by Gavin Scott
“It’s alright,” said Forrester. “It’s all over. Everything’s – sorted itself out now.” And he sat down suddenly on a pile of building equipment.
Beside him, the hollowed-out book which had been masquerading as the Heimskringla fell open, and Harrison’s microphone rolled out onto the frosted leads.
“We got everything on the wire recorder,” said Harrison. “And Barber heard it all as it came through. Well done, Dr. Forrester. Dr. Clark should be a free man by tomorrow morning.” He clapped a formidable hand on Forrester’s shoulder.
“Thank you, Harrison,” said Forrester, “but I couldn’t have done it without you.”
32
THE GORGE OF ACHARIUS
The path wound through the gorge beside the stream, almost invisible in the mist. Forrester could see, at the top of the cliffs enclosing him on either side, the tortured pines clinging to the bare slopes of the mountain; but down here in the narrow coolness, immense cypress trees, luxuriating in the water far beneath their roots, rose majestically past layer after layer of the ancient rock worn away by the modest, persistent work of the tiny river that had cut the gorge.
Vetch, speedwell and asphodel had lodged themselves in the crevices, and as Forrester inhaled their scent on the morning air he felt as if he were breathing in time with the Minoan priest kings who had walked here four thousand years before, when Egypt was still young and the Tower of Babylon not yet built.
The air was thick with the murmur of bees and somewhere in the distance he heard the tinkling of goat bells and the questioning, plaintive cries of the kids. Then he turned a corner and squeezed past the gnarled and ancient pine tree and there was the cave, waiting for him since the day he had first taken shelter there.
Inside its dark recesses, he knew, was the stone, its pictograms and hieroglyphs ready at last to give up the secrets of the dawn-time of Europe, when gods were real.
He hefted the pack off his back, leant it against the entrance to the cave, and turned to the Grevinne Sophie Arnfeldt-Laurvig.
“Well,” he said, “this is it.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gavin Scott is a British Hollywood screenwriter, novelist and journalist, based in Santa Monica, California. He spent twenty years as a radio and television reporter for BBC and ITN, during which time he interviewed J.B. Priestley, Iris Murdoch and Christopher Isherwood, among many others. He is writer of the Emmy-winning mini-series The Mists of Avalon, he developed and scripted The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for George Lucas, wrote the BAFTA-nominated The Borrowers, and worked with Stephen Spielberg on Small Soldiers. His film, Absolutely Anything, which he co-wrote with Monty Python’s Terry Jones, was released in 2015.
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