Xandria continued. “On first glace, a Sierpinski carpet just looks like a symmetrical diagram full of squares.” She got closer. “But if you look closer, you begin to notice that its actually far more complicated: a square with a square cut out, with that figure repeated infinitely.” She put the map in front of Cornelius’s face. “I thought that this was only a representation of the entryway to the tunnel, and maybe the entire tunnel system as well. But I didn’t know that it was also a representation of the treasure room itself.”

“Let me see.”

She turned the illuminated map so that each of the figures on the page lined up with the figures on the wall. “See!” she said. “The ox. The swan. The lion. The dog. The hare. The fox. The ape. The eagle. The king. All right here around us.”

“And in the middle . . .”

“The treasure,” Xandria said. “Jorgenson had the right idea, it was just that his approach was a bit too hasty.” She picked up one of the flares and hurled it into the broken space in the floor.

“Is it down there?” Barber asked.

Cornelius gestured toward the hole. “Why don’t you look and see?”

Barber held up his hands. “I was just asking.”

Cornelius frowned. “I wasn’t.”

Barber accepted his master’s challenge, but he wasn’t about to make the same mistake as his dead comrade. He tied a rope around his waist and secured it to the wall, making a journey toward the hole that was painstakingly slow.

“Do you see anything?” Xandria asked.

Barber peeked over the edge of the splintered boards. “It’s pretty far down. I can just barely see the flare.”

“You’re going to have to go down there,” Cornelius said.

“Let me do it,” Xandria said.

Barber didn’t argue. He retreated from the hole and untied his rope, handing it to Xandria. “You’re braver than me,” he admitted.

“No,” she said. “I’m just more committed.” Fastened firmly, she crawled out toward the gap. She turned and dropped her legs down into the nothingness below the floor. “Do you have me?”

“I gotcha,” Barber said. “I’m going to let you down just a little at a time.”

Xandria gripped the rope tightly, feeling the vibration of it rubbing against the edge of the wood. Her body began to go down.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she called back. One meter. Two meters. Three. Four. Still, the ground seemed a long distance away. She might run out of rope before reaching the floor.

“Can you see anything?” The voice belonged to Cornelius.

“Not really,” Xandria said. She looked up and watched the hole grow smaller and smaller. Good. At least she was making progress.

“We don’t have much more rope,” Barber said from above.

“Just get me as far as you can,” Xandria said. She wasn’t about to give up now.

The rope stopped.