A God in Every Stone Read Online Free

haven’t found it? she asked, watching him as he looked down towards the Temple.
    â€“ Found what?
    â€“ What you’ve always hoped to find at Labraunda.
    â€“ How do you know . . . ?
    â€“ You told me. The first time we talked properly.
    â€“ You were five years old the first time we talked properly. We discussed the spiritual life of dolls.
    â€“ Well, all right. The first time I remember us talking properly.
    Their voices lowered, teasing, their hands resting side by side on Alice’s fur.
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    The girl followed the lights, the music and the gabble of voices as they spilled from the door into the garden. As she progressed closer to the edge of the property she realised everything that had preceded her out was being swallowed up by the darkness, so that soon only she would remain. Unless the darkness swallowed her up, too.
    â€“ Where are you going?
    The darkness didn’t sound as she’d expected; its voice foreign.
    â€“ Away from that.
    She flicked her hand behind her at the house filled with New Year revellers waiting to cross into 1904. What she really meant was that she wanted to escape from her mother who was attempting to send her to bed as though, at eleven, she was still a child.
    The darkness lit a cigarette and a man’s face appeared, attached to the end of the glowing white stick. The girl had known this man all her life but he had only become interesting to her earlier that evening when her father whispered into her ear, ‘He’s an archaeologist who grew up where Herodotus did’. She repeated this fact back to the man, who pulled on his cigarette, his cheeks sucking in until the girl was sure they must have met inside his mouth.
    â€“ Yes, the ancient land of Caria, on the cusp of Persia and Greece. Home of Herodotus, the Father of History, it’s true. But before Herodotus there was Scylax – the greatest of the ancient travellers. Now reduced to a speck in the corner of history’s eye.
    â€“ He travelled to India! Herodotus writes about him.
    The man looked at her as if she had just become a person worthy of interest.
    â€“ Yes. It was the least he could do, Herodotus, after he stole all Scylax’ tales of India for his Histories . What do you know of him?
    â€“ Only what Herodotus tells us. The Persian emperor Darius sent a group of men he trusted to India including Scylax –
    â€“ Especially Scylax! Kai de kai , that’s the emphasising phrase he uses. Especially Scylax. The most trusted. Go on.
    â€“ Scylax travelled along the River Indus, and later Darius used the information he brought back to go down the river and conquer India, just as the British have done.
    â€“ Learned that last part from Herodotus, did you?
    He laughed, and she saw the gentle mockery as a sign that he recognised her as an adult worthy of the light-hearted teasing which he exhibited often with her father and never with her mother.
    â€“ Let me tell you the part Herodotus never mentioned, Vivian Rose: Darius so trusted Scylax he gave him a silver circlet fashioned with figs – a mark of the highest honour. But twenty years later when Scylax’ people, the Carians, rebelled against Darius’ Persians, Scylax was on the side of his countrymen, not his emperor.
    â€“ But Darius trusted him!
    â€“ Oh, English girl, how quickly you side with Empire.
    She knew she was being chastised, but couldn’t understand why. The Turk must have seen her expression change to bewilderment, hurt even, because he stood up and his voice lost its sharp edge.
    â€“ I’ll tell you a secret, if you promise to tell no one: one day I’ll find it. The Circlet of Scylax.
    He swept his arm from side to side, rippling the air with fire.
    â€“ Somewhere, beneath a patch of earth, it’s waiting for the man with the will to unearth it.
    â€“ Where will you look?
    â€“ A place called Labraunda.
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    â€“ I told you that? I thought I’d