Mystic Warrior. Alex Archer

continued her search, but she became quickly discouraged when nothing turned up. The light caught various facets and reflected through the glass ovoid, squirming through to another side in some places and stopping in others. Occasionally, the light snaked back on itself and became looped.

      Nothing made sense.

      Pausing again, Annja glanced at the manuscript pages. They have to be part of this, she reasoned.

      Krauzer sifted through the food cartons and muttered in displeasure. At least he was being somewhat quiet about his irritation.

      A new thought struck Annja and she glanced up at Orta. “Let’s get the pages over here.”

      Orta picked up the first page. “Shine the light through the pages?”

      “That’s the only thing we haven’t tried.”

      “The plastic protectors might interfere.” In spite of his misgivings, Orta held the first page against one of the flat spots on the crystal.

      Annja placed the flashlight lens against the laminated paper and slowly guided the manuscript page along so that every square inch was covered. After covering nearly the whole page, her hopes steadily sinking while Krauzer continued to stew, Annja blinked to clear her vision when she spotted writing in the lower right corner.

      She lowered the flashlight and raised the page to examine the surface with her naked eye. Even holding the manuscript up to the overhead lights didn’t show anything. The striations within the crystal somehow translated the image, probably through various degrees of refraction.

      “Did you find something?” Orta stood at her side, his chest resting slightly against her shoulder.

      “Yes,” Annja answered. Her voice sounded quiet in her own ears, but her excitement thrummed like a live thing inside her.

      “You’re imagining things,” Krauzer insisted. “You’re tired and you want something to be there.” Still, he came to stand on her other side and peered at the crystal. “See? Nothing’s there.”

      “Look inside it.” Annja replaced the page over the flat spot and shone the flashlight against the page so the beam shone into the crystal.

      Inside the crystal, the neat handwriting stood revealed, almost too small to read. The penmanship was delicate, ornate and so small. Each space between words was carefully designed.

      “I don’t see anything,” Krauzer challenged.

      Annja nodded to Orta. “Hold these.”

      Silently, enraptured by what he was seeing, Orta held the flashlight and the page. He experimented by pulling the flashlight lens back from the paper. “I can get the writing a little larger, but pulling the light source reflects back too much and throws off the focus, causing it to disappear.”

      Annja opened her backpack and took out her tablet PC and a small digital camera. She slipped on an equally small macro lens. “If someone had read the manuscript pages in that crystal all those years ago, they couldn’t have put a candle flame up against the paper.”

      “Someone built this crystal to hide the message inside the manuscript pages.” Orta shook his head. “But the crystal looks so real.”

      “The crystal is real. This is old, probably grown over time. I’d like to find out who created it, as well.” Annja left the tablet PC on one of the tables and brought the camera to the crystal. She experimented with angles and found the one that best revealed the message within the depths of the crystalline latticework. She snapped images.

      “I see it.” Krauzer bent so low and so close that his breath temporarily fogged the crystal. Looking embarrassed, he leaned back. “You know, that’s pretty cool. I could use something like this in A Diversion of Dragons.”

      Orta blew out an impatient breath. “Seriously? You see this—a secret message in a crystal that has to be at least hundreds of years old, the crystal itself even older than that—and the first thing you think of is using it in a movie? You don’t even wonder what the message is?”

      “Don’t go all professor on me, Doc.” Krauzer held up his hands defensively. “I’m a movie guy. I’m one of the movie guys in this town. People talk about me the same way they talk about Spielberg and Coppola.”

      “You’re an imbecile!”

      Krauzer held out a warning finger. “It wouldn’t be smart to make this personal.”

      “Smart? You’re not intelligent enough to know when you’re not invited to something.”

      “Are you talking about the food?” Krauzer hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the takeout cartons sitting on the table. “I can pay for that. In fact, I’ll pay for it all.” He pulled out a black American Express card. “You take plastic?”

      Frozen by the sudden outbreak of tempers, Annja couldn’t believe what was taking place. Male testosterone was so easily misplaced. “Guys? Maybe we could focus.”

      Orta blushed a deep red. “I cannot believe the crystal ended up in your hands.”

      Krauzer glared at his rival. “Yeah, well, it’s mine. Whatever secret message is in there is mine, too, so if there’s treasure, it’s mine.”

      “The message isn’t in the crystal, you idiot. It’s on these pages. Which I have.”

      “Yeah, well, I own the decoder ring. Try to figure out your secret message without that.” Krauzer shrugged. “I don’t need the secret message. It’s probably ‘Juan Cabrillo was here.’ Or maybe ‘Today the chef’s mystery meat was particularly horrible.’ You think Twitter and Facebook invented boring self-indulgence? Try reading some of those classics college professors cram down your throat.”

      “Have you even wondered why anyone would go to the trouble of putting a secret message in these pages and that crystal?”

      “I don’t care. I’ll just take my crystal and be going. I’m making a movie. I don’t have time for this crap.” Krauzer started to reach for the scrying crystal, then stopped when Annja narrowed her eyes.

      “Not yet,” she told him.

      “It’s mine.”

      “Not until I’m done with it,” Annja said. “We agreed.”

      Glaring at her, Krauzer backed away. “Hurry.”

      Annja nodded to Orta. “Ready?”

      Breathing out slowly, Orta picked up the flashlight and manuscript page to return to their joint task. It took him only a moment to find the hidden writing.

      Peering intently at the handwriting, Annja said, “Looks like calligraphy that was made with some kind of tool.”

      “Probably jeweler’s instruments,” Orta replied. “The Portuguese were constantly looking for treasures. Gold, silver and gems. For the message to be rendered so small, I’d say the writer used a jeweler’s loupe, too, though I’m not certain those had been invented at the time this was made. Some type of magnifying glass at the very least.”

      Adjusting the magnification of the image on her camera viewscreen, Annja tilted it toward Orta. “This looks like Latin.”

      He peered more closely. “Yes, it is. But see the name?”

      “Julio Gris.”

      “Yes.”

      “And unless I’m mistaken, this says it is the last will and testament of Gris.”

      “Let’s see what’s on the next page.”

      * * *

      IN LESS THAN an hour, Annja and Orta had the hidden messages from the manuscript pages shot and mostly decoded. She loaded the images onto her tablet PC and enlarged them. She’d shot them so they could be enhanced. Compiling the images into a single file