Restless Soul - Alex Archer [28]
What an amazing find, she thought, easily imagining a film crew recording everything in the chamber for a special on the ancient Hoabinhiam people. And she would find a way to get one here, locally hired or sent from New York after all the proper permission slips and paperwork had been filed with the government—even if she had to fabricate a monster.
But what is it that troubles me? Why is the voice silent now?
Annja was determined not to leave the chamber until she got to the bottom of things, so she worked quickly. When she was finished taking pictures of the coffins, she moved on to the treasure that was stacked against the other walls of the chamber and occupying her companions. Luartaro was still mesmerized by the gold and gems.
The gold gleamed warmly in the beam of her flashlight.
“Maybe it is the treasure,” she whispered. “But I’d still swear spirits are involved.”
Maybe she was too relaxed, now that their freedom from the mountain presented itself in the form of the rope ladder. Maybe she only heard the voice when she was stressed.
Annja tried to clear her mind and focus on the notion that someone was perhaps trying to communicate with her and that she needed to be more open to it.
In doing so, she brushed the sword again, hovering in the otherwhere, some dimension so easily within her grasp. She caught a glimpse of nothing else but the sword, and the cold feeling persisted and made her uncomfortable.
“What?” she whispered. “What are you trying to tell me? What? What? What? Why won’t you talk now?”
The rain continued to drum down, and the wind whistled. Luartaro and Zakkarat chattered, oblivious to her voiced concerns, the latter animatedly talking to himself in Thai.
Luartaro was taking pictures, too, and the flash made the gem-encrusted objects burst with color.
Annja finally roused herself from her musings when she caught a good look at what Zakkarat was doing. He was stuffing his pockets. “I said take nothing!” Annja said sharply.
“I am merely looking, Annjacreed,” Zakkarat said. “You are looking! You are taking a good look!”
Indeed, she was looking. It was impossible not to look.
The gold figurines stood out—at least two dozen of Buddha, from the size of a watermelon to one roughly half her height. The smallest had emeralds set in the earlobes and where its belly button would be. The most rotund Buddha was set with rubies and diamonds and its teeth were carved from pearls, and Luartaro stood in front of it, snapping pictures. The flash of his digital camera constantly bounced off the gold.
The thin Buddha came nearly up to Annja’s waist and had jewels, including a sapphire necklace draped around its neck that glowed in the beam of her flashlight. The largest gem was the size of a date, as large as any she’d seen in the Smithsonian, and she knew it must be terribly valuable.
The statues had to be heavy, and they weren’t carried down on that skimpy rope ladder. Whoever put them there must have used something sturdier to lower them.
And the statues certainly had nothing to do with the Hoabinhiam people or the coffins. But some of the pieces might be as old or possibly older than the coffins. How had all these antiquities come together?
Between each statue were pieces of ivory, bowls mostly, that were so thin and delicate her light glowed through them. There were pieces of jade and coral, some carved into the shapes of monkeys and birds and fantastical creatures that Annja had no names for. A fist-size jade turtle caught her gaze.
Her eyes flitted from one piece to the next, and she bent close to some as she took more and more pictures.
The lodge where she and Luartaro were staying had suddenly become that proverbial mixed blessing. Though it kept the world at bay with its