Michael White - Equinox

'Right,' he said and pulled the bag back. 'But I'm still not convinced. Let's use the rope. Tie it around your waist and I'll use the wall bracket to brace it. If it holds your weight, then fine. If not, I'll catch you.'

Laura wound the rope around her waist in two loops and Philip knotted it tightly. Then he swung the other end over the iron wall bracket and stood on the edge with his feet well apart. Laura moved forward carefully to place one foot slowly on the red pedestal. She was breathing heavily and beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. 'Here goes.'

It held. She turned to face Philip with a look of triumph on her face and he gave her the thumbs-up.

'Try the next one,' he called to her. 'I'll give you some slack.'

Laura inspected the pattern of circles in front of her. In the second row, second from the left, stood a yellow platform. Moving as light-footedly as she could, she hopped onto the yellow stone and let out a deep sigh of relief.

Til go the whole way,' she announced. 'It's too dangerous for both of us to be on these things at the same time.' Then, turning to look again at the 'bridge' of pedestals, she stepped onto the white one in the third row. There she paused for a moment, took a deep breath and then moved onto the black circle in the final row. A few seconds later she was on the other side.

'OK, your turn,' Laura called, her heart racing.

She untied the rope and paid it out so that Philip could approach the bridge with it hooked over the bracket and then tied to his waist. On Laura's side of the pit she looped the rope over another torch bracket in the wall near the archway. If one of the pedestals should give way Philip could pull himself over along the rope.

Moving as quickly but as carefully as he could, Philip followed the same route that Laura had taken — red, yellow, white and black, and in a few moments he was on the far side standing next to her.

'Phew,' he said and wiped the sweat away from his eyes. Td like to say that was fun. But in all honesty I can't.'

Through the archway was a short corridor which twisted to the left and then sharply right. As Laura and Philip took the second bend they emerged into a circular room. It was lit from the ceiling. In fact, the whole ceiling seemed to glow.

It was made of solid rock but the light seemed to be emanating from the stone itself.

'My God,' Philip said, looking up at the rock over his head. It was lumpy and mottled, and on closer inspection he could see a dusting of yellow crystals covering the entire surface. 'Must be some sort of natural light-emitting crystal,' he added.

'Clever alchemists.'

'I guess so. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?'

The room was bare except for another opening in the wall opposite the archway that they had come through. Laura peered in. Corridors led off left and right. On the wall ahead were two metal discs, each about the size of a CD. Etched into the left-hand disc were two concentric circles. The disc on the right carried another symbol, a circle with what looked like a pair of horns on top and a cross at the base.

'Any ideas?' she asked.

Philip peered at the Newton document. 'They're both on here — look, next to the labyrinth.'

'The one on the left is the symbol for Sol, the sun; the other one is Mercury, isn't it?'

Philip nodded.

'So, do we follow the sun or Mercury?'

'What relevance do either of them have?'

'Mercury is the winged messenger. The sun. . what? Light … the surface, maybe?'

'Doesn't help much. Mercury was the most important metal to the alchemist, though, right? One of the three basic elements used to create the Earth.'

'So we should go this way, then?' Laura pointed to the corridor on the right.

'Maybe. But the sun is the centre of all things in astrology.'

The ceilings of both corridors were illuminated in the same way as the chamber behind them. 'I would go for the left, the sun.'

'OK.'

Laura led the way. They took it slowly. A few yards in, the corridor curved to the right and then to the left, and soon they came to another fork. Here the path split into two smaller passageways, each one heading off at an angle, ten o'clock and two o'clock. Between the openings stood a rock column. There, at Laura's head height, they found another disc. It was divided by a vertical line. To the left of this they saw again the symbol for the sun, the circles they had seen earlier, and on the right, etched into the metal, was another symbol. It looked like the letter 'h' with a horizontal line through it.

'Does this mean we just keep following the symbol for the sun? That can't be right.' Laura frowned.

'No, it doesn't feel correct,' Philip confirmed.

'Which either means we go this way' — she pointed to the right-hand passageway — 'or we go back to the first pair of symbols and take the other route.'

Laura took the Newton document from Philip's hand and sat cross-legged on the floor with her back to the rock column that divided the pathways. The light from the ceiling was bright enough to read by.

'So, what information have we used so far?' Laura said. 'The colour code? We've used that twice, haven't we? And it doesn't seem relevant here. Mercury is a metal, but the other symbols are Saturn and the sun, so the Mercury symbol must refer to the planet.'

Philip squatted down beside her. 'What about the positions of these symbols?' he mused. 'Maybe they're telling us something.'

They both stared hard at the paper, trying to match the positions of the symbols with the schematic of the labyrinth that Newton had reproduced from the original.

'It's not their positions,' Laura said suddenly. 'It's their relationship to the incantation — this.' And she pointed at the lines of Latin they had obtained using

Charlie's code. Philip rifled through his pockets to find the translation they had written out the night before.

You are Mercury the mighty flower,

You are most worthy of honour;

You are the Source of Sol, Luna and Mars,

You are Settler of Saturn and Source of Venus,

You are Emperor, Prince and most regal of Kings,

You are Father of the Mirror and Maker of Light.

You are head and highest and fairest in Sight.

All praise thee.

All praise thee. Giver of truth.

We seek, we beseech, we welcome you.

'Yes. . "You are Mercury the mighty flower,'" Laura read aloud. 'Third line… "You ate the Source of Sol, Luna and Mars. ." That's it. We took the wrong corridor at the start. We should have followed Mercury, the right-hand passageway.'

Back at the archway leading from the circular stone chamber, they paused at the two discs on the wall for a moment and then headed off along the corridor straight ahead of them, the right-hand turning off the chamber. A few moments later they reached a T-junction. On the wall ahead of them were two more discs. The right-hand disc carried the symbol for Venus, a circle with a cross at the bottom.

Into the left-hand plate had been etched the symbol for the sun.

'There should be four more junctions in the labyrinth,' Philip added, 'and symbols for the moon, Mars, Saturn, and Venus, in that order. It would be absolutely impossible to get through this without the document.' And he led the way along the left-hand passageway.

The corridor to the next junction twisted and turned and seemed to go on for miles before hitting a steep upward incline. By the time they reached the top they were sweating and panting. Philip bent over with his hands on his knees. Laura wiped the sweat from her eyes and looked at the two plates on the wall designating another choice of route. The right-hand disc carried a crescent, the symbol for the moon. In the centre of the left-hand disc was the sign representing Mercury.

They paused for a moment to catch their breath and this time Laura led the way to the fourth fork. Here they found the symbol for Mars, a circle with an arrow pointing diagonally away to the right, and they took that route, which ran steeply downhill. At the bottom, they found themselves in a broad corridor some four yards across. At the far end of this section there were three openings in the wall: to the left of the first one there were three discs on the wall. This time the three symbols were for Mercury, Saturn and the sun.