Authors: Robert Storey
♦
The next day the oppressive, sunless sky sought to dampen the spirits of the three explorers as they homed in on the City of Tancama. Victor Fernandez had provided Sarah with a detailed map of the site and directions to get there, something that in the dark would prove very handy indeed. They took with them, as ever, the finds from the other sites, along with the bare essentials for their trade, including the all-important scanner.
A taxi cab they’d requisitioned mid-morning dropped them off next to a small visitor centre and, collecting their gear, they switched on their torches and struggled into the unfenced historical city. Utilising a pop up tent they created a base camp and then assessed the map Victor had supplied. Tancama consisted of three main squares, El Mirador, Santiago and La Promesa. The drawings indicated most of the structures were round and the largest square, El Mirador, contained the majority of them, thirteen in all.
‘We’ll start here.’ Sarah pointed at El Mirador.
‘What are we looking for, exactly?’ Jason said.
‘More of the same, really, anything that has symbols on it that resemble the ones on my pendant or those in the parchments.’
‘Surely Fernandez would have known that?’ Trish said.
‘I don’t think so. He only deals with the language side of things, he wouldn’t normally visit locations and he would have mentioned to me if he’d been here himself. Besides, they only first saw the gigantis symbols a year ago and most of the people who saw them are no longer around.’
‘Which makes our brush with those guys in Turkey even more frightening,’ Trish said. ‘We were lucky they released us instead of—’ She made a face and left the implication hanging.
‘I was wondering about that,’ Jason said. ‘I think our off the grid exploration was what saved us; we were too inconsequential to bother about, whereas the Museum was too well-respected to be let alone.’
Sarah adjusted the beam on her torch. ‘Or whatever they found at Teotihuacán was far beyond anything we recovered.’
‘Hmm. Makes you wonder,’ Jason said. ‘Those bastards, they have their hands on all this stuff we can only dream of. I wonder where they keep it all?’
‘God knows, some huge vault somewhere,’ Sarah said. ‘Right, let’s stop talking about this, it’s making me angry. So, we’re looking for symbols but we also need to scan the site for any chambers, like those we’ve found previously. Alternatively, we may find some more bones, or, if we’re lucky, another canister. Sound good?’
Trish nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘Baggsy scanner,’ Jason said quickly.
‘What?’ Trish frowned in annoyance. ‘It’s my turn first.’
‘You snooze, you lose,’ Jason told her triumphantly, slinging the scanner’s carry strap over his shoulder before she could react.
‘Fine,’ she said, relenting, ‘but you can make the dinner.’
Jason grinned. ‘Excellent. Sarah, we’ll be eating decent food tonight … for once.’
Sarah laughed and Trish made a swipe at him.
‘Git!’ she called after him as he fled from her with his scanner in tow.
Sometime later, with the three friends each searching different sections of the site, progress was slow as Jason had to prioritise where he scanned. At over four hectares and with no specific locus to target they had their work cut out.
Sarah walked around her third edifice, the light of her powerful hand torch skimming over rocks and stone. The monuments were primarily constructed out of large stone slabs and so far the city didn’t seem to contain any carvings or internal rooms that she could see.
A few more hours passed and if the dust cloud hadn’t been encircling the Earth the sun would’ve been starting to set. Sarah wondered how the area looked in sunlight; pretty glorious, she decided sadly. As she walked back to the camp, she heard a distant shout that sounded like Trish had found something. Being careful not to trip up in the dark, she trotted along, her beam bobbing along in front of her to guide her way.
Not long after she found Trish standing alone at the top of a huge mound, which had been encased in thousands of stone blocks. Unlike the others this building was square. Trish shone her light in Sarah’s direction, blinding her as she climbed up to meet her friend. Sarah held up her hand to shield her eyes, but Trish had already switched it back to illuminate something at her feet.
‘What have you got?’ Sarah said, tense with excitement.
‘It’s difficult to say,’ Trish replied. ‘This is my fourth building and I’ve seen nothing resembling symbols, carvings, hieroglyphs or anything like that until I got here.’
Sarah looked down at the patch of ground lit up by Trish’s torch.
Sunk into the earth and surrounded by grass was a single stone, measuring a metre in length and half that in width. Something might have been carved onto its surface, but hundreds of years of wear had taken its toll.
‘I think they might be the symbols we’re looking for,’ Trish said. ‘What do you think?’
Sarah wasn’t sure what she thought. The erosion on the stone was great and the marks so indistinct that it was impossible to tell if they were even man-made, let alone the symbols they searched for. ‘It’s hard to tell,’ she said finally.
‘What about these two here?’ Trish crouched down and traced two large marks with her hand.
‘They might be, you’re right, but equally they could be any number of things.’
‘What could be what?’ Jason said, puffing as he reached their sides with the scanner in his arms.
Trish pointed out the possible carved symbols to him.
‘Well, I’ve just been scanning for hours and found diddly-squat, and this is the only place with any kind of marks on that I’ve seen so I’ll fire this baby up and have a butcher’s. Stand back, ladies!’ he said with an ostentatious wave of his arm.
Trish rolled her eyes at Sarah, who smiled in return.
The scanner buzzed to life and Jason scoured the ground under and around the stone slab. He found nothing until he tried a different setting.
‘I think there’s something under this,’ he said at last, showing Sarah and Trish the scanner’s display screen.
‘Another chamber?’ Sarah asked him as she peered over his shoulder for a look.
‘No, I’m not sure what it is. The setting it’s on identifies ceramics, so it’s not metal or bone.’
‘It’s relatively close to the surface,’ Sarah said, ‘a few feet down. I’ll go grab some tools.’
Rushing off, she was soon back laden with a couple of shovels and some smaller hand tools, plus a lamp, which she placed on the ground atop a small tripod for elevation.
After excavating the stone, which didn’t take long, they lifted it up and moved it to one side; it was heavy, but between the three of them they were able to manhandle it well enough.
A few hours of digging eventually revealed a dense mosaic of interlocking stones. Tightly wedged against each other, the blocks had been adorned with deeply carved hieroglyphs akin to the stelae back in Copán, with a single distinct image formed in their centre.
‘Is it me or does that look like the Aztec calendar stone to you?’ Jason said, as they looked down on their discovery.
‘Pretty much,’ Sarah said, ‘albeit on a smaller scale.’
‘So what’s it doing here made up of Mayan markings?’
‘They’re not Mayan,’ Trish told him, ‘they’re Olmec, and by the look of them they could be well over three thousand years old. The fact that they resemble the Aztec design is,’ – she paused, her brow furrowing – ‘disturbing.’
‘How so?’ Jason asked her.
‘The Olmecs predated the Aztecs by a good two thousand years; for this design to appear here throws up some problematic questions about how the Mesoamerican civilisations interacted with one another.’
Sarah wasn’t interested in the historical human connotations; she wanted evidence of a far older origin. ‘I think this might be a tomb,’ she said. ‘This looks like a cover stone, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe,’ Jason said, ‘but if it is, they weren’t very tall, definitely not of gigantis proportions, anyway.’
‘Unless they were curled up in a foetal position,’ Trish suggested.
He looked sceptical. ‘Hmm, even then—’
Bending down, Sarah withdrew her trowel. ‘Only one way to find out,’ she said, and placed its blade between a couple of edging stones, before forcing it down with a few strikes from a hammer in an attempt to prise one out. They were well lodged in, however, and refused to budge, but after inserting another trowel, she managed to loosen one. Levering it out with care, she noted its thickness and weight, just under a foot and a good fifteen kilos, a substantial covering by anyone’s book.
‘There’s something odd under here,’ Sarah said, as she probed the dirt beneath with her fingers. Using a soft brush she dusted off the loose earth, revealing a shiny substrate. ‘Help me get the rest of these off,’ she said, moving to the next piece.
It took some time to remove all the blocks and, when the task was finally completed, they retreated from the trench to admire their labour. Below them rested a strange, perfectly smooth, oblong slab. It certainly wasn’t stone, as it had an opalescent sheen to it almost resembling glass, the faint reflection from the branches of a nearby tree just discernable on its surface.
‘Not a tomb, then,’ Trish said.
‘Well, this explains the signal I got from the scanner,’ Jason said, ‘although it doesn’t look like any ceramic I’ve ever seen before.’
Sarah dropped back down to run her palm across it. ‘It’s completely uniform – absolutely flat.’
‘What the hell is it?’ Jason said, joining her as he too bent down to feel the odd-looking substrate.
Trish moved to dig around one end to try and expose the bottom edge. ‘Guys, there’s another section here,’ she said, as her trowel met with resistance.
They worked on the new area for a further half an hour until it was free of soil. ‘It looks like some kind of platform,’ Jason said, looking down at it.
Sarah had to agree. The new section sat a foot lower than the main object, although the two were clearly connected and of the same material. Their latest discovery was also perfectly square; however, one faultless feature stood out from all the rest – a large sunken circle, positioned in its centre.
Chapter Twenty Five
Sarah looked at the unearthed circle and instinctively knew what she had to do. Taking off her jacket and laying it on the ground, she sat down on it and removed her shoes and socks.
‘What are you doing?’ Trish asked her, curious.
‘There’s no hysterical people round here, you know,’ Jason said, also intrigued by her actions.
‘It’s a circle,’ she told them by way of explanation.
‘Yeah, so what?’ Jason said, clearly not realising her intention.
She stood up and wiggled her toes in the cold air, a ticklish breeze flowing over them. ‘Where have we seen circles before?’
‘The parchments, of course!’ Trish said, catching on.
‘You think this is a big version?’ Jason said.
Sarah grinned at him and stepped onto the circle. The surface felt surprisingly cold on her skin and she padded about on it for a moment as her feet adjusted to the temperature. When she stood in one place she thought she could feel a tingling sensation on the soles of her feet, but it could just have been excitement flushing through her system. Rolling up her sleeves, she then released the smaller pendant from her neck chain and secured it in a zipped trouser pocket, allowing the larger pendant to touch the skin on her chest without interference. ‘Hold my arms,’ she told them.
Jason took off his left glove and placed his hand on her right arm.
‘Trish?’ Sarah said, looking to her friend.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Trish looked at the object they had unearthed with trepidation. ‘We don’t know what it does.’
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Sarah said. ‘Come on, it’ll be fine.’ She gave her friend an encouraging nudge with an elbow. Trish took off her gloves and reluctantly put her right hand on Sarah’s left arm, but as soon as she did so a sensation swept past beneath Sarah’s feet, making her jump.
Trish snatched her hand away. ‘What’s wrong!?’ she said in alarm.
‘Sorry.’ Sarah looked down at the platform. ‘It got warm.’
‘What did, the circle?’ Jason asked her.
‘No – yes,’ she said in surprise, ‘both, in fact, the circle and the pendant.’ She touched the now cold metal pentagonal disc at her neck. ‘Come on, let’s try again.’
They put their hands back on her arms and again Sarah felt the pendant and circle heat up. Nothing else happened at first, but as the warmth slowly increased an indistinct glow began to emanate from the larger slab in front of them, gradually increasing in intensity. The three friends looked on mesmerised as the surface shimmered and shifted, and faint colours crept to the fore, swirling and writhing in a myriad of intertwining patterns. Darker shades formed to coalesce in its centre, while light now poured out from the edges. Sarah felt Trish’s fingers slipping off her arm and she caught them with her right hand, keeping them firmly in place. The light show continued to build, then vanished, plunging them into darkness, and a great rush of air blew past them into the sky.
As their eyes adjusted back to the small single lamp positioned nearby they saw that, where before there had been the ceramic slab, there was now a dark, forbidding hole.
‘Give me a torch,’ Sarah said to no one in particular as she looked into the darkness below. A torch appeared under her nose as Jason passed her his. Taking it, she clicked it on and pointed it into the opening. The light revealed a vertical shaft hewn out of the bedrock. Ten feet from the surface a side wall had collapsed inwards, sealing whatever lay beyond it beneath an immovable mass of stone.
‘It doesn’t look like it goes anywhere,’ Trish said, disappointed, ‘but this mechanism or doorway is just – well – it’s the crowning glory isn’t it? Who could dispute this?’ She looked to her friends in expectation, waiting for the celebrations to begin. Sarah and Jason, however still peered intently down into the shaft.
‘I think there’s a way through.’ Sarah moved around the opening to get a better look. ‘Yes, look, just there, there’s a hole.’