Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth - By Christopher Golden Page 0,65
circle of water ringed by the islands of Thera.
“So we’re going to Santorini,” Sully said, wearing a dubious expression, “and we’re going to search every crevice in each of those islands for the ruins of a labyrinth that no one—in thousands of years—has stumbled across before?”
Jada gave a small shrug, refusing to be defeated. “No one’s ever known what they were looking for.”
But Drake had been watching Welch and could see the man’s lips moving while he studied the jar.
“You’re reading,” Drake said.
Welch nodded, a smile stealing across his face. “Yeah.” He gestured in the direction of the other chambers. “The room dedicated to Dionysus—the writing in there is Linear B, an ancient syllabic script used primarily by the Mycenaean Greeks. Now that I’ve had a minute to look at this, it’s really not very different. Linear B-2, let’s call it.”
“So?” Sully asked. “You got a point?”
“Oh, yes,” Welch said happily. He lifted the jar as if it were a trophy. “Here’s your link. I should’ve thought of this immediately, but I’m a little overwhelmed today, y’ know?”
Jada smiled at him. “We know.”
Welch looked grateful. “Anyway, there were texts found in the excavation of the temple at Knossos, written in Linear B, that decreed that all the gods were secondary to something called qe-ra-si-ja. Scholars have argued whether or not this was a god or a king or a kingdom. One school of thought translates qe-ra-si-ja as Therasia, a settlement on the precataclysm island of Thera.”
The archaeologist looked up, inspired. “But Therasia still exists. It’s small, and the side facing the caldera is all cliffs. Only a few hundred people live there.”
Drake felt an old, familiar excitement building. Whatever perils they had faced, whatever tragedies had led them here, they were on the trail of a secret.
“So we’re headed to Therasia,” he said.
“I’m coming with you,” Welch said quickly. “After Melissa’s done telling Hilary what went on today, I’ll be fired anyway.”
“First we have to get out of here without Henriksen’s goons killing us,” Sully said.
Jada scoffed. “He’s not going to shoot you with the expedition staff and workers around as witnesses. Rich people can get away with almost anything, pay off anyone, but it’d be pretty damn hard to cover up killing the entire crew up there.”
“I hope you’re right,” Sully said. “Still, we need to go.”
Welch held the jar he’d taken from the shelf as he stood. “All right. But I’m taking this with us. I want to have a closer look, and if we don’t have time now—”
“Where’s the gold?” Drake asked suddenly.
They all looked at him.
“The gold,” Drake went on. “Midas or Minos or whoever was supposed to be an alchemist, right? Daedalus paid the workers in gold. The cult of Sobek put gold crests on crocodiles.”
“We found some of those already,” Welch said.
“Yeah, okay,” Drake replied. “But if the mistress took the offering of honey from the worshippers and fed it to the Minotaur and the Minotaur was here to protect the gold, then where is the gold?”
“Gone, apparently,” Welch said thoughtfully.
“From here,” Jada said. “But if Daedalus and his people moved the gold from here—maybe from all three of these chambers—the logical place for them to have moved it is to one of the other labyrinths. Maybe they moved it around to keep it safe. It could have been on Thera, maybe destroyed in the eruption.”
Drake nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s in the fourth labyrinth.”
“Look around you,” Welch said, gesturing at the walls and the altar. “Do you see any reference to a fourth?”
“I can’t read this,” Drake replied. “And no one alive is exactly fluent in ancient Atlantean.”
“I told you, it’s a variation on Linear B,” Welch said. “I could muddle my way through a basic translation, but so far I haven’t seen any indication of a fourth labyrinth. And the three-labyrinth symbol is everywhere.”
“So the fourth one came later,” Drake said. “Companies change their logos all the time. Daedalus didn’t get a chance to do the rebranding he needed down here before he died. The point is, Jada’s father thought there was a fourth one, and somebody killed him because he was investigating the possibility. That’s evidence right there, as far as I’m concerned.”
Welch cradled the jar against his chest, looking like he was in the mood to argue. Not too bright, Drake thought, considering how urgent it was that they get out of there.
When Sully drew his gun, whatever Welch had been about to say was forgotten.