Storm of Shadows

by Christina Dodd

  Louis knew more about her than any person alive . . . except Aaron, and she’d been telling him stuff because he’d acted interested. And why? Why would he suddenly be interested when no other man had ever bothered?

  For her linguistic skills, of course. But what was so important about this prophecy that he needed to be nice to her?

  She glanced at her purse, wondering if Lance had texted her back yet, then looked up into Louis’s eyes. “I’d like to be friends. In fact, I think we already are.”

  “Good.” He sounded brisk as he opened the book for her. “Now—can you comprehend any of the script?”

  “It’s very odd—part tribal, part hieroglyphics.” Placing the book on the table beneath the light, she turned the pages slowly, picking out a phrase here, a word there, but finding the text, for the most part, disap pointingly indecipherable. “I think this is derived from an ancient language that has completely died off.”

  “Yes, so my people say.”

  Excitement began to bubble in her. “But perhaps there is a way to read this.” She reached for her purse. “If you would allow me?”

  “Of course.”

  She pulled out the reading glass Irving had given her, and stroked it for the pure sensual pleasure of its touch. “This supposedly translates any text into a readable script. I know it sounds too good to be true, but it can be effective.”

  The rounded dome glowed with all the colors of the rainbow; the surface felt slick and surprisingly warm, as if it had been sitting in the sun, and the flat bottom was perfectly smooth.

  Louis started as if he’d been stuck with a needle. “Where did you get that?”

  His tone contained such suppressed excitement, she looked at the old man. His eyes sparkled; his expression was rapt. “From Irving Shea of New York City. Do you know him?”

  “He has a reputation among collectors.” Louis reached out a hand as if in longing, then yanked it back. “I see that it’s true.”

  “Yes, his collection is fascinating. He called this Bala’s Glass—”

  “Bala’s Glass? Really?”

  She placed the flat side over the lettering on the page. “It’s reputed to translate the most indecipherable text. . . .” She looked up sheepishly. “I suppose that’s absurd, that there’s some trick to it. This glass would have to be magical to do that, wouldn’t it?”

  “If you believe in curses, then you can believe in magic,” Louis said.

  She stirred uncomfortably. She didn’t want to believe in curses or magic, for if she did, the world became a much more perilous place, where not even the library was safe. “I’ve carried the glass with me, but until now, I haven’t come upon anything I couldn’t translate. I’m fascinated to see if this works.” She leaned over and stared through the glass. Nothing happened, and she sighed with disappointment. “Of course, it is a hoax. It doesn’t work.”

  “Don’t give up yet,” Louis urged.

  As he spoke, the colors of the glass picked up the symbols and rearranged them. Bit by bit, she began to comprehend, and in a soft, slow voice, she read, “ ‘I, Sacmis, descendant of Isis, prophetess to the great/Do wish to write of the visions I have seen/And the tragedy I foretell. . . .’ ”

  Louis rolled a chair close to Rosamund and urged her to sit down, then seated himself beside her. “May I see through the reading glass?”

  She turned the book toward him, and he stared at the page, glancing between the bare, unreadable script and the cogent writing beneath the dome. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This manuscript has baffled the best translators in the world, and with the help of Bala’s Glass, even I can read it.”

  “Can you? I am so glad that it’s not just me.”

  “Bala’s Glass chooses its friends.”

  “If you believe an inanimate object can make choices.” She laughed. “I suspect the answer is somewhat easier than that. Reading is clarified through the glass, but only for someone who is trained in linguistics like you or me.”

  “My dear.” He placed his fingers over hers. “I am barely literate even in French.”

  She looked up, startled.

  He waved a hand around at his magnificent library. “Why else would I worship at the altar of so many great works of the ages?”

  “Oh.” That made sense. “But how do you run your businesses?”

  “I hire the best, I put the fear of God in them, and usually, they don’t betray me. It does not end well for those who do. I can smell a lie a mile away.” For the first time, he looked cold and ruthless.

  This was the man about whom Aaron had warned her.

  Yet she liked him. She wasn’t sure she believed him about his literate abilities, but she recognized a kindred spirit, a man who loved the learning imprisoned in the stones and the manuscripts of the past.

  Then Louis’s face again assumed its curiosity. He returned the book to her and said eagerly, “Go on. What else did she say?”

  “ ‘The traders who sold me, the family who bought me/They will live to suffer/As their children die before their eyes/Boils cover their bodies in seeping agony/ And all their worldly gold is lost. . . .’ ” Rosamund stopped, and swallowed in consternation. “She’s almost biblical in her desire for vengeance.”

  “Perhaps the curse is worth worrying about, heh?” Louis might have been joking. But perhaps not.

  Rosamund returned to the manuscript. She hurried through it, reading aloud the prophetess’s praise for herself and predictions of doom for any who had displeased her. At one point, Rosamund interrupted herself. “It might behoove you to discover how much of this came true. In Casablanca, people didn’t want to talk about her, or even acknowledge she had been there . . . not even for profit.”

  For the first time, Louis appeared to be uncomfortable with his purchase. “There are other collectors who would like this book. Perhaps I will sell it,” he conceded.

  Finally, on the last page, Rosamund read, “ ‘I go now from this Casablanca/To this place of Paris to be a gift to the queen Antoinette, wife of the king Louis/ Yet already I see his death and hers, the downfall of his family, the delight of his nation.’ ” A chill went up Rosamund’s spine, and she stopped. “She did foresee the French Revolution. And she wasn’t even in France yet.”

  Louis was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, listening with his eyes half closed. “I think you may have to cease doubting and believe in magic.”

  She thought of Aaron, of her suspicions, and rubbed her hands up her arms.

  “Is that all she has to say?”

  “I wish,” Rosamund muttered. “ ‘When the mothers rise to feed their children/Tear down the bastions of oppression/Sharp blades end all tyranny/Then will I go to the Sacred Cave/There to write my final prophecy /And pass into the gentle hands of the god of the blue-flamed eyes.’ ” Abruptly, her revulsion became too much. She snatched the glass off the page and slammed the book shut. “To the devil? She wants to go to Satan?”

  “ ‘The god of the blue-flamed eyes,’ ” Louis repeated. “Yes, traditionally, that is the devil. After reading this diatribe, that can’t surprise you.” Picking up the book between two fingers, he carried it to the shelf from which he had retrieved it. “I changed my mind. I’m not going to sell it. It’s going in the fire.”

  “Good.” Rosamund cast an apprehensive glance at the manuscript, half worried it had heard and would take action.

  Then she dropped her head into her hands.

  This wasn’t the end of the quest for the prophetess. She and Aaron would have to travel on, to the Sacred Cave where Sacmis had died, and see what they would find there. Rosamund knew she should be disappointed at this failure. She should be anxious to return to her job in the antiquities department of the library. But except for her desire to examine the stone tablet left by her mother, she couldn’t think of one reason to go back. She ought to want to see Lance again, but instead, she couldn’t wait to continue this adventure . . . with Aaron. Aaron. Handsome,
knowledgeable, sexy Aaron with the great, dark eyes that saw into her soul. Tough, adventurous, enforcer Aaron, whom she loved with every fiber of her staid librarian body.

  She was in such trouble.

  And perhaps . . . he was, too?

  Louis returned to her side. “Now. I have shown you my library, believed I could trust you to keep my treasures secret and safe. May I see your looking glass?”

  She hesitated. Irving had told her to keep it in her possession. But Louis was right. He had trusted her with so much. Surely she could trust him in return.

  He put out his hand. His palm was pale with age, deeply lined, and the old calluses had turned a transparent yellow.

  She slid the glass into his outstretched hand.

  “I’ve dreamed about this my whole life. To hold something that proves there is more to life than what we see on this mortal plain.” He cradled it, stroked it with a look of amazement and exhilaration. “While in India, I heard an obscure legend about a reading glass that translates indecipherable texts, but it wasn’t called Bala’s Glass. It was called Bala’s Stone.” He was very intense.

  She answered gently, “I suspect there are all kinds of stones reputed to be formed from Bala’s bones.”

  “Ah, but Bala’s Stone holds the power of the gods within, for it is not merely a gemstone, but a diamond of absolute purity.”

  He looked at her, waiting for her to come to some realization. . . .

  “I already had this conversation with Irving Shea.” She stated the obvious. “This isn’t a diamond. Diamonds this large always have inclusions and defects. Diamonds are the hardest natural mineral in the world. This glass—stone—isn’t cut into facets that sparkle, but rather is rounded and flattened. Do you know how hard it would be to shape a diamond of this size into a dome? Even with modern techniques, it would require other diamonds as polishing agents and years of work. If this was truly created before machinery, the polishing would take centuries.”

  “The legend declares that the king of the gods laid claim to the largest diamond created by Bala’s bones, and pressed it and shaped it like clay until it imprisoned all the colors of the rainbow, then used it to learn to read the writings of the ancients.”

  “It’s a legend. A very obscure legend.” Louis had to be pulling her leg. He had to be.

  But he looked so grave, so concerned. “Legends mask truths, and, my dear girl, there is one thing I know. In this world, throughout all eternity, when a man holds wealth and power, he can hire or intimidate or buy the best craftsmen to do whatever he desires. Case in point.” Louis waved a revealing hand around at his exquisite library. “Face the facts, Rosamund. This is Bala’s Stone, the largest uncut diamond in the world.”

  “It can’t be. Irving just handed it to me.” Panic stirred in her. “If it was a diamond, it would be worth millions, and I’ve been carrying it in my purse!”

  “The value of a diamond is influenced greatly by its history.” Louis weighed it in his hand. “This one isn’t famous among gem collectors, so I would estimate its street value at a hundred thousand a carat, and it’s probably five hundred carats.”

  “That’s five million dollars.” Her voice was nothing but a dry croak.

  His serious expression softened into a smile. “You forgot to carry a zero. It’s fifty million dollars.”

  “No,” she moaned.

  “What worries me is that those who study the occult would kill for it.” Louis pressed Bala’s Stone back into her hand.

  She put it carefully on the table.

  “You don’t need to worry about dropping it. The table would be dented, not the diamond.”

  She didn’t care. She couldn’t stand the thought of holding that thing. “What was Irving thinking?”

  “I suppose he thought you would need it, and ignorance would provide protection. But should anyone recognize that as a diamond, and especially that diamond . . . I beg you, friend, to keep this magical thing secret.”

  “I’ll leave it with you. It will be safe here.”

  “Yet I think you’ll leave here and go to the Sacred Cave, and there you’ll need it.”

  She chewed on her knuckles and stared at the stone. “Yes. I suppose. But I thought the Sacred Cave was in Central America. Surely Sacmis didn’t go so far to . . . to write her final prophecy and die.”

  “In the literature of western Europe, the Sacred Cave is reputed to be in the French Alps near the village of Sacre Barbare.”

  “I suppose more than one culture could have imagined the idea of a Sacred Cave.” Gingerly she picked up Bala’s Stone, put it in her purse, and flipped the latch.

  “Or . . . there is only one Sacred Cave that exists in specific places of power and sanctity.”

  “You’re kidding.” She laughed.

  He shook his head. “The idea is espoused in the Seventh Gospel.”

  She sobered, and said slowly, “I suppose if you believe in a Sacred Cave where God or the devil reigns and the real world is only a dream, it could be anywhere, anytime.”

  “That’s it.” Louis put his hand on her shoulder. “You have a brilliant mind, but some figure of authority drew a line around it and told you never to think beyond. It’s an artificial line, Rosamund, not a real boundary. Release yourself.”

  She stared at him, this old man born in the Paris gutters who had wrung his fortune from the bitch of Destiny, and his wisdom sank into her like a balm. “After my mother died, my father insisted I go to school, study hard, learn to be like . . . think like other people.”

  “He was a fool.”

  “He was afraid.” Rosamund had never allowed herself to realize it before, but now the words had popped out and she knew it was the truth. “He was afraid that I would end up like my mother, killed by my passion for exploration and adventure.”

  She considered how much she had enjoyed this trip—exploring Casablanca, exploring Paris, bartering, eating, listening, reading. This whole quest had been a change from her stale life, glorious from the start. Even falling in love with Aaron, painful and stupid though she knew it to be, had touched off sparks in her soul that she had never imagined.

  “My father passed his fear on to me.” The child she had been had sought an explanation for her mother’s death. She had learned the hard way that she could no longer run to her father for comfort or joy. Elijah Hall had changed toward her when her mother died, becoming cold and controlling, full of admonitions to stay safe. She absorbed his caution. She had come to see life as a risk. And she had come to the logical conclusions—her father no longer loved her because somehow, she was responsible for her mother’s death.

  Louis scrutinized her and the dawning of realization on her face. “Better to die free than to live in a cage.”

  And if she was responsible for her mother’s death, was she not also responsible for her father’s? Did everyone she loved have to die?

  Here, in Louis’s library, surrounded by the greatest works of the ages and sitting beside a man whose wisdom she had come to respect, she could see clearly. She might not know how or why they had died, but it wasn’t her fault.

  She had lived cautiously, in the cage Louis so cleverly saw she had built around herself.

  From this moment, she would swing wide the cage door and embrace the world—and Aaron.

  “You’re right.” She kissed Louis on the cheek. “You are my wise old man.”

  His face twisted as if she’d stuck a knife in his gut. “That is not the role I relish with a pretty girl. But with you, who have that young man waiting outside this door, I suppose it will have to do.” Standing, he held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go relieve his worry.”

  Chapter 29

  Rosamund was so excited, she almost danced out the door of the library.

  Louis followed, holding her purse.

  Aaron grabbed her—man, he was a grabby sort—held her before him and looked her over. “Are you all right?” His voice was deep, harsh, like a man under deep duress.<
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  “Of course I am.” She beamed. “And do you know why?”

  Aaron glanced at Louis, hostility radiating from every line. “No. Why?”

  “Because I found where we need to go next.”

  “Next.” Aaron sagged. “I had hoped this was the end of the line.”

  “No. But it is the next to the last on the line. Sacmis left Paris and traveled to the small village of Sacre Barbare in the French Alps. Do you know why? Do you know what ‘Sacre Barbare’ means?”

  “Sacred and . . . barbaric?”