The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set

by N. S. Wikarski

  When the hotel doorman opened the rear passenger door, the scrivener tumbled out along with half the luggage.

  “Oww! Watch it, bro!” Erik exclaimed. “You hit me in the eye with your elbow.”

  “Very sorry,” Griffin replied straddling the curb with one leg still inside the car.

  A porter loaded all their bags onto a cart and wheeled it into the lobby while the two other passengers crawled out of the vehicle and tried to decompress their spines.

  Thea called gaily out the window to them, “Parking is so difficult here that I must leave you for a while. I will give you half an hour to check in and then will come back here to collect you.”

  “We have to climb back in?” Griffin couldn’t suppress a quaver in his voice as he asked the question.

  Thea gave a sunny little smile. “It will be much more comfortable for you without the luggage. You will see.”

  Griffin waved half-heartedly and went to join his associates.

  As they walked toward the reception desk, Cassie asked, “Is it just me or does she seem a little odd?”

  Erik snorted. “That chick left odd in the dust about ten miles back.”

  “Then how come she’s a trove keeper?” Cassie appealed to Griffin for an answer. “Whose idea was that?”

  “It was the decision of the Etruscan council which used to oversee the finds here. I’ve been told that she has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Maltese temples. The fact that she’s a native is also a distinct advantage.”

  “Maybe it’s just a people skills thing.” Cassie played devil’s advocate. “If she’s that gung ho on research, she probably needs to spend a lot of time inside her own head.”

  “Quite possibly,” Griffin admitted.

  “People skills are overrated,” Erik said.

  “And the representative from Surlyville weighs in.” Cassie laughed.

  “I don’t care how many trips she takes to la-la land as long as she has some useful intel for us.”

  “True,” the pythia agreed. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Griffin reached the reception counter first. He leaned over and confidentially asked the clerk, “By any chance does the hotel retain a chiropractor on staff?”

  Chapter 23 – Touch and Go

  As promised, Thea reappeared half an hour later, and the trio dutifully wedged themselves back into her car.

  “Where to now?” Cassie asked.

  “We are going to my office. It is not very far from here. Nothing in Valletta is very far from anything else.”

  “We’re not going to the trove?” Cassie tried not to sound disappointed.

  “There is no trove yet,” Thea replied. “Whatever was collected is being stored in a warehouse by the docks.”

  “What?” The pythia registered surprise.

  “Sadly, Thea is correct,” Griffin agreed. “She’s only recently been put in charge of organizing a trove here.”

  “It’s all very...” The trove keeper paused, searching for the right word. “Overwhelming.”

  Without warning, she turned off the main road and maneuvered the car alongside the curb. “We are here,” she announced.

  They had parked on a narrow side street that seemed to climb upward toward the sky. There were no trees or patches of grass—simply wall to wall stone. All the buildings were two stories high and adjoined each other in one continuous structure of beige brick snaking its way up the hill. The cobblestone pavement matched the color of the houses.

  “This way.” Thea led them up the block and stopped in front of a wooden door which had been painted verdigris. She unlocked it and climbed an ancient stairway to another door on the second floor. They entered what appeared to be a loft. It was a spacious room with high ceilings and tall uncurtained windows streaming with daylight. The lower panes were open, allowing a gentle breeze to circulate inside.

  “Oh dear,” Griffin said, trying not to sound appalled. The room was choked with books and loose papers which fluttered in the draft from the open window. In addition to the bookcases and filing cabinets lining the walls, most of the floor space was covered with stacks of books, maps, and papers strewn about haphazardly. A rickety metal table had been set up against one wall with a computer resting on it.

  “Let us sit down and talk now.” Thea navigated her way around several piles of books and unceremoniously flounced down onto the only bare space on the floor in the center of the room. The trio of relic hunters exchanged dubious glances and followed her lead.

  They all sat cross-legged in a circle. Thea gazed around in silence at her visitors for a few seconds, her brown eyes magnified by her glasses. She seemed oblivious to their discomfort when she asked earnestly, “Now you must tell me how I can help you.”

  “Right then,” Griffin launched in. “We’re hoping you can guide us through the temples on Malta and Gozo. We’re looking for a particular set of symbols carved into the rock somewhere. They would look something like this.” He reached into his briefcase and handed her the replica of the granite key.

  She studied the markings for only a few seconds. “Some of these markings are Linear B, are they not?” She glanced at the scrivener for confirmation.

  Clearly impressed, he affirmed, “Yes, you’re quite right.”

  Cassie sighed. “If we’d had her with us on our first gig, she might have saved you a couple of months of guesswork.”

  Griffin smiled ruefully and then continued with his explanation. “Thea, we don’t expect to find the Linear B symbols carved here but have a look at these others.” He pointed to the side of the key with the lily symbol.

  The trove keeper frowned. “Then I have bad news for you.” Her tone was apologetic. “They do not exist in any of the temples here. I know every rock in every structure. You will not find them.”

  “Every rock?” Erik repeated skeptically.

  “Yes.” Thea nodded without a trace of uncertainty. “I know every rock in every temple. These symbols are not anywhere here.”

  “Perhaps you’ll indulge our curiosity,” Griffin hinted gently, “and allow us to look just the same.”

  “Oh, of course, as you wish,” the trove keeper readily assented.

  Turning to Cassie, Erik asked, “You’d be able to pick up a vibe if the Minoans were here, right?”

  “I think so,” the pythia agreed. “When we were checking the megaliths in Turkey I must have figured how to lock onto their frequency. I ought to be able to sense if they’ve been at a particular site just by going there and touching something.”

  “Then I vote for letting her try,” the security coordinator said.

  “It certainly can’t hurt if Thea will guide us,” the scrivener suggested.

  “Oh, yes,” she concurred. Then sadly, she added, “I hope I am wrong, but I think I am not. You will not find these symbols on Malta.”

  ***

  And so they tried. For days, Thea drove them up and down the island to places with unpronounceable names like Hagar Qim, Xemxija, and Tarxien. At each site, the trio followed Cassie hopefully while she wandered through piles of boulders and standing stones, placing her palms flat against random megaliths, trying to pick up any trace vibration of the Minoans. Each day the radius of their search was limited by the car’s battery and their ever-increasing muscle cramps. Each night they returned to base, so Thea could plug in her vehicle and recharge it.

  They ventured farther afield and took the ferry from Malta to Gozo to search Ggantija and several other smaller temples. The result was invariably the same. After each attempt, Cassie shook her head and said, “Sorry, guys. They haven’t been here.”

  Once they had searched every ruin on both islands, the dispirited group returned at sunset to Thea’s loft to decide what to do next. By now, they didn’t even blink at the idea of sitting in a circle in the middle of the floor surrounded by a paper fort. At first, no one spoke. They merely stared glumly at one another until Thea
broke the silence.

  “It may help if I know more about why you are searching for these symbols. That is if you are at liberty to tell me.”

  “I suppose it can’t hurt.” Griffin sighed. “We’re actually trying to solve a riddle.” He rattled off the clue to the second artifact from memory: “Let Eurus fill the sails twelve days, then follow Eberos where it climbs to the sky. Set your course four bees from the dragon’s wing to the sea. When the bull turns the season, mark where the goat grazes the spinner’s peak. There lies the second of five you seek.”

  His words seemed to have a remarkable effect on Thea. She sat bolt upright, and her eyes grew unfocused. She began murmuring something unintelligible and then sprang to her feet. Without explanation she started pulling apart stacks of books, digging through piles of papers. Maps went flying through the air. Volumes tumbled off of bookshelves to the floor. All the while she was ransacking the room, she continued her unintelligible chant. Then her mumbling became more audible and finally crystallized into a single word which she kept repeating over and over in hypnotic fashion. “Eberos, Eberos, Eberos.”

  Her guests ducked out of the way to avoid the airborne debris and to make more room on the floor as she rooted around in the stacks in corners. Finally, at the bottom of a pile of papers by the windows, she found what she was looking for. She sank back on her heels and scanned a loose sheet of paper. Then she whirled toward them in triumph. “You see, it is as I thought!”

  She walked over and held the paper out for Griffin to read. He scanned the page quickly and afterward stared up at her open-mouthed.

  “As I told you before, you will not find what you seek on Malta.” She tapped the paper for emphasis with her index finger. “But you will find it here.”

  Chapter 24 – Motor Mouth

  Faye and Hannah were seated in the dining room working at the computer when they were interrupted by the loud blast of a car horn in the driveway.

  “What on earth,” Faye murmured.

  Hannah’s hand flew to her mouth in terror. “Have they found me?” she quavered.

  The old woman smiled gently. “I think if someone were sent here to abduct you, they would hardly announce their presence so noisily. I’ll just go and see who it is.”

  Before she could reach the door, it was thrown open by a spiky-haired teenage boy in a faded tee-shirt and ripped jeans.

  “Hey Gamma!” The young man strode over to Faye and hugged her.

  “Zachary?” Faye registered surprise. “Was it you making that racket outside?”

  The boy grinned. “I got my license. C’mon and check out my ride.”

  “I have a guest,” the old woman demurred. “This is Hannah. She’s staying with me for a while.”

  The girl rose. Clinging warily to the back of a dining room chair, she said, “H... hello.”

  Zachary noticed the girl’s presence for the first time. He stared, colored up, and said, “Hey.”

  Hannah tipped her head to the side in puzzlement.

  Faye intervened. “In the parlance of young people nowadays, I believe my great-grandson just said, ‘Hello, I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance.’”

  The boy flushed an even deeper shade of red. “Yeah, um, I mean...how’s it goin’?”

  “It?” Hannah repeated, uncertain how to respond.

  Faye acted as translator once more. “The appropriate reply would be ‘fine.’”

  “It’s...” Hannah faltered, “fine.” Then in disbelief, she asked, “He’s your great-grandson?”

  “More accurately, he’s my great-great-something-or-other grandson. We haven’t decided how many greats are involved, so for simplicity’s sake I just refer to him as my great-grandson.”

  “Oh,” the girl said. As an aside, she whispered to Faye, “Why is his hair like that?”

  Embarrassed, Zach grabbed the top of his head and attempted to flatten the spikes. “Uh, I was going for a look.”

  Hannah appeared baffled. “A look?” she echoed cautiously. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  Her question left Zach too nonplussed to speak.

  “You were saying something about a driver’s license?” Faye prompted helpfully.

  At the change of topic, the boy brightened. “That’s right. It’s official. The minute I turned sixteen, I took the test. My buddy Tivo and me scraped together enough cash to buy an old beater. You gotta come scope it out.” He stopped and transferred his attention to Hannah. “You can come too if you want.”

  Hannah appealed mutely to Faye for an explanation.

  The old woman smiled. “I don’t think we’ve covered the topic of teenage slang yet. Zachary just rattled off half a dozen terms you’ve never heard before. What he’s trying to say in plain English is that he now has a license to drive an automobile. That he and a friend saved enough money to buy a very old and rundown vehicle and he’s just invited us both outside to inspect his purchase.”

  “Oh, I see.” Hannah nodded solemnly. Speaking loudly and slowly to Zach as if he were either deaf or simple-minded she said, “I would very much like to see your new vehicle, please.”

  The boy stared in disbelief first at the girl and then at his ancestor. “What’s up with that? Did she just diss me?”

  Faye took him by the elbow and propelled him toward the door. “We’ll discuss this later.” Over her shoulder, she called, “Come along, Hannah.”

  All three filed out to stare at an old hatchback subcompact covered with blotches of mismatched spray paint, presumably to hide its numerous rust spots.

  Zach beamed proudly. “She’s only got three hundred thousand miles on her. Isn’t she a beauty?”

  “Beauty is ever in the eye of the beholder,” Faye replied tactfully. “I’ve never seen a polka-dotted car before. What do you parents think?”

  “They told me if I could afford to pay for the car and the insurance, it was alright with them. I don’t think they ever expected me to cough up that much dough.”

  “Shot themselves in the foot, did they?” Faye chuckled.

  “You bet,” Zach grinned. “They couldn’t back out after they said yes.”

  “I do hope it’s safe.” Faye’s voice held a note of concern.

  “Hey, it’s not like I’m taking it cross-country. I’m only allowed to drive it close to home.”

  “Well, I suppose in that case,” the old woman relented slightly.

  “Do you wanna go for a spin?” Zach asked eagerly.

  Faye backed quickly away from the car. “No, not today. Perhaps another time.”

  More shyly, he directed the same question to Hannah. “How about you?”

  The girl froze in terror.

  His ancestor intervened. “I’m afraid not. Hannah needs to get back to her lessons while you and I have a chat in the garden.”

  Without a word, the girl scuttled back into the house, sat down at the computer and began concentrating furiously on the monitor.

  Faye steered her descendent through the hallway and out into the yard. She didn’t stop walking until they’d reached the ancient oak tree at the very back of her property. A wrought iron bench encircled the tree’s massive trunk. Faye sat down and patted the spot next to her.

  Zach took the seat and, without preamble, got right to the point. “So, what’s her deal?”

  “Her deal?”

  “I mean, she’s a major league hottie but are you tutoring her because she’s in Special Ed? She acts like she belongs on the short bus.”

  Faye smiled. “On the contrary. She’s a very bright, determined young woman.”

  “Well, you could of fooled me,” the boy said ruefully.

  The old woman hesitated, choosing her next words carefully. “Do you remember the confidential conversation we had the last time you were here?”

  Zach perked up. “Are you kidding? I’ll never forget it. You promised when I was a little older you would tell me some of the se
cret stuff you’re involved in.”

  “That day has come sooner than I expected. It appears as if I’ll need your assistance to cope with something.”

  The boy turned to face her directly. “Whatever it is, Gamma, I’m in.”

  “Yes, well, best to start at the beginning. Do you recall that letter you found when you searched my room?”

  Zach briefly looked at the ground, embarrassed. “Yeah, it was about somebody named Sybil.”

  “Sybil was one of my associates, and she was killed while protecting a valuable artifact from a cult which wanted to steal it.”

  The boy stared at his ancestor intently. “Wow, Gamma, this is some deep stuff you’re into.”

  “Very deep. Hannah ran away from the cult which was responsible for Sybil’s death. She sought refuge with Sybil’s younger sister Cassie who is now trying to recover some other artifacts for my organization.”

  Zach’s eyes grew wide. “She ran away from a cult? Was she being held hostage or something?”

  “No. I’m sorry to say she grew up among them and has no understanding whatsoever of the outside world.”

  “So, it’s like you’re deprogramming her?”

  “Something like that but I find I’m not very adept when it comes to explaining how young people act nowadays. It occurs to me that she might benefit from contact with someone her own age. Sending her to school in her current psychological state is out of the question. The poor child would be overwhelmed. Perhaps just a few hours a week in your company might help her assimilate.”

  “Absolutely. I’m your guy.”

  Faye hesitated again. “There are a few more things you should know. First of all, Hannah doesn’t realize I’m involved in a secret organization. She simply knows me as a friend of Cassie’s who has offered her shelter out of the goodness of my heart.”

  “Does she know about this artifact stuff?”

  “Yes, a little. About as much as you know. There’s no need for you to discuss the matter with her at all.”

  “OK, I’ll zip it about all that.”