Chapter 28

28

May 12, 11:07 A . M . MSK

Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, Russian Federation

Deep under the Ringing Tower, Gray stood over Lomonosov's desk. Next to him, Sister Anna cradled the only extant copy of Nicolas of Lynn's Inventio Fortunata in her hands. Her arms trembled with the weight of all those centuries, of what had been thought lost forever.

He stared past the buried study's threshold and pictured the greater expanse of the Golden Library, spreading outward in dozens of chambers, all lined by golden chests that held the promise of many other treasures of antiquity.

"I wonder if there could be a copy of Cnoyen's Itinerarium , too?" Anna asked with clear wonder in her voice. "That other vanished book."

Gray focused on the task at hand. "I don't know if we need it. Lomonosov left the Inventio Fortunata atop Mercator's old map. Surely for a reason. It must be significant."

Bailey reached out for the precious volume. "May I?" he asked Anna.

She passed it to him. "Of course."

Bailey treated the book with great care and reverence. He drew it open. "Maybe we must read it. It's written in Latin, but I should be able to translate it if given enough time."

Gray sensed they were running out of exactly that. "I don't think it was Lomonosov's intent that we read the entire book. He left the text open to a specific page. That must be important."

"Do you remember which one?" Anna asked.

"No," Gray admitted. He took the book from Bailey. "But it shouldn't be hard to figure out."

He carefully flipped through the yellowed pages, nagged by something he was forgetting. Still, it took all his concentration to find the set of pages that were coated in dust after being left open for so long. He finally located them and confirmed it was the right set of pages from the crease in the binding as he splayed the book open.

"This is the spot." He turned to Bailey. "Can you translate these two pages?"

"I better be able to, or they'll strip me of my degree in ancient studies."

Bailey set the book atop the desk and hunched over the pages. He read silently for a spell, hovering his finger over various lines. "Some sections are faded into obscurity, but the text seems to describe what you were discussing a moment ago. A great mountain— Rupus Nigra et Altissima , which translates to ‘Very High Black Cliff'—and a huge whirlpool below it, fed by four great rivers."

Anna pointed to the map. "Mercator wrote those same words— Rupus Nigra et Altissima— next to the mountain on his map. Right in the center."

Gray nodded, still nagged by the sense he was forgetting something.

With his brows furrowed, Bailey continued reading. "This line elaborates in more detail. ‘ The land is most strange and should be shunned by all. Do not be deceived by its false pull, do not be lured by the wonders it hides, not even the long life it promises in stone and water. Instead, fear that which ended the people of Hyperborea. For if it ever breaks free, it will destroy all of us. '"

Gray frowned. "That warning certainly supports what is inscribed on the wall plaque."

"And sounds even more dire," Anna added.

Bailey glanced up from the book. "There's also this. Someone—no doubt Lomonosov—underlined the phrase falsum viverra , or false pull in that line I just read. Could that be significant?"

Anna and Gray shared a look, but neither of them could make sense of it.

"And there's a section I can't read," Bailey admitted. "It's handwritten in the margin, a long passage, with an arrow pointing to another word in the text— magneticus —which means magnetic."

"The note in the margin?" Gray asked. "Is it too faded to make out?"

"No." He passed the book to Anna. "It's written in Glagolitic."

Ah...

Gray joined her, staring down at the crisp penmanship along the page's edge. "Can you translate it?"

"I'll try."

She turned to Jason, who hovered behind them. Jason pulled out his tablet, which still had Anna's Glagolitic conversion chart on it. They set about working on the mysterious message from Lomonosov.

Gray watched them, alone with his thoughts for the moment. As Anna tapped at the glowing screen, he suddenly recalled what had been nagging at him—both now and yesterday. The tablet in Anna's hand had reminded him.

He drew out his own device, turned it on, and flipped through the photos that Monsignor Borrelli had taken. He settled on one, realizing how much it looked like the description in the Inventio Fortunata —and what was drawn on Mercator's map.

It filled half a page of Herodotus's Histories , showing a mountainous valley that framed a lone peak at its center. Around it had been sketched a swirling pool.

Gray studied it.

Was this a glimpse of that same place, from someone who had been there?

Before he could ponder it further, Anna stepped back to them. "I think I have it all. Lomonosov's annotation was long, but not difficult to translate. Still, it makes little sense."

"What did he write?"

Anna stared down at the book in her hand and read the passage aloud. "‘ Ah, dear Mercator, you hid well what you knew. Making large what is not. Building mountains where there are none. Burying the truth, like Catherine and I do now under a tower. Others should have looked more closely at what you drew, listened more intently when you claimed that this is not the truth—that it lies elsewhere .'" She looked up. "Again, the last line points to the word magnetic —as if that's significant."

Gray closed his eyes, trying to unlock this riddle. Lomonosov must have written this for a reason, leaving this page open as centuries passed, sending a message into the future.

But what did he mean?

Gray talked aloud, trying to use his voice to tease out any answers. "Not only did that annotation point to the word magnetic , but he also underlined the words false pull , which possibly also suggests something magnetic."

"Or falsely magnetic," Jason reminded him, adding his voice to the puzzle.

Gray nodded.

There's something there... but what?

Gray squinted, trying to bring it into focus. "‘ Building mountains where there are none. ' Could Lomonosov be referring to the fact that there is no magnetic mountain sitting at the north pole?"

"And ‘ making large what is not ,'" Bailey added. "Mercator drew a huge landmass, a veritable continent. But from what Nicolas wrote in his book, it almost sounds like he's describing somewhere far smaller."

"A place that Mercator blew up huge," Anna said. "Magnifying it, so he could delineate what Nicolas had described in a greater detail at the center of his map."

Gray returned his attention to the map. "‘ Burying the truth .' Maybe Mercator was trying to accomplish what Catherine and Lomonosov were doing here by keeping the Golden Library buried. To preserve knowledge—but keep it safeguarded and hidden."

"In Lomonosov's annotation," Bailey said, "he hints that Mercator drew the answer on this map. ‘ Others should have looked more closely at what you drew.'"

Gray nodded. "And listened , too. According to Lomonosov, Mercator ‘ claimed that this is not the truth '—pointing to the word magnetic—and ‘ that it lies elsewhere .' Can anyone make sense of that?"

Anna stiffened, swearing in Russian, which earned a scowl from Yelagin, who leaned heavily on his staff, clearly exhausted.

"I think I know what he's talking about," Anna blurted out, sounding astounded with herself. "A well-documented part of the map's history is that Mercator never believed the central mountain he drew was the true magnetic pole. He told people many times that the magnetic Rupus Nigra et Altissima —Nicolas's Very High Black Cliff—lay elsewhere . But no one took heed of him."

"Where did he believe it was located?" Gray asked.

Anna pulled his attention back to Mercator's map. She pointed to a spot—an island from the look of it—positioned higher up the map.

"Mercator even labels this spot Polus magnetis —the magnetic pole ." She swung her finger to the center of the map. "While the mountain here he simply named Polus Arcticus —the Arctic Pole."

Jason frowned. "Could Mercator have been differentiating between the geographical North Pole and the magnetic pole of the Earth? They're in different locations. While the geographic pole is fixed, the magnetic one wanders all around."

Gray had to consider this, but it seemed unlikely, and for good reason. "No one from Mercator's time made that distinction. It wasn't recognized as two different locations until the middle of the eighteen hundreds. Three centuries after Mercator drew this map."

"Then what is that island on his map?" Jason asked.

Gray stared down at the tiny mountain in the ocean. "I think it's what Nicolas described—some island with a strong magnetic pull, one that falsely pulled his ship off course, drawing it away from true north."

Jason pointed to the large continent in the map's middle. "And what about the rest of what Mercator drew?"

"I think it was his attempt to expand what couldn't be drawn on that small spot on his map. Instead, he filled the Arctic's middle void with what Nicolas had described in his Inventio Fortunata ."

"‘ Making large what is not ,'" Anna added, quoting Lomonosov.

Bailey leaned to peer at the small island. "But where is this place?"

It was a great question.

Gray stared across the charting and navigation tools spread atop the desk. "I think that's what Lomonosov was attempting to figure out here. He must have gleaned enough to send out an expedition to pin it down."

He remembered Anna telling him about the rumors that Catherine the Great dispatched ships on secret missions to the Far North, searching for this lost continent.

"But how do we continue from here?" Anna asked.

"I don't think we'll need all these sextants and compasses," Gray said.

He stared down at his tablet, which still glowed with the image of that strange valley, surrounded by cliffs, circling a swirling pool.

That's the location we need to find.

He closed the tablet's window and opened a map of the polar region, one that was not drawn from accounts of long-dead explorers and lost books. It was a modern atlas of the Arctic, produced in exacting detail.

Gray added in a set of crosshairs at the center, marking the geographic North Pole.

He then crossed over and took a few snapshots of Mercator's handiwork. Once satisfied with the image, he overlaid it atop the modern map. While the sixteenth-century version was not perfect in its rendition of every coastline, one detail was constant between the two, both past and present—the geographical North Pole.

He centered Mercator's mountainous pole atop the current map's spot, then played with the rotation until he could fix another point that was equally well mapped in the sixteenth century—the coastline of northern Europe.

With those two points overlapped and fixed, he boxed off the position of the mysterious island, the possible wellspring for all the mythology of Hyperborea.

He showed his handiwork to the others.

"It appears Mercator's magnetic island lies somewhere in the East Siberian Sea," Gray announced. "By tasking satellites with magnetometers, we should be able to detect any anomalous fluctuations in the magnetic field within that region and roughly pinpoint the island's location."

As the others studied the map, passing the tablet around, Jason waved Gray to the side. He did not look happy. His voice dropped to a whisper. "That's some fractious waters. The East Siberian Sea is one of the major shipping lanes for Russia's Northern Sea Route. If that island is far enough out into the remote waters of the Arctic, and Russia can claim it for themselves, it will vastly extend their territorial reach, consuming a large bulk of the polar sea. It risks destabilizing the entire region."

Gray understood. "We can't let that Arkangel Society get first crack at reaching the island. If we can expose this discovery—one with enormous historical implications—we may be able to keep a territorial war from starting. But to do so, we need to shine a big light on it."

Jason nodded grimly and stated the mantra of transparency. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

"Exactly. But there is a larger danger we must consider."

"What's that?"

Gray stared up at the warning on the wall, remembering Nicolas's admonition in his book: Instead, fear that which ended the people of Hyperborea. For if it ever breaks free, it will destroy all of us.

"Something dangerous must be out there. Something that frightened Catherine enough to hide her library." He turned back to Jason. "And I'm worried we're not the first to learn of this."

"You think Sychkin might know, too."

"He has possession of that stolen Greek text. He has access to the decades of research by the Arkangel Society. So, I would not be surprised if he came upon this knowledge already. Still, for the moment, we're one step ahead of him, but that lead will not likely last."

"Then what do we do?"

Gray shrugged. "We follow Sigma's motto."

Jason grinned. " Be there first ."

Gray nodded. "That still leaves one last concern."

"Which is what?"

"Is anything even out there?"

Yelagin cleared his throat, having clearly overheard this last exchange. "There must be."

He drew their attention.

The bishop leaned on his staff, standing by the fireplace. He stared up at the curve of the tusk. "No one noticed this, but there's a word inscribed in Greek along the bottom here. I believe it spells out Hyperborea , only some letters are missing or covered over."

The bishop reached up and rubbed his palm across the yellowed ivory, as if to polish the word clearer. As he did, the tusk shifted under his hand. It seemed the artifact was more delicately balanced than it first appeared.

Gray realized why and lunged for Yelagin. "Stop..."

But it was too late.

The trap had been opulently baited—not with gold, but with a wealth of ivory, poised to punish any potential thief.

In the neighboring room, a meter-wide door tore open from the roof. Water pounded down from some great cistern above. The force was strong enough to break the oaken table below.

And it wasn't only that one room.

It was all of them.

Crashing waters echoed from every direction, rapidly flooding the library.

"Make for the stairs!" Gray hollered.

He got everyone moving. As he did, he stared across at the row upon row of golden chests. Only now did he recognize the significance of an unusual feature to them.

All the boxes had been sealed with wax.

He now understood why.

The trap's designers needed them to be watertight.

Gray grabbed Yelagin by the arm. Bailey came to his aid, too, while Jason helped Anna, whose eyes were wide with terror.

"Go, go, go..." Gray urged.

Water swamped into the small study, going from ankle-deep to knee-height before they could wade clear of the room. As the level rose, a certainty grew.

We'll never make it to the exit.

Jason gasped, hauling through the deluge. "Where's all this water coming from?"

Gray knew the answer, remembering all the stories of Lavra's sacred springs, fonts of miraculous healing. With this realization came a hard truth.

We're all about to drown in holy water.