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THE BLACK LANDWyrd oft nereth unfaegne eorl, ponne his ellen deah.
(Unless he is already doomed, fortune is apt to favor the man who keeps his nerve.)
--Beowulf

Mesa Verde, Colorado Spring 2003

BEFORE I'D EVEN REACHED THE HOUSE, I KNEW SOMETHING was wrong. Very wrong. Even though on the surface, it all seemed picture-perfect.

The steep, sweeping curve of drive was blanketed deep in snow and lined with stately rows of towering Colorado blue spruce. Their snow-covered branches sparkled like rose quartz in the early morning light. Atop the hill, where the driveway flattened and spread out for parking, I pulled up my rented Land Rover in front of the lodge.

A lazy curl of blue-gray smoke rose from the moss rock chimney that formed the center of the building. The rich scent of pine smoke pervaded the air, which meant that--although I might not be warmly welcomed after all this time--at least I was expected.

To confirm this, I saw that my mother's truck and jeep were both sitting side-by-side in the former horse stable at the edge of the parking area. I did find it odd, though, that the drive had not yet been plowed and there were no tracks. If I were expected, wouldn't someone have cleared a path?

Now that I was here at last, in the only place I'd ever called home, you would think I could finally relax. But I couldn't shake the sense that something was wrong.

Our family lodge had been built at about this same period in the prior century, by neighboring tribes, for my great-great-grandmother, a pioneering mountain lass. Constructed of hand-hewn rock and massive tree trunks chinked together, it was a huge log cabin that was shaped like an octagon--patterned after a hogan or sweat lodge--with many-paned windows facing in each cardinal direction, like a vast, architectural compass rose.

Each female descendant had lived here at one time or another, including my mother and me. . . . So what was wrong with me? Why couldn't I ever come here without this sense of impending doom? I knew why, of course. And so did my mother. It was the thing we never spoke about. That's why--when I had finally left home for good--my mother understood. She'd never insisted, like other mothers, that I come back for familial visits.

That is, not until today.

But then, my presence today hadn't exactly been by invitation--it was more of a summons, a cryptic message that Mother had left on my home phone back in Washington D.C., when she knew very well I'd be off at work.

She was inviting me, she said, to her birthday party.

And that, of course, was a big part of the problem.

You see, my mother didn't have birthdays. She'd never had birthdays.

I don't mean she was concerned about her youth or appearance or wished to lie about her age--in fact, she looked more youthful each year.

But the strange truth was, she didn't want anyone outside of our family even to know when her birthday was.

This secrecy, combined with a few other idiosyncracies--like the fact that she'd been in hermetic retreat up on top of this mountain for the past ten years, ever since . . . the thing we never spoke about--all went far to explain why there were those who may have perceived my mother, Catherine Velis, as a pretty eccentric duck.

The other part of my current problem was that I hadn't been able to contact my mother for an explanation of her sudden revelation. She'd answered neither her phone nor the messages I'd left for her, here at the lodge. The alternate number she'd given me was clearly not right--it was missing some final digits.

With my first true inkling...

 

"A big, rich, two-tiered confection of a novel . . . a rousing, amusing game."

 

"A fascinating piece of entertainment . . . few will find it resistible."

 

"Readers thrilled by The Da Vinci Code will relish the multilayered secrets of The Eight."

 

"With an alchemical skill, Neville blends a modern romance, historical fiction, and a medieval mystery . . . and comes up with gold."

 

"A feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark."

 

"Impossible to put down."

 

Katherine Neville is the author of The Eight, The Magic Circle (a USA Today bestseller), and A Calculated Risk (a New York Times Notable Book). The Eight has been translated into more than thirty languages. In a national poll in Spain by the noted journal El País, The Eight was voted one of the top ten books of all time. Neville lives in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

www.katherineneville.com


From the Hardcover edition.

 

The Fire by Katherine Neville
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