Daniel wandered around the cemetery, trying to find the right crypt. He remembered Hunt forcing the three strangers to climb inside the tomb. The ramp that led down to it had been choked with rock. Only the top half of the entrance had been open, and that was later buried completely by the earthquake that struck so unexpectedly. He remembered Hunt’s joke following the quake that Mother Nature had finished the job of killing the trio for him. At the time, Daniel had been appalled by Hunt’s callous behavior, but in retrospect he was more appalled by his own. He was the one who had stood by and allowed it to happen. Allowed three innocent people to be buried alive. It must have been a terrible way to die. He suppressed a shudder.
He skirted another tholos. Something about it looked familiar. He paused and walked back to the dromos—the ramp that led to the door of the underground crypt. It was filled with rock. The entrance was entirely blocked. He thought this might be the right one. How different everything looked in daylight. The spot itself was serene. His thoughts, unfortunately, were not.
Daniel directed a sidelong glance down the hill. Hunt was still dozing. How could he sleep so easily here, within fifty yards of the place where he had tried to commit murder? How could the man sleep at all given the things he had done in his life? No doubt, to a mercenary, it was all in the line of duty.
The scion felt a twinge as his own conscience reminded him what he, himself, had done in the line of duty. He was still carrying out his father’s orders. Still engaged in this relic hunt which was tainted with the blood of at least four people—possibly more. Daniel distracted himself from going further down that road. He circled the tomb. The dome was intact. All the others surrounding this one had begun to crumble, leaving gaps open to the sky. He was sure the tomb he was looking for had been sealed. He walked back to the front again. There it was. The upright boulder with the strange markings. A lily carved at the top followed by two lines of pictograms and a niche in the middle of the stone.
He sat down on the grass in front of the stele and unpacked the computer he had brought with him. Unlike the British man who had done the translating on that terrible night, he was not going to rely on books. Daniel had learned a great deal about computers since he began this project for his father. David, the librarian who taught him, said he was a natural at it. The scion carefully fed the pictograms into a translation program. It took a few moments for him to copy them all. Now he would see for himself what sort of clues they provided. The translation came back in a matter of seconds: “You will find the first of five you seek when the soul of the lady rises with the sun.”
Daniel frowned in perplexity. The message was identical to what the British man had decrypted. Perhaps the third line would be different. He reached into his computer case and drew out the granite key. Once he fitted it correctly into the niche in the stele, another line of pictograms was revealed. He copied these into his software and hit the command button. The result gave him no consolation. The output read, “At the home of the Mountain Mother.”
He sat back on his heels to consider. The results were identical in every particular to the information he already possessed. “You will find the first of five you seek, when the soul of the lady rises with the sun, at the home of the Mountain Mother.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes. They were very tired from trying to see around corners. He blinked a few times and then something caught his attention. He stared at the base of the stele. It was almost imperceptible, but there was a tiny gap between the stone that rested at the bottom of the boulder and the standing rock itself. Almost as if it had been moved recently. He couldn’t be sure if the ground around the stone had been disturbed or not. There had been too many people moving about that night and yet…
He crawled toward the stele on all fours. Keeping his face low to the ground, he examined the edges of the flat stone that rested in front of it. The seam of dirt that should have been piled up against the stele was missing. Someone had indeed moved this rock. Daniel began to formulate a theory.
He jumped up eagerly and circled the perimeter of the tomb again, searching. He shifted his attention briefly toward Hunt to make sure he was still sleeping. Halfway around the back of the dome, he thought he saw something. Crouching down he examined some cracks in the structure. Missing mortar. Rocks that might have been fitted back into place. His heart felt lighter than it had for months. A loose pile of brush had been stacked against the dome around this spot. Why? How did it get here? He began to smile to himself. They were alive. Somehow, they had managed to escape.
The smile froze on his lips as a far more disturbing thought occurred to him. If they had moved the flat stone in front of the stele after their escape, that meant they were still hunting for the relics too. In all likelihood, they were several steps ahead of him by now.
He raced back to the front of the tomb. “Mr. Hunt!” he shouted.
Leroy snorted and sat up.
