The Mountain Mother Cipher (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 2)

by N. S. Wikarski

  Father Abraham resumed reading his Bible.

  Annabeth glanced up at the portrait of the last Diviner which hung above the table. She averted her gaze just as quickly. The face seemed to be staring directly back at her in an attitude of stern disapproval.

  “What do you wish to speak to me about?”

  She jerked to attention. The Diviner was walking across the room toward where she sat.

  He took the chair opposite and waited for her reply.

  She cast her eyes down at the floor in confusion. “I’m sorry to bother you, Father. I…I… know how busy you must be.”

  “Yes,” he said coldly. “My time is valuable. I don’t want it wasted on trifles.”

  She gathered the courage to look at him. Her hands were no longer folded in her lap. They were clenched together in a tight little ball. She wanted to fly out of the room but she had to hold her ground and speak. Her own salvation was at stake. “I have come to tell you some news.” She hesitated. There was no good way to say this.

  “Yes?” His tone was impatient.

  “I… uh… I think there may be something wrong with the Scion’s new union.”

  “What?’ he bellowed, rising and standing above her. “What on earth are you jibbering about, woman?”

  She tried to blink back the tears but she had been on edge for so long that it all came flooding out and she began to sob. Hiding her face in her hands, she bent over the table and cried.

  The spectacle took Father Abraham by surprise. He seemed perplexed and sat back down. “There, there,” he said stiffly. “There’s no need for tears, Annabeth. Now what is the problem?”

  She blew her nose, sniffled and tried to regain control. “I…I… had to make sure you knew that it wasn’t my fault, Father. I’m not a bad wife.”

  “A bad wife?” he echoed. “Who said you were a bad wife?”

  “Y…you did.” She began to wail all over again.

  The Diviner drew himself up. He seemed offended. “I said no such thing.”

  Annabeth struggled to breathe. Her sobs left her gasping for air. “Y…yes. Y…you told me that I was disobedient and that’s why my husband didn’t seek out my company. But it isn’t only me!” She dug her fists into her eyes to clear them. “I don’t deserve to be cast out of the kingdom, Father. I don’t want to be left behind on Judgment Day.”

  The Diviner kept his tone level to avoid upsetting her further. He chose his words carefully. “You just said it isn’t only you. Explain what you mean by that.”

  Annabeth blinked back the last of her tears and let out a huge sigh. She blew her nose again and regarded the Diviner gravely. “I don’t believe the problem is with us, Father. I talked to my sister-wives and Daniel has showed no husbandly affection to any of us for years now. And then yesterday I asked my newest sister-wife Hannah about her wedding night and it seems…” she trailed off, unsure of how to phrase a subject so delicate.

  The Diviner appeared stunned. He sat perfectly still for several seconds, staring off into space. Finally he asked, “Are you trying to tell me that my son did not consummate his union with Hannah?”

  Annabeth nodded solemnly. “That is what she told me, Father. She seemed very confused by it too.”

  “Woman, you know it is a grave sin to lie about such things.”

  Annabeth nearly stopped breathing altogether. “Oh, Father, no! I would never lie about this or anything.”

  Father Abraham stared at her in silence. His face wore exactly the same expression as the man in the portrait. “If you aren’t lying then it is plain you are being deluded by the Father Of Lies. The Devil has tricked you into believing you are not to blame.”

  Annabeth faltered in her conviction. The thought had never occurred to her before. “He has?” she asked limply.

  The Diviner rose and paced around the room, his hands clasped behind his back. “There is no other possible explanation. He has hoodwinked not only you but your sister-wives as well.”

  She gaped at him in shock.

  He continued. “You are being seduced by the sin of pride. Satan has whispered in your ear that there is no fault in you so it must be your husband who is to blame. Women are foolish and easily led astray. If your husband is avoiding all of you perhaps he has detected some flaw that you are too prideful to admit. His judgment is to be trusted not merely because he is my son but because he is the Scion. He will one day speak directly to God as I do now. God himself chose Daniel to succeed me.” He wheeled around and glared at her. “Do you think He would have chosen a man who was fallible and lacking in discernment to lead the Nephilim?”

  “N…no, Father.” She couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. She stared at the floor. “That isn’t possible.”

  “I advise you to examine your heart most carefully, Annabeth. The foe of mankind has made an abode for himself there.”

  Annabeth felt a thrill of horror running through her. Satan in her own heart? How could she trust the evidence of her senses? Was any of it real? The devil could be whispering lies to her even now. She sat transfixed until she felt a firm hand grasp her by the elbow and propel her toward the door. The Diviner was speaking again. She heard his voice echoing from a great distance.

  “…the matter of your sister-wives. I will question each one separately.”

  She could feel him shaking her by the shoulders. “Annabeth! Pay attention.”

  “Y..yes, Father.”

  “You will not speak to anyone about this matter ever again. Do you understand me?”

  She nodded mutely as the door slammed in her face. She felt sick with dread. A demon had taken possession of her body. Someone else was peering out from behind her eyes. Hell wasn’t simply some faraway place where the Fallen would go on the Day Of Judgment. Hell was as close as the beating of her own heart.

  Chapter 13 – Catal Huyuk

  Catal Huyuk. Cassie thought the very name sounded mysterious and exotic. They were on their way to an honest-to-goddess archaeological dig site but she couldn’t help feeling slightly disgruntled. Nothing was turning out the way she’d expected. It had all started going sideways that morning. She imagined they would make the cross-country journey from Istanbul by train in something that looked like the Orient Express. Instead they took a commercial flight to Konya—a large town in central Turkey that had traffic signals and chain hotels. When their plane landed, she imagined they would be met by a vaguely sinister contact wearing a fez with a tassel. His name would be Ali Ben something. Instead they got a balding American guy named Fred who picked them up at the airport in a minivan. Fred’s only distinguishing characteristic was that he was so utterly ordinary that he had no distinguishing characteristics. Just about as colorful as an ice cube on a snow bank in Antarctica.

  Not remotely what she expected, Cassie thought dismally, as she sat in the back seat of the van gliding smoothly along well-paved highways. They ought to be bouncing along in an open truck with bad shocks across back country dirt roads. They should all be wearing khaki and safari helmets instead of jeans and T-shirts.

  Erik sat up front with Fred and Griffin was in the back with her. She confided her disillusionment in a whisper to the Scrivener, not wanting Erik to hear.

  He smiled sympathetically. “I think you’ve seen one too many films about mummies.”

  She turned away to look out the window. They had to drive forty miles to Catal Huyuk which Fred explained meant “fork mound” in Turkish. Hmmm. Not such an exotic name after all. It was located on the central Anatolian plateau where the terrain was flat and most of it was planted in wheat fields. It was all so utterly ordinary.

  The minivan slowed to pass through a gate with a barbed wire fence which protected several acres of hillside in the middle of nowhere. There were some guards in uniform but nobody stopped them or asked them for papers or tried to pass them any suspicious relics wrapped in brown paper like the Maltese Falcon.

  Cassie gave one last hopeful look out the window to see if there were any
upper class Brits in camp chairs writing field notes under canvas canopies while inscrutable houseboys served them tea. Nope. All she could see were a bunch of tourists in cross-trainers standing in a semi-circle around a tour guide.

  “Romance is dead,” she sighed.

  “I beg your pardon?” Griffin gave her a startled look.

  “I mean, where’s the glamour in it?”

  “Archaeology is far from a glamorous profession. A good deal of it consists of scraping dirt off the odd bit of crockery.”

  “Can I touch some of the stuff they’re digging up?” Cassie asked eagerly.

  “No!” both Erik and Griffin shouted in unison.

  “Do you have bat ears?” she asked Erik. “How can you hear all the way back here?”

  “I hear the important stuff and no you can’t touch anything!”

  “Why not,” she challenged.

  “Cassie, this dig site isn’t controlled by the Arkana,” Griffin cautioned.

  “It isn’t?”

  “Nope,” said Erik. “The Arkana has its own section of the dig separate from what’s going on here but the last thing we need is to call attention to…” he paused.

  “Your special gift,” Griffin finished tactfully. “We’re only here to collect information from the trove-keeper.”

  “I don’t know why you guys are so freaked out about it,” she grumbled. “I mean the people in charge have to know about the Arkana, don’t they?”

  “They actually don’t,” Fred called over his shoulder. “When we have to share a project with outsiders, we operate using front organizations that have respectable academic credentials. Staying off the radar is especially important when we’re working on a government-controlled site like this one.”

  “But then you don’t get to keep any of the stuff you find,” Cassie objected.

  “Neither does anybody else,” Erik countered. “It all gets turned over to national museums.”

  “But we do get a chance to see what’s here in its original state,” Fred explained.

  “Why is that important?”

  “Ah, there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip,” Griffin remarked sententiously.

  Cassie sighed. “Do I even need to tell you to unpack that?”

  Erik laughed. “What Sir Quipsalot is trying to say is that a dig site can get messed up by the people who are doing the digging.”

  “Quite so,” Griffin agreed. “It’s very common for objects at a site to be taken to museums before they’ve been identified in their original context. Not to mention some of the official interpretation given to the objects found.”

  “He’s right,” Fred concurred. “It’s always better if we’re around to see for ourselves without being treated to an overlord explanation of what it all means.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” Cassie relented slightly. “So no touchie?”

  “Absolutely no touchie.” Erik’s voice was stern. “Just stick your hands in your pockets while we’re here, OK?”

  “And whatever you do, don’t tread on any of the structures that have been unearthed at the dig site,” Griffin advised.

  “Is it OK if I breathe?”

  “Only if it’s through your nose.” At least Erik sounded as if he were joking.

  The minivan idled its way through the main parking lot past something called the Dig House. Again Cassie’s expectations were deflated. Instead of a tent, it was a long ranch style building that housed exhibits. A handful of sightseers were milling around the parking lot waiting for the next tour to start. Off in the distance she could see one of the actual digs. It was covered by what looked like a huge canvas tarp.

  Griffin pointed toward some of the workers who were dumping multi-colored plastic buckets into a hopper next to a water-filled metal trench. “That’s a quick way to filter the dirt for smaller, finer artifacts.”

  “Kind of like sifting for gold,” Cassie observed.

  “Precisely.”

  Fred drove past the central buildings to a higher section of the mound. Set off by itself was a short flat building near another dig site covered with a canopy. He pulled the minivan up to the building and switched off the engine. “We’re here,” he announced.

  Cassie slid open the side door. “Where’s here?”

  Fred climbed out. “This is the Arkana’s section of the dig, The building is our site office. It’s where the trove-keeper works whenever he’s in the area.”

  Griffin stepped down and stretched his legs after their long confinement.

  When Cassie turned to face the door of the building, she smiled. For the first time today she saw something that looked exactly the way she thought it should.

  An elderly man stood in the doorway. He stepped forward a few paces with the aid of a walking stick. Cassie noted that it was capped with a gold lion’s head. Despite the hundred degree heat, he was dressed in a brown suit and matching vest. His crisp white shirt was neatly pressed. The only concession to the weather was a straw Panama hat. He shook hands with the men but when his attention turned to Cassie, he gave a little bow from the waist.

  “My name is Aydin Ozgur. I am the Anatolian trove-keeper and I am deeply honored to meet the Pythia.” He spoke flawless English with only a hint of an accent.

  Cassie resisted the urge to dip him a slight curtsy. Instead she held out her hand. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Ozgur.” She studied his face. His skin was brown and wrinkled as a tobacco leaf. He had a bushy white moustache that drooped at the corners of his mouth. She guessed he might be as old as Faye but his brown eyes sparkled with curiosity.

  “You have come a long way,” Ozgur said. “I can offer you refreshments, but perhaps you would prefer a short tour of the site first?”

  Cassie blurted out impulsively, “Oh, I’d love to see the site!”

  “Remember, don’t touch anything,” Erik muttered under his breath.

  The girl smiled impishly. “Relax, Max.” She wiggled her fingertips at him and then jammed them into her pockets.

  They made their way along a narrow gravel path leading up to the dig. The visitors shuffled behind the trove-keeper, trying to slow their pace to match his. Ozgur steadied himself with his walking stick as he picked his way through broken rock. He stopped when he came to a canopy on the edge of a large hole in the ground.

  “Wow!” Cassie exclaimed.

  Looking down into the wide depression, she could see the floor was divided by a series of low mud-brick partitions. It was almost like looking at an overhead floor plan of a house. The partitions were only a few feet high though the crew working below was digging down to expose more wall. Several people were on their hands and knees scraping away at the floor of the structure. They all had plastic buckets handy where they dumped the dirt they were excavating.

  Cassie turned to the trove-keeper. “So who lived here at Catal Huyuk?”

  He smiled at her eager curiosity. “A peaceful people. They farmed and kept livestock. Their houses were made of mud brick which was covered in white plaster. The structures were all built next to one another. There are no streets.”

  “No streets,” Cassie echoed in surprise. “How did they get around?”

  Aydin chuckled. “They moved from building to building across the roofs. In order to enter a dwelling, one had to climb down through a hole in the roof using a ladder. Are you familiar with the pueblos in America?”

  “I’ve seen pictures of them,” the girl replied doubtfully, “but I’ve never been inside one.”

  The old man nodded. “They are built in much the same way as Catal Huyuk. People liked living in close proximity to one another.”

  “Guess high-rise apartments aren’t so modern after all,” the girl commented.

  “That is true.”

  “What’s that over there?” Cassie pointed to the opposite end of the pit where a small hollow mound of clay protruded from the wall.

  “I believe that’s an oven.” Griffin glanced at the trove-keeper for c
onfirmation. “Am I right?”

  “Yes, each house had an oven for cooking food. It also provided warmth and light since there were no windows.”

  “So the only light came from a hole in the roof?” Cassie was incredulous.

  “And very little light even from that source,” Griffin speculated. “In winter the hole would have been covered to keep out the snow.”

  “It’s hard to believe it ever gets cold here.” The girl felt as if she were standing in an oven. “It has to be almost a hundred degrees.”

  “Quite possibly.” The trove-keeper still looked unflappably cool himself. “But I assure you the winters are harsh. A covering would have been required over the hole in the roof. Sadly while it kept out the snow and wind, it would also have kept in a great deal of smoke.”

  “Great, they probably all had emphysema.”

  “Not likely,” Erik chimed in. “They only lived to be about thirty in the good old days.”

  “Yikes, so at my age I’d be an old woman?”

  “Already past your prime, toots.” The Security Coordinator gave an infuriating grin.

  Cassie turned her back to him. Her attention was immediately caught by a very familiar object on the floor of the dig site. “Jeez, is that what I think it is?” she asked Griffin excitedly.

  He nodded. “Something very like it.”

  The girl studied the short square pillar of molded clay. To each end of the pillar were affixed cattle horns turned in an upright position. “They look exactly like the horns of consecration we saw on Crete,” she explained to Ozgur.

  He didn’t seem surprised by her comment. “Some of the recent DNA evidence suggests that the Minoans originally came from Anatolia. They would have brought their sacred objects with them. The bucranium is a very old symbol. It may have existed as far back as the Paleolithic era.”

  “And it’s a good example of why we’re here,” Fred interjected. “The overlord explanation is that the people of Catal Hoyuk worshipped bulls while all the goddess statues they found scattered around were simply fertility figures.”