The Sacred Vault

killed either.’

‘But he would be all right if—’

‘You didn’t,’ he repeated, more forcefully. ‘Okay? And they arrested the guy who did. They’ve got him. He did it, not you. Don’t blame yourself for it. That’s what I did with Mitzi, and . . . well, you remember. Things went bad for a while. I don’t want you to have to go through the same thing that I did.’

‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘And . . . and I know I should talk to his father, tell him what happened, but . . . I can’t face it. The hospital told him, he knows that Rowan’s dead, but . . .’ Tears rolled down her cheeks, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘What if he blames me? If I think it’s my fault, what if he does too?’

Eddie held her more closely as she buried her face against his shoulder. ‘Hey, hey,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘He won’t blame you, because you didn’t do anything wrong.’

‘I . . . You’re right, I know. I know that, in my head. But I don’t feel that.’

‘It’s tough, I know. Believe me, I bloody know that! But you’ll get through it, and you’ll stop blaming yourself. I know that too. Look, you don’t have to do anything right now. You should go home.’

Nina lifted her head and wiped her eyes again. ‘No . . . no, I’d rather keep working. An Interpol officer’s coming in to see me later. If I can figure out why the raiders wanted to take the Codex rather than anything else, it might help them find out who was behind the robbery - and the thefts of all those other treasures.’ She sat upright, taking a long breath as she forced herself back into a businesslike mindset. ‘I’ll be okay.’

‘You sure?’

A half-hearted smile. ‘As much as I can be.’

‘That’s my girl.’ Eddie kissed her, then stood and stepped back to regard the contents of her desk. ‘So what have you worked out so far? Sussed it all out yet?’

‘Not yet,’ she sighed. ‘Maybe I should have taken that guy Khoil up on his offer to translate it.’

‘So what have you got?’

‘Mostly that as an explorer, Talonor’s a name that should be up there with Columbus and Cook and Marco Polo. The Codex only covers one of his expeditions, but we know that he visited South America as well - he discovered the site that would become the Atlantean settlement we found there. There might have been other expeditions, too; we just haven’t found his accounts yet.’

Eddie flicked through a few pages. ‘Is the translation accurate?’

‘As far as we know. Why?’

‘Just that I recognise the way it’s written. It’s like a military report, a tactical assessment - just the facts, ma’am. When he reaches somewhere, all he says about it is how many men old enough to fight live there, what the landscape’s like and where the high ground is, that kind of stuff. This Talonor bloke wasn’t an explorer - he was a scout.’

‘The Atlanteans were conquerors,’ Nina reminded him. ‘I suppose knowing a potential target’s strength was more important than their cultural heritage.’ She remembered something, and searched through the papers. ‘Although . . . here. He took more of an interest than usual in one group of people.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Some Hindu priests. He met them in the Himalayas when he was travelling up the Ganges. Afterwards, he carried on about a hundred miles northeast into Tibet and discovered the Golden Peak - the other major Atlantean site.’

‘Yeah, we had a lot of fun there, didn’t we?’ said Eddie, with a hint of sarcasm. ‘So what about these priests? Were there Hindus around that long ago?’

‘Hinduism’s been around for a long time - much longer than any of the Abrahamic religions. Even before we found the Codex and confirmed from this’ - she opened the Codex to the pages that had been on display in San Francisco and indicated the section of Vedic Sanskrit text - ‘that the ancient Hindus were contemporaries of the Atlanteans, there was evidence that the religion existed at least as far back as three thousand BC. And the epic Hindu texts described a civilisation that went back even farther.’

‘They weren’t talking about the Veteres, were they?’

‘I don’t know.’ Nina gave him a slightly pained look at the mention of the long-dead race she had unearthed a year earlier. ‘But let’s not go shouting about the possibility, huh? We already had fanatics from three religions trying to kill us over it - I don’t want to add a fourth.’

‘I’ll keep it to myself,’ he assured her. ‘What did Talonor say about ’em, then?’

Nina read from the translation. ‘It says, “We were guided away from the river at latitude one north” - that’s using the Atlantean scale, obviously - “to a great temple. Though the inhabitants were not hostile, they were well prepared to defend their holy mountain . . .” He goes on about how hard it would be to mount an assault because of the terrain, so you were right - it’s a tactical report. Anyway, “The priest granted me the honour of entrance, where he showed me an image of their god - whom I recognised as the great Poseidon from the trident he held, though these men know him by a different name.” Then he wonders if these people are cousins of the Atlanteans with a common mythology - which is actually an interesting theory. I might have to look into that . . .’ She tailed off, musing over the idea.

Eddie whistled sharply and tapped the Codex. ‘One thing at a time, love.’

‘Right, sorry. Where was I? “The priest was intrigued by my thoughts. He told me the knowledge of Poseidon might contain an answer, but because the texts were kept elsewhere for protection, I would have to wait to see them. When I asked how long, the priest said it would take one day for his acolytes to reach the sacred vault, but only one hour to return. When I asked how this was possible, he smiled and told me Poseidon had many secrets.” ’

‘What, did they teleport or something?’

‘No idea.’ Nina flicked through the translation. ‘But yeah, Talonor decided to stay, and a day later they came back with some stone tablets - which were written in Vedic Sanskrit.’ She indicated the text inscribed on the orichalcum sheet. ‘This section here is a copy of part of Poseidon’s knowledge . . . wait a minute!’ She snapped her fingers as disparate elements suddenly meshed together perfectly in her mind. ‘I’m a dumbass. Why didn’t I realise it before? It’s not Poseidon at all. It’s Shiva. He’s often depicted using a trident as a weapon.’

‘Shiva?’ Eddie asked.

‘One of the Hindu gods.’

‘I know that. I meant, which one? What’s his gig?’

‘Oh, nothing much,’ said Nina. ‘Just the Destroyer of Worlds.’

He frowned. ‘So he’s a bad guy?’

‘No, not at all. Hinduism’s based around the idea of cycles, everything going through a never-ending process of birth, life, death, rebirth - even the entire universe. Shiva’s the god who ends each cycle through an act of destruction . . . but by doing that, he enables the next cycle to be created. He’s one of the most important figures in Hindu mythology. We translated it as Poseidon because Talonor was imposing his own beliefs on another culture - typical Atlantean arrogance. So when he described the priest talking about the knowledge of Poseidon, what he really meant was the knowledge of Shiva. And in Vedic Sanskrit, the word for knowledge is veda - but veda has another meaning. The Vedas are some of the oldest Hindu sacred texts, dating back to at least fifteen hundred BC - but these . . . Shiva-Vedas would be much older. And they were kept in this vault . . . the Vault of Shiva.’

Eddie turned to the next page of the Codex, on which was scribed more Vedic Sanskrit text, before it reverted to the Atlantean language. ‘What does the rest of this say?’

Nina checked another sheet. ‘It’s mostly about the cycles of existence. Destruction and creation. Talonor must have liked the idea.’ She went back to the transcript of the Atlantean text. ‘The priest also showed him the key to the Vault of Shiva - which is this thing, right here.’ Closing the Codex, she indicated the impression in the orichalcum cover.

Eddie looked closely at the indentation. The width of a spread hand, it had at its centre an ornate relief of a man’s face, lips curled in an enigmatic smile. Five smaller faces encircled him, all female. ‘The priests must’ve been pretty trusting to let him stamp a copy of their key. What if he’d decided to rob the place?’

‘According to the text, they said that even if he found the vault, he’d never get in, because “only those who know the love of Shiva” can use the key,’ Nina told him. ‘They seemed very sure of that.’