The Seventh Stone Read Free Page A

mile.” He turned off his headlamp.
     
    Her hands shook. She fumbled with trembling fingers for her headlamp switch and turned it off.
     
    “ Hurry,” he said. As if being shot at wasn’t motivation enough. Joseph scrambled upwards, as sure-footed as a mountain goat.
     
    Christa was no mountain goat. The only time her footing was sure was on the fencing strip with a foil in hand. She had fenced blindfolded once, a coaching strategy. It hadn’t gone well. She looked back. Alongside the headlights, a glow rimmed the high canyon wall. The moon was rising. She and Joseph wouldn’t have the cover of dark for long. The headlights swung around, towards the dirt road that zigzagged down into the valley.
     
    “ He’s coming into closer range,” Joseph said.
     
    “ He can’t get a bead on us in the dark,” she said, based more on desperate hope than experience. The barking howl of a coyote punctuated the drone of a car engine. She felt for the next notch, clamped on and heaved herself up.
     
    Joseph’s moccasin disappeared over the rim.
     
    She clambered up behind him, rolling onto the flat, dusty plateau. The moon breached the horizon. It was full and bright. Its light flooded the cave in a timeless silver. She crouched, too stunned to be sensible and run for the nearest cover. The cliff dwelling was magnificent. It wasn’t in ruins. Its architecture had been perfectly preserved from being buried in sand for five hundred years.
     
    Joseph grabbed her hand. Keeping low, they ran away from the edge of the plateau and deeper into the eyebrow-shaped cave. The cave had to be at least seventy feet wide and thirty feet high, eroded out of the sandstone cliff eons ago. The pueblos clawed into the recesses of the cave, crammed into its shelter like a child’s jumble of building blocks, crafted from crude stone bricks and plastered together with adobe clay. Many didn’t have doorways, and only a few had windows; the ancient ones accessed their pueblos via ladders through the ceiling.
     
    Joseph pulled her behind the ruin of the outermost wall. He was breathing hard. Sweat beaded around the faded red bandana tied around his forehead beneath his headlamp. He corralled his salt and pepper braid back over his shoulder. “This place is not right,” he said.
     
    “ I agree. No potsherds. Not even the charred remains of a cooking fire.” She fished the Mayan knife out of her pack. “But Samuel said he found this knife here. Did you ever know Samuel to carry a knife like this?”
     
    “ As he told us, the ancient ones, the Anasazi, left it for him, here in this cliff dwelling.”
     
    “ Samuel was dying, possibly delirious. How could the ancient ones foresee a catastrophic sandstorm burying the dwelling in their time, and then, in the future, another windstorm revealing their dwelling, but choose to leave behind only one mysterious knife?”
     
    He turned his dark eyes on her. “It is a useful perspective, to see what waits beyond that which is visible.”
     
    “ If you’re alluding to the Breastplate, that’s not why I’m here,” she said. “I’m no longer a believer, like my father.”
     
    “ You will be.”
     
    “ I don’t need the Breastplate to know trouble’s coming.” She peered over the wall. The headlights bounced jaggedly, halfway down the opposite side of the canyon. “The Breastplate is Dad’s Holy Grail, not mine. Or, as I like to think of it, his Moby Dick.”
     
    “ We seek a piece of the Breastplate, once worn by Aaron, brother of Moses,” he said. “Its power destroyed entire villages. It is not to be taken lightly.”
     
    “ And it’s dragging my father to his death,” she said. “Throughout history, people have sacrificed their lives for quests for religious artifacts, thinking some divine power will create a happy ending, when it only leads to disaster and ruin.” Like in her recurring dream. In it, she held the sacred Breastplate, its gold heavy and warm, sparkling with