CHAPTER 91
Bathed in red light, the subterranean cavern resonated with the sounds of hell-inspired music—the wail of voices, the dissonant pinch of strings, and the deep roll of timpani, which thundered through the grotto like a seismic tremor.
As far as Langdon could see, the floor of this underground world was a glassy sheet of water—dark, still, smooth—like black ice on a frozen New England pond.
The lagoon that reflects no stars.
Rising out of the water, meticulously arranged in seemingly endless rows, were hundreds upon hundreds of thick Doric columns, each climbing thirty feet to support the cavern’s vaulted ceiling. The columns were lit from below by a series of individual red spotlights, creating a surreal forest of illuminated trunks that telescoped off into the darkness like some kind of mirrored illusion.
Langdon and Brüder paused at the bottom of the stairs, momentarily stalled on the threshold of the spectral hollow before them. The cavern itself seemed to glow with a reddish hue, and as Langdon took it all in, he could feel himself breathing as shallowly as possible.
The air down here was heavier than he’d imagined.
Langdon could see the crowd in the distance to their left. The concert was taking place deep in the underground space, halfway back against the far wall, its audience seated on an expanse of platforms. Several hundred spectators sat in concentric rings that had been arranged around the orchestra while a hundred more stood around the perimeter. Still others had taken up positions out on the near boardwalks, leaning on the sturdy railings and gazing down into the water as they listened to the music.
Langdon found himself scanning the sea of amorphous silhouettes, his eyes searching for Sienna. She was nowhere in sight. Instead he saw figures in tuxedos, gowns, bishts, burkas, and even tourists in shorts and sweatshirts. The cross section of humanity, gathered in the crimson light, looked to Langdon like celebrants in some kind of occult mass.
If Sienna’s down here, he realized, it will be nearly impossible to spot her.
At that moment a heavyset man moved past them, exiting up the stairs, coughing as he went. Brüder spun and watched him go, scrutinizing him carefully. Langdon felt a faint tickle in his own throat but told himself it was his imagination.
Brüder now took a tentative step forward on the boardwalk, eyeing their numerous options. The path before them looked like the entrance to the Minotaur’s labyrinth. The single boardwalk quickly forked into three, each of those branching off again, creating a suspended maze, hovering over the water, weaving in and out of the columns and snaking into the darkness.
I found myself within a forest dark, Langdon thought, recalling the ominous first canto of Dante’s masterwork, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Langdon peered over the walkway’s railing into the water. It was about four feet deep and surprisingly clear. The stone tile floor was visible, blanketed by a fine layer of silt.
Brüder took a quick look down, gave a noncommittal grunt, and then raised his eyes back to the room. “Do you see anything that looks like the area in Zobrist’s video?”
Everything, Langdon thought, surveying the steep, damp walls around them. He motioned to the most remote corner of the cavern, far off to the right, away from the congestion of the orchestral platform. “I’m guessing back there somewhere.”
Brüder nodded. “My instinct as well.”
The two of them hurried down the boardwalk, choosing the right-hand fork, which carried them away from the crowd, in the direction of the farthest reaches of the sunken palace.
As they walked, Langdon realized how easy it would be to hide overnight in this space, undetected. Zobrist could have done just that to make his video. Of course, if he had generously underwritten this week-long concert series, he also could have simply requested some private time in the cistern.
Not that it matters anymore.
Brüder was striding faster now, as if subconsciously keeping pace with the symphony’s tempo, which had increased into a cascading series of descending semitone suspensions.
Dante and Virgil’s descent into hell.
Langdon intently scanned the steep, mossy walls in the distance to their right, trying to match them up with what they had seen in the video. At each new fork in the boardwalk, they turned right, moving farther from the crowd, heading for the cavern’s most remote corner. Langdon looked back and was astounded by the distance they had covered.
They advanced at almost a jog now, passing a handful of meandering visitors, but by the time they entered the deepest parts of the cistern, the number of people had thinned to nothing.
Brüder and Langdon were alone.
“It all looks the same,” Brüder despaired. “Where do we start?”
Langdon shared his frustration. He remembered the video vividly, but nothing down here leaped out as a recognizable feature.
Langdon studied the softly lit informational signs that dotted the boardwalk as they moved ahead. One described the twenty-one-million-gallon capacity of the room. Another pointed out a nonmatching pillar that had been looted from a nearby structure during construction. And still another offered a diagram of an ancient carving now faded from view—the Crying Hen’s Eye symbol, which wept for all the slaves who died while building the cistern.
Strangely, it was a sign that bore a single word that now stopped Langdon dead in his tracks.
Brüder halted, too, turning. “What’s wrong?”
Langdon pointed.
On the sign, accompanied by a directional arrow, was the name of a fearsome Gorgon—an infamous female monster.
MEDUSA ⇒
Brüder read the sign and shrugged. “So what?”
Langdon’s heart was pounding. He knew Medusa was not only the fearsome snake-haired spirit whose gaze could turn anyone who looked at her to stone, but was also a prominent member of the Greek pantheon of subterranean spirits … a specific category known as the chthonic monsters.
Follow deep into the sunken palace …
for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits …
She’s pointing the way, Langdon realized, breaking into a run along the boardwalk. Brüder could barely keep up with him as Langdon zigzagged into the darkness, following the signs for Medusa. Finally, he reached a dead end at a small viewing platform near the base of the cistern’s rightmost wall.
There before him was an incredible sight.
Rising out of the water was a colossal carved marble block—the head of Medusa—her hair writhing with snakes. Making her presence here even more bizarre was the fact that her head had been placed on her neck upside down.
Inverted as the damned, Langdon realized, picturing Botticelli’s Map of Hell and the inverted sinners he had placed in the Malebolge.
Brüder arrived breathless beside Langdon at the railing, staring out at the upside-down Medusa with a look of bewilderment.
Langdon suspected that this carved head, which now served as a plinth supporting one of the columns, had probably been pillaged from elsewhere and used here as an inexpensive building supply. The reason for Medusa’s inverted position was no doubt the superstitious belief that the inversion would rob her of her evil powers. Even so, Langdon could not shake off the barrage of haunting thoughts that assailed him.
Dante’s Inferno. The finale. The center of the earth. Where gravity inverts itself. Where up becomes down.
His skin now prickling with foreboding, Langdon squinted through the reddish haze that surrounded the sculpted head. Most of Medusa’s serpent-infested hair was submerged underwater, but her eyes were above the surface, facing to the left, staring out across the lagoon.
Fearfully, Langdon leaned over the railing and turned his head, letting his gaze follow the statue’s out into the familiar empty corner of the sunken palace.
In an instant, he knew.
This was the spot.
Zobrist’s ground zero.