Chapter 2 – Pointed Questions
Stefan Kasprzyk knelt on the edge of a man-made crater in the earth and stared at a small object in his hand. He couldn’t understand what it was doing here. There were times, he thought irritably when he wondered what he, himself, was doing here. Stefan was supervising the excavation of a Kurgan burial mound in Kazakhstan, a country that had the distinction of being one of the most godforsaken places on earth. It was situated right in the middle of the Eurasian steppes. His team might as well be digging on the bright side of the moon. The landscape was barren and treeless as far as the eye could see. A monotonous series of low hills that dipped and rolled off into infinity. No shelter from the cold or the heat. It was summer, and the temperature was nearly one hundred degrees. He pulled his hat brim lower to shield his eyes from the sun. The excavation into the hillside had liberated a quantity of sand which the unremitting wind was blowing directly into his face.
He dusted himself off and walked over to examine the portion of the grave that had been unearthed so far. The skeleton it contained was a chieftain of some sort. His remains showed signs of trauma. A gaping hole in the skull suggested he hadn’t died peacefully in his sleep. An occupational hazard, Stefan thought grimly, for those who lived by the sword.
He shifted his attention to another part of the grave. Prominent Kurgan chieftains never died alone. Their burial rites demanded the death of others. A female body posed in a crouched position to his left suggested this was his wife. Quite possibly a bride captured from a neighboring tribe who didn’t care for her role in the funeral ceremonies. Her leg bones had been broken to keep her from running away, and her throat had been cut prior to interment. Her function was to serve her lord in the afterlife. Slavery in this life meant slavery in the next.
Stefan removed his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He fanned his face with the brim for a moment before kneeling down to continue his inspection of the grave goods. They were, for the most part, exactly what he expected to see. Items emphasizing the martial nature of the male buried here. Wooden bows and flint-headed arrows. Bone knives and spears. A stone mace. The skull of a slaughtered horse -- probably the chieftain’s favorite. The artifacts spoke of a life steeped in blood. A voracious need to subdue everything within reach.
Stefan shook his head. He would much rather be working on one of the Arkana’s other digs where the artifacts were less grim. But, he reminded himself, as the Kurgan trove keeper, his work was vital to their understanding of this anomaly in human behavior. How and why it all went wrong. The jumping off point when peaceful nomads became overlord invaders. His work might someday answer those questions. At the moment, he had more questions than answers. He looked down again at the object in his hands. It baffled him. An obsidian knife with an antler handle. What on earth was it doing here? Obsidian was volcanic glass, and the nearest volcano was a thousand miles away.
Even if the object had been obtained by trade or conquest, obsidian weaponry had become obsolete in the millennium prior to the burial of this chieftain. If that weren’t odd enough, its sheath presented another mystery. A hammered gold scabbard ornamented with lions. The decorative style of the sheath was consistent with the dead chieftain’s culture, but the knife was not. The combination was as anomalous as someone storing a medieval French dagger inside a gun holster from the American West.
He jammed his hat back on his head in exasperation. What was this knife doing here? His speculation led nowhere. He simply couldn’t answer that question. He paused as a thought struck him, and a slow grin spread across his face. Perhaps he didn’t know the answer himself, but he had just thought of the one person in the world who might be able to help him.
Chapter 3 – Tabling the Talk
Cassie Forsythe was running late for lunch. As always, finding parking in the trendy but highly-congested Gold Coast neighborhood took longer than she expected. She rushed through the revolving door of the restaurant only to be escorted back outside by the hostess who seated her at a bistro table overlooking the sidewalk.
She hadn’t wanted to be late, but it appeared she was early. Relaxing a bit, she tried to smooth her hair. It was dark brown, straight, and had a tendency to hang over half of her face like a curtain. Pulling a compact mirror out of her purse, she scrutinized her appearance. To a casual observer, she would have seemed like any other college student. A petite frame clad in jeans and cotton T-shirt. Nondescript features, or at least Cassie thought so, but people always commented on her eyes. They were an unusual opaque grey. She rubbed away a smudge of mascara that had fallen on her nose. Slipping the compact back inside her purse, she surveyed the passersby. It was the typical upscale Chicago crowd of lawyers, stockbrokers, and high maintenance spouses but she couldn’t see Rhonda anywhere.
Cassie was nervous about this interview. She mentally repeated the word—interview. It really wasn’t that. She had agreed to meet her sister’s former business partner for lunch. That was all. A simple meal with a friend.
“More like the third degree,” Cassie muttered under her breath. Given the strange events which had unfolded after her sister’s death two months earlier, there were too many things she couldn’t tell Rhonda. She would have to waltz around
