At that moment, Maddie walked back into the conference room. Her clothes reeked of cigarette smoke, but she appeared to be in a much pleasanter mood than when she’d left. “That’s better,” she announced taking her seat on the couch and immediately helping herself to the deli platter.
Faye looked around at her team benevolently. “All’s well that ends well,” she observed.
“All isn’t ended yet,” Maddie said, crunching into a dill pickle. “What about the artifact?”
“Right you are!” Griffin wiped his hands on a napkin and reached into his duffle bag. He dug around until he located a small box. “Here it is.” He held it out to Faye.
The old woman opened the lid and removed the tissue that surrounded the object. “Oh, my!” she exclaimed. “What exquisite craftsmanship.”
She held the golden bee in the palm of her hand. It measured about three inches in length. The bee’s wings were outstretched as if in flight. The entire surface of the wings was covered with the peculiar markings which had become all too familiar to the Arkana team.
“It was quite a feat to duplicate something this intricate on such short notice,” Griffin commented. “We’re indebted to the Anatolian goldsmiths who helped us out.”
“I’ll be sure to express your appreciation to Aydin,” Faye remarked.
“Let me see.” Maddie held out her hand, and Faye passed the object to her. She flipped the bee over and traced the hieroglyphs that covered the underside of the wings. She handed the piece back to Griffin. “Did you get a chance to translate what these symbols mean yet?”
The Brit sighed. “Translate, yes. Understand, no.”
“He told us what the message says,” Cassie offered.
“But it’s all Minoan to us.” Erik completed the thought.
“More tea?” Faye held out the pot, but everyone shook their heads now that a pitcher of cola had been brought up from the cafeteria. The old woman filled her own teacup and resettled herself. “Perhaps Maddie and I can help decipher the message. Just tell us what it says, dear.”
Griffin set the bee on the table and reached back into his bag for a tablet. He flipped through several pages of field notes before he came to the right section. “Ah yes, here it is. I must say, this seems even more cryptic than our last riddle was.”
The group waited in silence for him to begin.
“The first line reads: Let Eurus fill the sails twelve days, then follow Eberos where it climbs to the sky.”
“I don’t know about the Eurus or Eberos business, but the word ‘sails’ has to mean twelve days by boat to somewhere,” the operations director speculated as she popped a handful of olives into her mouth.
“Twelve days’ worth of sea travel to anywhere leads me to believe the relic won’t be in Crete or Turkey,” the scrivener said.
“I agree,” Faye concurred. “You’ll be traveling farther afield on your next expedition.”
“Yeah, but they couldn’t have gone that far,” Cassie objected. “Everybody thought the world was flat so they all stayed close to home, didn’t they?”
The old woman smiled knowingly. “The ancients were far more sophisticated in their navigation techniques and in their understanding of the world that our current history books would lead you to believe.”
“Ooops.” Cassie grinned sheepishly. “You can chalk that comment up to my overlord education.”
Faye nodded and then directed her attention to Griffin. “What’s next, dear?”
The scrivener consulted his notes. “Set your course three bees from the dragon's wing to the sea.”
The memory guardian frowned in perplexity. “Are you sure you translated that correctly?”
“I’m afraid so. I checked it several times. I confess I’m as mystified as you are. It’s some sort of nautical reference. That’s all I can determine at this point.”
Cassie reached across the table for the pitcher of soda and poured herself a refill. “We also figured the bee has something to do with it.”
“She means that the bee is supposed to be used as some kind of yardstick for us to measure with,” Erik expanded helpfully.
“How interesting,” Faye murmured half to herself. “So even if one had the text of this clue, without the artifact itself, it would be impossible to determine the location of the next relic.”
“Wish we’d realized that in time,” Cassie said ruefully. “We might have made the fake relic half an inch shorter. Could have thrown the Nephilim off for a while.”
“I don’t think it’s going to matter much,” Maddie observed. “If you guys are having a tough time understanding it, I don’t think they’ll figure it out any quicker.”
“I’ll just keep reading, shall I?” Griffin flipped a page in his notebook. “When the bull turns the season, mark where the goat grazes the spinner’s peak.”
They all looked at one another blankly.
“Huh,” Maddie grunted. “Sounds like complete gibberish to me.”
“Is there any more?” Faye asked.
“One more line: There lies the second of five you seek.”
“We figured that one out.” Cassie laughed.
“Yeah, that was a freebie,” Maddie murmured.
“Why don’t you read the entire message back to us now,” Faye suggested.
The scrivener obliged. “Let Eurus fill the sails twelve days, then follow Eberos where it climbs to the sky. Set your course three bees from the dragon’s wing to the sea. When the bull turns the season, mark where the goat grazes the spinner’s peak. There lies the second of five you seek.”
“That sure is a mouthful.” Cassie scowled as she considered the diminutive bee. “How the heck did they fit all those words on the wings?”
“My translation is somewhat liberal,” Griffin admitted. “I attempted to turn the message into something coherent and, to whatever extent, poetical. In its original form, it reads more like Morse Code or semaphore.”
Cassie regarded him skeptically. “You sure you didn’t lose anything along the way?”
“Oh no, the gist of what I recited is faithful to the original symbols.”
“Well if that’s true,” she remarked bleakly, “then we’ve got a ton of work ahead of us to figure this out. And I was hoping for
