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“Party,” Jade decided, wasn’t the right word for what happened next. It was more like... Well, work. But Kismet’s room was quieter than the restaurant, and so far, he had been a perfect gentleman.
Maybe a little too perfect. Jade wouldn’t have minded catching him sneaking an appraising glance at her once in a while, but his attention was entirely consumed with the images from the British Museum online archive.
The larger screen on Kismet’s tablet computer did make it easier to see the scans, but did not make them any less incomprehensible. Worse, as Kismet opened one file after another, flipping through the documents like they were pages in a retail catalog, he seemed to lose all interest in conversation.
“Are you sure you haven’t got one of those Apex thingies?” she asked after a while.
He looked up, blinking several times as if trying to relieve eye strain. “What?”
“You haven’t used any of those online resources you were talking about. From where I’m sitting, it looks like your sight-reading this stuff.” Even as she said it aloud, she realized that was exactly what he was doing. “Oh, my God. You do have it, don’t you?”
“I... It’s not like that,” he said, a little too quickly. “I’m not reading it, I’m just trying to get an overview.”
“Bull crap,” Jade fired back. “You’re reading it. You’ve got the Apex stone, don’t you?”
Kismet sighed, then reached up to the collar of his shirt and tugged it down to reveal a pendant dangling from a rawhide strip around his neck. It was exactly as he had described it, a pyramid of dark blue lapis lazuli flecked with gold pyrite and white calcite, with ridges that looked exactly like the bones of a child’s hand fused in place as if gripping it.
“Can I try it?”
Kismet didn’t react visibly, but Jade could tell that the question discomfited him. She had a mental image of Smeagol from Lord of the Rings, lovingly clutching the ring and whispering “Precious,” and decided not to press the issue. “How does it work? Is it automatic? Like a universal translator?”
“I’m not really sure that it’s doing anything,” Kismet admitted. “I told you I was good with languages. It wasn’t an exaggeration. I’ve looked at a lot of this writing since I started looking for the Liber Arcanum. At first, it was hard to decipher, but now...” He shrugged. “The script looks exactly the same, but it just sort of makes sense to me.”
“But you’re actually reading this?”
“Skimming it. I’ve seen most of this stuff before in other editions, so what I’m really doing is looking for something different. Something that...”
He trailed off, prompting Jade to take another look at the screen. The image on the screen was more of the same—strange Enochian glyphs, the so-called Angelic language—but they were not broken up into words or discrete lines. Instead, the arrangement looked more like a word search puzzle, with each individual character evenly spaced in relation to the next, to form a grid—Jade’s best guess was that it was a fifty-by-fifty grid. The script remained unreadable to her, but Jade thought she could see intentional patterns, as if the strange letters had been used to produce a picture. But that wasn’t the really weird part.
There were words written on the page, outside the grid. English words. Comments, with little arrows drawn to underlined portions of the text. Without context, the comments themselves were just as cryptic. There were references to elements and directions, and names that sounded like Latin words, followed by numerical notations that might have been page or chapters numbers.
Kismet had not said a word for what seemed like several minutes. “Is this it? Is this the one?”
“This is the Liber Loagaeth,” he said, speaking slowly.
“What does that mean? Is it, or isn’t it the book you’re looking for?”
“The name means ‘Book of the Speech of God’ but it’s sometimes also called ‘Liber Mysteriorum.’ ‘Book of Mysteries.’ Edward Kelley composed it based on a revelation he claimed to have received after looking into John Dee’s crystal Shew Stone.”
Jade coughed nervously. “Never heard of it.”
“The book itself is fairly well known, but there’s no definitive translation. This is a hand-written copy. It was a fairly standard practice for occult students to write one in their own hand. I think this one belonged to Adam Garral. That’s his writing in the margins.”
“Get out.” Jade slugged him playfully in the shoulder.
Kismet grinned, but then resumed clicking through the pages with renewed enthusiasm. Each new page was a different grid, with even more elaborate—and clearly intentional—patterns, and on each were more notes. Kismet seemed to devour them all in a single glance, not even giving Jade enough time to read the scribbled comments. Then, for no apparent reason, he lingered on one page, reading it several times. Finally, he offered an explanation.
“This page...it’s different than the other versions.”
“Different how?”
“There’s a mention here of the smoking mirror which shows the past and the future. I’m paraphrasing of course. It’s widely believed that Dee and Kelley used both crystals—like the Shew Stone—and an obsidian scrying mirror obtained in the New World, but this is the first time I’ve seen an explicit reference to it. In this passage, the angel is recounting how the mirror was found in the temple of someone named...” He paused. “Well, that’s odd. It just says the ‘pyramid temple of smoking mirror.’”
“Not so odd,” Jade said. “The Aztec deity of divination was named Tezcatlipoca, which literally translates to ‘smoking mirror.’ He was the god of, among other things, obsidian. Obsidian mirrors are a common artifact found in his temples.”
“Okay, that makes sense. What’s really strange is that I’ve never seen mention of the mirror in any of Dee’s writings.”
Jade nodded, recalling a conversation about the topic with Kelly Allenby at the British Museum. Although several crystal balls and other items were associated with Dee and his divination attempts, none of those objects had been reliably proven to have ever belonged to him.
“The angel talks about showing distant lands and things to come,” Kismet continued, “and promises to show the seer how to find the other elemental temples.”
“What does that mean?”
Kismet shook his head and swiped his finger across the tablet to bring up the next document. Jade gasped in disbelief. The document was not written in Enochian script, nor did it appear to have ever been a part of the grimoire. It was a letter, written on a piece of stationery that bore the letterhead: “BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION 1910, 36 & 38 VICTORIA STREET, LONDON S.W.”
The missive written to a certain Capt. J.E. Grace, was both a note of thanks, for a contribution in the amount of £1,000, and of congratulations, praising Captain Grace’s expertise with horses and welcoming him to the expedition. It was signed, “Your faithful servant, R. Scott.”
In the blank space at the top of the page, someone—the same someone that had made notes in the margins of the occult manuscript—had written: “Poor Scott. He thinks he’ll find immortality at the Pole, but I’ve got the map! VITRIOL!”
“One of these things is not like the other,” Jade said, shaking her head as she read the letter a second time. There was an accompanying notation from the archivist, indicating that the letter had been discovered between two pages of the folio, and was included in the file exactly as it had been found. “What do you suppose that’s doing there?”
Kismet just stared at the screen for several moments in silent contemplation. Finally, he shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
“What’s unbelievable?”
He pointed to the screen. “This letter. Do you know what it is?”
Jade shook her head uncertainly. “Antarctic expedition...1910...Scott. Kind of rings a bell.”
She was acutely feeling Professor’s absence now. He would have already launched into a thorough explanation of the letter’s significance.
“Robert Falcon Scott was a British naval officer and polar explorer. He wanted to be the first man to reach the South Pole. That’s what this expedition was all about. He made it to the pole, though another expedition led by Roald Amundsen beat him there by a month. Scott and his team all died on the return trip. This man—Captain John Edward Grace—was with him almost to the end. According to Scott’s diary, Grace suffering from frostbite and scurvy, left the tent and walked out into a blizzard so that the others wouldn’t waste any more resources on him. Supposedly, the last thing he said was, ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ His sacrifice ultimately didn’t matter because Scott and the others only made it another twenty miles before getting stopped in their tracks by the storm. They all starved to death.”
“Okay,” Jade said slowly. “And this is important why?” Silently, she added, Professor, where are you when I need you?
Kismet took a deep breath and let it out. “I think Adam Garral and Captain Grace were one and the same.”
“You think?” Jade said, enunciating the words like an accusation. “He’s your great-grandfather. Don’t you know? I mean, you look it up on Ancestry.com, yeah?”
Kismet’s face screwed up in a look that was part-annoyance and part-reservation. “Until recently, I never had a reason to investigate the family lore. I was told that Garral was something of a wandering libertine. Even his relationship with his wife, my great-great-grandmother, was an unconventional one; something to do with an occult rite if I understand correctly. He was always off on some adventure or another, and while he would write from time to time, it wasn’t like he could send GPS tagged photos from his smartphone. All she really had was his word for it. And when he disappeared in 1910, she just assumed he was off on another adventure. But aside from the oral tradition, there’s really not a lot of information about him. It’s not impossible... No, scratch that. It’s entirely plausible that he was leading a double life.”
“Okay, but this other guy, Grace, he’s a known historical quantity.”
“Good point.” Kismet closed the browser window displaying the letter and opened a search engine, into which he typed in the name of the polar explorer.
John Edward Grace had been born in 1880 to a landed family in London. Although the family occupied the manor hall at Gestingthorpe near Sudbury, Grace spent his school years in Putney, London and then attended Eton College, though he did not complete his studies there. He only had one sibling—a sister—and his father died when Grace was just sixteen. Perhaps inspired by his uncle, a famed explorer and naturalist, Grace embarked on a military career, which took him to the far-flung corners of the empire—South Africa, India, Egypt—where he was commended for bravery and ultimately promoted to the rank of captain. In 1910, he took an interest in joining Scott’s expedition, buying his way onto the competitive roster with a sizeable monetary donation, though according to Scott, it was Grace’s expertise with horses that was the deciding factor. Most of Scott’s team was composed of close acquaintances and polar veterans from Shackleton’s expeditions, with Grace being a rare outsider.
The relationship between the two men was tense at times, with Grace complaining about Scott’s leadership, but Scott nevertheless included him in the five-man team that set out on the final push to plant the Union Jack at the South Pole. Unfortunately for them, when they arrived, they found a tent left behind by Amundsen along with a letter dated thirty-five days earlier. Even worse, owing to increasingly difficult weather conditions and injuries—including a fall that killed one member of the team—the return trip took longer than expected and the dog-sled teams that were supposed to meet them never showed up. The men quickly ran out of supplies, which led to further health complications. Grace, suffering from scurvy which may have aggravated an old war injury, soon succumbed to frostbite and gangrene, and knowing that his death was looming, left the tent and vanished forever into history. His famous parting words may have been apocryphal, but embodied a bold and self-sacrificing spirit.
And yet, there was clearly more to the man than history realized. For nearly a century, it was believed that Grace had died without offspring, but a 2002 biography offered compelling evidence that Grace had fathered a child out of wedlock, with a 12-year-old Scottish girl.
“That takes sowing wild oats to a new low,” Jade remarked.
“You know if he lived one secret life, maybe he had another; one that nobody knows about.”
“That would be a scandalous revelation, even today. It sounds like this guy is still a national hero.”
Kismet nodded slowly. “I’m not interested in rewriting the history books. I just want to know what happened to him.” He paused. “Adam Garral left the Apex with his wife and infant son, and if he and Grace were really the same person, then we know where he went. But why?”
Jade snapped her fingers. “The note scribbled on that letter. It said something about immortality.”
Kismet clicked back to the document and read the handwritten note aloud. “‘Poor Scott. He thinks he’ll find immortality at the Pole, but I’ve got the map! VITRIOL!’”
“Vitriol? That’s some kind of acid, yeah?”
Kismet nodded. “It’s an archaic term for sulfate. But it’s also an acronym for the motto of medieval alchemists. Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem. ‘Visit the interior of the earth and rectifying you will find the secret stone.’”
“Oooh, there’s a secret stone. Interior of the earth? Does that mean a cave, or are we talking hollow earth theory?”
“For the alchemists, it was probably the latter. And the secret stone was a reference to the Philosopher’s Stone which could supposedly transmute base metals into gold or even make a person immortal.”
“Immortality,” Jade said. “Scott was looking for the immortality of fame, but Grace—or Garral—was looking for the real deal, and the map he had led him to the South Pole.”
“Most hollow earth theories held that there were openings to the interior world at the poles. Even as late as the 1950s, some of these scientific expeditions were actually looking for an entrance.” Kismet tapped his fingers on the table, deep in thought. “You know what? I think the name ‘Garral’ is another clue?”
“How so?”
“Garral is a very uncommon surname, but it was used by Jules Verne in the novel Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon.”
“And Jules Verne wrote Journey to the Center of the Earth,” Jade said, catching on.
“Something my great-great grandfather read in the Liber Arcanum convinced him he could find an entrance to the interior world in Antarctica. I think he was being literal when he said he had a map.”
“I guess it led him astray.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he never got the chance to go looking for it on his own. Maybe that’s what he was trying to do at the end.”
“You think Scott was lying about his condition? Frostbite and gangrene?”
“Probably not. Maybe at that point, he was delusional. If he was, the map is probably still with his body.” Kismet stared at the screen for a long time. “We need to find him. His remains, I mean.”
Jade grimaced. “Umm, you’re kidding, right? You’re talking about finding a needle in an Antarctica-sized haystack.”
“Not necessarily. Scott recorded the exact coordinates of the camp where Grace vanished. Assuming that he really was suffering from frostbite, he wouldn’t have gotten far.”
“Maybe not, but it’s been over a hundred years. That spot is probably buried under a ton of ice.”
“Probably,” Kismet agreed. “But with modern technology, I think we can definitely shrink the haystack down to something a little more manageable.”
“We?”
“I thought you would want to see this through. Unless you’re planning to kick me to the curb,” Kismet said, throwing her earlier words back at her.
“That was before you said anything about Antarctica.” Jade shivered just thinking about it. But, she also recalled what Professor had said about sticking close to Kismet. She let out a growl of defeat, but before she could articulate the terms of her surrender, a knock came at the door, followed by a loud female voice: “Room service.”
“Took them long enough,” Jade muttered, though secretly she was grateful for the interruption. It would give her a few seconds to think of something better to say to Kismet. She pushed out of her chair and started for the door. “I’ll get it.”
She reached the door in a few quick steps and, after checking the peephole to make sure that the woman on the other side of the door was indeed wearing the attire of a hotel server and pushing a tray-laden cart, threw the door wide.
“Perfect timing,” she started to say, but the cheery greeting turned to a yelp of alarm as, first one, then a pair, then four men, who had been lined up along the wall, just outside the peephole’s periphery, surged toward her.