The Bone Labyrinth (3 page)

Wrightson spoke as they followed a path through the maze of boulders and shattered trunks. “A local bird watcher stumbled upon the destruction here after last month’s quake. He was hiking early enough in the morning to see steam rising from between a few boulders, hinting at the possibility of a cavern system below.”

“And you believe the recent earthquake cracked this system open?” Lena asked.

“Indeed.” Wrightson waved an arm. “Not a particularly surprising outcome. This whole range is made up mostly of karst, a form of limestone. All the rainfall and abundant springs have made this region a geological playground, full of marvels. Underground rivers, sinkholes, caves—you name it.”

Roland stared at Arnaud. “But it was
more
than just an old cave you found here.”

Wrightson glanced back, his eyes glinting with amused excitement. “Best we don’t ruin the surprise. Isn’t that right, Dr. Arnaud?”

The paleontologist grumbled sourly, a match to the scowl that seemed permanently etched on his features. While Wrightson was gregarious and outgoing, the Frenchman was his dark shadow, ever grim and meanspirited. The researcher was only a few years older than Roland, who was thirty-two, but Arnaud’s attitude made him seem far older. Roland suspected much of Arnaud’s attitude rose from his annoyance at both his and the American’s inclusion here today. Roland knew how some scientists could become very territorial about their work.

“Ah, here we are!” Wrightson declared, stepping forward to the top of a ladder that protruded from a nondescript hole in the ground.

Focused on the goal, Roland missed the figure standing in the shadow of a boulder until the large man stepped into the sunlight. He had a rifle resting on his shoulder. Though the guard was dressed in civilian clothes, his stiff stance, the sharp creases in his clothes, and the steely glint in his eyes all suggested a military background. Even his black hair was shaved to stubble, looking more like a peaked skullcap.

He spoke rapidly to Arnaud in French.

Roland didn’t speak the language, but from the attitude, the guard plainly was not subservient to the paleontologist, more a colleague on equal footing. The guard pointed toward the darkening skies, seeming to be arguing about whether to allow them to go below. Finally he cursed, stepped to a generator, and yanked on a cord, setting the engine to rumbling.

“That would be Commandant Henri Gerard,” Wrightson introduced. “He’s with the Chasseurs Alpins, the elite French mountain infantry. He and his men have been keeping anyone from trespassing here.”

Roland glanced around, trying to spot any other soldiers, but he failed.

“A sad but necessary precaution, I’m afraid,” Wrightson continued. “After the birder discovered this possible entrance, he contacted a caving club to investigate. Lucky for us, the club’s members adhere to a strict and secretive code of conduct. When they discovered the importance of what lay below, they preserved what they found and reached out to their French comrades, those who oversaw the preservation of such famous caves as Chauvet and Lascaux.”

With a background in art history, Roland understood the significance of mentioning those two caves. The sites were famous for their Paleolithic cave art, paintings done by the oldest ancestors of modern man.

He stared toward the opening, suspecting now what must lie below.

Lena also understood. “Did you find cave artwork down there?”

Wrightson lifted one eyebrow. “Oh, we found so much more.” His gaze settled on Roland. “It’s why we contacted the Vatican, Father Novak . . . why you were summoned from the Croatian Catholic University in Zagreb to join us.”

Roland peered down into the tunnel. As thunder rumbled in the distance, dread drew him to touch the white Roman collar at his neck.

Arnaud spoke in his heavily accented voice, his disdain ringing clear. “Father Novak, you are here to witness and verify the miracle we’ve found.”

11:15
A
.
M
.

Lena climbed down the ladder, following Wrightson and Arnaud. A power cable paralleled their path, leading from the generator above toward the faint glow of lights below. Like the others, she wore a caving helmet with its own lamp. Her heart pounded in her ears, from excitement but also from a touch of claustrophobia.

She spent most of her time locked up in some genetics lab, her eyes fixed to a microscope or reading code off a computer monitor. Whenever she had free time, she escaped into any wild places afforded her. Lately that was mainly the ribbons of parklands running alongside the rivers that crisscrossed Leipzig. She missed the wooded acres that surrounded her former research station outside of Atlanta. She also missed her twin sister—a geneticist like her—who continued working on their joint project in the States, while she did ancillary work here in Europe, which meant spending sixteen to eighteen hours a day building ancient code from bits of decaying bone or teeth.

If this cave was truly some lost Paleolithic site, rich in fossilized remains and artifacts, she could guess her role here: to carefully collect samples for analysis back at her lab. The Max Planck Institute was well respected for its ability to sift through old bones for fragments of DNA and reconstruct those ancient sequences.

Lena stared between her boots as she scaled the ladder, wondering what she might discover below. She wished her sister Maria were here to share this moment.

A slight gasp sounded above her as Father Novak slipped slightly on the ladder, but he quickly caught himself. She frowned a bit, wondering yet again why the priest had been enlisted here. En route from Zagreb, she had engaged the man in conversation, learning that he taught medieval history at the university, a strange background for someone exploring a prehistoric cave.

She finally reached the base of the ladder, and Wrightson helped her down and pointed for her to follow Arnaud, who crouched and continued along a tunnel. She ducked her head under the low roof, but she still kept bumping the top of her helmet and bobbling the beam of her lamp. The air here was actually warmer than that of the chilly morning above, but it was heavy with moisture—the limestone walls damp to the touch, the ground slippery with wet silt.

After a bit of traversing, Arnaud finally straightened ahead of her. She joined him, stretching a kink in her back as she stood—then froze at the sight before her.

A cave opened ahead of them, fanged with stalactites and stalagmites. The walls ran with drapes of flowstone, while the ceiling was festooned with elaborate chandeliers of spiraling snow-white crystals, ranging from twisting tiny straws to antler-like horns.

“A spectacular showcase of helictites,” Wrightson said, noting her attention as he stood. “Those types of speleothems grow from capillary forces pushing water through microscopic cracks. Takes about a century to grow a few centimeters.”

“Amazing,” she whispered, afraid even her very breath might disturb the fragile-looking displays.

Arnaud spoke more sternly. “Take care from here. Walk only on the ladders we’ve laid out as bridges across the cavern floor. What’s preserved underfoot is as important as what hangs overhead.”

The paleontologist continued to lead the way, stepping along a thin trestle of steel treads that led deeper into the cavern. A handful of light panels, powered from the generator above, dotted their path. Lena noted objects strewn across the floor, frosted over and glued in place by calcite deposits. Through the crystals, she could make out the shapes of animal skulls and leg bones.

“There’s a treasure house of prehistoric life preserved down here,” Arnaud said, some of his earlier sourness fading to wonder. He nodded to one such object. “There’s the intact hind leg of
Coelodonta antiquitatis
.”

“The woolly rhinoceros,” Lena said.

Arnaud glanced at her, a flicker of respect showing, along with an insulting amount of surprise. “That’s correct.”

She pointed to an artifact resting on the plinth of a broken stalagmite: a skull fused to rock by runnels of calcite. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s from
Ursus spelaeus
.”

“The notorious cave bear,” Arnaud conceded grudgingly, which earned a chuckle from Wrightson.

Lena hid a smile.
Two could play at this game.

“Clearly from its position,” Arnaud continued, “it was likely used as a totem. You can see the black stain of an old fire pit resting in front of it. The flames likely cast the shadow of the beast’s skull across the far wall.”

Lena pictured such a sight, trying to imagine what that display would have evoked in the spirits of the ancient people who had made this cavern their home.

The paleontologist continued, identifying other rare treasures as they traversed to the far side of the cavern: horns of a saiga antelope, the skull of a bison, a pile of mammoth tusks, even the complete remains of a golden eagle. Dotted throughout were smaller black smudges, likely marking individual home hearths.

Finally they crossed out of the smaller cave and into a vast chamber that dwarfed the first. The ceiling arched several stories above them. A double-decker bus could easily have turned around in the large space.

“The main show,” Wrightson announced, taking the lead now, heading across more of the makeshift steel steps.

Lena needed no one to point out the wonders of this cavern. Across the walls, massive petroglyphs decorated the chamber’s lower half, depicting all manner of life, a snapshot of the natural world. Some were drawn in what appeared to be charcoal; others were scraped into the black rock to reveal the lighter shades beneath. Several had brighter hues incorporated into them, imbued with ancient pigments.

But what struck Lena the most was their sheer beauty. These were no simple stick figures or crude renderings, but works of true artistry. The horses’ manes seemed to whip and flow. Bison were drawn with a flurry of legs, as if caught in motion. Herds of deer flung their antlers high, as if trying to ensnare the eagles flying overhead. All around, lions and leopards sped through the mass, either hunting or fleeing themselves. To one side, a single mighty cave bear reared up on its hind legs, towering over all.

Lena had trouble keeping her boots on the treads as she tried to look in all directions at once. “Spectacular. I wish my sister could see this, too.”

“All of this puts those scribblings in Lascaux to shame, does it not?” Wrightson said with a large grin. “But that’s not all.”

“What do you mean?” Father Novak asked.

“Should we show them what’s hidden in plain sight?” Wrightson asked Arnaud.

The Frenchman shrugged.

Wrightson drew their attention away from the walls to the room’s center. A wide black stain, spreading two meters across the floor, marked the site of what must have once been a large bonfire. A tripod of lighting panels rested there.

The geologist dropped to a knee beside a panel of switches wired into the power cable. “If you’ll be so kind as to douse your helmet lamps.”

After they had all obeyed, he flipped a switch, and all of the light panels extinguished. Darkness dropped heavily over them.

“Now to be transported forty thousand years into the past,” Wrightson intoned, sounding like a circus ringmaster.

The snap of a thrown switch popped and light flared anew, coming solely from the trio of panels in the room’s center, but it was still bright enough to dazzle and blind, especially as the lighting flickered and strobed.

To mimic a bonfire
, she realized.

At first she did not understand the point of such a display, but a gasp rose from Father Novak. She followed the priest’s gaze back to the walls. Giant shadows now danced across the walls, rising far taller than the swirl of petrogylphs below. The shadows were cast upon the walls from a circle of stalagmites rising from the floor. Only now did Lena note how they had been carved and sculpted, drilled and shaped, all to create the shadowy army on the wall.

The silhouettes were clearly human in shape, but some bore curled horns and others lofted spears in the air. The flickering light also added to the sense of motion in the animals below, making them look panicked. The lone cave bear faced one of those figures; only a shadowy spear now pierced the side of the mighty beast. Its former bellow of rage now appeared more like a frozen moment of torment.

Lena turned in a slow circle, entranced by the images, an innate terror seeping into her bones. Even Father Novak crossed himself protectively.

“Enough of this foolishness,” Arnaud snapped.

Wrightson obeyed, and the rest of the lights flared to life.

Lena took a deep breath, inhaling the earthy scent of the air, feeling the steel tread under her boots, grounding herself back into the present. “Im . . . impressive,” she managed to eke out. “But what do you think it means? Was it some representation of a hunt, some accounting of the tribe’s skill at tracking and taking down prey?”

No one answered for a moment until Father Novak spoke.

“It felt like a warning,” the priest said. He gave a small shake of his head, as if unsure how to put into words how he felt.

Lena understood. The display here did not look like the celebration of a tribe’s skill with spear and club. It felt like an affront, something brutal and threatening.

“Such mysteries are not yours to solve,” Arnaud said, drawing them forward yet again. “That is not why we’ve brought you on site.”

The Frenchman led the way toward the room’s far side, where an archway led out of the painted cavern. As they passed one of the carved stalagmites, Lena wanted to stop and examine it, to see how these ancient people managed such an illusion of shape and motion, but Arnaud kept them moving quickly.

There were no more light panels beyond the main chamber. Past the arch in the cave was only darkness. Lena clicked her helmet lamp back on. A spear of light pierced the shadows, revealing a short tunnel that ended at a crumbling wall.

Arnaud led them up the slight incline toward the passageway’s end.