Restless Soul - Alex Archer [27]
Zakkarat gasped as he looked around the cavern and muttered to himself.
Luartaro tapped their guide on the shoulder. “See? I said that we would get out of here, and she’s found us far more than an escape. She’s found a great treasure! So there’s no reason we have to leave right away. No reason at all. It’s drier in here, anyway.”
“She will bring her TV people here?” Zakkarat wondered. “To this lost place?”
Luartaro shrugged. “If she can find a monster.”
Zakkarat looked puzzled for only a moment before his curiosity for the treasure took over. Both men fell to examining the objects that lined the walls of the chamber, most of which were stacked on small and large crates that undoubtedly held more valuables.
Luartaro’s flashlight beam danced from side to side, up and down, setting gold and gems to sparkling. He spotted a large lantern in front of a crate and lit it. There was a reflector in it that brightened up the cavern.
Annja shared their excitement. A part of her wanted to delight in the discovery and giddily take it all in, run from one niche of the chamber to the next like a character in an Indiana Jones movie. It was a dragon’s hoard of wealth.
Instead, she focused on finding the answer to her unsettling feeling. That took precedence, she told herself. She listened for the voice.
“Flash floods are expected this time of year, the beginning of the rainy season,” Zakkarat said as he scurried about. “I should not have let your baht lure me out here in the rain, Annjacreed. I got us lost. We all could have drowned, should have drowned, and it would have been my fault. But I am glad I did come out. Most very, very glad! Chop-mak! And I am very, very glad I got us lost. You would not have found this great treasure had I taken you to Ping Yah. I must tell my wife about this adventure and the gold.”
“We take nothing from this place, understand?” Annja cautioned. “Nothing at the moment but pictures.” She tugged her camera from her breast pocket, removed the plastic and started taking shots of the entire chamber, stuffing the flashlight under her arm and using its beam to help illuminate the various objects so the pictures would come out better.
The small cavern reminded her of a museum storehouse or a back room of Sotheby’s in New York where all manner of priceless antiques were waiting to be auctioned.
“The answer must be here,” she whispered. “Is there something in the treasure that gives me shivers?”
She concentrated on the teak coffins, in which Zakkarat and Luartaro seemed uninterested. At first she thought it odd that Luartaro did not concentrate on the coffins immediately; they were the greater archaeological prize. But the coffins weren’t going anywhere, so she was certain he would see to them after the lure of the gold faded.
Where was the voice that had perplexed her, she wondered.
She kept listening, but now there was nothing.
There were five coffins, the largest and most intricately carved of any of those she’d seen so far—and clearly in the best condition. Since the chamber sat higher in the mountains, it had likely not flooded as badly before, so though it was humid, the wood had remained relatively dry. One coffin was easily a dozen feet long, and she recorded images of it from different angles. It was empty, but the wood was stained where at least one body had rested inside, and there were pottery fragments laced with frayed cords where the corpse’s head would have been.
Are the spirits of these ancient people trying to reach me? One spirit in particular? she wondered. Should they have taken Zakkarat’s suggestion of removing the bodies from the coffins in the previous chamber? Maybe that was what “free me” meant. Maybe earlier cavers had heard the voices, too, and had removed the bodies at the spirits’ requests. Maybe she was not the first to hear and react to whatever force was trapped there. Would she have to somehow backtrack through the rising river to retrieve those bodies and find her own peace?
The smallest coffin was filled with intact pieces of ancient pottery that made her heart beat