“Distillation,” he said. “Dissolving the ego and increasing purity. Releasing the lunar energies, and… okay, your eyes are glazing over. What does it say to do there?”
“This is where the scroll starts to really break down. There’s a big section damaged here, but it looks like it says to reflect a light onto the serpent’s head.”
“Reflect? Like, with a mirror?”
“Probably, although I wonder if a flashlight would do.” She scratched her chin. “I guess the point is to illuminate the serpent with a connection, linking it to yourself.”
“See? You are getting this stuff.”
Phoebe grinned. “I try. Okay, now here’s where you’re going to kill me. The description of the seventh, the Sulfur or Gold puzzle.. ”
“Yes?” Caleb visualized the steps in sequence, putting together the path to completing the cycle.
“It’s gone.” She sighed. “I mean, there’s nothing legible, other than the word for gold.” She bit on one edge of her pigtail. “I’m sorry. I can work at resolving the image some more, but…”
Caleb slumped forward. “Despite that, Phoebe, great job. Amazing. We’re almost there. But as much as I want to continue this, please look something up for me-if you’re connected to the Web.”
“Of course I am.” She gave him a dirty look. “I’m a cripple, remember? I don’t get to go out much. I belong to some chat rooms where everyone thinks I’m this professional tennis player. It’s great.”
“I’m sure it is.” Caleb leaned forward. “Look up the name ‘Metreisse,’ and put in the date 1587.”
“Okay. Spell it.”
“I don’t know. Yahoo it.”
She tapped some keys. “Alright… there it is, first try.” She looked a little closer. “The first hit is from a book by an English historian. Let’s see… ‘Henri Metreisse was an alchemist in the court of Queen Elizabeth the First.’… Never successful, of course, in turning anything to gold,… but it says here he counseled the queen to victory over the Scots in several great battles. Oh, get this. He claimed to have clairvoyance, and could.. He could see into the enemy’s palaces, even overhear their battle plans!” She stared at Caleb. “A remote viewer!”
Caleb scratched his chin and fought the onset of chills. He’d have to find that sweatshirt. “What else? What about 1587?”
She scrolled down and then followed a link. “It says he was known to have convened with fellow alchemists. They met at Stonehenge during every Spring Equinox, but after the meeting in 1587, he never returned.”
She reached into her bag for a can of Coke. “Want one?”
“Nope.”
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” Phoebe took a sip. “What happened out there?”
Sighing, Caleb looked up. “Nolan Gregory was spying on us. Spying on me… again.”
“But, I thought Waxman checked us out for listening devices.”
“Wouldn’t matter,” Caleb said. “Gregory was following me. He knew everything I was doing, especially anything connected to the Pharos.”
Phoebe sat quietly, pensive. “Did you kill him?”
“What? No. He ran into traffic…”
Phoebe nodded. “So what’s this about 1587?”
“As Gregory died he told me I was important to them because of something called the ‘Split.’ Something that happened to the Keepers in 1587.”
Phoebe tapped her fingers. “Dissension in the ranks? Keepers against Keepers? Maybe that’s why he and Lydia wanted the treasure so badly. They have competition.”
“Maybe,” Caleb said, his eyes swimming out of focus, as if his vision were being pulled in another direction. “But there’s only one way to be sure.”
“You mean…?”
“I mean, get out your pencils and paper.”
Phoebe clapped her hands. “It’ll be like old times!” She grinned. “Except now you’re not such a dork.”
They dimmed the lights. Caleb changed into the dry sweatshirt and pulled up a chair beside hers. They decided against a formal trance. This one would just be free-form. Experience the visions and share with each other what they’d seen.
“Ready, big brother?”
“Yeah.” He took her hands. “Actually, no. Not yet. First tell me something. What did you see that time when I was in college? You told me about the girl with the green eyes.”
She pulled her hand away. “Oh that. I was hoping you’d forgotten. Well, I liked to try to look in on you now and then. Not that I was snooping, I just missed you. But for a stretch of a couple weeks, every time I tried it was always the same: I saw you being pushed underwater and held there by this girl with green eyes. The weird thing was, though, she was weeping while she did it.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. I don’t know what it means, but I kept hearing a baby crying. Wailing actually. The whole time while she was drowning you.”
“A baby?”
“Yeah. Like I said, weird.” She gave a wistful smile. “Probably I was getting your visions mixed up with my dreams.”
He reached for her. “Oh, sis, I’m so-”
“I know.” She sniffed, then pushed Caleb away. “So anyway, are we going to do this? Because if we are, you should prepare to get outmatched by your baby sister again.”
Later, Phoebe would say she hadn’t seen anything. Only a confused jumble of scenery, with no people. A land of hills, forests and rivers. And rain, lots of rain. She lingered too long in the setting, and when Caleb shook her, after what had seemed like hours, it was over.
Caleb’s vision began at once, as if it had been waiting there, expecting him to join…
… eighteen men and two women standing under the stars in a clearing, surrounded by a stone circle made of immense blocks. They are all wearing gray robes with planets and stars stitched onto the black fabric. Seven torches burn in a straight line toward a smaller stone to the northeast, upon which a large burning brazier sends its smoke into the air. Overhead, the moonless night is clear, the stars bold and close, peering down through the terrestrial curtain to watch the spectacle.
One of the elders steps forward. He is a white-bearded, hunched-over man, but with a surprising vigor about him. “We are here to discuss how to handle Metreisse. I had hoped he would honor tradition and come to our gathering, but it seems he has fled.”
“Kill him,” says one in the back of the crowd.
“Find him first,” says a woman leaning on a twisted staff entwined with ivy. “Find him and see if he’s the one.”
“We know he’s the one,” says the first speaker. “Who else could have learned the way past the traps?”
“Are we sure someone did?”
“Yes. Our watchmen reported seeing a cloaked figure enter the ruins of the Pharos last month during the lunar eclipse. This intruder was underneath the structure for many hours. When he emerged, my spies say he sought them out, called them from their hiding places, then gave them something to tell us. ‘Tell your masters that I have found the final Key,’ he said. ‘And I will hide it for all time, as long as your interests diverge from our original purpose. I have not entered the vault, and no one else shall until it is time.’”
“How dare he?” someone in the front mutters.
“He dares,” says the other female, “because he believes he follows the will of Sostratus.”
“Sostratus lied,” a new voice speaks up. “We all know this. Once, Sostratus did the world a favor and protected the great works from the centuries of coming darkness. But he did not intend us to wait this long!”
“And wait for what?” asks the first female.
“It is decided, then.” The elder steps into the center of the circle and raises his arms. “We are to seek him out. As long as it takes. Seek, and retrieve this key, whatever it is. Determine how to use it.”
“Do we have any idea where he went?”
“Only that he sailed east into the Mediterranean aboard a galley.”
“Then that is where we shall start.”
