“We have to tie him up,” Bran rasped, hand at his bruised throat.
We dragged the man into a shallow chamber. Bran sliced off several strips of my underskirt and, with deft movements, soon had the unconscious man bound and gagged.
“Hurry,” he said. “They’ll find him soon enough.”
He picked up the guard’s stuttering torch and we hurried down the tunnel. When Eustace Clarkson’s boot prints veered into a left passage, we went right.
We passed through archways and down damp stone steps. Cobwebs draped the ceiling, and water dripped from everywhere. The passage here seemed much older, cut into the very bedrock of the earth. When the tunnel narrowed until I could touch both sides, fear began to nip at me.
We’d made it to the crypt. Tombs lined both walls from floor to ceiling, like file cabinets of death. The names were mostly worn away, though some showed the carved words. As we moved deeper, twisting and turning, we saw that some of the seals had crumbled away completely, revealing grinning skulls and flashes of other bone.
Finally, we reached a dead end. This time, Bran’s frustration showed. He slammed his boot into the offending wall. “Damn! I was so certain this was the right way!”
“It’s okay,” I soothed. “Hang out here for a second, I’ll backtrack and check the other tunnel.”
Hurrying back the way we’d come, I saw that the passage we hadn’t chosen was also blocked.
I returned, brushing cobwebs from my hair. “Hey, we’ll need to double back at least . . .”
Bran’s lit torch hung in a rusted iron holder. Bran himself was gone. He was gone. And I was alone.
Chapter 45
MY VOICE SHOOK, “THIS ISN’T FUNNY, YOU KNOW.”
Silence.
“Bran?”
A crunch from deep in the tunnels. A random chunk of stone? Eustace? Bony fingers crawling from a grave? I yanked the torch from the wall and waved it out in front of me like a sword, pressing my back against the wall.
“Bran,” I hissed as the terror ate into me.
“Yes?” Bran’s voice said from just behind me.
I whirled, torch raised to strike. He squeezed the rest of the way out—as if from the stone itself. I stared at him, dumbfounded. “Wha—how?”
Then I saw it. A cleverly constructed false wall that folded back on itself. You had to be at the perfect angle to even find it.
I lowered the torch. “Fabulous,” I snapped. “But if you ever leave me like that again, I may have to kill you.”
Three sharp turns and a descent down four flights of nearly vertical steps took us to another world. At the bottom, the floor morphed from slick gray stone to a mosaic that shone in jewel colors where our footprints dislodged the dirt.
Excited, I tugged on his arm. “The cave under my aunt’s house has a floor like this. That’s gotta be good, right?”
The torchlight revealed elegant fluted columns supporting a ceiling that swirled in black and white concentric circles.
“Roman?” I wondered aloud. “Or . . . no, I think it’s even older than that.”
We stopped beside a dust-choked bronze sculpture. Waist high, it’d been cleverly molded into a cupped hand.
“There’s some very ancient wood here.” Bran peered down into the sculpture’s palm. “I think this was for fires.”
He set the torch to the dry kindling, and in moments light flickered, revealing the huge statue that dominated the chamber.
She was an angel. Or more likely a pagan goddess. Much, much older than the saints guarding the congregation above. The woman’s blank eyes stared down into her own cupped palm.
“That must be her,” Bran said. “The lady. The entrance to the Source has to be around here somewhere.”
While he searched the perimeter, I puttered around the base of the statue, staring up into the serene face. Curious, I scrambled onto the square plinth, using the statue’s marble skirts to steady myself. As I perched next to her, my arm around her slim waist for support, I leaned out to peer down into her hand.
A globe-shaped object rested in it, as if she kept watch over the world in miniature. Reaching out, I touched it. Something flaked off. I scratched at it, and another white chunk fell away. Frantic now, I gouged at the object. Tiny pieces of ancient painted clay crumbled beneath my touch, revealing what was hidden beneath. As the object came free at last, I plucked it from her palm. And stared.
“Bran.” Excitement edged my voice. “Come here. Now!”
I beamed down at him. “Heads up.”
His nimble hands flew, snatching what I knew, without a doubt, had to be the true Nonius Stone. “Bugger me,” he breathed. “You found it.”
This time there was no question. Even in the low light, the black stone sparked with all the colors of the rainbow, just as Pliny had described. Red and violet. Green, orange, yellow, and blue.