Christopher Golden - Uncharted - The Fourth Labyrinth

“Melissa,” Alan said, looking up from the shaft. “He’s right. There is another light source.”

“How can that be?” she asked. “The only light sources possible down here are our lights and the sky, and you can be damn sure it’s not sunlight or we’d have found that point of entry already.”

Alan stood up, brushing off his pants. Sully stood as well but didn’t bother.

“It’s your light,” Sully said, and he pointed into the worship chamber. “The angle’s from in there.”

“There must be another shaft,” Jada said.

“Spread out,” Sully barked, and no one argued about who was in charge.

All six of them worked their way through the worship chamber, running their hands over the walls and floor. In less than a minute, Jada called out.

“Here! I think I’ve found it.”

Drake turned to see her kneeling in front of the altar. A sliver of a gap existed between the base of the altar and the floor. He spun and saw the lights hung from the wall behind him and nodded to himself.

“Everywhere else there’s either a tighter seal or some kind of mortar,” Jada said, glancing up at Welch. “But it looks like the altar is just resting here.”

Melissa crouched on the other side, and they all heard her swear under her breath. “There are scrapes on the stone here.” She rose quickly and glanced around, argument forgotten. “Keep looking. There’s got to be a trigger.”

“You think there’s a shaft under the altar?” Sully growled.

Welch grinned. “Don’t you?”

“I love the ancient Egyptians,” Drake muttered to Jada as he joined her, the two of them running their hands all over the wall. “Sneaky bastards.”

Long minutes passed during which the air in the worship chamber seemed to become thinner and dustier, and the rock and sand over their heads closed in, growing heavier, until Drake thought the whole thing might come crashing down on top of them if something didn’t break the silence and the renewed tension of their search. Alan and Melissa had no idea what the hurry might be, but they felt the urgency and acted accordingly. Melissa apparently had decided that since Welch was technically her boss, she would let his boss worry about breaches in protocol. Drake thought it had a lot to do with her own sense of discovery. The urge to see what was beneath their feet was powerful.

“Come on,” Jada whispered.

She turned and stared at the altar, causing Drake to do the same thing.

“What?” he asked.

“There’s got to be some clue. Something Daedalus put in so that anyone coming from one of the other labyrinths to this one could find the trigger for whatever mechanism moves the altar.”

Welch froze. He hurried to the altar and put his hand on the symbol in its center-the etching of three interlocking octagons within three circles.

“I’ve seen this somewhere else here. I’m sure of it.” He turned to Jada. “If there’s any symbol here that hints at Daedalus’s presence, his design, it’s this. The rest is all Egyptian, but this is clearly meant to represent his three labyrinths.”

“I feel like I’ve seen that, too,” Alan said.

“Look around,” Sully rasped. “And be quick about it.”

They stopped testing every stone in the room and started examining the images and symbols instead. Drake watched them, frowning, certain that if the symbol had been in this room, they would have noticed it in their search just now. He stepped outside the worship chamber and studied the door frame and lintel and saw nothing like the triple-octagon symbol. A thought occurred to him, and he reentered but passed through and into the antechamber.

It took him only seconds to locate the symbol, carved into the bottommost stone in the exposed corner of the room. Drake used the toe of his boot to put pressure on it and frowned when nothing happened. He tried again, pushing harder, hands braced on the wall. Frustrated, he dropped to his knees and began to feel around the edges, and he felt it give a little on one side.

The stone hadn’t been built to slide inward. The architect had installed it to turn.

He pushed hard on the left side of the stone, and it shifted, turning clockwise. The stones on either side had been carved at sharp angles to allow for the freedom of movement of this keystone. Drake rotated it a quarter turn until it clicked into place again, this face of the stone carved with the same symbol.

A heavy, grinding thump resonated through the chamber. He felt it in the stones under his knees.

“That’s it!” he heard Melissa say. “Who did that?”

“Nate?” Sully called.

Drake peered around into the worship chamber. “I think I found it.”

“Damn right you found it,” Jada said.

They were all gathering around the altar, and Drake joined them. The entire altar, base and all, had shifted two inches toward the rear wall of the chamber, away from the door. The scrapes on the floor had been from the base dragging across it, though obviously some kind of stone wheel mechanism was in place for the altar to roll on.

The gap had widened, only darkness visible within. Alan knelt down and put his hand in front of the opening, then looked up at Welch in surprise.

“There’s a draft,” he said, glancing at the door. “The air coming from outside-it’s slipping right through here.”

“What does that mean?” Jada asked.

“Means there’s air circulation,” Sully said. “If it’s going in here, it’s gotta be going out somewhere down there. Whatever this is, it’s not just a room. It goes somewhere.”

“Come on,” Drake said, putting his hands on the altar and getting ready to push.

Welch and Melissa joined him, but there wasn’t room for them all to push. They had to be careful. If there was a shaft underneath the altar, none of them wanted to tumble into it. But when they pushed, the altar would give only a little.

“It’s stuck on something,” Melissa said.

“Sully, come on,” Drake said.

He joined them, and the four of them tried again. Drake pushed, low to the ground, putting all his weight into it. He felt his muscles strain with the effort.

“Come on,” Sully grumbled. “It feels like it’s giving a little.”

“Something’s blocking-” Alan began.

With a grinding snap, the altar began to shift. The four of them pushed, keeping to the sides as they uncovered the darkness below. The rumble and scrape of its movement echoed through the chamber, and then it was open.

They stood around the edges of the hole. Melissa shone her worklight downward, and Drake jerked back in surprise at the sight of the skeleton that lay on the granite stairs.

“This is incredible,” Melissa said, her voice hushed. “Alan, get your camera.”

Welch descended the first step, examining the skeleton and the way its arms were extended, lying on the upper stairs. The fingers of both hands were broken off, the small bones missing. Welch took out a small but powerful flashlight and studied them closer.

“Fresh breaks,” he said, frowning. He sighed, then glanced up at Sully. “This is what was in the way. This poor guy had his fingers stuck. We just broke them off.”

“What, he got caught like that?” Jada asked.

“More likely trapped down there,” Drake said. “He died trying to dig his way out or get a grip on the altar base to try to move it aside.”

Jada looked at Alan. “But you felt air moving past. Sully said it meant another way out.”

“Another way for air to get out,” Sully said, stroking his mustache thoughtfully as he studied the bones on the stairs. “Not for this guy, apparently.”

Melissa stared at him. “Sully? I thought your name was-”

“Nickname,” Sully said, brushing her off as he stepped nearer the secret stairwell. “Nate, what do you think? This guy looks bigger than the typical Egyptian to me.”