The Bone Labyrinth (2 page)

Onka’s fingertip ran over those bumps as if finding hidden meaning there. The other grinned, seeming to sense the child’s understanding.

The stranger straightened and laid a palm upon his own chest. “Teron,” he said.

K’ruk knew this must be his name, but the stranger spoke rapidly after that, waving to one of the elders who leaned heavily upon a thick gnarled staff.

The old man came forward and spoke in K’ruk’s people’s tongue. “Teron says the girl may join us. We are heading through a high pass that Teron knows, one that is yet free of ice, but only for another few days. If we can make it ahead of the enemy, we can break the hunters from our trail.”

“Until those snows thaw again,” K’ruk added worriedly.

“That won’t be for many moons. We will have vanished by then, our trail long cold.”

A fresh howling of wolves in the distance reminded them that the trail was far from cold at the moment.

The elder recognized this, too. “We must go now before they fall upon us.”

“And you will take my daughter?” He pushed Onka toward Teron.

Teron reached and gripped K’ruk by the shoulder, squeezing a promise with his strong fingers.

“She is welcome,” the elder assured him. “We will protect her. But on this long trek, we could use your strong back and sharp spear.”

K’ruk took a step away and gripped the shaft of his weapon more firmly. “The enemy comes too swiftly. I will use my last breaths to turn them from your trail or hold them off long enough for you and the others to reach the pass.”

Onka’s gaze met his, already teary-eyed with understanding. “Papa . . .”

His chest ached as he spoke. “This is your clan now, Onka. They will see you to better lands, where you will be safe and where you will grow into the strong woman I know you can be.”

Onka broke free of Teron’s grip and leaped at K’ruk, wrapping her thin arms around his neck.

With grief choking him as much as his daughter’s arms, he pulled Onka free and passed her to Teron, who hugged her from behind. K’ruk leaned and touched his forehead to Onka’s brow, saying good-bye, knowing he would never see his daughter again.

He then stood, turned, and strode away from the creek, heading up the slope toward the howling of wolves—but all he heard were the plaintive cries of Onka behind him.

Live well, my child.

He climbed more swiftly, determined to keep her safe. Once he reached the ridgeline, he sped toward the baying of the hunters’ beasts. Their cries had grown more raucous, rising from the next valley over.

He ran now, loping in great strides.

He reached the next crest as the sun sank away, filling the valley below with shadows. Slowing, he descended more cautiously, warily, especially as the wolves had gone silent now. He ducked low, sliding from shadow to shadow, staying downwind of the pack, careful of each step so as not to snap a branch.

At last he could spy the bottom of the valley, noting the stirring of darkness below. The wolves. One of the beasts shifted fully into view, revealing a shape unlike any wolf. Its mane was heavily matted. Scars marked its massive bulk. Lips rippled back to reveal long, yellowed fangs.

Though his heart pounded in his throat, K’ruk remained crouched, waiting for the masters of those monstrous beasts to show themselves.

Finally, taller shadows folded out of the trees. The largest stepped into view and revealed the true face of the enemy for the first time.

K’ruk went cold at the sight, terror icing through him.

No, it cannot be . . .

Still, he tightened his grip on his spear and glanced over his shoulder.

Run, Onka. Run and never stop.

Spring 1669

Rome, Papal States

Nicolas Steno marched the young emissary through the depths of the museum of the Collegio Romano. The stranger was heavily cloaked, his boots muddy, all a plain testament to both his urgency and secrecy.

The German messenger had been dispatched by Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor to the north. The package he carried was intended for Nicolas’s dear friend, Father Athanasius Kircher, the creator of this museum.

The emissary gaped at the many curiosities of nature found here, at the Egyptian obelisks, at the mechanical wonders that ticked and hummed, all crowned overhead by soaring domes decorated with astronomical details. The young man’s gaze caught upon a boulder of amber, lit behind by candelight, revealing the preserved body of a lizard inside.

“Don’t tarry,” Nicolas warned and drew the messenger onward.

Nicolas knew every corner of this place, every bound volume, mostly works by the master of this museum. Nicolas had spent the better part of a year here, sent by his own benefactor, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, to study the museum’s contents in order to construct his own cabinet of curiosities back at the duke’s palazzo in Florence.

At last he reached a tall oak door and pounded a fist on it.

A voice responded. “Enter.”

He hauled the door open and ushered the emissary into a small study, lit by the coals of a dying fire. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Reverend Father.”

The German messenger immediately dropped to one knee before the wide desk, bowing his head.

A long sigh rose from the figure bent amid the piles of books atop the desk. He held a quill in hand, the tip poised over a large parchment. “Come to rifle through my collection yet again, dear Nicolas? I should tell you that I’ve taken to numbering the books shelved here.”

Nicolas smiled. “I promise to return my copy of
Mundus Subterraneus
once I’ve fully refuted many of your claims found therein.”

“Is that so? I hear you’re putting the final flourishes upon your own work concerning the subterranean mysteries of rock and crystal.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Indeed. But before I present it, I would humbly welcome a similar searing analysis from one such as yourself.”

After Nicolas had arrived here a year ago, the two had spent many long nights in deep discourse concerning all manner of science, theology, and philosophy. Though Kircher was thirty-seven years his elder and deserved respect, the priest appreciated anyone willing to challenge him. In fact, upon their first meeting, the pair had argued vigorously concerning a paper Nicolas had published two years previously, declaring that glossopetrae or “tongue stones” found embedded in rocks were actually the teeth of ancient sharks. Father Kircher held a similar interest in bones and pieces of the past locked in stratified stone. They had hotly debated the origin of such mysteries. It was in such a crucible of scientific inquiry that the two had become each other’s admirers, colleagues, and most of all, friends.

Father Kircher’s gaze settled upon the emissary, still on bended knee before his overloaded desk. “And who is your companion?”

“He comes with a package from Leopold I. It would seem the emperor has remembered enough of his Jesuit education to send something of import to your doorstep. Leopold appealed to the Grand Duke to have me present this man to you with some urgency, under a cloak of dire secrecy.”

Father Kircher lowered his quill. “Intriguing.”

They both knew the current emperor had an interest in science and the natural world, instilled in him by the Jesuit scholars who had tutored the man in his youth. Emperor Leopold himself had been headed into the church until the death of his older brother to the pox placed the pious scholar on that cold northern throne.

Father Kircher waved to the messenger. “Enough of this foolish posturing, my good man. Stand and deliver what you’ve traveled so far to present.”

The emissary rose up and pulled back the cowl of his hood, revealing the face of a young man who could not be more than twenty years. From a satchel, he retrieved a thick letter, plainly sealed with the emperor’s sigil. He stepped forward and placed it upon the desk, then quickly stepped back.

Kircher glanced toward Nicolas, who merely shrugged, equally in the dark about the particulars of this matter.

Kircher retrieved a knife and slit through the seal to open the package. A small object rolled out and toppled to the desktop. It was a bone, frosted with crystalline rock. Pinching his brow, Kircher pulled out and unfolded a parchment included with the artifact. Even from steps away, Nicolas saw it was a detailed map of eastern Europe. Father Kircher studied it for a breath.

“I don’t understand the meaning of all of this,” Kircher said. “This map and this bit of old bone. They come with no letter of explanation.”

The emissary finally spoke, his Italian thickly accented. “The emperor chose me to deliver the other half of this message, words I was sworn to set to memory and reveal only to you, Reverend Father.”

“And what are those words?”

“The emperor knows of your interest in the ancient past, in those secrets buried in the bowels of the earth, and requests your aid in investigating what was revealed at the site marked on the map.”

“And what might be found there?” Nicolas asked. “More bones, such as this?”

He stepped closer and studied the ossified sliver, the crusts of whitish rock. He sensed the great antiquity of what lay upon the desk.

“Bones and much more,” the messenger concurred.

“And who do these bones belong to?” Kircher asked. “Whose grave do they mark?”

The young man answered, his words shocking. Then, before either man could respond, the messenger swiftly drew out a dagger and sliced his own throat from ear to ear. Blood poured forth as the man choked and collapsed first to his knees, then to the floor.

Nicolas rushed to the young man’s aid, cursing at such brutal necessity. It seemed those final words were meant only for Father Kircher and himself, and once dispatched, were never to be spoken again.

Father Kircher rounded his desk and dropped to a knee, taking the young man’s hand between his palms, but his question was for Nicolas. “Could it be true?”

Nicolas swallowed, dismayed by the last message spoken through those bloody lips.

The bones . . . they belong to Adam and Eve.

FIRST

BLOOD AND SHADOWS

Σ

1

April 29, 10:32
A
.
M
. CEST

Karlovac County, Croatia

We shouldn’t be here.

A trickle of superstitious dread stopped Roland Novak on a switchback of the trail. He raised his hand against the morning sun and stared at the craggy mountaintop ahead. Black clouds stacked in the distance.

According to Croatian folktales—stories he had heard as a child—during stormy nights, witches and fairies would gather atop the summit of Klek Mountain, where their screams would be heard all the way to the neighboring city of Ogulin. It was a peak haunted by tales of the unwary or the unlucky meeting horrible fates.

For centuries, such legends had kept the peak fairly unmolested. But in the past few decades that had changed when the crag’s towering cliffs drew an ever-increasing number of local rock climbers. Still, this was not why Roland and the others risked scaling the northern side of the mountain this morning.

“It’s not much farther,” Alex Wrightson promised. “Best we be in and out before the storm hits.”

The British geologist led the foursome, looking as solidly built as these peaks, though he had to be close to seventy years old. He wore khaki hiking shorts despite the chill, revealing strong, wiry legs. His snow-white hair, fuller than Roland’s own receding blond hairline, was tucked under a climbing helmet.

“That’s the third time he’s claimed that,” Lena Crandall mumbled under her breath to Roland. A fine sheen of perspiration from the hour-long climb made her cheeks glow, but she didn’t seem winded. Then again, she was in her midtwenties, and from the well-worn boots on her feet, he figured she must do a fair amount of hiking herself.

She stared at the skies, studying the towering wall of dark clouds. “Luckily I was able to get here a day early,” she said. “Once that storm breaks, these mountains will be swamped for who knows how long.”

In acknowledgment of that threat, the group set a harder pace up the unmarked trail. Lena unzipped her thermal expedition jacket and adjusted an old backpack higher on her shoulders. It bore the logo for Emory University, her alma mater in Atlanta, Georgia. Roland knew little else about this American, except that she was a geneticist who had been called away from a fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. And like Roland, she was equally in the dark about the reason behind this sudden summons by the British geologist and his partner, a French paleontologist.

As they climbed, Dr. Dayne Arnaud spoke in low whispers with Wrightson, and though Roland could not make out the paleontologist’s words, especially with the man’s thick French accent, the researcher plainly sounded irritated. So far neither of the men had shared any more details concerning the group’s destination or what they had discovered here.

Roland forced himself to be patient. He had grown up in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, but he knew all the stories surrounding this peak of the Dinaric Alps. Its summit bore an uncanny resemblance to a giant lying on its back. It was said to be the body of the giant Klek, who battled the god Volos and was turned to stone for his affront. Before being petrified, the giant swore that he would one day break free from his slumber and exact revenge upon the world.

Roland felt a flicker of superstitious unease.

Because that giant had been rumbling of late.

This region was prone to earthquakes, a fact that possibly gave rise to this legend of a slumbering giant. Then last month a strong quake registering 5.2 on the Richter scale had shaken the region, even cracking the bell tower of a medieval church in the nearby city of Ogulin.

Roland suspected that quake was tied to whatever had been discovered by the geologist and paleontologist. His suspicions proved true when the party circled past a craggy shoulder of the mountain and into a dense patch of pines. Ahead, a massive chunk of rock had broken from the cliff face and shattered into the forest, knocking down trees and smashing through the landscape, like the stomping of the mighty Klek himself.