“I don’t think this is a trap,” she called. She stepped through the arch.
There was a rasping sound behind her. She whirled around and saw that another opening had appeared on the opposite side of the small room. On the wall, just to the right of the new passage, there was another glyph with Phaistos symbols.
“Freaky,” she said. She stuck her head back into the room and looked up. “Uncle George?”
There was no sign of Pierce’s light. Instead, there was now a ceiling, just a few feet above head level, consisting of metal panels each about the same width as the segments on the floor.
“What the hell?”
The hissing noise came again, startling her back a step. The reflex saved her life. A wall of metal descended through the air just beyond the arch, and would have sliced her in half if she had not moved.
Before she could recover her wits, an opening appeared at the top of the arch, growing larger as the wall descended into the floor. When it stopped, the second opening had vanished into the floor, and the room was configured again as it had been at first. There was just one major difference. Standing in the middle of the room was the somewhat bewildered form of Pierce.
“Uncle George!”
He raised a hand. “Don’t move.”
She nodded, signaling that this time, she would do as instructed.
Pierce’s eyes darted around, taking in the changes. He shone the light up, revealing smooth walls with no visible ceiling. “The steps were camouflage. This is some kind of weight-sensitive elevator. Step on it, and it goes down. Step off, and it rises back up. Probably works on magnetic repulsion. It’s a one-way trip though.”
“I think this is where we’re supposed to be.” Fiona turned around and shone her phone’s light at the table. There were several more like it, dotting the floor and lining the walls of a circular chamber, which was at least fifty feet in diameter. Interspersed with the displays were several more arched openings, which presumably led back into the Labyrinth, but Fiona gave these only a cursory glance. Her attention was held by the contents of the room. “Uncle George, you’ve got to see this...but if you step off, we won’t be able to get back.”
Pierce scratched his head, furrowed his brow, pursed his lips and then said, “We’re not supposed to leave the same way we came in. There are two sides to the Disc. Two routes through the maze. One way in, one way out, but it leads here first.”
Pierce stepped through the opening and turned to watch the segmented floor rise, propelled by invisible lines of magnetic force. The passage was momentarily blocked, then opened up to reveal the second configuration.
He joined Fiona at the central table. Resting upon it, spread out to show its extraordinary size, was what appeared at first glance to be a bearskin rug—perhaps from a Kodiak grizzly—head and all. On closer inspection, the tawny gold fur, along with the shaggy mane surrounding the fiercely snarling head, showed it to actually be the pelt of an enormous lion.
Pierce gasp in astonishment. “The Nemean Lion.”
Fiona grinned as Pierce began to recount how Hercules, after strangling the Lion, had used its own claws, which were sharper than any sword, to cut through its skin, since no blade could penetrate it.
She drifted away and began looking at the other display tables. Some contained what might have been trophies from other Herculean conquests—swords, armor, teeth and claws from enormous beasts—while others contained items that were more utilitarian, with no explicit link to the myth. Fiona was drawn to one of the latter: a small chest, about one foot square and six-inches deep. It was covered in a reflective substance that showed no sign of corrosion or oxidation. Although she was no expert, Fiona thought it must be gold. Yet that was not what had drawn her eye. Something had been stamped into the soft metal, creating a raised relief. Fiona reached out a cautious finger and traced the shape.
Letters.
Greek letters.
“Uncle George, this isn’t right.”
Pierce moved to join her, shining his light directly on the small chest. “Heracleia,” he said, translating the ancient Greek script. “It’s in Greek,” he said, proud that she had noticed the aberration. “The Greeks didn’t develop their alphabet until the eighth century BC. The Phaistos Disc was uncovered in the ruins of a palace that was destroyed centuries before the Greeks started using this alphabet.”
He tested the lid, which refused to open, then tilted the chest up to reveal a thin line of some opaque material holding the cover in place. “Beeswax. Whatever’s in here has probably been perfectly preserved for thousands of years.”
She watched as he exerted a little more pressure, breaking the wax seal. The lid popped open with a faint sucking noise, revealing what looked like a stack of dingy old papers covered with Greek script.