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Before he could utter a cry of alarm, Maddock was swept off his feet. In an instant, the still pool in which he stood had transformed into a rushing, irresistible torrent, and he was caught in it. The raging water engulfed him completely, pulling at him, trying to carry him along like a piece of driftwood, but something kept him from moving... No, not something, but someone.
Bones had one hand clamped on his right shoulder, and the other gripping the wall of the passage to prevent himself from being swept away.
After only a second or two, the fury of the current seemed to abate. Maddock was no longer fully immersed in it, but merely laying in what felt like a shallow wave retreating from a beach. In the time it took for him to rise up on his elbows, the water had completely drained away, vanished into the gaping hole in the floor where Slava and Riddle had been standing only a moment before.
“Max! Slava!” Maddock called out as he started for the newly created opening. He only managed a single step before Bones hauled him back.
“Hold on,” Bones said, his tone urgent. “Take it slow.”
Maddock immediately grasped the reason for Bones’ warning. The excavation had ended above a hollow space, possibly a limestone karst formation, and three decades of water seeping through the rock and accumulating down at the lowest point had been steadily dissolving the floor of the passage. The added weight of Max and Slava had been just enough to cause the floor to crumble into a sinkhole, and there was a very good chance that additional weight might hasten further collapse.
Maddock nodded to indicate that he understood, but wasn’t about to give up on the others. “Hold my legs,” he said, and rolled over onto his belly, facing the hole.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Bones said. He unlimbered one of the coils of rope, tied a quick bowline knot in one end, and then handed the resulting loop to Maddock. “Clip in.”
Maddock took the rope and hooked it to the loop on the front of his climbing harness. Bones payed out more rope, which he looped around his upper torso, and then sat back on the floor of the passage with his legs spread out, the soles of his boots jammed against the sides of the passage.
“All right,” Bones said, “Now you can go.”
“Moving,” Maddock said, and then began sliding toward the edge of the sinkhole again, shouting as he moved. “Max!”
To his astonishment and relief, he heard Riddle’s answering cry. “Dane!”
“Are you okay? Is Slava with you?” He reached out for the edge of the fissure, hooked his fingers over the lip, and began cautiously pulling himself toward it.
“We’re both okay,” Riddle replied. “Just a little wet.”
Maddock inched forward until he was able to peer down into the hole. The beam of his headlight was reflected back from the rippling surface of a body of water, some thirty feet or so below. It took him a moment to spot Riddle and Slava—they were no longer directly below, but had found dry ground—a little rock shelf that jutted out into the water, about twenty feet or so from where they had fallen in. Both were conscious and looked shaken and bedraggled, but otherwise uninjured.
“I’m going to drop a rope down to you.” He rolled onto his side to look back at Bones. “Looks like we’ll need about sixty feet.”
Bones let out a little more slack on Maddock’s safety line, and then shucked off a second coil of rope. “Not going to be easy to pull them out,” he said as he readied the rope for use. “No good anchors here.”
“We’ll have to make do,” Maddock replied. “Between the two of us, we should be able to—”
With another loud crack, the stone beneath Maddock collapsed, plunging him into the sinkhole. He flailed his arms reflexively, seeking out the safety line even as it went taut, snapping him around into an out of control windmill.
He heard Bones shout a warning, and then dropped another foot before jolting to a halt. A faint scrabbling sound reached him, followed by a shower of rock fragments. Despite his best efforts to brace himself against the sides of the passage, Bones was being pulled toward the edge.
Another abrupt drop, another violent jolt.
Maddock knew that Bones didn’t have a prayer of finding a stable position to arrest his fall, much less begin pulling him back.
“Slack!” he shouted. “Slack. Let it out.”
Maddock didn’t know if Bones would be able to comply in the moment or two left to them, so he did the only thing he could. He pulled on the line, lifting himself just enough to lighten the load against his harness, and then with his free hand, unclipped the carabiner. As soon as the rope loop was free of the shackle, he let go.
As he fell, Maddock twisted, trying to reposition himself so that he would splash down more or less on his backside. It wasn’t a high fall, and the fact that Riddle and Slava hadn’t sustained any injuries in their completely uncontrolled fall led him to believe that the water below was fairly deep, but he wasn’t going to risk a broken leg by going in feet first.
It was the right call. He plunged into the water, and then, as he was completely engulfed, felt his butt scrape against solid rock. Cushioned by the layer of water, the impact wasn’t enough to cause injury, but as he rebounded back to the surface, he realized he had a new concern. The water wasn’t as still as it had appeared from above. There was a current—not a fast one, but nevertheless constant—pulling him away from where he’d gone in, pulling him toward the outcropping where Riddle and Slava had washed up.
He rolled over, fumbling to plant his boot soles on the bed of the underground river, which he judged to be only about four or five feet deep.
It turned out to be closer to five. His natural buoyancy kept him just high enough in the water that he could not get a purchase, and so was dragged along by the current.
Abandoning the effort to stand, he leaned forward and reached out with both arms, pulling himself through the water with long overhand swim strokes, kicking his feet hard to propel him closer to the edge of the flow. The current quickened, creating eddies that threatened to swirl him back out into the middle of the channel, so he dropped his feet again, and this time, felt his toes dragging along in water that was only about two feet deep.
A light flashed in his face—someone’s headlamp shining right at him, and only a few feet away. He dug in and then thrust himself toward it, reaching out with both hands hoping to snare the outcropping. Instead, he felt hands close around his wrists, and then he was being pulled out of the water, up onto the relatively dry ground.
He was vaguely aware of voices—Riddle and Slava—asking if he was all right, but for a few seconds, all he could do was lie there, taking deep breaths until the adrenaline finally drained out of his bloodstream. When the jitters finally stopped, he pushed himself up to a sitting position.
He took a moment to take in their new surroundings. The walls were a pale color, unnaturally smooth in some places, particularly near the water line. High above the flowing water, the roof was studded with stalactites that looked like dripping candle wax. Unlike the passage above, this was a natural cavern, carved out by the flow of the underground river rather than tools and human labor.
“You okay, Dane?” Riddle asked again.
“I’m okay, Just bruised my dignity.”
Riddle clapped his shoulder. “I know the feeling.”
Maddock looked up at him sidelong to avoid shining his headlamp directly into the man’s eyes. “You sound pretty upbeat for someone who’s stranded in a sinkhole.”
“I’d say so.”
Maddock raised an eyebrow. He looked past Riddle to Slava. Judging by her pinched expression, she did not share Riddle’s joie de vivre.
“Don’t you get it?” Riddle went on. “Nikolov told Colonel Stefanov that the excavation got within six meters of the resting place of the First Human Ancestor.”
He pointed up at the dark hole in the ceiling through which they had entered. “Looks like about six meters to me.”
“I’d say closer to ten,” Maddock replied.
“That’s not the point, Dane. The remote viewers sensed that they were close to something, and they were. If they’d have kept going, they would have found this.”
“Found what, Max? An underground river? That’s all this is.”
“That’s all we’ve seen so far. We need to have a look around.”
Maddock shook his head. “What we need to do is get out of this hole.” He cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted, “Bones! Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” came the reply. “But I don’t think I’m going to be able to pull you out of there. Not without a better anchor.”
“Better head back up. Tell Corey he’s going to have to suck it up and help out down here.”
“Will do.”
Riddle chose that moment to shout, practically in Maddock’s ear. “Tell him to bring the drone. We can use it to scope out this cavern.”
Maddock rolled his eyes, but Bones just shouted another affirmative. “Sit tight,” he finished, “I’ll be right back.”
“You heard the man,” Maddock said, sinking down onto his haunches. “It’ll probably take him an hour to make the round trip, so we might as well relax. I don’t suppose anyone brought along a granola bar?”
“What if they can’t pull us up?” Slava asked, sounding more than a little worried.
“Bones will figure something out,” Maddock replied confidently. “Worst case scenario, he has to call in a rescue team.”
Rather than easing her concerns, this suggestion only seemed to heighten Slava’s anxiety.
“Maybe there’s another way out,” suggested Riddle. “This river has to empty somewhere.”
“Somewhere may be an aquifer that’s even deeper than we are right now. Even if it does come out somewhere we want to be, there’s too much risk. The river might flow through cracks that are too small for us to fit through. Or through sections that are completely submerged. How long can you hold your breath, Max?”
Slava shook her head. “He’s right. It is like Dyavolsko Garlo—Devil’s Throat Cave—in the south near the Rhodope Mountains. It is the second largest cave in Bulgaria. A river flows into it from a waterfall, almost forty meters high, and then drains away through a submerged passage. It eventually joins with an underground river only one hundred fifty meters away, but nothing that falls into Devil’s Throat ever comes out the other side. Scientists have used dye to show that it takes water more than ninety minutes to come out.”
“I’ve heard about Devil’s Throat,” Riddle said. “A lot of scholars believe it was the passage that took Orpheus into the Underworld. It’s also rumored to be the Abyss described in the Bible, where the fallen angels who sired the Nephilim were imprisoned.” He grinned. “It’s actually the next place I want to explore for the show.”
Slava frowned. “In 1970s, two SCUBA divers disappeared trying to explore the hidden channel. Their bodies were never found.”
Maddock gave her a nod of acknowledgement. “Exactly my point. We’re not going to take chances like that. Not when Bones and Corey are right up there, ready to pull us back out.”
Riddle crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. “Well can we at least look around a little while we’re here?”
Maddock recalled how the current had almost carried him away, or at least it had seemed that way. He had been disoriented after the fall, and had probably panicked just a little.
“The current isn’t very powerful,” he told them, “but if you lose your footing and fall in, it might be strong enough to take you somewhere you don’t want to go.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Maddock sighed. “Our best chance of doing this will be to stay together, arms locked together. I’m talking deathgrip tight. If one of us slips, the other two have to keep him... or her... from going in.” He turned to Slava. “If you don’t want to do this...”
“I will try,” she said, sounding none-too-enthusiastic. “If there is something here, I want to see with my own eyes.”
“Solid,” Max said, a little too eagerly.
“All right,” Maddock said. “We’ll go upstream. That way, if we fall and get caught in the current, we’ll be able to come right back here.”
He slid from the ledge and lowered himself into the river. The stone riverbed under his feet was smooth and slippery. He felt the current immediately, not quite powerful enough to knock him down, but not something to be taken for granted. Keeping a wide stance for balance, he reached out a hand to the others. “Slava, you’re next.”
She swallowed nervously, but took his hand, and then tentatively stepped into the water. For a second or two, she jerked his arm back and forth, overcorrecting in her attempts to keep her balance, but he kept a firm grip on her and she did not fall. When she was finally steady, he guided her away from the ledge and hooked his left arm around her right elbow. Then, he reached back to Riddle. “Your turn, Max.”
Riddle’s transition went smoothly, and a few seconds later, the three of them were arm-in-arm, sidestepping up the riverbed.
It was like walking through tar. Every step was a herculean effort, made all the more difficult because of the need to synchronize with the other two, but they gradually worked their way upstream, passing under the place where they had broken through. The hole in the ceiling was dark and would stay that way until Bones returned. They kept going.
About fifty feet past that point, the cavern widened out considerably, which had the effect of making the river shallower—it was just ankle deep where they were standing—and significantly diminishing the power of the current. Maddock took a moment to savor the respite. “Okay,” he said, “I think we can take our seat belts off and move about the cabin.”
Slava stared back at him, bemused. “Seat belts?”
“I think he means we can let go of each other,” Riddle explained, and then pointed to an odd shadow on the wall directly ahead. “Dane, check that out. Does that look like a cave?”
Maddock shone his light on the spot, which appeared to be a low recess, a couple feet wide, but rising only about eight inches above the waterline. “Could be,” Maddock allowed. He moved cautiously toward it, and crouched down for a better look. “It looks like it’s mostly underwater. Could be a tributary source for this river.”
Riddle grinned. “Just mostly underwater?”
Maddock was curious despite himself. “I’ll check it out, but if I run out of headspace, I’m turning around.”
The opening was so low that moving forward required Maddock to low crawl on his belly through the shallow water, with his head turned to the side and angled up to keep mouth and nose above the surface. It was awkward but thankfully the ceiling lifted a few feet in, allowing him to push up onto his hands and knees. The floor of the passage rose also, until the water was merely a thin sheen rolling over and around the irregular rocks on its way down to the underground river.
Maddock crawled up the slight incline until there was enough headroom to rise into a crouch, and then he shone his headlamp into the surrounding darkness.
Something glinted back.
He scooted toward the reflection, half expecting it to be nothing more interesting than an exposed vein of iron pyrite, but as he neared it, he saw that it wasn’t the mineral commonly called “fool’s gold.”
It was the real deal.
Real gold.
He knew the metal was gold without touching it, weighing it in his hands, or testing its relative softness, for one simple reason. The gold was not in a form usually found in nature—not dust, or nuggets, or even ore—but was rather in the shape of several disks, each about an inch or so in diameter.
Coins.
Dozens of them. Hundreds. The coins, and the rotted remains of the chest that had once contained them, were resting in a little nook that had been chiseled into the cave wall.
He picked up one of the coins, held it close for inspection. It was slightly irregular in shape and rather than being perfectly flat, was slightly cupped like a contact lens. Rather than heads and tails, both sides depicted stylized human figures, along with crosses and little symbols that might have been letters.
He set it back down, and then carefully removed the lid of the chest. Time and moisture had transformed the wood into something the consistency of soggy newspaper, and it fell apart in his hands, but not before revealing more coins, and something else.
It was a bowl, a little bigger than both his hands cupped together, and partially filled with coins. He began removing the latter with meticulous care, to expose the dark, faintly yellow patina of tarnished silver, and then teased the vessel out of the chest. It was slightly oblong, smooth almost all the way around its circumference, but on one side there were a pair of round indentations, a little more than an inch in diameter, and a little less than an inch apart, and into each, a dark red gemstone—probably a garnet—had been set. The exterior was studded with more cabochon cut gems—yellow, red, and green—and the wide-footed stem protruding from the bottom suggested that it was actually an oversized wine goblet.
Something about the shape and the set of the two garnets looked eerily familiar, and when he turned the cup upside down, his suspicions were confirmed.
The vessel had been fashioned to resemble the top half of an inverted, life-sized human skull.
“Guys,” he shouted without looking back. “You should probably come in here.”