In "Run," Lex showed Clark his latest acquisition: an illuminated manuscript that turned out to be much more than it appeared to be.
| Lex: | I purchased this from a private collector in St. Petersburg. Convincing him to part with it required quite a few glasses of vodka and a small fortune, but it was worth it. |
| Clark: | Well, it's very nice. |
| Lex: | Take a closer look at the border design. Embedded glyphs, similar to the Kawatche symbols found in the cave. No one's spent more time down there than you. Any idea what they mean? |
| Clark: | No. But I thought you weren't interested in this stuff anymore. |
| Lex: | Oh, I'm still interested, Clark... Just not obsessed. Which is why I'm not keeping this from you. I'd like it if we could work on this mystery together. |
| Clark: | I'd like that. So what is it? |
| Lex: | It's the last surviving page from a 14th-century manuscript. It depicts the Grand Prince Donskoi's victory over his mortal enemy Mamai at the Battle of Kulikovo. Legend has it that this was the only object adorning the walls of Rasputin's chamber while he studied at the Verkhoturye Monastery. He believed this page would reveal a path to unimaginable power. Rasputin would stare at it for days at a time attempting to penetrate its secrets. |
A shot of the manuscript after Lex put it in a protective display case:
A closeup of the border to which Lex was referring:
The writing says, over and over again, look deeper.
Lex's description of what Rasputin supposedly believed about the manuscript sounds like what Edgar said in "Transference" about what combining the Elements would uncover-- "a trove of knowledge beyond your wildest dreams." What Lex had uncovered about the manuscript through computer analysis-- and Clark immediately uncovered using his X-ray vision-- was that what appeared to be a map was hidden underneath the surface depiction. The map, as seen on Lex's computer:
The Kryptonian symbols spell landmarks on the map. The writing in the upper left-hand corner reads trees, the top center reads ruins, the upper right-hand corner reads badlands, the right reads plains, and the lower left-hand side reads mountains. Here, for our amusement, is Clark's crappy drawing of the map ("Dude, your drawing sucks." -- Bart Allen, "Run"):
Obviously, super-drawing is not one of Clark's abilities.
The map was a guide to the final Element, the Air Element. Lana's witchy ancestor, Isobel, who also happened to be seeking the Stones, possessed Lana and saw the map on display in Lex's study.
| Isobel: | What is this? |
| Lex: | Just a little something I picked up in St. Petersburg. It's an illuminated manuscript depicting the ancient-- |
| Isobel: | You're lying. |
| Lex: | What? |
| Isobel: | You know its true nature, but the map was not meant for you. |
| Lex: | Lana, how did you know there's a map hidden under the page? |
| Isobel: | Because... [Utters a command in Latin, causing the map to disappear] |
| Lex: | Lana! What did you do? |
| Isobel: | You seek the stones, don't you? Well, we can't have that. |
Luckily, as previously mentioned, Lex had a copy of the map on his computer. The map was shown again in "Krypto" and was distinctly different from the one we saw in "Run." The "Krypto" map:
Note that the little sailboat-looking thing at the bottom of the "Run" map is gone, the head of the animal that looks like a horse (next to the Kryptonian for "plains") is now facing forward, and most obviously, the structure at the large fork (underneath the Kryptonian for "ruins") is no longer some sort of four-humped rock feature as it appeared to be earlier-- it's a temple. Lionel gave a closeup of the temple that he supposedly derived from this map to Jason and another to Lana.
Note the "air" or Kryptonian S or El family crest symbol over the doorway.