The Shadow Lamp Page 3

  Tony sighed. Getting information was going to be like pulling teeth. But this thought was followed by another: he was dealing with an indigenous culture’s description of a genuine marvel. Naturally they would cast it in terms they could understand—words that meant something to Friday and his people. They likely did not have another vocabulary, or even, perhaps, another way of thinking about the phenomenon. In any case, what Tony was being told lined up with what Cassandra had said in that late-night phone call that had put him on the next plane to Arizona.

  Alarm bells had begun ringing the moment he stepped off the jetway and tried to call Cass from the Flagstaff regional airport. Her cell was off and she did not answer the phone at the motel. He had collected a rental car and driven down to Sedona where, after a quick stop at his motel, he had hurried out to the dig site—which was shut down for the day owing to some local political stunt he had yet to understand. Back at the motel, he got in touch with two of Cass’ coworkers who told him that, yes, they had all seen his daughter at Red Rocks the night before. But, no, they had not seen her since.

  It took a few hours to learn that one of the white vans used by the diggers was missing from the parking lot. As the dig was suspended for the day, it had taken that long for anyone to notice the vehicle’s absence. Nevertheless, the van was quickly located at the excavation site tucked in behind a mound of debris bags; the vehicle was unlocked, the keys beneath the floor mat. It did not take a rocket scientist to put two and two together: Cass had driven out early that morning in the van, parked it in the shade, and gone off to investigate the Ghost Road again.

  He had immediately informed the police about his daughter’s disappearance and her mention of a visit to Secret Canyon. After the obligatory bureaucratic delay, the canyon had been thoroughly searched late the next day by national park rangers and two members of the local K-9 corps. The search turned up very little; though the dogs raised a scent leading from the van, they lost it once inside the gorge.

  Now Tony and Friday would carry the search forward into other realms.

  The two men walked along the shoulder of the highway until they reached a place where they could cross a weed-choked ditch and strike off into the desert. Tony listened to the crunch of the dry, gravel-strewn earth beneath his feet and cast his mind back to what Cass had told him about her encounter with a force or phenomenon she could not explain. He could still hear her voice, slightly aquiver with uncertainty, as she said, “Dad, I think I travelled to a different dimension. One second I was in the canyon being pelted by sand and wind and rain, and the next I was . . . Dad, I was standing on an alluvial pan of volcanic cinders—no canyon, no cacti, no nothing—only lines stretching to the horizon in every direction . . .”

  When he pressed her for details, she said, “Lines, you know—they looked like someone had taken a snow shovel and dug a shallow trough through the cinders across the plain, but not arbitrarily or haphazardly. These lines were absolutely straight, and they went on for miles.”

  Her description put him in mind of the ancient patterns scratched into the volcanic pan of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. A quick perusal of available reference books tended to confirm her description; it was, he reasoned, what one would see from the ground if dropped into the middle of the Nazca plain.

  Tony Clarke, the father, believed his daughter had undergone a very powerful experience that had rattled her normally rational view of the world. J. Anthony Clarke, the scientist, hypothesised that she had undergone an experience of translocational perception induced, perhaps, through the clash of electromagnetic forces wrought by some of Arizona’s unique physical geography.

  Known famously as the Sedona Vortexes, these telluric energy emanations could produce singular effects. Could they, he wondered, significantly affect cognition and awareness? He had read abstracts of experiments where volunteers subjected to intense magnetic fields experienced altered states of consciousness. Was this what had happened to Cassandra?

  Of course, mental dislocation was one thing; physical disappearance was something else entirely. A good scientist, J. Anthony Clarke refused to speculate until he had more facts at his command. And that was why he had sought out Friday on this bright, fresh morning.

  “Okay, so you don’t know how the Ghost Road works,” Tony conceded. “But how do you manipulate it? Where does it go? I want to know anything you can tell me.”

  A faint smile passed Friday’s lips. “You are just like your daughter.”

  “Thank you. I’m waiting . . .”

  Friday briefly described his experience of the Ghost Road, saying that the so-called spirit paths could only be found at certain times in the morning and evening, and that one must be initiated into their use by another traveller. He hinted that various destinations could be reached by linking path to path, thereby allowing a traveller to jump from one place to another. He said shamans who used the mysterious pathways seemed to age very slowly, if at all, and that there was great wisdom to be gained from travelling the Ghost Roads.

  Tony realised he was receiving a crash course in interdimensional travel and absorbed everything that was said; his understanding grew by leaps and bounds as his quick mind made instant connections between what he was being told and the science that had been his life’s work.

  As they talked, the red stone cliffs drew nearer, rising abruptly from the surrounding plain, stark and imposing in the bright morning light. Before the sun had cleared the towering rock stacks to the east, his guide had led him to the half-hidden entrance of the dry gorge known as Secret Canyon.

  Casting a last glance at the sky, Friday said, “We are in time.”

  Tony looked around. Steep walls of deep-red sandstone formed sheer curtains on either side of a narrow gully, the floor of which was mostly smooth and level. The valley interior between the two undulating walls was steeped in shadow. “What happens next?” he asked.

  “We walk.”

  “After you.”

  Friday nodded and started into the canyon; a step behind, Tony followed. It took a few moments for the hiker’s eyes to adjust to the dim light filtering down from the sky high above. The air held a mineral tang—that of stone and water and ozone created by the dry desert wind as it passed over the canyon rim. The two followed the smoothly curving path through the ravine until they came to a place where the trail straightened. Friday picked up his pace and lengthened his stride.

  Tony, watching his native guide, imitated the long, loping gait as closely as possible and, a moment later, felt the light breath of a fresh breeze wafting over them. A few more steps and the shadow deepened even more. Glancing up, he saw that they had passed into an area of misty fog hanging up along the canyon rim. A second or two later he felt the first spits of rain on his neck and hands.

  The breeze freshened, whistling among the high rocks, sending a light drift of pebbles down upon them.

  “Stay close and watch your step,” Friday instructed.

  “Is this part of it?” asked Tony.

  “Yes.”

  Without seeming to move any faster, Friday’s stride came quicker. He reached out a hand to Tony, who grasped it and was almost instantly blown off his feet by a terrific gust of wind. Or at least that is what he imagined had happened. For at the same moment the wind hit him, the canyon floor offered up a change in levels—a mere half step, but enough to throw the scientist off his stride. He lost his balance and would have pitched forward onto hands and knees if not for Friday’s steadying grasp.

  Everything became a little confused. The hanging fog seemed to pass in front of him and Tony felt a slick of mist on his face. Then the cloud vanished and he was standing in full daylight in the desert. Thinking at first that they had merely exited the canyon, Tony looked back fully expecting to see the red rock walls behind him. What he saw instead took his breath away and set his mind reeling.

  The signature sandstone stacks of Sedona were nowhere to be seen, nor any of the saguaro, yucca, or barrel cacti. In
stead, he saw that they stood on a vast, empty plain, flat as a pan to the horizon, which showed an uneven band of hills in the blue distance. He stood in a shallow trench that had been carved from the loose volcanic pumice that covered the plain; this trench stretched before and behind them, straight as a surveyor’s line as far as he could see.

  Friday stopped walking and dropped Tony’s hand. “We are here.”

  “Where?” asked Tony, gazing around in wonder. It was much as Cassandra had described it on the phone. “What is this place?”

  “This is Tsegihi,” he replied. “You would say ‘the Spirit World.’”

  “It may be the Spirit World, but it looks like Peru to me.”

  “If you say so.”

  Tony gazed around, feeling the sun hot on his back and head. “This is where you brought Cass—” he began, then was overwhelmed with a sudden and violent nausea that doubled him over and left him heaving into the dust.

  “That happens,” observed Friday.

  Tony raised his head and gave his guide a dark look. “You might have warned me,” he said, dabbing his mouth with a sleeve. He drew air deep into his lungs and the waves of seasickness slowly receded. He straightened once more. “What do you do here?”

  Friday returned his gaze but made no attempt to answer.

  “Okay. Let me ask you this, then—what did Cass do when she came here?”

  “Nothing,” replied Friday. “We looked at Tsegihi, and then I took her home.”

  “That’s all? That’s it?”

  “That’s it.” He turned his gaze to the far mountains, drew a deep breath, exhaled, and said, “Now I take you home too.”

  “Not so fast, my friend. If Cass came here alone, she probably left a trace of some kind—she may still be here somewhere. We’re going to look for her.”

  Friday made no reply, so Tony turned and surveyed the plain on which they stood. There was not another living thing in any direction as far as the eye could see. If there had been anyone, or anything, moving out on the pan, they would have seen it. Assuming Cass had arrived at roughly the same place as the two of them, what did she do next?

  “Are there other lines around here?” Tony asked.

  “Many.”

  “Do you know where they lead?”

  “No. They go everywhere. It is dangerous to travel where you do not know.”

  Tony considered this. “If she just kept walking, would she ever reach a town or village or anything?”

  Friday gave a curt shake of his head.

  “Then I think it is likely she tried to get back home,” Tony concluded. “Knowing her, that is what I think she would have done.” He glanced around at the lines etched into the pumice gravel of the plain. “Am I right in thinking that these lines mark different spirit roads or pathways?”

  Friday swept the empty plain with a stoic gaze. “Some of them.”

  “Since she would have no way of guessing which lines might be active pathways, the most logical thing would have been simply to retrace her steps. Am I right?”

  Friday said nothing.

  “Let’s assume for the moment that my assessment is correct.” Pointing to the trail on which they stood, he asked, “Does this road lead back to Secret Canyon?”

  “No.”

  Tony considered this. He looked up and down the length of the shallow trench, nodding thoughtfully. “Okay. So where does it go?” he asked at last.

  His reluctant guide hesitated in a moment’s indecision, then confessed, “I do not know.”

  “Well, Friday, my friend, we are about to find out.”

  CHAPTER 3

  In Which Cass Takes a Quantum Leap

  Weary, footsore, feeling very much like an old, tread-bare tyre leaking air, Cassandra came to stand before an immense wrought-iron gate guarding the entrance to a stately house at the end of a city street. There were no streetlights, no lights from the surrounding houses—no lights at all, save the last gleam of daylight swiftly dying in the west.

  Brendan’s directions had been faultless; however, his description of travelling into seventeenth-century England left a lot to be desired. But then, probably nothing he could have told Cass would have done justice to what she had experienced in the last . . . how long? One day? Two? It seemed like a lifetime already.

  Then again, where do you start, she wondered, to describe a world at once so familiar and yet so strange?

  Before her stood the imposing red-brick mansion of an English aristocrat with its gabled eaves and multiple chimneys, each with a different pattern and design; the mullioned windows with tiny diamond-shaped blown-glass panes; and the ornate iron railings around the entire property perimeter with the broad-limbed plane trees forming a darkly patterned backdrop. In the road behind her, a herdsman with a willow switch led four cows down the middle of the street; a man stood on the corner ringing a bell and shouting at the top of his lungs; and women in long skirts with wicker baskets on their heads walked hand in hand, chatting blithely as they passed.

  Cass took in the utterly dream-like quality of the scene with a long, slow shake of her tired head. If William Shakespeare appeared on the doorstep to greet her, it would not surprise her in the least. Certainly, the people she had met on the way and those walking about the streets appeared to be right out of a Shakespearean play. In dress and habit the people seemed like they would have been comfortably at home in the world of Merry Wives of Windsor. They talked like characters from Shakespeare too—which was another thing Brendan might have warned her about with a little more force: the language, unless followed with excruciating attention, was very nearly incomprehensible. She struggled through even the most obvious and simple exchanges and kept these to a minimum. It’s English, Jim, she thought, but not as we know it.

  This, added to all the other shocks and alarms that landing in the alien world of 1660s London had thrown at her, had worn Cassandra to a frazzled nub. She wanted nothing more than to curl up with a warm drink, rest, and regroup. Unfortunately, any such comfort would have to wait. Just now she stood on the brink of her greatest challenge thus far.

  Stepping through the gate, she started up the curving walk to the front door, where she paused to gather her thoughts. Drawing a breath, she put her hand to the big brass doorknocker. “Here goes nothing,” she murmured and gave the door three solid taps.

  She waited. Fatigue seemed to come seeping up through the ground into her blood, sending a jumble of the day’s events cascading through her mind.

  The day had started well before sunrise with a speed course in ley travel conducted by Brendan Hanno—the Chief Zetetic, as she now liked to think of him—her mentor and guide in this brave new world of interdimensional exploration.

  “You’ll want to keep in mind a few very basic general guidelines,” he had told her as they bumped along a lonely Syrian road into the arid hills north of Damascus. “The nearer one is to the beginning of a line, the closer one seems to be in relation to its origin point in time. It is well to keep that in mind, but don’t trust your life on it—there are too many exceptions.”

  “That’s another thing,” said Cass, taking a big bite of the sticky sweet roll that was her breakfast. “What makes the ley lines in the first place? How are they created?”

  “If we knew that,” laughed Brendan, “we would probably have completed the quest years ago. The creation of the leys is one of the many splendid mysteries of our unique endeavour.”

  “Maybe that can be one of your contributions to the quest,” suggested Mrs. Peelstick from the backseat. “Another sweet roll, dear? I also have some very nice pears.”

  “We’re almost there,” Brendan announced, slowing the vehicle. “We’ll stop just along the road and I’ll walk you to the ley. I don’t think there’s anyone around, but you never know.”

  They reached the valley and arrived at a crossroads identified by an old stone marker. There was a small farm surrounded by olive trees a few hundred metres to the west and another a few hun
dred metres beyond that. Otherwise, the place was deserted. Brendan stopped, pulled on the hand brake, and switched off the engine; Cass stepped out of the vehicle and into a cool, fresh morning. The sky was showing a frail pink light in the east.

  Mrs. Peelstick opened the rear door and joined her in the road. “I will be praying for your safety every step of the way, Cassandra,” she said. “Go with God.”

  Cass gave her a brief hug, made her farewell, and fell into step beside Brendan. “That marker,” he said, indicating the milestone beside the road, “is Roman. If you look real hard you can still make out the distance.”

  “Distance to where?”

  “Rome, of course,” replied Brendan cheerfully. “All roads lead to Rome, you know. The ley we want is not far from here.” He headed up the hill towards the rising sun. “Old Reliable, I call it.”

  “Because it never lets you down?” Cass, dressed in her sturdy walking shoes and long peasant skirt, blouse, and blue-checked shawl—Mrs. Peelstick’s valiant attempt at approximating Ye Olde English fashion—lifted her hem and climbed the rising path, picking her way among the chunky rocks littering the ground.

  “Because it is unfailingly stable—a sign that generally indicates a very old ley line. When you find a ley marked by successive epochs of human culture—standing stones, Neolithic burial mounds, sacred wells, churches, that sort of thing—all strung out across the landscape, then you can be reasonably certain that the ley is not only quite old but also very stable.”

  “Stable,” wondered Cass. “As in . . . ?”

  “As in, unlikely to pitch you into the soup.”

  “So the older a ley line, the more reliable it is destination-wise.”

  “Generally speaking. There are exceptions.”

  Cass shook her head. “Where would we be without exceptions?”

  They walked across a scrubby wasteland of sparse grass and rocky soil of the kind that in Syria passed for lush pasture. The sky continued to grow brighter, spreading red gold along the eastern horizon. The air was fresh and cool but held a hint of latent heat; it would be hot later. But then, Cass reminded herself, by that time she would be somewhere else, and somewhen else. “So tell me about London in the seventeenth century,” she said.