Solomon's Jar

by Alex Archer

  Still, it was worthwhile. She needed room both to keep her specimens and books, and to move. To work out.

  It wasn’t as if she was dependent on grants anymore. She had some royalties from her book. Although it was temporarily in abeyance she also had money in the bank from her work on the cable-television series, Chasing History’s Monsters, from which she was taking an indefinite sabbatical as she sorted out the details of her new life. When she’d gotten back from South America she had found her answering machine jammed with pleas from the show’s boy-wonder producer, Doug Morrell, to come back immediately if not sooner….

  The sword made soft swishing sounds in the air. She turned, holding it blade up in her right hand. She had the first two fingers of her left hand extended and pressed against the inside of her right forearm.

  The ritual had nothing to do with the sword as such, nor her mission—so far as she understood either. So far as she knew. Which, she had to admit, wasn’t far.

  SHE HAD MET Roux, the ageless man of mystery when the earth literally opened at her feet and swallowed her up.

  It happened on a mountain in France, while hunting the legend of the Beast of Gévaudan for Chasing History’s Monsters. Shortly thereafter she had fallen into a sinkhole that opened beneath her feet during an earthquake. In the caves where she landed she had found the skeleton of the beast herself, as well as the man who killed it—and a medallion that proved to be the final, missing piece of the sword of Joan of Arc, which had been broken by the English when she was burned as a witch at Rouen in the fifteenth century.

  Roux, it turned out, had been there. He had been Joan’s mentor.

  The old man had stolen the medallion from Annja in a restaurant. She had tracked him down to his mansion near Paris with the help of billionaire industrialist Garin Braden, who claimed to have been Roux’s apprentice—half a millennium before. And there, by some means of which she still had not the slightest comprehension, she had healed the ancient blade—made it whole again out of fragments by no more than the touch of her hand.

  It had caused Roux to proclaim her the spiritual descendant of the martyred Joan, and her fated successor as champion of the good. It had also inspired Garin to try to kill her. Or at least to break the sword, fearing that its restoration would break the spell—Roux named it a curse—that had kept both men alive and unaging for centuries.

  She was still sorting this all out in her mind, trying to integrate a lot of fundamentally dissonant facts.

  Unexplained things happened. She knew that. That the parents she could not remember had died and left her in an orphanage in New Orleans had rubbed her nose in that truth at a very early age.

  Earthquakes happened. The earth opened. But that didn’t stop it all from being a little too coincidental—providential, one might say.

  The fact she just happened to be dropped more or less on top of the final piece needed to restore the sword was just too neat for rational explanation. Thinking about that—she did that a lot these days, trying to find her bearings—made her wonder about what she had been accustomed to thinking of as “rational.” Because in this case truth and rational explanation were divergent. They had wandered far down very different pathways indeed.

  IN THE WEEKS since taking the sword as her own burden to bear, Annja had worked assiduously to learn to use the mystic weapon. Roux had her start conventional fencing, mostly for conditioning. Even with her impressive physical abilities, she needed training. And that training hurt, for she was using her muscles in unaccustomed ways and taxing them to their utmost.

  But Roux expressed contempt for fighting with what he called “car aerials,” although he admitted the épée approximated a useful weapon in size and balance, and that the cut-and-thrust of the saber mimicked actual combat, however faintly. He spurned the modern mythology of point-fighting as the be-all and end-all of sword combat.

  So she went beyond modern, conventional fencing. She studied sixteenth-and seventeenth-century sword manuals by masters such as Vadi and Meyer—even published a paper on them. She sought out live-steel masters of reconstructed sword techniques from the Middle Ages and Renaissance and learned from them.

  What she was doing now, though, was a form meant to be performed with a two-edged sword. It was convenient to do, kept her body fluid and mobile and perfected her balance. It helped familiarize her with the sword—and it with her. The form also helped to soothe her mind and spirit. That was something she put a premium on these days, even as she found it increasingly difficult to do so.

  She especially liked the symbolism of the left hand, the empty hand. It was traditionally held with first two fingers extended, the latter two folded into the palm with the thumb across them: what was called the spirit sword.

  She found it appropriate, somehow. And the slow motions were easy on her nose. It was still tender from having been broken when she did the face-plant against the cliff in Peru.

  AFTER SHE HAD GONE for a run in the rain, then come back and spent twenty minutes stretching, she showered and occupied herself fixing dinner. Then she watched part of the DVD set that had arrived in the mail while she was away, the first season of Ally McBeal. She didn’t really watch much television, and hated waiting from one episode to the next of a show. She much preferred being able to watch as many episodes as she cared to at a sitting. Besides, she’d always harbored a sneaking prejudice for artifacts of the past…even the very recent past.

  Leaving the television turned on for a little bit of light and motion, but no sound, she settled herself back on the window seat to see what had developed in her newsgroups.

  As the colored shadows played disregarded across her face, and outside the great light went down and the little lights came on in fairy profusion, she went back to alt.archaeology.esoterica. The post about Solomon’s Jar had elicited a new slew of comments. She scanned the headers.

  The majority remained abusive. As usual, she found that once the comments nested more than a couple of removes from the main thread they had little or nothing to do with the ostensible topic. So she concentrated on comments on the original post, and immediate replies to them.

  One username caught her eye: seeker23@demon.co.uk, a British domain. She had seen the name before. Often. He was a quixotic defender of the borderlands of respectability, of the realm of the possible—who nonetheless spoke knowingly in the jargon of archaeology. And never once in screaming caps. Seeker23 even knew that it’s isn’t a possessive, a rare attainment anywhere on the Net.

  She downloaded the comments he—or she, but the tone caused her to sense the poster was masculine—had posted. Mostly they were calm pleas for open minds. But one uncharacteristic sally made her sit up and open her eyes.

  There are even rumors that the crew of a Greek fishing trawler who found the supposed jar were mysteriously slaughtered on board afterward. Such a massacre did take place, in Corfu a couple of months ago. It’s possible, always, that was merely coincidence. But I hope Trees is exercising due caution.

  That brought him a positive flame tsunami, of course. Annja paid no attention. She could have recited most of the contents of the negative responses aloud without ever reading them anyway.

  She minimized her newsreader window and fired up Firefox. A Google search of news items brought a number of hits from the wire services. Six Slain In Fishing-Boat Massacre, she read. The crewmen had been found hacked to death as the boat lay tied at the dock in its home port on the island of Corfu.

  Annja closed her computer and stared out the window. The rain had started up again. The hard little lights across the East River seemed somehow muted, as well as blurred by chill tentacles of rain that stretched across the windowpane, that ran down the glass like the fingertips of dying men….

  Shuddering at the sound of unheard screams, the nape of her neck tingling, she opened the computer up again and went to a travel site to check flight times and prices to the Netherlands.

  3

  A string of Balinese bras
s bells tinkled musically to announce her as Annja pushed her way into the little shop in Amsterdam.

  Inside was warm, dark and fusty after the late North Sea afternoon with its high, pallid sky and brisk spring breezes off the IJ estuary. She closed the door as gently as she could, not wanting more racket from the string of tiny bells, while contradictorily saying “Hello?” at normal conversational volume.

  Great, she told herself. I try to sneak in while announcing myself out loud. She sighed. She had a lot left to get used to, it seemed.

  No one answered. She looked around.

  The bronze plaque outside had described the establishment as Trees’s Schatwinkel. What trees had to do with it she wasn’t sure; the somewhat skinny lime trees on the street hadn’t struck her as anything to name a shop after. Her first impression was that it was like her own home, but more so. The walls were lined with shelves of books, some glassed in as if to indicate rarer and more expensive volumes. The muted glow, which became more apparent as her eyes accustomed themselves to indoors, came from lights on the sculpted and painted metal ceiling. They were turned to spill illumination down the bookcases, and a few discreetly spotlit displays. Tables of artifacts were crowded between the bookshelves, along with some glassed-in cases.

  The street sounds were muted to a near subliminal murmur. The tiny shop had the sort of reflective quiet she always associated with such places, along with museums and cathedrals. Its smell struck her as unusual, though. Along with the usual dust and mildew one encountered in such places, however scrupulously kept up, and the smell of old paper and leather and paint, her nostrils detected incense and a particular if unidentifiable sweetish smell. There was something else that underlay it all, but she couldn’t yet define it.

  Along with the books the store was crammed with a variety of artifacts, from age-blackened icons hung in the niches between bookcases to various coins in glass display cases. In one case near Annja lay an exquisite wheel-lock pistol with an ebony stock intricately inlaid in silver; beside it lay a scrap of Egyptian papyrus inscribed with faded hieroglyphs. Annja couldn’t read them; they were too far out of her own scope.

  A quick survey told her most if not all of the merchandise on display had likely come from private collections—including the rather nice trilobite fossil resting on its own pedestal to the left of the cash register. None of it, at a guess, was extremely valuable, in part because of clouded provenance.

  Perhaps more importantly, none of the artifacts looked to her like illicit antiquities. It was basically a curio shop, and the items for sale would range in price alongside high-end souvenirs or contemporary artworks in the modest little galleries that catered to tourists in the Old Town district of the city’s center.

  But then, she thought, if they are trafficking in illegal antiquities, they’d hardly have them out front in the display cases.

  She was surprised that no one had emerged to the sound of the bells or her own cautious greeting. Perhaps the Dutch were unusually law-abiding, although she’d seen her share of panhandlers and tough, drawn street people working the canals and narrow streets. Still, she guessed the proprietors knew their own business.

  In the back of the shop a door opened onto what was presumably a storeroom. A dingy yellow light spilled out into the small main shop. No doubt the clerk or proprietor was back there somewhere, most likely in the bathroom. In the meantime, Annja walked up to the cash register and looked around.

  She saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were small items like chocolates wrapped in brightly colored foil for sale in baskets on the counter, and on the wall behind hung what she guessed were licenses and permits of various sorts, along with a number of small framed lithographs from various time periods. Half-tucked under a rubber mat meant to keep metallic objects from marring the glass countertop a business card caught her eye.

  She pulled it out with the tip of a finger. It was slightly yellowish off-white, like old ivory. One end was printed in dark green, with a stylized tree showing through in the color of the paper. In the same dark green was embossed The White Tree and below it, Metaphysical Inquiries and a UK address complete with phone number and e-mail.

  She slipped it back where it had been.

  She looked around. Still no sign of life in the place. Perhaps the staff had slipped out back into the alley for a smoke to abide by the stringent EU antismoking laws.

  Annja slipped behind the counter. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for; she only hoped she’d know if she found it.

  Unconsciously she realized her nose was wrinkling. There was an unmistakably off smell mingling with all the others. The air was still and definitely beginning to cloy.

  A phone with a digital display sat beside the register. The command buttons were unsurprisingly labeled in Dutch. They looked fairly conventional. She hit a sequence of keys she hoped would bring up the last number to have called the shop. A numeral string obediently appeared. Annja was surprised to see a New York area code.

  Little bells rang as the front door suddenly swung open.

  A young man entered the shop. For a moment the bright light from outside gave the impression he was surrounded by a nimbus of light. Then he stepped in and shut the door, and the illusion was gone.

  He looked to be about Annja’s height, five foot ten. Slim, he wore a white shirt with an open collar and the sleeves rolled up to midforearm and blue jeans. His hair was dark and curly and hung down around his ears. When he stepped forward with a smile she saw his complexion was pale, with very pink cheeks. His eyes were penetrant blue.

  “Do you work here?” he asked in English as he came up to the counter. His accent was British.

  “Oh, ah, no. I’m sorry. I was just making a phone call,” Annja replied.

  It was a clumsy evasion. She saw suspicion flicker in his eyes. They narrowed, and his smile slipped.

  “Where’s the proprietor?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, actually,” she said. “I came in and there was nobody here.”

  “So you just went around behind the cash register?” His tone was challenging.

  She shrugged. “I just got into town. I needed to call my hotel.”

  He leaned forward to peer over the counter. “You’re wearing a cell phone at your waist.”

  Annja smiled sheepishly. “Battery’s dead. Isn’t that the way it always goes?”

  “You came to an antiquities shop before you even checked into your hotel?”

  “I’m really very fascinated by antiquities. It’s like a hobby.” She patted the backpack she was still wearing. “I travel light, anyway.”

  He scowled as he looked at the backpack. For a moment she thought he would demand she open it to prove she hadn’t filled it with purloined goods.

  “Oh, really,” he said. “American, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. You can always tell, huh?” Maybe if I play stupid enough he’ll get exasperated and go away, she thought. She felt a bit of a pang at the thought; it was too bad they were getting off on the wrong foot like this.

  “What sort of antiquities, then?” he asked. “Americans aren’t usually interested in the past.”

  “I guess I’m the exception that proves the rule. I like antiquities of all kinds.”

  “Like this figurine here?” he asked, tapping a finger on the glass above a four-inch tall statue of a bearded warrior with a conical helmet and staring eyes. “Viking, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Eleventh-century Friesian.”

  He looked at her. Uh-oh, she thought. I let my stupid slip, there.

  “You do know your antiquities, don’t you?” he murmured. “Have you really no idea where the owner of the shop is?”

  She shook her head. “Like I said, I just came in—”

  He held up a hand. “I know. To use the phone. Well, don’t you wonder why no one’s come out to ask what we’re about, then?”

  “They’re out to lunch?”

  He looked at her levelly fo
r a moment. She could tell he was dying to remark that they weren’t the only ones. She seemed to have recouped her airhead bona fides.

  “I think I’ll just have a look in the back room,” he said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said, moving out from behind the counter. He glanced at her, more with curiosity than anything else. She realized she didn’t have a very good pretext for preventing him. Indeed, she wasn’t even sure what her reason was. But she didn’t want him looking in the back room.

  His slightly snubbed nose wrinkled. “Do you smell something odd?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A little bit…stale, I guess. Maybe a rat died in the baseboards.”

  “If you don’t mind I’ll have a look in the back, make sure nothing’s wrong,” he said, and stepped past her.

  He froze in the entryway. “Oh, my God,” he said.

  THE PROPRIETOR HAD BEEN stout, middle-aged and female. She wore a skirt and practical shoes with white ankle socks. And that was about all Annja could tell. Because her face was a crumpled pudding of blood, her upper garment was soaked and her hair was dyed and soggy with the stuff. Blood was splashed in bright sprays and swatches on the cardboard boxes and crates to either side of the body. It was congealing in pools on the scuffed linoleum floor. There were even suspicious stains on the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling overhead.

  The smell was blatant now that she knew what it was. It was a smell most archaeologists were quite unfamiliar with: they had few occasions to deal with fresh death. Annja knew it all too well. But the incense and other odors had masked it.

  She pushed past the young man to kneel by the body. She touched a bit of blue-white neck between blood rivulets. The skin was cool and gummy, and there was no pulse, confirming what the smell, and the visual evidence, had told her already.