The Stone of Secrets

by K. L. Nelson

  “Yeah but it’s been filled in with rubble for centuries.”

  “How much rubble?”

  Skye and Emmett went deeper into the cave and started moving rocks. Working together, they found the ancient shaft that once led up to the castle. Soon they had a passage cleared to the top. When they saw light, Emmett carefully moved one last stone and peered out. He could see the man not far away, looking over the edge of the cliff. He could see the tattoo on his neck.

  Emmett ducked back into the hole and whispered to Skye. “The good news is there’s only one of them. I think there’s adequate cover to get out of here without him seeing us. Stay low and follow me.”

  The pair was able to make it down off the castle rock by crouching behind the ancient walls and piles of stone. On the way back to the car, Emmett stopped. He saw a rental car nearby that looked out of place in the small Scottish village. “Wait for me at the car,” he said. “I have a present for our friend.” He used his small tool to remove the valve stems from two of the tires on the car. The man wasn’t going anywhere unless he had two spare tires.

  As they drove away, Skye started searching the internet. There are several castles built over caves in Bavaria, Switzerland, and the Italian Peninsula. Skye came up with a short list of the oldest and most prominent ones. Of those, she had a feeling about one.

  Predjama Castle

  Slovenia

  Next Day

  “Here we are,” Skye said. “Close enough to the power centers of Medieval Europe to form connections, but far enough away to keep a low profile.”

  They stared up at the castle built around the entrance to the cave in the middle of a 150-foot cliff. It was an impressive sight.

  “If I were a secret society in the Middle Ages, this is where I’d have my base,” Emmett said as they started up the steep path that led to the castle.

  “I wonder if any of our friends are around,” Skye said.

  “Yeah keep your eyes open.”

  Predjama Castle is situated in the historical region of Inner Carniola, in south-central Slovenia. The current castle dates to the Renaissance period, but it was built on the ruins of a much older gothic fortress. Built around a natural stone archway in the almost vertical cliff, the castle is only accessible from one side. The cave inside has not changed much in the last eight centuries, including the vertical shaft leading to the top of the cliff. The secret passage was used to supply the castle during a siege in the Middle Ages.

  Skye and Emmett took the paid tour of the castle. “I would love to spend more time in here,” Skye mused as they looked around the impressive site.

  “It’s amazing,” Emmett agreed. “Do you ever wish you could be a fly on the wall back then? What were the conversations about as they sat in these halls?”

  “I never pegged you for a history buff,” Skye said.

  “Maybe you’re starting to rub off on me,” Emmett replied.

  “Maybe that goes both ways,” Skye said thoughtfully. “Emmett, I never thanked you for training me to use that gun. It saved my life the other night. Thank you.”

  Emmett looked down in thought for a moment before speaking. “You’re welcome,” he said. “I’m glad you learned it so well. I’ve never had a better student.”

  “Yes, I guess the teacher can become the student.” She looked at him as they walked along the hall, wondering what was inside the man’s head. She could tell he had something else to say. But he just smiled and admired the armor on display. Skye thought it was fitting. Emmett seemed to have his emotional armor securely in place. There was a time when she kept her own armor on tight. She was different now. Her failed marriage didn’t seem like such a tragedy anymore. That was one good thing that had come out of this horrific episode with The Pact.

  Emmett was another. She knew he wanted to say something to her. It wasn’t like him to not know what to say. She hoped she hadn’t offended him by being so strict about her convictions. When they came back to Scotland, he booked separate hotel rooms for them. They didn’t even discuss it. She wondered what he thought about it. He didn’t seem offended, but what was he holding back? She wondered if she should coax him a little.

  “Emmett,” she began, “do you remember the Moonfish?”

  “The Moonfish Café!” he pronounced with a smile. “A fine establishment…”

  “Yes, it is. We had a great time there, didn’t we?” Skye continued.

  “Yes we did,” Emmett agreed.

  “We had some amazing conversations there didn’t we?” She paused to let that sink in. Emmett knew something was up. “You know,” she continued, “I miss that Emmett, the one who could tell me anything.”

  Emmett stopped and sighed. He looked deep into her eyes like he did on that night they first kissed, the night when he wanted to show her his gun collection. “Skye, I…I’ve never met anyone like you. There is a conversation I want to have with you, but I can’t right now. I’m in ‘catch the bad guy’ mode. I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  That sounded plausible, but Skye wondered if they would make a better team if everything was on the table. There was a lot she didn’t know about him, how he worked; the whole FBI/Navy SEAL thing. Maybe if he would just open up, things could be better.

  “Ok,” she replied. “So, you never told me what you thought of my parents. You met them at my funeral, right?”

  Emmett thought of that day and laughed. “Yeah, I’ve never met a girl’s parents in quite that way before. They were great, we had a good talk; pretty much what I expected.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  “Well, they raised you didn’t they? I guess I was expecting them to be awesome. And they were.”

  “Hmm,” Skye said. “And what did you talk about?”

  “You mostly,” Emmett replied. “Of course they were worried about you. They made me promise to protect you.”

  “Yeah I can imagine. Sorry you had to go through that.”

  “Actually I didn’t mind.”

  “Really?”

  Emmett drew a breath. “Skye, it was easy to promise your parents something I’d already resolved to do. And the other night when you needed me, I wasn’t there. If anything would have happened to you…Skye I just don’t know what I would do.”

  “What happened wasn’t your fault, Emmett. There’s no way you could have been there.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact you could have been killed. Sometimes things aren’t your fault, but they’re your responsibility. In combat a lot of bad things happen. Nothing is anyone’s fault. But if people don’t do their responsibility, the wrong people get killed.”

  “Sounds like a lot of pressure,” Skye replied drawing a breath. “This isn’t combat anymore, Emmett.”

  “I’m not sure how to put this delicately,” Emmett said as he put his hand on her shoulder. “With you Skye, it’s a lot like combat.”

  ***

  Emmett and Skye leaned on the railing inside the cave and looked across a pool of water. The tour guide spoke of how the water supply inside the cave had helped the famous robber baron Lord Erazem and his men endure a siege in the 15th century. But Skye was more interested in what she saw on the opposite wall just under the water’s surface.

  “What can you tell me about those inscriptions?” she asked the young lady conducting the tour.

  “Those are evidence that the cave was inhabited in prehistoric times,” she replied, sounding unconvinced. It was obvious the castle staff had no idea what they were. If they had, it would have attracted historians from all over the world.

  Skye didn’t embarrass the girl. But she gave Emmett a look that he understood fully. They had found another clue.

  “How long has the water been at this level?” she asked the tour guide.

  “The legend speaks of Erazem drawing water from this pool in the 15th century. Before that we have no record.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She and Emmett stayed behind as the tour contin
ued to another area.

  “Can you read it?” Emmett asked.

  “It’s difficult to see under the water from here. I need to get closer.”

  “I don’t think the staff will appreciate you swimming in their historical water.”

  “It could take weeks to get approval to study this. Emmett, do you think you could get us in here tonight after hours?”

  “Break into an impregnable fortress at night? Hmm, you were right. I’m starting to rub off on you more than I thought. Not sure that’s a good thing…”

  That night, Skye found herself dangling from a rappel line a hundred and fifty feet above a rocky death in the black of night.

  “I was picturing something along the lines of picking the lock,” Skye said as she lowered herself off the top of the cliff.

  “You have to admit, this is way more fun,” Emmett replied.

  They lowered themselves onto the roof of the castle and climbed down into the cave. They found the pool where the inscriptions were and swam across to study them. Skye put her mask on and went under. She read for as long as she could hold her breath. Emmett went down too and held his light for her. When they came up for air, Skye told Emmett what she had learned.

  “It looks like a warning: Let all who enter keep silence.”

  “There’s an entrance down there!” Emmett exclaimed. “Wait here.”

  Skye watched his light go down as he dove into the deep cavern. She could see the light disappear some ten or fifteen feet down and guessed he had found the doorway. It was a tense three minutes, far too long for Emmett to hold his breath, before Skye saw the light again.

  “Your archaeologist brain is going to explode when you see it,” Emmett said when he surfaced. “Take a big breath and follow me.”

  Skye didn’t have time to remind him that she wasn’t a Navy SEAL before he was gone. She put her mask on, breathed in deeply and went after him.

  It was no mere hole in the rock. The entrance was elaborately carved into the stone. The doorway was flanked by intricately detailed Greek columns. A stairway led up to the door. When Skye looked behind her, she could see a passage that came from another section of the cave. The cave system was so much more extensive than it appeared from above the water line. Over the doorway on the lintel was a symbol that Skye recognized instantly: the Pict symbol for signal. She was so taken aback by all this that she lost Emmett and had to come up for air. On her second breath, she swam through the doorway and surfaced on the other side.

  Emmett was sitting not far away from Skye when she rose out of the water.

  “Emmett what is this place?” she asked as she emerged.

  “You’re the professor,” he replied. “You tell me.”

  Emmett and Skye shined their lights into the expanse of a massive hall carved out of solid stone. Skye estimated it to be twenty feet wide, fifteen feet high and at least thirty five feet long. The long walls were draped with elaborate tapestries now shredded from the passage of time. In between each tapestry was a large animal trophy mounted to the wall: deer, caribou, bears, and a wolf. Long tables carved from solid stone also lined the walls. At the end of the room there was an elevated area atop some stairs, upon which another table sat. Lighting had been provided by torches now long spent. And near the head of the room along the right side wall was a group of shelves containing various scrolls and codices. Bronze and silver vessels lay about on the tables and floor. Debris was everywhere, but there was remarkably little dust. The water had effectively sealed the chamber for what Skye guessed to be at least seven hundred years.

  “My archaeologist brain has officially exploded,” Skye said as she stood agape. “This room dates to the thirteenth century. But it’s like they just walked away from it last year. The rising water must have forced them to abandon it. I doubt even Erazem would have known about this.”

  “What went on in here?” Emmett asked.

  Moving over and around the debris, Skye walked to the front of the room and ascended the stairs. “It’s a ceremonial room,” she said as she rounded the table and examined it. “Human sacrifice was performed here. These channels were to drain the blood. A vessel would have been placed under here to collect it.” She walked over to a small podium which held a document written on parchment. “It’s going to take years to study this literature. This document was read in some kind of ritual.” She read for a moment before looking up. “Emmett, I think this is where The Pact administered the oath to new recruits.”

  “And executed the ones who didn’t keep it,” Emmett added, looking at the sacrificial table. “It was a cheery place no doubt. See anything that could help us find the director?”

  “Well, let me see. This scroll contains ceremonial dialogue. This isn’t very helpful.” Skye walked over and started perusing the scrolls and books found on the shelves. She pulled some down and scanned them for several minutes. “There may be something here, but it could take weeks to find.”

  “I doubt the air in here will last that long. Could we take some of this stuff back to the hotel?”

  “Absolutely not,” the professor replied. “These documents should stay right here until the water is drained and they can be safely moved to a controlled environment.”

  “Then we’re back to square one,” Emmett said.

  “Maybe not,” Skye replied. “This codex appears to be one of the last records in the collection to be compiled. It looks like they were already planning to relocate this room to a facility closer to their main base of operations.”

  “Does it say where?” Emmett asked.

  “It mentions Lubeck. It must be talking about Lubeck, Germany. Do you remember when I told you about the patricians?”

  “Yeah, the elite merchant class of the Middle Ages.”

  “Precisely. Lubeck was the main port city of the Hanseatic League. Much of the commerce of medieval Europe would have gone right through Lubeck. It would have been a natural choice for The Pact to locate there.”

  Emmett looked at Skye. “Lubeck was on the list of death record concentrations for Pact members. It looks like that’s our next stop.”

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Nikolai Sorosa looked at his watch again and sighed. Flight 269 from Ljubljana was late. He told himself to relax; things could be much worse. He could be stuck on a muddy hillside in the rain, like he had been the previous summer in Marnoch. At least now he had a semi-comfortable airport chair to sit in and a magazine to read. But the waiting was agony. And the worst part about it -- this time he wasn’t going to shoot anyone.

  When the flight finally arrived, Nikolai looked over the top of his magazine and scanned the passengers as they came in to claim their luggage. The professor and the FBI agent were easy to spot. He pulled his phone from his pocket and texted the director: “Target in Lubeck.”

  Nikolai tossed the magazine on the table and walked out of the airport. He went to his car and drove to a location where he had a direct line of sight on the vehicles leaving the airport. He turned on the GPS display mounted on the dash and watched the red dot. Soon it was moving towards the center of the display. He looked through his telephoto lens and verified the tagged car was indeed the professor. He clicked a few pictures as they drove by, noting the model and color of the vehicle. With the car tagged at the rental agency, tailing them was easy. Nikolai followed them from a distance as they drove to their hotel. He watched them enter the building, where a Pact employee would check them in. You see, in Lubeck, The Pact owns the hotels, the rental car agencies, the police, the mayor’s office, and everything else. The professor and the FBI agent were on their turf now. Coming here would be their last mistake.

  “They’re at the Excelsior,” Nikolai spoke into his phone.

  “Good,” the director replied. “It should be easy for you. We will finally have what we want.”

  “Yes,” Nikolai said. “She will be in your office by morning, and the other one will be taken care of.”

  “That is good my friend
, because you know what will happen if you fail.”

  Nikolai swallowed hard as he ended the call. The threat was always in the back of his mind. It was in the back of everyone’s mind. It gave purpose to what they did, a steely kind of motivation that all but guaranteed success. He knew it was why they had everything they could possibly want and more. Nikolai himself enjoyed the finer things in life. He drove the best car. He lived in the finest house. He enjoyed the most expensive bottle of wine with his dinner each night. If he wanted to use the company jet to fly a woman to some exotic island for the weekend, all he need do is ask.

  And besides the motivation to succeed, the threat of a torturous death if they failed gave them clarity of thought. There is so much deception in the world today, but not in The Pact. Everyone knows exactly what is expected. And everyone knows what will happen if they fail to meet that expectation. It is a simple life: a rich reward for success, a dear price for failure.

  Nikolai received a text from the front desk of the Excelsior Hotel. The professor was in room 419, the FBI agent in 420. Separate rooms; it was perfect. The director had been right. This was going to be easy.

  That night, a precise amount of a toxic vapor fed into the professor’s room through the ventilation duct. It was just enough to render her incapacitated, but not enough to kill her. She would wake up the following day with a horrible stomach ache, but otherwise be in good health. The FBI agent would not be so fortunate. His dose of the gas would be well beyond the fatal limit. Two men entered room 419 with a key from the front desk. With their self-contained breathing apparatus protecting them from the vapor, they loaded the professor onto a gurney and carted her out the back of the hotel. There was a van waiting to take her to the director.

  Two men in masks also entered room 420. They took the FBI agent on a little ride down to the river. The current under the bridge runs deep. They would likely not find his body for many days, if they even knew where to look.