“Max, I think I’ve found something,” Sabine said.
He made his way over to her. She leaned in close to the stone wall and pointed. There, in another carving of the god of the underworld and Cerberus, his three-headed dog, was a crude rendition of a dove—the same rendition they’d seen on the tombstone.
“That’s it,” he said. “It was clearly added later than the rest of these carvings. It’s not as expressive or detailed.”
“There aren’t any words anywhere near here. Perhaps there isn’t another clue, and we’ve actually found it,” she said. “Do you have anything we can break the stone with?” She searched the area around her feet, scanning the floor for an item she could use.
Max smiled at her. “We might want to be careful before we bust through the wall. We don’t want to be trapped down here indefinitely. One wrong move could bring the whole building down on us.”
She looked up at the stone ceiling above them. A frown creased her forehead. “Excellent point.”
Max felt on the wall around the dove carving, pressing into the stone, but nothing moved beneath his hands. “There has to be a compartment or something around here,” he muttered.
She followed his lead and began running her hands over the stone. Her delicate hands ran inquisitively over the walls, and Max couldn’t help but imagine those same hands exploring his own body. The way she’d run her finger down his chest, her nails biting into his flesh, the way she kissed. His stomach tensed.
Damnation!
He stepped forward and pressed directly onto the dove. Nothing. He leaned into it and suddenly he felt the floor beneath his right foot shift. The stone where the dove sat slid downward, opening up a compartment.
“Max!” Sabine said.
In the compartment sat six bottles of different shapes and sizes.
“Interesting,” Max said.
“What do you suppose we’re supposed to do with them?”
“I’m not sure.” He leaned closer to better examine the bottles. “Poison,” he muttered. “No, that can’t be it. There has to be something else.”
“The last clue dealt with an Atlantean game.” Sabine turned around in the chamber. “Nothing here looks familiar to me, though.”
Max followed Sabine’s lead and surveyed the room again. The statue and the bottles—there was nothing to be done there. He narrowed his attention to the scale. He’d seen that scale before—that’s what was familiar about that statue. He stepped over to it. “I know this scale.”
“It looks like any other scale would,” Sabine said.
“No, see the symbols here.” He pointed to the engravings at the apex between the two plates. “I’ve seen that. In a book?” No, that wasn’t right. He glanced back at the bottles in the secret compartment, then back at the scale. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” Sabine asked.
He gathered the bottles, one by one. “This image, the scale with bottles on it.” He met her eyes and smiled. “It’s from the map.”
She motioned to his bag. “Well, get it out, and we can match this scale to the illustration.”
He shook his head. “With all the people we’ve had chasing us, I didn’t think it would be safe. I left it at my home.”
“Do you remember it then? The exact placement?” she asked.
“It’s not just about the bottles. We have to fill them with water. The weight needs to be evenly distributed.”
“So we have to find water,” Sabine said. “I wonder if that pump in the main room still works.” She turned and strode out of the chamber and into the pool room. Back behind the four statues sat an old pump.
“Here, let me. You hold the bottles.” He handed them to her. It took several cranks to get the pump moving. The water creaked and moaned through the pipes beneath the floor, then shot through the pump.
Sabine held each of the bottles under the flow, allowing them all to fill.
Once they’d completed that task, they went back into the chamber. They stood before the statue with the scale. Max closed his eyes, trying to envision the image of the scale with the bottles. While these bottles were also all different sizes and therefore held different amounts of water, they were not exact replicas. The bottles on the map were all different colors. With his eyes closed, he could imagine them: a short red one and a tall purple one, a narrow green one. But the bottles here were all made from the same yellow glass.
“Where do they go?” Sabine asked.