The Codex (An Armour of God Thriller Book 2)

by Daniel Patterson

"A ledger?" she asked. "What type of ledger?"

  "It contained detailed records of the churches in the eastern and western settlements and their tithes," he said. "But the journal also contained a single entry for a previously unknown settlement near Angmagssalik, what is now Tasiilaq. I think this is that settlement."

  "That's why no one could find them!" Sydney said. "They moved underground and created a whole civilization down here. This is unbelievable! And your grandfather knew this was here?"

  "He had a hunch, but he never mentioned anything about it being underground. He died before he could organize an expedition. I just wish he could be here to see this."

  "So you two were close?"

  "He was my best friend."

  Sydney placed a consoling hand on Zack's shoulder. "I'm sure he's very proud of you, Zack."

  They made their way to the buildings and began exploring. Running through the settlement was a crystal clear, fast-moving stream. Four feet across at its widest points, stone slabs bridged the stream, connecting the walkways.

  As Sydney peered in, trying to judge the depth, something moved. She screamed and jumped back.

  Zack grabbed her arm before she could go far. "Fish," he said. "Arctic char."

  Sydney stared at him, then looked back into the stream. "Incredible," she said in a hushed voice. "Do you know what this means?"

  "That this isn't a closed system," Zack said. "This stream starts somewhere else and travels through. There is a way out."

  "That, and these people had a food source without traveling to the surface." Sydney looked worried.

  Zack shook his head. "Doesn't mean they didn't go up—or that they couldn't. They found a way down. We'll find a way up."

  Chapter Twenty

  SYDNEY REMOVED A WATERPROOF notebook from her backpack and began scribbling.

  The cold had delayed the process of decay of this lost settlement. Stone walls still stood in place and interior walls stood to support roofs. Inside several buildings that turned out to be homes, there were wooden tables and chairs and other furniture. It was a well-preserved ghost town from another era.

  "What are you doing?" Zack asked.

  "Documenting. Uncle Sal taught me to write everything down."

  Zack pulled out his camera and snapped a few pictures. "Who's old school now?" he said, stepping back to get more of the lost village into the frame.

  As they walked through the houses, Zack snapped pictures of the furniture, digitally documenting as much as he could.

  "It looks like we're the first to set foot in this place since the villagers left," Sydney said softly. Her eyes glided over the furniture and objects scattered around the houses. "And it looks like they just left... Are you getting this?"

  "Uh-huh," Zack mumbled, focusing on his shots, snapping away.

  "This could well be the biggest find in the history of archaeology," Sydney said.

  Zack picked up a soapstone bowl from where it sat on a table inside one home; faded designs in red and blue decorating its exterior. A fine dust, almost like dirt, had pooled to the bottom of the bowl. Sitting next to it on the rough wooden table were a fork and a knife, both with bone handles. Made from antlers, most likely.

  Near the houses, a large building stood next to a broad expanse of soil with the remains of a stone and wood fence surrounding it. They peered inside. The interior was divided into compartments by low walls.

  "Do you smell that?" Zack said.

  "I thought that was you," Sydney quipped.

  "Very funny. I believe this was used as a stable."

  Sydney's expression changed to serious. She turned away and looked around. "I get it now..."

  "Get what?"

  "Scattered among all the buildings were raised beds of soil lined with rock. They were always centered where the sunlight was strongest. Vegetable gardens. This was a self-sustaining community." Her voice filled with awe.

  Zack let the implication of that sink in. Fresh water, vegetables, fish, and meat. These people could have lived here a long time without ever needing to travel to the surface. One look at Sydney showed that the same thought was occurring to her.

  Somehow, curiosity overcame dread. "Let's see what other comforts of home they had," she said and set off to explore some more.

  Grateful she wasn't turning into a quivering mass of despair, Zack followed. "Uh, Sydney. Do you mind if I ask you something?"

  "Sure," she said, "What is it?"

  "How did you get into archaeology?"

  "The usual way. Reading the Bible."

  "That's the usual way?"

  "Yeah. The Old Testament is an archaeological treasure map. You just need to know where to look. Uncle Sal taught me that."

  "So your uncle taught you a lot?"

  "Yeah. He helped me get my start. My parents knew how much I loved archaeology, so instead of sending me to summer camp as a kid, they let me spend it with Uncle Sal at the museum."

  "Not a bad way to spend your summers."

  "Not at all. And those summers led to summer internships. After I had graduated college, I moved to Chicago and applied for a position in the research department."

  "And you've been there ever since?"

  "Almost six years now."

  "And you still enjoy it?"

  "Sure, I get to work with priceless artifacts."

  Zack wasn't sure if she was serious. "Attracted to expensive things, are you?"

  From an open windowsill, she picked up a small soapstone figurine. "You mean like this?" She looked at the figurine's little face, and then gave it a kiss on its nose before putting it into a pocket on the side of her pants. "What more could a girl ask for?"

  Most of the buildings still had their wooden doors on them. Sydney pointed out one. Its top hinge rusted through and the door leaning at an awkward angle, held in place only by the other hinge and a lock made of animal bone.

  They walked into a stone building near the middle of the settlement. The weight of the silence around them had a reverent, almost sacred feel to it. Neither of them wanted to interrupt it.

  "This must have been a church," Sydney gave voice to what Zack was already thinking. She turned in a full circle, looking around. "The atmosphere is still so powerful here, even now after it's been deserted for so long."

  The people might have left, but the church was the house of God. Was He still around? Zack breathed in, letting the experience soak through him.

  When he turned around Sydney had put down her notebook and was kneeling in the front of the altar. He opened his mouth to speak but caught himself. The last time Zack was in a church was Guatemala a month ago when Father Giovanni sent him to retrieve a rare, 1526 Tyndale Bible. He wasn't sure what to do then, and he wasn't sure what to do now.

  After a few moments, Sydney stood up. She looked toward the back of the church where the dim light fell through openings in the wall, arranged in the shape of a cross. Zack looked down. The place where Sydney had knelt caught his eye. The dusty floor had clean streaks where Sydney's knees had touched the ground. One of the patches looked different than the other. Zack walked over and knelt down.

  "I thought you said you didn't pray," Sydney said.

  "I think there's something here."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ZACK BROUGHT HIS FACE close to the ground so he could inspect the floor level.

  Sydney knelt down too and examined the rocks that made up the floor.

  "You're right," she said, wiping more of the dust away with her hand.

  There was a flat rock, almost the size of a floor tile. It was a little squarer than the rest and different in color, hardly noticeable if you weren't looking at it. Zack ran his fingers along the edge. He wiped the last of the dust away and in the one corner a small marking became visible.

  "Look at this," he said, pointing at the marking.

  "If this is what I think it is—," Sydney said, without finishing.

  "What is it?" Zack asked.

 
"Chi Rho."

  "Chi what?"

  "Chi Rho. It's one of the earliest symbols of Christ," Sydney said, still in hushed tones. "This dates back to Constantine the Great. The stories tell us that Constantine saw this symbol in the sky the day before the Battle of Milvian Bridge. That night Constantine had a dream and was told en touto nika. It's Greek and roughly translates to, in this sign, conquer. He took the symbol for his army and defeated Emperor Maxentius."

  Zack pushed with a flat hand on the rock. It wobbled, just enough for them to know it was loose. "I've heard the story, but I thought it was a cross the army painted on their shields?"

  "That's what a lot of people think. But it was Chi Rho," Sydney said, tracing the marking carved into the stone with her finger. "It's the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ, Chi and Rho. Uppercase X and lower case p, superimposed over one another."

  Zack tried to dig his nails into the side of the rock. "I think we can open this." At first, it wouldn't budge, but then the rock shifted ever so slightly.

  "It's moving!" Sydney exclaimed, sitting up looking for something to get some leverage.

  "There's a knife in my backpack," Zack said.

  She rummaged through the pack and found the folding knife. Extending the blade, she wedged it into a small crevice and pushed it to the side, lifting the flat rock up.

  They both gasped, neither saying anything for fear of ruining the moment.

  Sunken into the floor was a compartment, dug into the frozen soil. Inside the compartment was a stone box of some sort. It looked like an ancient limestone ossuary used for skeletal remains, only a quarter of the size. On the lid was embedded a gold medallion with the same Chi Rho marking.

  "Is somebody buried there?" Sydney asked. "A priest or bishop perhaps?"

  "Maybe."

  Zack carefully brushed the loose dirt off the medallion. "Accipite Armaturam Dei," he read. "It's Latin for—"

  "The whole Armour of God," Sydney finished. "And I-H-S, below the Chi Rho is the abbreviated version of in hoc signo vinces, the Latin translation for, in this sign, conquer. What do you think is inside?"

  "Only one way to find out."

  Before Sydney could protest Zack reached into the compartment and removed the lid from the stone container. Old books were stacked inside, the paper so yellowed and so fragile they didn't dare touch it. The bindings looked like they were made of some sort of parchment or perhaps even leather. The books seemed to be bound by strips of hide to keep them closed.

  "I can't believe this," Sydney whispered.

  She extended a hand and ran her fingers across the stack, almost as if making sure what she was seeing was really there.

  "It's the Bible," she whispered.

  Zack inserted his gloved hands into the box and wrapped his fingers around the Book.

  "Careful Zack!"

  He lifted the sacred codex out of the box and inspected the pages in silence for more than a minute or two. "This isn't any Bible, Sydney. I think that this might be one of Constantine's Bibles."

  "Seriously?"

  "I'm almost positive."

  "How can you tell?"

  "Ancient manuscripts and codices are my specialties. This one is written in Greek. In 331 A.D., Constantine commissioned fifty Bibles to be prepared by Eusebius of Caesarea. There are only two known surviving copies, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus. There's a digitized version of the Codex Sinaiticus Online, and this one is nearly identical."

  "But how did they end up here so many centuries after Constantine?" Sydney asked, curling a strand of hair behind her ear. "This settlement must date to roughly the fifteenth century. That's a long time after Constantine."

  Zack nodded and handed the ancient manuscript to Sydney.

  "The first Christian church was built in Greenland around the fourteen-hundreds," Sydney continued. "Even though Constantine was the first Emperor to declare religious freedom, it was a long time before Christians had the liberty to practice their faith in peace. It's amazing that this Bible ended up here somehow. This is definitely Greek," Sydney started, mouthing the words. She nodded as if confirming it to herself. She flipped carefully through the other documents.

  "These other documents are written in Old Norse," she said after careful examination, "It looks like these might have been written here, by the villagers."

  Finding things from days past always made Zack giddy. The idea that people so many years ago had created this, and it still existed left him awestruck.

  This was incredible. This place, these buildings, the whole area, constituted the single greatest find in modern history. It was impossible to say just what this would mean to scientists and anthropologists alike. The entire academic community would be turned on its ear.

  "We have to get back here with a team," Sydney said, closing the parchments and carefully placing them back into the stone container.

  "You're right. We can't begin to catalog the amount of cultural treasures we might find here."

  Sydney slid the rock back into place.

  "What are you doing? We can't just leave these here," Zack said. "We have to at least take the Bible..."

  "No, we can't," Sydney said firmly. "We shouldn't have even disturbed the documents. You know that."

  "Someone else might find it here. We can't let this go to someone else—"

  "Who else is going to find it? And what if we fall in the water again? Do you know what kind of damage that will do? I'm not about to sacrifice something like this because of stupidity."

  Zack huffed but let her have her way. She was right. There was no telling what they would still go through before they got out of there.

  Zack brushed some loose dirt over the rock lid, wishing he had a plan. It was hard to let go of something so valuable. Sydney dusted her hands on her pants and glanced around church one more time. She looked like she didn't want to leave this behind either.

  "Alright. But we're coming back with a team as soon as we get out of here," he declared.

  Sydney walked back to the front of the church. Zack followed.

  They stood just outside the door of the church and looked at the village, bathed in dappled sunlight that fell through the openings above.

  "Zack?" she spoke his name, her brow was crinkled in thought.

  "What is it?"

  "Is there something missing from this picture? Look around. Don't you think this is kind of creepy? It looks like they just left. Where are the people?"

  "What, you think they went to a party and didn't invite us? They're dead, Sydney."

  "Yeah," she said. "So where are their remains?"

  That thought seeped into his brain and stole away his enthusiasm. She was right. There should be people here. Remains. Bodies. Graves.

  So where were they?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ZACK WALKED AROUND TO the back of the church and paused. "Sydney, come have a look at this..."

  She followed him. "Well, look at that," Sydney said.

  There was soil here covering a rectangular area about two hundred feet by one hundred feet. Dozens upon dozens of stone markers were sticking out of the ground about two feet high. Most were crosses, triangles, half-circles, and other shapes. But some were placed in the shape of footballs, squat ovals about nine or ten feet across from point to point.

  Sydney opened her notebook and started sketching. "Are those gravestones?" she asked.

  "Sort of. They're called stone ships. Some of the Norseman must have continued to follow old traditions of burning their dead at sea. On ships. If they didn't have a boat, the Norseman would put stone markers in the shape of a boat and bury their beloved inside the closed form. You see the shapes that look like pointy ovals? Those are ships. Think of the outline of a rowboat. A half-dozen of them, just in this one spot."

  She nodded. "Okay, I see it. So these are burial mounds?"

  "Exactly."

  Sydney frowned. "Why aren't they mounded, then?"

  She
was right. The ground inside all the shapes was flat. "I don't know," he admitted.

  "Well, the entire settlement isn't buried here. It's not big enough. So they didn't just die out. They must have left."

  "Not necessarily. If there had been some kind of disease, it might have wiped them all out before they could prepare enough mounds."

  "They'd have to do something with the bodies," Sydney mused. "They wouldn't just leave them lying around."

  "There was always Mikkel's corpse eater..."

  "Shut up!"

  Zack grinned and knelt down by one of the stones to take a closer look. There were runic inscriptions on several of the larger ones. "More Old Norse, I assume?"

  "It looks like it, yes," she said, jotting down the inscriptions.

  "Pity you didn't learn to read Old Norse."

  "I have a basic understanding of several ancient languages," she said defensively, "but why would I need to read Old Norse?"

  "Plenty of reason now," Zack said, looking around.

  "Well, if I'd known I was going to get trapped underground in the Land of the Lost, I'd have boned up on it." She knelt down next to Zack, examining the text on the stones. "I can read several North Germanic dialects, and Old Norse is closely related."

  Zack watched her, impressed. Her short brown hair fell onto her cheeks as she knelt down. Her liquid green eyes focused on the stones. Everything else blocked out. She was beautiful, a vision in this underground paradise, and she fit right in.

  Zack shook his head and forced himself to focus on the rocks too. He wasn't going do this. People fell in love during traumatic events all the time. He wasn't going to let this situation force him into something he would just regret later. Still, he snuck a glance over to her face. She was glowing.

  "Uti...uti ar weldude. No. Weladaude. That's the first line, anyway."

  "And it means...?"

  "A bad death while away from home," she translated. "I think. That sounds... ominous."

  Zack looked at the runic symbols. They made no sense to him. "It might just mean that the person who buried him was sad he had to die away from their native land of Norway. Stop being all doom and gloom, will you?" But something was making him jumpy. Something had happened here. All these people presumed dead but smart enough to go underground and recreate their society. And then what?