In a spellbinding blend of history, myth, and science, bestselling novelist Manda Scott unleashes a thriller that sweeps from the secrets of the Mayans to the court of a sixteenth-century queen to a shattering end-times prophecy.
"It’s a lump of rock, Stella; nothing more. No stone is worth dying for."
Except it’s not just a lump of rock. It’s a blue crystal skull made by the Maya to save the world from ruin; a sapphire so perfect, so powerful that for centuries men have killed to own or destroy it.
Ancient prophecies say that if the thirteen skulls already in existence are not reunited, the world will end on December 21, 2012. Cedric Owen, the skull’s last Keeper, died so that it might keep its secret for the next four centuries. Now Stella Cody has found it, and someone has already tried to kill her. Like Owen, she’s being hunted—but by whom?
Desperate to unravel the mystery of the crystal skull, Stella must decode Cedric Owen’s coded writings, sketches and ciphers no scholar has been able to unravel. What she discovers is astounding: a shocking secret prophecy…and the staggering puzzle of four terrifying creatures, thirteen precious stones, and what will happen if Cedric Owen’s crystal skull falls into the wrong hands. But time is against Stella. She has only days—hours—left to uncover the only secret that may yet save the world.
12.21.12
The date is set. Time is running out.
The end of the world starts now.
Excerpts
From the book
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CHAPTER ONE
Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today. --Friedrich Nietzsche
BENEATH INGLEBOROUGH FELL, YORKSHIRE DALES, MAY 2007
BECAUSE IT WAS HER wedding gift, Stella came out of the tunnel first. Filthy, wet and shivering hot-cold from the effort of the last fifty-metre uphill haul, she crawled on her belly, pulling herself facedown into the empty blackness beyond.
She moved slowly, keeping taut the umbilical line that linked her to Kit, feeling with her hands for the quality of the footing, then shuffling forward no farther than the spilled light from her head-torch.
Like the tunnel, the cave was of chalk. Her gloved hands pressed on stone washed smooth by century upon patient century of water. Her torch revealed bright trickles of damp everywhere, washing over flat, undulating limestone. Beyond the splash of yellow light was unknown territory, unmapped, unexplored, as likely to be a ledge and a bottomless fall as a flat cave floor.
With cold-stiff fingers, she established safety, set a bolt into the wall by the mouth of the tunnel, clipped into it and tugged the rope to let Kit know that she had stopped and not to pay out more rope. By the light of her head-lamp, she checked her compass and her watch, then marked the incline and her estimate of its length and direction with wax pencil on the chart she kept in her chest pocket, where it would not snag on tunnel walls.
Only after she had done all these things did she turn and look up and round, and send the thread of her torch into the vast, cathedral space Kit had found for her.
"My God . . . Kit, come and look."
She spoke to herself; he was too far back to hear. She tugged twice on the rope, saying the same thing, and felt the single answering twitch and then sudden slack as he began to move towards her.
Her hands coiled rope as a habit, without any conscious thought. Switching off her head-lamp, Stella stood in the roaring silence and let Kit's gift stand still in all its vast, black perfection around her, so that she could remember it for the rest of her life.
Marriage is fine for the rest of the world, but I want to find you a present that will last us forever, Stell, something to remember when the magic of now has grown to quiet domesticity. What is it in the world that you want most, dearest, that will let you love me for eternity?
He had said it in Cambridge, in his River Room, high above the Cam, with the river running glassy green below, on the morning before they had gone to the registrar with their two witnesses and made themselves legal in the eyes of the world.
She had known him little more than a year; he the Bede's scholar to the depths of his bones, she the Yorkshire lass with a degree from a metropolitan university who knew nothing of the ivory towers. Between these two poles, they had somehow found a meeting of minds. That had carried them, in fourteen dizzying months, from discussions on string theory to marriage.
Then, at peace with herself and the world, there was nothing she wanted from Kit that he had not given, but it was a beautiful day and she was thinking of rock and how little of it there was in the flat fenlands of Cambridge.
"Find me a cave," she had answered him, without thinking particularly, "a cave no-one else has ever seen. For that, I will love you for ever."
He had come to kneel by the bed, to a place where his complex green-brown eyes could see and be seen. His eyes were quiet then, more hazel than emerald, with hints of leafiness...
Reviews
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Moving from the past to the present, Scott's story recounts the quest for a crystal skull with magical healing powers. In the past, Cedric Owen has to find a place of safekeeping for the skull so that, hundreds of years in the future, Stella Cody can find it and keep it safe from the forces that wish to unleash doomsday. Susan Duerden narrates in a light, crisp English accent that comes to embody Stella's point of view and personality. When narrating Cedric's experiences, Duerden lowers her voice and adds a bit of a nasal tone, adroitly adjusting for the masculine timbre while not overcompensating for it. However, some of her accents sound forced or exaggerated. L.E. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
Jean Auel...
Praise for Manda Scott's Sunday Times bestseller Boudica novels: "A powerful novel, alive with love, deceit, wisdom and the heroics of humanity."
Independent...
"One of the boldest recent adventures in historical fiction."
