Daniel was already thinking of the next clue. “What do you make of the goat grazing the spinner’s peak?”
“What?” The librarian blinked, shaking himself out of his reverie. “Oh, right. Spinner’s peak,” he repeated and paused to concentrate. “The place where you found your artifact. Was it in the mountains?”
“Yes, it was.” Daniel could barely contain his elation. “We found the relic in a cave on a mountain called Anboto.”
“Anboto, Anboto,” Chris chanted as he typed the word into his search engine. Quickly scanning the results, he exclaimed, “Gotcha!”
“What? What did you get?” Daniel craned his neck to see the text displayed onscreen.
“Spinner’s peak. It’s a mythological reference to a goddess named Mari.”
“That’s right,” the scion agreed. “The Basques considered Anboto her sacred mountain but what does that have to do with spinning?”
Chris sighed. “If you’d done a search on her name, you would have found out that this particular goddess was said to sit at the entrance to her cave and spin golden thread.”
“So, the Minoans were also using mythology to leave clues,” the scion observed in surprise. The thought had never occurred to him before.
“Apparently,” Chris agreed.
“Now what about the grazing goat?” Daniel pressed on. “I know there are sheep that graze that mountainside.”
The librarian laughed. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t mean a live animal since this riddle was set down three thousand years ago.”
“Of course, you’re right,” Daniel admitted self-consciously.
Chris rubbed his chin in contemplation. “Maybe we’re back to the stars again. I wonder...” He trailed off and began typing.
When the search results popped up, Daniel read the screen. “Capella?”
“Very tricky,” Chris said appreciatively. “Now they’re combining mythology with celestial navigation. This particular goat star called Capella might have been positioned right around the summit of Anboto at a certain time of the year. I’m pretty sure the clue about the bull turning the season is some kind of springtime reference.”
“Why would the time of year matter?” Daniel asked.
The librarian shrugged. “I don’t know. Did any of your earlier clues depend on the time of year?”
Daniel hung his head. “Perhaps. I probably missed the reference entirely.”
“My guess is that it has something to do with where the sun rises. Maybe at the time Capella was positioned over Anboto in the spring, the rising sun might have hit the cave directly and pointed it out to you. Or maybe the star itself was close to the entrance of the cave.”
“There was so much I didn’t understand about these riddles,” the scion confessed. “It’s a miracle I found my way to the right place at all.”
Chris rubbed his friend’s shoulder. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Now you know better. The next riddle will be a snap for you to solve.”
Daniel took comfort from his words and even more comfort from the soft pressure of Chris’s hand on his back.
The scion gazed at the librarian with wonder and admiration. “You’re amazing.”
Chris gave an arch smile. “I’ve been told that any number of times but for a completely different reason.”
Daniel was puzzled.
Seeing his confusion, Chris added, “It’s always nice to hear, no matter what the context.”
The scion returned his smile. Their eyes met for a few seconds. Flustered by how his pulse had quickened, Daniel looked away and changed the subject. “It seems to me the Minoans were using a consistent symbolic system that carries through all the riddles.”
Chris nodded in agreement. “Right. You can expect some of their clues will refer to the physical location of stars for navigational purposes and some of their clues will refer to the mythology of stars.”
“They also like ancient megaliths,” Daniel added as an afterthought.
Chris did a double-take. “Really? Why didn’t you mention that before? It’s incredibly important!”
“I... I’m sorry,” Daniel stammered. “I didn’t have a good grasp of what mattered and what didn’t. The first artifact was found hidden in the middle of a stone circle in Turkey.”
“A stone circle,” Chris echoed, his thoughts obviously churning with new possibilities.
“And I think the next riddle may have something to do with megaliths as well,” Daniel offered.
“Let’s have it,” Chris prompted.
“It’s much shorter than the earlier riddles. Only two lines. It was written on this.” Daniel reached into his portfolio and drew out a photo of the lapis dove.
Chris bent over the picture with avid interest. “This is amazing. What was the riddle?”
Daniel repeated the verse from memory. “‘One dove flies to wake the helmsman. The course he sets reveals his fate.’”
Chris stared at the photo in silence for almost a minute. “It sounds to me as if the reference to a single dove is another latitudinal marker.”
“Yes, I see,” Daniel agreed with rising hope. The gibberish of the riddles was finally making sense to him. “So, we would measure the distance from the dove’s beak to its tail one time.”
“No, we wouldn’t,” Chris corrected him.
Daniel shot him a puzzled glance.
The librarian picked up the photo and held it before his friend’s face. “The dove isn’t flying north. If it’s flying to wake somebody, that means it’s headed east.” He turned the picture sideways, so the dove’s beak pointed to the right. “We measure from wing tip to wing tip.” He frowned as a thought occurred to him. “What’s the actual dimension of this bird?”
Daniel had written down the measurements, and they calculated the wingspan.
“And how many inches would four bees have been?”
Daniel did a quick calculation and told him.
“That would mean the latitude of one bird is about half of four bees,” Chris murmured. He turned back to his computer and typed in a handful of characters. After consulting the search results, he said, “The latitude of Anboto, Spain is roughly 43 degrees north. I expect you’re looking for something half that distance from the equator. Probably between 21 and 23 degrees north latitude.”
“And east of Spain,” Daniel added helpfully.
“Right.” Chris had pulled up a map of Africa. He pointed to a region cutting across the northern quarter of
