Matthew Reilly: Temple

Human offerings. Human sacrifices. They would throw their own people down here. But it probably didn’t stop at that, Race thought as he gazed at the inordinate number of olive skinned bodies that lay on the pile of corpses. The natives probably threw their dead—and the dead of their enemies—down here as well, as another way of appeasing the rapas. And in times of real shortage, Race imagined, the rapas probably ate each other. Just then, he saw five more rapas lying on the stone floor beyond the pile of corpses, next to a small, square shaped hole in the floor. The five rapas were staring right at him, entranced by the steady hum of the wet idol. Standing in front of them were about ten much smaller cats—cubs, rapa cubs each about the size and shape of a tiger cub. They also stared at Race. It seemed as if they had all stopped in midplay as soon as they had heard the idol’s mesmerising drone. Jesus, Race thought, there was a whole community down here. A community of rapas. Come on, Will, get on with it. Right. It was then that Race extracted something else from the leather satchel that he had slung over his shoulder. The fake idol. Race left the fake idol on the floor at the base of the large square shaped hole that had opened onto the cathedral, so that anyone entering the temple would find it immediately. He didn’t know for sure, but he imagined that that was exactly what Renco had done four hundred years previously. All right, he thought, time to get out of here. Race saw the smaller hole in the floor over by the five female rapas and their cubs and figured that his best option—apart from climbing up the sacrificial chute and hoping someone opened it for him—was to just keep going downwards. And so with the real idol still humming in his hands, he cautiously made his way past the five female rapas and their cubs and over to the small, square shaped hole in the floor next to them. He looked down into the hole. It was about six feet square and it just disappeared straight down into the rocky floor. Like the larger hole before it, it also had foot and handholds carved into its vertical walls. What the hell, Race thought. With his torch held firmly in his mouth again and the humming idol shoved inside his satchel, Race climbed down into the narrow shaft. After a minute or so, he lost sight of the hole’s opening above him. From then on, except for the small circle of flickering orange light that illuminated the shaft around him, he was surrounded by impenetrable darkness. A couple of the rapas followed him down, slinking down the walls of the shaft at the edge of the torch’s circle of light, hanging upside down above him, keeping pace with him, glaring at him with their cold yellow eyes. But they never attacked. Race kept climbing. Down and down. It felt like he climbed for miles, but in reality it was probably only a couple of hundred feet or so. Then, finally, his feet touched ground again. Race grabbed his torch and held it aloft and found that he was standing in a small cavern of some sort, bounded on every side by solid stone walls. Filling the cavern, however, was a body of water. It was a pool of some sort—a small pool, bounded on three sides by walls of stone. On the fourth side of the pool was the flat section of ground on which Race now stood. He walked over to the water’s edge, bent down to touch it, as if to see if it was real. The two rapas stepped slowly out from the shaft behind him.

Race dipped his hand in the water and suddenly, he felt something. Not an object or anything like that, but rather a gentle surge in the water itself. Race frowned. The water was flowing. He looked at the entire pool once again and saw that its tiny wavelets actually moved ever so slowly from right to left. And in that instant, he realised where he was. He was at the very bottom of the rock tower, at the point where it met the shallow lake at the bottom of the crater. Only—somehow—water was flowing in and out of this cavern. The idol was still humming in his satchel. The two rapas watched Race intently. Then, with a confidence that he had no reason to possess, Race discarded his flaming torch and stepped into the pool of inky black water—satchel, clothes and all—and ducked beneath the surface. Thirty seconds later, after breast stroking his way through a long underwater tunnel, he surfaced in the shallow lake at the bottom of the crater. He gulped in air and breathed a thankful sigh of relief. He was outside again. After he emerged from the base of the rock tower, Race returned to the upper village. But before he did so, he stopped at the tower top, at the entrance to the temple. The warriors who had pushed the boulder back into the portal were gone now, having already departed for the village, and Race stood before the ominous stone structure alone.

After a few moments, he grabbed a nearby stone and approached the boulder wedged inside the portal. Then, beneath Alberto Santiago’s inscription, he scratched a message of his own:

Do not open at any cost. Death lies within. William Race, 1999

When he arrived back at the upper village, he found Renée waiting for him at the edge of the moat, standing with Miguel Marquez and the chieftain, Roa. Race handed the idol to Roa. ‘The rapas are back inside the temple,’ he said. ‘It’s time for us to go home.’

‘My people thank you for all that you have done for them, Chosen One,’ Roa said.

‘If only there were more in the world like you.’ Race bowed his head modestly, just as Renée looped her good arm in his.

‘How are you feeling, hero?’ she said.

‘I think I must have suffered another hit to the head,’ he said. ‘How else am I going to explain all those feats of derring do? Must have been the adrenalin talking.’

Renée shook her head, looked him squarely in the eye.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it was adrenalin.’ Then she kissed him nicely pressing her lips firmly against his. When at last she pulled away, smiling, she said, ‘Come on, hero. It’s time to go home.’

Race and Renée left the upper village to the cheers of the natives. As they disappeared down into the crater and headed back to Vilcafor, a muffled scream could be heard from somewhere within the village far behind them. It came from the bamboo cage that was tied to the four postlike trees. In the cage, lying on the ground, rolling around in agony from the wounds to his stomach and with both of his hands hacked off, lay the wretched and gagged—figure of Frank Nash.

The natives hadn’t killed him on the main street of Vilcafor earlier. Rather, they had cut off his thieving hands and brought him up here for more appropriate treatment. An hour later, the last Indian procession to go to Solon’s temple began. Bodies were carried aloft on ceremonial litters as the procession made its way across the rope bridge and over to the temple. Nash lay writhing in agony on one of the litters, while a series of other corpses—Van Lewen, Marty, Lauren, Romano, and the corpses of the entire Navy DARPA team occupied other litters. Dead or alive, any kind of human flesh would appease the cat gods that dwelled inside the temple. The whole village gathered around the rear of the temple chanting in unison—as two strong warriors lifted the cylindrical stone from its slot in the path, revealing the sacrificial chute. The dead bodies were cast into the holefirst—Van Lewen, then Marty, then Lauren, Copeland and the Navy people. Frank Nash was brought over to the sacrificial well last of all. He had seen what had been done with the other bodies and his eyes widened as he realised what was going to happen to him. He screamed through his gag as the sacrificial priests bound his feet together. He writhed about maniacally as two Indian warriors brought him over to the chute. They put him in feet first and as he saw the sky for the last time, Frank Nash went bug eyed with horror. The two warriors dropped him into the chute. Nash screamed all the way down. The cylindrical stone was placed back into its slot and the natives left the tower top for the last time, never to return. Once they arrived back at their village, they began preparations for a long journey, a journey that would take them to a place deep within the rainforest, a place where they would never be found.