“Shit…” grunted Chase, every muscle tensing.

Nina saw the dark hole set in the far wall start to disappear behind the last ceiling block.

The pain in her arm became unbearable. Kari screamed.

As did Chase, his straining arms finally giving way under the pounding sledgehammer impact of the final weight.

The ceiling shot downwards.

Nina lunged for the hole as the last block dropped like a guillotine blade.

Her hand closed around something: a wooden handle. She pulled it.

Nothing happened-

Thunk.

With an echoing crunch of stone, the ceiling stopped.

Chase opened his eyes. In the distant light, he saw that the wooden bar was now resting an inch above his neck-and barely the length of a finger above that was the cold stone that had been about to crush him.

Kari held perfectly still. Any movement just made the pain in her arm worse. She tried to see what had happened to Nina.

Nina’s right arm was inside the hole in the wall. Trapped inside. The ceiling had dropped so low that she couldn’t pull it back out. Another inch, and it would have first crushed the bone, then sheared off her arm above the elbow.

With another monstrous grinding of stone and a flurry of dust, the ceiling started to ascend.

Chase glanced to his side. The door blocking the entrance opened again.

Nina snatched her arm out of the hole and looked back. Kari’s face, lit spookily from below by the flashlight, was full of pain-but also an almost disbelieving relief. Nina picked her way back through the poles to help her. With a moan, Kari lifted herself off the spike. Blood gushed through the hole in her sleeve.

“Oh God,” Nina said, pressing her hand against the wound. “Eddie! Eddie! Kari’s hurt, she needs help!”

“She’s not the only one,” Chase gasped as he slid out from beneath the bar, then rolled off the stone bench. He pushed himself to his feet, aching arms barely cooperating. “I need some light.”

Nina took the light and directed it down the passage so Chase could make his way through the poles. By the time he was halfway through, the ceiling had returned to its original position and the awful noise had stopped.

There was another clunk, this time from the dead end of the passage.

Nina whipped the flashlight around to see an opening appear, one of the stone blocks in the wall pivoting backwards to reveal darkness beyond.

“Nina…” said Kari, looking at the blood on her shoulder.

“Forget about me, you’re hurt worse than I am. Eddie!”

Barely fitting between the poles, the barbs plucking at his leather jacket, Chase reached them. “What happened? Let me see.”

Nina held up the light. “One of these spikes got her.”

“Jesus,” Chase muttered, carefully peeling back the wet material for a better look. “That’s deep-and the first aid kit’s outside in the village.”

“Forget that,” said Kari, struggling upright. “We don’t have time, we’ve got to keep moving. How long have we got?”

Chase raised his arm to look at his watch, letting out a strained grunt. “Are you okay?” Nina asked.

“Feels like some bugger dropped a car on me. We’ve got… forty-nine minutes.”

“And two challenges to go,” Nina said ruefully.

“We can do them,” said Kari, no doubt in her voice. “Come on.”

Once through the opening, Chase insisted that they stop so he could treat the women’s wounds. By ripping off Kari’s torn sleeve he was able to tie it around her arm to slow the bleeding. The injury to Nina’s shoulder was less deep, so he wadded up one of her sleeves and used it as a makeshift bandage.

“That’s the best I can do for now,” he said apologetically. “You’ll both need stitches when we get back out. And shots too. Don’t want some nasty little bastard insect infecting you with anything.”

Nina shuddered. “God. I can’t believe how close that was.”

“Still got two more to go,” Chase reminded her.

“Yeah, thanks for the reassurance. And you’re sweating.”

“I think this officially counts as hassle.”

“We’ve beaten the Challenge of Strength,” said Kari, cautiously flexing her arm and wincing a little. “So we’ve still got the Challenge of Skill, and of Mind.”

“I was going to say that I hope they’re easier than the last one,” Chase said, “but… I’m not getting that feeling.”

“Nor am I,” said Kari. “But I know we can do it. How much time?”

“Forty-six minutes.”

“Okay, then. Let’s see what the Challenge of Skill involves.”

They walked cautiously down the new passage, which turned several times before the sound of their footsteps was joined by something else. Chase directed the light ahead. The corridor opened out into a larger chamber. “Water,” he said.

“Inside the temple?” Nina asked.

“You said it’s the temple of the sea god…” They increased their pace. “Definitely running water. Maybe that little river we saw by the village goes through the temple as well.”

His theory was proven correct moments later as the narrow passage widened out. The trio found themselves on a platform along the long edge of a giant rectangular pool of brackish green water. The ceiling above the platform was at the same claustrophobic height as the passageway, but the chamber over the pool was far taller.

Chase directed the light at the water, rippling reflections crawling over the chamber’s walls. The pool, at least a hundred feet long, was about twenty-five feet across. Spanning it was what Nina at first thought was a rope until she realized it was actually a narrow wooden beam, little more than an inch wide, supported along its length by poles emerging from the pool. The beam was two feet below the level of the platform-and only six inches above the sluggishly flowing surface of the water.

“Okay, now what?” Chase wondered.

Kari pointed across the channel. “What’s that?”

The flashlight revealed a glinting golden dagger, resting point-down inside a shallow recess directly above the opposite end of the beam. About ten feet above that was a ledge running along the far wall, but there didn’t appear to be any way up to it. “Well, that’s the Challenge of Skill,” said Nina, moving to the edge of the platform and crouching for a closer look at the wooden beam. “You have to balance on this thing and walk across to get the dagger.”

Chase found something else of interest, at one end of the pool against the stone wall. “And then that comes down so the others can get across.” On the far side was a narrow drawbridge, held up by ropes. He traced an arc from its upper end with his forefinger, all the way down to the edge of the platform on which they stood.

Nina looked more closely at the pool. At each end of the chamber she could just about make out the arched top of what she assumed was an aqueduct, channels for the water to flow through. “Why not just swim across?” she wondered aloud. “I don’t know how deep it is, but-”

The dull green surface of the water suddenly exploded into life. A set of gaping jaws burst out of it, lunging at Nina-

Kari seized her by her collar and yanked her backwards as the caiman’s mouth snapped shut where she had been a moment earlier. The twelve-foot predator thrashed and clawed at the side of the pool, trying to pursue its quarry, but was defeated by the vertical stone wall. Unable to gain traction, it dropped back into the water with an evil hiss.

Nina was too shocked to speak. “Are you okay?” Kari asked as Chase let out a considerably louder shout of “Jesus!”

Her voice returned. “Oh my God!”

“That’s why you can’t swim across,” Chase said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s piranhas in there too.”

“How did that thing get in here?” Nina yelled, her whole body shaking. “We’re in a five-thousand-year-old fucking temple!”