The woman’s eyes were drawn to a female figure seated in the foremost of the square boxes. A plank of wood was strapped to her back. On it rested an infant if the poor little thing could be said to rest at all. It was swathed in cloth strips that bound its tiny body to the plank. The infant was wrapped so firmly that it could move neither its arms nor its legs. Its forehead was held rigidly against the board to keep it from flopping to either side. For a moment, the woman wondered whether the baby was even alive. Perhaps this was the way these foreigners prepared their dead for burial. Then the baby’s eyes blinked open lethargically. The pressure of the wrappings made the eyes seem to bulge from their sockets, but the infant remained mute. Perhaps it knew that no one would release it from its bindings, so there was no point in whimpering.
The woman’s attention then traveled from the bound infant to its mother. Her hair was flame-colored. She wore an intricately stitched shawl—red and green thread had been worked into square shapes with straight lines shooting through them. The design was more complex than anything the clan weavers could produce.
This caravan was a peculiar sight to be sure. But of all the curiosities in this odd procession, there was one stranger than all the rest. It was a wooden platform, smaller than the boxes which held the women and children. It too had wooden disks attached to each side and was pulled by a long-necked animal. Beneath the platform were more disks with notched edges which seemed to interlock with one another. These all connected to a small pillar resting on top of the platform. The pillar was topped by an ornamental carving of the neck and head of one of the beasts these people used for conveyance. As this platform traveled forward, no matter which way it zigged and zagged down the hills, the nose of the carving always turned toward the same direction. The woman judged it to be pointing south. She couldn’t imagine what purpose this device served.
Her silent speculation was cut short when the leader of the band raised his arm, commanding his followers to halt. They wordlessly obeyed. The man gave his beast a sharp kick in the ribs, and it ambled forward until he tugged on the strap in its mouth to make it stop a mere ten feet away from the assembled clan.
The farm folk gawked up at him. He impassively stared back at them. The woman took in every detail of his appearance. His yellow hair hung down his back. It was the color of ripe millet as was the color of the thick beard which flowed down his chest. His age was hard to guess. He was not a youth but not an elder either. His eyes were set so deeply that his eyelids folded over them like a hood. On his head, he wore some sort of metal bowl turned upside down. Horns had been affixed to either side of the bowl, giving him the fearsome aspect of a charging beast. A long knife hung from a leather belt at his waist.
The stranger made no threatening gesture despite his warlike attire. He merely sat on his animal and silently studied the people clustered below him. After a few moments, his gaze shifted from the crowd to the millet fields, the houses, the livestock pens and the river flowing endlessly off into the distance. A slight smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. The farmers continued to gape and point and whisper among themselves.
The woman felt a shadow cross the sun even though the sky was clear and bright. She didn’t have the gift of second sight like the shamans of the clan. Her gift lay in making things grow. Still, she felt an unaccountable sense of despair welling up from the depths of her heart. Without being able to explain why she knew that her world was about to change—and not for the better.
Chapter 2—Legal Threshold
Present Day, Western Suburbs of Chicago
“I think you’ve got OCD.” Cassie climbed out of the driver’s seat and slammed her car door for emphasis.
“Humor me,” Griffin replied dryly as he exited his own vehicle.
They were standing in the parking lot of Cassie’s apartment complex.
Leroy Hunt’s persistent efforts to find her had caused the pythia to take shelter in the western suburbs—as far away from the vault and downtown Chicago as possible. Her housing development was a sprawling complex of modern three-story apartment buildings clustered artistically around a central retention pond whose fountain had been turned off for the winter. A thin glaze of ice still coated the water.
Cassie hugged herself to keep warm while she waited for Griffin to catch up with her. Even though spring was technically around the corner, the early evening temperature was barely above freezing. They scurried up the walk to her front door on the ground level.
“Look, I’m telling you,” she continued. “I just cleaned my place two days ago, and I didn’t see your missing field agent’s journal anywhere.”
“Really?” The scrivener sounded genuinely puzzled. “I could have sworn I left it here the last time I dropped by.”
Cassie gave an exasperated sigh and fitted her key into the lock. “Go ahead and look but you won’t find it.”
She swung the door open to reveal a dark, quiet apartment. Without warning, the ceiling lights blazed on, and a chorus of voices shouted, “SURPRISE!”
“What the...” Cassie trailed off, blinking under the glare. She turned mutely to the scrivener.
Thirty people popped out from behind various pieces of furniture and came forward to greet her. She recognized them as co-workers from the Arkana.
