And there were parts missing.
“Are you certain it’s the same one?” Rynn asked. “There are a lot of caves.”
“You know as well as I do looks can be deceiving.” I rifled through my backpack until my fingers closed on a heavy plastic handle. “You ever wonder why so much magic was written in caves?”
Rynn shrugged. “Truth be told, Alix, I never felt that comfortable around magic. Seems to cause more trouble than it’s worth.”
I could drink in multiples to that statement. “They always stuck the inscriptions in caves so the sun couldn’t get at them. Note, the pyramids were built as a substitute where there were no ready caves, since they couldn’t really dig into the sand. So were some of the Greek and Roman catacombs for that matter.” It was something that had boggled archaeologists for a real long time. Why were all the ancient magic inscriptions kept underground?
“So sunlight couldn’t degrade them?”
“Good guess, but no, that’s just an added benefit.” I pulled out my heavier UV light floodlight, the one with multiple filters, and set it on the floor. “So we couldn’t see them like you guys can.” Supernaturals saw in different wavelengths than humans, particularly in the UV spectrum. A lot of their magic was only visible to humans when activated by light.
“Good hypothesis, Alix, but I can’t see anything either. The wall is blank,” he said.
Yeah. I had a theory about why the World Quest duo had been so set on this place. I fiddled with the filters and wavelength settings. If I was right about this, the settings would be critical. When I was satisfied, I turned it on.
Like invisible ink, the relief flared to life under the wave of my UV flashlight; symbols mixed in with pictographs that were so common in magic spells and inscriptions. Yaks, birds, people—all layered with the symbols to make a picture of sorts, then arranged in rings, swirling around each other not unlike a conga line done in oranges, reds, white, yellows, and blue.
“You couldn’t see these inscriptions with your bare eyes because they weren’t meant for you,” I said to Rynn.
“Human magic,” he said, staring at the images, now excited and visible under the infrared wavelength, not a spectrum supernaturals could see with their bare eyes but one that could be made visible with the right tools.
“Looks like ancient humans practicing magic here picked up on some of your guy’s supernatural tricks.”
Rynn let out a low whistle at the inscriptions both of us could now see under the infrared filters. They were beautiful. Breathtaking, when you considered this was one of the few existing examples on the planet of human magic—something that had been lost, not only to the history books but to the archaeological record as well, as if it had been wiped out.
I held up Neil and Frank’s notebook, open to the diagrams. Now they matched. Human magic, hidden from supernaturals. “This is a find of the century, if not the find of the century,” I said to Rynn. “They never would have been able to publish it, but if they had gone through the right channels, this could have made their careers.”
“Or ended their careers spectacularly—like yours was,” Rynn said.
I inclined my head. No wonder they’d been so secretive; if the IAA had had any idea what they’d been after, well, there was no shortage of tenured professors who would have been more than happy to steal their work.
“There’s one problem, Alix,” Rynn said as he gestured at the cavern. “There’s nothing here. No refuse, no camping gear, no equipment, no blood, no remains. I’ve seen it all—supernatural renderings, murders, magic gone wrong. There should be some trace, something I can see, but there’s nothing. Nothing at all.”
I nodded and held up the notebook to check the pictures against the cavern wall again.
“Yeah, well, we’ve got an even bigger problem,” I said, handing the open notebook to Rynn. “I’ve got absolutely no idea what any of these symbols or drawings mean.” Which meant I had my work cut out for me.
3
THE ART OF FINGER PAINT
11:00 a.m. Still in the quiet valley of death, Nepal
“Goddamn it.” I dropped the notebook and put my head in my hands. I was sitting cross-legged on the cold cave floor, still trying to figure out the damn notebook and pictures.
“Still nothing?” Rynn called from the entrance of the cave, where he was keeping an eye on the valley, a rifle resting on his lap. I could barely see him through the narrow alcove entrance, but he hadn’t moved since I’d settled in to work. I think the fact that the yeti hadn’t shown up yet was starting to unnerve him as well.
“It’s not that they didn’t take notes,” I said, nudging the notebook none too gently with my feet. “They took copious notes. They even diagrammed the relief in detail. The problem is I can’t make head or tales of any of their labels—not even with the research sitting right in front of me.” I gave a loose rock a kick for good measure, sending it across the cave floor. It eventually struck the UV lamp propped against my backpack so I could study the reliefs. It would be one thing if I had weeks to go through them, but we had hours at most.
I let out my breath and tried to force my temper down. I was starting to think I’d have a better shot getting meaning out of the yeti-rendered paintings over this mural.
And the unintelligible chicken scratch that passed for notes.
I’d figured on Neil and Frank coding their research—I mean, it was a supernaturally derived cave with magic reliefs. It was standard practice to code stuff, but my God, how did these two pass their undergrad classes? Even the most paranoid and secretive archaeologists left a clue somewhere. What if you ran into a skin walker?
“I mean, some of it is obvious. Pictures of yaks, carts, people carrying bags of goods. Doesn’t matter the culture or language, they’re all symbols of trade.”
“So that’s more than you knew an hour ago?” Rynn called from the entrance.
“Not really. I keep seeing symbolism for a gate but nothing concrete—not where they were going, who was doing the trading. If there was a trading center here, there should be some remnants—outpost ruins, towns, agricultural centers. Nothing. It’s as if it vanished.”
“Maybe it did?” Rynn said. “It wouldn’t be the first time something was lost to the ages.”
Maybe. The difference between disappeared and hidden was finding the clues. I held up the book again. “And as for this? Up until Fikkal, it’s just history of the region and the variations on the local Shangri-La legends. The rest of it? It’s all in code. The pictographs make more sense than what those idiots wrote in their dig book.” We’d searched the entire cave—not even a hidden jump drive. “And those,” I said, tossing a handful of sand at the pictures, “I can’t read.”
I’d tried various filters on the wall mural and hadn’t uncovered anything more. If I’d had a half-decent internet connection, I’d have been sorely tempted to give up cracking their notebook myself and load it on World Quest as a bonus code—something players did occasionally when they couldn’t get past a particular puzzle; offer in-game loot for someone else doing it.
Seeing as nobody has seen them in four years and the World Quest duo ceased in-game communication with me and Carpe a month ago, right after they’d helped us get into the City of the Dead, I probably couldn’t risk damaging my relationship with them any further.
Actually, loading some of this over on the message board at the Dead Orc Soup and a few other choice in-game bars wasn’t a half bad idea. It’d certainly get their attention. I mean, why fish when you can trawl?
“Don’t antagonize them any more than you already have,” Rynn called from the cave entrance.
My temper didn’t need much prompting. I hadn’t even said anything that time. “Do you ever turn that off?”
“I can’t,” was Rynn’s curt reply. Rynn might be a patient man, but we’d been here for two hours
now. Even he had his limits—and they were a hell of a lot more substantial than mine with this damn notebook in front of me I couldn’t for the life of me read.
I sighed. Maybe there was something in the sections on Shangri-La I missed.
“So that’s what this bounty is all about?” Rynn asked. “Finding Shangri-La?” I saw him shake his head in disgust. “Foolish pursuits,” he said.
For the most part I agreed. Shangri-La was what we in archaeology called a “white rabbit.” You could chase it down as many holes as you wanted, but you’d never catch it—and probably lose what chance you had of a career. “Many lives were ruined chasing after myths,” an old professor of mine used to say. It was one of the few pieces of advice I’d taken to heart. If there isn’t a good, concrete trail, I’m not interested.
But if Shangri-La had been found, an entire magic city based on human magic . . . “It does explain what the IAA wants with Neil and Frank.” I knew the IAA. This bounty was pulling out their biggest guns and crossing a lot of jurisdictional red tape. It never made sense that they were throwing their arsenal at the World Quest duo for sticking a few restricted dig sites in a video game. Not even to set an example to potentially wayward graduate students chomping at the reins. They had me for that. “Still, I wonder why they didn’t make the bounty for Shangri-La.” If nothing else, the IAA always kept their end game in mind—and advertising they were after Shangri-La would have attracted more talent, the kind that chases after glory and fame.
“Too many treasure hunters would have been tripping over each other’s toes. And maybe they sent them after Neil and Frank so they’d be certain to look in the right spot?” Rynn offered.
“Maybe.” Despite the secrecy and false names they’d used, we’d still managed to trace them to the Himalayas through credit card purchases and email archives. The human magic, that had to be it; somehow the IAA found out.
And only Frank and Neil knew how to open Pandora’s proverbial Shangri-La black box.
Which left me with more questions. Why hadn’t the IAA been able to find this place on their own? Why launch a public bounty if they wanted things kept under wraps?
I picked up a loose stone and launched it at an undecorated wall. The echo was cathartic.
If Rynn had an opinion as to the IAA’s motives, he didn’t offer them. Instead, he said, “Alix, I don’t need to pressure you, but we’ll need to start hiking back soon. The longer we stay here—”
The greater the chance the mercenaries or yeti would make an appearance. Meaning unless I found something spectacular in the World Quest designers’ notes or the cave itself in the next hour, I would still be running after the World Quest designers blind.
And I wasn’t going to kid myself. Despite the fact that the IAA had either ignored or missed the place, it wouldn’t stay safe from their attentions for long. I opened the notebook back up once again. What the hell were you two after?
Rynn abandoned his post and came over. “Let me see,” he said, gesturing for me to pass him the book.
“Knock yourself out,” I said, and handed it to him. Anything to stop myself launching it at the damn painted cave wall yaks.
He opened the journal, careful of the pages as he turned them. When he got to the images they’d painstakingly jotted down with the coded notes in the margin, he frowned.
I sat up. “Do you recognize them?” Maybe they’d pulled out some ancient dialect for their code.
But Rynn shook his head. “No, like you said, chicken scratch.” He sniffed at the pages gingerly. “But it does smell faintly of blood.”
Blood? There’s only a couple reasons blood would be on the pages, and it didn’t look like carnage splatter, so . . .
Rynn could see where my thoughts were going. “If there was supernaturally derived magic on the pages, I’d see it.”
I went cold . . . unless it wasn’t supernaturally derived.
Oh hell . . .
I picked the notebook back up and opened it back to the pages where they’d diagrammed the cave images. All right, Texas and Michigan, gimme something to work with here.
The chicken scratch notes diagrammed along the margins of the pages were grouped into circles and then attached to various symbols and pictographs on the wall with lines and arrows.
I palmed a UV flashlight out of my pocket and aimed it at the notes. Here went nothing. I flicked it on.
Nothing happened.
“It was a nice try, Alix,” Rynn said.
“This has to be it. I’m missing something.” I tried turning the page upside down and on its side under the UV light.
Wait a minute . . .
I stared at the page again. They wouldn’t have put something from the game in here, would they? Then again, only someone who played the game would think of it.
“Rynn, do you have a mirror?”
He gave me a funny look but fished a mirror from his backpack and brought it over to me.
I took it and, sitting cross-legged, balanced the book open on my lap. “I remember something like this from World Quest. A treasure map they released into the game a couple years back that was only half complete. There was a trick to getting the whole image.” Okay . . . now, how had this worked exactly? I balanced the book again and lined the mirror up as best as I could. Next, I motioned for Rynn to pass me the UV flashlight again. I’d done this in game before. Nothing happened to the diagram on the first try either in the game. There’d been a trick to it.
“You know what you’re doing?” Rynn said, glancing up at the painting, not bothering to hide his concern.
I thought about my answer. “Well, it’s a little different than commanding an avatar. I mean, I have to balance the book myself, and you don’t have to worry about angles in the game.” A mirror could amplify any of the UV light from the flashlight. Activation from stray light was a risk, especially since I wasn’t sure what the magic woven into the images did.
“The last time someone tried copying something from that videogame in the real world, I remember things going horribly wrong.”
“That wasn’t World Quest, that was a flight simulator game. And it was Carpe.” All right, how to balance the mirror so it didn’t slide off the page . . .
Rynn lowered his head and glared at me from under his eyebrows. “I really don’t see the difference,” he said.
I didn’t dignify that with a response. I wasn’t trying to fly a plane, I was looking for magic.
Figuring I had the book and mirror as balanced as they were ever going to be, I turned the flashlight on the page. Okay, World Quest, prove me wrong.
Nothing illuminated on the page itself; I hadn’t expected it to. I was watching the mirror. It wasn’t instantaneous, and it was a stretch to see it, but slowly and surely the reflected chicken scratch from the page began to elongate and change. Not on the page, mind you, just in the mirror.
“Son of a bitch,” I said under my breath as I watched the reflected chicken scratch morph and change in the mirror, completing the sentences that had been drawn out on the pages. “The bastards figured it out.”
I felt Rynn’s breath on my hands as he came closer and crouched behind me, looking over my shoulder. “Can you see any of this on the mirror?” I asked him.
He squinted at the reflection, but after a moment he nodded. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Human magic.” How many attempts of humans trying to do supernatural magic had I read about in history books? Every one had resulted in explosions and/ or missing limbs.
Yet here it was. Newly written magic code. Left by the World Quest duo. This had to be the first time in thousands of years that humans had figured out how to get human magic—once thought a myth or, at the very least, lost to the ages—to work. And yet here it was, right in my hands.
I looked up at Rynn. “The IAA doesn’t just want Shangri-
La. Neil and Frank are the first people—humans—in over a thousand years to get magic to work.”
“Can you read it?” was all he said, nodding at the page, his face unreadable.
I turned my head at an odd angle. The writing wasn’t coded; no point. If you got this far, why bother making you work harder? But it also wasn’t neat.
“Ahh, it’s not notes. A message,” I said, and began to read it out.
“ ‘To whoever finds this book. If you’ve made it this far, things have gone bad. Before you is the door to Shangri-La. Beware—something is horribly wrong. Do not try to activate it. I repeat, do not turn it on.’ ”
A doorway. This magic-coated picture was the doorway to Shangri-La. I walked over and ran my hand gingerly over one of the yak-drawn carts. Son of a bitch. They’d opened the doorway. That’s where they were, they had made it to Shangri-La.
“Alix,” Rynn warned, keeping his distance from the doorway. “The last thing they said to anyone was not to follow.”
“Or they didn’t want the wrong person to follow them.” It was as if the pictures called to my fingers, as if the door itself was reaching out, calling to me. But how to open it?
“That’s an irresponsible jump of logic, even for you.”
I turned on Rynn, not entirely sure why I was so irritated at his interruption. “If I don’t find them, who will? The mercenaries? The IAA? Please explain how any of that is better than me chasing after them?” I was shouting now. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. After how many false starts this month, I was so close. The doorway was right in front of me. Or that’s what I reasoned.
Owl and the Electric Samurai Page 5