The Aussie doctor held everyone back, shrugging a med pack from a shoulder. “We can’t stay down here long, folks,” Harper warned.
The doctor soaked a pile of 4x4 gauze sponges, then passed two or three to each person. “Keep your mouth and nose covered. Wipe your eyes down regularly.”
Elle followed her instructions, grateful for the relief.
The source of the burning stench was readily evident. It rose from the middle of the next chamber, where a deep pit bubbled with noxious black mud. It cast up belches of sulfurous gas, staining the air a foul yellow. The same, in powder form, was caked on the floor, walls, and ceiling.
“It’s a mudpot,” Jason said. “A blister of that geothermal energy that warms this place.”
“Only this will suffocate us if we don’t keep moving.” To hurry them on, Seichan pointed to what had caught her attention. “What do you make of these?”
Framing the entrance to the domed chamber, two tall pots—amphora-like jars—rested to either side of the tunnel.
“Whales and plants again,” Elle said. “Like on the walls.”
Jason held a wad of gauze over his lips and nose, while recording the pot on the left. “It’s not just whales carved into this pot, but all sorts of sea creatures.”
Gray moved to the pot on the right side, examining its carved images.
Elle followed and dropped to a knee, sweeping her light over its sculpted surface. “It’s the same carnivorous plant again.”
Gray stepped back to allow Jason to continue filming. “Both pots are empty,” he noted, “as if waiting to be filled.”
Gray pointed his flashlight back the way they had come. He cast his beam down one side of the tunnel, then the other. His expression was pinched with concentration.
Elle joined him. Despite the danger, curiosity throbbed through her. She noticed Gray’s expression softening, as if he were coming to some understanding.
“What are you thinking?” she asked him.
He turned, not rudely, just still ruminating. He faced the chamber with the bubbling cauldron. Three passageways extended outward from it: to the right and left and directly across the pit.
“We need to see more,” he simply stated and strode along the lip of rock surrounding the boiling mudpot.
The others followed. He cast his light into the two side tunnels as he passed them. The one to the left was covered in images of whales and sea life. The other was inscribed with a tangle of malignant-looking plants.
Same motif again.
Gray aimed for the far tunnel, where niches framed its entry. He was plainly drawn by the two amphorae inside, each three feet tall and sealed with lids. They were identical in appearance. One half of each pot had been carved with whales. The other half of each pot was inscribed all over with plants.
Gray brushed the caked sulfur off a pot. “Two sides of the same coin,” he muttered.
“But what’s up there?” Anna asked, pointing higher.
Above the passageway, another niche had been carved. Only this one was huge, half the size of the tunnel’s mouth. It showed figures gathered in a cave. Some looked as if they were beseeching their gods, raising their arms high. Others were down on their knees. Strange totems lined the back wall. The roof of the niche was inscribed with strange symbols and shapes.
“It looks like a ceremony or ritual,” Anna whispered.
Omryn nodded. “The Chukchi people do something like this. A prayer for the well-being of a family.”
Gray nodded, as if this made sense to him, then he passed into the tunnel under the niche. Elle kept up with him, no longer wishing to lag behind. The rest followed. The tunnel was short and featureless—but the chamber it dumped into was not.
Anna entered behind them, gawking all around. “This looks exactly like the carving outside.”
Elle nodded.
The ceiling bore the same arcane symbols. Totems stood stacked along the walls. In the room’s center, an elongated shallow depression stretched three meters, lined by rune-like markings. More of those two-faced pots rested along the walls.
Elle wandered deeper inside, forgetting for the moment the burning stench outside. She swore she could hear ancient chanting, the beat of drums, but it had to be her imagination.
