Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

concentrated along the barrel of the horse. The major symbol was the wheel of the sun inscribed on both sleek sides of the figurine. Each wheel had three equally spaced smaller wheels etched around its rim. In place of hooves a sun wheel grew at the base of each leg. The effect was both elegant and powerful. Whoever had created the figurine had been an extraordinary artist as well as a skilled craftsman.
    He had also lived at least four hundred years before Christ and had been influenced by the culture archaeologists called La Tène, after the site where this particular style of art was first found and studied. The wheels/hooves owed more to a time two hundred years earlier, called Hallstatt after a different archaeological site.
    She made sure the hidden, overhead camera had a clear view before she walked back to the waiting men.
    “Remarkable” was all she said as she set the horse in its velvet-lined tray. “There’s almost no blurring of the incised design after twenty-five hundred years. It might have been made yesterday.”
    She only wished she could believe that it had. A fraud would have been easy to dismiss. But she was very much afraid that the artifact was as real as it was powerful.
    “Next?” she asked flippantly.
    Smith-White frowned. He had heard that Shane’s curator could be difficult, but this was the first time he’d encountered it personally. Saying nothing, he pulled a third artifact from the aluminum box.
    “Another votive figurine,” he said to Shane. “Excellent condition.”
    “Why am I not surprised?” Risa asked no one in particular.
    Shane cut her a sideways look out of stone green eyes before he took the figurine. This time he was prepared for the searing jolt of recognition and power. His hand didn’t so much as quiver. Even as he admired the astounding complexity of the designs incised on the obviously potent stag, he passed the gold over to Risa. The challenging look in her eyes told him that if he braced her hand again she would dump the artifact in his lap. Smiling slightly, he placed the stag on her palm.
    Other than a subtle jerk that only he noticed, she appeared to have no reaction. But the flare of her pupils told him that she had recognized the artifact on some primal level, just as he had.
    That realization was as staggering as the densely inscribed designs on the figurine.
    She dreamed.
    She recognized.
    And she was running from it as fast as she could.
    Silently he vowed to find out why.
    Risa put the stag under the microscope. When the artifact came into focus, she didn’t know whether to celebrate the extraordinary beauty that lay on her palm or to put her head on the table and weep for all that had been lost to time and could never be known again.
    “Celtic,” she said huskily. “At least fourth or fifth century a.d. I’m looking at the beginning of the golden age of Celtic art, which culminated in the illuminations of the Book of Kells. The style of designs on this stag are closer to those of the Lindisfarne Gospels, at the beginning of the flowering of the illuminator’s art. It would be the work of a lifetime to decipher the complexities and interconnections of the symbolism on this figurine. And even after that lifetime I would enjoy only a fraction of the understanding, of the sheer emotional and intellectual impact, that someone from that time and place would experience in the stag’s presence. The context has been lost. So much . . . lost.”
    Smith-White heard the reverence in Risa’s voice and wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake by showing the stag third instead of last. To him, the armband had been the most spectacular of the lot, which was why he had chosen to show it last. The stag was a nice piece, indeed very fine, but the designs were so intricate that they were dizzying to the modern eye. As far as he was concerned, the armband was much more imposing.
    It remained to be seen if Shane’s curator would agree.
    After positioning the stag for the ceiling camera, Risa reluctantly returned it to Smith-White.
    “Again,” she said to Shane, “I have to point out how unlikely it is that gold work that detailed would retain its crispness through so many centuries.”
    “Noted,” he said.
    Before that line of discussion could continue, Smith-White pulled out the fourth and final artifact. “This is, quite simply, spectacular.”
    Risa wanted to argue, but there was no point.
    The piece was incredible.
    Shane mentally braced himself