Chapter Thirty

An hour later, Gosswick, an experienced caver, was the last to abseil down to the cavern floor. All nine explorers stood in a circle with their rucksacks and supplies.

“We’ve entered what appears to be an old burial pit.” Trummel climbed up one of the bone piles. “This right here is the kind of discovery archaeologists live for. And we’ve found it!” His excitement echoed in the cavern.

Ely nudged Imogen. “I’ve dreamed of this place too.” He flipped through his pad of black sketches to show her one that matched the subterranean charnel house.

The vibration they had all felt earlier now coursed through Imogen, as if resonating from somewhere nearby. “The pulsing is stronger down here.”

“Maybe it’s all the bones giving off the vibration,” Ely said. “Maybe it’s their ghosts we’re feeling.”

The blind man shook his head. “No,” Dyfan said. “The vibration has another source.”

“Can you identify it?” Trummel asked his psychic.

Dyfan shook his head. “My clairvoyance is foggy down here. But I sense we’re getting close to your relics. In that direction.” He pointed toward the hills of bones.

Trummel started walking. “Onward then.”

Imogen felt a rush of adrenaline as she and the others followed Trummel’s lead. A trail wound through the mounds of broken skeletons. She guessed the number of dead was in the thousands. A noise like tumbling stones echoed off to the right. Everyone turned toward the sound, headlamps illuminating the white hills. Bones slid from the top of one of the mounds.

The soldiers aimed their pistols.

Ely backed up to the center of the group. “What’s disturbing the bones?”

“Probably the vibration of our footsteps,” Trummel said.

More rustling sounds came from behind the team. Other hills moved, releasing small avalanches. A human skull rolled onto the path between Quig’s feet.

“We’re standing still now,” the soldier said, panic creeping into his voice. “Why are the bones moving?”

Trummel picked up the pace. “Keep walking.”

The group moved with a sense of urgency. The mounds ended at a wall of bone that towered high above them.

This pit is more than just a burial ground, Imogen realized with a mix of wonder and horror. The hills of bones were stores of human bricks for a necropolis.

Everyone followed the wall, keeping their lights trained on the white mounds to their left. Imogen sensed they were being watched.

The soldiers kept their guns drawn, ready to fire. At last the group reached an archway made of human skulls. At the top, the centermost skull had the horns of a massive bull and a long upper jaw.

Sykes and Quig stepped through the archway first, shining their lights around. The rest of the explorers filed through one at a time. Beyond the entrance, a passage meandered through a bone labyrinth. The masonry matched nothing Imogen had seen before in Egyptian architecture. If the Egyptians didn’t build this, who did?

Lights probed the latticework of rib cages, and thatched walls built of humerus and femur bones twined together with clavicles and vertebrae. Every so often her light passed over bizarre patterns, like a skull embedded in a spider’s web of finger bones. In several places, tanned hides stretched across doorways. On closer inspection, Imogen saw that some of the skins suggested human anatomy. One bore a tattoo.

Everyone remained silent as they twisted through the maze.

As the beam of her headlamp pierced the slatted walls, Imogen couldn’t shake the feeling that something on the other side watched her.

With a gasp Trummel stepped through another bone archway. The group followed.

“It looks like some kind of museum,” Caleb said.

The square chamber was crowded with sculptures. Someone had erected skeletons in various stances. They were clad in decayed clothes and long-tarnished armor. Warriors. Several wore helmets, and had swords and shields tethered to their hands. Some warriors stood as though frozen in battle, their swords clashing.

“An exhibit of antiquities,” Imogen said, admiring a skeleton holding an Egyptian sword.

“These are Roman legionary soldiers,” Caleb said excitedly as he walked through a platoon of the dead. They wore silver helmets and shoulder plates with groin protection and wielded gladius swords and shields.

“This unit is Greek.” Trummel played his torch over another group of skeletons. These wore bronze Corinthian face helmets and carried spears. Others Trummel identified as Akkadian, Persian, and Sumerian, all arranged in chronological order according to when their civilizations had flourished.

“A display of changing war technologies?” Imogen said.

“No,” Trummel said. “These are the explorers who came before us.” He turned to Imogen. “Your grandfather came across numerous accounts of explorers through the ages, who entered these caves in search of its source. Most never returned. I thought they were myths.”

“I’m not sure I like what happens to those who succeed,” Caleb said.

“They’ve all been marked.” Imogen showed the others where the bones of a skeleton had been carved. The intricate designs were similar to art she’d seen scrimshawed on ivory. Only these etchings matched the indecipherable welts across her grandfather’s body. “Who built this place?” she said.

Trummel shook his head. “I haven’t the foggiest. This is just another one of the great mysteries of Kahf Alssulta.”

At the far end of the subterranean museum, in an alcove, they gathered around a stone pedestal where a giant two-legged skeleton towered over eight feet tall.

“Holy shit!” Ely said.

“What the hell is that?” Quig asked.

“Astonishing.” Trummel’s light traced the dead creature’s long bones and massive rib cage. An enormous skull, shaped like a prehistoric wildcat, had incisors that would put a tiger to shame.

“Bugger,” Gosswick muttered as he examined bony hands that fanned out like rakes. “Claws must be six inches.”

“Any idea what this beast was?” Caleb asked.

“A marvel. None of its kind has ever been discovered,” Trummel said, grinning. “Until now.”

“Perhaps it was assembled from the bones of other creatures to represent a deity,” Imogen offered.

Trummel frowned. “Of course, you’d try to debunk it. Look at the length of those femurs, the size of its teeth. Those aren’t assembled parts.”

She ignored his condescension. “We’re standing at an altar.” Her light shone across decorative human skulls that had been left on the pedestal at the skeleton’s enormous feet. “These look like offerings.” Broken skullcaps, made into bowls, contained thick, lichen-covered liquids that smelled like mud and fungus.

Trummel told the others to step aside while he posed in front of the giant skeleton. “Beckett, take my photo. This is definitely one for your magazine.”

Caleb snapped a shot with his camera. The flash caused the monstrous skull to burn like a ghost in Imogen’s mind. Before she could begin to speculate what species this thing belonged to, or why the contents in the offering bowls looked fresh, Trummel was on the move again.