The Rosetta Codex Read online

  By the time he reached the town, a colder gusting wind swirled dust and dirt up from the earth, and he could feel the storm at his back. He put the rucksack inside the large central building then went back outside to secure it as well as he could against the storm. He was able to cover many of the windows with cracked or broken shutters, but he could close up only one of the two doorways, and there was nothing he could do about the holes in the roof.

  Minutes later the storm hit the town with a tremendous downpour and bursts of lightning and thunder. Cale cleared an area in the front corner of the building, on the side with the closed door and away from the two ceiling holes, and set up camp for the night. He assembled the stove and cooked up a stew with the last of the smoked meat from a lame buckbaby he had killed a few days earlier. While the stew simmered, he went to one of the open windows and watched the storm.

  The sky had darkened further, but Cale could not tell if that was from a worsening of the storm, or night beginning to fall. When lightning flashed, the dwellings of the town seemed to momentarily come to life, lit somehow in those moments from within as well as from without, sharpening their shadows, which now seemed to move.

  Watching the rain and the mud sluicing between the buildings, Cale was reminded of the day he had first seen Blackburn riding atop Morrigan through the downpour and into the village. He thought about Aglaia, and the way he had watched for her each day, hoping to catch her eye, not suspecting how badly that all would end.

  A flash of lightning lit up a drenched and ragged figure stumbling among the dwellings. When the light faded, Cale could still make out the figure, though now as a dim shadow moving among other motionless shadows. The figure disappeared, either behind or into one of the dwellings, then reappeared running and splashing through mud, headed toward him.

  Cale retreated into the corner, shut down the stove, then pulled the larger hunting knife from his rucksack and crouched behind one of the rotting benches. The figure staggered through the doorway and stood dripping and breathing heavily just inside the building. As he shook himself and stamped his boots, another flash of lightning illuminated his face, which glistened with moisture. Ropes of hair hung from beneath the man’s hat, and a long thick moustache framed his open mouth and prominent jaw. He wore a knee-length slick plastic poncho that dripped water steadily onto the wood floor.

  In darkness again, the man stood almost motionless, his head turning slowly from side to side. There was just enough light for Cale to make out his outline, his movements, his eyes. The man sniffed once, then twice more long and deep.

  “Somebody’s here,” the man said. His voice was dry and cracked. “I smell food. Good eats, yeah?” Then he slowly lowered himself into a crouch not unlike Cale’s.

  A long wordless time passed, the rain producing the only sounds: splashing the mud, clattering on the roof tiles, and spraying through the holes in the roof and onto the floor.

  “Not going to hurt no one,” the man said. “Just need a dry place to sleep. Wouldn’t mind some of that food, though. Haven’t eaten too much for a while, yeah. Got no weapons, just my knife, that’s all.”

  Another long silence passed. The man put his hands on the floor, then shifted from the crouch into a sitting position.

  “Not going nowhere,” he said. “Too damn wet and dark out there, and those other buildings are too damn spooky. Just take my chances in here.” He removed his hat, hit it twice against the pedestal. “Not giving up my knife, either. I’m not stupid.” Then he gazed slowly around the long room. “Maybe no one’s here, maybe they cooked their food and ate and then left and I’m all alone.” Cale thought he saw the man smile and shake his head. “Don’t think so, though.”

  Either way, Cale thought, he wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight. He got to his feet and he must have made a noise because the man turned toward him.

  “Somebody there, yeah?” the man said.

  “I am,” Cale said.

  “You going to kill me?”

  “No.”

  “How many are you?”

  “One,” Cale replied. “But one’s enough.”

  “Meant what I said,” the man assured him. “Don’t wanna hurt anyone. Don’t wanna be hurt.” He stood. “Could use some food, though, if you got any to spare.”

  “I guess I do,” Cale told him.

  The man’s name was Sproul and he had not eaten in two days. He was grateful for the offer of food, but disappointed that Cale had no tobacco or “distilled spirits.” They lit a couple of the broken candles for light, then pried the metal bowl out of the pedestal, set it on the floor, and built a fire in it for warmth. Sproul hung his poncho before the fire to dry, then pulled off his boots and socks and set them on one of the benches near the flames. Under the coat, he wore a long vest with bulging pockets and catches and loops too numerous to count; a canteen hung from a leather strap around his neck. “I can carry just about everything I need in this thing,” he said, patting the full pockets.

  But he had lost his bedroll in the mountains, he told Cale as they ate. Lost his bedroll and his animal traps and his pack with his pipe and tobacco and a metal flask of whiskey when he had slipped trying to cross a river. He had fallen in and nearly drowned in the rapids. If it had been winter he would have died, but he had managed to get out of the mountains, living on fruits and jawberries and the scraps of animal kills.

  They broke and fed pieces of wood into the fire, and after a while they didn’t talk anymore. Not trusting Sproul, Cale determined to stay awake through the night. But sitting before the warmth of the fire with his back against the wall and his knife in his hand, surrounded by the soothing sounds of rainfall, he soon fell asleep.

  He was awakened by Sproul gently shaking his shoulder. Cale scrambled back, gripping his knife tightly.

  “Hey,” Sproul said. “Not going to hurt you. Just need your help is all.”

  “Help with what?”

  “That.” He nodded his head toward the far end of the room. A candle burned near the stone altar. A slice of faintly glowing blue light emerged from the stone. “Can’t get the top slab off, yeah? Too damn heavy. Slid it a little, but about broke my back doing that.”

  Cale looked at Sproul, who shrugged and gave him a guilty smile. “You think I ended up in this place by accident?” He shrugged again. “We can be partners.”

  “Partners in what?”

  “That,” he said again, gesturing at the altar. “There’s treasure in there.”

  “What kind of treasure?” Cale asked.

  “Don’t really know. That’s what I’m trying to find out. But it’s something a lot of people have thought was worth killing or dying over.”

  “Then I suppose you’ll try to kill me after I help you.”

  Sproul shook his head. “No. Don’t want to kill no one. Been enough death already.” He paused, and his cheek twitched. “I lost my brother in that goddamn river along with everything else. Didn’t say anything about him before because I thought you might think I killed him.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “No. I told you. Never killed anyone, and don’t plan to. Not for anything, not even for this crazy treasure.”

  Cale believed him. He didn’t know why he should, but he did. He got to his feet and said, “All right, let’s see about this treasure.”

  The storm had abated somewhat, but wind and rain still gusted in through the open windows and the holes in the roof. Cale followed Sproul to the altar and the flickering candle. The rich fabric tapestry that had covered the altar lay in a crumpled heap on the wooden floor. Sproul had moved the slab just enough to allow the blue light to leak out through a crack no wider than Cale’s smallest finger.

  “Strange, yeah?” Sproul said. “How something could glow like that. But it’s not radioactive. I checked.” He held up a black metal disk with tiny windows and pulsing green figures. “See?”

  Cale didn’t, but he wasn’t going to let Sproul know his ignorance, so he just no
dded. They took hold of the slab, gripping the lip that extended from the altar on all sides; Cale at one end, Sproul at the other. The stone was smooth and cold on top, warm and rough below. Cale bent his knees, adjusted his grip, then straightened his legs when Sproul said, “Now.”

  Muscles strained, pain knifed Cale’s back, and a finger joint popped loudly. The slab came up, and more glowing blue light fanned out to the sides.

  “Damn!” Sproul gasped out.

  They shuffle-stepped to one side, then Sproul lost his grip and released the slab. As the long great stone dropped, Cale let go and leaped backward. The slab crashed to the floor, crushing and cracking the wood, but remained intact.

  Lambent azure light seemed to flow up and over the sides of the altar like liquid, pouring down to the floor and rising slowly upward to the ceiling above them. Cale wondered if he was hallucinating, or if some distracting trickery was involved, a protective device at work inside the altar.

  Sproul stood transfixed in the gleaming blue radiance, his eyes weirdly luminescent.

  “Treasure,” he whispered.

  Then all the strangeness faded, and all that remained before them was a plain, faint glow of light. Cale looked into the open altar.

  Blue faceted stones formed a nest for a large book bound with a shiny coppery material. Sproul plunged his hands into the stones, then withdrew them, holding one large stone in each upturned palm. He grinned at Cale.

  “What are they?” Cale asked.

  “Don’t know, but they must be rare, must be worth a fortune, all the people searching for them. Killing for them.”

  Killing, again. Cale wondered how many people had been killed in the search for this. He picked up the book, which was astonishingly heavy. He sat on the top step with it, near the candle, and held the book in his lap. The candlelight flickered across the covers so that the coppery material seemed to be in flux, transmuting before him. There were no markings, no letters or designs of any kind. Tentatively holding the corner between thumb and finger, he slowly raised the front cover.

  The pages appeared to have been fabricated from incredibly thin sheets of metal rather than paper like the anchorite’s books. The markings, which looked disturbingly like the incomprehensible glyphs on the wall behind him, were etched completely through the metal sheets, so that each leaf was like a stencil. He sliced his finger as he turned one of the pages, and blood dripped onto his pants, but he ignored the cut.

  Sproul’s shadow fell across the book. A rough, dirty hand held three large blue stones before Cale’s face.

  “Look at them,” Sproul said. “More than enough for both of us. Our lives will never be the same.”

  When they left the next morning, Sproul carried all of the blue stones himself, distributed throughout the numerous pockets and pouches of his vest. Cale carried the book in his rucksack; the extra weight pulled at the shoulder straps.

  They set out under clear skies. They would traverse the dry lake bed, replenish their water supplies at the pool, then head for the nearby foothills to the east. Sproul said he knew the best way to the Divide and the northern bridge. He wasn’t sure how they would get the gems across, but he said he had some ideas.

  As they left the town, Cale stopped and looked back at the central building. He felt as though someone, or something, was watching them. Observing and judging them, as if they had committed some foul deed. Cale thought that perhaps they had. Desecration. A word he had learned from the anchorite. He turned away from the building, and followed Sproul out across the dead dry lake.

  SIX

  Sproul coughed up blood, bright red spattering the dry and dusty earth. His hands shook and he was feverish. He drank deeply from his canteen, which seemed to provide little comfort. His curses were weak and hoarse.

  They were five days out from the deserted town, camped in the shelter of a tilted stone slab. Crouched with his back against the cool stone, Cale surveyed the barren expanse before them, watching the waves of heat rise like visions of delirium. He looked back at Sproul, who knelt half in shade, half in the late morning sun, eyes nearly closed and dripping with sweat.

  “You need to stay in the shade,” Cale told him.

  Sproul blinked several times, nodded halfheartedly, and crawled back to lay beside the slab, dragging the canteen with him. “This damn heat,” he said.

  “Can I do anything for you?”

  Sproul rolled his head slowly from side to side and closed his eyes without a word. Oozing sores had first appeared on his hands the second day out, and by the following morning had spread to his arms and legs, a few working their way up his neck. His skin became flushed and sensitive, and a painful fever coursed through him. Sproul refused to stop and rest, however, and they struggled through the morning until they reached the shelter of a dry riverbed, where they slept until sunset in the shade of a fallen tree partially buried in the crumbling bank.

  Temporarily revived by sleep and the cool darkness, Sproul resumed a steady pace. For most of that night he had been lucid and seemed certain of the way, but before the first light of dawn had even appeared he became delirious and disoriented, staggering chaotically from one direction to another until Cale had spotted the large stone slab jutting up from the earth and guided Sproul to it. They had remained here since, Sproul becoming more and more ill, their water supply dwindling.

  “Where do I go for water?” Cale asked. It was not the first time he had asked, but like the previous time, Sproul didn’t reply. Sproul had said he knew where water was, knew the way east to the Divide, so Cale had followed. Now they were in the middle of a barren desert—not as vast and desolate as the wasteland the caravan had embarked upon, but hotter and drier, and at the moment promising to be just as deadly—with no signs of water, and nothing hopeful in sight. The shortest way, Sproul had said. The quickest. Across this small strip of desert, north and east to the low hills barely visible on the horizon. It would save several days of travel, Sproul had said, and he knew where they could find water on the way if they needed it.

  “Water,” Cale said again.

  “Not a problem,” Sproul finally replied. “I know where it is.” But he did not open his eyes, did not move, and said no more.

  Cale squatted beside Sproul and regarded the fevered face, the trembling eyelids and cracked lips. Sproul was dying; he probably knew it as well as Cale did. They were both waiting for him to die.

  Sproul opened his eyes, his gaze unfocused, or focused on something far beyond Cale. “I’m being punished for my brother,” he said.

  “You told me you didn’t kill him.”

  “Might as well have. He didn’t want to come here, he didn’t want any treasure. He was happy with his zoological studies and his fossil collection, his quiet life. But I couldn’t do it . . .” He stopped, shutting his eyes tightly against some spasm of pain. He gasped, coughed, then resumed. “I couldn’t do it alone, so he came with me, and now he’s dead.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Cale said. He wasn’t sure that he believed that, but he wanted to comfort Sproul, ease his suffering.

  He opened Sproul’s canteen and reluctantly trickled what was left into the dying man’s mouth. Sproul’s lips quivered, and his dark and swollen tongue convulsed, made a choking, sucking noise.

  Cale glanced at his water bottles, wondering how much, if any, of his own water he would spare for a man who would soon be dead. Two of the four bottles were empty, and a third was less than half full. He had no idea how many days it would take to find water; without Sproul’s guidance, Cale did not know where to begin looking. Turning back to Sproul, Cale realized he wanted the man to die quickly. He understood why, but the thought still produced a terrible ache of guilt deep inside him.

  The afternoon sun had worked its way around the large stone slab and now touched the top of Sproul’s head, highlighting his hair with a golden sheen. Cale remained motionless, locked in place by an inertia born of despair, and watched the sun slowly, inevitably advance acro
ss Sproul’s hair until at last it touched his feverish skin. Then Cale finally moved, took hold of Sproul’s boots, and gently dragged him back into the shade.

  “Where do I go for water?” Cale asked, barely able to keep from shouting it at him. Then in a whisper added, “Damn you, anyway.” He wasn’t sure why he bothered to ask. He had asked Sproul the same question four or five times over the last two days, and never got an answer.

  He could not wait any longer, or he would die, too. Cale set out from their camp in search of water—a spring or pool, even a seep of some kind, anything at all. He traveled in a spiral, working his way outward, searching the ground, the faint shadows of stones and scrub, shallow depressions and draws.

  Cale was surprised when, three hours later, he came across a deep, circular pit, at the bottom of which lay a small pool of water. He stood at the rim of the pit, looking down on the water. He had not really expected to find any; he had expected to die a dry and painful death.

  On hands and feet, he slid down the steep bank and crouched beside the pool. He didn’t bother testing the water; he didn’t want to know if it wasn’t safe, for he had no choice. Cale lowered his face to the pool and drank. The water was tepid and slightly acrid, but he drank and drank until his belly felt bloated and nauseated. The pool was shallow, but maintained a constant level even as he filled the bottles and Sproul’s canteen. He sat beside it for a few minutes, letting the water settle in his gut. No stomach pain, no cramping. Maybe it would only kill him slowly. And maybe it was perfectly safe. He secured the bottles and canteen, then climbed up out of the pit newly alive.

  By the time he returned to their camp the western sky was a deep bloodred flowing into the darker violet-blue of approaching night, the stars mutely coming to life. Sproul’s breathing was labored, yet strangely shallow, and his body radiated a rank odor. Cale spoke to him, but he didn’t respond.

  He splashed water over Sproul’s face, and the dying man blinked his eyes and opened his mouth with a dry croak. Cale raised Sproul’s head and dripped water into the open mouth, but he could not manage to swallow any of it; the water dribbled out the side of his mouth and ran through the caked dirt along his neck. After trying for some time without success, Cale lowered Sproul’s head, then sat beside him to wait.