The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  The same could not be said for Beltan. He stood in the center of the room, hands empty and twitching, staring blankly. An ugly bruise darkened his right temple. She had never known what a proud warrior defeated looked like; she did now.

  “Good morning, mate,” Anders said, his voice a touch too far on the cheery side. “I brought you some fresh clothes. I thought you might like to get cleaned up.”

  Beltan said nothing. He did not look at them.

  Deirdre gathered her courage, then moved to him, touching his arm. He was shaking.

  “Beltan, please,” she said, trying to meet his eyes. “Talk to us.”

  “Why?” the blond man said, his voice hoarse. “What can you say that will change anything? Travis is gone. He has left me.”

  Anders set down the satchel. “He didn’t leave you, mate. He went after Nim. I’d say there’s a pretty big difference between the two.”

  “And yet either way I am still here, without him,” Beltan said. “I am alone. It is hopeless.” He turned away from Deirdre, scrubbing his face with a hand, but not before she saw the tears that ran down his cheeks.

  “Well, now,” Anders said, “that doesn’t sound very warrior-like to me. I don’t think Vathris would approve of that kind of talk.”

  “And what would you know of Vathris?” Beltan snarled over his shoulder.

  Anders shrugged thick shoulders. “Not much, I confess. Just what you wrote in your reports for the Seekers.”

  Beltan flinched. “It doesn’t matter what Vathris would think. There is nothing I can do.”

  “You sound pretty sure. But maybe for a moment stop thinking about what you can and can’t do. Why don’t you tell me what you want to do?”

  “What do you think I want to do?” Beltan clenched his hands into fists, advancing on the Seeker. “I want to go after them. I want to find them and help them!”

  Anders was grinning. “Now that sounds like a man of Vathris.”

  Beltan blinked, and for a moment shock replaced anguish, then shame. “You are right. As long as I am alive, I must try to find a way to reach them.” He gave Anders a grudging look of respect. “You would make a good warrior, you know.”

  Anders winked at him. “Been there, done that, mate. I’m the brains now, not the brawn.”

  “Warriors can have brains.”

  “I suppose they can at that,” Anders said wistfully.

  They sat down at the same table where they had gathered last night. Deirdre called for Lewis, and the butler brought a plate of sandwiches as well as coffee and new cups. He cleared away the broken shards of china without batting an eye, then silently slipped from the parlor. To be a butler for the Seekers was to quickly learn not to ask questions.

  “I feel strange,” Beltan said. “It’s like I’m made of water inside, not muscle and bone. I want to swing my sword, but there’s nothing to swing it at, and my hands are shaking so much I don’t even think I could hold it. What’s wrong with me?”

  Despite feeling watery herself, Deirdre smiled. “Nothing’s wrong with you, Beltan. You’re afraid, that’s all. Welcome to the club. It’s how a lot of us feel a lot of the time.”

  His jaw dropped. “And yet you still keep on going? You must be very brave. I don’t know if I am strong enough to do this.”

  “Maybe a sandwich will help,” Anders said, taking one and pushing the plate toward Beltan.

  “I doubt it,” the big man said, then took three sandwiches at once.

  The food did seem to help. Beltan’s color grew better, and as they spoke a fierce light ignited in his eyes.

  “You’re right,” he said around mouthfuls of food. “I know I have to do something, and I will. Only I don’t know what it is, or even how to find out. All I know is that somehow I’ve got to get to Eldh.”

  “There might be a way,” Deirdre murmured.

  Only when she saw both Beltan and Anders staring at her did she realize she had spoken the words aloud.

  Anders leaned over the table. “All right, out with it. What’s going on in that crafty little noggin of yours?”

  “There’s only one way to get to Eldh,” Deirdre said, “and that’s to use a gate.”

  “Only there aren’t any gates,” Anders said. “You can bet those sorcerer baddies took their gate artifact with them when they went.”

  “You’re forgetting about this.” Deirdre picked up the newspaper the mysterious Philosopher had sent last night.

  “All right, so there’s another gate,” the Seeker said, confusion on his pitted face. “But the sorcerers have the arch, too.”

  “No they don’t. Not all of it.” Deirdre couldn’t believe she was saying this. “The arch isn’t complete without the keystone, and right now it’s still in the vaults below this Charterhouse. If we could somehow get the arch . . .”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence. They had gone to a great deal of trouble to steal it; surely they wouldn’t leave it unguarded. However, she had said enough. Beltan leaped to his feet.

  “We must take the arch from the Scirathi!”

  Anders raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s a bit of a bold plan, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not a plan,” Deirdre said, doing her best to backpedal. “It’s just one possibility, that’s all. One very ridiculous, stupid, unlikely possibility.” However, it was too late; the damage had been done.

  “It can work,” Beltan said. “It has to—it’s the only way.” He locked gazes with Deirdre. “Promise you’ll help me.”

  Deirdre swallowed hard. “I don’t know . . .”

  Beltan made a growling sound low in his throat. “You have to help me get that gate. I will not lose Travis. I will not!” His hands twitched, and he started for the Grecian urn.

  Deirdre jumped up and stepped in front of the big man. For a moment she wasn’t so certain that was a good idea. No doubt, when tossed against a wall, she would make every bit as satisfying a smashing sound as the urn. He reached for her.

  She grabbed his hand, holding it. “I promise, Beltan. On the Book, I swear it. Anders and I will help you find a way to get to Travis if it’s the last thing we do.”

  And it very well might be. However, the words seemed to calm him. He returned to the table, and Deirdre let out a breath. Had she really just offered up her life to save an old vase? But she hadn’t promised they would try to take the arch back from the Scirathi, only that they would help Beltan find Travis.

  Is there really a di ference between the two, Deirdre? You know there’s no other way to Eldh besides the archway.

  “I don’t want to be the cloud that rains on the parade,” Anders said, taking a sip of his coffee, “but even assuming the Scirathi hand over the arch when we politely ask for it, and even assuming that keystone fits, how are we supposed to activate the gate? In case you’ve forgotten, that takes some extra special blood, which we just happen to be fresh out of.”

  “Oh, that’s not a problem,” Beltan said. “I kept this.”

  He pulled a dark, wadded-up piece of cloth from his pocket. It was the sleeve of Anders’s suit coat, which Vani had used last night as a makeshift bandage. It was crusted with dried blood— Travis’s blood.

  Anders let out a low whistle. “Warriors can have brains indeed.”

  “Is anyone going to eat that last sandwich?” Beltan said, and reached for the plate before either of them could answer.

  21.

  An hour later, Deirdre sat at her desk in the basement office she shared with Anders. Beltan was all for making a raid on the Scirathi right away, but Anders had managed to convince the blond man to get some rest first. Besides, they had no idea where the Scirathi had taken the arch after they stole it from the site on Crete. It could be anywhere in the world.

  Deirdre supposed she should rest, too. She hadn’t gotten a wink in twenty-four hours, and sleep deprivation wasn’t generally part of the formula for successful research. However, she felt jittery and strangely alert. As foolish as her promise to Be
ltan was, she didn’t regret it; she wanted to help him find Travis. After all, Hadrian Farr had managed to find a way to Eldh. Why couldn’t she?

  Is that what this is, Deirdre? asked a detached aspect of herself—the wise voice she didn’t always listen to but should, the shaman in her. Is it all just some competition with Hadrian Farr? He got to Eldh, so now you have to as well?

  Before she could answer that, Anders set a steaming mug of coffee amid the stacks of papers on her desk.

  “Nice way to include me in that little vow of yours, mate. How did it go?” He raised his husky voice into a falsetto. “ ‘Anders and I will help you find a way to get to Travis if it’s the last thing we do.’ ”

  Deirdre winced. “Sorry about that. I didn’t have much time to think. I was protecting a very important urn.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, sitting on the corner of her desk. “I want to help. Bloody hell, what red-blooded Seeker wouldn’t want to? Opening up doors to other worlds . . . that’s what we’re all about. It’s what I signed on for. So let me know what I can do.”

  Deirdre felt her dread recede. Even when things looked hopeless, Anders was incessantly cheery. Only it wasn’t annoying, now that she thought about it. Instead, it was heartening. . . .

  “What is it, mate?”

  She shook her head. “What is what?”

  “Do I have a bit of sandwich on my face or something? You were looking at me funny just now.”

  Horror flooded Deirdre. She must have been doing it again. Glowing. Quickly, she grabbed a random folder, opened it, and bent her head over the papers inside.

  “There’s one thing that would be a big help,” she said. “See if you can get any images of the arch from newspaper and television sources. Our first step is to learn everything we can about the arch. If we do, we may find a clue that will tell us where the Scirathi have taken it.”

  “Now that’s thinking like a Seeker, partner. I’ll get right on it.”

  After Anders left, Deirdre cleared everything off her desk, then spent the next several hours welded to her notebook computer, typing and clicking as she called up every document related to the keystone, the Thomas Atwater case, Greenfellow’s Tavern, Surrender Dorothy, and Glinda. Once she had gathered all the printouts and photos, she shuffled them on her desk, moving them around like the pieces of a puzzle, trying to see if they fit together in a way she hadn’t seen before.

  The DNA sequence of Glinda’s blood had been the clue that first led Deirdre to the keystone. A sample of dried blood had been collected from the keystone centuries ago, and it had just recently been sequenced in part of an ongoing effort to analyze all organic samples in the Seeker vaults before they deteriorated. The sequence from the blood on the keystone had been incomplete, but it had been enough to know it was statistically similar to the sequence of Glinda’s blood.

  Knowing what Deirdre did now, that made sense. The keystone had been collected at a location that in modern times corresponded to the nightclub Surrender Dorothy with its half-fairy denizens, like Glinda. And which, in the seventeenth century, had housed Greenfellow’s Tavern.

  Only what was the link between Glinda and Thomas Atwater? That was a question Deirdre still couldn’t answer.

  Atwater joined the Seekers as a young man in the year 1619, shortly after the order was founded. As a condition for acceptance to the Seekers, the Philosophers forbade him ever to return to Greenfellow’s Tavern, where he had worked before joining the Seekers. However, some years later, it was discovered that Atwater had returned to the tavern, though the Philosophers had never punished him for this clear violation of the Seventh Desideratum. Not long after that, Atwater died at the age of twenty-nine, no doubt of one of the many diseases prevalent in that era. But what did he, and Greenfellow’s Tavern, have to do with the keystone?

  Forget not the Sleeping Ones. In their blood lies the key. The words were inscribed on Glinda’s ring as well as on the keystone—although the keystone was so worn no one had ever been able to decipher the symbols. Deirdre only recognized them because she had studied the ring so closely. And even if the symbols hadn’t been worn with time, they still wouldn’t have been decipherable, because they weren’t written in any language known on Earth. After what they had seen on the television last night, she knew now that the symbols were written in an ancient language indigenous to the southern continent of the world Eldh.

  The language of sorcerers.

  Except the language is known here, Deirdre. At least by one person.

  She picked up the photograph the mysterious Philosopher had sent her: the photo of the clay tablet, which showed the inscription written in the same language as on the keystone as well as in Linear A. All of her searches for the tablet in the archives of the Seekers had come up empty. That meant this tablet had to be in his private collection. Three years ago, Deirdre had given a copy of the photo to Paul Jacoby over in linguistics, and he had been able to translate the portion written in Linear A.

  The linguistic connection between the keystone and Eldh was a new piece of the puzzle. Only it didn’t make the picture any clearer. The arch was a gate—a gate created by sorcerers. But why had they fashioned it? How had it ended up buried on Crete while the keystone came to rest at the site of Greenfellow’s Tavern? And who were the Sleeping Ones, and what was their blood the key to?

  Deirdre stared at the documents and photos until her head ached, but all she came up with were more questions. By the time Anders returned that afternoon, she was staring at the wall like a zombie.

  “Afternoon, partner,” Anders said, shrugging off his suit coat.

  She didn’t answer.

  “What’s the matter, mate? Cat got your tongue?”

  “More like my brain,” she croaked. She took a deep breath, trying to clear her mind. Coffee. She needed coffee. Her eyes strayed toward the percolator.

  “I’m on it,” Anders said before she could speak the word, grabbing the empty coffeepot.

  Twenty minutes later she sat at the timeworn mahogany table that dominated the center of their office. Deirdre gripped her second mug of coffee and enjoyed the pleasant tingle as caffeine permeated her brain.

  “So did you get them?” she asked Anders.

  “Did he get what?” Beltan said from the doorway.

  Deirdre glanced up and smiled. By his much improved appearance, the blond man had gotten a shower as well as some rest. His green eyes were clear, though his face was still grim.

  Anders set another mug on the table, as well as a plate of shortbread cookies. Beltan took several of the cookies, crammed them in his mouth, and chased them down with a long swig of the scalding coffee.

  “So what were you supposed to get?” he said, eyeing Anders.

  “Photographs of the arch.” Anders had rolled up his shirtsleeves and had loosened his tie, which was as close to casual as Deirdre had ever seen him. “It turned out it wasn’t too hard. I’ve got a source at one of the satellite television companies. He dubbed a copy of the archaeology program to tape for me. I saved some stills from the tape, but they were a bit on the grainy side, so I took them down to the lab for computer enhancement. The techs said they’d have them done by—wait a minute. Here’s Eustace now.”

  A speck of a man appeared in the doorway. Even sitting, Deirdre was nearly as tall as he. His thick shock of brown hair stood straight up—an effort to win him another inch, perhaps— and he wore wire-rimmed glasses as well as an eager expression.

  Eustace bounded into the office, holding a large manila envelope, and his blue eyes went wide behind his glasses. “Is that really him? The otherworldly traveler?” The apprentice didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he approached Beltan, who towered above him. “I can’t believe this is happening. I’m having my first Class One Encounter, and I’ve only been a Seeker for six months.” He thrust out a hand. “I’m terribly honored to meet you, sir. Is there something you can tell me—some bit of knowledge from another world you can impart?”r />
  Beltan squinted down at the young Seeker. “The cookies are not for you.”

  Deirdre could see Eustace silently repeating the words to himself, as if trying to fathom the wisdom they contained. And there was wisdom in them, because if given cause, Beltan might scoop the small Seeker up and crumple him into a ball like so much aluminum foil.

  Luckily, Eustace appeared uninterested in the cookies. He kept gaping at Beltan with a look of awe.

  Anders cleared his throat. “So what do you have for us, Eustace?”

  The young man snapped back to his senses. “The techs in the lab told me to bring this to you right away.” He handed the envelope to Anders. “So what’s in it?”

  Anders grinned. “None of your business. At least not until you’ve got Echelon 3 clearance. Which you’ll never get if you don’t keep at that research Nakamura assigned you. So scurry along now.”

  Eustace cast one last glance at Beltan, then hurried from the room, shutting the door behind him.

  “Let’s see those photos,” Deirdre said.

  The lab had done a good job. Though still a bit grainy, most of the symbols were clear, incised into the stones of the arch with sharp, angular lines. When she was finished examining the photographs, she slipped them back into the envelope.

  “So what are you going to do with those?” Anders asked.

  She sealed the envelope with wax. “I’m going to send them to Paul Jacoby over in linguistics. He was able to translate the passage in Linear A on the clay tablet, and I know he’s been comparing it to the passage written in the language of the Scirathi. I’m going to see if he has enough information to decipher any of these symbols.”

  Anders cleared his throat. “And you think we can trust him?”

  “I don’t think we have a choice. We have to learn everything we can about the arch if we’re going to have any chance of using it.” She sighed. “That’s assuming, of course, that we ever find it. I don’t know how we’re going to manage that one.”