II
Across town, in a top-floor hotel suite, a woman in a light sweater sat in front of a laptop. She held a large cup of coffee, her fingers, slender and confident, wrapped around the ceramic as if it held more than just a drink. Her name was Alice, and to the rest of the world, she was a myth, a convenient fairy tale used to explain the disappearance of artifacts from private collections and poorly guarded museums. The legend said she didn't exist. The reality, however, was that she was simply never wrong.
Her fingers glided silently across the touchpad, scrolling through digital copies of documents that would have made leading history departments envious. Diagrams, photographs, newspaper clippings, and satellite images flickered across the screen. Her attention was focused on the object known in certain circles as the "Key of Oblivion." She already knew its location in a country hotel complex and that Lothrip Longreat was hunting it. His gang of rough-and-tumble thugs was less a threat than a hindrance. She half-hoped their aggressive and clumsy actions would attract someone else's attention, creating a convenient clutter for her work.
But that wasn't what made her thin brows draw together slightly. Something else was alarming her: the subtle presence of a third force. Someone was acting with surgical precision, placing the pieces on the board. The one who had masterfully framed Longreat's henchman, forcing him to reveal information, was no ordinary competitor. He was a strategist.
All the references to the artifact she knew were gathered on the laptop screen. On the left was a fragment of an ancient manuscript, covered in complex medieval Greek script and sprinkled with Hermetic and alchemical symbols. Latin, the language of scholars, was out of place here - that knowledge was older and more mysterious. The manuscript not only described the "Key" as an object about twenty centimeters long and ten centimeters across, but also contained an image of the very bas-relief from the castle, offering clues to deciphering it. It also mentioned an ancient ballad, which she now had to find.
Next to the manuscript, a digitized fresco, or rather, a surviving fragment of one, shone. It repeated the enigmatic design with the arched bridge, but added new details: a schematic star map and rays of the sun rising over the horizon. The engineering symbolism of the bas-relief here combined with an astronomical and, possibly, temporal reference.
And finally, the detailed scan of the bas-relief itself. Alice zoomed in, her gaze lingering on the figure of the woman with the sun in her belly and the shepherd whose finger pointed to the crack. She traced the crack on the screen with the tip of her fingernail, mentally comparing it with the fracture in the fresco and the cryptic instructions in the manuscript. All these details had to come together to form a coherent picture, indicating not just a place, but also a time and conditions. Longreath was simply searching for a treasure chest. Alice, however, understood that she was hunting for an idea embodied in stone and metal, and whoever was orchestrating this entire situation from the shadows probably understood this as well as she did.