Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth - By Christopher Golden Page 0,80
Sully into the village to start asking around about the earthquake and what might have been on the hill before the fortress was built.
“This is turning out to be a waste of a day,” he said.
Jada had her hair back in a ponytail, and when she frowned and crossed her arms, she looked like someone’s recalcitrant teenage daughter.
“Are you giving up?” she asked.
“Nah,” Drake said, deciding this was not the moment to suggest they call the taxi back and head somewhere for a drink. He slid the gun from the back of his waistband and handed it to her. “Hang on to that for a second, will you?”
As she took it, he drew a deep breath, glanced at the door, then ran at it. Even as he launched himself off the ground, he knew what a stupid idea it was. Trying to be Action Man always ended in bruised ribs and a bruised ego. His regret lasted a millisecond, and then his feet struck the crack in the door and it burst inward in a shriek of metal and wood.
Drake tried to put a hand down to break his fall but still rapped his knee hard when he struck the ground. He grimaced, sucking air between his teeth, and got up slowly, massaging the same knee Sully had been nursing a minute before.
“You’re no Bruce Lee,” Sully muttered.
“I got the damn door open,” Drake countered, dusting off his trousers.
“Do you two ever not bicker like children?” Jada asked.
Drake and Sully exchanged a look, and then both of them grinned.
“Not really,” Sully said.
“It’s always his fault,” Drake said. “I’m innocent.”
Sully rolled his eyes. “How is it I’ve let you tag along with me so many times over the years?” he asked, stepping through the wreckage of the door, shining his flashlight around a room that had been closed up for more than half a century.
“You? I’m the one who lets you tag along. But that’s going to change, trust me. Grumpy old man with stinky cigars.”
“Enough with the cigars,” Sully called back to them, his voice echoing off the walls of what seemed like a fairly large room.
“I agree,” Jada whispered to Drake. “Enough with the cigars.”
“I heard that,” Sully said.
“Good,” she shot back.
Jada handed the gun back to Drake, who returned it to his waistband as they followed Sully through the shattered door. As they passed over the threshold, Drake looked up at the buckled frame. He said nothing to Jada, but he didn’t like the look of it. The split door had been acting as a massive support beam, just as she had feared. Grit sifted down from cracks in the stone above the ruptured wooden frame. But it was only a single room and the last one open to them. If they left without examining it, they would always wonder.
“Suddenly I’m thirsty,” Sully said, waving his flashlight around.
As Jada swept her light across the ceiling and then aimed it forward, Drake understood the joke. They were in a medieval wine cellar. Unlike the rest of the fortress, this room had been carved right out of a section of ancient stone, part of the hilltop. The curved ceiling was built of stone blocks, and arched alcoves lined the walls. Old casks were stacked in several of the alcoves, but over time the wood had dried so badly that the seals had opened and the wine had long since drained away and evaporated, leaving only stains and a dull but distinctive odor.
“Nice. How come I don’t have one of these?” Drake asked.
No one answered. Jada and Sully had both begun searching the room. He figured they were checking the alcoves for secret passages, since there was no obvious sign of cracks or breaks in the cavern floor. The fortress had been built eons after the labyrinth would have been abandoned, but if this was the location of Daedalus’s third maze, it was entirely possible that whoever had built the fortress would have known about the labyrinth and constructed some kind of hidden access. And given that the wine cellar had been carved out—or plugged into an existing split in the rock—it made sense that if there were any kind of access, it would be through here. But with a single circuit of the room, half in darkness since he didn’t have a flashlight, Drake could tell that the builder of the fortress had given this room only one purpose, and that was storing wine.