The Magic Circle, Katherine Neville [parable of the sower read online .TXT] 📗

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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF KATHERINE NEVILLE

The Eight

“With alchemical skill, Neville blends modern romance, historical fiction, and medieval mystery … and comes up with gold.” —People

“A fascinating piece of entertainment that manages to be both vibrant and cerebral.… Few will find it resistible.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Daring, original, and moving, [The Eight] seems destined to become a cult classic.” —Publishers Weekly

“Readers thrilled by The Da Vinci Code will relish the multilayered secrets of The Eight.” —Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club

“A feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark.” —The Washington Post Book World

“The female counterpart to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose … impossible to put down.” —Boston Herald

A Calculated Risk

A New York Times Notable Book

“Never a dull moment, and [Neville] makes it all the more plausible because of her intimate knowledge of how international banking works.… [Her] book churns up wave after wave of excitement.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Great fun … [A] lean, taut thriller.” —San Jose Mercury News

The Magic Circle

“Filled with intrigue … Neville keeps the novel moving at a fast pace.” —The Denver Post

“[A] racing-across-the-globe, one-step-ahead-of-the-bad-guys treasure hunt.” —Detroit Free Press

The Magic Circle

A Novel

Katherine Neville

The Age Returns.

—Motto of Lorenzo de’ Medici

Time itself is a circle, everything recurs.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

What goes around comes around.

—Motto of the Hell’s Angels

THE CAVE

And they do not know the future mystery,

or understand ancient matters.

And they do not know what is going to happen to them,

and they will not save their souls from the future mystery.

—

The Dead Sea Scrolls

, prophecy of the Essenes

Now has come the last age of the song of Cumae.

From the renewed spirit of the Ages a new Order is born.

Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns.

Now a new generation is sent down from heaven on high.

—

Virgil, Fourth Eclogue

, messianic prophecy of the Sibyl

Cumae, Italy: Autumn, A.D. 1870

It was just before dusk. The volcanic Lake Avernus, high above Cumae, seemed to float in the air, partly veiled with a thin metallic haze. Between the patches of mist, the lake’s glassy surface mirrored opalescent clouds scudding across the crescent sliver of the moon.

The walls of the crater were wild with scrub oak, changing color from bloodred to purple in the descending twilight. The aroma of the dark sulfurous lake filled the air with a sense of danger. The very landscape of this ancient, hallowed spot seemed to be waiting for something, something that had been foretold for thousands of years. Something that was about to happen tonight.

As the darkness deepened, a figure slipped stealthily from the trees bordering the water’s edge. It was followed swiftly by three others. Though all four were dressed in sturdy leather breeches, jerkins, and helmets, it was clear by form and bearing that their leader was a woman. Over her shoulder she carried a pickaxe, a roll of oiled tarpaulin, sturdy rope, and other climbing gear. Her male companions followed silently, skirting the rim to the far side of the lake.

The woman moved back into the shadows, where a thick cluster of trees camouflaged an overhanging cliff. In darkness, she felt along the sheer face of vine-covered rock until she’d once more found the hidden crevasse. Pulling on heavy gloves, she loosened the rubble she’d so carefully replaced earlier. Her heart pounded as she slipped sideways through the narrow cleft in the rock, followed by her three companions.

Inside the cliff, the woman quickly unrolled the tarpaulin and, with the help of the others, stuffed it into the crack. When not even the smallest trace of light from the cave could be observed outside, she pulled off her metal helmet and lit the carbide miner’s lamp affixed to it. Tossing back her mane of blond hair, she gazed at her three rugged companions, whose eyes glittered in the lamplight. Then she turned to look at the cave.

Carved from the lava rock, the walls of the vast cavern rose more than one hundred feet above them. It took her breath when she realized they stood at the edge of a sheer cliff that dropped off into the pitch-black void. She could hear the sound of rushing water, from what seemed hundreds of feet below. This was the passage that had once led those seeking the mysteries deep within the bowels of this extinct volcano. This was the legendary place sought by so many over so many centuries, the cavern that had once served as home to the most ancient of all prophets: the Sibylline oracle.

Now, as she shone the lamp across the glistening walls, the woman knew there could be no mistaking what she’d found. The cave was exactly as described by those who’d visited here from earliest times—Heraclitus, Plutarch, Pausanias, and the poet Virgil, who’d immortalized this grotto in verse as the site of Aeneas’s entry into the underworld. Indeed, she knew that she and her three comrades could well be the first to have laid eyes on this fabled spot in two millennia.

When the emperor Augustus had seized power in Rome in 27 B.C., his first act had been to round up all copies of the books of her prophecies, called the Sibylline Oracles. He’d burned any he deemed “inauthentic”—those that did not support his tenure, or that prophetically heralded the return of the Republic. Then he’d ordered the Cumaean grotto sealed. Its official entrance, located not here but at the base of the volcano, was buried beneath a mountain of rubble. All trace of the famous cave’s existence had been lost to mankind. Until now.

The young woman set down her gear and once again pulled on her mining helmet with its small