Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

You should have realized that I wouldn’t be able to have any of the coins. That’s what happens in stories like this. Characters in books find heaps of gold or hidden treasure all over the place—but then of course they never get to spend a penny of it. Instead, they either:

1)   Lose it in an earthquake or natural disaster.

II)  Put it in a backpack that then breaks at a climactic moment, dropping all of the treasure as the heroes flee.

C)  Use it to rescue their orphanage from foreclosure.

Stupid orphanages.

Anyway, it is very common for authors to do things like this to the people in their stories. Why? Well, we will claim it’s because we want to teach the reader that the real wealth is friendship, or caring, or something stupid like that. In reality, we’re simply mean people. We like to torment our readers, and that translates to tormenting our characters. After all, there is only one thing more frustrating than finding a pile of gold, then having it snatched away from you.

And that’s being told that at least you learned something from the experience.

I sighed, leaving the coins behind.

“Oh, don’t mope, Alcatraz,” Bastille said, waving indifferently toward another corner of the room. “Just take some of those gold bars instead. They don’t seem to have anything written on them.”

I turned and smacked my forehead, suddenly realizing that I wasn’t in a fictional story. This was an autobiography and was completely real—which meant that the “lesson” I could learn from it all is that grave robbing is way cool.

“Good idea!” I said. “Curators, do those bars count as books?”

The ghosts floated sullenly, one shooting an angry glare at Bastille. “No,” it finally said.

I smiled, then proceeded to stuff a few bars in my pocket, then a few more in Bastille’s pack. In case you were wondering, yes. Gold really is as heavy as they say. And it’s totally worth carrying anyway.

“Don’t you guys want any of this?” I asked, putting another bar in my jacket pocket.

Kaz shrugged. “You and I are Smedrys, Alcatraz. We’re friends to kings, counselors to emperors, defenders of the Free Kingdoms. Our family is incredibly wealthy, and we can pretty much have anything we want. I mean, that silimatic dragon we crashed was probably worth more money than most people would ever be able to spend in a lifetime.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And I kind of took a vow of poverty,” Bastille said, grimacing.

That was new. “Really?”

She nodded. “If I brought some of that gold, it would end up going to the Knights of Crystallia—and I’m a little annoyed with them right now.”

I stuffed a few more bars in my pocket for her anyway.

“Alcatraz, come look at this,” Kaz said.

I reluctantly left the rest of the gold behind, clinking my way over to the other two. They stood a distance away from the sarcophagus, not approaching. “What’s wrong?”

“Look closely,” Kaz said, pointing.

I did, squinting in the light of the single lamp. With effort, I saw what he was talking about. Dust. Hanging in the air, motionless.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Kaz said. “But, if you look, there’s a bubble of clean ground around the sarcophagus. No dust.”

There was a large circle on the ground, running around the casket, where either the dust had been cleaned away, or it had never fallen. Now that I thought to notice, I realized that the rest of this room was far more dusty than the library. It hadn’t been disturbed in some time.

“There’s something odd about this place,” Bastille said, hands on hips.

“Yeah,” I said, frowning. “Those hieroglyphics don’t quite look like any I’ve seen before.”

“Seen a lot?” she asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

I flushed. “I mean, they don’t look the way Egyptian ones should.”

It was hard to explain. As one might expect, the walls were covered with small pictures, drawn as if to be words. Yet instead of people with cattle or eagle heads, there were pictures of dragons and serpents. Instead of scarabs, there were odd geometric shapes like runes. Above the doorway where we had come in, there was …

“Kaz!” I said, pointing.

He turned, then his eyes opened wide. There, inscribed over the door, was a circle split into four sections, with symbols written in each of the four pieces. Just like the diagram Kaz had drawn for me on the ground, the one about the different kinds of Talents. The Incarnate Wheel.

This one also had a small circle in the center with its own symbol, along with a ring around the outside, split into two sections, each with another character in them.

“It could be a coincidence,” Kaz said slowly. “I mean, it’s just a circle split into four pieces. It isn’t necessarily the same diagram.”

“It is,” I said. “It feels right.”

“Well, maybe the Curators put it there,” Kaz said. “They saw me draw it on the ground, and copied it down. Maybe they have placed it here for us to find, so it would confuse us.”

I shook my head. “I’ve still got my Discerner’s Lenses on. That inscription is as old as the rest of the tomb.”