The River of Time Series Read online

  Her angry blue eyes moved from me to the wall in confusion. Stone wasn’t warm. It was never warm.

  “Maybe there’s a hot spring on the other side.”

  “Thought of that. But I don’t smell any sulfur, do you?” We both took a big whiff of the air. No, just your standard Etruscan tomb—with odors of water evaporated on old stone. “And it’s just the handprint that’s warm. This handprint that fits mine.” I stepped back and looked again to the pair of prints on the wall. The left fit my hand, but the right was smaller—and was the normal-temperature cool stone I’d come to expect in places like this. “Lia, here. Come here.” I wrapped my right arm around her so she could edge in closer, directly beside me. “The left print fits my hand, but the right is too small.” I glanced from the print to my sister. “You try it.”

  Lia glanced at me and then toward the tomb entrance, down a long corridor to my right. We were both thinking about our mother arguing with Manero in Italian. I doubted the espresso was helping.

  “They’re not coming anytime soon. Go on, try it. It’s so weird, touching a handprint from someone who’s been dead for a couple of thousand years.”

  I knew before Lia’s fingers were settled within the lines that it would fit as surely as the other print had fit mine.

  “I thought you said this one was cold,” Lia said.

  “I did.”

  “It’s—it’s warm,” she said in wonder.

  “Yours too?” I frowned. “Really?” I leaned in and put my hand on the left again. “When I touched it—”

  My voice broke off because something odd was happening. The room was spinning, slowly, the paintings on the wall stretching as if I was looking at them through fun-house glasses. And the wall was getting warmer. I tried to pull my hand away, but couldn’t.

  “Gabi!” Lia cried. I tried to focus on her, the only thing in the room that seemed static. Her wide blue eyes flashed terror. “It’s hot!”

  I looked up, to the tomb raiders’ hole. Up top, I could see trees, which comforted me for a moment, but then I blinked and looked again. Hundred-year-old oaks were shrinking, rising, shrinking, rising like one of those time-lapse cameras…set to record a thousand years.

  There was no sound. I couldn’t even hear Lia any longer.

  My mind raced. Handprints that fit our own. Heat where there should be cold. A room spinning, faster and faster about us. A tomb built three or four hundred years before Christ came to earth. Were we…

  I screamed, but it came out as a mere breath, come and gone as if it had never happened. I glanced up again. The trees outside were rising, shrinking, rising, faster than ever before. We had to stop it. Had to pull our hands from the wall. It was so hot my skin felt fused to it, as if it might tear the flesh from my palm if I dared to move. But we had to. Had to!

  I looked again into my sister’s eyes, silently telling her to get ready, since we couldn’t speak. I had to put my foot on the wall and yank, so surely was my hand now one with the print. As I wrenched it away—so hard it was like breaking a powerful magnetic connection—I wrapped both arms around my sister and fell to the ground behind us, like a football player sacking the quarterback. Except backward. But as my shoulder met the travertine floor, I knew I didn’t have her, after all. My arms were empty.

  It was dark.

  I groaned, taking stock, wondering if I’d hit my head. But it felt okay. Even my hand had immediately ceased burning. I blinked in confusion, hoping my vision would clear. “Lia?” I ventured.

  As soon as I said it, I knew I was alone. My voice echoed around the chamber with nothing but inanimate objects to absorb the sound. Mom’s lantern was long gone. Up top, there was no daylight. Had I passed out? Was it now night?

  Mom’s gonna be so mad…

  But I detected other sounds, odd, muffled sounds, the sounds of men crying out, and alarming sounds like horses, metal clanging, men screaming. Had Manero brought in reinforcements?

  “Mom?” I cried. “Lia!”

  I had to have hit my head, forgotten. I looked up—willing my eyes to see stars, moonlight, anything—but was met with only darkness.

  “Hey!” I yelled upward. “Hey, I’m in here!” All I could think was that the Archeologica Societa guys had ordered the tomb resealed, replacing the stone and covering the hole. My mom had lost her temporary jurisdiction over the site and somehow had not noticed that my sister and I were inside—or at least I was—before it was resealed. As for the warm handprint, my sister’s disappearance, the time-lapse forest…I had no idea what that was all about.

  I had to have fainted or something. Or picked up some weird bug and was running a fever. Maybe, in opening up these tombs, we’d awakened some odd virus. That’d be uncool. I reached up to feel my forehead, fully expecting a raging fever. But it didn’t feel like it.

  “Don’t panic,” I said to myself, feeling my heart race. “Gabriella, get a grip.” I’d spent far too many years in and out of Etruscan tombs to be creeped out. And I knew where the entrance was. I knew the way out.

  I got to my feet and felt my way toward the corridor. “Sorry, Mom,” I muttered, knowing that I was now spreading oil from my skin all along the wall. I used my right hand; my shoulder ached from my fall to the ground. I brushed up against a smooth shape and winced as I felt it give way, then crash to the floor. I’d seen the urns on the way in—seventh-century Magna Graecia, Mom said. Four matched urns, now three, miraculously surviving three centuries before they were put in this tomb. Somehow, the tomb raiders had left them behind. The urns had thrown my mom into an excited frenzy, because she couldn’t connect the style of the frescoes with the dating on the urns.

  “Oh, she’s really gonna kill me,” I said, heartsick, thinking of the coming wrath of my mom when she discovered what I’d done. Never before had I so damaged a site or artifact, even as a little kid.

  But I’d gladly face her fury rather than be stuck in here.

  The urn at least helped me know where I was, for sure. At the end of the passageway was the curved stone that marked the entrance. I could see the outline of daylight around it as I neared. Only problem: It was plugged with the entrance stone again. And the entrance stones were heavy, maybe three, four hundred pounds. I knelt and ran my fingers around the edge, considering options for removing it, remembering how my dad would pry them away with a crowbar. But always from the outside.

  I leaned my shoulder against it and pushed. My height—and fencing—made me stronger than most girls. But the stone barely moved.

  I paused. There were odd sounds coming from the other side. Men shouting, grunting. The clang of metal again as if…I shoved the thought aside. Impossible. And the main thing I had to focus on right now was escape. “Hey! Help! I’m in here! Help!” I shouted, so loudly it made my throat hurt.

  I could hear the pause in whatever metalwork was happening. “Mom? Lia! Help! Help me!” I screamed again. But then the sounds resumed.

  “Oh, brother,” I muttered. I maneuvered in the tunnel until my back and shoulders were against one side, and at an angle, I could press my feet against the stone. I pushed, pushed so hard that my butt lifted from the ground. I grunted, willing that stupid rock to move, to move, move…and then it did, scraping, groaning, then falling away to the dirt outside with a big thump.

  My eyes narrowed, and I cautiously peered outward.

  There appeared to be some sort of Renaissance faire battle-scene reenactment going on. How’d all these men get here? And why here? Perhaps some protest by the local Sienese, bent on reclaiming this land? Manero’s doing? It figured…now that they knew it held the treasures it did.

  But then I saw a man block another man’s sword strike with his own, then plunge a dagger into him with his other hand. I gasped, too surprised to scream. The injured man fell to his knees, clutching the hilt of the knife, his mouth a
gape. Blood spread across his white shirt in a slowly seeping circle. No Renaissance faire I’d seen had had special effects like that. With growing horror, I glanced to my right, where another man was writhing on the ground, groaning. My hand came to my mouth. His belly had been split open, and some of his intestines were bulging out. Blood spread across the ground in a wide pool.

  It was real.

  I was in the middle of a real battle. Suddenly I could smell the stink of sweat and coppery blood, all around me. Men were wounded or dying. Others seemed dead set on bringing the rest to the end of their lives. I glanced left and saw that one wasn’t battling any longer; instead, he stared at me as if I were a female Lazarus, emerging from the tomb in my grave clothes.

  I wanted to look away from him, but I couldn’t. He was the most handsome guy I’d ever seen, with a model’s physique and a face to match. Big, chocolate-brown eyes, square jaw, aristocratic nose, pronounced cheekbones…a serious hottie.

  I’d never encountered such Italian hotness outside of Roma.

  And he was certainly the first man I’d seen holding a real sword and in full-on knight gear—tunic, tights, breastplate, the whole enchilada. Somehow, he made the look work—

  It was then that I noticed the young man behind him, equal in height but a little narrower at the shoulders. His eyes were hard, shifting from me to the man before him. He raised his sword as if to strike. “Look out!” I screamed.

  The first man frowned and then, as if remembering where he was, turned, pulling his heavy sword from the ground and heaving it in an arc around to parry the other man’s strike. My mind immediately moved from the silly explanation I had come to—that this was some sort of Renaissance faire battle reenactment—to again attempt to absorb the truth.

  These men were fighting to the death. Why? Just what was going on?

  The question died in my mind as I caught sight of that castle in the distance, the one on the next hill that had been such a disaster when I’d first sighted it. It was no longer in ruins. The walls were erect, the tower intact. Crimson red flags waved from the battlements, in designs that matched the second knight’s coat of arms, visible on his shield as he raised it to deflect the first knight’s repeated blows.

  My eyes went back to the castle. It was as if I’d traveled back in time. Impossible. I was dreaming. I had to wake up.

  Wake up, Gabi! Wake up!

  I pinched myself and shook my head, slapped my cheeks, but the two small armies were still before me and that castle hadn’t changed a bit. Those two guys—princes from the castle or what?—fighting for what reason? My hand went to my head as I struggled to remember what little I knew of medieval history. We’d covered a bit last year in school, and my parents had always tried to plant kernels in our minds, hoping they’d somehow grow up into some harvest of historical knowledge, but what I really knew was Etruscan history, culture. Anything in the last couple of thousand years was still pretty fuzzy in my head.

  The crimson knight whistled and shouted at two men nearby, gesturing toward me. The hot knight glanced over his shoulder and frowned, then shouted at his own men.

  Suddenly six knights were in a dead run, all heading in my direction. But when they met, they began to fight one another. My heart pounded, and I turned, intending to escape into the forest behind me. But there was another knight—by the color of his tunic I could tell he was from the scarlet-flagged castle—steadily approaching me. He must have sneaked around the tomb, intending to surprise me. He rose from his crouch and smiled, as if this were some game, capturing me. I could hear the fighting continue behind me, a shout, a cry, as if another had been wounded.

  The knight was coming closer. I retreated until my back hit up against the curved wall. I fought for an idea, an escape route out of this terrible nightmare. Madly, I thought about dashing back into the tomb, but he’d be on me in a second.

  This was no dream; my attacker was real, leering, scanning my body as if he had never seen a girl in pants. I paused. Maybe he hadn’t. Suddenly I was aware of my skinny jeans and my cami top, barely covered by a thin cardigan that reached my elbows.

  He laughed, lowly, and was now close enough for me to see he had green eyes. And really bad teeth. He lifted his sword tip, studying me as it reached my throat. There was no rounded nub, as with the fencing swords my father and I used. This was broad and so sharp I feared he would actually cut me. I stayed as still as possible. But it was hard. I was shaking pretty badly.

  He asked me something in Italian, but in a dialect that made me pause for a moment. Slowly, my mind translated. “Are you a witch?”

  “A…a witch?” I returned in Italian, frowning.

  “A witch,” he repeated. “I saw you. Saw you come out of there. And your clothing…” He moved forward, changing the sword from tip to side at my throat in order to keep me in place, and allow him closer. He reached a hand up to my hair. “Your hair. No one allows their womenfolk to parade around as such. Are you a witch or are you a Norman?” He spit out Norman as if it were a foul word, referring to the French to the north.

  “I am no witch. I am from—” I clamped my lips shut. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him. “Look, you big jerk,” I said in English, finding strength in my frustration. “You don’t want to know where I’ve come from. It’d freak you out. It’s freakin’ me out!”

  He leaned back, as if surprised by my anger and confused by my odd language. But then he turned, sensing the man stealthily approaching him from behind. I’d tried to distract him—had been moderately successful—but these men were trained soldiers. That was clear enough. He met the knight’s heavy strike, barely deflecting it from slicing his head like a melon.

  I had to get out of here.

  A hand clenched my forearm, and I let out a yelp, but then quickly swallowed it. It was the first knight in gold that I had seen. Even more handsome up close. But his eyes were no longer soft in wonder. They were hard, staring down at me in consternation. “Venga,” he said gruffly in Italian. Come.

  I looked across the field and saw the crimson knight, wounded, his arms draped around two of his men. He glared at me and the knight beside me, then shouted. The man, my attacker, immediately broke from the other golden knight and retreated to join his comrades. My protector’s knights let him pass, unhindered, other than sending him verbal taunts. The battle was over, for some reason. The others mounted their horses, all draped in scarlet, gave us long looks, and then rode away.

  I looked to the men who now surrounded me, staring at me. Suddenly I felt weak-kneed. I was now under the protection—or was I the prisoner?—of the dudes from the gold castle.

  “I hope you’re the good guys,” I muttered.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Where are you taking me?” I cried in Italian, wrenching my elbow from the young man’s firm grasp as we walked away. “And why are you all dressed like someone out of a Shakespearean play?”

  The leader turned and eyed me, his handsome face a mass of confusion. “What is Shakespearean?”

  What is Shakespearean? Who doesn’t know Shakespeare?

  “I could ask the same of you,” he continued, hands on his hips. “Why are you out in such curious underclothes? Is this how the Normans send out their womenfolk?”

  Normans? I glanced over to the two young men behind their leader. They were all in their late teens, early twenties. They’d been in battle—not mock medieval battle, but real, hand-to-hand, I-want-to-kill-you battle. And the dialect of Italian…the same as that emerging from my own mouth…Dante. They—I—sounded like Dante’s Divine Comedy. My parents had made us read and recite portions of The Inferno last summer, in Italian. Apparently their efforts paid off, because I could now suddenly speak in Dante’s dialect, the first unified Italian the country had ever known, but a bit different from the modern version.

  I looked to my left, through
a gap in the trees that allowed me to see out into the thickly wooded valley. My hand came slowly to my mouth as my eyes scanned the slant of the hills again and again, trying to make sense of it, make sure I knew where I was looking. Because there in the distance, edging out of the trees, were the refined, perfect stones of another massive fortress wall. The tip of a waving golden flag dangled above it, visible one moment, retreating the next. That castle—the one we’d passed every day en route to the site, the one that Lia and I had tramped through one day, bored out of our minds—it had been nothing but a pile of rubble. It looked as if it had just been built, just like the one we could see from the tumuli campus. Impossible. Impossible!

  I dragged my eyes to meet the young man’s. “You don’t know Shakespeare. Do you know Dante?”

  He laughed, a scoff that didn’t even move his handsome features. Such dark, piercing eyes, as if he could see through me. Laced with wide lashes. He had a man’s chin, even though he couldn’t be much older than me. His voice was low, rumbly, curiously warm despite his cold tone. “Who among the aristocracy has not heard of Dante? My father was privileged to host him in our home shortly before his death.”

  I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. Dante had been dead for six—no, seven hundred years.

  My captor grabbed my arm again, wrenching me forward.

  “What are you going to do with her, Marcello?” asked a man behind me, to my left.

  “I do not know.”

  “How will you explain her to your father?”

  “I do not know.” The guy named Marcello glanced at me again. “You are from Normandy, yes?”

  Again, with the Normandy business. The people of the north, sometimes allies, sometimes enemies. It might be dangerous to answer this. But how else to explain my curious arrival? “You have guessed well,” I said, pulling back my shoulders, lifting my chin. There was only one way to play this. The superior, don’t-mess-with-me route. “I am Lady Gabriella Betarrini. I am in search of my mother, and now, my sister, too.”