Eph read quickly, the insights leaping into his brain through his eyes. The pale sunlight faded quickly at the end, and so did the book’s enhancements. So much more to read and to learn. But for now, Eph had seen enough. His hands continued to tremble. The Lumen had shown him the way.
Eph walked back inside past Fet and Nora. He felt neither relief nor exhilaration, still vibrating like a tuning fork.
Eph looked at Mr. Quinlan, who saw it in his face.
Sunlight. Of course.
The others knew something had happened. Except for Gus, who remained skeptical.
“Well?” said Nora.
Eph said, “I’m ready now.”
“Ready for what?” said Fet. “Ready to go?”
Eph looked at Nora. “I need a map.”
She ran off into the offices. They heard desk drawers slamming.
Eph just stood there, like a man recovering from an electric shock. “It was the sunlight,” he explained. “Reading the Lumen in natural sunlight. It was like the pages opened up for me. I saw it all … or would have, if I’d had more time. The original Native American name for this plac
e was ‘Burned Earth.’ But their word for ‘burned’ is the same as ‘black.’ ”
Oscura. Dark.
“Chernobyl, the failed attempt—the simulation,” said Fet. “It appeased the Ancients because ‘Chernobyl’ means ‘Black Soil.’ And I saw a Stoneheart crew excavating sites around a geologically active area of hot springs outside Reykjavik known as Black Pool.”
“But there are no coordinates in the book,” said Nora.
“Because it was beneath the water,” said Eph. “At the time Ozryel’s remains were cast away, this site was underwater. The Master didn’t emerge until hundreds of years later.”
The youngest one. The last.
A triumphant yell, and then Nora came running back with a sheaf of oversized topographical maps of the northeastern United States, with cellophane street atlas overlays.
Eph flipped the pages to New York State. The top part of the map included the southern region of Ontario, Canada.
“Lake Ontario,” he said. “To the east here.” At the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, east of Wolfe Island, a cluster of tiny, unnamed islands was grouped together, labeled “Thousand Islands.” “It’s there. One of those. Just off the New York coast.”
“The burial site?” said Fet.
“I don’t know what its name is today. The original Native American name for the island was ‘Ahsudagu-wah.’ Roughly translated from the Onondaga language as ‘Dark Place’ or ‘Black Place.’ ”
Fet slid the road atlas out from beneath Eph’s hands, flipping back to New Jersey.
“How do we find the island?” said Nora.
Eph said, “It’s shaped roughly like the biohazard symbol, like a three-petaled flower.”
Fet quickly plotted their course through New Jersey into Pennsylvania, then north to the top of New York State. He ripped out the pages. “Interstate Eighty West to Interstate Eighty-one North. Gets us right to the Saint Lawrence River.”
“How long?” said Nora.
“Roughly three hundred miles. We can do that in five or six hours.”
“Maybe straight highway time,” said Nora. “Something tells me it won’t be as simple as that.”
“It’s going to figure out which way we’re headed and try to cut us off,” Fet said.