Alex Archer - Seeker's Curse

Annja thought she showed no reaction but the monk chuckled.

“Oh, I know that you do not believe in fate, Annja Creed. Any more than you believe in demons. Despite the secret burden you carry. You are simply too polite to tell a fat old man to his face that you believe he is, as you might say, full of it.

“You believe that only you, and those who think as you do, see the true face of reality. I can only shake my head sadly and hope that someday you might see that this universe of shining gears and ratchets you have constructed to believe in is itself merely a glittering toy, an illusion by which you hide the truth from your eyes.”

She started to say something. Whether to dispute him or make some polite evasion, she didn’t know. But he held up a chubby finger.

“No need exists for us to debate. My universe, like your unseeing, unfeeling, uncaring machine, shall carry on regardless of whether either of us believes or disbelieves. I only caution you for your sake—do not be too hasty to disbelieve in the help that comes to you in your direst need. You can explain it away later. What is vital to your quest, and possibly your survival, is that you not fight it.”

She nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

Destiny

Solomon’s Jar

The Spider Stone

The Chosen

Forbidden City

The Lost Scrolls

God of Thunder

Secret of the Slaves

Warrior Spirit

Serpent’s Kiss

Provenance

The Soul Stealer

Gabriel’s Horn

The Golden Elephant

Swordsman’s Legacy

Polar Quest

Eternal Journey

Sacrifice

Seeker’s Curse

Rogue Angel ™

www.mirabooks.co.uk

…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned,

gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against

the ground and his foot at the center of the blade.

The broadsword shattered, fragments falling

into the mud. The crowd surged forward,

peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards

from the trampled mud. The commander tossed

the hilt deep into the crowd.

Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued

praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed

her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France,

but her legend and sword are reborn….

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

The building fronts were whitewashed in name only. They had long since taken on a dingy cast.

Or maybe that was just Annja Creed’s frame of mind.

She wore a gray business suit over a pale lavender blouse and high-heeled shoes that were impractical and uncomfortable on the cobbled streets. With her head held high and shoulders thrown back she looked, she hoped, every inch the typical successful American businesswoman.

But the angles of Kastoria, strewed all up and down picturesque hills on a peninsula that undulated into a lake, conspired against her. The unfamiliar balancing act of walking in heels, which made her back ache and sent pain stabbing up her lower legs at every step, threatened to twist an ankle or send her tumbling down the lane.

As picturesque a little Greek Macedonian town as Kastoria was, Annja felt as if she could smell tension like a tang of wood smoke in the air. Panel trucks blared horns at men trundling crates across the crowded street on handcarts. The way people shouted and gestured at each other made Annja hunch her shoulders in unhappy anticipation that knives would come out at any minute.

And all that was before she reached her scheduled rendezvous with a gang of ethnic-Albanian artifact smugglers out of Kosovo.

Along with the diesel fumes and harsh tobacco smoke a chemical smell loaded down what should have been crisp air filtered through the pines on the surrounding hills. Annja passed a stack of cages where long slender animals paced nervously or stood with slightly arched backs and stared at her with beady black eyes. They were minks, destined to play a role in the fur trade, which was still the town’s main commerce and Annja reckoned also must account for the unidentified stink, since presumably the furs were subjected to some kind of chemical treatment.

She kept her head turning right to left, hoping she looked arrogant rather than furtive or paranoid. Furtive and paranoid would have been accurate. She was looking for a weathered dark blue sign with yellow lettering. Which of course she wouldn’t be able to read because it was in Greek. But supposedly that wouldn’t matter; it was only a landmark.

How the Japan Buddhist Federation had turned up the contact she didn’t know and hadn’t asked. She doubted they’d tell her. They’d hired her, for a very nice sum, to investigate why artifacts from Nepalese Buddhist shrines had begun to appear on the black market in Europe, particularly the Balkans. If she had to guess, she suspected certain of their members posed as collectors none too concerned about the provenance of the items in their collections, so long as they were convinced of their genuine antiquity—and value. They were certainly heeled well enough to pull off the pose.

Fearless pigeons bobbed, pecked and burbled everywhere, as disdainful of her uncertain progress as they were of the prospects of destruction beneath the wheels of the trucks and humpbacked little cars and overloaded handcarts. They went about their single-minded business until the last possible moment and a heartbeat or two beyond. Then they scurried or fluttered up from the path of onrushing doom and settled down again a few feet away as if nothing important had happened.

As promised, she spotted the sign on her right, near the base of the hill. A block farther down, the narrow lane opened onto a road that ran around the lake’s shore. Shacks and kiosks stood along the water. A few boats bobbed at rickety wharfs. The lake water was very blue but the waves were getting pointy and even flashing a little white in the sun as the breeze strengthened. Some heavy clouds were starting to crowd the sky overhead. It looked as if a storm front was moving down from the Balkans.

Appropriate, she thought.

The sign was a surprisingly deep blue; the weathering showed not in fading so much as severe cracking. In yellow above the Greek writing was an outline of a young woman who appeared to be pouring something from an amphora. Given the location it could be the waters of the lake as easily as the local wine.

At the bottom of the sign the word Taverna was written. Not that she had much doubt as to the nature of the business going on behind the gray stone facade. Stocky old men with sailor’s caps, gray beards and heavy sweaters stood around the stone stoop smoking. They glared at her as she marched past, whether in suspicion or religious disapproval of assertive foreign womanhood she couldn’t tell.

Play the part, she told herself. What’ve you got to be afraid of? Other than walking alone into the middle of a gang of Muslim Kosovar bandits who are doubtless armed to the teeth.

Thinking those reassuring thoughts, she turned right onto the narrow street just past the tavern’s raw stone corner.