Arkana Archaeology Mystery Box Set 2

by N. S. Wikarski

  He held up his hand. “Let me back up. Shinto is the traditional religion of Japan. It has its roots in the prehistoric past, probably springing from Siberian shamanism fifty thousand years ago. That’s why Shinto doesn’t have any founder or religious texts. It’s an animist religion. ‘Animist’ is a derogatory term that overlords use to describe the concept that everything has a soul. In Shinto, the divine essence of a thing is called a kami. The term can refer to a god in the conventional overlord sense, but it can also apply to a rock or a tree or an ancestor or an event. Whatever someone considers holy.”

  “That sounds really New Age,” Cassie observed.

  “Or really Old Age depending on your perspective.” Ken chuckled. “The notion of the sanctity of all life is as ancient as human spirituality itself. Shinto holds that the greatest divine spirit, or kami, is the sun goddess Amaterasu. Actually, she’s the mother creator of the whole universe, not just a sun deity. Her name means ‘the great august god who shines in heaven.’”

  Griffin picked up the thread. “The worship of Amaterasu is significant because it has survived to this very day despite Japan’s overlord culture. Both Buddhists and Confucians actively discouraged her worship but never succeeded in stamping it out. The Japanese flag is a rising sun, the emblem of Amaterasu. The imperial dynasty only legitimized its rule by claiming that Amaterasu ordained it. In fact, the emperor is supposedly descended from the goddess herself.”

  “And it all began thousands of years ago with the Jomon.” Ken eyed the scion, silently daring him to offer an objection. When none came, the trove keeper continued. “But it’s more than goddess worship that proves the Jomon were matristic. We know they were a peaceful, gender-equal society from the contents of their pit graves.”

  “Pit graves!” Cassie registered alarm.

  The trove keeper seemed bewildered by her reaction. “Yes, there were about a hundred found at this site.”

  “Maybe it isn’t such a good idea for me to be standing here.” The pythia took a few steps backward.

  Griffin placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Our pythia had rather a bad experience at Anyang.”

  “Anyang.” Ken gave a low whistle. “I can understand why. If I was a psychic, I wouldn’t want to set foot in that place.”

  “What’s Anyang?” Daniel asked.

  “An overlord site in China that we visited during our last recovery mission,” the scrivener informed him.

  “Yeah, it was a hoot.” Cassie grimaced. “Pits full of decapitated and mutilated human sacrifices. One old dude was even buried alive, and I got to channel that experience!”

  “Oh.” The scion’s eyes grew wide.

  “Don’t worry, Cassie.” Ken’s tone was reassuring. “The Jomon pit graves are nothing like that. Still, the comparison to Anyang illustrates a point I was about to make. Anyang is all about overlord power. Ofune isn’t. The pit graves here contained a mix of male and female skeletons buried at different times over the centuries. Nobody was given an elaborate state funeral that included buried plunder and slaughtered slaves. This wasn’t a ‘big man’ type of society. In fact, the greatest care was taken in burying infants and children, not dignitaries. Most significant of all, not a single skeleton we’ve unearthed shows any sign of violent death. The same is true of all the other Jomon sites as well. They were a peaceful people.”

  “Yeah, I get that.” Cassie swept her gaze over the hilltop. “The vibe of this place has absolutely zero drama, zero trauma.” She smiled contentedly. “I like it here. It feels nice.”

  “So, what happened to them?” Daniel asked.

  “The same thing that happens to all peaceful cultures.” Ken rolled his eyes. “Overlords.”

  “I believe the Jomon were driven out of this area by the Yayoi people,” Griffin said.

  “That’s right,” trove keeper agreed. “Around 1000 BCE, a new group migrated to Japan from the Asian mainland. They knew how to plant rice, and they lived in a stratified society with different clans battling each other using bronze and iron weapons. For a long time, it was believed the Yayoi came from Korea. They might have taken that route to get here, but DNA evidence shows they originated in the Yangtse River valley.”

  “So, they were Han Chinese,” Griffin concluded.

  “In all their overlord glory,” Ken summarized grimly. “It doesn’t appear that the Yayoi slaughtered the Jomon. The gatherer-hunters simply pulled up stakes and moved farther north to get out of range. Eventually, they all died out. The Ainu tribe contains remnants of Jomon DNA, but their numbers are dwindling too.”

  “Same old, same old.” Cassie sighed. “Overlords move in. Everything good dies out.”

  “Strangely enough, Yayoi women retained some vestige of authority,” the trove keeper said. “Around 200 CE, their ruler was a shaman-queen named Himiko. She was succeeded by another female ruler, but reigning queens vanished with the influx of more foreigners. By 300 CE, tribes were burying their rulers in kurgan-style mounds with lavish grave goods indicating that an overlord society had emerged.”

  Ken paused in his lecture and searched the faces of his listeners. “So, is everybody up to speed on Jomon culture now?”

  The trio mumbled their assent.

  “Good.” The trove keeper unexpectedly turned on his heel and started walking back towards their parked car. “Now we can get on to the real reason I brought you to Hokkaido.”

  Chapter 22—Lend Me Your Ears

  Erik checked the display on his digital alarm clock. One in the morning. Everybody should be asleep by now. He glanced at the layout map Daniel had given him. His objective was to get from his own room to the diviner’s office without being spied on camera. It wasn’t going to be as impossible as he’d originally anticipated. For that, he had to thank Chopper Bowdeen. Whether through sheer incompetence or personal misgiving, the mercenary had left wide gaps in the surveillance coverage of the compound.

  It was a stroke of luck that the guest wing wasn’t being monitored at all. Maybe Metcalf had thought visitors shouldn’t be subjected to the same scrutiny as the rest of the community. Given that Joshua Metcalf was in charge of security, this was a good thing. The spymaster wasn’t supposed to know Erik had survived, much less that the two were living under the same roof. His suspicions would certainly have been aroused if cameras were capturing the number of food trays traveling to the guest wing. Hannah’s presence alone couldn’t justify that amount of activity. Daniel’s frequent visits to two different guest rooms would have been equally suspicious. Thankfully nothing that happened in the wing was being recorded.

  The paladin gave a rueful sigh. While he might be able to get out of his room and out of the guest wing undetected, that wouldn’t be the case once he started moving through the rest of the building. To accomplish that feat, he needed help. Daniel had given him a layout map and had drawn arrows from Erik’s current location to Metcalf’s office. The scion had circled all the cameras in the corridors and their field of view. There were plenty of blind spots if the paladin was careful. He should be able to make it all the way to the diviner’s office without being seen. “Should” being the operative word.

  The entire point of this risky exercise was to set up surveillance in Metcalf’s office. Maddie believed that if she could monitor the old man’s conversations, she might finally learn what his endgame was. The paladin thought her scheme looked great on paper. Getting himself from the guest wing to the office was the tricky part. If Joshua Metcalf learned of his existence, much less that he was sneaking around the compound after hours, Erik wouldn’t survive the night.

  The paladin shrugged philosophically. He’d beaten steeper odds than this. He checked his pocket for the spare key to the diviner’s office that Daniel had given him. “Showtime,” he murmured, then unlocked his prison door and advanced into the hallway.

  Erik took his time inching down one corridor and up another. His injuries didn’t allow him to move very qui
ckly, but a slow pace also allowed him to scan for any unanticipated dangers. The compound was a maze. From the outside, its cinderblock shape looked deceptively simple. Inside was another story. The hallways intersected and dead-ended at unexpected points. Erik didn’t know if the architect’s intention had been to confuse and disorient an outsider, or maybe the occupants themselves, but the strategy succeeded admirably. He found himself referring repeatedly to his layout map. More than a few times, he ducked down inches before stepping into a camera’s field of view.

  As he proceeded, he listened for stray sounds coming from the sleeping chambers, secretly praying that nobody suffered from insomnia. On that score, his biggest fear was running into Metcalf himself. Daniel had told him the diviner rarely slept through the night unless he drugged himself into a stupor. Hopefully, this was one of those nights.

  The paladin checked his watch. He’d only been traveling for ten minutes, but it felt like two hours when he made the turn into the corridor where the office was located. He glanced up and saw the camera near the ceiling at the far end of the hall. During Chopper’s assassination attempt, Joshua had apparently tinkered with the angle of coverage as well as the feed. The camera no longer captured Metcalf’s office door. Daniel had been able to verify this after overhearing complaints from the sentries that “someone ought to fix that cam.” But nobody had.

  The paladin smiled to himself. Their loss. If he pressed himself against the wall and kept low, he should be able to slip inside unseen. He hunkered down and unlocked the door, opening it barely enough to squeeze through. He paused to listen. No alarms sounded. He couldn’t hear running feet. One hurdle cleared.

  Now he turned his attention to the cameras above him. There were three. Two were affixed to the corners near the ceiling behind the diviner’s desk. The third was directly above the desk itself. Incredibly enough, all of them were trained on a wall of paneling twenty feet away on the opposite side of the room. This meant that half the room was a blind spot. As long as Erik stayed close to Metcalf’s desk, he wouldn’t be seen. That suited his plan perfectly. There was nothing on the other side of the room that he needed. The camera placement baffled him though. He shelved that puzzle as something to contemplate in his leisure time. For now, everything he needed was on Metcalf’s desk.

  Erik straightened up and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d made it all the way to his destination without a hitch. Now came the fun part. Everything hinged on Metcalf’s cell phone. Erik’s first job was to find it. His task would have been far harder if the diviner were a few decades younger. Unlike Millennials whose cell phones were grafted onto their hands at all times, the older generation usually left their cells lying around like a spare pair of reading glasses. The paladin assumed Metcalf would store his phone in the office rather than carrying it with him when he retired for the night.

  That assumption proved to be correct. When Erik slid open the center drawer of Metcalf’s desk, the phone was tucked inside, still powered on with a full battery charge. That was a good sign. It meant that, except for recharging, the phone was always operational. He studied it—a brand new Android. Another good sign which indicated that Metcalf wouldn’t be likely to upgrade it anytime soon. Erik went to work. He downloaded a spy phone app which would embed itself in background processing. Then he patiently keyed in login credentials that Maddie would use on the net to reach the spy phone website. Erik was giving the chatelaine and her security team the capability to remotely monitor all the phone’s activity including texts, phone calls, and video images. All they had to do was access the site where the data was stored and listen in at their leisure.

  The spy app offered one even more useful feature. It controlled the cell phone’s microphone and would record any conversations occurring in the office. The phone itself had just been transformed into an audio bug hiding in plain sight. Metcalf would never know his cell had been tapped. When the diviner got back to business the following morning, his every conversation would be overheard by the Arkana. Sooner or later he was bound to say something useful about his master plan.

  Erik smiled to himself and slipped the phone back into the drawer exactly where he’d found it. Then he surveyed the room as a whole to make sure he’d moved nothing out of place. Checking his watch again, he decided this was enough to get the chatelaine started. Depending on what she overheard, he would most likely have to come back to search Metcalf’s files. At this point, he still didn’t know what to look for. It was just as well. He wasn’t in top shape yet and tonight had taken a toll. He could feel his bullet wounds reminding him that they needed time to heal.

  “Still, it’s a start,” he murmured and limped back the way he’d come.

  Chapter 23—Psychic Physics 101

  After they left the Jomon settlement site at Ofune, Ken drove the Arkana team about twenty miles up the coast highway. With no advance warning, he pulled off the road, parked the car on an access ramp beside an overpass, and told everyone to get out.

  Once the trio emerged from the car, they glanced at one another in surprise.

  “This sure doesn’t look like a dig site,” Cassie commented. “It’s a highway running underneath an overpass.”

  Ken’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “It’s not the highway that’s interesting. We came to see what’s above it. Follow me.” He began walking up the ramp to the top of the overpass.

  The visitors obediently trudged behind him.

  When they reached the top, they all paused to catch their breaths. The overpass wasn’t a bridge at all. There were no connecting roads on either side. It consisted of nothing but a flat open space with a number of rocks strewn about.

  “What is this place?” Daniel voiced his colleagues’ bewilderment.

  “It’s the largest Jomon stone circle on the island of Hokkaido. It measures one hundred and twenty feet in circumference.”

  Cassie turned her attention to the design of the circle. Although the position of the stones seemed random at first, she realized that a pattern existed. There were two outer rings and a third oval ring at the center. The stones in the outermost ring were each about a foot long and must have originally been laid end-to-end lengthwise while the ones in the second circle were embedded in the ground at a forty-five-degree angle with the long end pointing inward toward the middle.

  “We owe the preservation of this place to Mount Komagatake.” Ken pointed to a volcano off in the distance. “Its last big eruption centuries ago completely covered the circle in ash. When a new expressway was being built here, the Jomon site was sitting right in the middle of the construction zone.”

  “So, they dug under it?” the scion asked in disbelief.

  “Engineers were able to slide a tunnel underneath without disturbing the circle,” the trove keeper said. “This is now a designated historic site called Washinoki. It dates from around 2000 BCE. In addition to the circle, a pit cemetery was also found.”

  “And we came here because...” Cassie trailed off.

  “Because I need the help of a pythia to understand what it means,” Ken replied enigmatically.

  He walked up to the outer ring of stones. The others followed.

  “I wanted to take you to Ofune first, so you could get some sense of what Jomon culture was like. We archaeologists can reconstruct a culture using grave goods, dwellings, and statuary but stone circles are a different matter altogether. They tell us nothing.” He gave a wry smile. “We look at something like this, and it’s all blind speculation. Some believe stone circles are intended to track astronomical phenomena. While that might be true of megalithic sites, I don’t see how that could be the case here. These stones are barely a foot tall.”

  The trove keeper turned to Cassie, spreading his arms in helpless appeal. “Can you tell me why the Jomon constructed it and, more importantly, why here?”

  The pythia tilted her head, assessing the risk. She couldn’t sense any danger. “OK, I’ll give it a shot, but you guys sh
ould stay where you are. Whatever signal I get might be distorted if any of you step inside the circle with me.”

  All three men took a step backward.

  “We’re here if you need us,” the scrivener reassured her.

  Daniel darted him a puzzled glance.

  “Griffin has seen the downside of my job more than a few times,” Cassie explained. She took a deep breath. “Here goes.” Then she stepped inside the circle.

  Much to her surprise, she didn’t fall into a trance. There were no people from the past wandering about. All she saw were waves of light hovering above the rocks—rising and falling like the Aurora Borealis. They formed concentric rings that followed the placement of the two outer rows of stones and spiraled inward to the center of the circle. “This is strange,” she muttered half to herself.

  Cassie stretched out her hands and spread her fingers. She moved like a blind person inching along a dark hallway, trying to sense fluctuations in energy. After advancing to the innermost ring of the circle, she stood for a moment. She could feel herself enveloped in a pillar of light that radiated from the ground beneath her feet up into the sky. A sound emerged from out of nowhere. It was made by a chorus of ghostly voices, but they weren’t speaking or singing, just intoning a single note that changed in pitch at regular intervals. The sound spread outward like ripples in a pond until it bounced off the outer edge of the ring and returned to the center amplified.

  Cassie shook the noise out of her head. Frowning, she retraced her steps and crossed over to rejoin her companions.

  “At least you didn’t faint,” Griffin observed dryly.

  “What?” Daniel sounded aghast.

  “Occupational hazard.” Cassie shrugged matter-of-factly. “It happens sometimes. More often than I’d like.”

  “Did you sense anything?” Ken prompted.

  Focusing her attention on the trove keeper, the pythia said, “It wasn’t what I expected. I thought I’d see people performing rituals, making sacrifices, but it was none of that. It was all about energy.” She peered at Ken. “Do you understand?”