The Eight

Excerpts from "The Eight" by Katherine Neville in 1988 (eat your heart out, Dan Brown): (Page 143-paperback edition): Nim went to the woodpile stacked against the fireplace wall and broke up a bed of kindling, swiftly piling heavy logs on top. After a few minutes the room glowed warmly with an inner light. I pulled off my boots and curled up on a sofa as Nim uncorked some sherry. He handed me a glass and poured another for himself, taking a seat beside me. After I'd peeled off my coat, he tipped his glass toward mine. "To the Montglane Service and the many adventures it will bring you," he said, smiling, and took a sip. "Yum. This is delicious," I said. "It's an amontillado," he replied, swirling it in his glass. "People have been bricked into walls still breathing, for sherries inferior to this one." "I hope that's not the sort of adventure you're planning for me," I told him. "I really have to go to work tomorrow morning." [Spoken like a true JanXena...] (Page 145): Nim had located his jacket draped over a chair and pulled out the cocktail napkin from the fortune-teller. He looked at Llewellyn's printing on the napkin for a very long time. Then, handing it to me, he got up to stir the fire. "What do you notice that is unusual about this poem? he asked. I looked at it but didn't see anything odd. "Of course you know that the fourth day of the fourth month is my birthday," I said. Nim noddded soberly from the hearth. The firelight turned his hair a brilliant reddish gold. "The fortune-teller warned me not to tell anyone about that," I added. "As usual, you kept your word at all cost," Nim observed wrily, throwing a few more logs on the fire. He went over to a table in the corner and pulled out some paper and a pen, returning to sit beside me. "Take a look at this," he said. Printing in neat block letters on the paper, he copied out the poem into separate lines. Previously it had been scrambled across the napkin. Now it read: Just as these lines that merge to form a key Are as chess squares; when month and day are four; Don't risk another chance to move to mate. One game is real and one's a metaphor. Untold times this wisdom's come too late. Battle of white has raged on endlessly. Everywhere Black will strive to seal his fate. Continue a search for thirty-three and three. Veiled forever is the secret door. "What do you see here?" said Nim, studying me as I studied his printed version of the poem. I wasn't certain what he was driving at. "Look at the structure of the poem itself," he said a little impatiently. "You've a mathematical mind, try to put it to some use." [Patience, Mister, patience!] I looked at the poem again, and then I saw it. "The rhyming pattern is unusual," I said proudly. Nim's eyebrows went up, and he snatched the paper away from me. He looked at it a moment and started to laugh. "So it is," he said, handing it back to me. "I hadn't noticed that myself. Here, take the pen and write down what it is." [Spoken like a true male chauvenist - always the boss, even when he's not...] I did so, and wrote: "Key-Four-Mate (A-B-C), Metaphor-Late-Endlessly (B-C-A), Fate-Three Door (C-A-B). "So, the rhyming pattern is like so," said Nim, copying it below my writing on the paper. "Now I want you to apply numbers instead of letters and add them up." I did so beside where he'd printed the letters, and it looked like this: ABC 123 BCA 231 CAB 312 666 "That was the number of the Beast in the Apocalypse: 666!" I said. "So it was," said Nim. "And if you add the rows horizontally, you'll find they add to the same number. And that, my dear, is known as a 'magic square.' Another mathematical game. Some of those Knight's Tours that Ben Franklin developed had secret magic squares hidden within them. You've quite a knack for this. Found one your first time out that I hadn't seen myself." [The truth comes out - he's disgruntled because she saw something he didn't, tsk tsk]. "You didn't see it? I said, rather pleased with myself. "But then, what was it you wanted me to find?" I studied the paper as if searching for a hidden rabbit in a drawing from a child's magazine, expecting it to pop out at me sideways or upside down. "Draw a line separating the last two sentences from the first seven," said Nim, and as I was drawing the line he added, "Now look at the first letter of each sentence." I traced my eye slowly down the page, but as I moved toward the bottom a horrible chill had started to come over me, despite the warm and cheery fire. "What's wrong?" Nim said, looking at me strangely. I stared at the paper, speechless. Then I picked up the pen and wrote what I saw. "J-A-D-O-U-B-E/C-V," said the paper, as if speaking to me. "Indeed," Nim was saying as I sat, frozen, beside him. "J'adoube, the French chess term meaning I touch, I adjust. That is what a player speaks when he is about to adjust one of his pieces during a game. Followed by the letters 'C.V.,' which are your initials. It suggests that this fortune-teller was sending you a mesage of some sort. She wants to get in touch with you, perhaps. I realize...what on earth is making you look so dreadful?" he said. "You don't understand," I told him, my voice limp with fear. "J'adoube...was the last word that Fiske said in public. Just before he died." [Cue spooky music...ooooohhhhwhhhooooooohhhhoooooo...]