Rogue Angel - Restless Soul Part 7

How did this treasure get here? she mused. Who brought it and where did it come from? And what about the blood? Did the treasure have a violent past?

She thought of the temple they'd spotted on their walk to Tham Lod Cave. Some of the objects had a religious significance. Maybe she could show her pictures to someone there.

She took only one shot of a flat wooden box that sat on a tall crate. It was filled with thumb-size fish carved from coral. Annja gingerly moved it aside to find a slightly smaller box underneath that was filled with strings of pearls and gold and silver beads.

"The treasure of a king," she said.

"Of two or three kings, maybe," Luartaro added. "The treasure of an entire kingdom." He'd silently slipped to her side, still taking pictures. "Look at that." He gave out a low, appreciative whistle.

One of the strands alternated pearls with smooth, grape-size rubies. It was short, but there was a long one with smaller stones.

Luartaro bent to touch one, but Annja moved his hand away.

"Don't touch anything," she said in the tone of a museum curator scolding a visitor. "And don't take anything." She paused. "At least, not yet. We shouldn't disturb a single object."

"I'm an archaeologist, too." He shook his head sadly. "You shouldn't have to tell me that. I know better than to touch things. I guess I just got too caught up in all of this."

She instantly chastised herself for moving the box with the coral fish. They were all guilty of becoming too excited by the find.

"I know that things should be studied and doc.u.mented before they are moved. And you don't have to tell me not to take anything, Annja. But tell that to our guide." Luartaro tipped his head toward Zakkarat.

Annja looked back.

Zakkarat was still stuffing his pockets full of jewelry. He had managed to open one of the smaller crates and was raiding the contents. Inside were gold and silver incense burners, bracelets and candle holders, all padded with straw and wood shavings.

"No!" she shouted. "We take nothing, Zakkarat!"

He ignored her, dipping into the crate and pulling out a handful of bangle bracelets and a pearl necklace.

She rushed at him and grabbed his hands.

A string of chocolate-hued pearls dropped from his fingers, the strand hitting the stone, breaking and sending the beads dancing everywhere.

Annja's grip was firm and her eyes like daggers. "Zakkarat, nothing here is ours. This belongs to history. It must be-"

Zakkarat jerked his hands free. The lines on his face were tight and more p.r.o.nounced in his ire. "Nothing here is yours! This is my country, Annjacreed. And these things might belong to history, but even you can see that this treasure has nothing to do with the Hoabinhiam hunter-gatherers or their coffins and pieces of pots. Old? Yes, the treasure is that, but it is not the same as the coffins. It does not belong here. See?" He pointed to something on the ground at the base of one of the Buddha statues.

"Annjacreed, I do not think the Hoabinhiam were so foolish as to smoke. Or if they were, they would not have smoked Chinese cigarettes."

A crumpled cigarette pack lay on the ground. Near it was a spent pack of matches, a candy wrapper and behind the crate an empty clipboard.

"Clearly," Annja returned through clenched teeth. "Clearly these things do not belong together."

"Stolen, all this treasure likely is, Annjacreed," Zakkarat continued. He bent and scooped up some of the errant pearls and pocketed them. "So I am stealing only from thieves. How is that wrong? I was not a wealthy man when we started out this morning, Annjacreed. I am not like a famous TV woman with baht to spare."

He paused to examine one of the dark pearls. "But I am rich now. My family will want for nothing, and you will not stop me. You do not have the right to stop me."

Annja fumed. "There might be a finder's fee but for now we take nothing," she said. "You take nothing," he corrected. "Me? I will take what I can carry...which is next to nothing when you look at all of this. What I take is nothing. What I take will not be missed." take nothing," he corrected. "Me? I will take what I can carry...which is next to nothing when you look at all of this. What I take is nothing. What I take will not be missed."

He continued to speak, but it was in Thai and she couldn't understand him.

Then he spun away and strode toward Luartaro's dropped backpack. He opened it and dumped the contents, then proceeded to stuff it with bejeweled and ivory trinkets. He tried to put the watermelon-size Buddha in, but couldn't lift the statue.

Luartaro put a hand on Annja's shoulder. "I'm not sure you should stop him, you know," he said quietly. "The authorities-"

"Yes, we can call the authorities when we get out of here, and we can well report him. Maybe we should. But I don't know." Luartaro took a picture of Zakkarat still trying to lift the gold Buddha.

"We should." Her voice was softer and sad. She sympathized with Zakkarat. Here was an opportunity to live well. If she was in his position, would she do anything differently? "We should report him," she said again.

"We'll have time to talk about it on the walk back to the resort...or the ride if we can find his Jeep. We'll have to go into town, you know, to call people about this."

She nodded. "I...I'm not done here yet, Lu."

"And I wager you'll not get Zakkarat out of here until he is so loaded down he can barely walk." He took several more pictures of Zakkarat, who had finally given up on the Buddha and was taking instead a polished horn with monkey faces carved on it. "And best we take a good long look at as much as we can now in case the authorities don't let us back in. We do have to tell the authorities about this."

"Yes, we do." She returned to examining the treasure, glancing over her shoulder at Zakkarat and deciding that he could stuff as much as would fit in the pack, but he wasn't leaving with it.

She was pleased Luartaro thought as she did-that the Thai authorities had to be told about this place so it could be protected. But she was confident she would be allowed back in. She would be persuasive if she needed to be, and the promise of a television special or doc.u.mentary always lured people into saying yes.

"Coins!" She heard Zakkarat exclaim. "Old, gold ones."

Everything here is old, she thought, though admittedly some pieces in the treasure belonged to a more recent age than the ancient coffins. But some pieces were also likely older than the coffins.

Was this what had troubled her? The treasure from different times and cultures colliding in this chamber? Had something foreshadowed her finding this place? And Zakkarat stealing? And where was the mysterious voice?

The chill hadn't left her. She retraced her steps around the chamber, looking past golden Buddhas and into niches that contained still more antiquities and crushed cigarettes and wrappers.

Luartaro followed her. "Annja-"

"What?" The word came out far sharper than she'd intended. "Sorry."

"There is something I saw earlier and wanted to talk to you-"

"Saw what? Where? What did you-"

"Not in here. I didn't see it in here. It was when you were climbing the wall in the cavern, when the river rushed in and I had to use my flashlight because the lantern was lost.... I saw you had a sword, an old one. And you used it to cut through the dirt and-"

So he had gotten a good look at her with the flashlight! It was dark, but he obviously had good eyesight.

She shook her head. "A sword? You were mistaken." Though she considered the lie necessary, it grated on her nonetheless. "I used a piton to cut through the dirt. I didn't have a sword."

It was his turn to shake his head. "What I glimpsed was too long to be a simple piton. It was dark in the cavern, but I know what I saw. Where did you find a sword down here? And where is it now? I couldn't see it well, but it looked old. You scold Zakkarat about taking things and yet-"

"There is no sword, Lu. A sword wouldn't have fit in my pack, and there certainly isn't one here." She spread her hands out to her sides and turned in front of him. "See? No sword."

Once more she touched Joan of Arc's weapon with her mind. She hadn't wanted Luartaro to learn about that part of her life.

"Do you see a sword?" Her tone was light and teasing, hopefully convincing. "A trick of the light and the rain, Lu. It's like I told you. I used a piton to dig through the dirt."

She walked to her pack and brought it near the coffins, not wanting Zakkarat to dump it out and stuff it with treasure.

"No sword," she repeated. Annja unzipped the bag and opened it so he could see it contained only pitons, a small hammer and some other small tools.

He shrugged. "I guess you're right. Sorry. It was really dark, after all. I suppose I could have been seeing things."

"And I'd like to see a few more of these things before we have to leave," she said, glad he had given in to her lie. And before I stop Zakkarat from hauling priceless pieces out of here, she thought. But she wasn't going to squander the minutes to argue with the Thai man at that moment.

Annja turned away from Luartaro and went back to examining the coffins. My answer must be here, she thought. Why can't I see it? Why can't I hear- Free me.

7.

Annja did her best to shut out the sounds around her-the rain coming down and pelting against the pool in the center of the chamber, Zakkarat babbling away in Thai and Luartaro pacing and talking and taking photograph upon photograph.

Annja wanted to leave this place and make sure Zakkarat took nothing-at least nothing of significance or that could bring trouble upon him later. A few trinkets or some gold coins, she truly could not begrudge him that.

"But it's not yet time to leave," she said sternly. "Not just-"

Free me.

She stood in front of the middle coffin and stared at the contents. Her eyes drifted to a particular piece, one of the covered bowls she'd glanced at earlier. This time she felt drawn to it.

"That's it." Annja somehow felt a connection to the bowl, and in realizing it, the chilling sensation that had gripped her vanished and she almost felt a sense of peace.

She'd told the men not to touch anything-not that Zakkarat listened. Now she was going against her own advice, but she had to! The voice wouldn't allow her to wait any longer.

She set the flashlight on the edge of the coffin, angled so it highlighted the bowl. But what is it?

On closer inspection she saw it wasn't really a bowl. She moved some of the other things away from it. The container was a dull white, polished and covered with flowing symbols that might be letters, but it was no language that she recognized.

She took a picture, thinking she knew people on the archaeological networks that might help translate it. She took more pictures from different angles and then returned to it, seeing a thumb-size dark brown splotch.

"More dried blood."

She drew in a deep breath. The air was fresher here than in any other chamber they'd been in, but there were traces of old things in it-the teak and the treasure...and now that she was alert to it, she was sure she could smell blood.

She took another deep breath and picked up the scents of the jungle and the rain.

Finally, she leaned forward, fingers gently folding around the container, chastising herself for doing this without gloves but not able to stop herself.

The moment her fingertips touched the surface, images flashed through her mind. The jungle. Rain coming down. Flowered vines twisting in the wind. The black gaping maw of...of... What? A tomb? Men. White men with green-and-black paint smeared on their cheeks, dirt smeared on their hands, their expressions transforming from joy and excitement to being twisted by fear. Pain. Then eyes closed in death and pale skin flecked with blood.

She shuddered and nearly pulled back, but her need to know what it meant was stronger than her discomfort.

Free me.

"This is it," she said more firmly. "This place in the mountains and this...thing."

Something about the container had led her there, had touched her through the teak coffins and the mountain range when she and Luartaro were at Tham Lod and worried at her enough to pull her through chambers and twisting tunnels filled with the rising river. "But what is it?"

She drew the bowl toward her and held it directly in front of the flashlight. The light played across the surface, and she stumbled. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she almost dropped the thing in her hands.

The container was a skull.

She closed her eyes for a moment, breathed deeply and evenly, and steadied her hands until she could open her eyes and examine the object.

The top part of a skull had been fas.h.i.+oned into a bowl, the jaw removed. It looked as if it had been polished, then engraved with symbols or letters. Some sort of dye had been applied to make the symbols stand out.

No, not dye. Blood.

The etchings were inlaid with blood like a jeweler might inlay gold or a souvenir maker might inlay cloisonne. The lid was ceramic. It was shaped vaguely like a parasol and had a little nub in the center to grasp to open.

Annja set the container on the floor between her feet, brought the flashlight down and tried to remove the lid. It didn't budge, but the images flashed again, more intensely. Dirty, tired faces transformed by excitement, then fear. The jungle all around them.

She could smell the sickening scent of the thick-petaled flowers. She could feel the tiresome rain that had pattered against the men's faces.

Who were they?

When were they?

She felt their excitement at discovering something, though she couldn't see what it was. She shared their surprise when thunder boomed and felt it turn to fear when it was followed by a rat-a-tat-tat rat-a-tat-tat that was not part of the storm. And she took their last, dying breaths with them. that was not part of the storm. And she took their last, dying breaths with them.

She released the breath she hadn't even been aware she was holding and was grateful for the air that filled her lungs. Grateful that she was still alive.

The images of the men's faces swirled around her like the thick morning fog on a riverbank, and then dissipated, leaving her numb.

Free me.

Whatever was inside the skull container wanted out. She could almost feel it thrumming beneath the bone bowl.

But should she let it out? Running her finger around the edge of the lid, she felt a hard waxy substance, like a seal. She wanted to pry at it with her nails. But something held her back.

If she was going to open it, she should take the bowl with her and open it later when Zakkarat and Luartaro were not around. No use jeopardizing them further.

Free me.

She had witnessed some extraordinary things since she'd come into possession of the sword. She truly didn't know what might happen if she pried open the strange container.

She squatted in front of it and dug her fingernails into the wax, clawing at it even as she told herself she should open it later. The same way she'd told herself she should have come out here by herself.

Maybe Roux would have one more thing to lecture her about. But she wasn't going to wait. She couldn't wait.

Something was demanding she open the bowl now, now, an inner voice that had nothing to do with the one saying, "Free me." an inner voice that had nothing to do with the one saying, "Free me."