“There it is.” Cassie gestured toward the desk where the Minoan relic lay next to the scrivener’s computer and notes.
“May I?” The Arkana agent hesitated before picking up the find.
Griffin handed it to him. “Please.”
The artifact stood about a foot high and a foot wide. It was a Minoan labrys—a double-headed axe—made entirely of gold.
“It’s pretty unusual for the haft of a labrys to be shaped like the figure of a woman,” Rabten observed.
“A goddess actually,” Griffin corrected him. “The goddess with upraised hands—an image of benediction which predates the Minoans by forty thousand years. There are cave paintings in France showing female divinities in this exact posture.”
“She looks like she’s giving the hand signal for a touchdown in American football,” Rabten joked.
“I think she looks like a butterfly with the axe blades as her wings,” Cassie remarked.
All three of them paused to study the elongated figure of the goddess. She wasn’t dressed in the typical Minoan costume of bare bodice and ornate flounced skirt. Only the outline of her form and skirt were represented. Her arms were raised at right angles to her body and pressed against the axe blades in bas-relief. She wore a crown of rubies on her head.
“Why rubies?” Rabten asked.
“In all likelihood, they’re meant to represent poppies,” Griffin replied. “That was a typical Minoan motif. Opium poppies have been cultivated as far back as the Neolithic period. The drug was used in religious rituals as a means of communicating with the goddess through altered states of consciousness.”
“Like shamans used snake venom,” Cassie said helpfully.
“Exactly,” the scrivener concurred.
Rabten ran his finger across the axe. “What do you think these are supposed to mean?” He pointed to four gems affixed to the blades—two on each side and spaced equidistantly from one other. In the upper left quadrant was a topaz, beneath it an emerald. The opposite blade held a sapphire and below it a ruby.
“We’re not sure yet,” the pythia said. “One thing is certain. They don’t stand for constellations like the gems on the other artifacts we found.”
Rabten frowned in bewilderment. “Does the riddle help explain what they mean?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Cassie stared pointedly at the scrivener. “Griffin was still translating it when you got here.”
“Correction, I finished translating it.” The scrivener picked up his notes and read from them. “‘Past the golden road of Boreas, where his islands kill the sea, seek the great river’s mother. Her reliquary holds the key.’”
“Hey, you made it rhyme,” Rabten noted appreciatively.
“Reliquary?” the pythia echoed with suspicion. “Your secret Minoan decoder ring came up with a word like ‘reliquary’?”
“Not precisely. It was the closest word in English which matched the intent of the riddle. A reliquary is a container or depository for sacred objects. During the Middle Ages, reliquaries were used to house the bones of saints.”
“Or, in our case, the Bones of the Mother?”
“Yes, I think that’s what the Minoans were implying.”
“So maybe all five artifacts have to be collected together in the same place before we can get to the Sage Stone,” the pythia speculated.
“The riddle does say ‘the reliquary holds the key,’” Griffin concurred.
“But the riddle doesn’t help explain the gems,” Rabten noted.
“It doesn’t help explain much of anything.” Cassie tried not to sound too crestfallen.
“I understood only one word—Boreas.” Griffin tossed his legal pad back on the desk.
“You mean like the north wind?” the pythia asked.
The scrivener nodded. “I see you remember.” Turning to Rabten, he said, “In a previous riddle, the Minoans made reference to the anemoi—deities who control winds which blow from the four cardinal directions. Boreas is the god in charge of the north wind. In terms of our current riddle, the allusion to Boreas may simply mean that we must search north of our current position.”
“There isn’t too much real estate south of where we are now,” Cassie said.
“But the clue refers to the original location of the artifact at Lugu Lake,” the scrivener pointed out.
Cassie raised her eyebrows skeptically. “I don’t think that helps. Even if we travel north from Lugu, that still leaves Europe, North America, most of Asia and the top half of Africa.”
“Obviously, a large area to cover,” Griffin agreed.
“This is kind of odd.” Rabten was once more scrutinizing the artifact.
The bottom of the goddess statue wasn’t flat. Instead, it terminated in a series of five rectangular prisms of a grayish cast. They were all bundled together though each one was a different length.
The agent studied the relic intently. “Aside from the weird shape, the base is made of a different metal.”
“It’s an alloy of some sort,” the scrivener explained. “I suspect it’s much harder than gold.”
“The first time I picked that artifact up, I got a vision,” Cassie elaborated. “I knew that the bottom of the statue was meant to be a pressure point key. When we get to the right location, the key slides into a recessed lock. That’s how we open the secret compartment where the Sage Stone is hidden.” She sighed regretfully. “I tried half a dozen times to get more information by reading the artifact, but this little butterfly goddess doesn’t believe in oversharing.”
“Even though we only have a limited understanding of the artifact itself, the first step is to get a duplicate made.” Griffin’s voice took on a note of concern. “The latest communication from Maddie tells us that the Nephilim will soon be on their way. We have very little time.” Turning to the agent, he asked, “Can you help us?”
Rabten smiled. “It’s what I do. The minute I knew I was coming here to meet you, I started lining up resources. I found somebody in Padang City who can turn the job around in less than a week.”
“Excellent! That is good news indeed.” The scrivener looked toward Cassie for confirmation, but she was staring at the artifact and scowling. “Cassie, did you hear? Less than a week.”
“What?” She gaped at him blankly. “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry. I was just thinking about something.” She transferred
