Reliquary

The night-vision goggles bloomed into static as they tried to resolve the vast space that lay beyond. As best Pendergast could tell, he was in a large, circular room. Far above his head, the remains of an enormous crystal chandelier, filthy and askew, dangled from the groined ceiling. Bits of material that looked like seaweed hung from its still-graceful curves. The ceiling was a great dome, tiled in mirrors that were now shattered and webbed, hovering above him like a ruined, glittering sky. Although he could not make out the center of the large space, Pendergast saw a series of stone steps, placed at irregular intervals, leading ahead into the darkness. The muddy footprints followed these steps. In the center was some kind of structure: an information kiosk, perhaps, or ancient refreshment area.

The walls of the room curved away from him into the distance, pillared in Doric columns of crumbling plaster. Between the nearest columns was an enormous tiled mural: trees, a quiet lake with a beaver dam and beaver, mountains, and an approaching thunderstorm were all depicted in ruined complexity. The decayed condition of the mural and its shattered tiles would have reminded Pendergast of Pompeii, were it not for the furious sea of dried mud and filth that had swept up along its lower edges. Broad streaks of ordure, like a giant’s fingerpainting, ran crazily up the walls. Along the crown of the mural, Pendergast could make out the name ASTOR in complex tilework. He smiled; Astor had originally made his fortune in beaver pelts. This had indeed been a private sanctuary for a few very rich families.

The next bay contained another great mural, this one depicting a steam locomotive crossing a river gorge, pulling a line of hopper and tank cars and framed by snow-capped peaks. The name VANDERBILT was tiled above it—a man who made his fortune in railroads. In front of the mural lay an ancient ottoman, its arms askew and its back broken, mildewed stuffing pouring from the rent pillows. Farther along, a niche marked ROCKEFELLER depicted an oil refinery in a bucolic setting, surrounded by farms, the distillation columns tinged by the sunset.

Pendergast took a step into the large space. He watched the rows of columns recede into darkness, the grand names of the Gilded Age glowing in his goggles: Vanderbilt, Morgan, Jesup, others too faint to make out. He moved slowly, watching for any movement. At the far side of the room, a corridor marked TO HOTEL led to two ornate elevators, their brass doors wide open and stained with verdigris, the cars inside in complete devastation, cables draped along the floor like iron snakes. Inset into a nearby wall between two shattered mirrors was a mahogany schedule board, warped and rotten with worm holes. Though the bottom of the board had fallen away, he could make out the lettering across the top:

WEEKENDS IN SEASON

Dest.

Time

Pocantico Hills

10:14 A

Cold Spring

10:42

Hyde Park

11:3

Beside the timetable was a small waiting area of disintegrating chairs and sofas. Amidst them, Pendergast saw what had once been a Bösendorfer concert grand. The floods had rotted and then stripped most of the wood away, leaving a massive metal frame, keyboard, and wild nest of broken strings: a musical skeleton, now silent.

Pendergast turned toward the center of the room and listened. The silence was broken only by the distant sound of dripping water; he glanced around and saw a stream of shivering drops falling from the ceiling. He began moving forward, sca

The goatish smell became stronger.

As the shape in the center began resolving itself in the green haze of his goggles, Pendergast realized it was too low and squat to be a kiosk. Now he could see that it was a crudely made structure: a hut of smooth white stones with only a partial roof, apparently unfinished, surrounded by low platforms and pedestals. Moving still closer, he could see that what he had thought were stones were actually skulls.

Pendergast stopped and took several breaths of the cleansing oxygen. The entire hut had been constructed of human skulls, anterior sides facing outward. Ragged holes yawned through their backs, glowing eerily green in his goggles. He counted the skulls from floor to roof, then did a rough estimation of the diameter; a quick calculation told him that the circular wall of the hut was formed of roughly four hundred and fifty skulls. Hair and scalp fragments showed that most, if not all, of the skulls were fresh.

Pendergast circled to the front of the hut, then waited outside the entrance for several minutes, motionless. The tracks ended here—thousands of them—in a mad jumble of prints around the opening. Above it, he could see three ideographs, painted in some dark liquid:

There was no sound, no movement. Taking a deep breath, he crouched, then spun toward the inside.

The hut was deserted. Ceremonial clay goblets, at least a hundred or more, had been placed on the floor along the inside wall. Outside the entrance stood a simple stone offering table, perhaps four feet high and two in diameter. It was surrounded with a fence made out of what appeared to be human long-bones, lashed with rawhide. Some odd-looking metal parts had been arranged on the table and covered with rotting flowers, as if part of a shrine. Pendergast picked up one of the parts and examined it in surprise. It was a flat piece of metal with a worn rubber handle. The other, equally mundane items provided no further clues. He slipped a few of the smallest into his pocket.

Suddenly, a flash of white registered in his goggles. Quickly, he dropped to a kneeling position behind the table. All seemed quiet, and he wondered if he had been mistaken. Occasionally the goggles could be fooled by thermal layers in the air.

But there it was again: a shape, human—or nearly—loping through the archway from the platform beyond, a white blob leaving an infrared track on his field of view. It appeared to be clutching something to its chest as it ran toward him.

In the thick dark, Pendergast silently raised his gun in one hand, his flash apparatus in the other, and waited.

= 40 =

MARGO SAT BACK in the flimsy institutional chair, massaging her temples lightly with her fingertips. After Frock’s departure, the meeting had quickly degenerated into disagreement. Horlocker left the room for several minutes to speak privately with the mayor. He returned with a city engineer named Hausma

“Look,” came the voice of Masters, ti

“Send several teams, then,” Horlocker snapped. “Try different entrance points. Use a wave approach, so we know at least one team will make penetration.”

“Sir, you can’t even tell me the number or condition of the, well, whatever you call them. And the terrain is unfamiliar. The tu

“There’s always the Bottleneck,” said Hausma

“The what?” Horlocker replied.

“The Bottleneck,” said the engineer. “All the piping in that quadrant has to go through a single large blast hole, maybe three hundred feet down. The Astor Tu