The Spirit Well be-3 Read online

  The Spirit Well

  ( Bright Empires - 3 )

  Stephen R. Lawhead

  Stephen R. Lawhead

  The Spirit Well

  Important People

  Anen — Friend of Arthur Flinders-Petrie, High Priest of the Temple of Amun in Egypt, 18th dynasty.

  Archelaeus Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland — Nemesis of FlindersPetrie, Cosimo, Kit, and all right-thinking people.

  Arthur Flinders-Petrie — Also known as The Man Who Is Map, patriarch of his line. Begat Benedict, who begat Charles, who begat Douglas.

  Friar Roger Bacon — An early philosopher, scientist, and theologian who worked and taught first at Paris and then Oxford from around 1240 to 1290; he has been called Doctor Mirabilis for his wonderful teaching.

  Balthazar Bazalgette — The Lord High Alchemist at the Court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, friend and confidant of Wilhelmina.

  Benedict Flinders-Petrie — The son of Arthur and Xian-Li, and father of Charles.

  Burley Men — Con, Dex, Mal, and Tav. Lord Burleigh ’s henchmen. They keep a Stone Age cat called Baby.

  Charles Flinders-Petrie — Son of Benedict and father of Douglas, he is grandson of Arthur.

  Cosimo Christopher Livingstone, the Elder, aka Cosimo — A Victorian gentleman who seeks to reunite the Skin Map and understand the key to the future.

  Cosimo Christopher Livingstone, the Younger, aka Kit- Cosimo ’s great-grandson.

  Dardok — The head of the River City Clan whom Kit first encounters in the Stone Age; also known as Big Hunter.

  Douglas Flinders-Petrie- Son of Charles, and great-grandson of Arthur; he is quietly pursuing his own search for the Skin Map, one piece of which is in his possession.

  Emperor Rudolf II — King of Bohemia and Hungary, Archduke of Austria and King of the Romans, he is also known as the Holy Roman Emperor and is quite mad.

  Engelbert Stiffelbeam — A baker from Rosenheim in Germany, affectionately known as Etzel.

  En-Ul- The elder statesman of the River City Clan.

  Giles Standfast — Sir Henry Fayth ’s coachman and Kit ’s ally.

  Gustavus Rosenkreuz — The Chief Assistant to the Lord High Alchemist and Wilhelmina ’s ally.

  Lady Haven Fayth — Sir Henry ’s headstrong and mercurial niece.

  Sir Henry Fayth, Lord Castlemain — Member of the Royal Society, staunch friend and ally of Cosimo. Haven ’s uncle.

  Snipe — Feral child and malignant aide to Douglas Flinders-Petrie.

  Turms- A king of Etruria, one of the Immortals, and a friend of Arthur; he oversees the birth of Benedict Flinders-Petrie when XianLi’s pregnancy becomes problematic.

  Wilhelmina Klug, aka Mina — In another life, a London baker and Kit ’s girlfriend. In this life, owns Prague’s Grand Imperial Kaffeehaus with Etzel.

  Dr. Thomas Young — Physician, scientist, a certified polymath with a keen interest in the archaeology of ancient Egypt, his astonishing breadth and depth of accomplishment led to his epithet: “The Last Man in the World to Know Everything.”

  Xian-Li — Wife of Arthur Flinders-Petrie and mother of Benedict; daughter of the tattooist Wu Chen Hu of Macao.

  Previously

  The phenomenon known as ley leaping or ley travel is an endeavour fraught with complication and error. Far from being an exact science, using ley lines to travel among, between, and across the various known dimensions of the multidimensional Omniverse is at best an art that can only be perfected through long apprenticeship, and even the most expert of explorers is likely to go astray-a fact that Kit Livingstone knows only too well. Using a ley line discovered by Wilhelmina, his former girlfriend, Kit has succeeded in eluding capture by Lord Archelaeus Burleigh, a ruthless and violent man determined to possess the fabled Skin Map at any cost.

  In Kit’s desperation to escape Burleigh’s clutches, however, something has gone amiss; for although he landed in the right place, it seems to be entirely the wrong time. At least, the epoch in which Kit finds himself is definitely not the one Wilhelmina had in mind when she advised him to use that particular ley line for his getaway. Suffice it to say that for the time being, and perhaps the foreseeable future, Kit seems to be stuck in the Stone Age. Making the best of his predicament, Kit has stumbled upon a discovery that could prove important to the ongoing proceedings. It would appear that against all odds he has discovered the fabled Well of Souls or, as it is perhaps better known to readers of these pages, the Spirit Well.

  Meanwhile, back in seventeenth-century Prague, Wilhelmina’s enterprises go from strength to strength; her Grand Imperial Kaffeehaus is a rousing success and a boon to the city’s population. Engelbert “Etzel” Stiffelbeam, Mina’s business partner and a baker by trade, provides tasty pastries and invigorating coffee to a wildly appreciative public, as well as stalwart support to Wilhelmina. Her material welfare thus guaranteed, Mina now has time and money to spend in pursuit of the quest to find the scattered pieces of the Skin Map. To this end, she has formed a shaky alliance with the mercurial Lady Fayth against the same Lord Burleigh and his gang of base ruffians, the nefarious Burley Men. Yet, we ask ourselves, can Lady Fayth be trusted?

  It should be remembered that Giles Standfast, the late Sir Henry Fayth’s footman and driver, was sorely wounded in the attempt to flee Burleigh on the night Kit vanished and was taken to the Kaffeehaus for medical attention. The unfortunate Mr. Standfast has been returned to his home in England to convalesce. What lies in store for Giles remains to be seen, but it is expected that he will make a full recovery.

  Half a world away in Egypt, Dr. Thomas Young and his new and enthusiastic assistant, Khefri, are deeply engrossed in their work. We last saw them beginning the task of cataloguing an astounding trove of treasure recovered from the sealed tomb of Anen, High Priest of Amun and brother-in-law to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. One of the items retrieved from the tomb was a portion of the Skin Map. Our Dr. Young, we may recall, is also in possession of a meticulously rendered copy of the map and, with Khefri’s help, will endeavour to decipher its unique symbology. We wish them well, and hope they continue to occupy themselves to good effect.

  Unbeknownst to the others, a rival questor has been quietly making progress in the search for the ultimate treasure-none other than Douglas Flinders-Petrie. For those who may be sensing difficulty with the expanding Flinders-Petrie line, there is a simple alphabetic mnemonic. The line begins with A for Arthur, followed by B for Benedict, C for Charles, and D for Douglas. The last in line, Douglas, the great-grandson of the intrepid Arthur, possesses a purloined section of the map and is diligently applying his considerable talents in learning how to read it. To this end, he has succeeded in locating and suborning an unsuspecting aide to the cause in the person of Friar Roger Bacon, a thirteenth-century scholar, philosopher, theologian, and scientist. Careful readers may recall the audacious assault on the British Museum by Douglas and his young associate, the surly and taciturn Snipe. The two forced entry into the venerable institution’s Rare Book Room after opening hours and, following a brief search, made off with a prize volume plucked from the collection.

  To allow a slight digression, it can now be reported that the book in question had long been part of a minor southern aristocrat’s family library, which at the disposition of the deceased’s estate had come to the museum along with his collection of Roman glass and Tudor silver. The volume was thought to be from the late 1500s; it was a small, neat, leather-bound tome handwritten by its author and entitled Inconssensus Arcanus, or Forbidden Secrets.

  This particular work was prized not for its historic value, which was minimal, nor for its educational value, which was even less because it was wholly unreadable. The book was kept merely because all th
at could be deciphered in page after page of dense, cryptic text was the name Roger Bacon, who was none other than the famous professor of Oxford University in the early medieval period. Priest and scientist, the renowned “Doctor Mirabilis” was the author of many learned volumes, including the legendary Opus Minus Alchemaie.

  Every page of the Book of Forbidden Secrets, as it is known, is filled with strange pictograms resembling the letters of an unknown alphabet, an alphabet serving a language no one on earth had ever heard spoken. A secret code? An occult language? Who could say? Douglas Flinders-Petrie had a fairly solid hunch that it was not a language, neither was it a code. Rather, it was, in his considered opinion, a wholly symbolic script devised by Friar Bacon sometime around the year 1250-the same symbology that had inspired his own greatgrandfather, Arthur Flinders-Petrie, in the making of the Skin Map.

  In short, it was Douglas’ belief that the archaic manuscript was a catalogue of experiments and coordinates. The experiments detailed alchemical processes. The coordinates were those of ley line destinations. Ergo Roger Bacon, in addition to his other more highly lauded achievements, had also discovered ley travel.

  More could be said about these matters, but one feels this is quite enough for now; in any event it is enough to be getting on with. So, keeping these details firmly in mind, we return to our tale in which Friday takes a holiday.

  PART ONE

  The Ghost Road

  CHAPTER 1

  In Which Friday Takes a Holiday

  Cassandra Clarke dug bones for a living. She spent every summer of her professional life hunkered down in trenches of various depths with a trowel in one hand and a whisk broom in the other, excavating the skeletal remains of creatures long dead, many of which were known only to science and some known to no one at all. Although digging was in her blood-her mother was Alison Brett Clarke, palaeontologist of Turkana Boy renown-Cassandra did not plan to spend her entire life in plexiglas goggles with dust in her hair and a damp handkerchief over her nose. Her ambition was far greater than crating up fossils to be carefully catalogued and then locked away in some musty museum basement.

  Her father-the astrophysicist J. Anthony Clarke III, whose theory on the origin of the universe through quantum fluctuations in a plasma field won him a Nobel Prize nomination-enjoyed telling people that his precocious daughter was born with her feet in the dirt and her head in the stars. Those who heard that quip assumed it was a reference to her parentage and the fact that she spent so much time scrabbling around in holes in the ground. True enough, but it was also a sly allusion to his beloved Cassie’s penchant for fanciful invention.

  As a child Cass ran a neighbourhood theatre company from a tent in the backyard; for two summers running she cajoled kids within a six-block radius of 8th Avenue and 15th Street into performing in a string of dramas she wrote, produced, and directed. Usually the plays involved beautiful princesses being menaced by either dinosaurs or aliens, sometimes both. Later she graduated to writing poetry and short stories for the school newspaper, and won a prize in junior high for a poem about a melancholy wildflower growing in a parking lot.

  Despite these artistic leanings, she gravitated naturally to science. Blessed with her mother’s patient persistence and her father’s analytical proclivity, she excelled in her undergraduate studies and chose to follow her mother’s lead into fossil hunting, spending her summers assisting in digs from China to Mexico, earning her spurs. Now, as a doctoral candidate, she was assigned as assistant director for a major Arizona excavation with career-consolidating potential.

  Lately, however, the routine had begun to pall. Coprolites and Jurassic snails no longer held the fascination they once did, and the incessant backbiting and political manoeuvring endemic in upperechelon academia-which she had always known and accepted as part of the scholastic landscape-was proving more and more of an irksome distraction. The further she travelled into darkest PhD territory, the more the fossilised remains of extinct creatures dwindled in fascination; she was rapidly specialising herself beyond caring about her subject. Whether or not the world learned what the latest new megasaurus ate for lunch sixty million years ago, what difference did it make? On bad days, which seemed to come fairly often of late, it all seemed so pointless.

  More and more she found herself looking at the gorgeous Sedona sunsets and, irrationally, hankering for a clean canvas and a set of brushes-or seeing individual cacti as surrealist sculptures, or inwardly rhapsodising about the towering, wind-carved rocks of the canyons. In ways she could not fully describe, she felt she was being moved on to other things, perhaps another life beyond science. Still, she was not willing to throw in the trowel just yet. There was a teetering mountain of work to do, and she was up to her hips, almost literally, in unclassified fossils.

  Using a dental pick, Cass teased a glassy curve of mineralised bone from the hard-packed brick-coloured earth. It came free and plopped into her hand-a black, leaf-shaped stub of stone so smooth it looked as if it had been polished: the tooth of a young Tarbosaurus, a theropod that streaked about the earth during the Cretaceous period and, until this very moment, had only ever been found in the Gobi desert. Cass had studied these creatures in detail, and now had the proof she needed to support the theory of a more far-flung population than previously recognised. There was a time when securing such a specimen would have had her doing handsprings around the camp. Today, however, she merely tossed the fossil into a plastic bucket of other such treasures, paused, and straightened. Pressing a hand to the small of her aching back, she sighed, rubbed the sweat from the nape of her neck, and, shielding her eyes from the merciless afternoon sun, muttered, “Where’s Friday?”

  She made a quick scan of the surrounding terrain. The same bleak landscape met her gaze, unchanged in the twenty-one days since the dig season began, unchanged in eons: blood-red sun-scoured rocks, gnarled and withered creosote bushes, many-armed saguaro, scraggly yucca, choya, and assorted cacti by the carload. Of Friday-a Yavapai Indian who acted as gofer and scout for the excavating team-there was no sign. She turned to the west and glimpsed a faded red bandanna bobbing above a haze of purple sage as the work-shy fellow sloped off into the neighbouring canyon.

  She glanced at her watch. It was nearing six o’clock; there was another good hour left before they would have to gather up their tools, load the vans, and head back into town.

  “How’s it going down there?”

  Cass turned. The voice belonged to Joe Greenough, her colleague, team leader, and chief community liaison officer for the university field team. An affable chap in his early thirties, Joe coasted up with his hands in his pockets. “Anything interesting?” He peered down into the trench in which she stood.

  “Same old, same old.” She reached up a hand. “Here. Help a lady out.”

  “Any time.” Grasping her hand, he held it and smiled, but made no effort to help her up.

  “Today would be good,” she told him. “Any time… now, perhaps?”

  He put a hand under her arm and pulled as she scrambled up the side of the hole. “I hear there’s a new invention called a ladder,” he said, watching her dust off the seat of her cargo jeans. “Great for climbing. If you’re ever in a town that sells ’em, you should get one.”

  “You know me,” she said, moving off. “An old-fashioned girl to my fossilised bones. Don’t hold with these newfangled contraptions.”

  “Hey!” he called. “Where you going?”

  “After Friday. I’ll be right back.”

  “I came to talk to you,” he pointed out. “Not shout.”

  “What? You wearing cement shoes?”

  “Cass, listen.” He jogged after her. “Slow down a second. It’s important.”

  “Then speed up.” She kept her eye on the quickly disappearing Indian. It was strange how the indigenous folk could cover ground so quickly without appearing to expend any effort at all. “Friday’s gone walkabout, and I don’t want to lose him.”

  “It’s about
the dig.” Joe paused, as if remembering what he had come to say.

  “Yeah, with you so far,” she said, giving him a sideways glance. She saw a cloud pass over his usually sunny features. “Gosh, it must be some kind of important if it has you at a loss for words.”

  “It’s just… ” He sighed. “There’s no good way to say this.”

  “Then say it in a bad way,” she urged. “Just say it already.”

  “There’s trouble.”

  “Okay… and?” Before he could reply, she went on. “Don’t tell me the department is cutting back on our grant money again.” She stopped walking and turned to him. “I don’t believe this! After all I’ve done to convince-”

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “The grant is fine. The committee is delighted with the results.”

  “Okay, then.” She shrugged and started walking again.

  “It’s the Indians,” he blurted.

  “Native Americans.”

  “They’re on the warpath.”

  “Why? What did you say to them this time?” She skirted a large prickly pear and stepped lightly over a fallen saguaro limb. The university’s assurances and goodwill notwithstanding, the Arizona Native American Council had long ago decided to take a dim view of any archaeological activity in the region. So far, the project directors had been able to placate the ANAC by hiring local people to help with the dig and consult on indigenous culture-which was somewhat outside the remit of a palaeontology project, but helped keep the peace.

  “Nothing to do with me,” Joe protested. “Apparently there’s a major celebration coming up-a holy day or something. The tribal elders are claiming the entire valley as a site of special cultural significance-a sacred landscape.”

  “Is it?”