around the wall to check for anyone lying in wait for them on the other side.
Five long minutes later, a hand pulled the curtains apart and signaled the all clear. He walked up to the large door and pushed it open. As soon as it felt the pressure of his touch, the heavy wood split down the middle and fell to the ground in a cloud of wet snow and dust. Someone had definitely been here. He could make out the shape of a hand brushing snow from the tabletop fairly recently, and a shuffling of boot prints marked the area around the fallen door.
Sgt. Harmon knelt down and stirred his right index finger in the snow at his feet. He was sure Jabez had been here, but for how long? Where was he now? The prints moved to the door from the table and then disappeared. The soldier barricaded himself against the door in a panic but didn’t seem to go through it. There were no traces left to determine which way he went. Looking back down at the river, he wondered.
He shaded his eyes from a bright shaft of sunlight coming through the doorframe. Stalactites of ice dripped ever-increasing flows of cold melt-water down from the trees. A freezing draft came up from the river. Chills climbed the back of his neck from a different source entirely, though. Jabez was someplace close. He could feel him. There was no intellectual way to explain the odd magnetism of connection he felt in his gut.
A quick flash of light, and Sgt. Harmon pivoted toward a fallen log a few yards above the shoreline. Just beyond the water’s edge lay a standing of rocks. It wasn’t a pile caused by the flow of water. This was put there intentionally. Someone built it. He didn’t know how he missed it before. It couldn’t have been there when they arrived at the ruins.
The rock pile started below the surface of the water and climbed several feet into the air. Not something easily missed. Especially by men as well trained as these.
Smooth white stones with perfectly rounded edges balanced atop one another. Not a crack or blemish anywhere. Increasing in size as the structure reached upward, they should not have been able to stand at all, let alone so completely still. With the rough water crashing into the structure at such high speeds it seemed next to impossible. He inched closer to it. There didn’t appear to be anything holding the stones together, other than the pull of gravity.
The stone resting on top was three feet wide and at least a foot thick. It must have weighed over a hundred pounds. The rock below it was six inches smaller in diameter. Each stone progressively shrank smaller and smaller until they disappeared from view beneath the river. He counted seven stones in all. Each one as blindingly white as polished ivory, they hurt to look at.
Light shimmered from a spot at the center of the top stone. Something was reflecting the sun and shining directly into Sgt. Harmon’s eyes. By now the men had gathered behind him and were muttering nervously. He motioned for them to come forward, and they lifted him high enough to see what appeared to be a key, sitting on top of a brown leather book closed with frayed red twine loosely tied in a bow.
The fingerless gloves he wore for a better grip on his weapons allowed his fingers to brush across the book when he grabbed for the key. His hand jerked back when the book moved. He squinted against the sharpness of the early morning’s bitter sun to focus his sight. The cracked leather rose up and down slowly, accompanied by a quiet hiss of air exhaling from between the old, yellowing edges of the pages.
Knowing that it might be important, the sergeant pushed through his fear as if running into battle and picked it up. It was much too heavy for a thing of this small size. The men began to weave back and forth at the sudden change in weight, so Sgt. Harmon jumped back down into the water. His mind raced, attempting to decipher the meaning in all of this and what, if anything, it had to do with his lost
Five long minutes later, a hand pulled the curtains apart and signaled the all clear. He walked up to the large door and pushed it open. As soon as it felt the pressure of his touch, the heavy wood split down the middle and fell to the ground in a cloud of wet snow and dust. Someone had definitely been here. He could make out the shape of a hand brushing snow from the tabletop fairly recently, and a shuffling of boot prints marked the area around the fallen door.
Sgt. Harmon knelt down and stirred his right index finger in the snow at his feet. He was sure Jabez had been here, but for how long? Where was he now? The prints moved to the door from the table and then disappeared. The soldier barricaded himself against the door in a panic but didn’t seem to go through it. There were no traces left to determine which way he went. Looking back down at the river, he wondered.
He shaded his eyes from a bright shaft of sunlight coming through the doorframe. Stalactites of ice dripped ever-increasing flows of cold melt-water down from the trees. A freezing draft came up from the river. Chills climbed the back of his neck from a different source entirely, though. Jabez was someplace close. He could feel him. There was no intellectual way to explain the odd magnetism of connection he felt in his gut.
A quick flash of light, and Sgt. Harmon pivoted toward a fallen log a few yards above the shoreline. Just beyond the water’s edge lay a standing of rocks. It wasn’t a pile caused by the flow of water. This was put there intentionally. Someone built it. He didn’t know how he missed it before. It couldn’t have been there when they arrived at the ruins.
The rock pile started below the surface of the water and climbed several feet into the air. Not something easily missed. Especially by men as well trained as these.
Smooth white stones with perfectly rounded edges balanced atop one another. Not a crack or blemish anywhere. Increasing in size as the structure reached upward, they should not have been able to stand at all, let alone so completely still. With the rough water crashing into the structure at such high speeds it seemed next to impossible. He inched closer to it. There didn’t appear to be anything holding the stones together, other than the pull of gravity.
The stone resting on top was three feet wide and at least a foot thick. It must have weighed over a hundred pounds. The rock below it was six inches smaller in diameter. Each stone progressively shrank smaller and smaller until they disappeared from view beneath the river. He counted seven stones in all. Each one as blindingly white as polished ivory, they hurt to look at.
Light shimmered from a spot at the center of the top stone. Something was reflecting the sun and shining directly into Sgt. Harmon’s eyes. By now the men had gathered behind him and were muttering nervously. He motioned for them to come forward, and they lifted him high enough to see what appeared to be a key, sitting on top of a brown leather book closed with frayed red twine loosely tied in a bow.
The fingerless gloves he wore for a better grip on his weapons allowed his fingers to brush across the book when he grabbed for the key. His hand jerked back when the book moved. He squinted against the sharpness of the early morning’s bitter sun to focus his sight. The cracked leather rose up and down slowly, accompanied by a quiet hiss of air exhaling from between the old, yellowing edges of the pages.
Knowing that it might be important, the sergeant pushed through his fear as if running into battle and picked it up. It was much too heavy for a thing of this small size. The men began to weave back and forth at the sudden change in weight, so Sgt. Harmon jumped back down into the water. His mind raced, attempting to decipher the meaning in all of this and what, if anything, it had to do with his lost
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