Its head was a single huge block of stone more than fifteen feet across, one side matching the curvature of the wall. The handle was a thick beam crossing the entire chamber from a slot chiseled into the rock: a pivot. The entire massive object was designed to pound down and crush anything in front of the doors into a very thin paste.
“I guess they did have time to build a booby trap,” Nina whispered, as if afraid that her voice alone would trigger it. She shone her torch around the rest of the chamber. The walls, the lower parts coated by a layer of plaster, were covered with inscriptions: Atlantean texts.
Near the entrance were several niches containing dusty objects.
Bodies.
She looked more closely. The corpses were tightly wrapped in cloth shrouds, heads left exposed. Empty-eyed skulls leered back at her.
“Who are this lot?” Eddie asked in distaste.
Nina knew the Atlantean language well enough to pick out a familiar name crudely marked in the stone above one particular nook. “It’s Nantalas!”
He directed his light at the shriveled head. “Ha! Maybe you really are related.” The beam picked out some surviving strands of distinctly red hair.
“Very funny.” She didn’t recognize the names over the other bodies, but understood the gist of an inscription nearby. “These must be her acolytes, I suppose. They died with her.”
“How?”
“Poison. It says that once the new Temple of the Gods was completed, they took their own lives in atonement for Nantalas’s blasphemy. Then I guess the other Atlanteans who came with them walled up the tunnel.” She read more of the texts. “They took the statues with them—they were going to hide them in the empire’s farthest outposts so they could never be brought together again.”
“That worked out well,” Eddie said sarcastically. “Why didn’t they just smash the things?”
“The same reason they didn’t destroy the meteorite. They thought it was sent by the gods, so smashing it would just have made Poseidon and Co. even madder. And speaking of gods …” She perused one particular section of text, then looked up at the suspended hammer. “I was right about them interpreting the volcano as being the forge of Hephaestus. They built this thing to honor him, by having his symbol protect the stone.”
“So it’s a trap, right?”
“Oh yeah. Only someone who deserves to enter the Temple of the Gods can get through the doors. Anyone else … well, whoever wrote this was big on smiting.”
“This isn’t the temple?”
“No, just an antechamber. The actual place is through there.” She indicated the doors … then, her curiosity fully aroused, started to cross the chamber to examine them.
“Whoa, whoa!” Eddie pulled her back. “Smiting, remember?”
“I wasn’t going to touch anything,” she said, annoyed. “Besides, if they just wanted to stop anyone from reaching the Temple of the Gods, they could have filled in the lava tube. There must be a way in, otherwise why even bother with the test?”
“What test?”
She pointed at the orichalcum plate. Visible on it was an indentation in the metal: a handprint. “I think that’s how you find out if you deserve to go through. Nothing’ll happen as long as nobody touches it.” She started back toward the doors. “Probably.” Eddie winced as she crossed under the hammer … but it remained still. Warily, he followed her.
Nina peered at the metal plate. The handprint, fingers splayed, was not large; a woman’s. Nantalas? There was something set into the center of the indented palm. A piece of stone.
Purple stone. Part of the meteorite, the same substance from which the statues had been made.
She stared at it, thinking. Why place a material that could conduct earth energy on a door?
The answer was obvious. It was a lock, one that could only be opened with a biological key. Someone who could channel earth energy would be able to unlock it simply by pressing their hand against the panel.
Someone like Nantalas.
Or herself.
“I know what it is,” she told Eddie. “This place must be an earth energy confluence—maybe it’s why the meteorite ended up here, because it was following the lines of energy. So if I touch the stone, it’ll charge up just like the statues, and release the lock.”
Eddie did not share her confidence. “And if you’re wrong, it’s hammer time and I have to mop you off the floor.”
“I don’t think I’m wrong. But just in case, you should go back over to the entrance. Take this with you.” She gave him the bag