With that, Radulf called Sal back in to join us. Then he hoisted me up to the cavity in the rock, handed me a torch, and ordered Sal to lower me inside.
The darkness was blacker than anything I'd ever seen. Blacker than night, or even the deepest mine tunnels. Light was an enemy to this place. The torch I carried helped a little, but it was so bright, I could see nothing else. An icy breeze assaulted me next. As miners, we had all become used to cold, but this air seemed to flow right through me, and I half expected the torch to freeze in place.
I held my breath at first. Mostly from fear, but also because of the possibility that the air was poisonous. We'd seen it before in the mines. Air that is trapped underground for centuries sometimes kills the first few miners to breathe it in. It had never been a question in my mind that I would die young. Killed during an escape attempt or during an uprising, maybe -- those were honorable deaths, at least. But I refused to have stories told about me dying from bad air.
As Sal lowered me down, I tried to think of what I knew about Julius Caesar. My mother had once told me a story about when Caesar was kidnapped by pirates on the Aegean Sea. Offended that they asked only twenty talents of silver for his ransom, Caesar demanded they increase it to fifty. Once it was paid and he went free, he returned to the island where he'd been held and executed the pirates himself. Then he recovered his fifty talents, and all their possessions too. It was no surprise that he went on to become a military general who won every war he ever fought.
If Caesar was that powerful, then who was I to dare enter his sealed cave?
The rope above me was sliding against a very sharp rock. Using the torch to look up, I saw strands of it beginning to fray. And when I swung the torch down, I was still too high to see the cave floor. I wondered if I had any chance of landing before Sal ran out of rope. If he did, would he pull me back up, or cut it? Without Radulf standing right beside him up there, he probably would've cut it already.
Finally, I had no choice but to take a breath, and was relieved to discover that the air was stale, but not poisonous. My relief was short-lived, however. The same breeze I drew into my body also snuffed out my torch, leaving me in complete darkness.
I called up to Sal that the light was gone, but he either didn't hear me or didn't care. Since he was using this cave to get rid of me, it was safe to assume the latter. And I continued to drop lower and lower. Into nothingness. Into the underworld.
After several long minutes, my feet collided with something hard. The ground, I hoped, but I didn't trust it yet. So with my hands, I groped around blindly. I found rock beneath me, but different from the type of rock we mined higher up. It was less porous, and sharper. It also seemed fairly flat, but before I had the chance to test a step, Sal lowered me down onto it. Whatever this was, I was committed now.
I was on my knees, and put my hands down again to determine how much room I had, but I touched upon something different than before. It wasn't dirt, but it wasn't as hard as rock either. It felt more like wood, a rounded, carved piece as smooth as -- my breath caught in my throat. It was as smooth as bone. And round ... like a skull. I ran my hands along the ground and felt more skulls and other bones.
I choked on my own breath, suddenly ill. Who were these people? Were they sacrifices made at Diana's temple? Or invaders whose discovery had become their tomb? A worse thought still: Was I meant to join them?
Horrified, I leapt to my feet and ran. I didn't know exactly what I was running on, but my feet rolled more than once, so I had a pretty good idea of what lay below. I would've apologized to the dead as I ran, but I didn't like the idea that someone here might answer back, so I kept my mouth closed and continued running.
After some distance, I came to solid ground and began to breathe easier. I'd hoped that my eyes would gradually adjust, as they always did when I was mining. But not down here. There simply wasn't any light for my eyes to adjust to.
So I took careful, halting steps, always keeping one hand on the rope as my last connection to the surface high above me. But that was little comfort. I had never been so alone in my life.
Except, I was beginning to think I wasn't actually alone. Somewhere in the blackness, something was awake. Its breath came in even and deliberate strokes. Whatever it was, it knew that I was here too.
The bones I had stumbled over weren't from people who had died in here. They had all been killed.
I felt my way through the cave like a blind man. And like most blind beggars, I knew my fate if I didn't find some sort of mercy. Darkness was part of any life in the mines. But I'd never been so deep on my own, and rarely without the hope for a lit torch somewhere shortly ahead.
The breathing continued, so quietly that I might not have heard it if everything else wasn't so still. And though I tried to move away from it, the echoes in this cave made it sound as if the creature was always ahead of me, just out of my reach. Or if there were no echoes, then the creature was moving, like a cat waiting to pounce.
I wanted to call to Radulf to pull me up, but I didn't. Not only was I certain he would ignore my request, but I also doubted the wisdom of giving away my exact location to the thing inside this cave. That was ridiculous, of course. No matter how blind I was, it clearly knew exactly where to find me.
Somewhere ahead there appeared to be some sort of light. It cast a faint gleam toward me, enough to see the fallen body of the first miner who had entered. He was on his back with his hands like claws frozen in place. His skin was white like the moon, as if all blood had drained from him, but I couldn't see any sign of injury. It was the look of a man who had died of fear.
I stepped carefully around him, then continued moving. It wasn't much, and I ignored the bigger question of how there could possibly be any light at all this far below ground. But I felt the pull of the light, calling me toward it. I was a moth to the flame.
When I had first started working in the mines, the dark had frightened me. But my mother had shown me how there was nothing in the darkness that didn't also exist in the light. Since then, I had never been afraid of moving in the deepest shadows ... until now. Because this time, I was certain that she was wrong. Not only was some mysterious creature down here with me, but the closer I came to the light, the more I believed it was coming from Caesar's spirit. I felt him, still here, drawing me forward.
As real as that seemed, when I got closer, I saw the true source of the light. I was standing in the doorway of an enormous cavern, more vast than any place I'd ever seen underground. The room was filled with piles of gold. There were toppled stacks of coins, thousands of them, and heavy gold bars, each one larger than all the gold we might carve out of the mine in a year. Tossed carelessly amidst the rest were goblets, rings, and trays, all made of gold. But they weren't the source of the light. The glow came from something on the very top of the highest pile, something I only saw when I stood on the tips of my toes and arched my neck. It was a golden bulla, the size and shape of my fist, with a brown leather strap to hang from the neck. It seemed no different from any other, except for the glow. Admittedly, that was odd. I'd mined gold before, and it never, never glowed. Without a doubt in my mind, I knew this was the object Radulf wanted. It was Caesar's bulla.
I tried to step into the vast chamber, but by then I had reached the limits of the rope. If I was going to retrieve the bulla, there was no choice but to untie it. My plan was simple and undoubtedly stupid: move fast, gr
ab the bulla, then race back to the cave's entrance. With any luck, the creature down here wouldn't fit through that doorway, and if it did, then I hoped Sal was faster with the rope than the creature was on his feet. I hoped for that. But I didn't truly believe it.
The instant I was untied, I set off on a full run toward the gold. My mind couldn't even begin to process the value of everything down here. One handful of gold could buy freedom for my sister and me. With another handful, we'd have a life of luxury. The sweetest foods, the softest fabrics. Even sandals for our feet. Radulf had told me to ignore everything but the bulla. But ... what if I didn't?
The bulla was square in my vision as I continued running. If it had jewels inside, as most bullas did, then they could be as valuable as two handfuls of gold. Maybe more.
But the moment my foot touched the first gold piece, I was attacked from the side by something that knocked me to the cave floor. My head banged the ground hard enough that my vision blurred while the creature flew away. I tried to focus my eyes. Whatever the thing was, it had powerful wings, and a long, muscular tail.
I rolled to my stomach, then pushed myself up onto all fours while I got a breath. When I did, the creature swooped down from above, flapping its great wings hard enough to create a wind that rattled the gold pieces. It snatched me up with a giant talon that squeezed my lungs. I didn't care what this thing was -- I'd have it for dinner before I gave up fighting. So I kicked back, landing a foot into its soft underbelly.
The animal dropped me almost on top of the pile of gold and screeched in anger. Only then did I turn to my back where I could see it better. It swept upward and fixed a furious eye on me. The animal had the head of an eagle, only it was as large as a horse's. When outstretched, its eagle wings commanded the cave, and the creature circled around, always with an eye on me. Once it crossed behind me, I saw the rest of its body, that of a lion.