The Sage Stone Prophecy (Arkana Archaeology Adventure Series Book 7)

by N. S. Wikarski

  “My son Joshua seems to think she’s malingering.”

  “Oh, I hardly think so,” the herbalist objected.

  “Really?” Abraham searched Brother Andrew’s face eagerly for reassurance.

  “During my younger days in the outer world, I heard of many cases like Sister Hannah’s. Apparently, people who have suffered some great shock or trauma at a tender age may spontaneously lose the power of speech even though there is nothing wrong with their vocal cords. It is an affliction of the mind, I fear.”

  The Diviner sat forward in his chair. “And what is the cure for such a condition?”

  Brother Andrew shrugged. “Time and a great deal of patience when dealing with the stricken one.”

  “So you don’t think the medicine you’re giving me might help her?”

  The herbalist’s eyes grew round. “Oh, heavens, no! In such cases, the afflicted has great difficulty connecting with the physical world. The last thing Sister Hannah needs is a medicine that would further distance her from this realm. In fact, administering the tincture to her might make the poor child’s condition worse!”

  “Of course, just as you say.” Metcalf backpedaled and reconsidered the idea. “So I was right in the first place. Peace and quiet is what she needs. To that end, I have moved her to a section of the compound which is much less busy.”

  “That’s a very good idea,” Brother Andrew agreed enthusiastically. “A calm atmosphere that makes her feel secure will surely assist in her recovery.”

  Abraham stroked his chin. “Perhaps some female companionship from one of her sister-wives would bring her additional comfort.”

  “Also an excellent suggestion.” The herbalist gave his superior an encouraging smile.

  “I have it.” Abraham slapped the arm rest of his chair decisively. “I’ll send Mother Rachel to visit her regularly.”

  “Perhaps someone her own age might be more appropriate,” Brother Andrew countered.

  “Nonsense,” Metcalf objected. “None of my other wives are as young as Hannah. What she needs is a woman of mature understanding and strong faith to guide her back to mental health.”

  “Have you considered that Mother Rachel might be of too strong a temperament?” the herbalist objected meekly.

  The Diviner barely heard him, already mentally caught up in his new plan. “What? Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous.” He stood up as decisively as his weakened physical state would allow. “I’m going to arrange matters this instant.”

  “Good day, father,” Brother Andrew called to his leader’s retreating back. “I’ll say a prayer for Sister Hannah.”

  Chapter 9—On The Rocks

  Alma Jones slowly eased the SUV over the causeway at Cahill’s Crossing.

  Cassie gulped. She leaned out her window to gauge the height of the water. Even though the tires were only submerged about half a foot, the current was swift. She didn’t want to imagine crossing this land bridge with a flash flood racing under the wheels.

  “You told us to look out for salties,” Daniel said, barely above a whisper. “What’s a saltie?”

  “Good goddess, man!” Griffin’s tone was exasperated. “None of us want to know that!”

  “There’s one.” Alma inclined her head to the right, both hands firmly gripping the steering wheel.

  Her three passengers scanned the water on the driver’s side.

  “Please tell me that’s a tree trunk floating out there,” the Pythia implored.

  “No,” Alma demurred. “It’s a saltwater crocodile. Saltie for short though they don’t spend much time in salt water. They prefer watering holes—billagongs as we call them. The males can run six meters in length.”

  “Translation?” Cassie turned toward Griffin.

  “Six meters would be roughly twenty feet.” As an aside to the others, he explained, “She’s taken a firm stand against the metric system.”

  “Freshies or freshwater crocodiles are much smaller and they eat fish not humans,” Alma added. “The salties are the ones to watch out for. Your American alligators are nearly as big but they aren’t always looking for a fight. Salties are natural-born brawlers.”

  “Has anybody died at Cahill’s Crossing?” Daniel asked.

  “Yet another fact we don’t want to know,” the Scrivener grumbled.

  “Oh yes,” the scout replied. “This is prime saltie territory. They float about waiting to see what comes their way. Once in a while the tide is high enough and the current is strong enough to shove a light vehicle off the bridge. Not at this time of year though. The main risk is to the fishermen on the banks.”

  “They become croc bait?” the Pythia asked tersely.

  Their guide nodded and then smiled as the SUV dipped upward at the end of the causeway. “See, no worries. We’ve made it to the other side.”

  An audible sigh of relief emerged from the rest of the vehicle’s occupants.

  Once they’d left Cahill’s crocs behind them, the remainder of their journey proceeded smoothly. Within fifteen minutes, they found themselves on a floodplain dominated by a large outcrop of rock.

  “Is that it?” Daniel asked.

  “Injalak Hill,” Alma confirmed.

  Cassie studied the escarpment. From a distance it appeared to be a single mound but, on approach, it proved to be a cluster of wind-sculpted red rock pillars with deep narrow chasms between them. Sparse clumps of green vegetation clung to the sandstone face at wide intervals.

  Alma parked the SUV where the trail ended at the base of the hill.

  Everyone got out and stretched before donning their backpacks. Daniel passed around fresh bottles of water to his companions.

  The Pythia squinted upward and took a precautionary sip of water. The sun glowed overhead in a clear blue sky, promising a toasty afternoon temperature.

  “This way.” Alma led them up a narrow track toward the escarpment.

  They skirted the base of the hill on a gentle incline for some time, traversing grasslands with small boulders jutting up here and there.

  Cassie dubiously observed the overgrown track beneath their feet “It looks as if we’re the first people to travel this way.”

  The scout turned and gave a brief smile. “People have been coming this way for the past fifty thousand years. Local guides from the Injalak Arts Center bring tourists up here quite frequently in the dry season.”

  “I don’t see why,” the Scion murmured under his breath.

  “You will,” she replied cryptically and moved forward.

  They marched upward for about ten minutes until Alma brought them all to a halt in front of a deeply recessed overhang in the cliff wall. Everyone stepped inside to examine it.

  “This area was used as a shelter,” the scout explained. “A dozen people or more could gather here.” She pointed to a flat rock with several other rocks piled vertically behind it. “This stone would have served for a cooking stove.” She pointed to another stone. “And that one is a firepit to keep people warm at night. Their bedding would have been made of paper bark.”

  Noting the perplexed faces of her listeners, she added, “But this isn’t what we came here to see.” Instead of returning to the path on the outer edge of the hill, Alma moved deeper into the interior of the fissure. She stepped through a vertical crack in the rock and beckoned the rest to follow.

  They walked single file down a path between sheer rock walls. The trail zigged and zagged. Broken boulders underfoot sometimes raised the elevation and sometimes lowered it. In places, the overhead light dimmed where trees growing at the top of the cliffs blocked the sun. In other places where the canyon widened, shafts of light pierced the gloom.

  “I’ve lost all sense of direction,” the Pythia murmured. “This escarpment is like a maze.”

  The party trudged onward until their guide stopped suddenly. “Here,” she announced.

  They stepped into a chamber where the overhang had been painted with a variety of fantastic creatures. Some were
recognizable – kangaroos, fish, nesting birds, humans. Others were creatures of the imagination—fusions of animal forms or abstract shapes. Cassie recognized a crocodile and a large fish which Alma said was a barramundi—a staple of the aboriginal diet.

  “How old are these paintings?” Daniel asked in wonder.

  “Some are fifteen thousand years old, some much more recent. People keep adding to the story,” their guide explained.

  “What story? Your Dreamtime stories?”

  “The Dreaming isn’t a time” Alma corrected. “It’s outside of time. Going on all around us now.”

  Daniel stared at her uncomprehendingly.

  “I wouldn’t expect a Nephilim to understand.” Her tone was mildly dismissive.

  Cassie contemplated the images in rapt fascination. “Your Dreaming is more like an altered state of consciousness. It’s always in the present so everything that was, still is. Like what happens to me when I go into a trance.”

  Alma nodded in agreement. “Yes, it’s like that.” She moved forward again. “We should go to the goddess gallery. That’s where your lily might be found.”

  They passed beneath more overhangs completely covered with rock art images in shades of red, black, and white. Some of the shapes took advantage of the natural contours of the rock. A snake coiled around a small protrusion in the stone face, giving the reptile a three-dimensional appearance.

  Eventually Alma halted and pointed toward a rock painting unlike any the group had encountered before. It was a human stick figure with legs placed vertically parallel and arms bent upward at the elbows. The eyes were large dark hollows but the rest of the features were obscured. From a headband hung a number of long strings terminating in rectangular shapes.

  “This is Yingana,” Alma explained. “She’s the serpent goddess who created the world. Once she gave birth to the people of this country, she taught each tribe its proper language.”

  “What are these?” Cassie pointed to the strings and rectangles.

  “Dilly bags,” the scout replied. “They’re woven containers mainly used by women to gather plants, seeds, and the like. Sometimes men will carry one while they’re hunting but this number of dilly bags would indicate a female. The legends say that Yingana filled these with yams which she planted and taught the people how to harvest.”

  “She looks familiar,” Daniel remarked unexpectedly. “The pose. It looks like our latest artifact—the golden labrys with a figurine of a goddess as the axe handle. Her arms are extended exactly as in this painting.”

  “The goddess with arms upraised in benediction is a very, very old image,” Griffin offered. “The Minoans employed it frequently in their statuary. Who knows? Perhaps they took their inspiration from rock art like this.”

  Cassie studied the portrait of Yingana. “We’ve seen lots of places where a serpent goddess created the universe. In Africa, Mawu-Lisa. In China, Nu Kwa. In Mesopotamia, Tiamat. Maybe this myth goes all the way back to the python stone.”

  The guide regarded her approvingly. “Yes, I heard you validated that site. Quite a lot of ancient rock art to be found in Botswana. When my ancestors walked across the land bridge from Africa seventy thousand years ago, they brought its earliest art form with them and its earliest mythology as well.”

  “Still it’s hard to tell that the serpent goddess on this rock is female,” the Scion said. “She has no obvious physical characteristics to indicate her gender.”

  “Oh, everyone identifies this as a female figure,” Alma countered. “But the myth of the rainbow serpent varies among the tribes. Sometimes she’s an androgynous figure who can switch gender at will. In other places, she’s male. I suspect her gender change was the result of overlord contamination of local culture. It goes back thousands of years.”

  Griffin turned to his colleagues to offer an explanation. “Alma’s area of expertise is the overlord footprint in Australia.”

  “That’s right.” The scout nodded. “Overlords are a strange breed. They think everybody else is like them or ought to be. Consequently, whenever they encounter a new culture, they don’t know how to interpret what they’re looking at. Take, for example, the first European missionaries and explorers. Given their own patriarchal bias, they misunderstood gender relations in aboriginal society. All the male anthropologists who followed the first wave made the same mistake. When they noticed that women were excluded from certain rituals related to the Dreaming, they erroneously concluded that men controlled the religious realm and women carried out day-to-day chores. In other words, men were sacred and women were profane.”

  Alma rolled her eyes. “The fact is that men are responsible for some rituals and women for others. The overlords never bothered to ask what the women were doing during their secret gatherings from which men were excluded. They assumed it couldn’t be all that important and trivialized ‘women’s business’ as witchcraft and superstition. In reality, women wield significant power in aboriginal society. Their magic is considered stronger than men’s. Both men and women are charged with protecting and preserving the ancestral lands. They just use different rituals to do so.”

  Daniel stared at Alma in astonishment.

  Noting his reaction, she gave a wry smile. “So, Nephilim. You’ve never heard that version of the story before?”

  He shook his head. “All the books I’ve read about aboriginal culture came from... ” He hesitated uncomfortably. “Overlord sources.”

  “Keep your eyes and ears open,” Alma instructed. “You might learn something.” She transferred her attention back to the image of Yingana and sighed. “I don’t see anything that looks like a lily in this gallery.”

  Griffin made a big show of scrutinizing the rock. “Nor do I.”

  Of course, Cassie knew there was no lily to be found.

  Alma gazed at her inquisitively. “Perhaps the Pythia might like to try...”

  Cassie’s eyes widened in alarm. “I wouldn’t dare!” She backed away from the wall. “This isn’t like validating a single artifact. That’s hard enough if it’s carrying a long history. This...” she paused to find the right words. “This would be like channeling a million voices all at once because the trace of so many lives has been left on these stones. I might never find my way back.”

  Daniel was drinking in the interchange, obviously trying to process the strange notion that Cassie could touch an object and experience its history.

  “We thought of another solution to the problem.” Griffin turned to the Scion. “Daniel, might we have the artifact I asked you to bring?”

  Daniel searched through his backpack and produced the original granite key.

  “Our Pythia might be able to detect the presence of the Minoans in this locale by using one of their own relics,” Griffin said to Alma.

  Cassie hesitated before taking the cylinder, glancing at the rock art again. “Not here. There’s too much psychic static. Let’s find someplace else.”

  Alma brightened. “I have just the spot. Follow me.”

  They climbed upward through another maze of rock corridors. More sunlight broke through the gloom the higher they climbed. Cassie sensed that they were approaching the crest of Injalak Hill.

  They emerged from the rock canyons at last among tall grasses and miniature rock pillars where they were rewarded with a panorama of the countryside.

  “I had no idea we’d climbed this high!” Daniel exclaimed.

  “Bird’s eye view,” Cassie agreed.

  Alma led them to a flat shelf of rock where they could all sit down and enjoy the scene below them. To their left, more hills sloped away toward the horizon. To their right, a green floodplain with patches of exposed red dirt stretched endlessly. Almost directly below them, the small town of Gunbalanya appeared hazy in the afternoon light, perched on the edge of a blue billabong.

  Griffin took the granite key from Daniel. Turning to Cassie, he asked, “Are you ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” the Pythia replied. They
had planned this strategy in advance. She held out her hand, took the stone cylinder and closed her eyes. She could feel Alma and Daniel watching her face intently. Scowling, as if to concentrate on some inner vision, she paused a few seconds for effect. Then she raised the cylinder and pointed off toward the horizon. Mimicking a trance state, she murmured, “Across another sea—a cold sea. That’s where they went. Not here. Never here.” She opened her eyes and sighed. “Sorry, guys. Our lead turned out to be a red herring.”

  “A cold sea,” Alma echoed. “It’s possible they went further south.”

  “No,” Cassie said half-to-herself. “It was north.”

  The scout shook her head “It wouldn’t be cold that way. You’d be heading toward the equator.”

  Cassie shut her eyes again. “Past the equator. I feel the distance between the Minoans and Injalak Hill is huge. Many seas from here, as they might say.”

  Daniel scratched his head. “If we were to travel directly north of here, we’d arrive in the north Pacific.”

  Cassie nodded vaguely. “That might be it. I’m not sure. We’ll have to check our archives again for more clues.” She handed the granite key back to Daniel.

  Alma noted the lengthening shadows. “It’s getting late. We’ll have to leave now if we want to reach Darwin before dark.”

  “Cahill’s Crossing isn’t the sort of place where I’d like to spend the night.” Cassie shivered at the thought.

  “Right then,” the scout said. “Down we go.” She rose and selected a different trail than the one that had brought them to the crest.

  Daniel followed close on the guide’s heels.

  Cassie and Griffin hung back for a few moments.

  “Do you think they believed us?” Griffin whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cassie murmured as she hoisted her backpack to her shoulders. “This trip bought us time. Let’s hope it was enough to give the team at the Vault a decent head start. If not...” she trailed off apprehensively. “I really don’t want to think about the alternative.”