David Gilman - Ice Claw

Something moved in the shadows below.

Bobby Morrell didn’t have a chance when they came for him.

As darkness fell and the swollen moon escaped the confines of the horizon, he sat with a mug of coffee, a small fire burning on the beach. It was a cold night. He and Peaches had caught a few waves on the break near the rocks, but the wind had freshened, pushing clouds silently through the valleys and peaks of the mountains behind him. Another few weeks and he’d be back in school. Then college. Then what? He didn’t know. What he really wanted was to be on his own with the elements. He’d get a degree-business studies-and set up a sporting empire on the Web. Five years from now someone else could run it. He’d go and find the perfect wave and the highest mountain.

Countless waves around the world waited for him and his board, and there were high valleys choked with snow just begging for him to slice them open with a sweeping curve.

Life should be that simple. Bobby was part of the great outdoors. Connected was how he felt. Integral. Symbiosis. Mountains and sea needed him and he needed them.

That was why he liked Max Gordon. That kid was “connected” as well. Max was cool. He’d take on a challenge. He’d give it a go, as the Brits say. Yeah. He’d take Max to Hawaii one day and let him see real waves on Oahu. That’d chill his blood. Winter storms in Alaska created huge rollers that traveled thousands of miles until they hit Oahu’s north shore. Monsters. Wow. Those waves came at you like an express train, twenty yards high. Higher.

Max’d like that.

He looked out across the bay. Peaches must have caught a wave farther down and decided to call it a night. She was probably trudging through the sand right now. He’d keep the fire going. She’d be cold.

As the moonlight shimmered across the flat-water bay, he heard distant growls-off-roaders. Three or four of them were scratching around the night. He checked his cell phone, nervous he’d missed Max’s call. Nothing. Then something pushed through the bushes.

Bobby got to his feet, grabbed a piece of driftwood to protect himself and faced the figure who’d stepped into the firelight. The malformed head raised its face to the moonlight, as if sniffing the wind. The gashed mouth revealed pointed teeth. Its tongue licked saliva before it dribbled down its almost nonexistent chin.

“You must be Bobby,” Sharkface said.

Max pulled books and files from the library shelves, searching for any clues. Sayid did the same. But all they found for their efforts were a few charts, a plan of the chateau and what amounted to a series of yearbooks of scientists. Max was on the upper level, moving along the gantry below the emblazoned Basque letters on the roof beams. He looked at them and dismissed them. The words were a legacy of the generous spirit of Antoine d’Abbadie, encouraging the readers in his library to work and seek wisdom. It didn’t matter. Max didn’t understand a word.

His eyes were glazing over. He’d been in the half-light too long, and trying to read the foreign words on the spines of the folders and books was giving him a crick in his neck. He was looking without seeing, concentration flagging.

And then something caught his eye. He took two steps back. Words had been scratched along the edge of a shelf. Faint, barely visible, and they were small. It was doubtful if anyone would notice them unless by chance. Or unless they were looking.

What he needed was a piece of chalk to highlight the letters. But there was no chalk. What else? Max looked down to where Sayid sat at the trestle table, poring over a volume. He saw what he needed. He ran to the end of the gantry and down to Sayid, praying what he wanted would still be in place.

The old typewriter.

“What? You’ve found something?” Sayid said as Max stuck his nose close to the old metal keys.

“Something,” he said, his fingers already lifting the faded ribbon from the machine. Within seconds he was back at the bookshelf. He rubbed what little pigmentation there was with spit on his finger, then ran the ribbon across the bookshelf’s edge. It worked. The faded scratches lifted slightly, but he could see only a few of the words. Luciferi primo cum sidere frigida rurar carpamus … There were more words too worn to be seen. Max muttered the inscription to himself. Lucifer! There it was.

If only Mr. Chaplin were at his shoulder. The soft-spoken teacher at Dartmoor High had found the route to Max’s fleeting attention span in class by teaching them ancient Greek and Roman history. And Dartmoor High was built on a onetime outpost of Rome’s XX Legion; that meant soldiers and battles-and Latin.

“What is it?” Sayid said quietly, looking up to the gallery.

Max studied the words again. “ More Latin. I dunno. Something to do with … er … to do with hastening … the first morning light.” He shook his head and shrugged apologetically at Sayid.

“Thicko,” Sayid said.

“I can tell you all the battles the Twentieth Legion fought. I can’t help it if they spoke in ancient Italian.”

“Lucifer, though, eh?” Sayid said.

“Luciferi . Yeah.”

Max scanned the books wedged immediately above the scratched words. A folder was hidden behind them, its corner alerting an inquiring eye to find it. Max reached in and pulled it free.

The worn brown paper had sloughed, like dead skin. He opened it and a few pages fell out. The first sheet was a hand-drawn circle with symbols and numbers around the edge, and inside the circle what looked to be three or four triangles of different sizes.

Scrawled across the top of the page, in a barely legible script, were three more Latin words: Lux et veritas .

“There’s more!” Max blurted out as he made his way down to Sayid. “Lux et veritas . That means ‘Light and truth,’ I know that much.”

He laid the sheets of paper on the table, but Sayid’s attention was elsewhere. He had found a volume of documents.

“Blimey,” Sayid said. “Look at this.”

Sayid placed the big book next to Max’s folder on the table. A diagram filled the page. It was an intricate symbol, a zigzag pattern, all angles and lines. Where the lines did not touch, the spaces formed shapes that made the pattern look like a field of diamonds, while the spaces between the lines made star patterns. This was something.

“You know what this is?”

“Yeah,” Sayid said, still gazing at the drawing.

“It’s all right, Sayid. No hurry. Take your time. You don’t have to share the secret if you don’t want to.”

“Well, it’s just a bit of a surprise, that’s all. My family had books on Islamic art and I’ve seen this before. Wow. Amazing.”

Max stared at Sayid, who was transfixed by the drawing. He turned it this way and that, and no matter which way up it was held the pattern stayed the same.

“I’ll tell you what this is …,” Sayid said, the intricate drawing still holding his attention.

Max sighed, and waited.

“This is the Divine Order,” Sayid told him.

“The what?”

“It’s pure geometry. I think the Arabs got it from the Greeks, but they perfected it. Anyway, that’s what it represents-that the chaos of the universe is part of a plan. At least, I think that’s what it means. And this shape, this diagram, shows the chaos of the universe in a defined order. All very precise.”

“You’ve lost me, Sayid.”

Max’s mind raced. His dad had taught him so many things when they traveled together, but this didn’t trigger any memories. He knew the ancient Greeks had learned from Egypt and Babylonia, and that the Indians and Arabs had mastered astronomy and mathematics, but where did this fit in? Was there anything his dad had told him that would help solve this puzzle?