The Covenant Of The Flame

It's getting worse, Tess thought.

Crude steps carved into the limestone led down to a deep, wide, towering cavern. Dim lightbulbs next to the primitive stairway Sustened off moist rock and guided the way.

Tess reached the bottom, overwhelmed by the vastness of the amber. In awe, she stared this way and that at intricate rock formations. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, water dripping down from them, forming pools which she avoided. Stalagmites projected upward from the pools, their contours vaguely resembling the snouts of animals.

Her rapid breathing appeared as vapor.

'This cave has a constant temperature of fifty-five degrees,' Fulano said. 'Winter or summer. Thousands of years ago, a rock-fall buried the original entrance, preserving the interior. In all that time, the secret of the cave was hidden. But during the eighteen hundreds, another rockslide opened a gap in the cliff. A local farmer, searching for missing lambs, wandered up the slope, discovered the gap, and decided to investigate, less out of curiosity about the cave – after all, such places can be dangerous – than out of concern that his lambs might have wandered inside. He soon reached a farther gap so narrow that his lambs could never have gotten past it. Dim sunlight from the entrance showed him that the cave was much larger beyond the narrow passageway, and he mentioned it to his family, then to other farmers after he'd found his lambs in a meadow later that day. Word gradually spread and eventually reached my valley, where my great-great-grandfather had an interest in caves. He decided to mount an expedition, came to this valley, and ordered his workmen to use picks and sledgehammers to widen the passageway. The limestone was brittle enough to allow them to accomplish his orders. He then used torches to investigate farther, and when he found what we're about to show you, he swore his workers to secrecy. As quickly as possible, he had an iron door secured into the rock walls at the entrance, and he alone carried the key to its padlock. Later a second door was added farther along. Those doors are not the ones through which we passed. Years ago, the originals rusted and disintegrated, replaced by others. In recent times, improvements were made, steps chiseled into slopes, light-bulbs strung, their wires attached to the kerosene generator.'

'But what did he find?' Craig asked. 'And why did he want to hide it?'

'Not so much to hide it as protect it,' Fulano said. 'In a moment, you'll understand.' He led the group across the chamber, entering a dimly illuminated corridor that twisted to the right, then the left, and took them lower.

Tess felt smothered by the dampness and the sense that the confines of the cave created a pressure, making the air around her heavy. She stepped over pools of water, sometimes hearing water trickle from the ceiling. On occasion, cold drops pelted her head. One passage led to another, maze-like.

She rounded a bend. Another huge chamber opened before her. Fulano and Gerrard waited ahead, smiling with joy, their eyes glinting so intensely that reflection from the dim bulbs along the floor couldn't have caused the radiance in their expressions.

Craig stopped beside her. In back, Hugh Kelly and the guards emerged from the corridor, joining them.

'And now?' Craig sounded apprehensive. 'Why are we stopping?'

'Because we've reached what we came to show you. Don't you see?' Gerrard asked, laughing. 'Don't you see? Look around!' His laughter swelled, echoing throughout the cavern, his gleeful outburst magnified. 'Look!'

Confused, Tess obeyed, slowly turning, directing her gaze in the direction of Gerrard's outspread arms.

Abruptly she did see, and the vision that awaited her caused her to clutch her chest, then to step back in astonishment, awestruck.

'Oh, my God.' At once she said it again, louder, overwhelmed. 'My God!'

Her knees became weak. She struggled to keep her balance, stu

'They're magnificent!' she blurted. They're…! I've never seen anything like…! It's almost impossible to believe…! They're so beautiful I want to cry!'

Craig shook his head in astonishment, so overpowered with surprise and rapture that he was speechless.

All around and above them, on the walls and across the ceiling, animals seemed to race or graze, to swim or leap or simply pose to be admired. Paintings on the rock, so many that Tess couldn't count them or comprehend their complex flowing pattern, the animals frequently overlapping, their images static yet somehow in motion, a huge eternal rampant herd.

'Yes,' Gerrard said, his voice sounding choked, 'so magnificent, so awesomely beautiful that they make me want to cry. I've been here i

Deer, elk, bison, horses, ibex, bears, lions, mammoths. More, many more, including species that Tess could not identify, Presumably because they were extinct.

Some were engraved in the rock, the figures outlined with charcoal. Others were silhouetted in red, the lines either solid or composed of large dots. The animals were life-size. On the ceiling, an eight-foot-long deer had racks of spreading, many-pronged antlers that were almost equally long. The contours of the ceiling had been used to indicate bulging muscles in the deer's back and legs.

The style of the paintings was eerily realistic as if the animals were alive and any moment could leap off the walls. At the same time, the style was surreal, causing the magnificent creatures to look oddly distorted, some foreshortened, others elongated, a distortion that added paradoxically to the powerful effect. The animals curved gracefully around projections in the rock. They rippled dramatically in and out of cracks and fissues. An elk appeared to be swimming. A horse appeared to be falling. Moisture in the limestone made them shimmer. Breathtaking.

'Who painted these?' Craig managed to ask. 'When? You said this cave was discovered in the eighteen hundreds. But before then, rocks had barricaded the entrance. How old are-?'

'Twenty thousand years.'

'What?'

'These paintings come from a time when human beings had only recently appeared,' Fulano said. 'Who painted them? Our immediate evolutionary ancestors. A type of human called Cro-Magnon. Obviously their sense of beauty, their admiration for nature, was immense. In that respect, compared to our own disrespect for nature, perhaps our species hasn't evolved but regressed. Sometimes you hear these people referred to as "cave men, " an absurd expression because the Cro-Magnons never lived in caves. How could they have tolerated the chill and the dampness?' Fulano shook his head. 'No, they lived outside the caves. But for reasons that anthropologists haven't been able to determine, they sometimes went into the caves, deep within, and in chambers similar to this one, they painted the glory of the animals. It's my opinion that these chambers were their churches, that they came here on special occasions, perhaps at the vernal equinox and the summer solstice, to worship the miracle of rebirth and growth, to initiate children about to become adults and show them the mysteries of the tribe. The greatest mystery – life. A place of adoration, of sublime appreciation for what this planet is all about.'

Gerrard added to Fulano's explanation. 'This wasn't the only such sanctuary to be discovered during the eighteen hundreds.'

Tess nodded. 'I've heard about, although I've never seen, the paintings at Lascaux in France, and many others, including those at Altamira here in Spain.'