Excavations and Enlightenment (A sequel to "Caveats and Cliches")

Chapter 13: Back To The Drawing Board

NOTHING??

Before us is the desiccated remains of the emperor, yellowed bones and crumbling scraps of cloth, but no trace of his precious staff. The silence is broken by a sharp intake of breath as Easton clutches at his hair.

"No no no no no! Where is it? It should be here! Right here!"

"Maybe...maybe it's a...a secret compartment!"

Toby says, and hefts his pickaxe in response. He takes chaotic swings at the wall at the foot of the sarcophagus near the shelves, but is met with only solid rock. Easton does the same on the other side, but there is nothing to find. They tire quickly and stand, panting in the tiny room, looking around wildly for some clue. After a moment, Sarah begins to usher them out.

"There's nothing here, and this place isn't safe. Let's get back to camp."

The goblins look up in alarm when Toby and Easton storm out of the temple, empty handed and in a bad mood. The crew has already bathed and gone to dinner, so we quietly wash up. No games to be played in the river tonight. Dinner is a sullen event; there is little to be said and Toby and Easton are in no mood to hear it. Finally, Sarah breaks the silence.

"Easton, could I take a look at Pema's journal?"

Stiffly, Easton nods and goes to get it for her. Instead of turning to the map or the story of the bamboozled emperor, Sarah starts at the beginning and meticulously reads each page. Easton watches her carefully, but she doesn't say anything, just systematically considers each entry. It doesn't take Sarah too long to read it all the way through. Still, she says nothing. She goes through the journal again, lingering over certain passages, then stares into the fire. Easton bears the silence admirably, but it's too much for Toby.

"Alright, seriously, what are we going to do? We can't get Pema back without the staff and it isn't here!"

Easton looks pained, then his eyes darken a bit and he too stares into the fire. When he speaks, it's slow and deliberate.

"Jareth, could we fight? I could call that man, trick him into meeting us... and we could...could..."

He trails off and my stomach sinks at the implication.

"NO!" I say more sharply than I mean to.

"Why not?" Toby says, irritated. "They are a bunch of low life kidnappers! We don't owe them anything! I say we fight!"

As if to prove his point he picks up the nearest shovel and gives it a testing swing. I cross my arms and shake my head. I feel like telling my brother in law, in no uncertain terms, that he should shove off because he's just a child who doesn't know what he's talking about. Instead I try to appeal to his sense of reason.

"We don't know enough about our adversary to risk a confrontation. You would be endangering Pema's life, as well as the rest of us."

Toby looks unconvinced, so I'm about to follow up my argument with a threat detailing the unpleasant things I will do to him if he even considers trying to talk my wife or brother into putting themselves in such a precarious situation, but Sarah speaks up, seemingly oblivious to our dispute.

"Toby, have you read this? All the way through?"

Sarah has the journal open again, peering into it with a perplexed look on her face. The question is so unexpected that it stops him short.

"Yeah... yes I've read the whole thing. But it's just like Easton said, there are really only a few pages that give any information about this site and the Emperor's staff."

He's still indignant, but he's losing steam under his sister's calm gaze.

"That's what I don't understand. Come and look at this."

She gestures to Toby and Easton to join her. The shovel slips from Toby's hand, already forgotten, and both boys crowd around her, looking at the journal with renewed interest.

"Look. There are pages and pages detailing an excavation several miles from here, but by her own account, there was almost nothing of relevance that was found there. And even after the narrative of the Emperor and his staff, there's still more detail, painstakingly recorded about this characterless site."

She looks at each of us in turn. We gape at her, uncomprehending. Not getting the response she's looking for, Sarah half shrugs.

"Our first night at dinner, Pema spoke about this site. About how important it was to find the staff. I don't know her as well as you two, but she didn't strike me as the type of person that would spend so much time and effort on chronicling something so seemingly unimportant."

Easton speaks up. "That was her first dig. They may not have found much, but I'm sure it was important to her."

Sarah nods. "But if that's the case, then why put the story of the Emperor and his staff here, in this journal? Why didn't she make a new one dedicated to this dig? It...just doesn't belong."

She goes quiet, letting her words sink in.  Toby snaps his fingers.

"A red herring!" He says.

Sarah looks at him in surprise, but I get the feeling this is what she was hoping for. Toby doesn't miss her expression.

"What? I've read The Catbird Seat."

"Fish?...cat-birds?...I don't...I don't understand." Easton sputters.

Sarah swallows an amused smile.

"Red herring is a human expression. It means a false clue, something purposely left to be misleading or distracting."

Easton picks up on the thought.

"You're saying Pema left it...as a distraction? But why?"

Sarah answers, "She must have known that other people would be interested in such a valuable object. If the journal were to fall into the wrong hands, then the staff would still be protected."

"Sar, how could that be? We dug out the temple! We were the first ones to open the Emperor's tomb!"

Sarah regards Toby for a moment. "Were we?"

Toby frowns and opens his mouth to answer, but I speak first.

"No. We weren't."

All eyes turn in my direction.

"You said when we started digging that the soil was loose, not hard packed like you expected. Even though the building was badly dilapidated, we didn't have to remove any other obstacles once we were inside. There was a relatively clear path all the way to the tomb. And the wall, that separated the hallway from the tomb, it looked almost...new."

Easton rises from his place by the fire and begins pacing.

"What you are saying, is that Pema and her team successfully excavated this whole dig, found the staff, then... reburied the entire site and left the map to mislead any potential thieves??"

Toby goggles open-mouthed, while Sarah and I nod solemnly. Easton stops pacing and looks up.

"Then where is the staff, really?"

Sarah points to the open page of the journal laying in her lap.

"Here."