Andy Mcdermott - Temple of the Gods

‘Hey,’ said Eddie quietly, recognising her mood. ‘This was just the outer room, remember?’ He nodded towards the newly opened passage. ‘The Temple of the Gods is right through there.’

‘You’re right,’ she said, composing herself. Eddie headed for the exit; she gave a silent apology to what little remained of Nantalas and her acolytes before following.

Even with the stiff wind at their backs, the temperature beyond the chamber rose rapidly. And as they moved down the short tunnel, the light from their torches was joined by another source from ahead. Eddie at first thought it was daylight, but the colour was wrong: too orange.

Nina had noticed it too. ‘You know we thought the meteorite was in a volcano? I think it’s literally in a volcano.’

The tunnel opened out… and revealed that she was right.

They emerged on a large bowl-like ledge jutting from the inside of the volcano’s throat. High above was a circle of blue sky, but the orange light was coming from below. The volcano was still active, a lake of molten lava bubbling away deep underground.

For the moment, though, Nina’s attention was on the ledge itself. A dozen statues surrounded the centre of the bowl. All were mythological figures: gods. She recognised Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Athena, Hera and more… the Olympians, the most powerful figures in the shared pantheon of the ancient Greeks and the Atlanteans. They faced outwards to keep watch in all directions, their poses and expressions a stern warning against approaching the object they guarded.

The sky stone. The meteorite. The object that had brought life to earth, and now held the potential to change that life — not with the power of gods, but with the science of men.

Eddie made a face. ‘I don’t think we brought enough explosives.’

It was not the size of a couch, or a car, as he had hoped. It was the size of a house . In places threateningly jagged, in others smoothed off as if melted, the irregular hunk of rock was a good sixty feet along its longest axis, rising at its highest almost thirty feet above the floor. The whole thing was covered with a grimy layer of ash and sulphur, deposited over millennia by the fumes rising up from the bubbling lava below. The statues around it were similarly defiled.

Nina and Eddie moved closer. As they left the cover of the tunnel, the rush of wind from it lessened — and the stench and heat coming from the bottom of the volcanic conduit hit them for the first time. The enormous updraught of hot gases rising past the ledge was sucking clean air from outside down the lava tube, keeping the natural bowl at least partially clear of the worst of the toxic vapours. ‘Christ, that stinks,’ Eddie muttered, trying to hold in a cough. ‘So, this is what everyone’s been looking for?’

‘This is it,’ said Nina. She went up to the stone, about to touch it, but then drew back her hand.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Considering what happened when Nantalas last touched the meteorite, it’s probably not a great idea for me to start messing with it.’

‘You’ve got a point.’ Eddie looked up at the statue of Poseidon, the god of the oceans holding a metal trident as if poised to hurl it at any intruder. ‘And he’s got three. This is the Temple of the Gods, then?’

Nina turned away from the meteorite — and froze in momentary shock as for the first time she took in the sheer wall that had been behind her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘ That is.’

A vast structure had been carved out of the cliff, extending almost the full width of the ledge and rising in tiers to over a hundred feet above. The elaborate yet harsh architectural style was unmistakably Atlantean. The lava tube emerged from the wall at its base between a pair of large pillars; on either side were more statues. Each level of the grand temple above them was lined with more ancient figures.

‘God!’ exclaimed Eddie, awed. ‘Or gods, I mean. How many are there?’

‘All of them, I think,’ Nina replied. The Olympians were the big guns of the lost civilisation’s mythology, but there were hundreds of lesser deities below them… and it seemed that every single one was in attendance. The rulers of Atlantis had been unable to decide which of their gods they had angered by unleashing the power of the sky stone — so had tried to appease them all.

‘That’s pretty bloody impressive. How the hell did they build all that in here?’

‘Nantalas’s expedition must have been bigger than we thought. Atlantis was the greatest empire the world would see for another few thousand years, so if anyone had the resources, they did.’ She raised her camera again and started taking pictures of the temple. Through the telephoto lens, she saw stairs linking the tiers behind the rows of statues.

‘There isn’t time for that,’ said Eddie, setting down the rucksack and removing the explosives and detonators. ‘We’ve found the thing, so let’s blow it up.’

‘It’s the only time for it,’ she countered. ‘You saw what the first charge did to the outer chamber — there was nothing left. When we blow up the meteorite, it’ll wreck the temple. Even if I can’t save it, I can’t let this place go unrecorded.’

Eddie reluctantly conceded. ‘Get your snaps, then.’ He checked the remaining detonators, then circled the rock as Nina continued. When he returned, his expression was decidedly more downcast. ‘You know I didn’t think we’d brought enough explosives?’

‘Yes?’

‘We definitely didn’t. Remember what that geologist, Bellfriar, told us about the statues before we went to South America? He said the meteorite they came from had a lot of metal in the rock — and that’ll make it really, really tough. There’s no way these charges’ll be enough to destroy it. Best they’ll do is split it into smaller bits, but they’ll still be too big for us just to chuck ’em into the lava.’ He looked back at the entrance. ‘We need a Plan B.’

‘What kind of Plan B?’

‘My usual kind — blowing something up.’

‘But that’s Plan A as well!’

He smiled, then collected one of the explosive charges and a detonator and headed for the lava tube. ‘Get all your photos — soon as I come back, I’ll set the bombs on the rock and then we’ll get out of here.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To make sure nobody gets through that tunnel after we leave.’ He jogged away, leaving Nina alone with the Atlantean gods.

She photographed the whole of the temple, then turned her attention to the statues around the meteorite. Whatever Eddie was doing, it was taking a while; he still had not returned by the time she had captured all of the Olympians. She considered taking a closer look at the temple, but curiosity about a more natural wonder won out and she made her way up the slope to the lip of the ledge.

The heat grew more intense the closer she got. Away from the fresh air coming through the lava tube, it also became harder to breathe. Coughing, she nevertheless climbed the last few yards to the edge and looked down.

It was like peering directly into Hell. The volcano’s conduit dropped dizzyingly down for hundreds of feet, a searing red eye at its end glaring back up at her. The level of the lava below had at some point sunk, leaving a seething molten lake churning in the subterranean magma chamber. The temperature was so great that she could only bear it for a few seconds before withdrawing, but she had seen more than enough. Even at its lowest level of activity, a volcano was still terrifying close up; she tried to imagine what it would have been like when Nantalas unwittingly released the full fury of the earth beneath Atlantis. It was almost too frightening to think about.