The First Stone by Mark Anthony Page A

of power. Just the proximity to it was enough to awaken the artifact. A tiny, transparent image of a man appeared above the tetrahedron.
    It was Sareth. He held a knife, and there was a dark line on his forearm.
    “Sister,” the image spoke in a reedy but clear facsimile of Sareth’s voice, “I returned from the south, from Moringarth, only today, and our al-Mama tells me that you are already two weeks gone. I wish that I could speak with you in person. But I fear, whatever dark wonders you might tell me, the news I bear would be darker yet.”
    A grimace crossed the image of his face. “I must be brief. Let me say this: I think it is fate you chose to journey to Earth. In Moringarth, I spoke to a dervish, and though what he told me seems impossible, I am certain it is true. The burial place of Morindu the Dark has been discovered. Already the Scirathi seek it out, and our people move to hinder them and reach the city first. And, sister, this news is even stranger than you imagine, for the dervish who brought it to me is a man from Travis Wilder’s world, a man named Hadrian Farr. He says word must be sent to Travis, that the time draws near when he must return to Eldh and—”
    The image of Sareth flickered, then vanished. The tetrahedron grew cool and heavy in Travis’s hand. He could feel both Vani’s and Beltan’s eyes on him as he set it on the table. His mind buzzed, and his hands itched. What had Sareth been about to say before the spell of blood sorcery ceased? What was Travis supposed to return to Eldh and do?
    They want you to raise it, Travis. To raise it from the sands
that swallowed it long ago. Morindu the Dark, lost city of sorcerers.
    He shoved his chair back from the table and stood.
    Beltan’s green eyes were worried. “What are you doing?”
    “I’m calling for help,” Travis said as he picked up the phone and dialed.

7.
    “Come on,” Deirdre Falling Hawk muttered as the train rattled to a stop at the Green Park station.
    The doors lurched open, and she squeezed through the moment the opening was wide enough. “Mind the gap,” droned a recorded voice, but she had already leaped onto the platform, breaking into a run as her boots hit the tiles. Travis hadn’t said why he wanted her to come over, but there had been something in his voice—a sharpness—that made her heart quicken. Besides, Travis and Beltan hadn’t invited her or any other Seeker to their flat in the three years since they had come to London. Something told her this wasn’t an invitation for a drink and casual conversation.
    She gripped the yellowed bear claw that hung at her throat as she pounded up the steps and into the balmy night. A man wearing a grimy white sheet stood next to the entrance of the Tube station, holding a cardboard sign, a blank look on his face. The sign read, in neatly printed letters, You Will Be Eaten.
    “Are you ready for the Mouth?” he said as she passed him, the words accompanied by a puff of sour breath.
    Deirdre ignored him—the Mouthers were everywhere in the city these days—and darted across Piccadilly Street. She had never been to Travis and Beltan’s flat, but she knew exactly where it was. The Seekers had a penchant for keeping tabs on otherworldly travelers. Even those whose cases were closed.
    Except the case would never really be closed, whether the Seekers were actively investigating it or not. And it wasn’t just because of the phone call from Travis that Deirdre ran headlong down the sidewalk, daring other pedestrians to get in her way.
    Just before the phone rang, she had been sitting at the dining table in her flat, working on her laptop computer, doing some cross-indexing between two databases. It was tedious work, but necessary as well. The kind of work she’d been doing a lot of lately.
    Not that she wouldn’t rather have been investigating rumors of unexplainable energy signatures or artifacts of unknown origin, journeying to exotic locations, poring over lost