Well of Souls

“And evacuate the air inside to equalize the pressure.” Pahl’s pale blue eyes looked almost silver in the glow of their flashlights.

“Yeah.” Jase aimed a significant look at his friend. “Probably we can get back out. At least, there’s air: oxygen, nitrogen. A little helium.”

“Like someone’s expecting us.”

“Yeah.” Jase hesitated, then reached up with both hands and thumbed the seals on his helmet. There was a hiss as the seals released. Cautiously, Jase lifted the helmet a few centimeters and sniffed. Instantly, he recoiled. “Ugh. Smells old, kind of stale. Thick. Like,” he made a face then turned and spat, “tastes like something…”

He stopped as he recognized the stench of death. And what else was he expecting? It’s a tomb, you jerk.Jase worked out another mouthful of foul-tasting spit. Of course, there’s something dead.

“Come on,” Jase said, clipping his helmet to his waist. He hoped he would get used to the smell. Otherwise, he would be forced to put his helmet back on; the smell of decay was that strong.

As Jase predicted, the panel slid shut behind them when they stepped away. Through the metal, they heard the swoosh and hiss of air being evacuated.

As they walked through the tu

There was one recurrent image: a great woman-snake, or maybe it was a dragon, Jase couldn’t tell. The thing had green scales, curved talons, and batlike wings; her eyes were set within ridges of scales and the same rhomboid-and diamond-shaped scales ran down the sides of her neck. Her neck wasn’t exactly straight either; it flared, so her shoulders and neck inscribed an arc, not an angle. In some of the paintings, the woman-snake hovered over figures that were clearly worshippers; Jase spotted humanoid figures carrying baskets of offerings—jewels, coins, food—and other figures that played upon piped instruments or harps. But in other paintings, the woman-snake formed the background for a figure that Jase thought must be the king: a jeweled diadem nestled on his forehead.

Playing his light over the walls and ceiling of the tu

He tapped Pahl on the arm. “Do you…?”

Pahl nodded and stared at his tricorder. “There’s light. Just ahead.”

The tu

In the room was a man with golden skin. Staring at them.

Jase flinched back with a cry. His heart thumped against his ribs, and his legs went watery with fear, and then he made himself look again. Almost at once, he wanted to kick himself for being so stupid. No, jerk. It’s not a man. It’s a statue. Jeez.

The statue was gold, its features inlaid with colored stones: rubies for the lips, coal-black obsidian eyes outlined in some dark blue gem, black crystals for nostrils. A green faceted stone (an emerald?) centered on the forehead: the king’s diadem. The statue stood before a stone altar that was a triangle three meters high; each side was flanked by a flight of three stone steps. Chiseled carvings of chimeras roiled along the altar’s three stone faces.

Everything in threes.Jase took a few steps toward the statue, and then turned to inspect the rest of the chamber. Jase saw that the tu

“An altar,” said Jase. He knelt on a step and his gloved fingers played over white smooth humps of material clinging to the rock. “Melted wax, like from candles. They probably did something religious here, prayers or something, before they left.”

“This way,” said Pahl, indicating a small passageway to the right of one statue. “There’s another room, much bigger.”

Once in the room, which was lit with a dim glow that seemed to have no source, they stood for several seconds, mouths open. Just staring.

“Oh,” said Jase, releasing his breath in an astonished gasp. His gaze traveled along the vaulted ceiling. The ceiling was painted a rich, dark blue and studded with glittering yellow stars. Like the sky at night, and there are two bigger than the rest, probably those binary stars.He saw at once that the paintings on the walls of the elliptical room—a dizzying array of red, blacks, and greens—were divided into three registers, with figures contained within intersecting rhomboids and trapezoids. Probably telling a story.Yet the story didn’t unfold in a straight line; the mural swirled along the walls. Jase spotted serpents, jagged bolts crashing through skies studded with blazing stars, the arcs of arrows curving in the air. The paintings felt organic and alive but suspended in time, in that instant between life and death every child knows but does not remember: the moment before he draws its first breath. Instinctively, Jase understood that the mural told a story of the hours of a single night. The story seemed to end with an image of huge golden disc at the far side of the room.

Jase took another step into the chamber. That disc had to be a depiction of the rising sun—maybe the neutron star before it had becomea neutron star. Just beneath the disc, he saw the woman-snake again, with its angry blood-red eyes, its shimmering green-scaled reptilian body. Those black wings.

He felt Pahl touch his arm. “Look,” said Pahl, pointing toward the center of the room.

Jase’s gaze followed. A red-stone, rhomboid slab stood in the center of the ellipse. Unlike the stone altar in the other room, however, this was carved with scrolls of ivy twisting around arcing columns incised out of the rock. Scattered on the floor were heaps of gold; dark wooden chests with latinum inlay and the rich green of jevonite; the crumbling remains of candles long since burned to nothing. And there was a body.

Jase and Pahl exchanged glances, and Jase saw Pahl’s throat work in a hard swallow. Without a word, they crept toward the slab and fa