Pieter eased past Jonathan and directed his light towards the stone.
For a while, all Daniel could hear was their breathing and the faint scrape of Pieter’s boots as he changed position.
“That could be a natural fracture,” Pieter said.
“It could,” Jonathan agreed.
Daniel shook his head.
“It turns underneath.”
Pieter lowered the beam. The line ran towards the floor, where a crust of pale material obscured it.
“You can’t see that.”
“No.”
Pieter looked at him.
Daniel wished he had a better answer. He could sense the shape of the stone beyond its visible edge, the way he sometimes knew where a component belonged before he had finished taking a machine apart. Explaining that to a stranger in a cave seemed unlikely to improve matters.
Mara crouched beside him.
“Show me.”
Daniel moved his light along the edge.
“Here. Then across.”
She studied the surface. At first she saw only what Pieter saw: an irregular line in an irregular wall. Then her attention caught on a place near the bottom, where the pale deposit had thickened around a small depression.
The feeling was familiar enough to make her hesitate.
“What?” Daniel asked.
She pointed.
“There.”
Jonathan bent closer.
“Another mark?”
“No. Something holding it.”
Pieter moved his light to the spot.
“Everyone back a little.”
There was barely enough room to comply. Jonathan retreated first, dragging his bag through the narrowest part of the passage. Something inside it caught against the rock.
He tugged.
Nothing.
Daniel glanced over his shoulder.
“Careful. Your archaeological equipment.”
Jonathan freed the bag with a sharp pull.
“Very funny.”
The small exchange helped Mara breathe. She had been holding herself too still, waiting for something to happen before she understood what she was expecting.
Pieter took a closer look. He brushed the surface lightly with his glove, clearing a little loose dust.
Beneath it, the depression had an edge. He stopped. Jonathan saw the change in his posture.
“What is it?”
Pieter didn’t answer immediately. He moved the light again, bringing it almost level with the surface.
“That’s been worked.”
Jonathan squeezed forward as far as he could.
“May I?”
Pieter shifted aside.
Jonathan examined the depression, then the line Daniel had traced. The excitement left his face for a moment, replaced by concentration.
“We need to photograph this before anything else.”
The camera flash made the passage look flat and ordinary.
Between photographs, the darkness seemed deeper than before. Mara remained beside Daniel while Jonathan checked each angle and Pieter examined the surrounding rock.
Nobody was joking now.
Jonathan lowered the camera.
“If this is a fitted stone, I don’t want anybody trying to prise it out.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that,” Daniel said.
“You were thinking about it.”
“I was thinking about how it works.”
Pieter straightened carefully beneath the low ceiling.
“We should go back. Bring someone else down to look at it.”
Jonathan nodded, although reluctantly.
Mara knew they were right. She could imagine how foolish it would sound afterwards: four people finding something unusual and immediately breaking it because two of them had a feeling.
Still, she kept looking at the depression.
Daniel noticed.
“What do you think?”
She moved closer, leaving her hands at her sides.
The weakness she sensed wasn’t in the stone itself. It was where something inside met something else. She couldn’t picture it, but she could feel the point at which the arrangement would cease to hold.
Like the crane.
The thought made her step back.
Daniel’s expression changed.
“Mara?”
“It doesn’t need pulling.”
Pieter turned towards her.
“What?”
She swallowed.
“I think that part moves.”
He followed her gaze.
Jonathan looked between them.
“Both of you are going to have to explain how you’re doing this eventually.”
“Gladly,” Mara said. “As soon as somebody explains it to us.”
Daniel crouched again.
“Just that section?”
She nodded.
“Which way?”
For a moment she nearly answered. The certainty was there, close enough to reach, but the memory of the falling steel returned with it.
“I don’t know what happens if we do it.”
Daniel looked up at her. That was enough to stop him. Pieter drew a breath.
“We’re leaving it.”
He turned to make room for Jonathan.
As Daniel stood, he placed his hand against the stone to steady himself. Mara reached for his wrist, meaning to keep him away from the depression.
Their fingers met.
A pale light appeared beneath Daniel’s palm.
He pulled his hand back.
The light remained.
For several seconds nobody moved.
A thin silver line had formed around the edge of the stone. It followed the fracture downwards, continued beneath the deposit and rose along the other side, outlining a shape none of their torches had revealed.
Jonathan’s camera hung forgotten against his chest.
Pieter backed into him.
“What did you do?”
Daniel stared at his hand.
“I don’t know.”
Mara still held his wrist. She could feel his pulse against her fingertips, much faster than she had expected.
There had been no violent pressure this time. No cracking glass or stopped clock. Whatever was beneath the surface seemed to have taken their contact and answered it.
A small click sounded inside the wall.
Pieter caught Jonathan’s shoulder and pushed him back.
“Move.”
They retreated as far as the passage allowed. The fitted stone shifted towards them by less than an inch. Dust sifted from its upper edge. Then it stopped. The silver light faded.
Their torches showed only stone again, but now there was a dark opening along one side.
Jonathan stared at it.
“Oh, my God.”
Pieter made them wait.
He inspected the ceiling, then the rock around the opening, checking for movement. Daniel stood beside Mara, close enough that their sleeves touched. Neither reached for the other.
Finally Pieter directed his torch through the gap.
The beam vanished into a space beyond.
“It opens into something,” he said.
Jonathan leaned forward.
“How big?”
“I can’t tell.”
Daniel studied the shifted stone. Now that it had moved, the arrangement made sense to him. The slab wasn’t meant to come out. It pivoted around a point hidden beneath the floor.
He showed Pieter the upper edge.
“It turns. That side goes in.”
Pieter looked, then tested it with cautious pressure. The stone moved smoothly. He stopped at once, surprised by how little effort it required. Jonathan let out a breath.
“That has no business doing that.”
Between them, Pieter and Daniel eased it farther open. The gap widened enough to admit a person, releasing air that felt cooler against Mara’s face.
Beyond was a short passage. Jonathan raised the camera again, remembered the flash and lowered it. Pieter shone his torch inside.
“I’m looking first. You stay here.”
He stepped through, keeping one hand near the opening. His light travelled along the floor, then lifted towards the far wall.
He became very still.
“Pieter?” Jonathan said.
No answer.
Jonathan looked at Daniel, then followed him.
Mara heard a quiet, involuntary sound from the passage ahead. By the time she stepped through with Daniel, Jonathan was standing at the entrance to a chamber, his torch held motionless.
The room was larger than she had expected.
Its walls had been shaped rather than simply used. Beneath a covering of dust, faded lines and figures extended across the stone. Near the centre stood a long raised structure.
Jonathan moved his beam over its surface.
A carved figure lay along the top, hands folded across its chest.
“A tomb,” he said.
The words came softly, without any of the excitement he had brought into the cave.
Mara looked towards the walls. Several figures surrounded a larger one, their heads inclined towards it. Farther along, the same central figure stood with one hand extended towards a crowd.
She couldn’t tell whether the others were kneeling or falling.
Daniel stopped beside her.
“What are they doing?”
Jonathan approached the wall but kept his hands away.
“Honouring someone, perhaps.”
Mara followed the images around the chamber. In one, the central figure stood between two groups carrying weapons. In the next, the weapons had been lowered.
She thought of the strange calm she had felt when the stone opened.
Pieter was watching the entrance.
“We shouldn’t be in here.”
Jonathan nodded.
“No.”
But his light had settled on something beside the carved hands.
A small object rested in a shallow recess on the tomb.
Even beneath the dust, it caught the beam differently from the surrounding stone. A pale central crystal was held within an intricate frame, with smaller crystals arranged around it.
Jonathan leaned closer.
Mara saw Daniel’s face in the reflected light. His expression had changed again.
“What?”
He took a slow breath.
“I know how some of that fits together.”
Jonathan looked up.
“You’ve never seen it before.”
“I know.”
Mara moved beside him.
As she approached, one of the smaller crystals brightened.
Jonathan froze.
A second point of silver appeared beside it.
The large crystal in the centre remained dark.