when he lifted them out. ‘This crap’s floating on top of the water, and then they sprinkled all this sand over it to make it look like part of the floor.’
Nina looked up at the holes in the ceiling. ‘And I bet if you break those threads, something up there catches light and drops into the oil. Whoomph! Roasted robbers.’
Macy rubbed her sole across the floor, disgusted. ‘So how do you get across without setting off the trap?’
‘Swim under it,’ said Eddie, pointing at the water pool, which was clear of the oil. ‘The fire’ll only be on the surface.’
‘It can’t be that easy,’ Nina said, regarding the faux floor with suspicion. She looked round at the odd copper bowls, and shone her light into one. ‘Aha.’
‘What is it?’ asked Macy.
‘There’s something inside.’ Nina reached into the globe and gripped a handle fixed to its bottom - or, she realised as she lifted it up, its top. ‘Know what I think this is?’ She lowered it over her head until it touched her shoulders. ‘It’s a diving helmet!’ she announced, voice echoing.