Pierce grinned again. “Smart girl. Alexander said it was a key. I don’t believe he was speaking figuratively.”
He stepped closer to the wall and held the Disc up so that it was situated in the valley between the horns. The artifact was abruptly yanked out of his grasp, hitting the wall with a hollow clank, like a terra cotta bell. It did not slide to the ground but remained fixed in place between the horns. An instant later, there was a grinding sound from beyond the wall, and then a crunch, as some unseen force battled thousands of years of inertia and calcification. The wall began to move, rolling away into a hidden recess. Not a wall after all, but a circular door, with the Disc still affixed to its center. It rotated only half a turn before stopping, revealing a crescent-shaped opening.
“Open Sesame,” Pierce said. “It would appear that the Phaistos Disc is actually an ancient Minoan key card.”
He shone the light into the opening. The shape of the passage was too straight and uniform to be the work of nature. There was just enough space to accommodate a single person. It continued for at least fifty feet, at which point the black walls devoured his light. What lay beyond remained shrouded in darkness. “Shall we?”
“I thought we were just supposed to make sure no one gets the key,” Fiona said. “Wasn’t that what the protocol said to do?”
“Sometimes you have to go outside the letter of the law to keep the spirit of the law. Even without the Disc, someone might be able to get through that door. We need to know what Alexander wanted kept secret. If it’s something we can remove or…” he frowned, “...destroy…then this is our chance. Besides, I’m curious. Aren’t you?”
“I should call you Curious George,” Fiona replied before following and sticking close behind him. As Pierce advanced into the passage, his own eagerness diminished a little. The tunnel was more confining than he had imagined. The weight of the earth above seemed to press down on him, making it difficult to breathe. The air felt warmer, and there was something else about it that seemed…off.
“What’s that smell?” Fiona asked. “It’s like…blood.”
Pierce played the light against the walls of the passage. The black surface was mottled with what looked like a dull orange fungus. “Rust. These walls are sheeted with iron plates.”
“Iron? I thought the Minoan civilization pre-dated the Iron Age.”
Pierce gave an approving nod. Fiona had been paying attention to her studies. “They did. This is…interesting…to say the least. Some of the legends about this cave mention a race of spirit beings called Dactyls.”
“As in ‘fingers?’”
“When Rhea gave birth to Zeus, she dug her fingers into the earth, and the Dactyls were created. They were expert metal-workers, and they gave the secret of forging iron to mankind.” He shrugged. “That’s the myth, anyway.” He stopped as the light revealed a T-junction at the end of the passage. The passages leading off in either direction were, like the first, finished with walls of featureless iron, vanishing into darkness beyond the reach of the flashlight.
Fiona peered over his shoulder. “Which way?”
“Good question. In many ancient belief systems, the choice of right or left had great symbolic significance, but in this instance, we may just have to flip a coin.”
“What’s that?” Fiona pushed past him and moved closer to the facing wall a few steps down the right hand passage. She pointed to a large patch of rust which, after a closer look, revealed lines and curves that were too precise to be random.
“The Horns again,” Pierce said. “It’s the same as the glyph on the door. But it’s different. The Phaistos symbols aren’t the same.” He approached and brushed away some of the rust to get a better look.
“There are only three symbols here. This is probably some kind of identifier. The name or number of this tunnel.” He moved a few steps down the left hand passage, searching the wall until he found another symbol.
“Feel up for a linguistic puzzle?” he asked, grinning, as he took out his cell phone and handed it to Fiona. “Owens published his decipherment key online. It should give us a rough idea of what these signs are trying to tell us. See if you can find it.”
Fiona stared at the screen. “No reception down here.”
Pierce barely heard her as he studied the symbols, darting back and forth between the two glyphs. “We don’t need it.”
“You know what it says?”