“Fascinating.” Cass matched Kit’s expression of awe with her own. “You have to take me to see this place. You promised, remember?”
“Sure, but there’s just one small detail,” Kit hedged. “When I took Mina and Gianni to the clearing in the forest, the Bone House was gone. Instead, we found this huge yew tree—a thousand years old at least, maybe older. That’s the problem.”
“A yew tree, huh?” Cass returned to picking at the black sooty ashes with the needle.
“Yeah, an absolutely gigantic yew tree,” said Kit. “Why?”
“Well, you know, yew trees being associated with immortality and eternity—which also happens to be the subject of this quest everybody is always talking about.” She glanced at Kit. “Didn’t you know that? Lots of ancient cultures regard the yew as a sacred tree—probably because they’re so fantastically long-lived. People thought yew trees lived forever, so they became a symbol of everlasting life. That’s why you see them planted in churchyards so much.” She gave a little half shrug. “It’s an interesting coincidence, is all.”
“Cassandra, my dear,” said Kit, mimicking the old-fashioned, elevated tone of his late great-grandfather, “we should all very well know by now there is no such thing as coincidence.”
Cass regarded him with a quizzical expression. “Okay . . .”
“It’s something Cosimo and Sir Henry were always on about,” he explained. “Anyway, back to the tree . . . So there we are, standing around in the forest looking at it and wondering what to do, and all of a sudden our lamps go crazy. We’re just checking to see if the ley portal is still there, and they go all berserk—the shadow lamps, that is—and the silly things overheat.”
“Just heat?” asked Cass, looking at the array of parts and materials before her. “Anything else?”
Kit thought a moment. “The little lights were blinking—no, not blinking, more like pulsing. Really bright—I’d never seen them so bright. And then suddenly the brass case got too hot to hold. Mina dropped hers first, and then I did. The gizmos gave off a funny little pop and white smoke came out, and fzzt! That was it.”
“Hmm.” Cass put down the needle and picked up a pair of tweezers, extracting a lump of charred material, which she dropped into a small glass bowl she’d borrowed from the coffeehouse. “So what happened next?”
“That’s all,” Kit said. “We came back here, and then you and Haven and Giles showed up. The rest you know.”
Retrieving two more samples, Cass added each to a Grand Imperial cup. Into the first cup she added a drop of water; into the second, a smidge of vinegar; and into the bowl, a drop of something pale and yellow that stank of rotten eggs. “Crude, but we might be able to get a reaction from one of these reagents,” Cass told him. “That is, if there is anything to react with anymore.” She stirred the samples one at a time with the end of a glass writing pen and waited, frowning with concentration.
“Anything?” asked Kit after a moment.
“Nothing yet.” She lengthened the wick on the table lamp and held one of the cups close to the intensified flame. “Sometimes a little heat can catalyse a reaction.” She stirred the contents of the cup again, tilted it over the flame, waited, and then went on to the next. None of the samples displayed any discernible change.
“This might be a doomed project,” she surmised, “but at least we’re giving it a shot. If I had more sophisticated test equipment and more chemicals, we might get a little further.” She turned back to her experiment. “I’ll try a few more tests and see if I can advance things any. If not, I’ll start in on the samples Gustavus supplied. But to tell you the truth, I’m getting near the end of my limited expertise.”
“Right. You carry on,” said Kit. “I’ll go find Gianni.”
“Hurry back.”
Kit zoomed off in search of the Italian and, after a lengthy search through the aisles and avenues of the heaving marketplace, eventually located him at the far side of the square where the crafts-men generally set up their wares. Kit hailed him and joined him at a pottery stall. Gianni had drawn examples of what he wanted and, from what Kit could gather, was trying to convince the potter to make them for him. This entailed a lengthy discussion Kit could not follow, but which seemed to be satisfactorily concluded when the two shook hands.
“This time next week, God willing, I hope to begin my garden,” he announced.
“May I?” asked Kit, indicating the drawing.
Gianni passed it to him, saying, “They do not have these here. Can you believe it?”
“Flowerpots?” wondered Kit, scanning the sketch. “That’s what you needed to see the potter about?”
“Simple terra-cotta planters, yes. He kept saying that bowls are more useful. But I need something to grow herbs and vegetables.”
“Whatever you say.” Kit returned the drawing and said, “Cass and I were wondering if you could lend a hand with the testing. She’s reached a roadblock.”
Gianni sealed his deal with a small advance payment, and followed Kit to the upper room at the Apoteke.
“I have not induced a reaction to any of the test materials I have on hand,” Cass explained. “I tested the residue as well as the raw material. No reaction whatsoever.”
“It is not surprising. I suspect it would take more sophisticated tools and chemicals than you can find in this place and time—and most likely will not be able to obtain for the next two hundred years.” Gianni pulled up a chair and took his place beside her. “But let us see what we can do here and now. First, however, I would like to hear how these little lamps . . . ah, function—is that right?”
Both turned their faces towards Kit. “How? But you’ve already seen how they function.”
“No, my friend, I have seen only how they misfunction.”
“Malfunction,” Cass corrected lightly.
“Okay,” said Kit, “it’s really very simple. When the lamp comes into contact with a ley line that happens to be active, the little holes light up. They glow blue.”
“I think there is maybe more to it than that,” prodded the priest physicist. “Please, describe what happens—from the beginning. Tell us everything you can think of—even the smallest detail may prove useful.”
Kit gave a thoughtful nod and then embarked on a lengthy discussion of how the ley lamp worked and how it was used, everything he could remember down to the colour of the lights and smell produced when it fizzled out. He concluded by saying, “Mina could tell you more than I can—she’s the expert. Also, her lamp was a newer and more powerful model—more bells and whistles.”
Gianni thanked him and then turned to his colleague in the next chair. “Any ideas, Cassandra?”
“Rare earth,” she said. “I’ve thought that from the start. Terbium, maybe—or gadolinium.”
“Possibly, possibly.” Gianni pulled on his chin. “It could be gadolinium—or one of its derivatives.” He tapped his chin with a finger. Then his eyes lit up. “I know! Europium!”
“Europium,” echoed Cass. “That’s a new one on me. But then, this is pretty far out of my field.”
“Europium might be worth a closer look,” Gianni asserted. “I think so. We should try gadolinium and terbium, also neodymium.”
“I’m going to assume those are real things,” Kit remarked. “You’re not making them up?”
“Rare earth metals,” Cass told him. “They are real, all right, very real—but also—well . . . very rare.”
“I get it,” said Kit.
“They are related members of a family of lanthanides—some of the heavier elements—produced in the nucleosynthesis of supernovae.” Seeing Kit’s eyes begin to glaze, she explained, “That means they are produced in the thermonuclear explosions of stars.”
“Exploding stars,” murmured Kit. “Of course.”
“The elements produced can be used for all kinds of things,” Cass continued. “They are useful to palaeontologists because they change over time, so we use them to help date fossils.
They’re also found in all sorts of high-tech devices such as lasers, X-ray machines, MRI scanners, nuclear batteries—things like that.”
“Behold the glory of creation! Even exploding stars have their purpose,” Gianni declared, allowing himself a little homily. “And that purpose can be harnessed by mankind.”
“The lanthanides, as they are known, are likely candidates for these shadow lamps,” Cass continued, “since many of them are sensitive to electromagnetic energy of various sorts—often exhibiting pronounced electron excitation resulting in abundant photon emission in the shorter wavelengths.”
At Kit’s puzzled expression, she added, “They glow.”
“That would explain it,” concluded Kit. He pointed at the dish of undistinguished grey granules. “Gustavus said that Burleigh brought the material to him, right? So where would Burleigh get this stuff if it is so very rare?”
“As we said before—when we know what it is, we’ll know where it came from.” Cass turned to Gianni. “China is my guess.”
“That must be our first choice,” he agreed.
“Why China?” asked Kit, feeling increasingly out of his depth and sinking fast.
“Simply because most of the world’s supply of rare earth elements comes from there,” she said. “Southern China is a rich area, geologically speaking.”
Gianni picked up the glass vial containing a tiny bit of the raw material Gustavus had given them. “If we could narrow down our list of candidates, we might be able to design a more specific test. A few of these elements are halide reactive—some of them form stable compounds with chalcogenides . . .”
The discussion quickly plunged into deeper waters Kit could not navigate. He decided to go out, get some air, stretch his legs, and leave the technical talk to the experts. “You two carry on, I’m just popping out for a bit,” he said, quietly removing himself from the discussion. Once outside, he strolled off across the square. Some of the merchants were striking their stalls and getting ready to head home, but there were still plenty of shoppers and vendors around doing last-minute deals. As he rounded a corner, he saw Engelbert disappearing into a side street with a bag over his shoulder; it put Kit in mind of Santa Claus making his rounds. Kit gave a halfhearted shout and a wave, but the baker was already gone.
Kit continued his window shopping; he sauntered here and there, idly examining the various wares on display and thinking, as he passed the iron monger and carpenter, what a monumental achievement the humble chisel represented. Among River City Clan even a simple saw would have been a marvel of technology. Take a saw, a sack full of nails, and a hammer or two back to River City and he would be thought a wonder-worker, a wizard of the first degree. Throw in a packet of needles and a pair of scissors and he would be hailed a king at least, maybe even a god.
Thinking about the clan cast Kit into a melancholy mood, which he misdiagnosed as impatience or frustrated purpose, but then realised was more properly a form of longing: he missed his friends, his people, the gentle giants of a more primitive age. Not least, he missed the person he was when he was with them. He missed the forthright simplicity, the innate compassion, the way the clan cared unstintingly for one another. He missed Dardok and the other members of the clan, the young Turks, the women and little ones; most of all, he missed the chieftain, En-Ul.
The Ancient One, in that mysterious way they all possessed, could read his thoughts almost as clearly as speech. Well, concluded Kit, if thoughts can be read across time and space, then read this, En-Ul: I shall return.
CHAPTER 23
In Which Tomb Robbing Is Encouraged
The desert heat struck Charles Flinders-Petrie with a force strong enough to peel paint. He imagined the soles of his shoes catching fire—or, worse, the searing rays of the white-hot sun igniting his hair and setting his head alight. If he had walked into a blast furnace it could not, he decided, have felt any hotter. Pausing only long enough to catch his breath and survey his surroundings, he patted the bone-white dust from his clothes and looked around. Beneath the sun-bleached empty sky, the distant hills danced in shimmering waves rising from the desert floor. But that was the only movement for miles in any direction. Stretching ahead of him, the ram-headed sphinxes lining the long avenue leading to the ruined temple remained, as ever, unmoved and unaffected by the scorching atmosphere.
Seeing that he was completely alone and unobserved, Charles allowed himself to relax a little; he pulled a length of linen cloth from the leather bag at his side and wound it around his head turban style. The pack—the same used by his father on his last visit to Egypt—contained all the things he imagined he would need on this, his most adventurous journey yet. The fact that he had Lord Burleigh to thank for his newfound enthusiasm for ley travel was not lost on Charles. For if not for the earl’s insistent meddling all those years ago, he probably would never have given his grandfather’s map a second thought.
With a tug on the long braided strap, he hitched up the pack and started off across country towards the gently wavering line of hills, leaving the double rank of silent statues behind. With only his father’s description to guide him, Charles was soon wishing Benedict had thought to make a map of his own—or at least jotted down a few tricks of the family trade. Without such a guide, reconstructing the precise ley-leaping method used by Arthur had proven exceedingly difficult; it had taken Charles over five years and a few score attempts before he tumbled to a rough calibration method that would allow him to reach this place at this time—give or take a year, or even a generation or two. More work would refine his technique, but for that he would need the map. And the map was the reason for his visit.
Although he had never been to Egypt, from the time he was old enough to walk he had heard the family stories from his father and grandmother so often that he felt he knew the place—at least well enough to find his way around. He knew the Nile lay beyond the hills and that there would be a farming village or town somewhere on the riverbank nearby. He knew that beyond the river lay a wadi where, with perseverance and generous lashings of luck, he would find the tomb of Anen, his grandfather’s friend and a high priest of what was now being called the Eighteenth Dynasty.
In the village he would find men he could hire to help with his reclamation project. This would, he expected, have serious consequences for future archaeology: he did not see how the desecration of the tomb could be prevented. For as soon as his erstwhile helpers discovered what Charles knew to be there, the looting would begin. Official documents from the time of Pharaoh Cheops spoke of “tomb robbers”—a particular scourge of the wealthier classes; consequently, Egyptologists tended to consider them a separate criminal class. They were not. In reality, the thieves were merely the poor local peasantry of whatever era who, in their hardscrabble need, simply helped themselves to whatever valuables they found lying around—often in burial chambers half hidden in the sand and long forgotten. No doubt the villagers would find plenty to please them in High Priest Anen’s tomb; but so long as Charles got what he wanted, his hirelings were welcome to whatever they could carry away.
First, however, he had to reach the river and find the village. The walk was arduous to the point of absurdity, and by the time Charles reached the base of the hills, he was leaking water from every pore—but feeling no cooler for it. His sweat flash-dried the moment it seeped through the skin, leaving only a faint damp spot on the thin cloth of his linen shirt . . . and then that disappeared, evaporating into the arid desert air, leaving behind a deposit of his own salts. He shambled along the base of the nearest hill until finding a rock large enough to cast a shadow he might shelter in. When he came to it, he sat down in the shade; with his back to the stone, he withdrew his old-fashioned waterskin and allowed himself a good long drink. Then he closed his eyes and, leaning back against the stone, conjured cool, soothing thoughts until the sun, having reached its zenith, began its long, slow descent into the west.
While he rested, he reviewed the details of what he had been
told about his family’s connection with Egypt. He knew that Arthur, his grandfather, had lived some years there, studying the language and culture and making friends with a young priest named Anen. It was Anen who had looked after his father, Benedict, when tragedy struck and Arthur was killed during an uprising; and Anen also, in the end, provided a resting place for Arthur’s linen-wrapped bones. He knew his grandmother, Xian-Li, and Benedict had returned at some later time to return the Skin Map to its owner.
This macabre object, born of a linguistic misunderstanding, had loomed large in the family lore ever since its creation. In fact, for Charles there was never a time when he could not remember knowing about his grandfather’s storied map: how it had been made from Arthur’s skin in order to save the tattoos that recorded the more important destinations his grandfather had discovered; and how, within the coded symbols, a fearful and wonderful secret lay hidden; and how his father had been made to give up interdimensional travel in order to better ensure the family’s survival.
Well, Charles considered, the family had survived and even thrived, and his father’s vow never again to use ley lines had not prevented him from talking about them and telling stories about Arthur’s exploits and adventures. Before being made to give up ley travel, Benedict had shared some of his father’s journeys, accompanying him on various trips through time and space, learning the secrets of ley travel first-hand. It was on such a trip to Egypt that the two had been caught in the uprising that took Arthur’s life; young Benedict had met not one but two pharaohs, and it was he who had visited the high priest’s tomb and deposited the map in his father’s sarcophagus, thereby ending the familial preoccupation that Charles meant to revive.
When the shadow of the rock began to stretch long on the trail, Charles rose and began his climb over the hills above the Nile Valley. By the time he reached the top there were but two or three hours of daylight remaining. The little settlement, glimpsed as a dull smudge beside the great, glittering river, still lay some distance away. Owing to the heat and the need to rest, it had taken him longer to gain the heights than he had imagined; Charles doubted whether he could reach his destination before nightfall, and he reckoned a strange traveller arriving after dark would not find the sort of welcome he desired. No matter. He had come equipped for that eventuality. In his pack he carried a little food and a linen coverlet—something like a shroud—that would keep him warm when, perversely, the desert air grew chill in the hours before dawn.