Herculean (Cerberus Group Book 1) (7 page)

“Feel up for a linguistic puzzle?” he asked, grinning, as he took out his cell phone and handed it to Fiona. “Owens published his decipherment key online. It should give us a rough idea of what these signs are trying to tell us. See if you can find it.”

Fiona stared at the screen. “No reception down here.”

Pierce barely heard her as he studied the symbols, darting back and forth between the two glyphs. “We don’t need it.”

“You know what it says?”

He shook his head. “No, but I know what it means.” He pointed at the symbol in the left hand passage. “This is on the Phaistos Disc. It’s the second word in the spiral. That other one is nonsense. The Disc isn’t just a key card. It’s a route map. If we go down this tunnel…” He turned and headed down the left tunnel.

Fiona followed quickly and caught up to him a few steps from another junction, this time with a passage intersecting from the right. He was scanning the wall, looking for another symbol. He aimed his flashlight at the wall, revealing another glyph, identical to the one at the other end of the passage. “Here.”

A quick check revealed a symbol with a different set of Phaistos characters at the beginning of the adjoining passage, and yet another on the wall that continued straight.

“One of these is the third word on the Disc,” Pierce said. “If we keep going in that direction, we’ll find more symbols in the same order as the Disc.”

“A map,” Fiona said, eyes widening. “I should have seen it.”

Fiona had a gift for languages, modern and ancient, spoken and nearly forgotten, but spotting patterns was a skill that took practice. And her self-deprecation was preventing her from realizing the true scope of what they had found.

Pierce smiled wide. “Fi, do you know what this place is? This is
the
Labyrinth.”

Her eyes widened in time with a broad smile. “Holy sh— Think there’s a Minotaur down here?”

Pierce thought she meant it as a joke, but he gave the question serious consideration. He doubted that a literal bull-man creature had been wandering the iron corridors for over three thousand years, but the mere fact that the tunnels existed, to say nothing of the magnetic lock on the front door, strongly suggested that at least some parts of the legend were true.

“According to the myth,” Pierce said, “the Labyrinth on the island of Crete was designed by the master architect, Daedalus. Ovid wrote that it was so elaborate that even Daedalus himself almost got lost in it.”

“Daedalus. The guy who made the wings.”

Pierce nodded. “After designing the Labyrinth, King Minos imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus, so they would not be able to share its secrets. Daedalus collected feathers and stuck them together with wax to make a pair of wings so they could escape, but Icarus flew too close to the sun. The wax melted, his wings fell apart, and he crashed and burned.

“That story is also from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
, and it came much later. First century BC. But the stories of Daedalus’s inventions go back much further. He was a mechanical genius. I’ve often thought he might be one of Alexander’s alter-egos.”

He knew it was a bit of a stretch, but by no means impossible. Alexander Diotrephes was a complicated man with an even more complicated story, and he’d gone by many other names in addition to Hercules and Alexander. Pierce was not sure how much Fiona knew about Alexander, and this was not the time or place for that discussion.

The short version was that Alexander had achieved a sort of immortality by virtue of a unique physiology combined with a comprehensive knowledge of chemistry and biology that was advanced even by modern standards. George wasn’t positive, but he thought the man had been alive since before the ninth century BC. Immortality was a trait most often applied to supernatural beings or fictitious gods, but it was also the pursuit of learned men throughout all of history, ancient and recent. Alexander was one of the few who had achieved it.

“It would explain why he established the protocol,” Pierce said. “He knew that if this place was ever discovered, there would be a lot of impossible questions.”

“But why build it in the first place?”

“To imprison the Minotaur?”

“There are over thirty word combinations on each side of the Disc. If we take that to mean two safe paths through the maze, and we double that number for false trails, that makes at least a hundred and twenty different passages down here. Seems like a lot of work just to cage one magical beastie.”

Pierce shrugged. “If the Disc is a map, then the answer to your question is probably waiting at the center.”

“We’ll need the Disc,” Fiona said, and she headed back up the passage to the entrance, evidently having overcome her reluctance to explore the subterranean tunnels.

Pierce followed and they slipped through the opening. He reached out to pry the Disc free of the magnetic grip. It took some effort, but he managed to wedge his fingertips beneath it, and peel it away. As soon as he did, the door rolled back into place, sealing the tunnel again.

“I guess we’re supposed to leave the key in the door,” Fiona said.

Pierce stared at the Disc. “If I had some paper, we could do a rubbing. That way we’d have our map.”

Fiona grinned and held up her phone. “Or we could do something a little more twenty-first century, and take a picture of it.”

Pierce made a face. “You know what the problem with twenty-first century solutions is? Batteries die.”

“I’m at ninety percent.” She waggled the phone at him, then clicked a picture of the front side of the Disc. “That should give us plenty of time to get in and get back out again. Turn it over so I can get the other side.”

When she was finished, Pierce used the Disc to open the door again. They retraced their steps to the second intersection, where their hypothesis was proven correct. The symbols on the wall indicated that they should continue straight. Soon thereafter, they reached yet another junction, this time with three possible choices, all marked with Phaistos script, but only one corresponded to the expected sequence found on the Disc.

“If the Phaistos symbols do represent actual letters or phonemes, could it be possible that the Labyrinth could have been a sort of literacy test?” Fiona asked. “Someone who knows how to read them would see the difference between real words and gobbledygook.”

“Makes sense,” Pierce said.

“What do you suppose happens if we make a wrong turn?” Fiona asked.

Pierce flashed his light down one of the alternate tunnels. “Best case, we get lost and follow the maze while keeping a hand on the wall, eventually making our way back here...which could be miles of walking.”

“And worst case?”

“I suppose the very worst case would be something like the Minotaur, but my guess is that there are probably some booby traps.”

“Nice.” Fiona held up her phone, zooming in on the next set of symbols they were seeking.

The passages were not uniformly straight or flat. Some meandered back and forth, up long inclines and down spiral staircases. Only the reliability of the Phaistos symbols, marking the way every hundred yards or so, kept Pierce’s anxiety in check. As they neared the end of the spiral, apprehension gave way to anticipation.

The final intersection presented them with a choice. Up or down. They emerged from a passage onto a broad landing, which appeared to be in the middle of a spiral staircase.

“Down,” Fiona announced, checking the symbols against the picture of the Phaistos Disc. “This is it.”

She started down the descending staircase.

And vanished.

7

As darkness engulfed her, Fiona felt her stomach rise into her throat. Her first thought was that she was falling, but this was more like being in a fast elevator. Her feet were still on solid ground, but she was definitely descending. A sudden heaviness signaled the end of her downward journey, and then all was still.

“Fiona!”

Pierce’s frantic shout echoed in the air overhead. She looked up, searching for the source. She saw the faint glow of his flashlight, at least fifty feet above her. The light was not nearly bright enough to illuminate her surroundings, but just being able to see it filled her with hope.

“I’m down here!” she called. The iron walls created a weird reverberation effect, like shouting down a metal pipe. “I’m okay.”

“What happened?” The glow intensified into a bright star, shining down into her upraised eyes. “The stairs disappeared.”

“Did they? I can’t see anything.”

She blinked, forcing herself to look away from the pinpoint of light. “Was this a trap?”

“I don’t know.” Pierce’s voice sounded fainter, as if the distance separating them was increasing. She knew it was not; the light above remained unchanged. “Don’t move. I’ll figure something out.”

“I know I picked the right symbol,” she insisted, more for her own sake than for Pierce’s. To reassure herself, she raised her phone again, intending to double-check the symbols. “Oh, duh!”

She thumbed on the phone’s built-in flashlight, and the darkness retreated.

She was standing in a small square room with walls that rose up into the black void overhead. There was no sign of the steps, but the floor beneath her feet was lined with evenly spaced grooves, each as wide as the treads of a stairway.

The stairs had been rigged to collapse downward as soon as anyone stepped onto them. A trap, but not a lethal one. At least, not right away. She and Pierce were separated. He could still get out, maybe bring back some rope…

He’ll have to backtrack through the maze, but I’ve got the pictures of the Disc. Wonderful.

An arched doorway was the only way out of the room. Fiona flashed her light into the opening, but was unable to see much of what lay beyond. There were no Phaistos symbols on the black iron walls to indicate whether going through the door was the right course of action.

“Like I’ve got a choice,” she muttered. Raising her head, she shouted up at Pierce. “There’s a door here. I’m going to go through it.”

“No! Stay right there!”

She ignored his warning and stepped closer to the door, checking the floor for pressure plates and trip wires. There was a wooden table at the edge of her light, holding something on its center. She couldn’t quite make out what the object was, but the overall presentation reminded her of the display cases at the Heraklion Museum.

“I don’t think this is a trap,” she called. She stepped through the arch.

There was a rasping sound behind her. She whirled around and saw that another opening had appeared on the opposite side of the small room. On the wall, just to the right of the new passage, there was another glyph with Phaistos symbols.

“Freaky,” she said. She stuck her head back into the room and looked up. “Uncle George?”

There was no sign of Pierce’s light. Instead, there was now a ceiling, just a few feet above head level, consisting of metal panels each about the same width as the segments on the floor.

“What the hell?”

The hissing noise came again, startling her back a step. The reflex saved her life. A wall of metal descended through the air just beyond the arch, and would have sliced her in half if she had not moved.

Before she could recover her wits, an opening appeared at the top of the arch, growing larger as the wall descended into the floor. When it stopped, the second opening had vanished into the floor, and the room was configured again as it had been at first. There was just one major difference. Standing in the middle of the room was the somewhat bewildered form of Pierce.

“Uncle George!”

He raised a hand. “Don’t move.”

She nodded, signaling that this time, she would do as instructed.

Pierce’s eyes darted around, taking in the changes. He shone the light up, revealing smooth walls with no visible ceiling. “The steps were camouflage. This is some kind of weight-sensitive elevator. Step on it, and it goes down. Step off, and it rises back up. Probably works on magnetic repulsion. It’s a one-way trip though.”

“I think this is where we’re supposed to be.” Fiona turned around and shone her phone’s light at the table. There were several more like it, dotting the floor and lining the walls of a circular chamber, which was at least fifty feet in diameter. Interspersed with the displays were several more arched openings, which presumably led back into the Labyrinth, but Fiona gave these only a cursory glance. Her attention was held by the contents of the room. “Uncle George, you’ve got to see this...but if you step off, we won’t be able to get back.”

Pierce scratched his head, furrowed his brow, pursed his lips and then said, “We’re not supposed to leave the same way we came in. There are two sides to the Disc. Two routes through the maze. One way in, one way out, but it leads here first.”

Pierce stepped through the opening and turned to watch the segmented floor rise, propelled by invisible lines of magnetic force. The passage was momentarily blocked, then opened up to reveal the second configuration.

He joined Fiona at the central table. Resting upon it, spread out to show its extraordinary size, was what appeared at first glance to be a bearskin rug—perhaps from a Kodiak grizzly—head and all. On closer inspection, the tawny gold fur, along with the shaggy mane surrounding the fiercely snarling head, showed it to actually be the pelt of an enormous lion.

Pierce gasp in astonishment. “The Nemean Lion.”

Fiona grinned as Pierce began to recount how Hercules, after strangling the Lion, had used its own claws, which were sharper than any sword, to cut through its skin, since no blade could penetrate it.

She drifted away and began looking at the other display tables. Some contained what might have been trophies from other Herculean conquests—swords, armor, teeth and claws from enormous beasts—while others contained items that were more utilitarian, with no explicit link to the myth. Fiona was drawn to one of the latter: a small chest, about one foot square and six-inches deep. It was covered in a reflective substance that showed no sign of corrosion or oxidation. Although she was no expert, Fiona thought it must be gold. Yet that was not what had drawn her eye. Something had been stamped into the soft metal, creating a raised relief. Fiona reached out a cautious finger and traced the shape.

Letters.

Greek letters.

“Uncle George, this isn’t right.”

Pierce moved to join her, shining his light directly on the small chest. “Heracleia,” he said, translating the ancient Greek script. “It’s in Greek,” he said, proud that she had noticed the aberration. “The Greeks didn’t develop their alphabet until the eighth century BC. The Phaistos Disc was uncovered in the ruins of a palace that was destroyed centuries before the Greeks started using this alphabet.”

He tested the lid, which refused to open, then tilted the chest up to reveal a thin line of some opaque material holding the cover in place. “Beeswax. Whatever’s in here has probably been perfectly preserved for thousands of years.”

She watched as he exerted a little more pressure, breaking the wax seal. The lid popped open with a faint sucking noise, revealing what looked like a stack of dingy old papers covered with Greek script.

“Papyrus leaves,” Pierce said, shaking his head as the mystery grew.

“You seem frustrated, Doctor Pierce. Perhaps you don’t know Hercules as well as you think you do.”

Fiona whirled in the direction of the familiar but unexpected voice, and found Liam Kenner standing just inside the entrance to the room. He wore the same smug smile that Fiona remembered from their earlier encounter.

Before she or Pierce could say a word to challenge him, a faint rasping noise signaled the arrival of yet another unexpected guest on the magnetic elevator.

Fiona did not recognize the man that stepped out of the small room. He was tall, broadly built and so ugly that for a moment, she wondered if he was some humanoid monster out of mythology. But this wasn’t a bull-man standing before them. It was just a man. She could tell because he was pointing a gun at them.