“I thought you didn’t know anything about Indian archaeology,” Constance accused.
“I don’t,” Neil replied.“I’ve only picked up a few things here and there over the years.”
“Like Mauryan stone-polishing techniques?”
“Yes?”Neil appeared confused by her wry tone.
The man honestly had no idea.Constance wondered what level of knowledge it would take for Neil to consider himself reasonably well-informed on a topic.
Subhas shook his head.
Neil traced his fingers reverently over the script on the column.“The other structures aren’t Mauryan.I’d estimate they date from the eleventh or twelfth century, along with the torana.The presence of the Ashoka Pillar indicates this was originally a Buddhist site, but I suspect it was resettled by Hindus sometime after its initial abandonment.”He clambered over to a jumbled pile of rocks nearby.“I wonder if there’s evidence of the earlier Buddhist structures in the foundation stones.”
“Watch out for pit vipers,” Subhas commented mildly.
“Wait—what?”Neil danced back from the ruins as if expecting a snake to strike from behind them at any moment.“Are there pit vipers here?”
Subhas’s eyes glinted wickedly.“Keep jumping around in the rocks where they like to hide, and I suppose we’ll find out.”
Neil went pale.
Constance shot Subhas a glare.
Subhas answered it with a wink.“Let’s go find your waters.Jignesh!Ziju aanaha!”
“Waters?”Neil contemplated his beloved foundation stones as though torn between the urge to clamber over them and a natural aversion to being bitten by a deadly snake.
“The Waters of the Son of the Wind?”Constance reminded him.“You know—from Tulsidas’s clues?”
“But… the foundation stones…” Neil cast a mournful gaze back at the jumbled rocks.
Constance hooked a hand through his arm and dragged him from the pillar.“The rocks will wait for you, Stuffy.”
?
Twenty-Eight
Adam was inhell.
“So then I told him—that shows what you know about Herodotus!”Dawson continued.“And yet that blasted journal published his paper instead of mine—a clear instance of favoritism if I have ever seen it.”
“Uh-huh,” Adam vaguely agreed.
They had been hiking for hours through the towering forest that covered the rising slope of the ridge.The heat of the day was thick and humid despite the haze overhead.Lizards darted through the undergrowth while birds flitted between soaring trees where flowers hung heavily from fragrant branches.
Subedar Singh Rao had broken up the camp while the sky was still gray with dawn, setting a hard pace.None of the men complained.Adam suspected that had more to do with Singh Rao’s leadership than any general respect for Borthwick.
They had reached the Shiva stone on the ridge before noon, right where Adam had said they would find it.
When he’d blurted out the location of the landmark the night before, he’d been acting on desperate impulse, driven by the terror of what Borthwick’s whip could do to Vanika.The consequences of that split-second decision had come home to him as the colonel studied the slender pillar of pale stone that pierced the distant canopy below their perch.
Adam was leading Borthwick straight to the damned astra.
“And that’s why I make it a point to steer clear of mollusks,” Dawson concluded authoritatively.
Dawson had glued himself to Adam’s side like a barnacle on a pier.The guy was desperate for someone to talk at, and Adam was his best prospect now that the professor was convinced they were on the same side.
He’d been yammering the whole way up and down the damned mountain.
