“Ouch,” she yelled and then cursed under her breath. She leaned against the rock for balance as she inspected her foot, sure she had broken a toe. “What the…” she trailed off.
She found herself in the same spot only now it was the middle of the day. The sun was beating down on her head. Her arms were large and sinewy. She realized she was a man cutting deep marks into a large stone.
“Cassie, Cassie, are you alright?” Distant voices in her head were calling her. It was as if she was under water and somebody on the surface was shouting her name. Somebody was shaking her by the shoulder.
“Cassie! Snap out of it!” The voice grew louder and closer. It was Erik’s. His hands were clamped to her upper arms. He shook her so hard that her teeth rattled.
“What?” she asked groggily, disoriented. Gradually, she came back to the present. She was seated on the ground, gazing stupidly from one man to the other. Griffin trained his flashlight on her face. She blinked.
“Get that thing out of my eyes, will you?” She turned to Erik and winced. “And as for you, ouch! Let go of my arms. You’re hurting me.”
Erik exhaled deeply. She almost imagined it sounded like a sigh of relief. “She’s OK,” he said tersely, standing up. Then recovering himself, he demanded, “What the hell was that all about?”
She was back now. The realization of what had happened hit her, and she leaped to her feet wincing slightly. Her toe still throbbed. She was beginning to understand exactly what it was all about.
“Guys!” she exclaimed urgently. “I think it’s here! You need to look here!” She pointed in the dark toward the massive block of stone behind her.
Both men simultaneously trained their flashlights on the rock.
“Good goddess!” Griffin exclaimed.
Chapter 37 – Decoding the Past
Griffin fell to his knees in front of the boulder, his fingers tracing the lily pattern on its face. The stone was four feet high, rounded in the back, but the front half had been polished flat to allow an inscription to be carved on it.
Erik kept his flashlight focused on the rock, so Griffin could try to decipher the message. “I don’t believe it,” he said incredulously. “Between the two of you, you actually managed to find it.”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.” Cassie’s tone was less hostile than it might have been. The fact that Erik was paying them any kind of compliment, even a backhanded one, was a welcome change from his usual attitude. She sat on the ground at the base of the stone holding her flashlight over the photos of the key markings, comparing the symbols to the carving.
“Yes, this is definitely it!” Griffin could barely contain his excitement at the find. “The lily above the inscription is an exact match to the ones on the key. It’s a coded way of saying, ‘To find The Bones of the Mother.’ His hand traced another line etched a foot below the lily. “And here we have a line of symbols that I ought to be able to translate in a few moments.”
The scrivener sat on the ground in front of the boulder and drew a small notebook and pencil out of his jacket pocket. From another pocket, he drew a thick stack of folded pages. “This will take a bit. I have to compare the symbols on the boulder to the ones on the key, translate those to Linear B, then translate the Linear B text to modern Greek, and then to English. Cassie, if you wouldn’t mind training your torch on these pages while I write.” He began scratching on the pad and referring to his various reference sources. For several minutes he seemed to be conducting a monologue with himself. “No, that’s not it. The syntax is wrong. Let’s try it this way. Ah, that’s better. Now we’re making progress.”
Cassie thought about taking a nap, flashlight in hand, while he nattered on, but then he snapped his notebook shut decisively. “Right, that’s it then.”
“You got it?” Cassie asked, instantly alert.
“Yes,” he replied somewhat guardedly.
Noting his tone, Erik asked, “What is it?”
“Well, the good news is that now we know how many relics there are. The bad news is that they aren’t hidden together.”
“Why don’t you just tell us what the line says?” Cassie urged.
Griffin sighed. “It reads: ‘You will find the first of five you seek.’”
“Five,” Erik echoed. “I guess this isn’t gonna be a slam dunk after all.”
“They could be hidden anywhere.” Cassie felt dismayed. “Scattered halfway across the planet for all we know.”
“Not to worry,” Griffin said reassuringly. “We have more code to translate. Hopefully, the next set of characters will give us the location of the first relic at least.” He ran his hand over a second line of symbols carved several inches below the first.
It took several more minutes of page-shuffling and note-scratching before Griffin glanced up, scowling slightly.
“That is not a happy face,” Erik observed.
“Admittedly this line is a bit obscure,” Griffin hedged. “It reads: ‘When the soul of the lady rises with the sun.’”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” the security coordinator challenged irritably.
Griffin shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. It may be a metaphor. It may be a reference to a point in time. In either case, this will take additional research to sort out.”
Cassie slumped forward and rubbed her forehead. “Guess we aren’t going to be able to scamper off and collect those bones tomorrow, are we?”
“Don’t give way.” Griffin tried to sound comforting. “There’s bound to be something less abstract in the next line.” His fingers traced some additional markings carved in the middle of the stone. “Oh dear,” he said in dismay.
Erik pointed his flashlight on the spot. Directly below the first two
