Read Secrets Of The Serpent's Heart (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 6) Online
Authors: N. S. Wikarski
Cassie stretched and gazed out the rear passenger window of the car.
“Before you even ask ‘are we there yet’,” Griffin cautioned, “I believe we are.”
This was the second day of a two-stage journey by car. There were no direct flights from Lanzhou to their next destination of Luoyang which made a six-hundred mile road trip the quickest way to get there. After spending the previous night in a hotel in Luoyang, they were now en route to the archaeological site of Erlitou which stood twenty-five miles outside the city.
During their trip, the landscape had changed from the mountains circling Lanzhou to green farmland. They were now traveling through the flat, fertile land along the lower reaches of the Yellow River which grew the crops that fed most of the nation.
Jun unexpectedly slowed the vehicle and pulled it over to the shoulder of the road next to what appeared to be farm acreage. Given the warmer climate of Henan, the cultivated furrows were already sending seedlings shooting toward the sun.
They all stepped out of the car and scanned the landscape. A series of plowed fields stretched in a level patchwork toward distant mountains.
“Where’s the dig site?” Cassie asked in a baffled tone.
“Here,” Jun replied matter-of-factly as he struck off across the field. “Follow me.”
The three silently complied, treading carefully in an effort not to disturb the young plants. After about five minutes, Jun stopped in front of a rammed earth retaining wall.
“Careful,” he cautioned, spreading his arms protectively to keep the rest from falling into a depression in the ground.
Cassie barely caught herself before taking a tumble. “You’d think somebody would put up a sign.”
They all paused to stare at the excavation. As archaeological sites went, it wasn’t particularly impressive. Piles of dirt were scattered around rectangular partition walls guarding a central depression which had been excavated a few feet below ground level.
“Isn’t anyone working here now?” Griffin seemed mildly surprised.
“Off and on,” Jun replied. “More off than on. The site is huge. It covers most of these surrounding fields. Objects have been found everywhere from here to the river.” He gestured toward the nearby Luo, a tributary of the Yellow River. “This dig has been active for several decades. Any artifacts discovered here were immediately sent off to museums.”
Cassie gave the excavation one more dubious glance. “Let’s see if I can get a reading from something.” She promptly crouched down beside the retaining wall and slid her fingers across its surface. Pictures flashed across her consciousness in rapid succession. She didn’t even bother to close her eyes, aware of both the intent expressions on her companions’ faces and the stream of images parading through her head.
A few seconds later, she smiled and stood up. “I got it.”
“What? Just like that?” Griffin sounded disappointed.
“I don’t know about you but I can skip the bouts of nausea, dizziness and pounding headaches,” she countered.
“Sorry.” His tone was mortified.
“What did you see?” Jun urged.
“Well, for starters, we’re standing right in the middle of what used to be an enclosed courtyard. I’m pretty sure this was the center of town because I got the impression that the power elites hung out here. There were three or four buildings—one-story tall with steep roofs. I could tell that one was a temple and the biggest one was a palace. But there’s a lot more.” She gestured toward the innocent-looking fields all around them. “There were peasant shacks and grain fields. And over by the river, there was some kind of metal-working operation off in an enclosure of its own. Then on the other side of the walled palace grounds was another bunch of fancy houses that belonged to the aristocrats.”
She frowned, concentrating. “The people who lived here weren’t like the ones I channeled before. Not like in Mohenjo-Daro or Dholavira. They didn’t pray to a goddess. They prayed to a human—the guy in charge. The ceremonies conducted in this courtyard were all about pleasing or placating whoever their king was. They were big on protocol and rituals. It was all very orderly and rigid and fearful.” She laughed grimly. “I didn’t like it.”
Her listeners were silent for a few seconds causing her to question her findings. “How’d I do?” she asked Jun timidly.
The trove-keeper seemed taken aback by the volume of data she’d collected in a matter of seconds. “Very impressive,” he finally said. “Everything you say about life in Erlitou tallies with what we know of it. It was founded by the Xia Dynasty which came six hundred years after the Yellow Emperor and his five successors. During those six hundred years, more steppe barbarians arrived and brought more conflict with them. The Xia kings probably no longer appeared Caucasian, having been genetically assimilated, but the overlord culture of the steppes had taken firm hold by 2000 BCE when this city flourished.
“Unlike the Neolithic farming communities, Erlitou was socially-stratified. At the lowest level was a peasant class that worked the land and provided a labor force for overlord building projects. Above them was an artisan class, principally metal-workers, who created bronze weapons and ceremonial objects. On top of everybody else were the ruling elites. The city at its height may have contained twenty thousand inhabitants.”
Griffin wheeled about to gaze at the surrounding farmland. “So all of this was urban at one time.”
“Yes,” Jun agreed. “The peasant dwellings would have been placed outside the main enclosure but quite close to the farmland. Here in Erlitou we see how the infiltration which began on such a small scale in the northwestern provinces intensified until it resulted in a rigid social hierarchy with overlords at the top and the indigenous farmers on the bottom.”
“I’m sure traditional Chinese historians might disagree,” Griffin countered.
Jun nodded philosophically. “I’m sure they would but they would be wrong nonetheless.”
“That’s my hunch too,” Cassie warily agreed. “But what proof do you have that everything here wasn’t home-grown?”
Jun took a seat on the wall and indicated the others should join him. “There are objects and inventions discovered at Erlitou which have no native antecedents.”
“Such as?” Griffin prompted.
“The wheel.” As usual Rou only spoke up when everybody had forgotten her presence. Cassie noticed that although the girl was seated right next to her grandfather, she hadn’t whispered the information into his ear. The Pythia considered this to be a sign of progress.
The trove-keeper expanded on Rou’s comment. “Here at Erlitou, archaeologists discovered the first set of wheel tracks found anywhere in China. Wheeled vehicles of any kind had not been seen before. These particular tracks may have been made by war chariots. Of course, traditional lore says that the war chariot was invented by an advisor to the first Xia emperor.”
“Except that we know steppe nomads had been using them for a few thousand years,” Cassie noted.
“That is correct,” Jun affirmed. “Also it goes without saying that if the Xia invented a war chariot, they would need horses to pull it.”
“Steppe horses,” Rou piped up. Her voice had grown a fraction less hesitant.
The others deliberately made no remark.
“Another oddity was the discovery of a turquoise dragon found in one of the excavated graves here.”
“That doesn’t strike me as too strange,” Cassie objected. “Dragons are practically an international symbol of China.”
“Yes, but did they originate here?” Jun smiled playfully. “Steppe mythology contains references to dragons going back thousands of years. Yet in China, dragons don’t appear as a symbol of power until the one found at Erlitou. One might even argue that the pig-dragon figurines found at Hongshan might have been imported from the west. At the very least, their mythology might have been. The items I’ve mentioned aren’t the only indicator of an overlord presence in Erlitou. Bronze-making techniques used by the Qijia Culture northwest of here are identical to those found among tribes in central Asia. Of course, the Xia refined those techniques.”
“But I’m sure the original impetus to make bronze weaponry came from outside the country,” the Scrivener speculated.
Rou was gazing off into the distance, seemingly lost in thought. “So many things that don’t belong here.” Although she said the words aloud, she seemed unconscious of that fact.
“That is very true.” Jun encouraged her. “We’ve already spoken at length about metalcraft, wheeled transport and horses but there are other foreign items—sheep, cattle, barley, and even wheat. The excavation here revealed four thousand year old wheat seeds. Wheat cultivation originated in central Asia. There is no form of the grain that is indigenous to China yet the Xia cultivated it in these very fields.”
“Speaking of things that don’t belong here,” Cassie said, “the overall sense I got was of order and control in Erlitou. Lots of rules and lots of punishments for breaking the rules. That sort of thing comes straight out of the overlord playbook.”
“I don’t suppose as you were forming impressions of this place, you came across any hint of our Minoan friends, did you?” Griffin regarded Cassie hopefully.
“Sorry, nothing even vaguely Minoan flashed across my radar.”
Both Jun and Rou seemed crestfallen at the news.
“I am very sorry,” the trove-keeper said. “It appears we brought you here for no reason.”
Cassie shrugged matter-of-factly. “At least we can check off another spot where the Minoans weren’t.” She smiled to try to cheer up their guides.
Rou seemed particularly distressed. She rose to her feet and paced back and forth before the retaining wall. Then she swung about to face her ancestor. “Grandfather, we must take them to Anyang.” She sounded downright decisive for a change.
Jun gazed at her in baffled amusement at her vehemence. “Yes, no doubt we should.”
“Anyang?” Griffin asked.
The trove-keeper took a moment to let his eyes wander over the excavation site. “If Erlitou merely whispers of the overlords, Anyang shouts their exploits in blood.”
It was about three in the afternoon when Leroy Hunt parked half a block away from the farmhouse in the sticks. It had taken him all morning to play out the farce of driving to the airport for his imaginary flight to Buffalo. He’d seen a car tailing him from his apartment to O’Hare but it didn’t follow him into the parking garage. Leroy assumed his tail would report that the cowboy was on his way out of town. That suited him fine. Just as an added precaution, he had gone to the trouble of buying a ticket for Buffalo so he could see if anybody else was lurking at the gate. He hung back after the last call to board but nobody was loitering in the waiting area. When he had assured himself that the coast was clear, he ducked into a bathroom and changed out of his western attire into something nondescript. A baseball cap and dark sunglasses completed his look. He felt sure nobody would recognize him as he made a beeline for the rental car counters.
He selected a white cargo van with tinted windows which would make it easier for him to scope out the neighborhood without being observed. He also took the precaution of slapping magnetic logo signs on the side doors advertising that the van belonged to a building contractor. Quiet suburban neighborhoods might notice a strange car parked on the street. They tended to ignore tradespeople in vans.
It was a long drive from the airport to the address out in the boondocks so he didn’t arrive until mid-afternoon. He found the place as soon as he turned down the street. It stuck out like a sore thumb among the identical suburban prefabs. A blue stucco two-story farmhouse with a fenced backyard that sat on an acre of land. The street itself was quiet. Nobody was outside walking around. Leroy knew he couldn’t dawdle on this stakeout because cars that weren’t parked in driveways were an oddity.
He took out a laser microphone with a built-in spy glass and got down to work. For starters, there was an old station wagon parked in the farmhouse driveway. Hunt made a note of the license plate number. There was no way of telling how many people were inside but the lone car was a good indicator. Then Leroy noticed the front door swing open. An old woman came out and stood on the porch.
For a minute Leroy thought this was a carbon copy of his first fake lead in Phoenix. Maybe this little old lady was another of Mr. Big’s flunkies. For all he knew, she might be setting this place up as the next fake address he’d be sent to. Leroy ducked low in the front seat but kept his spy glass trained on her. She had white hair and was wearing a cotton dress with giant flowers splattered all over it—the kind women wore when his grandma was still in pigtails. She ambled down the front walk to the mailbox by the curb and took out some letters. She didn’t look in his direction. Just sorted through the envelopes and went back inside the house. His microphone wasn’t picking up the sound of any other voices inside so she was obviously alone.
Hunt felt a sinking sensation.
Maybe all the trouble he’d taken to find a paper trail had been useless. This place was going to prove to be just another dead end. He was on the point of starting up his engine and leaving when he saw a sight that changed his mind.
A school bus turned onto the street where he was parked. Again he ducked low in the seat to watch. The bus stopped in front of the farmhouse, its flashers blinking red. A girl got out and the bus drove away. Leroy glued his spyglass to his eye so he could catch every detail of her appearance. He got a good look because she turned around to check the mailbox before going inside. He pulled the dog-eared photo of Metcalf’s scared bride out of his pocket and compared it to the girl by the mailbox. Her hair was cut short and she was wearing makeup but she seemed to be about the right height and age. He glanced at the photo again. Yup, it was Hannah alright. Not scared anymore. She walked with her head up like she belonged here. When she reached the front door, she let herself in with a key.
Leroy used his laser microphone and listened in to the conversation that followed. It amounted to nothing more than “How was school?” Unless that was some kind of secret code for “the doodads are stashed in the basement” there was nothing fishy going on in that house.
The cowboy sat back to mull over what all of these facts meant. For starters, Hannah wasn’t being held hostage as he’d originally thought. It seemed like she wanted to be right where she was—even had her own key to the place. It didn’t sound like she had any notion that she was being sheltered by a band of thieves and their boss. And who was the old lady? She was probably another patsy who was even more in the dark about the real nature of Mr. Big’s operation than little Hannah was.
Hunt sat there for another half hour waiting to spot any other activity around the farmhouse. At the end of that time, he concluded that unless there was a giant secret vault underneath the building, nobody else was using the place for any shady business. It clearly wasn’t a base of operations for Mr. Big or his trio of artifact thieves. More likely it was a safe house for the little gal. That made good sense. A willing hostage was a lot easier to handle than an unwilling one. Hannah could still be used as a bargaining chip if need be but for now she was just a normal kid going to high school.
The sound of a bad muffler cut into Hunt’s thoughts. He craned his neck to see where the noise was coming from. An old junker had just turned the corner and was making straight for the farmhouse. Its driver pulled up into the driveway with no hesitation. Apparently, he was already familiar with the place. The engine died and a runty kid with spikey hair climbed out of the driver’s seat. Hunt put his spy glass to his eye so he could get the kid’s license plate number. He also cracked his van window open to catch any stray outdoor conversation.
Hannah poked her head out the front door. She called to the boy loud enough for Leroy to hear without his fancy spy equipment. “Zach, Granny Faye needs something from the grocery store. Would you mind driving me?”
“Sure thing,” he called back. “And don’t forget to remind Gamma that she needs to call my dad about the car for prom night.”
“OK, I’ll tell her right now.” Hannah ducked back inside to transmit the message.
The boy leaned against the door of his car and waited for her.
A few minutes later, she ran out to meet him, giving him a quick kiss before climbing into the car.
Hunt raised his eyebrows in surprise. So that’s how it was. Hannah had surely taken to the Fallen World in a big way. A boyfriend. Prom night. The preacher would fairly blow a gasket if he could see her now. The cowboy ducked down as the two of them tore off down the street. Then he sat up straight behind the steering wheel to assess everything that he’d learned. He knew all the players now. Little Hannah had a boyfriend named Zach. The old lady’s name was Faye. She was probably the boyfriend’s grandma since he’d called her Gamma. Hunt knew for a fact she wasn’t related to Hannah even though the gal had called her Granny Faye.
It was pretty clear that nobody in that house knew squat about the doodads or the trio or Mr. Big. A kindly old lady looking after a teenager. A teenager with a boyfriend. It was about as vanilla as could be. He’d continue to scope out the place for a week or so just to be sure but Hunt had seen enough for one day. He grinned at the thought that his long-standing loose end was about to be snipped off for good. He started his engine and drove off.