Chapter 26

26

May 12, 10:18 A . M . MSK

Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, Russian Federation

Gray stood at the chamber's threshold. "What is this place?"

"It looks like a private study," Yelagin noted. "Maybe from the seventeenth or eighteenth century."

Both awed and dumbfounded, Gray peered at the baroque design inside.

The room's walls were paneled and shelved in mahogany, all full of dusty leatherbound books amidst a collection of artifacts. Overhead, its flat roof was raftered and plastered. To one side, a rich tapestry hung, running from ceiling to floor, and below it, a crimson rug covered the tiles. There was even a replica of a small fireplace in a back corner. Above its mantel hung the curve of a mammoth tusk.

But what drew Gray's eye stood in the room's center. It was a large satinwood desk, inlaid with silver and gold filigrees. A lone glass lantern sat atop it, surrounded by a spread of papers, inked maps, small brass tools, even a book that had been left splayed open.

It was as if some researcher had stepped away and had expected to return shortly.

"What do you make of this?" Bailey asked Gray.

"This room feels like an anomaly. From a different time period than the rest. I think this was always the central hub to the library, but it looks like someone installed this chamber later. Perhaps to conduct research in a more comfortable setting."

Anna shifted closer. "This may be Catherine the Great's handiwork after she discovered this library. She loved to put her stamp on old Russian sites."

"But who was working here?" Jason asked. "I can't imagine it was the empress herself."

Gray stepped into the room. "For now, it's us . If we hope to learn any clues about Hyperborea, it'll be found in this room. I'm sure of it." He turned to the group. "But take great care."

As the team dispersed to examine sections of the room, Gray crossed to the desk, drawing Anna with him. He stood over the spread of books and papers. Atop the tallest stack, a journal rested crookedly. Silver stenciling across its cover shone through a layer of dust.

Gray leaned down and blew across its surface, brightening the Cyrillic lettering.

He glanced over to Anna, whose eyes had grown wider.

"What does it say?" he asked her.

"It's a name. No doubt the owner of this desk, the one who was doing research in here."

"Who was it?"

She pointed to the Cyrillic stenciling. "Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov."

Gray shook his head, not recognizing the name.

"He was the leading Russian scientist of his time. A genius and polymath. One who exceled across a breadth of subjects. Chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy." She turned to him. "He was also Catherine the Great's most valued scientific adviser, even given the title of state councillor."

Gray considered all of this as he gazed around the space. "If Catherine wanted someone to explore this library, to search for clues to Hyperborea, I can see why she handpicked him."

"Without a doubt. It's also been well documented that Lomonosov showed great interest in the Arctic, having grown up in the Arkhangelsk Oblast, not far from the White Sea. He was particularly interested in the enigma of the magnetic North Pole."

"And maybe in other mysteries of that frozen world," Gray added.

"Possibly."

"But considering the astounding discovery Catherine made here, recovering the Golden Library, why did she focus on this lost continent? What drew her so immediately on that course?"

"It was an obsession of hers—not Hyperborea—but to establish the roots of the Russian people. She first believed it was the Scythians who might be our forefathers."

"The militant nomads of the Eurasian steppes?" Gray remembered Bailey and Yelagin bringing up those Bronze Age people last night at the embassy.

"The same. Even today there is an offshoot of the philosophies of Aleksandr Dugin—a group who call themselves the New Scythians—who pursue this same ideology. In fact, there's been a lot of friction between the New Scythians and the Arkangel Society, both arguing about who is right."

"And where did Catherine land, during her time?"

"She turned away from the Scythians and became convinced our true origins were much farther north."

"In Hyperborea."

Anna nodded. "Her fascination is well documented. And there are rumors she dispatched ships on secret missions to the Far North, searching for this lost continent."

Jason called from the fireplace. "I'd say she found it—or at least, found something ."

Gray and Anna turned to him.

Jason stood with his hands on his hips, his neck craned back, staring up at the length of the mammoth tusk. The room was decorated with other artifacts across its crowded shelves: large chunks of crystals, stuffed birds under glass domes, painted pottery, tiny bronze sculptures.

Gray couldn't understand why the tusk had captured Jason's attention. Still, he stepped closer. "What is it?"

Jason pointed up, using his other hand to wave dust from the artifact's surface. "Someone turned this huge horn of ivory into one massive piece of scrimshaw."

Gray squinted and saw he was right. The artwork engraved into the tusk was broken by age and incomplete, but he could easily identify a collection of pyramids, tiered buildings, and spires.

He looked across the room to where Bailey and Yelagin conversed in low tones, searching the shelves and walls on that side. He remembered the bishop mentioning an archaeological discovery on islands in the White Sea.

Pyramids, tombs, and thrones.

Gray studied the scrimshaw.

Is this a peek of what those crumbling sites once looked like? Or is it evidence of a more sophisticated civilization even farther north?

Anna pointed up, but not at the mammoth tusk. "There's a plaque on the wall. It's inscribed with a long list of names. Like a memorial to lost explorers."

Gray looked higher and saw she was right. "But what's written to the left of that list? Though it's Cyrillic, it doesn't look like a name."

"It's not. But I believe it proves that this is a testament to those who died exploring. Possibly those who sought out Hyperborea and never returned."

"What does it say?"

She read the phrase aloud, " ‘Never go there, never trespass, never wake that which is sleeping .'" She turned to Gray. "This may be part of the reason Catherine hid this library, kept her discoveries secret. She must have discovered something dangerous."

"Then why preserve all of this?" Gray asked. "Why plant seeds under Moscow—possibly other places, too—that lead here? She must have wanted the library to be rediscovered."

"Maybe eventually . She clearly believed the knowledge was worth safeguarding. Even if it was dangerous. Perhaps she feared those of her time weren't ready for it, couldn't handle it."

Gray slowly nodded. "She planted those seeds for a future generation to discover. Maybe as a test." He pictured the boobytrapped vault and the encrypted page in the Greek book. "To prove we're cautious enough and wise enough to receive such knowledge."

"But are we?" Anna challenged him. "My brother's team wasn't cautious enough and suffered for it. And while we might have proved clever enough in solving her encryption, it was only by cheating —by using our technology to peer through the Lavra's sketch to see her easier puzzle."

Gray couldn't argue with her.

Jason, though, raised a question that was far more important. "But how did Catherine and Lomonosov discover Hyperborea's location? And more importantly, how do we follow in their footsteps?"

Gray returned to the desk, where Lomonosov's labors were suspended in time.

There must be a clue to his methodology here.

He stared across the disheveled spread of papers, journals, and books. He noted two types of brass compasses—the magnetic kind to divine true north and instruments for drawing circles. There was also a tarnished silver sextant, along with a set of metal rulers and protractors.

All tools of cartography .

This realization drew him to a brightly colored map on the table, drawn in pinks, greens, and yellows. Its parchment was more cracked and yellowed than anything else on the desktop, suggesting it was far older.

He shifted toward it, wanting a better look, but a large book was splayed open atop it, obscuring most of the map.

Gray defied his own instructions and reached down and closed the book. He shifted it aside to reveal the full breadth of the chart beneath it.

It was a map he vaguely recognized, one of the foremost examples of early cartography. He had also come across it more recently, from his research on lost continents—for obvious reasons.

Leaning closer, he studied the finely drawn map, which was inscribed with notes and names in Latin. He hovered a finger over the bottom right corner, where a title was written: Septentrionalium Terrarum .

Anna peered over his shoulder, noting where he was pointing, and translated the Latin. " Of the Northern Lands ."

He glanced to her.

"It's a copy of the Mercator Map," she said, clearly recognizing it, too. "Considered the oldest chart of the Arctic. Drawn by a Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator, in the sixteenth century."

Gray nodded. The map was a top-down view of the Arctic centered on the North Pole. He could even appreciate how much of the coastlines roughly matched existing lands. Except, in the center, surrounding the pole, was drawn a large landmass divided into four parts by rivers.

No wonder this map drew the attention of Lomonosov .

He glanced to Anna and pointed to the map's center. "Is that supposed to be Hyperborea?"

"Many have believed so. But Mercator never claimed as such. In fact, he was a meticulous cartographer, one famous, even today, for his accuracy."

"Looks like he went way off course with this one."

"You must understand that he constructed this map based on information gleaned from many sources, mostly charts and accounts from early Arctic explorers. And clearly much of what is recorded here is accurate. Most of the coastlines, some of the written notes—not only about the various lands, but also its peoples." She pointed to the lower right quadrant of the fanciful continent. "Like here."

"As you can read," Anna continued, "this states that there are pygmies who live in this region. Most historians suspect Mercator is misidentifying the short-statured locals. Likely referring to the predecessors of the modern-day Inuit people."

"So, Mercator mixed truth with fiction. But what about the big landmass in the middle?" Gray circled a finger around the mysterious continent at the center of the map.

Anna studied it with a sigh. "According to Mercator's description, he states that rising at the North Pole is a huge mountain composed of pure lodestone, some thirty-three miles in diameter. It was where all compasses pointed, drawn by the pull of that magnetic peak. And not just compass needles, it also drew those four rivers toward it."

"Breaking the continent into its four sections," Gray noted.

"Correct. And where those rivers all met, at the base of the mountain, they formed a huge whirlpool that would empty into the world below."

"But there's nothing like that around the North Pole. For someone so accurate and meticulous as Mercator, how did he get it so wrong?"

"Again, he based his maps on eyewitness accounts from Arctic explorers."

"Like who?"

She shrugged. "There were many as I recall from my archival studies. For example, there was a pair of sixteenth-century adventurers, Frobisher and Davis, who traveled to northern Canada and reported vicious currents pulling icebergs toward the pole, towed—or so they believed—by those indrawing rivers."

Gray sighed and shook his head. "I guess this proves you should double-check your sources."

Anna scowled her disapproval. "Mercator did . The pair of Canadian adventurers weren't the only ones to tell this tale. Mercator's most influential source came from an English friar from Oxford, Nicolas of Lynn, who traveled to Norway in the fourteenth century and then continued farther to the north, sailing deep into the Arctic. He wrote a travelogue of his account, titled Inventio Fortunata , which he presented to King Edward III upon his return—along with an additional gift."

She glanced sidelong at him, as if this were significant.

"What was it?"

"The astrolabe that he used to navigate his journeys."

Gray stood straighter, picturing what was sketched inside the Greek book. He grew more interested in this tangent. "What was described in that travelogue?"

Anna stared down at the map. "According to Mercator, what you see here—a land of magnetic mountains and whirlpools—what you deem fantastical."

"But, of course, it is ," he stressed. "Surely Nicolas, that English friar, had too many pints when writing his travelogue."

"We'll never know," Anna said sadly. "By the fifteenth century, all copies of the Inventio Fortunata went missing. We only know of it because of Mercator and a few others who had read and copied sections from it. Like Jacobus Cnoyen, a Brabantian explorer, who read Nicolas's travelogue and wrote about it in his own book—the Itinerarium. "

She gave Gray another impactful glance. "Which subsequently also vanished."

Gray considered this. "It's as if someone was purposefully erasing all written records of this friar's book—and maybe of Hyperborea."

Anna shrugged. "All we have left are the shadows of it. Like Mercator's map. And a letter the cartographer wrote to a friend, a royal astronomer, where Mercator mentions the friar's travelogue."

Gray frowned. "If only we could get our hands on a copy of that book."

By now, Father Bailey and Bishop Yelagin had been drawn by the conversation, quietly following their discourse.

It was Bailey who broke the silence and pointed out the obvious, literally by reaching out a finger toward the desk.

"Isn't it right there?" he asked.

Both Gray and Anna turned from the map and looked at the book resting beside it. Gray had closed that same tome moments before and shifted it off Mercator's chart. So focused on the strange map, he had failed to note the importance of its paperweight.

Written in dark lettering and embossed into its leather cover were two words.