The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set

by N. S. Wikarski

  They all nodded in agreement.

  “It’s settled then,” Griffin said. “Tomorrow we explore the caves of Jebel Barkal.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a golden cobra and a fabulous treasure.” Cassie laughed.

  “I’ll take a pass on meeting up with the cobra.” Erik grinned. “But I wouldn’t say no to the treasure.”

  Chapter 39—Unsitely

  The pickup came to a screeching halt. Sand spun up in the air and floated back down onto the hood. “We are here,” the driver announced. Although his coloring and features suggested that he was Arabic, he was dressed in the garb of a Nephilim—black suit and tie with a white shirt. His feet were encased in black socks and leather shoes. The attire was completely impractical as desert-wear, but he seemed oblivious to that fact.

  Looking around guardedly, he spoke in a low voice to the two other occupants of the truck’s cab. “It would be best if you both wait here until I am sure no one else is about.” He climbed out and quietly shut the door behind him.

  His companions offered no comment until he was out of earshot.

  Leroy Hunt’s eyes followed the retreating shape of their guide. Shaking his head in disbelief, he said, “I just gotta ask. What rock did you all find him under? I thought that Brother Hammy was one squirrely dude, but this feller’s got him beat by a mile.”

  “Brother Mohammed is a recent convert from Islam,” Daniel explained. “He still retains many of his old ideas.”

  “Yeah, of course, his name’s gotta be Mohammed,” Hunt muttered. “The day I run across an Ayyy-rab who ain’t named Mohammed, I’ll eat my hat.”

  “Ayyy-rab? Oh, I suppose you mean an Arab.”

  “Ain’t that what I just said? Clean out your ears, boy.”

  Daniel disregarded the rebuke. “I think Brother Mohammed is having some difficulty adapting to the ways of the Nephilim.”

  “All I gotta say is we better watch our backs. I spent some time in Eye-rack during the war, so I know what I’m talkin’ about.”

  “Where?”

  Hunt looked bemused. “Ain’t you never heard of Eye-rak, boy? ‘I-R-A-Q.’ Eye-rak. Another one of them Ayyy-rab countries. Ayyy-rabs is all crazy. You know how they pray? They bang their skulls against the ground five times a day. Sure as shootin’ that’s bound to scramble what little brains they had to start with.”

  Hunt must have noticed Daniel’s skeptical expression because he quickly added, “Don’t give me that look, boy. You tell me what feller in his right mind is gonna make his women folk throw a bed sheet over their heads before they go out grocery shoppin’?”

  “I suspect you’re put out because it’s difficult to obtain liquor in Arab countries,” Daniel suggested. Hunt had been unusually edgy ever since they’d arrived in the south of Egypt where establishments which sold alcohol were few and far between.

  “Don’t you get me started on that! Yesterday I went to buy a bottle of Jack, and the shopkeep looked at me like I was tryin’ to score a bag of heroin. You wanna know the real reason why these camel jockeys are spoilin’ for a fight all the time? It’s because they don’t drink!”

  “Really?” Daniel tried to keep the sarcastic tone out of his voice, but Hunt’s increasingly outrageous opinions made it harder every day.

  “Damn straight! If they drank, wouldn’t be so much killin’ all the time. They’d be too busy nursin’ a hangover to care. Just look at what happened back in the States. The year Prohibition got voted in, the murder rate across the whole damn country shot up seventy percent.”

  “Are you certain?” Daniel felt genuinely surprised.

  “God’s truth. I ain’t makin’ this up. And what do you think happened the year Prohibition was scrapped? The murder rate dropped right back down to where it used to be.”

  “You don’t strike me as the sort of person to collect statistics, Mr. Hunt,” the scion demurred.

  “That one stayed with me because it made a heap of sense.”

  “Drinking doesn’t seem to have diminished your liking for violence,” Daniel said softly, wondering if he’d gone too far.

  To his amazement, Hunt chuckled at the observation. “Son, you didn’t know me before I discovered the sweet salvation of the bottle. What you’re seein’ now is the kinder, gentler me.”

  Daniel shuddered inwardly at the thought of what Hunt might be capable of without his favorite panacea.

  “Ayyy-rabs!” The cowboy snorted in disgust. “Bat-shit crazy every last one of ‘em! Can’t be trusted. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll watch your back!”

  “Duly noted, Mr. Hunt.” Daniel cut the mercenary’s ethnic rant short. “Here he comes.” The scion secretly had to admit that Brother Mohammed was unusual, even by the standards of the Nephilim. He was vigilant to the point of paranoia which gave him a perpetually wild-eyed look. Of course, finding any converts in the Middle East had been difficult considering the fervent religiosity of the region. Still, Daniel found himself wondering whether the brotherhood might not have been better served by letting this particular acolyte find a different cause to die for.

  Mohammed opened the driver side door. “It is safe,” he whispered. “You may come out now.”

  “Much obliged for the intel, Brother Mo,” Hunt said tartly.

  The three men trudged up a small dune to survey a jumble of rocks sticking out of the sand.

  “Oh, my Lord!” Daniel exclaimed in dismay. “It’s been vandalized.”

  “How in the name of blazes can you tell that, boy?” Hunt sounded astonished. “We’re in the middle of the goddam desert!”

  “Blasphemy!” Mohammed hissed darkly.

  Hunt ignored him and continued. “You dragged me out here cause you needed to look at a heap of rocks. There’s your sand. There’s your rocks. What else do you want?”

  Daniel stepped forward a few paces to contemplate the wreckage of Nabta Playa. “I expected to find a calendar circle. I expected to find order. Not this... this...” Words failed him. He sat down on the hot sand and sank his face into his hands.

  Hunt walked back to the truck in disgust. He leaned against the bumper, cursing under his breath, as he shook sand out of his snakeskin boots.

  Mohammed crouched on the ground next to Daniel, waiting anxiously.

  The scion rubbed his eyes. He blinked several times, but the offending vision remained. Nabta Playa had been destroyed and with it his hopes of retrieving the next relic. He found himself desperately wishing he could talk to Chris. Daniel needed the wise advice of his friend more than ever before. Hunt and Mohammed made useless counselors. They could scarcely form a coherent thought between them.

  He sighed and rose to his feet. Mohammed sprang up and asked tensely, “What are your commands for me, O Scion?”

  Daniel regarded him wearily. “Why don’t you go wait by the truck? I need to be alone for a while to think.”

  Mohammed gave a little bow of deference. “As you wish. I will wait with the infidel.”

  “Brother Mohammed, please don’t call him that to his face,” Daniel corrected mildly. “It will annoy him. When Mr. Hunt gets annoyed, he tends to shoot people.”

  The Nephilim convert nodded sullenly and walked back to the vehicle. He slumped down on the shady side. Hunt had already crawled back into the truck after opening both doors to catch a cross breeze. He’d slid down in the seat and tipped his hat over his eyes feigning sleep. Daniel guessed that he had adopted the pose to avoid conversing with Mohammed.

  The scion walked slowly around what he guessed to be the perimeter of the calendar circle. It looked nothing like the pictures he had pored over in Abu Simbel the night before. He tried to reconstruct the site from memory. Thankfully, a few of the center stones were still intact. At least that gave him his bearings. But where was the lily symbol? It appeared that many of the megaliths were missing. Carried off, perhaps?

  He stopped his inner monologue abruptly when somet
hing on the ground caught his attention. There were several sets of fresh footprints in and around the circle. Vandals? No, not vandals because there was no sign anything had been dragged out of place recently. Simply footprints concentrated in the center of the circle as if their owners were looking for something.

  Daniel bent down to study the tracks more closely. He could detect three distinct sets. The smallest and lightest probably belonged to a woman. The other two were larger and heavier though one set of prints seemed unusually long—most likely a tall man. So, the most recent visitors to the site had been a woman, a tall man, and a man of average height.

  Straightening up to ponder his findings, the scion turned pale in spite of the desert heat as the implication struck him. The three relic thieves had been here! He’d never forgotten his prophetic dream about them. He knew beyond question that they were still alive. Of course, he’d never confided his vision to Hunt or anyone else. Whether it was true or not, his battered conscience needed him to believe it. He clung to that conviction like a drowning man clings to a sliver of driftwood in a monsoon.

  But how had they gotten here ahead of him? He paused to consider for several seconds before realizing how easy it would have been. They must have been monitoring his movements and followed him to the library. Once they discovered that Chris was his confidante, they might have wired the Rare Book Room in the library and overheard everything that was said. Daniel was no expert in surveillance, but he was quite sure that such a thing was possible. Assuming the relic thieves were monitoring his conversations, they would have known about Nabta Playa even before Daniel made his travel arrangements. They would also have known the contents of the riddle and the physical description of the lapis dove.

  Daniel swallowed hard, forcing down a wave of panic. These relic thieves weren’t lagging behind, waiting for him to find something. They were probably three steps ahead of him by now. What would his father say if he knew? Daniel almost laughed out loud at the thought of the diviner’s impotent rage. The scion was sorely tempted to let the trio have the relic—to hang back long enough to be sure they would find it first. He could be free of this wretched quest once and for all. His elation at the thought of freedom died instantly when he considered his father’s retaliation for the loss of the artifact. If the diviner believed that relic thieves had stolen his prize, he would track them down and kill them.

  The scion grimaced at the irony. He was actually concerned about protecting his competitors. In the final analysis, the only way to defend the trio was to get to the relic before they did. His conscience had been released from the burden of their deaths on Crete. He wasn’t eager to have a second opportunity to blame himself for their destruction.

  So, the relic thieves had gotten to Nabta Playa before him. What had they found? He studied the remains of the calendar circle carefully. There was no indication that anything had been dug up. Surely, if an artifact had been recovered, there would be a hole in the ground somewhere, but the sand appeared undisturbed. No, the relic thieves had left empty-handed, but they’d also unwittingly left him a clue.

  For the first time, Daniel noticed a distinct trail of footprints leading from a flat stone at one end of the vandalized circle to another flat stone on the opposite side. He narrowed his focus. These stones didn’t appear to be part of the original circle. Too small. They must have been taken from debris strewn around the area.

  Daniel walked back to the center of the circle. He alternated his attention from one of the flat stones to the other. What did their positions mean? Why had the relic thieves placed them thus? An image of the lapis dove flashed briefly through his mind. He could clearly see the diamond circle with two rubies fixed opposite one another.

  “Good heavens!” he murmured. The trio had tried to reconstruct the clue using those two stones. He paused, remembering that one of the rubies was larger than the other. A pointer of some sort?

  He reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a compass. Standing near what he judged to be the center of the circle, he faced north. Daniel realized with a start that the flat stone over his right shoulder was pointing southeast just like the larger of the two rubies on the dove’s back. What was he supposed to make of that? He racked his brain trying to remember everything Chris has told him about the symbolism the Minoans employed. What had his friend said again? That they used mythology and astronomy to give hints about the artifact’s hiding place.

  Daniel marched decisively back toward the truck, signaling to Mohammed to start the engine. That evening he intended to research astronomical phenomena in this part of the world. He would also place a private call to Chris to see what mythological references the librarian could come up with. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to figure out in what corner of this endless desert the next artifact was hiding. He only prayed that he wouldn’t gain that knowledge too late.

  Chapter 40—The Ups and Downs of

  Treasure Hunting

  The Arkana team started out early the following morning to search the caves of Jebel Barkal. They decided to cover the trails on the north side of the mountain under the assumption that the Minoans would have chosen a hiding place they could reach by foot path. The south side of the mountain was a sheer wall of rock so any cave formations there were immediately discounted as unreachable.

  The group spent half a day going up one trail and down another. The caves they found were all shallow, only extending five or ten feet into the mountainside. These they rejected as being too exposed. Both light and sound would travel to the outside.

  They reached the mountain crest around noon and sat down for a short break.

  “I had no idea there were so many holes in this hill,” Cassie sighed. She zipped open her backpack to retrieve a fresh water bottle.

  Erik took off his cap to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “Are we still sure this is the hiding spot?” he asked Griffin bleakly.

  “There are two more trails we haven’t searched yet,” John hinted.

  “We must check them all,” Griffin replied resolutely. He turned to Cassie with a hopeful note in his voice. “Have you been able to sense the Minoans’ presence yet?”

  The pythia shook her head. “Not so far. Every cave we’ve searched is cold.”

  Erik stood abruptly. “We might as well get on with it. I’m cooking on top of this rock. It’s shadier inside the caves.”

  In silent agreement, they all rose to resume their search. Another three hours brought them from the top of the mountain to its base with no better luck.

  They stood together in a small despondent circle.

  “How much time do we have til sunset?” Erik asked.

  “About three hours,” Griffin replied. “Time enough to climb one more trail.”

  “It is the last one anyway,” their guide said. John walked toward the final trail head and paused to look back at the Arkana team questioningly. “Do you want to try?”

  They wearily followed his lead.

  “When we come up empty, I don’t want to be the one to break the news to Maddie,” Erik muttered ominously to his teammates.

  They had climbed halfway up the final trail when Cassie began to feel a change. She couldn’t define the sensation exactly. It was simply an impression of expectancy. “Hey guys,” she paused. “My spider senses are starting to tingle.”

  John seemed bemused.

  “Your what?” Griffin asked.

  Erik patted him on the back. “Forget it, Grif. Unless you’re a fanboy, you won’t get the reference.”

  “But what does she mean?” The Brit looked perplexed.

  “It’s a vibe,” Cassie said. “I feel like we’re getting close to something. What or where, I don’t know yet.”

  They walked on in silence for another ten minutes though all of them appeared to be on high alert.

  “There!" Cassie swung up her arm and pointed. “I think that’s it.”

  The team stared at the loca
tion she had singled out. It was a darker vertical shadow against the shaded mountainside.

  “That’s no more than a crevice,” Griffin objected.

  “I think it’s a lot more.” Cassie forged ahead to examine the spot that drew her attention. At first glance, it appeared to be what Griffin had said, a slight fold of rock and nothing more. However, when she came to stand about a foot past it, she could see a narrow gap in the stone. She wasn’t sure if it led anywhere, but some impulse made her squeeze her way through to the other side. “Guys, get in here,” she called excitedly. “You have to see this.”

  The opening was just wide enough that the men were able to slide through sideways. Once inside, they all dug in their backpacks for flashlights. Training the beams on their surroundings, they gasped involuntarily.

  “I had no idea this was here,” John said in bafflement. “And I have been climbing this mountain my whole life.”

  They were standing in a cave whose ceiling was a good eight feet above them. After they cleared a curve in the wall near the entrance, the width of the chamber opened out to approximately fifteen feet.

  “This is a proper cave.” Griffin sounded impressed.

  “You can’t tell it’s a cave from outside,” Erik observed. “That’s probably why nobody knows it’s here.”

  “One would have to be looking for just such a place in order to find it,” the scrivener agreed.

  “I knew there was something worth seeing here.” Cassie gave them a triumphant smile. “C’mon. We need to find out how far back this goes.”

  Flashlights trained on the walls and floor, they traveled forward in silence for more than five minutes, and still the cave continued on.

  “This is the deepest one we’ve been in yet,” Erik observed.

  “Perhaps it is a tunnel like the legends say,” John offered.

  “Oh dear,” Griffin said in dismay. “If it really is a tunnel then we may have to travel a great distance to find where the Minoans hid the artifact.”