by Renee Duke
They looked, and all inwardly gasped, for the book had once been the property of someone called Titus Herne. Though it was unlikely this name meant anything to Professor Azarian, the others were well aware of its significance.
Chapter Eleven
“Coincidence?” Paige whispered.
“Doubt it,” Dane responded.
Uncle Trevor obviously did, too.
“Young men on the Grand Tour travelled with tutors who were supposed to keep them out of trouble,” he said lightly. “Did the one assigned to this Titus fall down on the job?”
Professor Azarian smiled. “I wondered about that. I did a little digging. Young Master Herne appears to have been a travel tutor’s nightmare. Even though he was only fifteen—a very, very young age for being taken on a Grand Tour—he was far more interested in frequenting taverns and gambling dens than in visiting places of culture. The tutor had to put up with a great deal during their travels through France, Switzerland, and Italy. When they got to Germany, he finally quit in disgust, leaving his charge to his own devices. For a time, I should imagine that quite pleased the boy, but then his letters of credit ran out and his irate father refused to supply him with further funds. He was forced to live in near penury until a kindly English couple took him under their wing and escorted him home.”
“Do you know anything else about him?”
“I’m afraid not. Since the book’s ownership didn’t pertain to what Edmond had asked me to look into for him, I didn’t probe beyond the boundaries of my own curiosity. Should I have?”
“No. Like you, I was just curious. The stuff Dad asked you for is of greater interest. What have you found out for him?”
“Take a seat and I will tell you.”
There were only two chairs in the room, so the men took those and the children sat cross-legged on the floor.
“Well, now,” said Professor Azarian, “Keep in mind that what I am about to say is drawn from several different sources, the majority based on hearsay. I have pieced together the common elements but none of the events are likely to have occurred quite as I shall recount them. As a historian I prefer facts to fantasy, and much of this has to be regarded as myth and legend.
“Edmond said he was primarily interested in a fellow with several names. Zoravar, Khatcheres, and Vartan. For the time and place in question—which was a small town in Armenia around seventy-seven AD—these appear as the names of people possessed of supernatural powers. Today, of course, we know they were probably just scientifically-minded individuals with a flair for the dramatic. And I say the names of ‘people’ instead of ‘a person’ because although, like Edmond, I once thought Zoravar, Khatcheres, and Vartan were all the same person, I have come to believe they were not. Zoravar and Khatcheres might have been—in fact, almost certainly were—but not Vartan. Vartan was a modest practitioner of what I suppose I must call ‘magic’. With modest referring to the amount of magic he did, rather than its quality, of which little has been written. You see, when it came to providing people with enchanted solutions to their problems, Vartan kept very short business hours. He did cast the odd spell, and mix the odd potion, but seems to have spent most of his time tending roses in the garden of a far more formidable practitioner of magic known as Abaven, which means ‘protector’. Vartan’s name means ‘giver of roses’, and give them he did, distributing them with great care and consideration.”
“And Abaven’s approval?” Uncle Trevor queried.
“Most assuredly. They were great friends.”
“Was Khatcheres-slash-Zoravar a friend, too?” Jack asked.
“Far from it,” said Professor Azarian. “Being considered only so-so in the magic department, Khatcheres was deeply jealous of Abaven, who had all sorts of mysterious powers. Fortunately, he’s reputed to have only ever used them in good ways. ‘To direct and stabilize the lives of all’, one account says, although I don’t really know what is meant by that. Such an altruistic attitude was incomprehensible to someone like Khatcheres, who yearned to ‘manipulate the lives of all’ and in doing so acquire great wealth, influence, and respect.
“He especially wanted respect. He could only perform enough magic to earn a living as a sorcerer—someone who could point a staff or wave a wand and give paying customers their heart’s desire or cause misfortune to befall their enemies. As such he was feared, and somewhat admired, but not really respected. Abaven, on the other hand, was greatly respected. He was a mage—someone who ranks much higher in magical circles. Mages do not require a staff or wand to cast their spells. Mages are supposed to be mentally and physically attuned to the secret power source from which their abilities come. And Abaven is alleged to have had some rather impressive abilities—including the ability to exert some sort of control over Time. He was sometimes even referred to as the Keeper of Time.
“Khatcheres made several attempts to gain access to Abaven’s power source but, being the wily fellow he was, Abaven always managed to thwart him. Eventually, however, Abaven became old and frail and knew the day was coming when he would not be able to keep Khatcheres at bay. Wanting to place his knowledge and power into younger, sturdier hands, he began to look for someone to take over from him. Like all magicians, he had several apprentices, both male and female, which wasn’t as surprising as you might think. In some places, including Armenia, the fair sex had far more rights in ancient times than they did in later eras. Unfortunately, some set of mystic ‘rules’ dictated that Abaven’s successor had to be at least sixteen years of age. Which posed a bit of a problem because all his older apprentices had either met sudden ends or been lured into service with Khatcheres, who might well have been responsible for the demise of the others.
“Though the younger ones were barely into adolescence, Abaven was forced to choose from amongst them. After talking things over with Vartan, he devised an intensive training programme for his proposed successor and decreed that, should he pass on before that successor was sixteen, the bulk of his powers were to be placed in stasis until his successor was sixteen and could make proper use of them. He then started to focus his attention on a girl of about fourteen—an abandoned waif he and Vartan had found a few years earlier and decided to keep because her name was named Varteni—‘rose tree’—and, like Vartan, she was fond of roses.
‘Abaven taught Varteni daily, gave her mystical scrolls and tablets to study, and supplied her with various ‘tools and instruments’, the nature of which remains obscure. He also found her a personal servant. A boy of much the same age, who was supposed to ‘help and protect her’. As far as I know, his name has never been recorded—although he is sometimes referred to as Gharib, which means ‘foreigner’, an indication that he came from another country. Or perhaps just another town. People were a bit insular in those days.”
“From what we know of the Keeper Pieces, old Abaven did pass on before his successor turned sixteen,” said Uncle Trevor. “How was his power, or perhaps just his means of accessing power, safeguarded?”
Professor Azarian laughed. “That is the most fantastical part of the story. As I’ve already said, there isn’t much information concerning the complexity of Vartan’s magic, but he is on record as having one rather remarkable talent. He could, it was said, take on various guises, and even turn some aspect of himself into a bird or animal. When Abaven’s end was near, Vartan dutifully turned this aspect into an eagle and allowed Abaven to change it into a gold statue of an eagle. A statue into which the, by then, feeble, Abaven supposedly managed to channel all his most important powers.”
“That does sound a bit fantastical,” said Uncle Trevor. “Moving on from there, however, is it safe to assume that, once Abaven was no longer around, the statue wound up with Khatcheres?”
Professor Azarian nodded. “As did Varteni once he realized the statue wasn’t going to give up its secrets to anyone but her. Having discovered that that couldn’t happen until she reached a certain age, he set about trying to win her trust and favour so that,
when the time came, she’d ‘share’ Abaven’s power with him. She does not come across as having been receptive to the idea.”
He paused. “From that point on, accounts become a little murky, because it was around that time that Khatcheres began to call himself Zoravar, which means ‘powerful’, and that was what people believed him to be, because he was in possession of the statue containing the power of the mighty Abaven. Such an assumption, though incorrect, made it possible for him to demand the respect he so craved. Unaware that he couldn’t actually get at the power he’d stolen, the townspeople stood in awe of him. They pretty much let him run the whole town, and he’d just got used to doing so when a contubernium of Roman soldiers showed up with some sort of Roman official named Vibius Sestius Rullus.”
“Uncle Edmond just calls that Roman guy ‘Vibby’,” said Dane.
“As shall I. The full appellative being somewhat of a mouthful. I dare say Khatcheres had a number of names for him, too. None of them complimentary. Though Rome had added Armenia to its empire some years before, Khatcheres’s part of it had, up until then, remained Roman free, and he very much resented this challenge to his new-found authority.”
“I think we know the next bit,” said Uncle Trevor. “Khatcheres and Vibby clashed. Khatcheres said a few things he shouldn’t have. Vibby took offence, and got back at Khatcheres by confiscating the eagle statue. Correct?”
“Correct,” Professor Azarian confirmed. “And Khatcheres was very upset about it. He knew his magic didn’t stretch to, shall we say, ‘zapping’ the statue out of Vibby’s treasure house. His inability to do anything literally made him sick. Varteni was upset, too, but was of a much more practical nature. During her street child days she’d been an accomplished little thief, and once she put her mind to it, she had no trouble obtaining the statue. Not wanting Khatcheres to have it either, she hid it in a place where no one was likely to find it. Exactly where that was I’ve been unable to ascertain.
“Khatcheres’s illness put him out of the running as a suspect, so Vibby shifted his attention to members of the surly sorcerer’s household. The equivalent of a modern background check revealed Varteni’s larcenous past, and she was taken in for questioning. In those days that was usually conducted quite roughly but the girl held firm and wouldn’t disclose the statue’s whereabouts. Incensed, Vibby ordered her execution, but was somehow persuaded to condemn her to slavery instead. By whom I do not know, other than it was a young member of the contubernium.
‘She was then taken off to Rome, and to say Khatcheres was appalled by this turn of events would be an understatement. He now had neither the statue nor the one person he thought might one day be persuaded to tap its power for him. He only managed to keep his hold over the community by telling people he’d found another power source. And most believed he had, because, while he still wasn’t in Abaven’s league, he was suddenly able to do things he couldn’t do before.”
“So, how did the Keeper Pieces get made?” Dane asked. “Who did know where the statue was? Aside from Varteni, I mean.”
“Vartan is believed to have known but said nothing because he didn’t want it to fall into either Vibby or Khatcheres’s hands again. Later, after Vibby and other Romans had been withdrawn from the town, Khatcheres—by then, Zoravar—made the same claim, citing Vibby alone as the reason for his reticence. Vartan, meanwhile, must have quietly retrieved the statue and, unable to do anything to help Varteni, melted it down and made it into the Keeper Pieces. Placing one or more roses on each in honour of his lost ‘rose tree’.”
“What about the boy who was supposed to watch over Varteni?” Jack asked. “What happened to him?”
“I’ve no idea. He seems to have faded into obscurity.”
Not quite, Paige thought. According to Rosalina’s book, he was the one who made the Keeper Pieces. But that book was just meant for medallion users, so the professor would never have come across it.
“Lesser players in history often fade into obscurity,” Professor Azarian went on. “Even Varteni and the magicians only draw the attention of Keeper Piece enthusiasts. The general public knows nothing of them, and the few historians who come across references to them pay them little heed. They view them as mythical figures rather than historical ones.”
“So do you, I guess,” said Paige.
“Yes, but I found them quite entertaining. Did you?”
“Very much so,” said Uncle Trevor, standing up and nodding to Paige to gather up the Keeper Pieces. “I expect Dad will, too. Thank you for all your hard work.”
Professor Azarian put the verse back into its envelope, reinserted it into the document package, and handed the package to Uncle Trevor. “I was happy to do it. I owed Edmond a bit of research in return for some he did for me last year. Please give him my best regards and tell him I’ll let him know if I turn up anything more.”
Walking back to the U-Bahn station Uncle Trevor said, “Well, if nothing else, we now have names for some of people Rosalina introduced us to in the Little Rose Tree. We already knew Varteni was the little rose tree itself, but we now know the old one was a mage called Abaven, the eagle a lesser wielder of magic called Vartan, and the wicked sorcerer an actual wicked sorcerer called Khatcheres. Or Zoravar. Which do you prefer?”
“Khatcheres,” said Dane. “He came up with the name Zoravar. To me, he’s Khatcheres.”
“Me too,” said Paige. “It’s sort of like how Cousin Ophelia’s gone by several names over the years but, to Dad, she’s still just Bev.”
“Names aside, what did you think of what the professor had to say?” Uncle Trevor inquired.
“Well, some of it just elaborated on what was in Rosalina’s book,” said Paige. She laughed. “If Professor Azarian thought some of the accounts he found sounded farfetched, imagine what he’d have had to say about The Little Rose Tree. Especially the bit about how the Keeper Pieces came into being. I mean, hey, a statue gets shatters in a magical ‘collision’, reassembles itself, and then gets melted down so pieces of it can be used to find and rescue a young girl with some sort of mysterious destiny to fulfill. A girl kids have to travel through Time to find.”
“Yeah, he’d have slapped a ‘fantasy’ label on that right off the bat,” Dane agreed. “But you can’t really blame him. Unlike us, he doesn’t know the statue’s magic is real. And powerful. Even the shard Khatcheres caught when it shattered gave him enough power to become ‘Zoravar’.”
“And strike out at us,” said Paige. “Grantie’s sure he was behind Rosalina’s nervous breakdowns. Having him turn our modern-day lives upside down was pretty awful, too. And the mid-time mind control stuff was downright scary. Until Skookaweethp helped us focus on reality, I really thought that mountain was coming down on us.”
“Well, this time round, he’s out of the picture, and it’s our noxious relatives we have to worry about,” said Uncle Trevor. “We’ll have to make sure the booty in your back pack is safely hidden whilst we’re at the Deutsches Museum.”
Zach and Alina had gone to a movie with their grandparents and were still out when they got back to the guesthouse. With Jeff Brockton and Tarkan Demir doing some work in Uncle Trevor’s room, potential hiding places for the Keeper Pieces had to be sought in the children’s rooms.
Paige’s had little to offer. The wardrobe and bedside cabinet were the first places anyone would look and anything stuck behind a picture would have caused it to jut out.
“Under my mattress won’t work either, because that’s another place someone would look,” Paige declared. “And there don’t seem to be any loose floorboards or deep cracks in the paneling. We’d better try your room, guys.”
They entered just as the cuckoo in the cuckoo clock was popping in and out.
“Hmmm. I wonder,” said Uncle Trevor.
He closed the door and waited for the cuckoo to finish its hour count. Unlike the ones in Herr Gerlach’s workshop, this clock was relatively plain, but did have little flowers carved around th
e sides of the cuckoo’s door. Taking it down, Uncle Trevor ran his fingers over the flowers, pressing on the centre of each. A moment later the children heard a click and the bottom of the clock fell open to reveal an empty space below the area in which the clock’s inner workings were encased.
“A secret compartment. How did you know it would have a secret compartment?” Dane asked, amazed.
“I didn’t, but I thought there was a chance it might. Finding such things is a bit of a hobby with me. It started at Rosebank, which, in addition to having a secret passage, contains several items that have secret compartments. As a boy I loved to try to find them and figure out how to work the trigger mechanisms.”
“Really? We must look those out the next time we’re there,” said Jack. “Care to tell us where they are?”
Uncle Trevor shook his head. “Finding them was half the fun. The other half was using them. Grantie said if I could find them, I could use them to hide my childhood treasures.”
“What made you think this clock might have a secret compartment?” Dane inquired.
“Its lack of ornamentation. That’s rather unusual in this type of clock. A thief would by-pass it and take something that looked more valuable—little realizing it’s the sort of thing that’s the perfect hiding place for valuables.”
“Let’s see if the Keeper Pieces will fit,” said Paige, removing them from her pack.
They did. Even wrapped in protective cloths, they all went in easily.
“Guard them well, little bird,” Uncle Trevor said as he put the clock back in place.
A little while later, Zach and Alina came in, eager to tell the others about the movie they’d seen. Ironically, it had been about time-travellers.
“I don’t expect we’ll get much chance to time travel tomorrow,” Dane said to Jack when bedtime came and Zach was in the bathroom brushing his teeth. “Not from the museum, anyway. Not with both Penelope and our mums sticking close to us.”
