Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth (27 page)

“Let’s try this one first,” Jada said, shining her light into the left side tunnel.

Holding the journal open in his hands, Drake followed her. Sully seemed thoughtful but said nothing as he took up the rear. Drake studied the doorway, then looked along the corridor, which seemed to turn left again just ahead. Behind him, Sully paused to scratch something into the wall just inside the doorway.

“Your initials?” Drake asked.

“Hey, at least I didn’t write ‘Sully was here.’ ”

“But you were tempted.”

Sully shrugged. “Of course.”

Drake started to turn, but something caught his eye. He reached out for Sully’s arm and pulled him over, making him shine the flashlight beam at the wall just above the door. Something else had been inscribed there, and it wasn’t Sully’s initials.

“Jada!” Drake called.

She hurried back to join them, merging her light with Sully’s. In the bright splash of illumination, they could all see the small diamond shape engraved into the stone above the door.

“Do you think that means we chose right?” Jada asked.

Sully stepped back out into the junction, but Drake had a glimmer of memory. In the light from Jada’s flash, he scanned pages of Luka’s journal again, and a smile crept across his face. He tapped the same page he’d looked at before, showing several variations on the three-choice junction. In each instance, Luka had drawn a small diamond shape on two of the possible avenues but not the third.

“Look at the map,” Drake said quickly.

Jada set it on the floor and unfolded it. They huddled over it, studying it in the light.

“The middle path isn’t marked,” Sully called from the junction.

“He’s drawn them here, too,” Jada said, tapping a fingernail on the map, where her father had inscribed tiny diamond shapes in many places.

Drake got up and went out to the junction with Sully. He snatched the flashlight away and went into the middle tunnel, searching the wall above the door. Then he went into the third tunnel.

“Yes!” he shouted in triumph.

Sully and Jada stood in the junction watching him.

“So the diamond marks the path?” Sully asked.

“No,” Drake said, gesturing to the stone above the doorway. “It’s here, too. Only on the inside. No way to see it from out there.”

“But if it’s on two of them, how do you—” Sully began, and then he grinned, nodding. “Oh, I like that. The right way is the one that isn’t marked.”

“Exactly,” Drake said, glancing excitedly at Jada. “Your father had it figured out. But we never would’ve realized it if we’d only run into forks in the labyrinth. If it was one or the other, the diamonds wouldn’t have helped. But this has three choices, and if two are marked, that’s gotta mean that the absence of a diamond is what shows the right path. Which means we were wrong. It’s the middle door.”

The three of them stared at one another, smiling in triumph.

They hurried through the middle door and had gone about twenty feet when Sully halted abruptly.

“Wait, wait,” he said, running back to the entrance and scrawling his initials just inside the door. “Just in case we’re idiots.”

15

Though the difference was gradual and subtle, there could be no mistaking the fact that their travels through the labyrinth were taking them deeper. Drake had the impression they were also moving farther away from the fortress. In Egypt, they had explored only a small section of a sprawling maze that might have been the size of a town. The temple at Knossos had thousands of rooms, and he suspected that they were inside a structure just as vast as that one. There were small chambers off the tunnels and corridors; some apparently were for storage, whereas others appeared to have been used for rituals. Several had frescoes on the walls that were neither Egyptian nor Greek in style but a merging of both. Those rooms surprised them, as did the presence of the flower motif they had encountered at the entrance, which was repeated in many of the small rooms.

In the tunnels, however, there were no decorations, no frescoes, nothing that might be used as a landmark for those lost in the maze. Only those side chambers might have given an intruder clues, but although their contents might be different, their design was consistent from one to the next.

They had come three times to what seemed a dead end only to discover hidden doorways, and twice they had descended secret stairways into lower levels of the labyrinth. Sometimes it felt as if they were traveling far from their origin point, and at others it seemed to Drake they were going in ever diminishing circles.

The diamonds or lack thereof had not failed them yet. Not once had they had to retrace their steps. Yet Drake had wondered if the trail without diamonds was leading them to the center of the labyrinth or to some trap for fools who thought they were clever and ended up instead broken after a fall through a shaft in the floor.

There had been dozens of shafts. After Drake had come around a corner and had to hurl himself across one, nearly tumbling into it, they were taking corners more carefully now. The air that came up from the shafts was warm enough that each of them had built up a sheen of sweat. The deeper they descended, the more the temperature increased.

“I guess this is what comes from digging into the skin of a volcanic island,” Jada had said the first time she touched a wall and pulled her hand away, surprised at the heat.

But it didn’t slow her down. If anything, it spurred her on so that half the time she was in the lead, though they didn’t let her get too far ahead. There was no telling when some hidden trap might be sprung.

They worked their way through a series of narrow openings, nearly missed a turn made invisible by the placement and coloration of stone, and had to backtrack when they discovered they had entered a tunnel marked with a diamond. When they had righted themselves, they found a tunnel so low that they were forced to crouch to pass through.

Once they had reached a place where they could stand again, they found themselves at a fork where both tunnels sloped downward at steep angles, the first time they had encountered such a significant drop without stairs.

“How deep are we?” Jada asked as she looked for the markings inside each of the doorways, shining her flashlight into the darkened passages.

“Good question,” Sully replied, studying the walls inside the left passage. “Look at this.”

Drake crouched to get a closer look at the engraving. Near the floor, just inside the door, was an octagon inside a circle like the ones they had found in Crocodilopolis. Just one, which made sense given that only in the worship chambers had they encountered that triple-octagon design that seemed to represent the three labyrinths designed by Daedalus. But this one was different in another way. Etched inside the octagon was the same flower design they had seen all through this labyrinth.

“What the hell is that flower?” Drake asked, but it was a rhetorical question. None of them knew the answer.

“No diamond here,” Sully said, shining his light on the stone above the door.

“Jada, come on,” Drake said. “It’s this one.”

He poked his head out and saw her standing just inside the entrance to the right-hand passage of the fork. She wore a puzzled expression.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

Jada looked at him. “I hear water.”

Drake went to join her, Sully hurrying to catch up. He gestured for Jada to take the lead, and she did, making her way cautiously down the sloping tunnel, using her flashlight to study the floor in front of them before taking a step. The incline grew steeper until only the roughness of the surface gave them enough traction to avoid sliding down into the dark.

The noise of the surf grew louder as they descended, and Drake wondered if they possibly could have gone so far from the hill. Granted, Akrotiri village was a stone’s throw from the cliffs overlooking the ocean, but how far had they gone underground? The question seemed moot as the sound of the crashing water increased.

“Anyone notice the temperature difference down here?” Sully asked.

“I made the mistake of touching the wall,” Jada replied.

Drake tested it, placing his palm against the stone. Though it was not hot enough to burn him, the temperature had risen. When the floor began to level out, they found themselves in a small chamber whose floor was shot through with circular vents. Unlike the shafts they had seen on the upper levels of the labyrinth, these seemed natural. Steam rose from the openings.

“Kill the lights,” Drake said.

Jada cast an odd glance his way, but when Sully shut his flashlight off, she complied as well. He heard her small gasp. Though dim, each of the vents gave off a reddish glow.

“We really are on top of a volcano,” Jada said softly.

“Did you think it was an urban legend?” Drake asked.

She clicked her flashlight back on. “No. It’s just so hard to imagine how anyone can live here, knowing that it might all be obliterated at any time.”

“People will give up a lot for paradise,” Sully rumbled.

Drake glanced at him. “That may be just about the smartest thing you’ve ever said. Seriously.”

“Inside this grizzled exterior is a great philosopher,” Sully advised him.

“I’ll try to remember that,” Drake replied.

They continued through the small chamber and into a series of short zags and switchbacks, the water growing louder. Only a minute or so later, their flashlight beams were swallowed by vast gray nothing. Sully grabbed Drake’s arm as Jada came to a startled halt. They swept the lights back and found the precipice half a dozen feet ahead. Part of the labyrinth had collapsed, opening up a cavern thirty feet above them and at least sixty feet wide. Stone blocks and what looked like the remnants of walls painted with frescoes were amid the rubble strewn far below, picked out by the flashlight beams as Sully and Jada investigated.

They were in a sea cave, but no light came from outside. Perhaps at low tide there might have been an opening, but the entrance to the cave was submerged. The water crashed on the rocks not in waves but in a churning ebb and flow that reminded Drake of breathing, in and out, filling and emptying. If this had been the path to the center of the labyrinth and the worship chambers, they would have been out of luck.

“The earthquake must have shaken this wing of the labyrinth apart,” Jada said.

“
Some
earthquake,” Sully said. “I’m sure there’ve been a hell of a lot of them since the island blew up in the first place.”

For several seconds, they just stared at the sea cave and the salt water washing over the rubble far below the precipice. Drake thought he could make out some of the details on the shattered frescoes down there. There were images of flowers yet again, but another caught his eye: a veiled woman kneeling before a horned figure, offering a chalice. He would not have been able to make out the image if not for the fact that he’d seen one quite like it in the labyrinth of Sobek. Then the water washed over it, falling against the debris, and he reminded himself that whatever they were supposed to find, it would await them at the heart of the labyrinth.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re wasting time. Don’t want to miss our taxi.”

Sully took point as they retraced their steps. After the small cave with its steaming volcanic vents, the three of them had to make their way up the steep tunnel. Bent into the effort, sometimes using their hands to steady themselves on the severe incline, they climbed back toward the fork in the maze.

“Damn, I need to cut back on the Oreos,” Drake muttered as he hiked after Sully. The heat of the labyrinth had begun to affect him more, and he wished they had brought more water.

They ascended for several seconds in silence before Jada chuckled.

“Wow,” she said. “Uncle Vic doesn’t even have the energy to be snarky.”

“I’m taking the high road,” Sully rasped tiredly.

Drake chose not to comment. Either they both were taking the high road or they both were too busy clambering up through the steep tunnel to bicker. As they reached the fork, where the labyrinth leveled out again, Sully sighed in relief. But as Drake looked up, seeing Sully illuminated by the golden glow of the flashlight, which threw strange shadows all around the labyrinth corridor ahead, he saw a figure dart from the right and strike Sully across the head.

Sully cried out in pain and went to his knees, clutching his skull where he’d been struck.

Tyr Henriksen stood over him, brandishing a blue-black pistol with cruel confidence. He stepped back so that Sully couldn’t lash out at him but kept his gun aimed at Sully’s head.

“I know you’re armed,” Henriksen said. “But I’ve got kind of a head start, and bullets travel fast.”

Drake took the warning, keeping his hands where Henriksen could see them as he emerged from the steep tunnel. He could vaguely hear the sound of water behind him, but that sea cave seemed distant and beautiful now, like some forgotten grotto.

“Leave him alone, you son of a bitch,” Jada said, pushing past Drake and hurrying toward Sully. She knelt by him protectively, and Henriksen did nothing to stop her, though he kept the gun on them both.

Others began to emerge into the split corridor. From the other sloping tunnel in the fork came two gunmen, one short but powerfully built and the other the kind of dead-eyed, buzz-cut mercenary whose very aura suggested a military career gone wrong. Three others appeared from the tunnel Drake, Jada, and Sully had used to get this far. By their complexion and the curiosity in their eyes, Drake decided they must be local talent: homegrown Greek thugs. One had long since gone gray, and his skin was taut and weathered so that it looked almost like tree bark. The other two looked enough like him to be his sons. They were also armed. Counting Henriksen, that made six guns against three, but Henriksen and his goons had theirs drawn already, which made the odds moot.

“You followed us,” Drake said.

“Of course,” Henriksen said, giving a small shrug, blue eyes shining in the illumination from the flashlights. Several of the thugs carried them, and the corridor was lit up brightly now.