The Seventh Stone

by Pamela Hegarty

  He toppled to the packed earth, his cheek smacking a Roman paving stone. The air exploded with bangs, screams and guttural shouts. Then silence and the smell of gunpowder blanketed the ruins. A hand pressed against his uninjured shoulder. Then more hands eased him around, onto his back. He peered up to the cloudless sky, vibrant in the sunrise.

  “Professor Thaddeus.” It was Muktar, leaning over him. “The bad men, they are dead. My diggers killed them. We will dump their worthless bodies into the sea.” He spoke with a tinge of pride, but his eyes were wide with fear, and his voice breathless.

  “Ambar?” Thaddeus asked. Even the exertion of saying that one word hurt.

  “I am here.” She was kneeling next to him, her face wizened from years in the sun, but her expression no longer as hard as the cracked earth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I almost got you killed.”

  “You save me,” she said. She frowned at his wound. “Now, I save you.”

  But he knew, just as Salvatierra knew when he was dying in these very ruins five hundred years ago, only one thing could save him now. The letter.

  CHAPTER 5

  Viceroyalty of New Granada, South America,

  February 1586

  Juan de Salvatierra saw this Godforsaken jungle for what it was, not the genesis of a new world, but the end of the old one. He held a sprig of mint leaves to his nose. The stench of death permeated the air even here, a full day’s march from the last village of the dead. The sun’s heat held no mercy. Neither could Salvatierra’s heart. Like the jungle with its impenetrable canopy, he cloaked himself in the perpetual twilight of despair. He had come here to retrieve the most powerful artifact known to mankind, the Breastplate of Aaron, thought lost for thousands of years. But he had to destroy it, even if it cost his life, even if it risked his immortal soul.

  “You must not destroy the Breastplate, Padre,” young Elias pleaded with him. The captain and thirteen soldiers behind him glowered in agreement. Their swords and long-shafted halberds clanked as they marched. “The pope commanded you to return it to Rome.”

  “God has commanded me to destroy it,” Salvatierra said. He refused to reveal his doubt that this command could have come from a fevered delirium, not a divine dream. He swiped at a mosquito sucking the blood from the back of his neck. His sandaled foot tripped on a root, stabbing pain into his many sores, rending another tear through his tattered brown robe. He had been a young, hopeful missionary when he left Spain three months ago on the trade wind of hope for the new world. Now his skin was pallid and wrinkled with the relentless damp, aging him to his very core. “I must right what is wrong.”

  “Forgive me, Padre, but that village back there.” Elias nearly jogged to keep up with Salvatierra’s long strides. “You saw the evil. That old man had bashed in the heads of six women,” he swallowed, “with a rock.” The boy looked at his hand with a perplexed expression as if trying to imagine what could drive a man to do such a thing. Salvatierra slowed as the boy leaned in closer. “That young mother,” he said, his voice quiet. Salvatierra understood the boy’s fear that such words might beckon the devil. “Her fingers were still clutching the throat of her dead infant.”

  The innocent killed by the hands of his mother, a young, lithe woman whose own face was beaten beyond recognition until death. That was the image which had galvanized Salvatierra’s terrifying decision. She had gone mad, like the others, and murdered the child or, even more heartrending, she had killed her baby to save him from a worse brutality. As Salvatierra and the men followed the muddy river deeper into the jungle, their hearts darkened seeing village after village of savages who had gone mad, then murdered each other brutally before dying themselves. “Do you want to see that in our own country, Elias?” he spat back. “In our own families? That is what the almighty power of the Breastplate can do in the hands of evil men. I must stop it.”

  He bristled at the muttered curses of the men tramping behind him, a discontented cadence to the spiteful chatter of birds, the menacing growl of a jaguar, the endless buzz of millions of insects. These were feared, ruthless men, but the taste for the fight that lay ahead had soured in their mouths. They knew it would be a fight to the death, with fellow countrymen this time, not savages.

  Captain Diaz was a battle-hardened leader and fortune seeker, but it was clear from his expression that he saw their trepidation. He straightened his shoulders and spoke loudly over the howl of a red monkey. “Our reward is nearly within our grasp,” he said, clenching the air with his fist. “Isn’t that right, Padre Salvatierra?”

  “I seek no earthly reward,” he said. The men laughed. He was a constant amusement to them, a means for them to bolster their bravado.

  “And we will be victorious,” said the captain, “for God is on our side.”

  “If He is not,” Salvatierra said, “then we are doomed.” This time, the men did not laugh.

  “You have your mission, Salvatierra. I have mine. Our Majesty, the King, assigned me this task,” the captain boasted. “Return the traitor, Alvaro Contreras, to Spain in chains. Kill his men and leave them to rot in unconsecrated ground. Contreras did not seek El Dorado. He had the savages bring their gold to him. And we will get a conqueror’s share of his treasure. Gold, Emeralds, it waits there, men, just ahead of us. Do what you will with your Breastplate, Padre.” He pointed into the dark, dense jungle and breathed in deeply. “I can smell a traitor’s blood.”

  The men penetrated deeper into the heart of darkness. The volcano on the horizon shuddered and rumbled, belching out a hellish, sulfuric smoke. Only young Elias’s eyes were still wide with wonder. “The Breastplate, Padre,” Elias said. “The others in our Circle of Seven believe it is a weapon of unmatched power.”

  His inquisitiveness was insatiable, but that’s what drew Salvatierra to the boy. Elias was one of five sailors Salvatierra had taught to read using the Bible during their ocean crossing. A sixth man joined their group to teach science and astronomy. He was an aristocrat, hardly more than a boy, who was sent by his father so he would grow iron in his hand and take over the family’s business rather than flit about with intellectuals. They named themselves the Circle of Seven. The others in the Circle waited back on their ship, guarding her. Salvatierra now understood the Lord’s hand in this. Without the loyalty of the Circle of Seven, his plan would never work.

  “Its power is unmatched, as it is the Lord’s,” Salvatierra said, “but it was never meant to be a weapon, of that I am sure. You have read the passage in Exodus. God commanded man to create the Breastplate. He commanded Aaron, brother of Moses, to wear this very Breastplate to determine God’s will for His people, not to destroy them.”

  “Is it true that the Breastplate allows the wearer to talk to God?” asked Elias. He looked to the heavens with an expression of fright and awe. “That the inquisitors can use it to decide the guilt of a man?”

  The inquisitors need no device to condemn, thought Salvatierra, and their thirst is not slaked by burnings at the stake. He shuddered to think what they would do to him. “In ancient times, the high priest donned the Breastplate to judge the guilt of the accused,” he said.

  “And we must bring the savages to understand the power of God,” said Elias, “but they are terrified of the twelve stones of the Breastplate. This savage told you.” He gestured towards the shaman guiding them. “They fear especially the Emerald, the Tear of the Moon.” The brown-skinned shaman was wrinkled and thin, wearing only a loincloth and a necklace strung with a finely wrought, golden pendant. It was an eagle clutching a figurine of a man in its talons. Nobody dared steal it. He carried a blowgun and, incredibly, wore no coverings on his feet. Though his stature was short, Salvatierra sensed that his heart held more courage than all of the thirteen soldiers who tramped behind him combined.

  “I have learned much in this new world,” he said. “Most importantly, to believe what is true to your soul.”

  “With the Breastplate, the Vatican will have the power,
” said Elias, “and the divine right, to save and rule over all the souls. Imagine, Padre,” he pressed. “With this Breastplate, we can talk with God. We will hear His voice, as in the time of Moses.”

  The words clutched at Salvatierra’s heart. His whole life, he had sought to be closer to the Lord. Now he might destroy his only chance to be one with Him while still on His Earth. He could be wrong. Perhaps he should don the Breastplate, just once. The ground beneath them trembled.

  “Silence,” Captain Diaz hissed. The men halted. They clutched their weapons tighter. The heat was stifling, heavy with silence. Salvatierra listened. A low, keening wail wafted through the forest ahead of them.

  The shaman spoke in his melodic, staccato language. Salvatierra translated. “He says that wailing we hear is the men from the tribe. They wait for us ahead. They grieve. He says the man we hunt is very near.”

  “And the temple?” Diaz asked, his hand on the hilt of his sword, his expression a fight between dread and lust. “The treasure? He shoved aside the shaman and quickened his pace. The men pushed by to stay on the captain’s heels. Salvatierra hurried to keep up. He followed as they burst into a clearing. The men stopped, their bravado sucked out of them like water through a reed straw. Salvatierra could only see above them, to a giant rock outcropping that towered above the trees.

  He stretched onto his toes to peer over the soldiers. Savages crowded the perimeter of the circular clearing. Red markings on their naked brown skin mimicked bloodied skeletons. Their posture was unyielding, their eyes black with hate. Three of them gripped Spanish swords, red with blood, at their side. A preternatural silence enveloped the clearing. God had silenced and stilled even the birds and insects. The only movement was the drip of Spanish blood from the tip of a Spaniard’s sword.

  CHAPTER 6

  Christa spun around as the bloodcurdling yelps and howls shrieked through the haunted walls of the cliff dwelling. The recent drought made prey scarce and predators more aggressive, more territorial. But these howls sounded more vicious than those of ordinary predators. “Those wolves sound crazed, bloodthirsty,” she said. Oh God, those animals could have found Samuel.

  “They are not wolves,” he said. “The Skinwalkers are hunting us.”

  “Skinwalkers.” She couldn’t hide the skepticism in her tone. “You mean Navajos who have trained in the witchery way,” she said. A homicide by Skinwalker monopolized this morning’s local headlines. Investigators had found a stick across the victim’s throat and a clump of grave grass near her pickup. Skinwalkers had been a part of Navajo culture for years, but the history of these paranormal beasts was scanty. Skinwalker stories might have originated to scare off the white man’s western expansion or evolved from when men wore animal pelts for the buffalo hunt. But whatever was howling out there definitely was not human.

  “Evil men,” said Joseph. “They have the power to shift shapes and the soul of a killer.”

  “Wolves don’t need to shift shapes,” she said. “They are born killers.” Her only weapon was the Mayan knife. Their only defense might be their position. The ancient ones had built these cliff dwellings in inaccessible caves for protection from predators. The fact that the Anasazi had all mysteriously disappeared centuries ago was not reassuring.

  Joseph’s expression of dread inspired even less optimism. “You try to understand what you do not believe,” said Joseph. “You must believe to understand.”

  “I believe any creature who howls like that won’t settle for a jackrabbit.”

  “It is human prey they stalk,” he said. “Skinwalkers are shapeshifters. They can become a crow, an owl, a wolf.” He fingered his medicine pouch like a hunter might judge his load for his shotgun.

  “So you’re saying they could fly to this cliff dwelling as crows, and attack us as wolves,” she said.

  “They were human once. Yee naaldlooshii are evil men who have embraced the witchery way. To fully realize the power of Skinwalker, a witch must kill a member of his immediate family.”

  “Gives a whole new meaning to sibling rivalry.”

  “They are on the scent of the potential power of evil,” he said, “of the sacred stone we seek. They are gathering in the dark. We must leave here. Now.”

  Joseph was a brave man. That’s what frightened her. “I can’t leave,” she said, “not without that Turquoise.”

  “Now you believe.”

  “Not believe, I know. I made a promise to Samuel, and to my father. If there is any chance the Turquoise is here, I’m taking the risk.” She stretched on tiptoes to peer down into the canyon. The headlights were barely visible, weaving through the cottonwoods at the foot of the cliff across the river. “Those men chasing us, they won’t let wild animals stop them from finding the Turquoise.” Dad would never give up, not when that pride of lions stalked their campsite in the Serengeti. Not now. She still had nightmares about it, but had survived. She’d survive this. If only she could stop her fingers from shaking. “This may be our only chance.” Slipping sideways through the narrow portal, she crossed the threshold into the circular structure of the cliff dwelling.

  It was pitch black. She switched on her headlamp. The room was round, about twelve feet in diameter. Ragged blood stains splotched the pounded earth floor. Samuel must have been shot here, and stabbed his killer.

  The howls pierced through the portal, swirling around her like a whirlwind. A scuffling at the doorway. Joseph. He didn’t abandon her. She wanted to hug him. Instead, she crouched, looked up. The stone ceiling formed a stepped pyramid, twenty feet above their heads. “A pyramid?” she said, her whisper of a voice like thunder in the small room. “Not exactly typical Anasazi architecture.”

  Joseph flicked on his headlamp. “This was not a typical Anasazi village.” His beam and hers joined in a macabre waltz, twisting and weaving across the stone walls.

  “The walls are more Incan than Anasazi,” she said. “The sandstone blocks are precisely hewn and fitted together, without mortar.” The beasts’ howls grew more strident, a bone-chilling chorus of yelps and wails. All she needed was one speck of evidence, one clue to the location of the Turquoise, to know that this was worth the risk, to take that last leap of faith. The chamber was eerily beautiful, and utterly empty.

  Dad would have found it, an archaeological anomaly, an unnaturally shaped stone, a bump in the wall. Her beam tripped over it, on the stone abutting the entrance, no more than a flicker of a shadow. She drew closer and ran her fingertips over a rough brick of stone. It was eye level, a perfect, 15-inch square. In its center, it had an indentation nearly obscured by centuries of dust. She directed her light and blew on the stone. A billow of fine, silvery sand danced in the beam of her light. This was no stonecutter’s slip. It was a symbol. Joseph came beside her. The symbol had four cardinal points, like a compass, each point marked with four lines, like rays.

  “The Navajo symbol for sun,” said Joseph. He wiped his sleeve across his sweaty upper lip. “For life, growth, and all that is good.”

  “Of course, I recognize it now.” She brushed off the stone’s squared edges with the flat of her hand. “This stone with the symbol isn’t flush like the others. It sticks out a little. It could hide a secret niche. The Turquoise could be right here, behind this stone.” The beasts yowled. “Come on, help me get it out.” She hooked her fingertips on the edge of the stone and shimmied it. Dust and gravel rained down on them from the pyramid roof above them. The whole chamber shook and trembled. A massive brick cracked out of the ceiling. It slammed to the floor so close that its concussion puffed away the dust at her feet. Stupid. She knew better. It wasn’t the first trap that had almost killed her. “A booby trap,” she said. “Remove the wrong brick, the ceiling collapses on top of us.”

  “Jenga,” said Joseph.

  “Navajo for we’re screwed?”

  “My grandson’s favorite game as a boy,” he said. “Small, rectangular wooden blocks, assembled criss-crossed on top of one another to make a tower.
The trick is to remove a block low down on the tower without knocking over the whole thing. It’s all about balance, and choosing the right brick.”

  “My father and I played a game like that, with river rocks at the digs.” They were too busy traipsing over the world to buy her any mass manufactured toys. “Of course, it didn’t involve being crushed to death, most of the time.”

  “The tribe that lived here centered their lives on protecting the Turquoise. When the Spaniard brought it to them, they picked this cliff because of its inaccessibility. They built this chamber before the cataclysmic sandstorm hit, to hide the clue to the Turquoise so that no outsider could attain it.”

  “Until us,” she said. “I haven’t seen a single potsherd. People that meticulous had a reason for carving this symbol and leaving it behind. Maybe they thought their descendants would return, and retrieve the Turquoise. They wouldn’t want them killed for their trouble. So they left them a sign.”

  Joseph directed his headlamp around the room, landing on another eye level stone that protruded from the west wall. He hurried to it, blew away the dust. “The morning star,” he said. The carving looked like a blend between a cross and a diamond, “honored by the people of the Plains as a symbol for courage and purity of spirit.”