Descendant: A Mira Raiden Adventure (Dark Trinity Book 2)

by Sean Ellis

  49.

  The Snares, New Zealand

  “You have an ability,” Mira told Xu when they were sequestered along with Kiong in the master stateroom. “Just like I do. You know that, don’t you?”

  Xu blinked at her, saying nothing.

  “So does she.” Mira pointed at the silent form of the blind woman.

  Xu muttered something in Mandarin and Kiong gave a sharp nod. Xu then turned back to Mira. “You are correct. Zhu Kiong can see through other people’s eyes. I believe you would call her talent ‘remote viewing.’ That is how we were able to find you in Lhasa.”

  “Do you know where these abilities come from?”

  Xu shrugged. “Some people just have them.”

  Mira nodded. “Yes, but do you know why? The answer is tied up with what we’re doing here. The Trinity was made as a weapon to stop people like us.”

  “And yet you went looking for it,” Xu replied. “How very interesting.”

  “I had my reasons. Sometimes, maintaining the status quo, as bad as it is, is better than the alternative. Unfortunately, that’s not an option any longer. I wish I had time to explain it to you, but it’s important that you know that we’re on the same side. I’m not talking about China and America here. People with abilities—you, me, her—we’re in this together.”

  Xu continued to regard her thoughtfully. “I know that you believe this is so, but belief alone does not make a thing true.”

  “That’s your ability, isn’t it? You can read people, read their minds.”

  For the first time since he had captured her, Xu looked uncomfortable. “I never knew for sure if what I could do was like….” He pointed at Kiong.

  “It is. The gift manifests in different ways. It’s a genetic trait that we’ve all inherited. There are probably thousands of other people out there with the same raw ability. There might be millions more for whom the gene is recessive.” She stopped, aware that she was veering off topic. “The point is that we’re on the same side. You know I’m not lying.”

  He nodded.

  “I think I know how we can find a way into Lemuria, but we have to put aside our differences and focus on what we have in common, namely our abilities.” The admonition was as much for her own ears as for Xu’s. Putting differences aside meant setting, if only temporarily, the revulsion she felt for the man who had so indifferently destroyed Potala Palace and killed Booker. Xu had been right about the need for the occasional sacrifice; she was sacrificing a part of herself right now.

  “What exactly are you suggesting?” he asked.

  Mira wasn’t sure that she really knew the answer to that question but acting on a sudden impulse, she reached out and took Xu’s hand. The Chinese minister flinched as if she had shocked him, but then mastered himself and relaxed. Mira extended her other hand toward Kiong and was surprised when the blind woman took it without any prompting.

  Is she looking through my eyes right now? Mira wondered. She suddenly felt very unsure of herself. All her life, she had always believed that she was unique. Even the revelation about the Ascendant Ones had not prepared her for the possibility that there might be others like her. What she was doing now was so far outside her comfort zone that she was actually terrified of continuing.

  “I don’t know if this will work,” she confessed. “You can get into our heads. She can see what other people see. And I can sense things before they happen. Maybe working together we’ll be able to do something that none of us can do separately.”

  “Yes,” Xu said. His voice had an odd dreamy quality. “I believe it will work. But what is it that we are going to do?”

  Mira saw that Xu had taken Kiong’s other hand to form a connected triangle. No, not a triangle. A trinity, she realized. This might actually work.

  “Just follow my lead,” Mira said. She closed her eyes and reached into her own mind.

  50.

  The Snares, New Zealand—1944

  The vision was all he had to guide him, and as the days of failure piled up, he began to wonder if it was enough.

  He still recalled the vision as vividly as if only a few days, and not an entire year, had passed. There was another crown, one just like the one he had taken from the brow of a dead king in Shambala, and it was here. It was close. If only he knew how to reach it.

  He wondered if his decision to distance himself from the Nazis had perhaps been made rashly, but no, it had been the right thing to do. Mann, the Schutzstaffel officer, was a treacherous snake who had taken the crown along with his notes. He’d gotten the last laugh there; even with his diary, the Nazis would never learn the secret of entering Shambala.

  He was sure Mann was planning to have him killed, a fate postponed only because he had promised that he could find the second crown. He had chosen to conduct the search on his own, rejecting the offer of manpower and funding, but now the pittance he had received for finding the first crown was almost gone. He had to find it and soon, or Mann would make good on his threat.

  It was a pity that the Nazis were so deceitful. There was much about them that he admired. Their unified vision—a blend of mysticism and science, past and future—was what had made his own explorations possible. Their willingness to make hard choices in the name of preserving purity was something to be lauded. If only they had been willing to reach a little further, extend their ambitions beyond merely dominating the world in a physical sense….

  He dismissed the thought. Their loss was his gain.

  It had been another fruitless day underwater, encased in the clunky diving suit with its heavy helmet and lead boots, trudging up and down the submerged slopes looking for some way into the ancient city that he had glimpsed just once in that brief vision of the ancient world. Now, freed of his aquatic armor, he sat in front of his tent on the desolate island, staring into the campfire, desperate for a sign, a clue, a hint…a hunch…that would put him on the doorstep of the ancient city.

  It was all so different now. Nothing remained of Lemuria; no buildings, no roads, not even ruins. The vision had shown him the past through the eyes of the ancient king. A vast city stretching out in every direction, radiating outward like the spokes of a wheel from a central hub, the high tower, which had once been a mountain. There were other mountains to the north, visible only from the top of the tower, but the Lemurians had chosen to build their city here, where the flat ground could be easily cultivated, and where they might launch ships to trade with…trade with who, exactly? He didn’t know. Perhaps there were more cities. Perhaps that would be revealed when he found his way inside.

  Something about the mountains nagged at his consciousness, mountains that were visible from the tower, but not from ground level. At sea level, the horizon extended only about twelve miles, but climb up and that range could extend to hundreds of miles. The mountains must have been quite far off. Where were they today? Had they been likewise inundated in the global deluge that had destroyed Lemuria? Were they now just islands or submerged seamounts?

  That explanation seemed insufficient somehow. Lemuria might have been completely covered by water, but mountains—as he had learned in Tibet—were massive things, sometimes reaching several miles into the sky. A distant mountain visible from the tower of Lemuria, and not just visible, but dominating the horizon, would reach above even the highest floodwaters.

  The answer came to him like a revelation. The “mountains” were nothing less than the South Island of New Zealand, from which rose, like the crest on a hog’s back, the Southern Alps range, with more than a dozen peaks rising to nearly two miles in height. Before the waters had risen, the islands of New Zealand would have formed a single continental mass, and it was upon the southernmost lowlands that the Lemurians had built their city.

  This information did not seem to help him at all. He already knew that he had found the location of Lemuria, but what proof did he have? He had not seen a single piece of physical evidence to support his claim, not so much as a stone axe-head or a potsher
d, to say nothing of the mystical artifacts he had seen in the vision.

  Nevertheless, there was something about those mountains….

  The king—the man who wore the crown and whom, in his vision, he identified as Le’Mu—had spent many hours gazing at those mountains, perhaps reminded of his original home on the Tibetan plateau. He had gazed at them from the top of his tower, watching them fade into the gloaming.

  Not the mountains…the tower!

  The island upon which he now camped had once been the tower of Lemuria. But why did that matter?

  I’m missing something.

  Le’Mu would gaze at the mountains, and then when dusk fell, he would go back into his tower and retire for the night.

  Of course!

  The revelation was complete. Now he understood that he had been looking in the wrong place. Lemuria may have sunken beneath the sea, but the tower remained, still protruding above the ocean. The tower was his way into the city. He needed only to find the passage ancient Le’Mu had used to reach the uppermost parapet, and he would not find that out in the water, but somewhere here, on dry land, on this desolate rock that had been ignored by all who saw it.

  He stood, gazing past the orange glow of his fire, trying to see this world as the long forgotten king had seen it. Much had changed over the millennia; waves and weather had worried away parts of the mountain spire, yet even in the time of Lemuria, it had been a rough looking thing. To even call it a tower was an injustice; it was a fortress, a citadel unto itself, with hundreds of miles of passages and staircases honeycombing the spire. The upper reaches, where Le’Mu had gaze lovingly at the distant mountains, had been a plateau almost two miles across. He did not know how many different staircases or ramparts had once led up to the top, but he did know of one; the one Le’Mu himself had used every night when he came down from his meditations.

  Time had reshaped the island. Erosion had worn away the familiar landmarks, trees and grass had covered the rest. Not even an outline remained of the tower that once had been, but some things had not changed. He took a branch from the fire, holding it aloft like a torch. The wind whipped at the flame, scattering orange fireflies in his wake, but it was enough to guide his steps as he set out across the rugged landscape, heading north. He could not see the Southern Alps, and didn’t know if they would be visible even in daylight, but he knew in what direction they lay. After trekking for just a few minutes, he reached a precipice. Far below, beyond the reach of his torch, the ocean crashed against the rocks.

  The man I seek once stood here, he thought. I am walking in his footsteps.

  He imagined…no, he remembered Le’Mu turning away, treading the path that led to the staircase. His torch revealed little, but he no longer needed its light. With each step, he felt himself transported into the past. The sensation was not altogether unlike his experience in Tibet, where he had literally crossed from one world into the next.

  He stopped.

  Here! It’s right here.

  He lowered the flaming brand and swept it over the ground. He felt a surge of disappointment; it had been too much to hope that the tower would so easily give up its secrets. There was nothing but grass and rock. The passage to the staircase had almost certainly been filled in by ten thousand years of erosion….

  A dark line appeared before him, a jagged horizontal fissure beneath an overhang of glistening rock. He knelt and thrust the brand into the crack, fearing that it was nothing more than a trick of light and shadow. It was not. This was the opening he sought.

  He had found the passage to Lemuria.

  51.

  The Snares—present day

  Mira felt Xu’s hand slip out of her own. She opened her eyes and saw him smiling exultantly. “I can feel it,” he said, breathlessly. “We’re so close. Is this what it is like for you?”

  He rose abruptly and started for the door.

  “Wait.” Mira called out. She wanted to tell him that they had only scratched the surface of Tarrant’s experience, and that a deeper look into the deceased grave robber’s mind might reveal booby traps and other hidden dangers waiting for them on the descent into Lemuria, but Xu was already gone. Kiong continued to sit, motionless, inscrutable as ever, as if waiting for someone to tell her what to do.

  What are you thinking? Mira wondered if the blind woman could still hear her thoughts. We are sisters. We need to work together.

  Kiong’s head turned slightly in her direction and she released her hold on Mira’s hand, calmly folding her hands in her lap.

  Was that an answer? Mira had no idea. She rose and left the stateroom, heading up onto the deck where the marines were busy loading equipment into an inflatable launch.

  “What did you learn?” Atlas asked her.

  She told him about the vision the three of them had shared and saw a glimmer of remembrance in his eyes. “Of course. I don’t know how I missed that.”

  Mira had wondered the same thing, but as Atlas had often pointed out, his memories of the city were not merely of the place as it had existed in the past, but were also buried under many lifetimes worth of other remembrances. “Well, at least now we know where to look. But if there’s anything else that you’ve forgotten, now would be a very good time to remember it.”

  Atlas just shook his head.

  She let it go. “You know that Xu wants the Trinity for himself.”

  “The important thing is that the pieces not be joined. If the Chinese have one piece and the Americans have the other two, then it’s a stalemate.”

  “Sort of like détente during the Cold War. A balance of terror. It won’t last. They’re already willing to go to war over this.”

  Atlas gave a noncommittal shrug. “Nothing lasts. Hopefully, it will buy us time to learn the Wise Father’s true purpose and defeat him.”

  She doubted that he was being completely honest, but there was an undeniable logic to his response. Destroying the Trinity, if that was even possible, or destroying the means to remake it, was only a stopgap measure. The Wise Father had planned for such an eventuality, and she had no doubt that even if they managed to destroy all traces of the ancient kingdoms, it would not be enough. The plan—the Great Work—had accounted for every contingency except delay.

  They boarded the launch and motored across the choppy bay to a narrow, rocky shore on the western edge of the inlet. As the marines, under the guidance of Sergeant Li, began unloading equipment onto the beach, Xu scrambled up a not-quite vertical slope and reached the cliff top. Mira raced to catch him.

  Cresting the rise, she got her first, real look at North East Island, and what she now knew to be the tower of Lemuria. Another seventy years had further altered the landscape, though less dramatically. The rough outline of the island had been smoothed a little more. Trees now stood where before there had been only clumps of grass, while elsewhere there was only bare ground, where before there had been forest. Nevertheless, it was still visibly the same place she had seen through Tarrant’s eyes.

  The fissure was almost exactly the same, too, though so covered with overhanging grass that, had they not known what to look for, they might have missed it entirely. Xu began tearing at the foliage, fully exposing the dark slit. To Mira’s complete amazement, he took a small flashlight from his pocket, then dropped to his belly and squirmed into the opening.

  “Wait!”

  Once more, her warning went unheeded. There was a faint glow from the inky blackness of the fissure, but Xu was already so deep into it that she could no longer see him.

  She growled in frustration and then lowered herself into the darkness. The fissure descended several feet before opening into a wider space where she could crawl on hands and knees. Xu’s light was easily visible and she scrambled to catch up. There was no need to rush however. Xu’s advance had halted at a sheer drop. She reached his side and followed the beam of his flashlight down into the depths of the void beyond.

  They were on the edge of a roughly circular hole more than th
irty feet in diameter. The sheer wall was dotted with openings, some of which were almost certainly the result of erosion and natural deformities in the rock, but others, Mira felt sure, led into the maze of Lemuria. Far below, at least two hundred feet down—sea level, Mira guessed—the light reflected back from a glistening pool.

  The matrix was down there, underwater.

  “We might need some of that equipment,” Mira remarked, deadpan.

  Xu did not reply.

  52.

  Although advances in technology and a better understanding of both chemistry and the human body had greatly reduced the risks associated with SCUBA diving, the exploration of submerged caves was one of the most dangerous activities on the planet—more dangerous than mountain climbing and sky diving, probably even more dangerous than being in a war. Relative to the number of people actively involved in cave diving, the fatality rate was staggering.

  Mira was comfortable with SCUBA equipment and, if she was being totally honest, had spent an unhealthy amount of time underground, but she was not cave-trained—and she was the most experienced member of their ad hoc team. Her enhanced instincts would greatly increase the odds of survival for her, but the others would not have that advantage.

  She rappelled down into the hole, visually checking each recess that she passed, hoping against hope that one of them might be a passage that would make the dive unnecessary. No such luck. She could feel the energy of the device that would restore the Trinity reaching out to her through stone and water, and knew that none of these hollows would bring her any closer. The niches were however the perfect place to set intermediate belays, a necessity given the depth of the pit. As she started down the second pitch, she saw someone already descending the first rope.

  Xu’s impatience was going to get someone killed.