Michael Cordy - The Source

But Zeb wasn't listening. Instead her eyes were fixed on the side of the ziggurat. 'Ross,' she whispered, pointing a shaking finger. 'Over there. You see it?'

He blinked. The vines obscured most of the stone but he could see something carved into it. An image he recognized. 'Yes,' he said, mouth dry. 'I see it.'

He rushed over to the ziggurat and, with his good hand, began to hack away the vines, exposing a carving at least six feet high. Zeb reached into her pack, pulled out her notes and flipped through the photocopied pages of the Voynich. She stopped at one and held it up.

'Look, Ross! This is page ninety-three of the Voynich.'

Ross stood back from the ziggurat and took it from her. The carving had been done with more skill than the drawing but otherwise it was identical. He rushed to the next block of stone and cut back the vine, revealing another carving of a strange plant, then another. He reached for Zeb's photocopies. Each of the strange plants carved into the stone was the same as one of those illustrated in the Voynich.

'I thought Father Orlando and the conquistadors never found this place,' she said.

'Perhaps they didn't,' said Ross. He felt dizzy with the heat and the possibilities of what he was seeing. He looked about for Sister Chantal and the others, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Then he heard his name. 'Ross!' He stepped away from the ziggurat as Hackett poked his head out of the portal at the top and waved. 'Ross! Zeb! Come up here. You've got to see this.'

The steps up the pyramid were easier to climb than they looked from the ground, even though thick vines obstructed many of them. As Ross led Zeb upwards, he tried to process the images he had seen and what they might mean. He caught himself searching the vegetation for any sign of the flowers and plants depicted in the Voynich and on the ziggurat, but there were none.

At the top of the stairs he entered a portal crowned with a trapezoidal lintel, similar to the one in the ransom chamber at Cajamarca. It led into a cool, gloomy room that smelt like a zoo but was remarkably clean and well preserved. Sister Chantal caught his eye. 'Did you know about the carvings down there?' he hissed.

She said nothing.

'What carvings?' said Hackett. 'Are they anything like these?' He stepped aside and shone his Maglite torch on the walls. Zeb gasped. The walls were decorated with intricately carved, three-foot-square frames, each of which contained a scene, like a storyboard or comic strip. 'Neither the Incas nor their predecessors had a written language,' he said. 'It wasn't until the Spaniards chronicled their conquests and discoveries that anything was written down. This was how the ancients who once lived here recorded events.'

'And what events they were,' whispered Zeb.

'I told you something bad happened here,' said Juarez.

Even Ross, with no training in language or symbols, could follow the narrative. The first carved image depicted the flower-shaped fountain in full flow, surrounded by a circle of human figures kneeling before it, as if in worship, while a benign sun shone down from above. The second image was of the same fountain, this time surrounded by a circle of human figures dancing and eating strange plants, like those in the Voynich. In the next image the fountain was dry and the flowers were dying. The fourth showed figures digging the diamond-shaped pit and throwing piles of human bodies into it. In the next a figure was laid on top of the ziggurat and another was pulling out its heart. The sixth showed the fountain again with two drops falling into it: from the sacrificial heart and the sun. The last image was of a line of humans of varying sizes, men, women and children, leaving the city and going into the jungle.

'I don't understand,' said Hackett.

'Isn't it obvious, Nigel?' said Zeb. 'When the fountain dried up people became sick and died. They performed sacrifices to bring the water back but they didn't work so the city died and the survivors left.'

'I understand the story,' said Hackett. 'I just don't understand why they were so dependent on a fountain. This isn't the desert. It's a rainforest – and it's been one for thousands of years. They wouldn't need a small fountain to stay alive and healthy.'

'Unless it wasn't ordinary water,' said Zeb.

Ross thought again of the unusual plants depicted in the carvings and the Voynich. Had they grown here because of something in the spring water, something unique to Father Orlando's garden? Excitement coursed through him. Had the water contained some unusual chemicals or minerals on which the people had relied? 'The water probably came from a subterranean stream with a source not far from here,' he said. 'Then something happened – a geological shift, a subterranean landslide – which dammed the stream and dried up the spring.'

'So, although the spring's dried up its source might still exist?' asked Zeb.

'Yes.' He returned her smile. Orlando Falcon's garden was seeming less and less like a myth. 'And it might be pretty close.'

'Whatever they thought was in the water,' said Hackett, pointing at the penultimate image, 'they offered two sacrifices to bring it back.' He tapped the drops. 'Human blood and the tears of the sun.' He smiled a wide, boyish smile. 'And do you know what that is? Gold.'

Ross thought of the ore-riddled caves they had walked through to reach the valley. Perhaps they contained seams of gold, once mined by the inhabitants of this place.

'Where would the gold be?' said Mendoza.

'In a sacred place.' Hackett pointed again at the carvings and tapped the image of the ziggurat. 'Somewhere in here.'

Just then, Juarez's voice cried, 'Sister Chantal's found something!'

Ross and the others followed Hackett's Maglite beam to the far recesses of the chamber where Juarez stood with the nun, pointing his torch down a flight of dark steps that disappeared into the depths of the pyramid. The stairs descended one flight, levelled out, then turned back on themselves, descending further into the darkness. The zoo smell wafted up from the bowels of the stone ziggurat. Animal droppings lay on the rough-hewn steps. Large ones.

Mendoza cocked his weapon, Hackett pulled a pistol from his backpack, and Juarez took the rifle from his shoulder.

'If there's gold it'll be down here,' said Hackett, moving to the stairs.

'I go with you,' said Juarez, eyes bright with uncustomary bravado. 'You said we share everything. I want to see this gold.'

Hackett prodded a vine, which slithered away. A snake. 'Whatever you say.' He checked his pistol, then glanced nervously at Ross and Mendoza. 'You're coming, too, aren't you?'

Mendoza nodded. Ross hesitated, holding his broken wrist. He hadn't come for gold or to explore any ancient lost city, and he wasn't armed, but he felt compelled to see what was down there. 'I'm coming,' he said.

'I'm not,' said Zeb. 'I'll stay with Sister Chantal.'

'Let's go.' Hackett adjusted his hat, then headed down the stairs.

Juarez and Hackett went first down the wide steps, followed by Ross and Mendoza. Before he descended into the pungent darkness, Ross glanced back at the nun, trying in vain to read her inscrutable expression. Had she been there before? Did she know what was down there?

At the end of the first flight, the air was cooler but the smell stronger. Ross took out his own torch and shone it into the darkness. They followed the steps down three more returns until they came to a small antechamber and an open portal. Stone brackets that had once held flaming torches lined the walls. In the Maglite beam, Ross saw that the portal led into a large chamber with a passage down the centre, lined on each side with rows of stone shelves, stacked six high. Each contained what appeared to be a stone coffin. He shuddered.