Fitrat knelt beside the three men, checking for pulses that were not there.
“Captain.”
Fitrat looked up at him.
“Can we get out of here?”
The captain shook his head. “They have us surrounded.”
“Then we have no choice. We have to go into the cave.”
Fitrat looked at the cave. “Knowing where it is supposed to lead?”
Lourds shook his head. “It doesn’t go there. That’s just a story. The worst part will be if it only goes back for a few feet and we still end up trapped, but even then, it’ll at least force the Russians to come at us through a chokepoint. And if we have any kind of luck, that passageway will open up somewhere else and we can get out of here.”
Fitrat nodded and started stripping the dead men of usable gear. “Rahimi. Help me.”
Leaving the boy against the wall, Lourds went to one of the bodies as well and took the man’s extra ammunition, equipment bag, and picked up the pistol from the ground.
In seconds, they were ready to go, and only a few bullets chopped into the well around them. So far, their attackers hadn’t gotten close enough to shoot down into the well.
Lourds gave the boy one of the spare flashlights and took his empty hand in his. “Come on.”
When the boy saw where he was headed, he balked. “No. You cannot go there.”
“We can’t stay out here, either.” Taking a final look around inside the cave before he ventured forth, Lourds threw a leg over the threshold and stepped inside.
Until he heard the gunfire, Dmitry didn’t know if they were getting closer to Lourds or not. He kept his men in a tight group and only advanced as quickly as his scout could confirm an area clear. The process was time-consuming, but it couldn’t be helped. Getting spotted by Linko and his men, then getting subsequently ambushed, would do no one any good.
Dmitry hadn’t come all this way to die. He still had grandchildren to help raise. And a promise he meant to keep.
When he heard the gunfire, though, he knew he could no longer hold back. In fact, it might already be too late to save the professor. He hoped this was not so because he rather liked Professor Lourds.
He cued his radio. “Okay, move in.” Then he pushed himself into a steady jog that he could maintain for miles even with the equipment pack he carried.
He ran through the sparse forest, heading for the location of the shots.
52
The sporadic gunfire echoed loudly in the narrow passageway. Lourds ran quickly and nearly fell when he reached a flight of stone steps carved into a steep grade. He slowed down and caught himself, barely managing to keep his balance. He shone his flashlight ahead of him.
The passageway went on for a long ways. At least there hadn’t been that sudden ending he’d feared.
“Keep going.” Fitrat waved him forward. “I’ve left two men to slow them down, but with limited ammo, they won’t be able to hold them off forever. We need to find another way out.”
Lourds pressed on, following the tunnel as it continued heading down at a sharp angle. Haros ran at Lourds’s side, evidently feeling more comfortable with him than with anyone else.
“What do you know about this tunnel?”
“It leads to Hades, as I said.”
“Why do you know about this place?”
“Because my father taught me after my grandfather died. It has always been so in my family.”
“Why?” Lourds ducked under a section of the roof. “Low ceiling!” he called in Dari for the men behind him.
“Because my family was chosen to be the priests of Hades. The duty has been handed down from generation, from one to another, since the temple was built. There has only been one priest allowed at any time.”
Lourds remembered that from the stories he’d researched. “That was thousands of years ago.”
“I know.”
“Have you ever seen the well open?”
“No. The way has been blocked since before my father’s father twenty-six times back.”
Lourds did the math and figured out that no one had been inside the cave system in at least five hundred years. “Do you believe this passageway leads to Hades?”
Haros hesitated, then shrugged. “I do not know. Sometimes, I think. It is a cool story.”
“Ever tell your friends?”
“No. It is forbidden. If my father had found out I did something like that—” Haros fell silent. “I don’t know what would have happened.” Then a look of pain crossed his face. “I did tell one person. My best friend. I told him, and he laughed at me, and the next day, my father died in a boating accident. I never told anyone again. When I saw you here tonight, I knew I had to stop you. I swore to prevent anyone from coming here. I have failed at that.”
“We didn’t have a choice, Haros.”
“And if you had? Would you have turned away when I asked?”
Lourds didn’t want to answer the question.
The passageway suddenly forked in a small cavern.
Lourds hesitated, playing his flashlight over both branches. “Do you know which way to go?”
“No.” Haros looked scared. “We do not want to go much farther.”
“Why?”
“Because my father told me there is the Place of Dreams and that I should beware of it.”
“What Place of Dreams?”
“It is a cavern somewhere in here, a place where the Oracle came and dreamed her dreams after the Romans tore down her temple.”
“The Oracle came here?”
“Yes. She had no choice but to go into hiding. So she came here.”
Fitrat stood impatiently behind Lourds. “Professor.”
Lourds chose the branch on the right and charged through. “Why did the Oracle come here?”
“Many people remember the Oracle, Pythia, as a representative of Apollo, but that was not the truth of the matter.”
Marias trailed after the boy. “That is true, Thomas. In the beginning, the office of the Oracle was held by the goddesses Themis and Phoebe, and the cave where she prophesized was sacred to Gaia herself.”
Haros nodded. “As my father told me. When the Romans tore down the Oracle’s home, Hades honored a request from Gaia and built her a new home here.”
That made sense to Lourds. After the Oracle was routed from her home, prophesies continued for a time. She had to be operating from somewhere. And Elis had been a major trade port at the time. There would have been ample opportunity for several people to speak to the Oracle.
“You said no one was allowed past the wall. How did the people speak to the Oracle?”
“She went out to meet them in the harbor. She had a building where she did her business every seventh day. One day, the last Oracle died, and she went beyond the wall.” Haros pursed his lips. “Somewhere within this passageway, before you reach the River Styx, is the Oracle’s Place of Dreams where she came to find answers to questions she had been asked.”
Linko halted at the cave that held the branching tunnels. A single grenade had gotten them past the chokepoint at the tunnel’s entrance. He’d feared it might bring down the wall and close off the cave, but he’d had no choice. Now, he shone his flashlight around, looking for any kind of mark Lourds or the others might have left. He didn’t want to go stumbling around in the dark and end up getting lost. Losing Lourds now would be unacceptable.