Ancient Echoes (8 page)

Rempart answered the big stranger's question. “We were
trying to get around a landslide on what’s called the Sheep Hill Trail and head
northwest. Instead, we seem to have been forced south by the topography.” He
held up his folded map as he spoke, as if to blame it for their troubles.

“Where you goin'?”
The
barrel-chested fellow asked as he and his skinny friend ambled toward the
students.

Rempart clearly warred with himself before answering the
question. He had kept an important fact from the guide and Melisse when they
asked why he insisted on following his map. It was a secret, something he
didn’t trust others to know about until he had succeeded in his quest. But
since the map didn’t match what he saw on the ground, divulging the secret might
mean the difference between finding the site or not. Finally, he said, “I'm
trying to find a couple of pillars, tall and upright. I don’t know much about
them. They’re probably made of wood. Have you ever seen anything like that out
here?”

The river rats glanced at each other. “Why? What’s so
special about them? Are they valuable?” the skinny one asked.

“Not of value to anyone but archeologists and
anthropologists,” Rempart stated. “We're the latter. Any Tukudeka tribe
artifacts around those pillars may be invaluable to the scholars of the area.”

The thin guy looked at the barrel-chested one. “Sounds like
a lotta bull crap to me, Kyle.”

Big Kyle bellowed with laughter. “Yeah,
me
too, Buck.” His eyes narrowed as he looked over the professor. “Listen, man, we
know the pillars. Double Needles, we call them.”

“You do? You know them?” Rempart could scarcely contain his
excitement.

“Sure. But you're goin' way the hell out of your way. It'll
take you over a day to walk to them. Why don't you use the creek?”

Again Rempart held out his all but useless map. “According
to the map, they aren't near any creek, but miles inland to the north.”

“Map?”
Skinny Buck shook his head.
“I never heard of
no
map of the Double Needles area.
This whole wilderness is crisscrossed with creeks and streams that don't show
up on
no
map, ones that only have water part of the
year, flood you out, and then go bone dry. But this here creek is a big one.
It'll take you right near the Needles' front door. If you're sure that's where
you're wantin'
to go.”

“They got a
rep-u-ta-tion
of being kinda hard to
find.” Big Kyle gave a knowing glance at his companion. Skinny Buck nodded.

“It's all right,” Rempart said. “We're scientists.”

No, we're not!
Devlin wanted to shout. He had a bad
feeling about this. Didn't Rempart have the brains not to trust those two?

“Ah.” The two men nodded at each other as if Rempart's words
explained everything.

“Now, you need to know,” Big Kyle added, “nobody much goes
to that area. You head out there and get yourself hurt, it's not gonna be
good.”

“I understand.” Rempart beamed. “We'll be just fine, but if
you could tell us how to get there—”

“Professor,” Melisse warned, but he ignored her.

Big Kyle folded ham-like arms. “Tell you what, I'm Big Kyle Barnes,
and this here's Skinny Buck Jewel. We worked this area all our lives, and I'll
tell you, the direction you were headed, the mountains and cliffs would be too
steep for you and these kids. If someone said they'd take you overland to the
Needles you been snookered. It happens out these parts. Don't trust
nobody
. That's the safest way. But maybe we can help.”

“You're right, Kyle.” Skinny Buck said earnestly, then
smiled at the group. His teeth were black from decay. “We ain't doing much but
sittin' on our asses waiting 'til Saturday when we got a group for a raftin'
trip down on the Salmon. If you'd like, we'll take you close as we can get on
this here creek. It'll be easy. This creek's
child play
to float.”

“I don't think so.” Rempart said with regret. “The
university has more time than money. We have no authorization—”

“We could get you close to those twin pillars in just about
ninety minutes.” Big Kyle's tone sounded smooth, encouraging. “It's an hour's
walk from there, but it'll shave a day off your trip. You're talking some real
rough country.”

“A day?”
Rempart was aghast. “It'll
take another day? We've already wasted a day trying to get around the
landslide. How much does it cost to hire you?”

Big Kyle scratched his beard and thought a moment. “I'll
take you for only fifty each. That's a cut rate, believe me.”

Rempart looked over his students.
“Can't
do it.”

“You sure?”
Big Kyle scrounged
through a duffle bag for an old flyer advertising their service and handed it
to Rempart.

The students gathered near. The grimy, wrinkled flyer looked
like it had been printed off a Word file on someone's computer:

White water rafting on the Salmon River!!

River of No Return thrills, chills, and no spills!!

Forty-years of combined experience with

Big Kyle Barnes and Skinny Buck Jewel!!

“I don't reckon you want to walk through the forests around
here,” Big Kyle added. “
There's
some strange things in
them.”

“Oh?” Rempart said.

“I got an idea,” Big Kyle said as he looked over the group.
“Since you people are involved with
ed-u-ca-shun
, and that's a good
thing, and since me and Buck are leavin' anyways, we'll take you for only
twenty-five each.
But no less.”

Rempart and the students got together and emptied their
wallets. A quick counting and sharing of funds, and they turned up enough money
to get away from here and save a day's travel besides.

Rempart handed it over to the guides. “Let's go.”

Mongolia

“MICHAEL! MICHAEL! Wake up! Wake
up!”

Michael heard Jianjun's voice, felt his assistant's hand shaking
his shoulder, felt air so cold it numbed his teeth. He opened his eyes to see a
blue sky.

He looked around amazed to be alive,
then
pushed away the sand that covered his body and sat up. Finally, he held his
head,
laid
back down, and shut his eyes once more. The
last thing he remembered, he had been inside the
ger
drinking, and then
felt sleepy. A vague memory…Lady Hsieh calling him
, drawing
him outside…

He didn’t want to think about that, about
her.

Now it seemed an entire caravan had marched over his body
while a yak dung fire burned in his mouth.
Airag
did that to a man.
Opening one eye at a time, he tried again. “What am I doing here?” he
whispered.

“Good question. You tripped over me leaving the
ger
.
Woke
me up.” Jianjun’s hair stood on end, his face pale, and
his eyes blood shot. He looked as bad as Michael felt. “You were sleep-walking.
I tried to talk to you, stop you, but you kept going so I followed. We both
fell, I guess. At least, I'm assuming we fell, and that's how we got down here.
Way down here. I must have been knocked out or I was too tired to stay awake,
because next thing I woke to the loud sound of my own teeth chattering. They're
still chattering. It's freezing and—”

“Stop!”
Michael pleaded, holding
his aching head. “I get the picture.”

He rose unsteadily to his feet, and saw they were at the
bottom of a steep drop. They were lucky they hadn't broken their necks in the
fall.

After nearly thirty minutes and any number of tries, they
climbed out of it. The sun was high, the sky clear, pale and ghostly, but the
land....

Sand and dust lay everywhere, covered everything, and turned
a grassy plain to a tan-hued ocean.

Michael made his way toward the camp's sand-covered
gers
on legs that felt shaky and weak.

No smoke billowed from the chimney, and no one moved around
outside. An unnatural, eerie stillness had settled over the area. As much as
Michael wanted to convince himself that Batbaatar and Acemgul might yet be
sleeping off the liquor, or that they had already gone to the dig site to see
how much damage had been done, he couldn't. A foreboding took hold and refused
to let go.

He ran toward camp, cautiously at first, then faster.

As he got closer, his steps slowed and faltered. Jianjun,
right behind him, did the same.

Two low mounds of sand were on the ground near the
gers.
Looking at the size and shape of them, his heart sank.

He went to one mound near the truck and with a gentle hand
brushed away the sand. He shut his eyes, his worst fear confirmed.

Batbaatar.

Not far from him lay Acemgul's body, also covered with sand.

They'd been shot in the back of the head.
Two
executions.

Michael fell to his knees as he surveyed the horrifying
scene, the startled, anguished death stares on the faces of men he had worked
with for so many weeks, men who had become true and honest friends.

“What happened here?” Jianjun placed his hand on Michael’s
shoulder. “Why kill these men?
These good men?”

Michael didn't reply.

“If you hadn’t left, and I hadn’t followed you,” Jianjun
said in a voice scarcely above a whisper, “could we have saved them? Or would
we also be dead?”

The question remained unanswered as, angry and sickened by
the senseless deaths, Michael gazed in the direction of the dig. No tire tracks
or other signs survived the storm, yet a
suspicion,
one he prayed wasn't true, formed.

He went to the truck, Jianjun silent beside him. Batbaatar
had covered the hood with a tied-down tarp before entering the
ger
the
day before to keep sand out of the engine. When Michael removed the tarp and
cranked the key, the truck came to life.

Michael drove straight to the dig site. The storm should
have completely buried it, but as he neared, what he saw infuriated him.

Someone had been here. Someone had dug into the pit and
cleared any sand that had fallen into it. No, not some
one—
removing that
much sand would have taken a small army!

Wordlessly, he jumped from the truck, searching for any sign
of who had done this.

He scrambled down the ladder to Lord Hsieh's tomb.
Everything connected with Lord Hsieh had been removed, but that meant little to
him.

He hurried to the opening down to the lower level, and
half-slid, half-fell into Lady Hsieh's chamber.

The coffin was gone.

Raw fury cut through him like a razor. Who did this, and why?
With those questions, he made a resolution. He would find her again. He would
find her and learn what all this meant. He would do it, no matter what it took.

Paris

DESPITE HERSELF, IN the cold gloom
of the Cluny museum, Charlotte became entranced by Nicolas Flamel's bizarre
tale and continued reading.

Flamel had been obsessed with learning the meaning behind
the words and symbols in
The Book of Abraham the Jew
. He knew something
about alchemy from other manuscripts and books he had copied, but none of them
compared to the book he now possessed. He placed some pages he had copied in
his shop window, seeking anyone who might understand them, but the populace
scorned and laughed at him.

For twenty-one years he struggled to decipher the book with
little success. At age fifty, he feared he would not live long enough to learn
the book's secret if he didn't act.

He needed a Kabbalist scholar, but the Jews had been driven
out of France by persecution. Many fled to Spain, to Malaga and Granada, ruled
by Moorish kings.

Flamel decided to go to them. Carrying only a few carefully
copied pages from the manuscript, he went dressed as a pilgrim with a staff and
shell-adorned hat.

The Jews in Spain were suspicious of Christians, however,
especially French ones dressed as pilgrims, and refused to help him.

Defeated, Flamel headed back to Paris when, in León, he met
a fellow merchant who told him of an old Jewish scholar named Chanches. At
first Chanches eyed him warily, but once Flamel mentioned
The Book of
Abraham the Jew
, everything changed.

According to Chanches, Abraham was the most venerable of all
the sages who studied the Kabbalah. He lived in the Jewish sector of Alexandria
in the first or second century A.D., and wrote in Greek. Centuries ago, his
book disappeared. Legend had it the book had passed from hand to hand, always
to the man destined to receive it. Chanches dreamed all his life of finding it,
but had failed.

Chanches agreed to return to Paris to translate the complete
text, but he died on the way. Once back home, Flamel and his wife Perrenella
used what he had learned from Chanches to decipher the remaining pages of the
book. It took him three years, and at the end of that period, he began his
experiments.

“Oh, my God!”
Charlotte murmured as
she continued to read:

. .
.following
always my Book,
from word to word, I made projection of the Red Stone, upon the like quantity
of Mercury, in the presence likewise of Perrenella only, in the same house, the
five and twentieth day of April following, the same year, about five o'clock in
the evening, which I transmuted truly into almost as much pure Gold, better
assuredly than common Gold, more soft and more plyable. I may speak it with
truth,
I have made it three times, with the help of Perrenella,
who understood it as well as I, because she helped in my operations.