Artemis Invaded by Jane Lindskold

you could see the string. These seem to have formed around nothing at all.”
    â€œMaybe we should go outside and examine them in sunlight,” Griffin suggested. “I wonder if there are others. I’d like to take a look.”
    Adara shrugged. “If you don’t mind getting wet and cold, I don’t mind towing you. We certainly seem to have come up on a dead end here. We’ve found the doors, but we can’t get them open.”
    Terrell nodded. “Let’s go out. There’s something I want to check, too … Something I’ve been wondering about ever since Adara found those three clusters of artifacts.”
    *   *   *
    Once they were outside, Terrell hardly took time to change out of his damp clothing before making a beeline toward the location where they had found a skeleton but had not found one of the pendants.
    â€œI’ve been bothered all along,” he said, to Adara and Griffin, “by why these bodies were separated from the rest. There’s something too alike about their situation.”
    Struggling to button his trousers, Griffin hurried after, his mind swirling through possibilities. “Alike … You mean how all of them were near large clusters of stones?”
    â€œYes! I know we agreed that those people might have taken shelter there, but why then didn’t we find evidence of more than one person? You said the scraps we found—buttons and things—indicated one person, maybe two, but probably one.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œWe also concluded that the reason the bodies weren’t found and buried, as were those in the temple, was because they were isolated.”
    â€œRight again.”
    â€œWhat,” Terrell said, coming to a halt by the cluster of boulders, “if those three people went to those places deliberately? What if they had the means to open a way into the cavern?”
    Adara frowned. “Then why did the people wait in the temple? I thought we agreed it was built as misdirection, nothing more.”
    â€œMaybe we’ll find there is an opening,” Terrell said. He had begun to methodically search the surfaces of the clustered rocks. Griffin joined in. Without asking, he sensed what Terrell sought. “However, we only have legend to tell us that the people were hiding in the temple when they were slaughtered. Maybe they were waiting for something else and hid when they saw the enemy coming. Maybe those who came to bury the bodies assumed they had been hiding in the temple and had been forced out into the open by the attackers.”
    â€œIt would be a reasonable assumption,” Adara agreed, “if they didn’t suspect there was anything else here.”
    â€œI think,” Terrell said, “that these rocks hide some sort of mechanism, one that would enable emergency access. I think it took at least three keys to open it. I think we have two of those keys. If we’re lucky, we’ll find the third and with it…”
    His voice trailed off as he slid his hand into a crevice between two of the larger rocks. He pulled, and one of the rocks moved as if it had been set on a pivot.
    â€œThere!” he said with satisfaction. “There! What did I tell you?”
    Hidden in the space between the two rocks was an incision. Set into that was a glittering elongated oval spiral patterned in indigo-violet crystals. Griffin leaned to get a closer look.
    â€œFascinating. The pendant stretches out like a spring to fill the space. That explains the spiral shape.”
    â€œBeautiful,” Adara said. “Now I’m torn as to whether I like this one or the topaz one better.” She grinned impishly at them. “Shall we go find what the other rocks hide?”
    Terrell pushed the rock back into place. “There’s a grip here, hidden so that it looks like a flaw in the rock. I felt something click when I pulled the rock out. I think the