Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow by James Rollins

Author:James Rollins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

The next morning, Jake sat in the Astromicon, starting his apprenticeship. He felt 1,000 percent better.

Balam gave him a wooden tray that was sectioned into little boxes. The boxes held shards of crystals across a rainbow of colors. There had to be more than a hundred different shades.

“Each colored crystal serves a unique purpose,” Balam explained, standing next to Jake. “Some we know what they do, like this one.”

He plucked a crystal from the tray and held it up into a shaft of sunlight that beamed through one of the twelve holes in the dome. The crystal was the color of dark red wine.

Balam turned to Marika, who sat on a stool next to Jake. He raised an eyebrow toward her. “And what’s the name of this crystal?”

She scrunched up her brow in thought. “Ironshine?”

“Very good,” he said with a proud flash of a smile. “This stone, when wet, draws iron to its heart.”

Balam licked the crystal and placed it near a small metal nail. The nail leaped off the table and stuck to the shard.

Jake leaned in closer, fascinated. The crystal had somehow become magnetized.

Balam smiled at his reaction, pleased with his demonstration, then tapped the crystal with a silver hammer. The iron nail clattered back to the tabletop.

“Other crystals remain a mystery, and it is such mysteries that I spend my days studying.” Balam placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Most of the time, alchemy is one part wisdom and nine parts chance. And more often than not, dangerous.” Balam touched the silver badge on Jake’s jacket. “These are the four cornerstones of alchemy. And you must learn them well.”

Jake stared down at embedded crystals on his badge. The ruby, the emerald, the sapphire formed a triangle around the diamond. Balam tapped each one.

“From these stones all others rise.” Balam waved a hand over the box. “‘From the four flows all the power of Kukulkan.’”

As Jake studied the badge, something began to trickle through his brain, something he’d learned long ago. But what was it? Something to do with the three colored stones that formed the triangle: red, green, blue…

Then he suddenly remembered. It was like a starburst going off in his head. Something his father had shown him when they were out camping. Jake twisted in his chair and bent down to his backpack on the floor. He searched through its content and found what he was seeking buried near the bottom of the pack.

His franticness had drawn Balam’s interest.

Jake pulled free a chunk of quartz cut into a triangular prism. “Red, green, blue,” he said. “They’re the three primary colors of light!”

His father had explained how televisions and computers used red, blue, and green phosphors to produce the millions of colors on the screen. Jake’s father had also shown him something else.

Before anyone could respond, Jake lifted the quartz prism into the shaft of sunlight. As the sun’s ray shot through it, the light shattered into a small rainbow that splashed against the wall.

“This is advanced alchemy,” Balam explained.

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