The Artifact Hunters Read online

“Isaac?” comes Amelie’s small voice, as she sits up. “Where are we?”

  The mountains, bright with snow, form a long line in the distance to his right, a spiky high ridge. He turns and they both stand. Isaac shivers. The plain around them, a field of crops that’s rocky where it’s uncultivated, stretches away as far as he can see.

  “I’m dizzy,” he says.

  “Me too.”

  Long moats of water enclose raised terraces of some kind of plant. Then he hears a girl singing, and he and Amelie turn.

  The girl is bent over, picking beans and filling a reed basket. A long black braid snakes down her back and her skin is light brown, and she wears a flat hat and a long shawl over a full skirt. When she straightens, she lifts the basket to her shoulders and grunts. Her shawl and skirt are woven in elaborate geometric patterns in brilliant colors—red, turquoise, orange, and blue.

  Isaac points. Amelie’s mouth makes a round O.

  Winding, interlocking rings—the familiar eternity knot—are woven throughout the girl’s shawl in a bronze thread that shines.

  She walks along the strip of earth, still singing, and they follow as she marches up a low hill. When they reach the top, Isaac pauses and points again.

  About half a mile away a small city spreads across the plain. Or rather, a great stone temple (that’s what Isaac thinks it looks like) squats in the middle of a vast ring of buildings made of stone and clay with thatched reed roofs. It’s a riot of color, people dressed in brilliant clothes moving through the winding streets, the stones, too, painted and decorated. Smoke rises in spirals, people crowd the streets, chickens and dogs mill in the crowds. The girl makes for that city.

  The temple at its center is long and rectangular and resting on a low terrace surrounded on all sides by broad steps. Men work on one section of the wall with hand tools. They hammer at the pale stones that are shaped and tightly fit. At the center of the complex is a blocky building with receding doors to a shadowed interior. It’s huge and, Isaac thinks, extraordinary, the complex geometric shapes of the doors and windows framing the inside. The walls are decorated with colorful frescoes.

  A road leads away from the city to a stone quarry, and carts and people move back and forth on that road, which also winds away toward the lake in the distance.

  The sun beats down, but the air is cold.

  “Where do you think we are?” Amelie asks.

  “I’ve never seen a place like this before,” Isaac answers.

  They walk down the hill toward the city, following the girl at a distance.

  Framing the entrance to the city is an enormous carved gate in a surrounding wall, and on either side of the gate are free-standing rock pillars—stone giants of men holding up the lintel.

  “Wow,” Isaac says. “That is amazing. It is huge.”

  “And snakes,” Amelie says, pointing at the carvings of what appear to be cobras that twine up and around the legs of the stone giants.

  “Ah. Speaking of snakes,” Isaac says. He slips the bracelet from his arm and holds it on his free palm. “What do you suppose I say to it?”

  “Didn’t Colin say that it wanted to go home?”

  “Yes, right.” Isaac clears his throat. “Snake, go home.”

  As soon as Isaac says the word home, the snake comes alive. Amelie jumps behind Isaac, still clutching his arm, but the snake lowers itself to the ground and moves away fast, following the girl. She’s already at the square arch of the gate and walking into the city.

  “I guess we had better follow,” Isaac says.

  When they reach the gate, the snake slides along the walls, making for the temple complex, while the girl moves off through the crowds in the streets.

  “Which way?” Isaac asks.

  “The snake,” Amelie answers. “We need to follow the magic.” Then, “Look! Those are llamas.”

  “Llamas live in South America,” Isaac says. “I guess, then, that these mountains are the Andes.” He tries to remember his geography. “Maybe that big lake is Titicaca?”

  “That would explain why we’re dizzy. We’re at a high altitude,” Amelie says. “Somewhere in the Andes, and somewhere in the distant past. Wasn’t the Inca culture in the Andes near Lake Titicaca?”

  “I do not know for certain.”

  Ahead of them the snake passes through the streets as they follow. It is climbing the stone steps to the terrace when Amelie pulls at Isaac’s arm.

  A man steps out of the crowd and makes his way toward the terrace ahead of them. He wears a type of loincloth and a brilliant cape and a pendant around his neck, hanging from a thick leather strap.

  The pendant is the eternity knot.

  Isaac’s pendant.

  Isaac and Amelie exchange a glance. His heart begins to pound.

  A procession approaches. Men in elaborate woven robes in scarlet, blue, and yellow, with high feathered headdresses, march past and climb the steps of the terrace toward the temple. The man with the pendant falls into step at the tail end of the procession. The snake, now on the top step, coils and turns, as if it’s waiting for Isaac and Amelie, so they follow.

  Three sides of the terrace are bordered by walls inset with stones bearing carved faces. Just faces. No two faces are alike, and their highly realistic expressions of pain, of terror, of anger make Isaac shudder. The snake slithers straight across the terrace, weaving among the men in the procession, making for the center of the temple with its smooth-fitted stone walls.

  Then something happens, and for a moment Isaac is confused. He and Amelie pause.

  The earth has—for an instant—shuddered beneath their feet.

  Everything stops. Time, the sun, the procession, sounds from the surrounding city, the wind, even the snake. The world freezes.

  Then, dogs in the city begin barking.

  A flock of roosting birds bursts into the air.

  A deep rumble like thunder rolls through the earth and a heavy gray cloud billows from somewhere outside the walls of the temple complex, expanding up and up, blotting out the sun.

  “Come on,” Isaac cries, and he and Amelie hurry up the last of the stone steps. Isaac’s legs are wobbly, and he falls and smacks his knee on the second-to-last step, and then he realizes that the ground is moving in all directions at once.

  “Earthquake,” Amelie shouts—shouts because it’s unbearably noisy. Walls begin to collapse, blocks of stone crash to earth, people scream and shout, animals bray and bellow and bark, and still the earth rocks and rolls, up and down and back and forth. Isaac and Amelie try to run for the center of the terrace but are tripped by blocks of stone that heave out of the ground that boils as if it is water.

  It grows darker by the minute.

  The man wearing the pendant is trying to run toward the blank wall near the center of the complex. The snake, too, makes for the wall, so Isaac pulls Amelie to her feet and yells, “Run,” and they stumble onward as the earth continues to heave.

  The man makes straight for the wall and then Isaac sees it. The eternity knot is carved into the stone in the center of the wall.

  “There,” Isaac shouts. “But . . .”

  The man reaches the wall, only a few tens of yards ahead of them, but he might as well be on the other side of the ocean. The snake is close behind the man, sliding up and over the heaving and rolling earth.

  Isaac and Amelie run and trip, continuing to follow.

  In the middle of the confusion and fear and noise, with people falling to their knees and reaching hands heavenward, the man stops and places one hand on the wall. A door materializes there out of the stone—a great carved wooden door—and it’s open.

  The man turns and sees the snake. He makes a sound, and the snake slides up the man’s leg and then his arm and freezes, a bracelet again. The man does not seem surprised, which surprises Isaac.

 
Isaac feels the tick-tick-tick of the watch against his palm, but he knows he must follow that man and snake.

  He yanks Amelie’s hand as the man steps through the door and vanishes, and the door begins to fade.

  “Hurry,” Amelie cries, and they both stumble for the fading door, reaching it just as it’s almost gone. Isaac pushes against the wall and clutches the watch to his chest. He feels the pendant press deep and cold into his skin, so cold it burns.

  Isaac wishes for that door to stay open, and then yells out loud, “Please, door, appear and open.” Without any warning, it stops fading and re-forms in the wall, shimmery at first, and then real and made of wood, and it’s just barely open.

  Isaac summons whatever strength he has. Magic zings through him, sharp and bright. Isaac and Amelie fall through the door into utter black, and the door disappears, leaving the heaving city on the other side.

  * * *

  * * *

  They stand in an echoing, pitch-dark space. The ground beneath their feet is solid and firm, and Isaac takes a deep breath. Amelie’s hand is warm in his.

  “Where are we?” she whispers.

  “I don’t know,” Isaac says, and as he speaks, a dim yellow light, from no clear source, grows around them as if sensing their presence.

  “Do you think your parents meant us to feel that earthquake?” she asks.

  He thinks about this. “I am not sure,” he says. “They said my travels would be dangerous. But it seems I am to experience a number of dangers.” Isaac wonders why his parents would do such a thing. Then he remembers his father’s word: “training.”

  Maybe this is his fate. Isaac must learn to face this kind of danger. But, why?

  The door behind them has vanished, the wall a smooth gray plaster. The man has disappeared. Isaac runs his hand down the silky-smooth wall where there had been a door. He turns.

  They are in a long, windowless room, or series of rooms, the far wall disappearing into shadow. The walls on either side are lined with shelves, and a long table runs down the center.

  On the shelves are myriad odd and wondrous objects.

  “Look,” Amelie says. She moves away from him now that they are alone and goes to the table. There, perched on it, frozen into its coiled bracelet self, is the snake. “Do you think this is its home?” Amelie says.

  “It led us here,” he says. “To this place. To that man who wore the pendant and seemed to know about the snake.” Isaac’s grateful to be away from the terror of the earthquake, and grateful for the hushed safety of this place. Whatever this place is.

  The shelves are crowded with objects of all shapes, sizes, colors, types. They’re labeled by hand in an array of languages.

  “Wow,” Isaac says.

  “You said it.”

  “It is like a museum,” Isaac says. Amelie begins to walk down the room examining the objects on the shelves. “My grandfather would have loved this.”

  On the table next to the snake-bracelet is an open ledger. Isaac bends over it and can see entries and lists, also in a number of languages.

  Amelie says, “Look at this.” She’s pulled out a sword, its hilt encrusted with rubies and emeralds. “And that,” she says, and points.

  There’s a strange cap, embroidered with stars and moons. Next to it, a staff entwined with a pair of snakes wrought of gold. A pair of sandals with wings that flutter as if in a light breeze. A small carpet that floats above the shelf. A primitive burnished wood figurine with bright, white pebble eyes. A vial that gives off sparks of light as if the liquid inside is in constant motion. A snow globe with a perfect tiny house next to a perfect pond set in a perfect winter wood.

  Everywhere are marvelous objects, no two alike.

  “Oh, my,” Isaac whispers.

  He walks down the length of shelves, running his fingers along the shelf edge. The objects are labeled with a system of letters and numbers, some in ancient and some in modern alphabets, which he thinks must be recorded in the ledger. He stops before one of the items, so very familiar.

  It’s the—what did Kat call it?—the astrolabe that Isaac had seen in the Library of Alexandria. The astrolabe that Hypatia and the girl took through a mysterious door much like the one he and Amelie just tumbled through.

  Isaac has the sudden realization that Hypatia and the girl left this astrolabe in this very place many centuries earlier.

  But . . . they had been in ancient Egypt. Not South America.

  Isaac steps away as the watch tick-tick-ticks against his palm.

  “I know what these are,” Amelie says. “These are magical artifacts. Like the snake. Oh, look at this one. I think I know what it is.” She picks up a ring of mottled stone that’s large enough to fit over her wrist like a cuff.

  Isaac takes it back to the ledger and finds the corresponding letter and number and reads in English: “‘Adder Stone. A faerie stone capable of rendering one invisible when worn, but only for a short period of time.’” He hands the cuff back to Amelie.

  “Very strange,” he says, awed. He reads a couple of the ledger entries. “Here’s another. ‘The Elixir of Life can heal a fatal wound. Or, given the right conditions, bring someone back from the dead,’” he says, and glances at Amelie.

  “Ew,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “That could be really icky, if someone’s been dead awhile.”

  He looks back through the ledger again, turning the pages one by one, and then he sees that the last entry is not quite like the ones above.

  Instead, he realizes, he’s reading a letter. A letter from his father, addressed to him.

  Isaac, if you have arrived here, you have already made great progress. This is the Vault, which holds magical artifacts. You’ve been led here by one of those artifacts, and they are both useful and dangerous. They must be guarded at all times, for there are some who would use them for terrible purposes, to win wars or even destroy the human race.

  Your mother and I wish we could have trained you properly, but it was not to be. You must continue to piece this puzzle together.

  You, Isaac, now hold the only key to the Vault.

  Isaac pulls away. I hold the only key? To a Vault that holds magical artifacts? But—

  “What is it?” Amelie says, interrupting his thoughts. “Have you found the clue? We probably should hurry,” she says. She moves down the room, searching the shelves. “What do you think it could be this time?”

  Isaac shakes his head and leans over again and reads,

  Now that you are in Rookskill Castle, you should know that your next set of clues can be found in the . . .

  Isaac has to turn the page.

  But before he can, he feels the movement inside the watch that’s clutched in his right hand as it begins to stir.

  Time’s up. One, two, three . . .

  Amelie is far away, down the room.

  “Amelie,” he shouts. “Come back at once. Now!”

  She turns, her eyes wide with panic.

  Isaac runs toward her as she runs toward him, the watch’s quick, sweet bell echoing through the room.

  . . . nine, ten, eleven, and Amelie dives for Isaac’s free hand just as it rings for the twelfth time. Isaac whirls through time and space, and he has her hand in his as all goes dark.

  CHAPTER 37

  Moloch

  Moloch waits until the Seelie have exhausted themselves with food and drink and dance, and it is deepest night in the Realm of Faerie.

  Wyvern snorts, riffling his green scales as if they are feathers. Moloch knows he is impatient to lift into the sky. So is Moloch.

  But now it’s time. He mounts and flies Wyvern to the thin place between worlds, where they slip through. Wyvern is sleek and fast.

  At last.

  Moloch breathes deeply of the human air, the shadows of storms and smokes of war. Ah, misery.
It hasn’t smelled so good in the human world in a while.

  Wyvern settles on a tall tree in the middle of the enchanted forest that surrounds Rookskill Castle. Moloch will take his own sweet time to find what he’s been searching for, which must be hiding within the castle walls.

  Not too much time, though. Moloch is salivating. When he’s found the Guardian, he’ll be the most powerful fae in Faerie.

  No. He’ll be the most powerful being in both the worlds.

  CHAPTER 38

  Isaac

  1942

  Through the tumble and whirlwind of their journey back, Isaac held on tight to Amelie so as not to lose her. He’d almost lost her in that last second.

  They landed back in Isaac’s room as if they’d been dumped out of a bag. It took Isaac a full minute to realize they were back, the world was spinning so furiously.

  Amelie shook herself and then put her trembling hands over her eyes.

  “It’s all right,” Isaac said to her. “It’s okay. We made it.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “You know I would never leave you behind. Never. I’d rather stay behind with you than leave you there alone.”

  She dropped her hands and looked at him with wide blue eyes. Then, slowly, she smiled and said softly, “It was kind of neat, that place. The whole experience. Except for that last bit, almost getting lost. But I’m okay.”

  He smiled back. Then he stood and walked to the window. “Wasn’t it daylight when we left? I think the last time when I traveled I was only gone a few minutes in Rookskill time, but . . .”

  Amelie stood and turned to the window. “Oh! It’s grown so dark so fast.”

  “It looks like a storm is coming.”

  “It looks like a storm is already here.” Amelie was at his side. “The sky. Look at the sky.”

  The clouds, black and purple, boiled, covering the sky and hiding the sun so that it was as dark as twilight. A fierce wind shuddered the window glass. The ground was covered in icy spittle. The forest, now right up against the castle, was thornier and taller than the castle’s highest tower. The branches writhed and tossed in the wind, and the stones cracked and groaned.