Into The Jaws Of The Lion (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 5)

by N. S. Wikarski

  The Scion stood up and followed his friend to the elevator.

  While they waited for it to arrive, Chris gave Daniel an amused glance. “We should start calling the library the ‘University Of Daniel’.”

  The Scion smiled self-consciously. “I suppose I am being rather intense but there’s so much knowledge to be found here. I have to make up for lost time.”

  The elevator doors opened and they entered. Chris pressed the button for the lobby. “You’re like a kid in a candy store, if the candy was made of alphabet letters. I don’t imagine your father is big on learning.”

  “He is when it comes to the scriptures or Biblical languages or the sermons of dead Diviners but not much else.”

  “That’s probably why he didn’t want you talking to me.” Chris chuckled. “I’m a bad influence.”

  “You? Oh, no. You’ve taught me so much about the outside world.”

  “Exactly my point,” the librarian countered. “I’ve taught you things your father doesn’t want you to know. I mean, the fact that I work in a library opens the door to all kinds of forbidden knowledge. Oh, the horror!” He raised his hand to his brow in a theatrical gesture.

  Daniel looked at him askance. “Is that another cultural reference that I don’t understand?”

  “One of oh so many,” Chris murmured at the elevator doors opened.

  They crossed the lobby, spun through the revolving doors and joined the crowds of mid-day pedestrians in downtown Chicago.

  Daniel had become used to the activity of the city after so many months. The bustle, the noise, the traffic and pollution. He liked the energy of it all. It bristled with life compared to the compound of the Blessed Nephilim. The silent corridors of his home did their best to mimic the absolute stillness of death.

  “I’m going to expand your education in a different direction today,” Chris said mysteriously. “We’re trying a new place for lunch.”

  Daniel silently tagged along as the librarian took an unfamiliar street leading west. They paused at a stop light.

  “If you got as far as Buddhism this morning, that must mean you’ve just about wrapped up all the big religions,” Chris speculated.

  The light turned green.

  “Yes, I’ve covered Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and the various sects of Christianity. But it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What doesn’t?” Chris paused, looking up at a street sign to get his bearings.

  “All those religions essentially believe in one great power that created everything but they’ve been fighting wars for millennia because they can’t agree on how to worship Him.”

  “Ah yes, how best to worship the Great Whatsit.” Chris nodded his head sagely as they continued walking. “By the way, your choice of pronoun is provocative all by itself.”

  Daniel peered at his friend, uncomprehending. “It is?”

  They paused at another red light.

  Chris turned to face him. “Absolutely. All the big religions nowadays use ‘He’ to refer to the Whatsit but that wasn’t always the case. Lots of older religions think of that power as ‘It’ or even as, gasp, ‘She’. Funny that the religions favoring ‘He’ always want to stomp on the It-Worshippers and the She-Worshippers.”

  Daniel had never considered that the divinity who had created the world could be anything other than a He. The Scion pondered the notion for the first time. “I’m aware that some of the pagan religions had female fertility goddesses,” he ventured.

  Chris nudged him to move as the light changed. “That’s nothing. You need to check out some of the books on folk religions and neo-pagan philosophy. Most of them believe that the supreme power of the universe is female. Frankly, when I think of a deity who’s in the business of creating life, I have an easier time believing that it’s female. Just makes more sense from a biological standpoint.”

  “Do you follow a religion yourself?” Daniel asked, curious for the first time about Chris’s beliefs.

  “I’m an agnostic.” Chris’s arm shot out, pointing to the right. “Down this street.” They raced across as the light turned yellow.

  “Is that like an atheist?” Daniel hurried to keep up.

  “Sort of,” Chris agreed. “An atheist doesn’t believe in anything. An agnostic believes in something but isn’t sure what.”

  Daniel frowned in puzzlement. “It must make it hard for you to pray if you don’t know what you’re praying to.”

  “Agnostics don’t pray,” Chris countered. “We just shut our eyes and hope for the best.”

  The librarian darted under the archway of a high rise office building. “It’s in here,” he said.

  They passed through a revolving door into a darkly-lit restaurant. Dim pendant lights hung over the bar and over the rustic trestle tables set into the opposite wall. Seating consisted of high-backed barstools.

  Chris made for the back of the establishment, away from other customers. Over his shoulder, he said, “This place was just written up in Chicago Magazine. It’s supposed to have a fantastic microbrew selection.”

  “Microbrew?” Daniel repeated.

  “It’s a small-scale brewery that turns out designer beers.” Chris claimed a seat at the farthest table in the back corner. “No lemonade for you today, Danny Boy.”

  For some unknown reason, Chris had decided to call him that. Daniel liked having a nickname. He thought it brought the two of them closer. He took the barstool across the table from his friend. “No lemonade?” The Scion was mystified by Chris’s insistence on his choice of beverage. “But I always drink lemonade.”

  Chris handed him one of the plastic menus that was standing on the table top. “Has anybody ever told you that you’re kind of uptight?”

  “Uptight?”

  “Tense. It means you’re tense all the time.”

  “Oh that.” Daniel nodded. “I suppose I am.”

  “Well, I have just the cure for your malady.” Chris flipped open Daniel’s copy of the menu. One side of the page consisted of nothing but beverages with strange names. He pointed to an item halfway down the list.

  Daniel felt shocked. “Ale? You want me to drink some kind of beer?”

  “It’s pale ale,” Chris retorted, unmoved by his distress. “The alcohol content is so low that even a teetotaler like you won’t feel it.”

  “But my father forbids it. The Blessed Nephilim are not to partake of any strong drink—not coffee or tea and especially not alcohol.”

  “Just exactly what do you think will happen if you drink a glass of ale?” the librarian asked.

  “It’s Satan’s tool to ensnare sinners. It will surely lead me to hell.”

  “Uh huh.” Chris maintained a deadpan expression. “And you know this how?”

  “My father said...” Daniel caught himself. He noticed his friend’s arch look and realized how ridiculous he sounded.

  “Your father has such a wide experience of the world, he couldn’t possibly be wrong about the effects of ale,” Chris murmured tongue-in-cheek. “Why it’s an absolute orgy in this place, isn’t it?”

  Daniel looked sheepishly at the other diners, nearly all of whom had a glass of amber liquid next to their plates. No one was rolling on the floor and frothing at the mouth.

  Chris sighed and peered at him earnestly. “Don’t you think you should find out for yourself?”

  “That’s exactly what the snake must have told Eve in the Garden Of Eden,” Daniel muttered darkly.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’d take the gift of knowledge over dogma any day of the week, no matter what the consequences.” The librarian shot him a mischievous, dazzling smile.

  Daniel had to admit that Chris’s light-hearted remark held a grain of truth. Wasn’t the gift of knowledge the very reason why he’d started coming to the library in the first place?

  When the waiter appeared, they hurriedly chose from the menu. In addition to pulled pork sandwiches, Daniel ordered a pale ale and Chris selected so
mething called “stout.”

  While they were waiting for their food to arrive, Chris leaned over the table. Lowering his voice, he said, “I don’t mean to rush you but you’ve been back for almost two months and you haven’t said anything about the next riddle you have to solve.”

  Daniel sighed. “I know. I’ll have to tackle it this week before my father gets impatient.”

  “Then let’s get started,” the librarian urged, his eyes twinkling. “Helping you solve that last clue was the highpoint of my year.”

  “Very well,” Daniel agreed. He reached into the portfolio he always carried with him. Aside from copious notes about the subjects he’d been studying, it also contained photos of the relic he’d retrieved in Africa. A statue of the head and neck of a golden bull. Its horns were encrusted with diamonds. Sapphires, scattered at random, decorated the beast’s neck. Minoan glyphs were inscribed on its back.

  He handed the photos to Chris who devoured them with his eyes. “Holy carats, Batman! How big is this thing?”

  “Several inches tall.”

  “If that’s solid gold and those are real diamonds and sapphires, then this is worth...” Chris trailed off speechless.

  “A fortune,” Daniel concluded. “You aren’t even considering the antiquity of the piece. It’s at least three thousand years old.”

  “Three thousand—”

  At that moment their order arrived. Chris handed the photos back to Daniel and said to the waiter, “Just a minute.” He took the glass of stout and gulped it down without pausing to draw breath. “Bring me another one.”

  The waiter nodded, grinning, and departed with the empty glass.

  Daniel observed his friend’s reaction with bafflement.

  “How can you sit there looking so matter-of-fact?” Chris challenged. “Most people live an entire lifetime without laying eyes on something as spectacular as this.”

  Daniel shrugged. “I suppose I’ve been on this quest for so long that it all seems ordinary to me now.”

  “So what’s the riddle?” the librarian prompted, picking up his sandwich.

  Daniel took a few bites of his own before turning to his notes. “I had a little trouble with the translation but I think this is what it says: ‘The stones behind, on an island tower she alights to drink, biding til her kindred fill the jaws of the lion’.”

  The waiter returned with Chris’s second glass of stout. Before taking a sip, the librarian frowned at Daniel’s still-full glass of ale. “Will you at least try it?”

  The Scion hesitantly complied. He barely moistened his lips at first. “Hmmm.” He tried a larger sip the second time. He could feel a warm sensation spreading through his head and chest. “The taste is a little bitter,” he observed.

  “Anything would be bitter compared to lemonade,” Chris retorted, finishing half his sandwich. “Try another sip.”

  Daniel took a large gulp of the light golden liquid and then waited a few moments to observe the effects.

  “Well, your head didn’t burst into flames,” the librarian commented acerbically.

  “I feel...” Daniel paused, grasping for the right word. He stared at Chris is blank surprise. “I feel calmer.”

  “Uh huh,” his friend agreed. “That’s the point. It’s supposed to mellow you out. So long as you don’t go overboard, it’s a nice feeling, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.” Daniel eyed the glass of ale with newfound respect. He then turned his attention to the rest of his meal.

  By now, Chris had finished and pushed his plate to the side. He returned to pondering the riddle. “On an island tower she alights to drink,” he murmured half to himself. “I assume that’s a reference to the dove from the last riddle?”

  Daniel nodded, his mouth full of food. Swallowing, he said, “Yes, I agree. The dove continues to fly until she arrives at a tower on an island.”

  “What about ‘the stones behind’?”

  The Scion wiped his mouth with a napkin and looked furtively around to see if anybody was listening to their conversation. Satisfied, he leaned forward and spoke in a soft tone. “There were pyramids in Sudan right around the spot where we located the last artifact. I think the riddle is directing us to turn our backs on the stone pyramids and continue eastward on the same course.”

  “So that would mean the same latitude traveling east from the place you found the bull?”

  “Yes.” Daniel took a few more sips of ale. “I haven’t studied the geography of the region so I’m not sure what the terrain east of Napata is like.”

  Chris scowled in concentration. “The reference to an island tower has got to mean something along a coastline. The first likely spot would be the east coast of Sudan. Beyond that would be the Arabian Peninsula. Since it’s a peninsula it has an awful lot of coastline.”

  “I still don’t have a theory about what’s supposed to fill the jaws of the lion though,” the Scion admitted.

  The librarian seemed undeterred. “It doesn’t matter. One problem at a time. Maybe if we can figure out where the island tower is, the rest of the riddle will make sense.”

  Daniel finished his ale. The warm glow in his stomach gave him a reassuring sense that, with Chris’s help, he would have no trouble solving the riddle and finding the next relic.

  “So are you ready to stop studying comparative religion and tackle this riddle now?”

  “Right after lunch,” Daniel agreed. “But first, can I have another glass of ale?”

  Chris gave him an apologetic grin and slid off his barstool. “Sorry, Danny Boy. I think you’ve had enough for one day. We both need to keep a clear head. There’s a treasure at stake.”

  Chapter 7—Special Delivery

  Annabeth smiled with secret satisfaction as she gazed down at the baby cradled in her arms. He was only a week old but he was about to change her life. He slept so sweetly, so blissfully unaware of the difference he was going to make in his mother’s rank among the Consecrated Brides of the Blessed Nephilim. In fact, he had already made a difference. Ever since his birth, Annabeth had received a steady stream of visitors to pay homage to the new arrival. Even her husband Daniel had made an appearance to congratulate her and gaze admiringly on the child. He had torn himself away from his precious library because, for once, Annabeth had done something that captured his attention. It wasn’t every day that a son was born to the future Diviner of the Blessed Nephilim.

  She heard a sharp knock at the door to her quarters. A tall, elderly woman swept into the room.

  “Hello, Annabeth.”

  Annabeth attempted to rise from her rocking chair but the woman gestured for her to stop.

  “Don’t get up, child. I only came to see if you needed anything.”

  “Why, n...n... no, Mother Rachel,” she stuttered. “Thank you for asking.”

  This was a high honor indeed. The Diviner’s principal wife had come to visit her. Annabeth hadn’t realized that Mother Rachel was even aware of her existence but here she was paying a social call just as if they were old friends. Father Abraham possessed over thirty spouses but Mother Rachel had held the rank of his principal wife for more decades than anyone could remember. Among the Consecrated Brides of the Blessed Nephilim, she occupied a position second only to the Diviner himself. She had ascended to that honor by giving birth to ten children—nine of them male.

  One of the Diviner’s other wives has also produced ten offspring but half of them were girls so they didn’t count as much. It was unlikely anyone would eclipse Mother Rachel’s record of baby boys. She was no longer Father Abraham’s favorite. She had lost that distinction in the early years of their union but it was of no consequence. The Diviner was growing old. The number of pregnancies among his wives declined each year. That made Mother Rachel’s rank in the community, and in the celestial kingdom to come, all the more secure.

  The old woman leaned over Annabeth’s rocking chair and peered at the baby as if she were inspecting an undercooked pot roast. Taking glasses
out of her apron pocket, she perched them on her nose and leaned in even closer. Annabeth noticed the deep grooves around the woman’s mouth and the wrinkles cutting furrows across her cheeks. She seemed ancient—much older than the Diviner himself. Annabeth wondered how Mother Rachel must have felt when the aged Diviner wed Hannah who was barely fourteen at the time. It was common knowledge that he doted on the girl. Would Mother Rachel have been jealous? Worried about losing her rank? Annabeth thought back to the brief time when Hannah had been married to her own husband Daniel. She remembered her feelings of jealousy and fear. Praise God, Hannah had succumbed to the temptation of the devil and run away. Both Mother Rachel and Annabeth had good cause to rejoice in her absence.

  “Hmmm, looks healthy enough.” The old woman straightened up, folding her glasses and putting them back in her pocket. Then she turned from side to side, looking around the room as if she had lost something. “You also have a daughter, don’t you? Where is she?”

  Annabeth shrugged vaguely. “I don’t know. I think one of my sister-wives is looking after her. She was always underfoot and now that the new baby is here, I can’t be chasing after her all the time. Someone else will have to keep her for a while.”

  The old woman nodded, satisfied with the explanation. Then she took a cursory stroll around the small quarters, inspecting everything with a practiced eye as she went. The cheap pine dresser, the thin coverlet on the bed. Finally, she gave a soft “tsk, tsk.” Wheeling around, she fixed Annabeth with a decisive look. “This won’t do. Such a chamber isn’t suitable for the principal wife of the Scion.”

  Annabeth felt her heart thrill with pride. Respect at last. As the principal wife of the Scion she was owed certain privileges. All because her husband Daniel was the heir to his father’s title as Diviner. When Father Abraham passed from this life, Daniel would assume leadership of the Blessed Nephilim and Annabeth would be standing right behind him. She stole a glance at the bundle of joy that had made her elevation possible.

  Mother Rachel was still talking. Annabeth refocused her attention.