Temple of the Gods by Andy McDermott Read Free Book Online

room within the enormous Temple of Poseidon. She had never been inside it personally, something that still bugged her, but had seen live video footage of it shot by Eddie before its partial destruction. The ship that had crashed on to the structure was the research vessel Evenor , from which the first underwater expedition had been launched. It had taken over four years before other explorers managed to clear away enough of the wreckage to find that some sections of the smashed temple had survived.
    Atlantean artefacts and treasures had been recovered from the altar room by the IHA, but by far the most valuable of its contents was still in place. Parts of the walls gleamed in the diver’s spotlights. The chamber had been lined with sheets of precious metal, a gold alloy known to its builders as orichalcum, but even they paled in worth against the words inscribed upon them. The room recorded the entire history of Atlantis, from its earliest beginnings right up to its fall – and one of the hopes for Hayter’s expedition was that it would find those last words and solve the final mystery of one of humanity’s greatest legends.
    Why Atlantis sank.
    The pointer jittered over crumpled metal protruding from beneath a fallen block. ‘As you can see,’ Hayter went on, ‘a lot of the panels have been lost. More than half of them are completely buried, and short of taking apart the temple stone by stone it’s unlikely we’ll ever be able to recover them.’
    ‘ Sharkdozer could do it,’ Matt chipped in. ‘The heavy lifting arms can easily shift that lot. It’s just a matter of time.’
    ‘And money,’ Hayter said patronisingly. ‘Now, around two-thirds of the accessible panels are damaged to some extent.’ The laser spot danced over gashes and twists in the orichalcum. ‘Fortunately, one of the larger ceiling slabs only collapsed at one end, and as you can see here –’ he indicated a rubble-choked gap beneath a long block of stone lying at an angle – ‘it protected the texts beneath it to a degree. Once we cleared the debris, we were able to view them.’
    Another click. The new picture was closer in on the now accessible space. More orichalcum sheets gleamed, words in a long-dead language discernible upon them. The chronicles of the Atlantean empire ran around the room, added day by day, line by line.
    ‘Our translation team started work on this section as soon as the divers returned to the surface,’ said Hayter. ‘Most of it’s similar to the other texts in the temple – accounts of the actions of the king and queen and other political leaders, military activity, and so on. Talonor’s expeditions are mentioned several times.’ The Atlantean explorer’s unearthed records had led Nina to discover an ancient – and spectacular – Hindu vault high in the Himalayas the previous year. ‘But the part I think you’ll be most interested in is this.’
    He used the remote to display a close-up of one particular section of the scribed texts. Nina examined it thoughtfully. ‘I recognise some words,’ she said. ‘Something about . . . keys? The keys of . . . strength, it looks like. No, of power.’
    Hayter seemed put out that she could understand any of it without his help. ‘I’ll save you some time,’ he said, highlighting a line. ‘Beginning here: “Nantalas, high priestess of the Temple of the Gods and keeper of the sky stone, showed the magic of the keys of power to the royal court. In the hands of others they were nothing more than simple statues, but in hers they blazed with heavenly light.”’
    Nina stiffened, immediately realising the significance of the words. Matt cocked an eyebrow at her reaction, but said nothing as Hayter continued: ‘“Nantalas told the king that the keys had given her a vision of the sky stone –” we’re not sure whether that’s referring to an actual meteorite or something more metaphorical, by the way – “with its power unleashed, a power to destroy the