Black Knight (35 page)

“To hell with that,” Kyle growls. “I’m not standing on the side of this freezing sand castle for another hour. I say we suck it up and go over and have a peek inside.”

They all turn to me, like always, to decide.

“Ordinarily, I’d agree with Sam,” I reply. “The moonlight’s our best defense against Viper. But Marc’s in bad shape. I’ve got to get him inside and out of the cold. I say we go for it.”

“Fine,” Sam agrees reluctantly. “But we’ve got to free up our hands if we’re going to fight and the only way we can do that is by leaving Marc, Chad, Li, and Jelanda outside.”

“No way,” I say. “We did that last time and look what Nordra and Viper did to us. We can’t make the same mistake twice.”

“She’s got a point,” Kyle says. “Who knows if Nordra’s in front of us or behind us?”

“Chances are he’s already here, in front of us,” Sam says.

“I can set Marc down in an instant if I have to,” I say. “As for Chad and Li, they can walk the rest of the way to the cave. And Jelanda . . . I don’t know what to do with her.”

“I’ll slice her Achilles tendons again and tie her to a boulder outside the cave, no problem,” Kyle says.

“Then it’s settled,” I say, not happy about his tendon slicing but too worried about Marc to waste time on another argument. “Everyone draw their weapons and scan for any sign of movement. Search the ground for prints. Listen for breathing.” I nod. “Let’s do it.”

We start for the cave, passing out of the moonlight halfway to the entrance. The sudden dark is unsettling, and as if it senses my fear, the volcano suddenly belches out a shower of red sparks, several of which land only a few feet to our right side. A rumbling starts deep beneath us and the ground seems to shake. The King of the Field, I think, with his burning red crown, knows the climax of the contest is near at hand. I could swear the flashes of fire cannot be a coincidence. The volcano must be alive.

We stop ten yards shy of the opening, searching for signs of Viper and Nordra, and the ghosts for that matter. There
are
prints in the ash, but as far as we can tell they were created by a person hiking from the other side of the volcano, who stopped at least thirty yards shy of the cave before reversing direction and walking back the way he came.

The prints are huge; I’m confident they belong to Nordra. His pattern has always shown a lack of subtlety. He prefers the straight attack, never mind what Cleo told me. Viper’s been the opposite; she’s always snuck up on us. Which makes me fear that she might have brushed away her tracks as she neared the cave.

All of us, we exchange looks, but there’s nothing to say.

We need to go forward.

Up close the circular nature of the cave opening is beyond dispute—it’s ridiculously symmetrical. It looks as if the entrance was cut into the side of the cinder cone using a gigantic drill bit. Since nature doesn’t work with such precision, the entrance to the cave, at least, is artificial.

We step to the opening and peer inside.

There’s light. It’s a soft red but it’s enough to see by. We don’t need to light a torch. Nevertheless, Kyle holds up an unlit torch and gestures with his fingers, indicating he wants to light it once we’re inside. In response I point to Jelanda and motion for him to tie her up—now. No way I’m bringing her inside with us.

Kyle nods and drags her off to a nearby rock, wraps her with multiple layers of vines and cloth, casually slices the heels of her feet wide open, and returns to where we wait.

He’s taking a terrible risk. If the rest of the ghosts are nearby and suddenly swoop in, they might be able to free their leader. Yet, since we started up from the base of the cinder cone, we’ve lost all sight of them.

We step inside. The first hundred feet are perfectly circular. The giant drill must have been shoved in deep, I think. Carefully touching the walls with my fingertips, I’m struck by their hard blackness, their smoothness, and their warmth. Already the temperature and humidity have increased dramatically.

None of us has to search far to see why. Sam was right; the interior’s filled with pools of steaming water and glowing baths of molten lava. We come upon them abruptly, as the narrow entrance expands into a cavern as large as my childhood church.

An uncluttered gray path leads down the center and the high ceiling has a gentle arc to it, but I couldn’t swear the cavern itself is artificial. The pools of water and lava are haphazardly placed and the walls are riveted with deep grooves; the erosion probably the result of the swirling steam and repeated tremors. Once again I feel as if the ground beneath my feet trembles but it might be my imagination.

Kyle signals to me with his torch. I nod and he lights it and holds up the bright orange light, which contrasts sharply with the somber red. Chad lights a torch as well and takes a step forward to explore before I grab his arm and give him a sharp look. I want us to stay close together until I’m sure we have the place to ourselves.

Yet the light from the twin torches is reassuring. They create such a bright glare, I find it hard to believe Viper could be cloaked inside the cave and we couldn’t spot her. The cavern is only two hundred feet deep and half that wide. It doesn’t take us long to explore it, and realize the back wall holds the most fascinating riddles.

First there’s an icy stream that strangely comes out the base of one wall and mysteriously disappears into the base of another. Then there’re the rows of petroglyphs above the stream, alongside a tall wall of writing.

The petroglyphs—or images—and the ancient language are two separate things, and yet I’ve seen both before. They are definitely related to the symbols and writing I saw on a wall overlooking a secret pool concealed in a rocky hill in the desert outside Las Vegas. Kendor took me to the spot to swim in the pool and to show me a prophecy that related to my daughter, Lara. Kendor had told me the site had once been considered sacred to the Paleo-Indians who had lived in the area centuries before the white man arrived.

Gently, I set Marc down against a wall beside the stream and cup a handful of the cold water in my palms and pour it over his head. He stirs and opens his eyes briefly before closing them again. Yet he smiles faintly.

“More,” he whispers.

“You can have all you want,” I say, relieved to see him awake. I continue to splash his head and even mange to get him to take a few sips. It’s as if the stream is as magical as the desert pool Kendor took me to. Marc’s fever goes down at least two degrees in the short time I treat him.

“Obviously this is written in a different language than the plaque,” Kyle says. “But I’d swear the style of writing is the same.”

Before I can tell them what Kendor told me about the old language, and the petroglyphs, Sam speaks.

“This language is called Tarora. It’s known only to the oldest of the Tar and it’s directly related to these petroglyphs. My mother taught me a few of the Tarora’s characters when I was a kid but I can’t remember well enough to decipher any of these words. Too bad she’s not here, she could probably translate this entire wall for us.”

“A pity,” Kyle says with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, like he doesn’t believe Sam—which makes no sense considering the fact that Sam didn’t have to volunteer the information. Nevertheless, our paranoia being what it is, I, too, begin to wonder if Sam is lying, if he knows exactly what it says on the wall and is keeping it to himself. Hell, maybe the Tarora writings do explain a secret way of getting off the island.

“Let’s study the pictures,” I say, standing and taking a step away from Marc, scanning the images more closely. Whoever drew them had a skilled hand and access to a variety of colored paint or chalk. The symbols take up more space than the writing and are arranged in four distinct rows.

The first image in the top row shows a diagram of our solar system. The sun is depicted as a bright white star, with only a faint hint of yellow, which I know from my high-school astronomy class to be accurate. I find the attention to detail interesting, as well as the fact that there are ten planets circling the sun instead of nine—never mind that poor Pluto is technically no longer supposed to be called a planet. Between Mars and Jupiter is a blue-white planet that resembles the Earth. It occupies the orbit of what is now the asteroid belt.

The fifth planet intrigues me. I know that many astronomers believe that the asteroids were created in the distant past when an unfortunate fifth planet exploded. It is in fact the leading theory for the existence of the space rubble.

It makes me wonder how old these images are. And if the artist who created them had a different set of science books than modern man has.

In the second picture we see a close-up image of Venus, Earth, Mars, and the unnamed fifth planet. There are signs of green on all of them except Venus, which all modern astronomers agree has too hostile an environment to support life. Yet, as a semiscience nerd, I find the image exciting because a large number of scientists do speculate that Mars had life on it in the past.

Also, it’s fascinating, although frightening, to think the mysterious fifth planet could also have supported life. I wonder if it was inhabited.

The third image is strange.

It shows a featureless black wall ringing half the fifth planet. I say half because only half the planet is depicted in the picture. The other half is just . . . gone. It doesn’t exist.

The image makes no sense.

How could half a planet orbit the sun?

Maybe it couldn’t. In the fourth and final image of the top row, the mysterious fifth planet is nothing but rocks tumbling through space; the rocks obviously representing the asteroid belt. Basically, the fourth image is a diagram of how the solar system looks today.

The second row starts with an overhead painting of the Field. I can tell it’s our island because half of it is identical to the half I’ve seen. There’s the volcano, the huge valley, the raging river, the smaller valley where we landed, the cliff with the cave where we first slept, the rocky beach, and so on.

The six following images show close-ups of six spots on the island. I immediately recognize two of them. They show where Sam’s group and our group landed. Yet I’m confident the third image is Kyle’s landing spot based on the description he gave me of where they set down on the beach.

That leaves three pictures of the island that depict spots I’ve not been to but nevertheless vaguely recognize. Two appear to be set in the forest where Shira died, where I first encountered the ghosts and Nordra. The third location is on the barren side of a hill, which I only spotted in the last hour when we neared the top of the volcano.

The superficial meaning of the pictures is clear. They list where we, the contestants in the Field, were placed on the island. A deeper meaning is implied, however—that
every
contestant, throughout time, is placed at one of these six spots. Certainly, whoever created these pictures knew these six locations were important.

But why were they important? And why were none of the six landing spots located on the other side of the island? The third row, which has only one image, might provide an answer to my second question.

Like the picture at the start of the second row, it shows an overhead view of the island. But only half the island is present, the half we’ve been running around on for the past three days. The other half is missing. It’s just gone, there’s nothing there.

The fourth and final row has three images in it. The first shows the black wall that was depicted in the picture of the mysterious fifth planet. Only here, the image is a close-up of our volcano and the wall. The picture appears to have been cropped for some reason; it doesn’t extend far in either direction.

But it is drawn from the perspective of someone staring at the wall from roughly our position on the side of the volcano, or at least from our altitude. And it makes it clear that if we hike farther around the cinder cone, we’ll run into the wall.

The next image shows a female, who bears a resemblance to Cleo, approaching the wall and pressing a red bracelet to its side. The picture gives the impression this is the proper way to touch the wall, instead of with one’s fingertips.

The third and final picture in the bottom row is odd. It shows the same young woman as before, holding her bracelet to the wall, only now there are countless images of other people who overlap with each other as they stretch alongside the wall. These people are drawn more like ghost figures—we’re able to see through them. The original female remains clear, only now there’s a faint white light around her head, something akin to a halo.

“What the hell?” Marc mutters from his place on the floor. I was so busy studying the images that I hadn’t noticed he had reopened his eyes and was doing the same thing. I kneel by his side.

“How do you feel?” I ask.

“Would you please quit asking me that.” Marc points to the pictures. “We came all the way here for that?”

I have to smile. No matter how dire the situation, Marc is always still Marc. “Got any profound insight on what the pictures mean?” I ask.

Marc closes his eyes and leans his head back. “It means that black wall is one freaking weird barrier,” he mumbles.

I stand and look at the others. “I agree with Marc.”

“You’re saying it’s not a way off the island?” Kyle asks.

“I’m saying we’re not going to figure out what it is by standing here and talking about it,” I reply.

“I’ve already been to the wall,” Sam says suddenly, his voice anxious. “I’m not going back.”

“What?” Kyle exclaims. “You’re the one who told us about it! Who got us all excited about it! Now you just want to chicken out and stay here?”

Sam shifts uneasily, lowers his head. “It’s different once you’ve touched it. It gets under your skin. It’s hard to explain but I sort of forgot about it after I left this place. But now that we’re back here—I don’t know, the thought of getting near it creeps me out.”

Kyle shakes his head. “I can’t believe this.”

I speak to Sam. “Are you saying you’re not going with us to check it out?”