Chapter 10
2094 Words
10
“Me!” Marcus offered.
“What about the baron?” I spoke up, deflating the excitement in the air.
“What about the baron?” Caius returned.
I nodded at the book. “He gave us that journal. Shouldn’t we tell him about what we found?”
“Maybe he’ll want to come with us!” Marcus suggested.
“I don’t think he’s going across all those fields in that wheelchair,” Caius countered.
“Are there no roads to these statues?” Sage wondered.
Caius shook his head. “Not a one. Nobody’s really supposed to go around there because one of the statues dropped during a wind storm some forty years ago. We might find an animal path to lead us that, but that’s it.”
A knock came from the door. “Yes?” Sage called out.
“I was wondering if any of you were up yet,” our host replied.
Sage pursed his lips and his eyes flickered over all of us before he spoke in a low voice. “I will explain matters.” He cleared his throat and raised his voice. “Please come in, My Lord.”
The door opened and Baron Mechta was wheeled in by his nurse. A satisfied smile appeared on his face when he noticed Marcus standing among us. “By Gad! You are a picture of health, my lad! Ah, but praise youth for its vigor in keeping the young alive!”
Marcus blushed under such compliments and bowed his head. “I wasn’t that sick. . .”
“I believe a little fresh air is in order for my young patient,” Sage spoke up.
The baron looked to him and his gaze fell on the journal in my grandfather’s hand. A sly smile slipped onto his lips and his eyes glistened with all the cunning of a hunter who had outlasted all his prey, and yet with a sorrow that showed he almost lived to regret that. “You are a good liar, sir, but you forget I am a hunter. You have found something in that journal that takes you away from my abode, is that it?”
Sage smiled and bowed his head. “You are correct, My Lord. I may have found the location of the hidden treasure.”
“Then what are you doing standing around here?” The baron waved his hand at one of the windows. “Then off with you! Go and find this treasure and bring it back to show me!”
“You mean it?” Marcus breathed.
“I mean what I say, and I say you all get out of here and go on your hunt!” he insisted.
We didn’t need a third invitation, but left the house with a quick step in our heels. The sun was bright and warm and the ground bandaged from Marcus’ many diggings. The grounds keeper who had found the coin looked up from burying one of the holes and scowled at Marcus.
Caius led us northward off the groomed estate grounds and into the wild fields. The few trees provided us shade, but they were twigs against the dark mountains that rose up before us. Their craggy peaks with their snow-capped tops glared down at us with cold looks.
I looked around at the group as we trudged shoulder-to-shoulder through the tall grass. “So does anyone else wonder about the baron just letting us go without caring if we find anything?”
Caius nodded. “Yeah, but he forgot to mention that the treasure is on land owned by him. He could be expecting a cut, or the whole thing.”
“He’s not like that!” Marcus insisted.
“Perhaps he is rather uninterested in money,” Sage mused as he studied the soft wilderness around us. He patted the book that was tucked under one arm. “And I find his attention to be more on the present and future than this most ancient past.”
“What does those dusty pages say about the statues?” Caius wondered.
“I fear there is another riddle to be solved before we gain access to the tombs,” Sage warned us.
“What’s that one say?” I asked him.
He drew out the journal and flipped through the pages to a spot near the end of the book. “The riddle says ‘We stand as tall as the trees, three in number in the breeze. Venture forward to the wall of stone, and there you will find the unknown.’” He closed the book. “At least, that is how I would translate the words. They are more archaic, even in the language of the Sylvidia people.”
I furrowed my brow as I thought over the riddle. “Three in number. So I’m guessing there’s three statues.”
“Two are still standing,” Caius reminded me as we ventured closer to the mountain. “But you’ll see for yourself soon enough.”
We walked for a few more miles before I glimpsed the foothills of the craggy mounts. The grass stopped fifty yards short of the base, and the rest of the open ground was littered with weeds and rocks big and small. Many were sharp boulders that had rolled down the hillside and stopped in the fields. Others were small stones broken off from their larger origins in the roll and left scattered about.
It was among this chaos that I saw the three statues, or rather two. They stood on their own square platforms one in front of and to the side of the other. The front was a man in priestly garb not unlike the robes worn by Father Ferrero. The rear statue was of a woman with her head bowed in supplication. She wore a simple dress with thin straps that showed off her shapely shoulders and arms. Her hair was tie back in a tight bun, but I could see it was curled before the tying. Her lips were parted and her gaze was cast to the bright sky.
The third statue was less fortunate. It had been toppled from its pedestal and lay face-down in the rubble of its own hair. I stopped before the sad figure and stooped to study its features. The person was a young man with long curly hair and wide eyes that looked up at the sky in awe. His dress was of elaborate flowing robe and tights with a scarf wrapped around his neck.
I stood and watched the others study the statues. Sage was very much interested in the center figure. “How interesting to find the trinity in a place as remote at this,” he mused.
“The trinity?” I asked him.
He smiled at me. “Have you forgotten your studies already, Jane? The trinity is a common number in religious rites. Three symbolizes the opposing forces of the male, female, and the neutral party.”
“Like a referee,” Bee suggested.
He chuckled. “Quite. This gentleman here-” he nodded at the center figure, “-is that referee, or in this case I believe he may symbolize the sun with its soothing light. The disc pin that ties the front of his cloak together says as much. The other two are his worshipers, both male and female. Together they create a trinity that represents the sun in all its forms.” He gestured to the fallen male statue and then the female. “The day and the night, light and dark as it were, and the sun itself is the lunar eclipse when only the sun is present.”
“Thanks for the lesson, but where’s the tomb?” Caius spoke up as he looked around.
The ground beneath our feet was covered in paved stone cracked and weathered by time. Twenty feet behind the statues was the sheer wall of the mountain foothills. The angled and sharp rocks stared back at us like a blank face.
I nodded at the statues. “Well, these are the three in number and that wall must be the wall of stone.”
Marcus hurried over to the wall and pressed his hands over the rocks. He searched for a few moments before he turned around and shrugged. “I don’t see anything.”
Sage cupped his chin in his hand and furrowed his brow. “‘Three in number in the breeze.’ That strikes me as a rather strange way to describe them.”
“Breeze. . .” I murmured as I looked from the statues to the wall. “Breeze. B-” I froze as a thought struck me. “The breeze!”
“We quite understand the word, pumpkin,” Sage assured me.
I shook my head. “Not the word! The wind! Maybe something has to be blown on!”
“It would have been blown on by the wind and opened a long time ago,” Caius pointed out.
“But these people were descendants of one of the floating cities, right? What if they brought their technology with them and used it to hide what was most precious to them? Their bodies and their wealth?”
Sage nodded. “That is a sound theory, but we can hardly guess at their technology.”
“Well, what about Staba?” I asked my friends. “We saw a bunch of technology there. Maybe there’s something around here that looks like that.”
“Staba?” Marcus spoke up as the rest of us searched the area.
“I’ll tell you later, just look for something that doesn’t belong here,” Caius instructed.
Marcus threw up his hands. “This whole place doesn’t belong here.”
Sage froze and snapped his fingers. “That’s it! This entire area is the secret!”
“Come again?” I asked him.
“The Miamorans were a brilliant people, and so they would have hidden the entrance in plain sight,” he surmised as he stepped back in front of the statues. “Surely we will find the secret among these three guardians.”
“Then let’s get looking,” Caius suggested.
We put our eyes to the ground and started wandering around the people. There was so much debris that I could stumbling over the rocks. One stumble caused me to trip into a larger rock.
I caught myself with my hands and I frowned. “These guys really should’ve picked a better spot.”
“A secret tomb isn’t easy to hide, and there really isn’t anywhere else around here to put something like that except the ground, and that gets pretty wet in the spring,” Caius pointed out.
I sighed and made to push myself off when I noticed a strange etching in the stones. I leaned over the rock and brushed away the bits of rubble. My hand revealed three smooth bumps in the stone, all of them barely perceptible to my eye. They curved like a shell around themselves, growing bigger with each outward extension.
“Guys, I think I found something,” I shouted at my companions. They hurried over and I pointed out the strange curving lines.
Caius removed some more of the larger rocks and Sage knelt on one knee beside the lines. He followed the curve with his eyes and a smile slipped onto his lips. “Jane, I do believe you have found what we seek.”
I squinted at the markings. “It’s the breeze, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “I believe it is, or a representation of the soft winds that blow.” He brushed his hand over the marking and looked out on the whole of the cobblestone area. “Mayhap we will find the key at the source of these three bands.”
Marcus was way ahead of us. He followed the outer band and nearly crashed into the cliff wall. “This one ends here!”
Caius walked over to him and frowned. “But not the other ones.”
“Then we might find their termination in the wall near that one,” Sage guessed.
After a short inspection all three points were found. I stood over the middle one and looked around. “Now what?”
“Now we look for anything more unusual,” Sage suggested.
I scoured the wall in front of me and noticed a slight depression. I looked to Caius and Marcus who stood at their end. “Do you guys have a round hole in the wall over there?”
After a quick search Caius nodded. “Yeah.”
I turned my attention to my grandparents. “What about you guys?”
“We do indeed,” Sage confirmed as he pressed his finger into the depression. Nothing happened. He cupped his chin in his hand and furrowed his brow. “This must be part of some mechanism, but what is the secret.”
Bee smiled at him. “You silly. You can’t just push one when there’s two others.”
Sage dropped his hand and chuckled. “Of course not. How foolish of me.” He looked to us. “On the count of three, press your holes if you would.” We positioned our fingers and waited for the count. “One. Two. Three!”
We pressed the depression and I felt the stone give a little. There came the sound of clinking metal and the wall shivered. I jumped back when the wall opened inward via two secret doors perfectly matched to the cliff side. A puff of stale air blew out. Caius hurried over to me and covered me with his body as a puff of stale, dry air blew out of the long-dormant tomb.
At its passing Caius looked over his shoulder and I looked past him. The doors led into a wide hallway that disappeared in darkness.
We had found our tomb.
- Writer
