Dedication: For Tanya Reed. Happy Birthday!!! I hope you enjoy reading this story as much I enjoyed writing it.

Disclaimers: I don't own Relic Hunter. Nods are also owed to novels by Anthony Trollope, Wilkie-Collins, E.M.Forster, a few others, and, um, The X-Files.

Note to all: This is just a short taster/prologue for what will be another rather long, historical adventure! It's not the short, sweet nothing-nasty-happens story I promised, but I'm afraid this just idea demanded to be written. Anyway, I've churned out reams of this stuff but I'm not posting any more yet, because it's not Tanya's birthday until Saturday!

The Jewel in the Crown

by Katia

Prologue: 21st Century.

Malabi Mountains, India.

The heat was intoxicating. As Nigel followed Sydney up the deep, narrow ravine that led to the entrance of the cave, he lifted the corner of his unbuttoned shirt to wipe the perspiration from his brow. It was a futile effort. The shirt was so wet through that it could absorb little more.

Nigel paused, leaning with his hand against the rock-face, gathering his breath and watching as Sydney forged energetically on ahead. He wondered, admiringly, how she rarely displayed any signs of heat and exhaustion, despite the tight black lycras, which clung to her every curve. Then he sighed and continued after her.

'Nigel! I can see the cave entrance! We've found it!'

Sydney was very excited. This had been the culmination of three years research by Saritha, a much-loved friend and ex-student of hers. Saritha now worked at a museum in Calcutta, where she had uncovered coded, archival documents, created over two centuries ago. She believed they revealed the route to the cave in which was interred the legendary Diamond Ruby.

The said stone, a diamond-shape red jewel, of over two inches in parameter, had originally been embedded in the crown of a statue of Vishnu the Preserver, the Hindu God. It had been hidden in 1799, when British troops had sacked the city of Seringapatam and damaged the temple in which the statue rested. In order to stop the precious and sacred relic falling into the hands of the Imperial plunderers, the elders of the city had hidden it in a cave, far from anywhere, the location of which had apparently been an unbroken secret - until now. Becoming stuck on the verge of pin-pointing its whereabouts, Saritha called Sydney, who had eagerly stepped in to finish the task.

'Come on, Nigel!' entreated Sydney. 'This is it. I just know it.'

The entrance to the cave was narrow, a slit in the rock tapering to nothing above their heads, and thin enough only for one to enter at a time. As Sydney eagerly stepped up to the opening, Nigel, who had finally caught up, stilled her, wrapping his fingers around her arm.

'Wait. This place seems, um, odd.' He frowned, searching for the words to explain himself better. 'It's… strangely familiar. Could I have read a description of it in a book somewhere?'

'I shouldn't think so,' replied Syd. 'The ruby has been sealed away for over two hundred years. The only people who may have been back to check were the noble family who were entrusted with guarding the secret. But even Saritha couldn't find out who they were, and I doubt they would have disturbed it. Let's go.'

She stepped through the entrance, leaving Nigel dithering on the sand.

'Then why do I know that this small entrance opens up to a large cavern,' he muttered. 'And why do I really not want to go in there?'

This was silly, he told himself. He swallowed his fear as best he could, and stepped through the entrance.

Sydney had lit a large wooden torch, which she had wrested from its two-century old fitting on the wall. She was gazing around, her eyes scanning for danger yet eager for the culmination of the hunt. This was clearly the cave they'd been searching for: not only were there the torches but, on the far side, the light of the flame fell upon a large, ornamented door. Saritha had described one just like it as guarding the resting place of the jewel.

'No traps here,' called Sydney, hoping this would reassure Nigel. 'You've got to see the door. It's amazing!'

She strode across the room, not looking back for a moment. She expected that Nigel would quickly overcome his exhaustion and apprehension and be as keen as she was, now they were so close to the relic.

'It's magnificent,' she gasped, as the full radiance of the golden portal shimmered in the light. 'Nigel, you've got to get a photograph of this…Nigel?'

Even in the split-second it took to turn her head, Sydney knew that something was wrong.

Nigel was nowhere to be seen, but there was a figure lying in the middle of the cave floor, which certainly had not been there a second ago. She took a small step closer, holding out the light, and then gasped.

The body slumped on its side on the floor was Nigel, yet it wasn't the late twenty-something man who was accompanying her on the hunt. This Nigel seemed little more than a child, slight to the verge of thinness, and his skin deadly pale. His clothes resembled a 19th-century soldier's uniform, with a tailored scarlet tunic and black wool trousers, quite inappropriate for a stifling day in India.

Although unable to decipher the meaning of what she saw, Sydney's instincts told her to hold him, to comfort him. But she couldn't. Even as her eyes focused on the boy lying at her feet, the rest of her world descended into a stupor. She told her body to stoop and her hands to reach forward, but nothing responded. She tried to call out to him, yet she couldn't muster a croak.

She blinked her eyes deliberately: it was all she could do.

When she opened them, the figure in front of her had propped himself tentatively up onto an elbow and was also blinking, bleary and bewildered.

'Syd? What the hell happened?'

'Nigel!' Sydney was at his side in an instant, to her relief registering that this was her Nigel. Boyish but not a boy, and sturdy enough, he was dressed again in familiar blue cotton, sweat-soaked shirt and light, beige slacks. The soldier's uniform had vanished.

'I don't know what happened,' admitted Sydney, concealing her extreme agitation. 'You tell me? Are you okay?'

Nigel sat up a little further and shook himself, as if ascertaining this very fact. 'I think so. I must have fainted or something. Dehydration probably… '

He stopped dead as Sydney's face was illuminated by the torchlight. It was harrowed and drained, almost unfamiliar.

'My God, Syd, are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost!'

Sydney managed a thin smile, and decided not to tell Nigel what she saw, for now at least, partially because she didn't quite know how. She reached into his backpack, retrieved a bottle of water and handed it to him.

'I'm fine Nigel. No ghosts. You should know by now that you need to drink a lot of liquids when we go on these journeys.' Nigel obediently took a swig of the water.

'I feel fine, now.'

'Great,' said Syd. 'We need to get through this door.'

Sydney made her way back over to the door as Nigel pulled himself to his feet, brushing the dust from his trousers.

'Very odd,' he murmured to himself. There was certainly something 'off' about this place.

Sydney was looking at the coloured jewels embedded in the door, and some text engraved nearby. Saritha had mentioned that there would be some sort of combination lock, and some text to translate in a complex dialect.

She could feel Nigel's presence at her shoulder, his warm breath against her neck.

'There's no need to translate it or fiddle with the combination,' he said slowly. 'The lock's broken.'

'How the heck do you know that, Nigel?'

Nigel shrugged. 'I don't know, but I do know. If you see what I mean.' He grimaced apologetically, thinking he must sound like an idiot.

'Maybe there is a book about this somewhere that Saritha missed,' she mumbled reassuringly, even though deep inside she knew that there was not. She also suppressed the gut feeling that Nigel's knowledge was connected to her vision: the Nigel, who wasn't Nigel.

She pressed gently on the door. It clicked and shifted ajar, barely an inch. Sydney slipped graceful fingers into the gap, and pushed it open a little further, peeping in.

From where he was, there was no way that Nigel could see what she now observed. Still, he said:

'The jewel isn't there. The chamber's empty.'

Sydney flung the door open, shining her flaming torch into the empty space. 'How did you know, Nigel? All the sources indicated that the jewel was hidden here in 1799, and hadn't been disturbed since.'

Nigel shook his head slowly, utterly at a loss. Nevertheless, as Sydney examined the edges of the gorgeous door more closely, she could see that it had indeed been hacked open. There were signs of blows by a bludgeon or an axe.

'Damn,' said Sydney. 'Somebody has definitely been here before.'

Their eyes locked together, and they shared a deep knowledge that neither of them knew how to express.

Nigel shivered. It was cool in the cave, but that didn't explain how he had gone from sweltering to shivering in barely a few minutes. 'I don't like this place, Syd. Let's get out of here.'

'I'll go with that,' agreed Syd. 'This place has given me a weird sense of…'

'Déjà vu?'

'Yeah… and something else,' murmured Sydney. 'Let's get back to the hotel, and start the research over. I've a feeling we're going to have to do a lot more hunting if we're going to get this relic to the museum in Calcutta for their celebration of Vishnu next month.'

Nigel was out of the cave ahead of her before she'd finished the sentence. He took a deep breath of the warm, humid air, acutely aware of the steady beat of his heart. Despite their failure, and the prospect of the arduous journey back to the hostel, he felt an unexpected wave of jubilance.

'It's wonderful to be out relic hunting with Sydney,' he mused, smiling to himself. 'I'm just so lucky. Yes, it's great to be alive…'

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Thanks for reading. Please review. More to come on Tanya's birthday!!!