Pierce, still wearing the Nemean Lion’s skin, led the way back to the central chamber. As expected, Kenner and Rohn were long gone. Pierce made a cursory check of the other display tables, identifying several of the relics, many of which were clearly from later periods in history, but there was nothing that indicated which path led to the hypothetical back door.
He turned his attention to the symbols that marked each passage, hoping to find a similarly anachronistic marker. “These appear on the Disc, but they’re not in the right place.”
“Right,” she said.
“Focus,” he said. “Forget about everything else. Tell me what you see.”
She furrowed her brow in thought. “If this really is some kind of literacy test, then the glyphs that lead out should form words. Even though we don’t speak the language, there’s going to be a logic to the way the symbols are used. In English, certain letters are frequently used together, while others almost never are.”
“Go on,” he said, smiling. She was on the right track.
“Some of the symbols appear with a lot more frequency. Like Wheel of Fortune. People always start with the high frequency letters? R, N, S, T, L, and E. Even though we can’t read this language, we should be able to see the difference between real words and nonsense combinations.”
Pierce grinned. “Well done. I knew there was a reason I brought you along.” He handed her the flashlight. “Now, keep your eyes peeled for traps.”
Fiona stared at the glyph, feeling the weight of responsibility. Their survival depended on her. If she was wrong, they would wander the maze until they dropped from exhaustion, or worse, got killed by some ancient booby trap.
“We should mark our trail,” Pierce said. “In case we have to backtrack. Like Theseus, trailing Ariadne’s thread.” He held up a massive lion forepaw and squeezed it, extending the razor sharp black claws. He scratched a single vertical line on the iron wall beneath the glyph. “That should do the trick.”
Grateful for the safety net, Fiona ventured into the passage.
When they arrived at each junction, she studied the choices, looking for the one that matched a word on the Disc or was consistent with the internal logic of the ancient Minoan language. They didn’t encounter any traps or dead ends, but it was impossible to know if they were on the right track. Navigating the passages was like being in an ‘old school’ arcade game, where winning a level simply took you to the next battleground, identical in every respect, except harder. Each decision was a gut check, and as they pushed deeper into the unknown, she felt the cumulative weight of all those choices. Either she was leading them to safety, or they were already hopelessly lost. Yet, with each hard decision, she felt her confidence growing. She was getting it. She was going to beat this game.
Then the uniformly cramped iron walls gave way to native rock. A few steps further, the winding tunnel led out onto a rusty iron bridge spanning an open fissure with nearly vertical walls.
Fiona shone her light across the gap, which she judged to be about thirty feet wide. She saw a ledge on the far side, wide enough to walk on, stretching in either direction beyond the reach of the light. But there did not appear to be any openings in the far cave wall. She glanced back at Pierce. “Did we make a wrong turn?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. It wouldn’t make any sense to build a bridge that goes nowhere.”
“Maybe the bridge is a trap. Get halfway across and then—click! Going down in a hurry.”
Pierce studied the metal span for a moment. “I don’t think it’s rigged to fail. Now, whether it will hold up after all this time…” He gave a helpless shrug. “Stay here.”
“What? I don’t think—”
Pierce was already in motion, walking cautiously out onto the bridge. Each step generated an ominous creak, but the bridge held. Fiona held her breath, willing the metal to remain intact just a few minutes longer. Pierce stepped onto the ledge at the other side and then waved her on.
“Take it slow,” he warned. “But if you think it’s starting to go, run like hell.”
Fighting the urge to simply run across, Fiona took a step onto the bridge, then another. She could feel it vibrating beneath her, could almost see flakes of oxidized metal crumbling away with each footfall.
Halfway.
The bridge groaned and started swaying… Just my imagination, she told herself.
The ledge was just ten feet away now.
Close enough.
She launched herself forward, but the extra force generated by the attempt punched a hole clean through the walkway. Her toe caught on the edge, and she pitched forward. Her knee struck the deck, the impact crumbling the metal like a stale potato chip. In her mind’s eye, she saw the entire bridge disintegrating under her as she struggled to get back to her feet—
Pierce caught one of her outstretched arms and yanked her the rest of the way off the bridge. He held her upright, which was good, because her legs felt like overcooked spaghetti noodles. “I said, take it slow,” he chided. “You all right?”