Empire of Gold

‘What causes that glow?’ Barley asked, stepping closer.

‘It’s a phenomenon called earth energy,’ said Nina, ‘but as for exactly how it works, I can’t tell you. Not because it’s classified – although it is – but because I genuinely don’t understand it myself. I’m not a physicist. All I know are its effects.’

‘Which are . . . ?’

‘Classified.’

Barley sighed. ‘I suspected as much.’

Nina placed the first statue on the block, then took the other from the case. It too reacted in the same way to her touch, filling the chamber with an unnatural light. But she noticed something as she put the second figure down beside the first: the effect was not uniform.

Macy saw it too. ‘It’s brighter on the side facing the other one – like it’s responding to it.’

Nina picked up the second statuette again and slowly moved it in a circle round the first. There was indeed a somewhat stronger band of light on one side of the figure, which changed position as the stone was moved, so that it always shone in the direction of the statue’s near-twin. ‘Like holding a magnet to a compass,’ Barley mused.

‘There’s a compass in the case,’ Nina said. ‘Macy, get it out; we’ll see if it’s some kind of magnetic effect.’

It wasn’t, the needle unmoving. Nina picked up both statues experimentally, wondering if each would show a bright band when they were aglow. They did, pointing towards each other no matter the figures’ relative positions. Whatever caused the earth energy effect, whoever made the two statuettes had found a practical use for it – if somebody who could utilise the phenomenon had one statue in their possession, they could use it to find the other.

But there was something else – another, barely discernible line of increased illumination on each. Whatever this pointed towards, it was unmoving. Still holding the statues, she walked back and forth across the chamber in the hope of spotting a parallax effect. None was evident. The cause was apparently some distance away.

‘What if it’s the third statue?’ Macy suggested.

‘There’s another one?’ Barley asked.

‘Yes – they fit together.’ Nina returned to the block and slotted the statues together, arms interlocking. This time, there was a change: the two lines merged into one, much brighter, still pointing in the direction of the fainter bands she had seen moments before.

She turned the linked figures. The glow remained stationary, the band of light rippling over the crude carved features as she rotated them. It was a pointer. One that led to the missing third of the triptych.

But what was the statues’ purpose, and who had created them?

Nina let go, the illumination instantly vanishing. Macy tapped at the figurines, but nothing happened. Barley warily followed suit, with the same lack of result. ‘It’s only you, Dr Wilde,’ he said.

‘Must be my electrifying personality.’ Silence. ‘Oh come on, that was funny.’

‘Mm,’ said Macy, not quite a ringing endorsement. ‘Touch it again – I want to check something.’ Nina brought her hand back to the statues and the strange light returned. Macy held the compass above the glowing figures, taking a bearing. ‘So it’s pointing . . . just about exactly southwest. If there really is a third statue, it’s somewhere that way.’

‘Southwest . . . ’ Nina echoed. She turned to Barley. ‘Do you have a globe?’

The Tor’s Arthurian archaeological team did not in fact have a globe of the world to hand, but they had the next best thing; a virtual equivalent on Barley’s computer. ‘Are you sure you want to rule out any potential sites in the UK?’ he asked in response to Nina’s request for him to zoom out. ‘Dartmoor alone has over eight hundred Neolithic and Bronze Age sites, and that’s southwest of here.’

‘I have a hunch that we’re looking for something more far-flung,’ she said. ‘The first statue was found on another continent - in a chamber that was sealed centuries before the start of the European Bronze Age.’

The image on the screen pulled back more and more, until the Earth’s curvature appeared at the edges of the screen. Nina followed a line running diagonally down and to the left from Glastonbury, at the map’s centre. Though it passed close to the Azores, out in the Atlantic, it didn’t touch land until it reached South America, visible only as a line of green along the very edge of the visible hemisphere. ‘Can you switch it to a cartographic view?’

Barley fussed with the controls. The image changed, continents distorting as they morphed from a three- dimensional representation to a flat one. The line now made landfall near the great delta of the Orinoco river, on the continent’s northern coast. ‘Venezuela?’ said Macy.

‘And Colombia. And Brazil, and Peru,’ Nina added, following the line southwest through more countries until it reached the Pacific.

‘Rather a lot of ground to cover,’ said Barley. ‘And I think you’ll find Dartmoor a lot easier to reach!’

‘The best sites are always in the worst places . . . ’ She regarded the map. South America: home to numerous ancient civilisations. Could one have possessed the third statue? It was possible. But which – and why?

She thanked Barley, gently reminding him of the need for discretion, and headed back to the Range Rover with Macy. ‘So what now?’ Macy asked.

‘I don’t know. Like Dr Barley said, there’s a lot of ground to cover. And we don’t have a distance, only a direction.’

There was one thing she was sure of, though. Ancient artefacts that could conduct earth energy definitely fell within the IHA’s remit. If there was a third statue somewhere in South America, it was up to her to find it.

Before anyone else did.

Eddie put a pint of beer and a whisky on the table. ‘There you go.’