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She couldn’t possibly be considering reaching out and twisting an artifact of a lost culture. It could be incredibly fragile.
It didn’t look very fragile.
As she watched, a small bead of water collected at the lip of the tube and then dripped down to the stones under her boots.
Ellie glanced down and saw a small stalagmite growing there.
Her eyes shot to the handle again.
What if she was very,verycareful?
Glancing over at Adam as if afraid he would catch her, Ellie grasped the handle and gently, gingerly twisted it.
Something grated inside the wall, and a spill of water rushed out, splattering over the top of her head.
Ellie spluttered against it and stepped back as Adam whirled toward her from his post by the exit, frowning with alarm and disapproval.
Elie couldn’t bring herself to care. She was far too excited. The water was still coming, splashing across her boots.
“They have plumbing!” she hissed with an excited squeak.
Adam stalked over, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her to the end of the chamber.
He stopped her at the edge of it, where he turned her to face what lay outside.
“We’ve got trouble,” he muttered at her ear.
?
Forty-Two
Through the narrowexit of the antechamber, Ellie peered out at a cavern the size of a cathedral nave.
The ceiling arched forty feet overhead, dripping with elegant stalactites in pale hues. Paraffin lanterns cast a warm glow over spectacular columns and frozen falls of glittering limestone. Some of the formations obstructed her view of exactly what lay ahead of them. Ellie could only make out the vastness of the space—and the sound of voices.
“Careful with that!” Dawson complained. “We don’t have a replacement for it.”
Ellie drew in a sharp breath. She and Adam had risked their lives to successfully navigate the path of an ancient initiation rite… only to discover that their enemies had made it there first.
“How are they here?” she demanded in a whisper. “They couldn’t possibly have traversed through the caves without us noticing them.”
Adam turned to peer over her shoulder—and then stopped.
“Er… probably through that door,” he replied uneasily.
Ellie looked to where he nodded. In the wall of the cavern across from where they hid, a perfectly rectangular opening had been cut into the rock. Ellie could just make out the start of a flight of steep, twisting stairs in the light of another lantern that had been left there.
“But where does it go?” she burst out.
“The chamber at the top of the temple,” Adam replied.
Ellie whirled back to give him a wide-eyed look.
“How on earth do you know that?” she demanded.
He shifted awkwardly and scratched at his stubble.
“Possibly because I maybe opened it for them,” he replied.
