by Jenn Stark
“And this piece?” Chichiro said, pointing to the gold scroll case. “Did you have anyone who would have sent you after this?”
“Sure,” Nigel and I said, not quite simultaneously, so I couldn’t invoke the jinx. This day was unsatisfying in so many ways.
Nigel continued. “There was a non-Connected scholar of Tibetan artifacts in particular that would have slavered over this.”
“Tibetan?” I demanded. “Why Tibetan? There’s only one line of Sanskrit or whatever on it.”
He smiled. “But it’s a hell of a line. I studied ancient Sanskrit at MI6.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t Sanskrit,” I complained to Chichiro, but she just smiled primly and shrugged.
“There are…similarities,” she said. I’d just about had it with their little Look at Me, I Can Translate routine. Forget that Chichiro said I had the chip already built into my DNA, I didn’t have time to deal with that. Not when I was pretty sure I could put an app on my phone and solve the whole issue, like Google Translate for ancient languages.
I frowned. Maybe that app already existed. If so, Simon definitely owed me.
“If it is here, it is everywhere. If it is not here, it is nowhere,” Nigel said, jarring me back to the present. “That’s the translation at least of the ah, Shambali on the gold case. Very roughly.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That sounds like something you pulled off a coffee cup.”
“I’m paraphrasing, but if I’m reading it correctly, it’s close to an old Tibetan proverb I remember. Though I didn’t realize it was this old.” He leaned closer to the gold case, though not too close. “How old do you figure it is?”
“Old,” I said summarily. “Probably as old as these other cases, but I don’t have time to carbon date it. Let’s assume they’re contemporaries. Why did the librarian single it out for me? What did she want me to do with it?”
Chichiro’s and Nigel’s gazes swung toward me with surprise, and I brought them up to speed—Kreios’s job to find the amber and jade cases, my visit to the Arcanum Library, Death and the librarian. I left out the part about the wailing banshees, of course. We needed to stay on task.
I turned to Chichiro. “You said that this script of enlightenment, the scroll inside or whatever, was to be read at the end of the world. Where did you get that prophecy?”
She inclined her head. “While you fetched your pack, I had my own ancient texts to recover. And they will shed at least some light on this dilemma.” She stood and went to a small table at the far side of the room, pausing at a leather pouch I hadn’t noticed before. Opening it reverently, she pulled out a small cylinder, which she cradled in her hands as she returned to us. Reseating herself, she began the painstaking process of opening the cylinder, teasing out the paper within, and weighting it down with the small silk-wrapped sandbags.
With a graceful gesture, she directed our attention to the page. Seven suns surrounded the world, their rays reaching hungrily toward the globe, the earth itself engulfed in flames.
“The end of the world, according to Tibetan belief. Scheduled at the end of six billion years of existence.”
“Nice of them to give us a heads-up. When did the clock officially start on that?” Still, I shifted uncomfortably as I gazed at the ancient scroll. I wasn’t about to buy that there were seven suns heading on a trajectory toward earth anytime soon, but would there be seven gods or goddesses with the ability and interest to breach the veil? That seemed entirely more likely. And would their impact on the earth create the kind of conflagration that would turn the world to ash? Also quite likely.
And weren’t there already meteor storms battering the earth—three, at last count? Also, undeniably true.
“By all estimates, this prediction is still millions, if not billions of years into the future,” Chichiro said. “But then, the words of enlightenment were not supposed to reach the hands of humans until its very cusp.”
“Yet here they are.” Nigel scowled at the third scroll case. “You know, the more I look at this thing, the more I can’t help thinking I’ve seen it before.”
Chichiro shook her head. “Heard its description, perhaps. But no images were allowed to remain of the sacred vessel that holds enlightenment. To create such an image was to attach to the unattachable, and the owner of such an obscenity would be no true Buddhist adherent. Further, no layperson would ever be given the sanctity of trust to know the description to begin with.”
I held up my hands. “Wait. No drawing could exist because to know what to draw would mean you’re a big Buddha fan, and no one who was that big a fan would ever draw such a thing?” I frowned. “What if someone was tortured for the information?”
“Possible, of course, but why? As I mentioned, the contents of the scroll could only be read past the gates of Shambhala, which requires a soul to be enlightened before it may gain entry. Once again, a looping barrier, the crossing of which the unworthy may never successfully attempt.”
“Unless the thing just gets dropped on our heads, like it has,” I said reasonably. “Now I’ve got the Cracker Jack secret message. What’s next? We go to Shambhala, wherever that officially is, and knock on the door?”
Nigel gave a short, derisive laugh. “If finding the gates to that place were easy, a good fourth of my clients would already have gone through.”
“Seriously.” I looked at him now with a mixture of irritation and interest, which wasn’t all that unusual for how I looked at Nigel. “You had that many Buddhist fans among your clientele. Because I, frankly, didn’t have much of any.”
“Your clients were esoteric in their faiths, and to a one Connected.”
“Not all of them,” I protested. “I had plenty of people who wanted a magic charm for their spouse or their kid or their boss. It didn’t matter what they themselves believed. But I never got the job to find the gates of Shambhala, or Shangri-La, or whatever. There were other, more tangible goals to achieve. And I can’t believe my clients were all that much more unique than yours. Like, give me three guys who fall in the description of someone who’d be after this case.”
“I can give you a dozen,” Nigel returned. “It’s ancient, collectible, gold, and it’s got a Rosetta stone–esque appearance here with the three ancient languages. You can bet there are holes in those languages which the case alone can fill. As to what’s inside…”
“What is inside?” I asked, shooting a glance at Chichiro. “A scroll, like that one?” I pointed to her slip of paper.
She nodded. “Likely protected with its own preservative, not to mention spells of binding, though I cannot say for sure.”
“Then we should open it,” I said. “I brought that thing out of a hole in the sky. We should see what’s inside it.”
“I don’t think—”
I reached forward and picked up the case, holding it in the light. “Heavy,” I muttered. “But it’s made out of solid gold. Heavy is relative.”
Nigel scowled, instantly tense. “Sara, I—”
“Open it,” Chichiro said, her eyes on me. “Imagine that it is open, see if you can move the latches.”
The amber and jade cases had only required the passage of my hand to unlatch, but the gold case remained as stubborn as it had in the Arcanum Library. I flicked open my third eye, and the room around me suddenly transformed to one of interlacing bands of electrical energy, the building blocks of magic. Weirdly, however, the case didn’t draw any electricity to itself, nor did it cast that electricity off. I stared as I passed it through the various crisscrossing lines of light, and it remained undisturbed. Even as I brought it closer to the jade and amber cases, it remained stubbornly dead. “What the hell,” I muttered.
“Open it,” Chichiro said again, a faint lilt of irritation in her voice.
“I’m trying to—”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Nigel reached past my hands that were gripping either end of the scroll case and yanked at the latches. One by one they popped free, until the
case itself cracked open.
We all froze for a moment. “You are so not enlightened,” I protested. “I’m totally not believing that.
“I am the opposite of you,” he said. “Light to Dark, Yin to Yang, Connected to non-Connected, mortal to immortal, stylish to—”
“I get it.”
“No.” Chichiro’s voice was barely a murmur, and we turned to her. She had pulled the opened case toward her, was staring at the puddle of silk within.
“What is it?” Nigel asked as Chichiro reverently drew the strip of silk up and out of the case.
“It’s gone,” she said, lifting her gaze, her eyes shining with the first strong emotion I’d ever seen in her—and that emotion was grief. “The scroll of enlightenment is gone.”
Chapter Fifteen
I kept my face carefully neutral as my mind raced to reconcile the fact of the missing scroll with the librarian’s very clear and obvious intention that I bring the case with me, out of the Arcanum Library. Had she known somehow that I’d be coming for the wands of life and darkness and figured she could piggyback her own missing library book on Kreios’s request?
And why had Nigel seemed to recognize the gold scroll case?
I glanced toward him. “You said you—”
At that moment, the great gong by Chichiro’s front door sounded with three sorrowful notes. Nigel was up on his feet instantly, his hand going for his weapon.
“Who knew we were here?” he demanded. “You aren’t expecting anyone?”
“No one, and no,” Chichiro said, but her expression was haggard. And she still stared at the empty scroll case, as if that were more important than the fact that someone had found her mountain hideaway and come all the way to her very door without a single alarm going off. Ma-Singh had established an entire network of automated checkpoints along Chichiro’s lonely mountain road. We should have been alerted three times over before someone reached her door.
“That gaming place,” I said, looking at Nigel. “Someone had to have seen me. But how did they get up here?”
Nigel shook his head. “Followed us?”
“Four days later?” Even I couldn’t buy that. Still, whoever had rung the gong had apparently given up on manners, because her voice was raised now in a wail, and she pounded on the door.
“Please! Please, you must help me!”
Nigel held up a cautionary hand, but he was already on the move. Chichiro rushed out after him, leaving me with the scroll cases for a moment.
I stared down at them for another breath, then moved my hands quickly over the amber and jade cases. They sprang open with enthusiasm, their stumpy treasure looking strange and small. Without giving myself time to reconsider, I pulled my sleeves down over my palms and scooped up the wands of life and darkness with my protected hands, dumping them into the pockets of my hoodie. Like it or not, these artifacts were weapons. I wasn’t going to leave weapons lying on the table anymore…in this case, literally.
I strode quickly back through the house and emerged into the sensei’s gracious sitting room, taking everything in. The shades on all the windows were drawn, so we couldn’t see out. Chichiro didn’t have a peephole through the door, but this was 2017, after all. Nigel gestured me to the computer console at the side of the room.
“To get here, she would have had to pass three electronic scans—those are recorded, but the sound wasn’t on,” he said. That explained one mystery, anyway. “Regardless, the console would have lit up like a Christmas tree if she was carrying anything hot,” he said quietly. “She’s not packing.”
“Got it.” The screen was visible from a distance, but I crossed to it anyway, peering down at the woman who now stared up at the camera. She was small, blonde, and Caucasian, older—maybe midforties, and she wore no makeup. Tears streaked down her face, and her hands were clasped in front of her chest. She wore a rugged fleece pullover and jeans and what looked like hiking boots, all of which looked worn but not ragged. She wasn’t dressing for show, exactly, but she also wasn’t someone who fought the elements out of necessity. Merely choice.
“Single female, no visible gun, no car in view,” I murmured to Nigel, not wanting to tip the woman off that we were so close.
She seemed to figure it out anyway. “Please!” she shouted again, turning away from the camera and toward the door. She pounded on the thick wood, her desperate booms echoing through the silent room. “Please, you have to help me! I know you’re in there, Simon said you would be.”
Nigel and I exchanged startled glances, and I quickly scrolled through the rest of the security screens. No other cars had been recorded on the mountain road, and the one she’d driven was a standard rental, nondescript. Not something I would have taken up in the mountains myself, though. Not with the possibility of a storm or fog.
Nigel barked out a question. “Who are you?”
On the screen, the woman froze, then resumed her frantic knocking. “Oh my God, open the door, I need your help—your help! It’s my niece, she’s disappeared, she’s disappeared and all she did anymore was look for Sara Wilde, and she learned you were here and she took off to find you and now she’s gone and…and…” She took in a deep, stuttering breath. “And you have to help me!”
I shot a glance to Nigel, but I was already moving forward. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen this woman before somewhere—not exactly, but close. Nigel met my gaze, but in his eyes, I saw grudging acceptance of what I was going to do. There was no way I was going to turn this woman away, not if her niece was missing in some way because of me.
That said, I wasn’t stupid either, at least not completely. The woman could be lying. She definitely seemed unhinged. I shifted the unfamiliar weight of the wands in my pockets and kept myself well back from the door, slanting my gaze toward the computer screen. I flicked open my third eye as I fixed on the image of the woman, then shouted, “Who are you? What’s your name?”
The woman clasped her hands to her chest. “I’m Hayley’s aunt!” she blurted. “Hayley—Hale, she goes by Hale now! You brought her back from that terrible place where she was captive, and now she’s gone!”
Hale? I mouthed to Nigel, and he looked back at me, equally at sea, but there was no doubting the woman’s sincerity. The waves of emotion pouring off her were suffused with pain, loss, hope, fear, so many emotions at once. Emotions I recognized, I realized with a sudden jolt. Emotions I’d experienced so many times, back when I wasn’t hunting for pretty artifacts but for far more precious cargo.
“Hayley,” I breathed, and everything fell into place with a resounding clatter. “Hayley Adams, you mean. You’re Hayley Adams’s aunt.” The face suddenly fit, features molding into another woman’s features, a haggard, older version of a young, fresh-faced girl, her eyes bold and luminous, her smile wide, her energy intense for all that she had just suffered.
One of the children Viktor had stolen away, a child I’d tried to track down ten years ago and failed. A child I’d brought home from the other side of the veil only scant months ago.
I didn’t wait for Nigel anymore. I burst past him, reaching for the door, and pulled it open wide. The woman practically fell inside the room. Immediately, a weird clanging noise sounded, and Nigel shouted something, but my attention was only on the woman—the woman who was now crumpled over on herself, apparently too overcome to straighten.
“Safe! She told me she’d be safe if I found you, if I—”
“It’s okay,” I assured her, taking a step toward her. “It’s okay. We’ll help you.”
She merely hunched over farther, kneeling like a supplicant, her hands still folded at chest height, as if in prayer.
“Sara!” I heard Nigel shout from far away.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she begged. “But I promised.”
She opened up her hands, and something dropped free.
“Bomb,” I gasped, the reality of it so true, so intense, I could see it in my mind’s eye even before the flash
of light erupted from the dead black hockey puck. Without rationally understanding why, I jammed my hands into my pockets and gripped the wands, and the touch of them literally threw me out of my own skin.
“Bomb!” I cried again, or maybe it was the first shout still reverberating in my ears. I yanked my hands free and rushed forward with the kind of speed normally reserved for astral travel, and maybe it was astral travel, because I swept up the device even as the explosion triggered. I felt the waves of its assault blast through me, heard Nigel’s cry and a more distant shout of feminine alarm, but then I had the bomb in my hands and had surrounded it with a corona of blue fire, a bomb of my own making, a bomb more powerful than any puny munition that could have been smuggled into Chichiro’s mountain home.
The bomb blasted outward in a million pieces and for a split second, I feared that I’d underestimated whatever enemy had sent the woman here, but no, no, it was a standard chunk of concentrated explosive, not a technoceutical or magically enhanced device beyond its original casing that somehow had let the woman get all the way into Chichiro’s home without detection. As I weathered the explosion, I realized I was no longer anywhere near Chichiro’s beautiful home, but instead high up on the mountain, looking down at her cursed roof with all its spikes, spikes that I could still feel driving into me, piercing my skin and muscle and sinew, breaking my bones.
Another eruption rocked me, this one a percussive blast that seemed to focus inward, not outward, the reaction of my own magic to being burst so far outward and then forced to retract. Something rained down on me like a fall of gravel, and I twisted away, shooting off the precipice and back toward Chichiro’s house. I somehow landed without breaking every bone in my body and crossed the manicured lawn at a run, scowling as I saw the place was littered with the same little black disks that the woman had brought to our door. In my attempt to clear one bomb, had I somehow seeded a minefield? With a wave of my hand, I blew the explosive devices out of my way, sending them far up again into the sky.