We had to be careful no one saw us using this stuff, though. Not even the Top Floor students had keen gear like us. So that was way cool, being the only students at the school who knew the real truth about Blackthorn Academy.
THE BIG SECRET SPY ROOM THAT’S HIDDEN UNDER THE SCHOOL AND ACCESSIBLE ONLY BY SECRET PASSAGE FROM MR. KIM’S OFFICE held enough lab equipment, computers, satellite phones, DNA analyzers, and spy stuff to launch an invasion of a small country. Blackthorn Academy was built into the side of a mountain, and this room was about ten stories below the school, carved out of a giant cave in the mountainside. In the center of the room was a conference table with a four-sided video monitor in the middle of it. Here Mr. Kim could call up FBI or CIA stations all over the world.
On this night he sat there talking with Mr. Quinn, the Criminology and Abnormal Psychology instructor. Mr. Quinn also attended Blackthorn Academy. He was a major brainiac who pretty much invented the FBI’s National Crime Index when he was still a student here. He taught full-time at Blackthorn because he loved the school, but he also consulted with the FBI and helped them to develop psychological profiles of criminals.
Mr. Quinn and Mr. Kim sat on the ends of the conference table and I sat next to Brent. He asked me if he could take my watch off my wrist for a minute, and I nodded as he gently removed it. He took the back of the watch off with a tiny screwdriver and fiddled around inside it. Pilar and Alex sat next to each other on the other side of the table. Every so often Pilar would look up at Alex with this big old moony-eyed expression and he would smile back at her and then she’d blush and look back at her copy of the book. May I say: ewwww.
Since they were making me nauseous, I watched Brent poke around the inside of the watch instead. Brent was pretty smart about gadgets and machines and stuff like that. He was in my Mic Elec class and he was easily the smartest student in the room. He could fix anything electrical or mechanical, and he was always taking different parts of stuff and making little gizmos. None of us had the slightest idea what they did.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Fixing your watch,” he said.
“What? Is it broken already?” Mr. Kim had just given them to us a few weeks ago.
“Nope,” he said. He didn’t look up at me or say anything more than that. He was the quiet, mysterious type. But I had also noticed that when Brent did say something, it was usually something smart and important.
For some reason I couldn’t concentrate tonight. Maybe it was Pilar telling me her dream that had me spooked, but I felt jumpy and out of sorts.
“So,” Mr. Kim said. “Does anyone have any ideas or thoughts?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think we need to find the rest of the missing artifacts before Simon does.” I like to cut right to the important stuff.
Alex slapped his forehead with his hand. Then he got that smirky expression he always gets.
“I don’t know why we didn’t think of that,” he said. “You really are brilliant.”
I shot him the hairy eyeball, but it just made him smirkier.
“Look,” I said, “we’ve gone over what happened on the ship about a million times. So I think we need to start with the artifacts themselves. What do we know about them?”
Mr. Quinn ran it down for us, tapping a keyboard in front of him.
“According to the early translations of the book, there are seven artifacts,” he said.
Drawings of some old-looking stuff popped onto the video monitor.
“These are artists’ renderings of the four remaining missing Mithrian Relics, based on their description in the book. The first is the Clawhorn Chalice.” The image showed a big silver cup with what looked like an eagle’s claw or some other giant bird foot holding up the cup part. It had a lot of jewels in it and the carving of a bull’s head in the base. “Next is the Scepter of Light.” This was a long golden pointy thing that looked like a baseball bat, with more jewels stuck in it. “The Idol of Fury.” It was a large golden statue of a bull sitting on its hindquarters, covered with jewels. Obviously there was a bling bling theme here. “And finally, the Lance of Mithras.” The final drawing showed a big spear that was made out of some type of shiny metal with—you guessed it—a lot of rubies and emeralds in the shaft.
Mr. Quinn went on. “Emperor Flavius had these items hidden when he was losing control of the Empire. According to the book, the Seven Relics were blessed by Mithras. They must be found and brought together in order to bring Mithras back to life in this world.”
“What about the other three objects?” asked Alex.
“We know Simon has the Medallion of Truth. You saw him wearing it on the ship. That was stolen from a museum in Greece many years ago. The Scroll of the Enlightened is in a museum in Kuzbekistan. The other is the Firehorn. It was discovered years ago in Africa and is currently in the home of a wealthy collector in Los Angeles.”
“But wait,” I said. “If these dusty old things are so valuable, why don’t we take them out of the museum and get them from the collector and hide them somewhere that Mithras can never find them?”
“Easier said than done, Rachel,” Mr. Kim said. “First, Kuzbekistan is a very unstable country. Its government is quite protective of its artifacts. As for the collector, he refuses to give up the piece and insists he can safeguard it. For all we know, Simon may be controlling these governments and individuals to keep the relics safe until he needs them. It is only by luck that Simon was not able to get the genuine Book of Seraphim out of Kuzbekistan. The decision to send the book to this country for display was nearly a disaster.”
“So what do we do now?” I said.
“Pilar, you have read through most of the book,” Mr. Kim said. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Not so far,” she said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Assuming the translations are accurate, Flavius sent seven of his most trusted Centurions away, each of them with one of the pieces. None of them knew where any of the others were going. They were to sail to these destinations and build a temple to keep the artifact safe. But each destination is like a big riddle. I can’t figure them out.”
Mr. Kim nodded. He walked over to the small vault where he kept the authentic book, protected by a hand-print scanner and a combination, and brought the book carefully back to the table. It was a beautiful thing. The front was covered in jewels, except in the very middle, where there was a clasp that must have held a giant gem of some kind, now missing. Mr. Kim thought that maybe someone had stolen it from the temple. From that center clasp, a line of small diamonds radiated out from the center to where each line ended at a pretty good-size ruby. It looked like the center stone was the sun and each of these lines of diamonds that led to the sapphire were the rays of the sun radiating out from the center. It was pretty cool-looking.
“So far we haven’t had any luck either,” said Mr. Kim. He stared at the book like maybe if he studied it long enough a clue would magically appear.
“Just out of curiosity,” I said, “where were the Medallion, the Firehorn, and the Scroll discovered?”
Mr. Quinn hit his keyboard and a world map popped up on the screen. He highlighted the area where each artifact was discovered with a little blue dot. There was a blue dot on the western coast of India, one on a little island off the coast of Greece, and one on the west coast of Africa. When I looked at those little dots, something started working in my brain. After a moment I asked Mr. Kim to put a dot on where the Book had been found in Kuzbekistan. Somehow something about the way they were all laid out on the map was familiar. It was like it was right on the tip of my tongue or the edges of my vision. But I couldn’t quite place it.
I pulled the book in front of me and very carefully opened it up. The endpapers of the book were made of thick parchment. On one endpaper was a drawing of a world map as it existed in the time of the Emperor Flavius, with a lot of empty space off in the oceans and stuff.
Something about those blue dots was tugging at my brain
.
“Pilar, these words around the edges of the map—what do they say?” I asked.
“You got me. They seem to be little prayers or devotions to Mithras or something.” She pointed to the one on the far edge of the map. “This one says ‘Mithras walks with Hades’ handmaiden.’ This one says ‘Mithras shall thunder from the mountain.’ They’re totally random and don’t make any sense that I can see.”
I studied the map for a moment and then it hit me. I knew. I knew what had been bugging me about the pattern I’d seen earlier.
“Mr. Quinn, can you scan this map from the book into the computer?”
He looked at Mr. Kim, who nodded.
“Then that world map you have that shows where the artifacts were discovered? Is there some way you can adjust both of these maps so that the scale measurement is the same for each?”
“Well, yes, but it won’t be exact. The map from the book is hand drawn and the map I’m using is from a satellite image. It won’t make a perfect—”
I interrupted him, because Mr. Quinn, smart as he is, has a tendency to prattle on sometimes. And they say teenagers have a hard time staying on task.
“I understand. Just try to make as close a match as you can,” I said.
He went to work on the computer and his fingers flew over the keyboard. We watched the screen, and the cursor on the screen was flying all around like some kind of Frisbee on steroids. Lines appeared and little icons circled the edges of both maps. Then both maps appeared on the screen side by side.
“There. The calibration is as close to scale as I can get it,” he said.
“Okay, now, can you scale the today map down so that when it prints out from the screen it will be the exact same size as the cover of the book? And can you print it out with all of the blue dots on it?”
Mr. Quinn looked at me quizzically but pulled a ruler from the drawer at the table and measured the dimensions of the book.
“What are you doing?” Alex said.
“I’m not sure, just an idea,” I said.
The Book of Seraphim was a big oversized book, with the binding on the short side of the rectangle, sort of like an old-fashioned scrapbook or something. I took the map from Mr. Quinn and oriented it so it matched the layout of the cover. When I laid the map on top of the cover, a very strange thing happened.
Each blue dot where one of the artifacts had been found lined up perfectly with one of the giant rubies on the cover of the book. And the blue dot on the map that represented where the book had been found was directly over the center spot where the missing gemstone should have been. It was a perfect match. I had to give a shout-out to Flavius, because he had used the oldest trick there was. He had hidden the map to the artifacts in plain sight.
“Well,” I said. “At least now I think we know where to look.”
CHAPTER THREE
I Rule. Oh Yes I Do.
No one said anything for a minute.
Alex, who usually gets all smart-alecky at a time like this, was the first one to say something.
“Could it really be that simple?” he said. Wow. Not even a zinger. Alex must be really stunned.
“Why not?” I said. “Think about it. The other night Pilar read to me the final section of the book, where Flavius sends his men out to hide the artifacts. It sounded like he knew it was over for him and he wanted them all to be scattered around the world so that they’d be safe from Etherea.”
“Sure, but—” Alex started to interrupt me.
“But when I saw the map Mr. Quinn put up on the screen, the one where the artifacts we know about were discovered, something bugged me about it. The way they were laid out was like a pattern or something. Flavius knew where each Centurion was going. But no one else knew. So just to make sure there was a record, he made sure the rubies matched up. Little clues just as a fail-safe.”
“But if this map is correct, then some of these artifacts are hidden in places that the Romans couldn’t have even known existed. How is that possible?” he said.
Right then, I had a flashback to the night on the boat when I saw that thing. A horrible, hideous, man-bull thing that had screamed with an otherworldly fury. Something could have helped Flavius. I knew that I was right. And if this map was correct, we’d find the other artifacts hidden in England, Hawaii, South America, and Japan. Sure, those were all big places, but at the very least it gave us somewhere to start.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t know how all this happened. But we know that we’re dealing with something weird here—mystical forces and ancient gods and probably the Force from Star Wars, for all I know. These artifacts are there. I know it like I know my own name.”
Mr. Kim looked at me with a curious expression. He almost smiled. Like he was proud of me or something.
“There’s a problem, though,” Pilar said. “Even if this is right, we’re still talking about thousands of square miles. I mean, Japan, England—even the Big Island of Hawaii is like four thousand square miles or something. How will we know where to look?”
Because I am a teenager and in possession of a teenage brain, and even though I was in the middle of a very serious, potentially deadly situation, I paused for a moment to reflect on how incredibly geeky it was that Pilar happened to know the square mileage of the Big Island of Hawaii. If we ever got Blankenship behind bars, I was taking all three of these guys to the nearest shopping mall to get them an iPod and a copy of Entertainment Weekly.
“I’m way ahead of you,” I said. “Mr. Quinn, can you run an Internet search, maybe through some archaeological sites, and find out if any of these places have ever had discoveries of Roman artifacts or settlements? I mean, I know England will, because on the day I stayed awake in history class I vaguely remember the teacher saying that there were Romans there, but what about the other places?”
Mr. Quinn leaned back in his chair for a minute and stared up at the ceiling. You could almost see the microchips firing in his brain. He held that pose for several moments, then leaned forward and his fingers started flying over the keyboard. For a second I had a really bad case of keyboard envy. Gosh, I missed the Internet.
“I don’t believe it,” he said finally.
“Both Hawaii and Japan have turned up Roman-era artifacts. Of course, England is overrun with sites; everyone knows the Roman Empire extended that far. But there is also evidence of Roman presence in early feudal Japan. And in 1954 at a dig site near Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii, archaeologists uncovered a helmet and a few pieces of armor that were confirmed to be of Roman origin. It was a major discovery at the time.
“Scientists speculated that a Roman ship became lost in the South Pacific and was either shipwrecked there or else lost at sea and the wreckage washed up on the island. The site is still being excavated to this day, and a few pieces have been found on other islands, probably traded or carried there by natives who discovered or met up with the Roman survivors…assuming there were survivors.
“The story is almost the same in Japan. A site in northern Japan was discovered in the 1920s. Roman helmets, swords, and other items. Same conclusion by the archaeologists: a ship that got lost or perhaps Roman soldiers taken captive by Chinese or Korean warriors.”
Alex was still unconvinced. Paging Dr. Skeptical! Please report to the ER, stat!
“It just seems so unlikely that they could have gotten that far from Rome,” he said.
“Not necessarily,” said Mr. Quinn. “Remember, the Mongols invaded overland from China all the way to Europe. So Europeans moving in the other direction is certainly possible,” he said.
“So that’s it,” I said. “That’s where we start.”
“Well, let’s not be hasty,” Mr. Kim said. “This is certainly food for thought, but I think we need to study it further before we investigate.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Japan. I hear they have good sushi and karaoke there. I love sushi,” I said, choosing to ignore him.
“Rachel, even if you are
correct, you won’t be going anywhere except to your classes. If Mr. Quinn and I determine further action is necessary, we will be the ones to investigate. We can’t risk exposing you to Simon again. It would be too dangerous.”
“Maybe we should start in Hawaii. We could breeze in, find the treasure, work on our tans, and maybe catch a luau,” I said, still ignoring him. “A little sun would be good for all of us.”
Mr. Kim smiled and shook his head.
“Rachel, you don’t have the necessary training.” And more of the blah, blah, blah about what I didn’t have.
I decided to try a different approach.
“Okay. If you don’t want our help finding this stuff, that’s fine.” Yeah, right. “But I think you better get started right away. Like tonight,” I said.
“Rachel, patience is a virtue.” Mr. Kim laughed.
“Listen to me. You replaced the Book of Seraphim with a copy, so the one that Simon stole is a fake, right?”
“Correct,” said Mr. Kim.
“How accurate a forgery is it?” I said.
“It is a very careful forgery. Changes were made in the text in subtle ways so that a cursory comparison won’t show any differences. But the appearance and the design of the forged book are identical to the authentic one. Right down to the missing gem on the cover,” he said.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said.
“Why?” said Mr. Kim.
“Because,” I said, trying to sound all nonchalant, like I really wasn’t that interested unless he changed his mind and gave us the trips to Hawaii and Japan that we so totally deserved, “it means that if we have this map of the gems, from right on the cover of the book, then so does Simon. Remember? You said the cover was identical to his copy. He might not figure it out…but what if he does?”
To Hawaii, with Love Page 3
