The Mountain Mother Cipher (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 2) Read online

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  THE MOUNTAIN MOTHER CIPHER

  by

  N. S. Wikarski

  The Mountain Mother Cipher

  Book Two Of Seven – The Arkana Mystery Series

  http://www.mythofhistory.com

  Copyright © 2011 by N. S. Wikarski

  Second Edition 2013

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 – In The Beginning

  Chapter 2 – Pointed Questions

  Chapter 3 – Tabling The Talk

  Chapter 4 – Heavenly Mansions

  Chapter 5 - Revelations

  Chapter 6 - Tripping

  Chapter 7 – A Bedtime Story

  Chapter 8 – Run From Your Wife

  Chapter 9 – A Room With A View Of The Past

  Chapter 10 – Flooded With Information

  Chapter 11 – Flight Of Angels

  Chapter 12 – Consummate Deception

  Chapter 13 – Catal Huyuk

  Chapter 14 – The Lady And The Lions

  Chapter 15 – The Elephant In The Garden

  Chapter 16 – Religious Inexperience

  Chapter 17 – Father Of Lies

  Chapter 18 – Ida Ho!

  Chapter 19 – Through A Glass Darkly

  Chapter 20 – Nomad’s Land

  Chapter 21 – Hope In Ruins

  Chapter 22 – Of Two Minds

  Chapter 23 – Relative Proximity

  Chapter 24 – Twinkle, Twinkle

  Chapter 25 – On Purpose

  Chapter 26 - Wedlocked

  Chapter 27 – Quartz Calendar Watch

  Chapter 28 – Duty Call

  Chapter 29 – Sting Operation

  Chapter 30 - Unmentionables

  Chapter 31 – A Little Night Music

  Chapter 32 – S-Bomb

  Chapter 33 – Mercenary Considerations

  Chapter 34 – Sleight Change Of Plan

  Chapter 35 – Lyrical Interlude

  Chapter 36 – Captivating Companions

  Chapter 37 – Rustics Retreat

  Chapter 38 – Tourist Trap

  Chapter 39 – Installment Plan

  Chapter 40 – Ties That Bind

  Chapter 41 – Swap Meet

  Chapter 42 – Marital Affairs

  Chapter 43 – Bugs In The Design

  Chapter 44 - Cliffhanger

  Chapter 45 – Relic Redux

  Names You Should Know

  Author Bio

  Books By N. S. Wikarski

  Useful Info

  FOR READERS NEW TO THE SERIES

  A list of Names You Should Know is appended to the end of this book.

  Chapter 1 – In The Beginning

  Caucasus Mountains — East of the Black Sea coast — 5600 BCE

  They had been fleeing for weeks now. At first running just to keep a few paces ahead of the flood water. The water that no longer ran fresh but tasted of salt. It had swallowed their dwellings, their crops, and even their livestock and children. Many had perished. Some had been quick enough to escape. There was nowhere left to go but into the mountains so they stopped running and began to climb.

  It was summer when they left the shore. They had now reached the heights where summer never came. Some had wrapped their feet in rags to keep away the frostbite for a little while longer. Others had already died along the trail. That was when they still had meager food supplies. When they were not yet tempted to feed off the dead to keep themselves alive.

  Now they were reduced to a band of twenty. Some old, some young. She was the oldest. The only clan mother who had not drowned in the flood or died on the trail. Not yet anyway. They had stopped to rest on the top of a snowy pass while the shaman cast for signs.

  The clan mother looked around at the pinched and frozen faces surrounding her. Their troubled expressions prompted her for guidance.

  “Let us see what the signs will tell us.” She shuffled over to a woman who was crouching above a pile of flat stones with markings incised on them. The woman wore an amulet bound to her forehead. A polished piece of copper inscribed with a five-pointed star.

  “We should go down that way.” The shaman pointed toward a decline that led off to the right.

  “And I say we should go up instead!” challenged a burly young man. He pointed toward a gap between two mountain peaks to their left. The clan mother didn’t know his name or who his mother was. He had attached himself to their band during the flight. He possessed a bad temper and the chill in his eyes whispered to her that he had been born without a soul.

  “The signs say we should go down,” the shaman murmured, still intent on her casting.

  “And I am sick of listening to you and your signs!” The stranger advanced and stood menacingly above the shaman.

  She looked up at him in surprise. “Do you think the Mother Of All Things would lead us into harm’s way?”

  He spat behind him. “I think she has already led us into harm’s way. Where was she when the waters rose? What good have your prayers done so far?”

  “We’re still alive, aren’t we?” The shaman rose indignantly.

  “And you would give her credit for that?” The stranger’s tone was incredulous. “For starvation?”

  The shaman’s voice became hard. “She will not fail us.”

  “She has already abandoned us!” he shouted back. “She is not to be trusted. She has turned her back on us and now we should turn our backs on her.”

  The clan mother stood apart, considering the situation in silence.

  “We go this way.” The shaman pointed emphatically to the sloping trail on the right.

  “Enough talk!” Without warning, the stranger’s obsidian knife slashed across the shaman’s throat.

  She gave a single choking gasp before falling backwards, her blood staining the white snow.

  A few of the older men drew their knives but the clan mother stopped them. “No, let him go,” she said sternly.

  The stranger backed away from the group, his knife still drawn. He held up the star talisman he had snatched from the shaman’s forehead as she fell. “Look how well the Mother Of All Things protected her priestess. Do you think she will do any better for you or you or you?” He pointed in turn to each of the shocked faces that confronted him. “Anybody else who wants to live can come with me!”

  They looked at one other dumbly. Exhaustion and starvation had rendered them slow-witted. After a few moments, a handful of the younger folk straggled toward where the challenger stood. His eyes glittered as he stared at the clan mother. “Hah! You see who they choose to follow now. I will lead them to a new world with new gods who won’t betray us.”

  The clan mother watched him and his little band disappear in the gap between the peaks. She and her tribe had no place in the world of which he spoke. Nor would she have wanted one. She glanced down at the shaman lying at her feet, blood still gushing across the snow.

  ***

  It would be many thousand years before men would spin the memory of what had happened on that desolate mountain and weave it into their myths. It coul
d be reduced to two words. Original sin.

  Chapter 2 – Pointed Questions

  Stefan Kasprzyk knelt on the edge of a man-made crater in the earth and stared at a small object in his hand. He couldn’t understand what it was doing here. There were times, he thought irritably, when he wondered what he, himself, was doing here. Stefan was supervising the excavation of a Kurgan burial mound in Kazakhstan, a country that had the distinction of being one of the most godforsaken places on earth. It was situated right in the middle of the Eurasian steppes. His team might as well be digging on the bright side of the moon. The landscape was barren and treeless as far as the eye could see. A monotonous series of low hills that dipped and rolled off into infinity. No shelter from the cold or the heat. It was summer and the temperature was nearly one hundred degrees. He pulled his hat brim lower to shield his eyes from the sun. The excavation into the hillside had liberated a quantity of sand which the unremitting wind was blowing directly into his face.

  He dusted himself off and walked over to examine the portion of the grave that had been unearthed so far. The skeleton it contained was a chieftain of some sort. His remains showed signs of trauma. A gaping hole in the skull suggested he hadn’t died peacefully in his sleep. An occupational hazard, Stefan thought grimly, for those who lived by the sword.

  He shifted his attention to another part of the grave. Prominent Kurgan chieftains never died alone. Their burial rites demanded the death of others. A female body posed in a crouched position to his left suggested this was his wife. Quite possibly a bride captured from a neighboring tribe who didn’t care for her role in the funeral ceremonies. Her leg bones had been broken to keep her from running away and her throat had been cut prior to interment. Her function was to serve her lord in the afterlife. Slavery in this life meant slavery in the next.

  Stefan removed his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He fanned his face with the brim for a moment before kneeling down to continue his inspection of the grave goods. They were, for the most part, exactly what he expected to see. Items emphasizing the martial nature of the male buried here. Wooden bows and flint-headed arrows. Bone knives and spears. A stone mace. The skull of a slaughtered horse -- probably the chieftain’s favorite. The artifacts spoke of a life steeped in blood. A voracious need to subdue everything within reach.

  Stefan shook his head. He would much rather be working on one of the Arkana’s other digs where the artifacts were less grim. But, he reminded himself, as the Kurgan trove-keeper, his work was vital to their understanding of this anomaly in human behavior. How and why it all went wrong. The jumping off point when peaceful nomads became overlord invaders. His work might someday answer those questions. At the moment, he had more questions than answers. He looked down again at the object in his hands. It baffled him. An obsidian knife with an antler handle. What on earth was it doing here? Obsidian was volcanic glass and the nearest volcano was a thousand miles away.

  Even if the object had been obtained by trade or conquest, obsidian weaponry had become obsolete in the millennium prior to the burial of this chieftain. If that weren’t odd enough, its sheath presented another mystery. A hammered gold scabbard ornamented with lions. The decorative style of the sheath was consistent with the dead chieftain’s culture but the knife was not. The combination was as anomalous as someone storing a medieval French dagger inside a gun holster from the American West.

  He jammed his hat back on his head in exasperation. What was this knife doing here? His speculation led nowhere. He simply couldn’t answer that question. He paused as a thought struck him and a slow grin spread across his face. Perhaps he didn’t know the answer himself but he had just thought of the one person in the world who might be able to help him.

  Chapter 3 – Tabling The Talk

  Cassie Forsythe was running late for lunch. As always, finding parking in this trendy but highly-congested Gold Coast neighborhood took longer than she expected. She rushed through the revolving door of the restaurant only to be escorted back outside by the hostess who seated her at a bistro table overlooking the sidewalk.

  She hadn’t wanted to be late but it appeared she was early. Relaxing a bit, she tried to smooth her hair. It was dark brown, straight, and had a tendency to hang over half of her face like a curtain. Pulling a compact mirror out of her purse, she scrutinized her appearance. To a casual observer she would have seemed like any other nineteen year old college student. A petite frame clad in jeans and cotton T-shirt. Nondescript features, or at least Cassie thought so, but people always commented on her eyes. They were an unusual opaque grey. She rubbed away a smudge of mascara that had fallen on her nose. Slipping the compact back inside her purse, she surveyed the passersby. It was the typical upscale Chicago crowd of lawyers, stockbrokers, and high maintenance spouses but she couldn’t see Rhonda anywhere.

  Cassie was nervous about this interview. She mentally repeated the word. Interview. It really wasn’t that. She had agreed to meet her sister’s former business partner for lunch. That was all. A simple meal with a friend. “More like the third degree,” Cassie muttered under her breath. Given the strange events which had unfolded after her sister’s death two months earlier, there were too many things she couldn’t tell Rhonda. She would have to waltz around the truth like a debutante at a cotillion and she’d never been a good dancer to begin with.

  “Hi, sweetie, how are you?”

  Cassie jumped at the soft pressure of a hand on her shoulder. Rhonda had walked up behind her while the girl was busy with her internal monologue.

  “Hey Rhonda,” she replied shakily, rising to hug the plump older woman. She didn’t know why but every time she saw that concerned, maternal look in Rhonda’s eyes, it made her want to cry. It would have been such a relief to pour out all her cares to a sympathetic ear but she couldn’t allow herself to do that. Instead she blinked back a few tears and resettled herself in her chair.

  A brisk waiter arrived to fill their water glasses. They sat patiently while he regaled them with the day’s specials. Once he had retreated back inside they took a long look at one another.

  “So?” Rhonda began tentatively.

  “So?” Cassie echoed warily.

  “So how are you?” her friend added. “I haven’t seen you since that one time you stopped by the shop and it’s been nearly two months. What have you been doing with yourself?”

  There it was. Out in the open. How could she answer that very innocent and entirely awkward question? Cassie’s mind flashed back to the night her sister died. How she had wakened from a nightmare that showed her every detail of the crime as it was being committed.

  “What have I been doing?” She repeated the question to buy time. “Oh, I found a few things to keep me busy.” Busy didn’t begin to describe it. Cassie had discovered her sister was part of a secret organization called the Arkana and that its mission was to collect ancient artifacts that revealed human history to be quite different from what was being taught in schools around the world.

  “Care to elaborate?” Rhonda urged.

  The girl shrugged. “Nothing earth-shattering.” That’s a lie, Cassie thought to herself. Her sister Sybil had stumbled across an artifact which a fundamentalist cult known as the Blessed Nephilim killed her to get. If that wasn’t enough, Cassie herself was drawn into the Arkana when she discovered her ability to touch a relic and instantly receive telemetric flashes about the object’s past.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to avoid giving me a straight answer,” the older woman teased.

  Cassie smiled nervously. “That would be silly,” she demurred. “What have I got to hide?” What have I got to hide, she asked herself. Absolutely everything! For starters there was the trip to Crete. Together with two other agents she’d been sent to retrieve a vital relic and they were all nearly killed by a Nephilim and his mercenary henchman. Now she and her team were on the brink of pursuing another relic somewhere in Turkey with the Nephilim looking for it too. It was q
uite a bit for your typical nineteen-year-old college freshman to juggle between classes.

  Rhonda was giving her a quizzical look.

  Cassie rolled her eyes, trying to breeze through the interrogation. “OK, Mom. If you need the details, I got to know some of Sybil’s friends in the antique trade, that’s all.”

  “Really? I’m glad,” Rhonda commented encouragingly.

  The waiter returned to take their order. Cassie’s digestive system was churning so violently that all she wanted was a bowl of soup and iced tea.

  “I know Sybil was active in the antiquities market but she was always very close-mouthed about who she worked with.” Rhonda stirred cream into her coffee. “Are they nice people?”

  Again Cassie flashed back to her first introduction to the Arkana. To ninety-something Faye. Mild-mannered granny by day. The head of an international secret organization by night. To Griffin, the intellectually hyperactive wunderkind who managed the global catalog. To Maddie, the frizzy-haired chain-smoking Amazon who controlled worldwide operations. And also to Erik—annoyingly handsome smart ass Erik who ran security for the team when they were in the field.

  The girl paused and stirred a packet of sugar into her tea before replying. “Yes, they’re very nice,” she answered noncommittally.

  Rhonda reached into her purse, drew out an envelope and handed it to Cassie.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your share of last month’s profits from the store.”

  “Oh, right.” Cassie had forgotten that since her sister’s death she was now Rhonda’s business partner in the antique shop she co-owned with Sybil.

  “Last time we spoke, you mentioned that you wanted me to buy back your interest in the store.” Rhonda hesitated. “Do you still want that?”

  Relieved to be away from touchy topics, the girl answered decisively. “Actually I don’t. I mean, if you don’t mind, that is. Sybil wasn’t an active partner anyway. She just put up the front money, didn’t she?”