She examined his handy work. No blood leaked through the dressing. “Hey, you’re not bad at this.”
Sam smiled. “Thanks.”
Jess gripped his hand appreciatively and pulled herself up onto her feet. She felt dizzy for a moment, but quickly regained her balance. “Do you want to meet the Master Builders?”
Chapter Fifteen
A border collie ran up to meet them.
Sam leaned down to pat the sheep dog, which responded to the attention with its tail wagging cheerfully. They walked across the acres of verdant grass to the palatial homestead.
A man approached them from the stables. He was tall and wore a blue uniform that reminded Sam of the decorative dress uniforms of some sort of medieval army, yet the man appeared to carry no weapon. He looked no different than any other modern human.
“Hello,” the man said looking at Jess. “You look like you had a bit of trouble with the maze today. That was careless of you.”
Jess embraced the man with a warm hug. “I very nearly got myself killed.”
“Like I said, awfully careless.” The man looked up at Sam and Tom, as though only just now realizing the presence of two strangers. “I’m sorry, I’m the Caretaker.”
“Sam,” he said, offering his hand. “And this is Tom.”
The man took it with a firm and leathery grip. “Pleasure. Welcome. We don’t get a lot of visitors here, as you can imagine. Which reminds me, why are you here?”
Jess said, “They’ve come to meet the Gifted Ones.”
The Caretaker frowned. “Then I’m afraid they might be a little disappointed.”
Sam held his breath. “Why?”
“The Gifted Ones have gone to the topside for a while.”
“Any idea when they will be back?”
“It’s hard to say. Sometimes they go for days, but if they leave the 8th Continent they can be gone for months.”
“Great. Then we’ve come a long way for nothing.”
Jess said, “Not nothing. Come inside. There’s a map I’d like to show you.”
Sam and Tom followed her inside the main sandstone building, while the Caretaker continued on with his work tending to the horses in the stables.
The interior of the colonial style house looked like it had been ripped out of the 18th century gentry. There was rich royal blue carpet, a mahogany staircase, even an old gramophone. Jess put on an old record, and some classical music, which he didn’t recognize, started to play.
She took them to a large billiards room.
Sam struggled to imagine a bunch of Master Builders drinking beer and playing billiards. He dismissed the thought from his mind as his eyes locked on a large map, presumably of the 8th Continent, mounted on the wall.
Jess smiled. “Well, what do you think?”
Sam shook his head as he examined the map. “It’s amazing.”
There were four distinctively different quadrants, representing each of the seasons, as Jess had described. He looked at the northeast quadrant, where the maze was depicted in full. His eyes traced the Sentinel River as it ran due south, splitting the continent in two. Unable to head east due to the freezing environment, the river meandered to the west to form a definite distinction from the desert of permanent summer, and then ran north again, through fall, before being released at the two hundred foot waterfall he’d seen at the entrance to the spring quadrant.
He focused in on the manmade structures in the inhospitable southern quadrants. His eyes narrowed and he felt his heart pound in his chest. There, near the peak of the snow covered mountain was the image of a pyramid. Any doubt he had that the Gifted Ones were indeed Master Builders was suddenly removed.
Tom, feigning disinterest, casually set up the billiard table and started to play.
“Have you ever been here?” Sam asked, pointing to the pyramid.
“No. I’ve never been to the southern quadrants.” She smiled. “But I’ve seen the one in the spring quadrant.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “There’s more than one pyramid?”
“Yes, there are four in total.”
He turned his attention to the lava filled land at the farthest southwest section of the map. There, in the middle of what appeared to be a permanent sea of lava from an active volcano was another golden pyramid.
Sam met her eye. “Any idea how someone goes about traveling to a land filled with lava?”
“I don’t know…” she laughed. “I suppose you would want to wear some sort of protective suit. Although why you’d want to go there, I don’t know.”
“What about the pyramid in the northeast?” he asked, staring at the pyramid that was depicted in the middle of the region most densely populated by Homo sapiens.
“What about it?” she asked.
“Have you been inside?”
“No. There are no doors. Only giant stones that appear golden in the sun. I’m told the Gifted Ones can enter.”
“One day, I would like to come back here for a much longer time, and see what I can learn from these pyramids — and ideally, what I can do to help the Master Builders.” His tone turned serious. “The real question, though, is what do we do about the 8th Continent?”
Jess met his question with hostility. “What do you mean, do?”
“I mean, this place has remained hidden from the world for millennia. What about the human inhabitants? You said that they’ve evolved differently because they have ample resources in terms of food and shelter, but little others to promote scientific advancement, such as metals, and fuel sources. When I return to my government, what should I say?”
“You mean, should the discovery of the 8th Continent be passed onto the rest of the world?”
“Exactly…” Sam said. “What do you think?”
“I think we’re living in utopia. The last Garden of Eden on Earth.”
Sam asked, “You don’t want anything to change?”
“It’s not up to me.”
“Who is it up to then?”
“There will need to be a gathering of the elders. There will be a vote. But I have an idea I know what they will say.”
Sam looked at her gray eyes. “And what’s that?”
“They will want independence.”
“That might be hard to enforce when the location of the 8th Continent comes out.”
She shook her head. “We can defend ourselves. If need be, we can destroy the entrance, and no one from the surface will ever see this world again.”
Sam sighed heavily, acknowledging the threat. “I’ll do my best to help.”
“Just give us enough time to make a decision. When we do, I’ll contact you and let you know what we’ve decided.”
“You can contact me?”
She smiled. “If you leave me your phone number, I can. The Gifted Ones have a phone with a direct line to the outside world, here.”
“Okay. We’ll head home in the morning and I’ll await your call.”
“I need to stay here for a few more days,” she said. “Do you think you can find the entrance on your own?”
“Sure I can…” Sam grinned. “Well, so long as Tom helps me.”
Chapter Sixteen
She watched Sam and Tom leave the maze.
The Caretaker approached, his jaw set firm and his steely gaze leveled at her. “You were supposed to kill them… what happened?”
“I liked them.”
“What difference does it make whether or not you liked them? They’re going to come back here with an army. We’ve just started a war on the Master Builders. Don’t you think it’s a little dangerous to release their allies back to the surface? You’ve seen their weapons; we’ll be no match against them.”
“No they won’t. That wasn’t what they came for.”
“What are you talking about? Why else would the Gifted Ones have sent for them?”