The Six Sacred Stones

by Matthew Reilly

  By the light of a penlight, Julius examined a more recent plan of Stonehenge, showing the layout of the stones that still stood:

  “Three of the five central trilithons are still intact,” he said. “One upright from the Grand Trilithon still stands, and one upright down here, at the bottom right. Might be an issue.”

  “What about the Altar Stone?” Lachlan said.

  “It’s fallen.”

  “Which one is it?” Zoe asked.

  “This one.” Lachlan hustled among the towering stones, came to a fallen one, a great horizontal slab, halfburied in the grass within the central ring of stones. It was about eight feet long, slim and lean. A small rectangular hole in the earth lay next to it.

  Lachlan examined one of its ends and called, “It’s got a depression in it! Square in shape.

  Maybe eight by eight inches.”

  “That would match theSaBenben,” Zoe said.

  She stared at the horizontal slab, amazed at what she was about to say: “OK, then. Let’s reerect it.”

  They moved quickly but gently, not wanting to damage the 4,500yearold stones.

  Slings were wrapped around the Altar Stone and it was gently lifted by an Aframe pulley system fitted with a dieselpowered cable spooler.

  While this was going on, Lily cleared out the hole in the ground near the base of the Altar Stone. Alby was training his telescope on the northeast horizon.

  “I see Jupiter!” he called.

  Through his telescope, he saw a small orange dot hovering on the horizon, perfectly aligned with Stonehenge’s outer ring of lintels and its famous Heel Stone.

  “Hurry!” Zoe called to the twins.

  “I am not going to hurry with a national treasure,” Julius said indignantly.

  Slowly, very slowly, the spooler reeled the great stone slab upward, pulling it vertical until—whump—Julius jumped at the sound—it slid abruptly downward, slotting into the hole where over four thousand years ago it had originally stood.

  Zoe checked her watch.

  3:48A.M.

  One minute to go.

  It was then that she removed something from her backpack.

  The top piece of the Golden Capstone.

  TheSaBenben.

  The Firestone.

  It was stunning to behold. It glimmered in the night, its golden sides shining, its crystalline peak sparkling.

  Zoe climbed a stepladder and stood at the top of the nowerect Altar Stone.

  She saw the depression in the flat top end of the stone, saw that, yes, it matched the size of the Firestone’s base perfectly.

  “All right, then…” she said softly to herself. “The Great Pyramid and Stonehenge. Let’s see what you got.”

  With great reverence, she placed the squarebased Firestone in the matching recess of the Altar Stone and suddenly, the Altar Stone took on a wholly new appearance: it looked like a miniobelisk, surrounded by the trilithons of the henge, guardians in the night.

  Her watch hit 3:49.

  “I see Titan…” Alby said.

  Through his highpowered telescope, the greatest moon of Saturn appeared as barely a dot behind the large orange orb that was Jupiter. It rose behind it, looking like a very dim star.

  A minute passed. The twins hitRECORD on some digital video cameras they’d set up around the henge. They also held still cameras in their hands.

  Another minute passed.

  “And I see Saturn…wow!”

  A larger dot rose behind Jupiter, moving ever so slowly, its rings barely apparent, before it cleared the horizon of Jupiter and a gap appeared between the two planets.

  At which point Stonehenge, silent and mysterious for over fortyfive centuries, suddenly and spectacularly came to life.

  AN INVISIBLE lightforce shot over the horizon from the Dark Sun, lanced over the Heel Stone in a deadstraight line, shot through the outer circle of lintels before itslammed into the Firestone sitting atop the central Altar Stone.

  The Firestone blazed to life.

  Brilliant purple light flared around it, illuminating the ring of trilithons in an unearthly glow.

  Then shafts of this purple light—bright, strong shafts of the stuff, six of them—lanced outward from the Firestone like the spokes of a wheel andhit some of the uprights of the trilithons.

  Zoe and the others could only stare in stunned awe at the light show, a light show that had not been seen for over 4,500 years.

  And then something else happened.

  The lichens on the surface of the trilithons—the strange algaefungus that had no business existing this far inland—began to glow a pale green.

  And suddenly, as this faint glowing of the lichens combined with the cracks and indentations of the stone uprights themselves,images began to form on the trilithons, images that hadn’t been discernible before.

  Zoe stared in wonder.

  The images on the trilithons looked strangely familiar, kind of like the continents of Earth—but notexactly like them. They were somehow different, the familiar coastlines warped. A couple of the trilithons depicted what appeared to be theedges of continents.

  “It’s the world,” Lachlan breathed. “They all combine to create a map of the Earth, millions of years ago.”

  “What?”Zoe whispered, not realizing that she was whispering.

  Lachlan nodded at the glowing images in the stones: “They’re the continents of our planet. They’re in their current positions, but before rising oceans gave them their current coastlines. Whoever built this, built it along time ago.”

  Zoe swung back to gaze at the glowing images on the stones, and saw that he was right.

  There was Africa…

  BEFORE

  DURING

  And that looked a little like Asia…

  The stone depicting Africa was pierced by two of the laserlike purple light shafts: one shaft penetrating it near the northern end, the second shaft hitting it at the very southern tip.

  “Are you getting all this?” Zoe called.

  The twins were indeed clicking away on their digital cameras, taking photos of the illuminated stones and light shafts. At the same time their video cameras whirred, recording it.

  “What about those two?” Zoe asked, indicating the two uprights that appeared to depict the edges of continents.

  “Oceans, I guess,” Julius said, “but it’s hard to tell which ones, given the altered coastlines. The world has three main oceans, the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans. A third ocean might have been on one of the fallen uprights. Which makes sense. No one has ever figured out why Stonehenge has ten uprights. This would explain it: seven continents and three oceans.”

  Zoe blinked.

  Holy, holy shit…

  Then Alby called, “She’s sinking! Saturn’s sinking!”

  A moment later, everything went dark.

  The Firestone’s purple light went out and the great stone circle was dark once more.

  Zoe gazed at the twins and the kids. “Bet you haven’t seen that before. Come on.” She hurriedly reerected her stepladder, heading for the Firestone. “We’re done. Lachlan, Julius: lower the Altar Stone, put it back exactly where you found it. Then we have to motor. Wizard and Jack are not gonna believe this.”

  When the two security guards awoke two hours later, groggy and dazed, they found Stonehenge undamaged, seemingly untouched.

  There were several sets of footprints among the central stones, suggesting unusual activity, but nothing was missing. Except for the hole that had once housed the Altar Stone—it had been cleared of dirt—everything, thankfully, was where it should be.

  The next day there would be reports from locals of a glowing purple light emanating from the area, but they were quickly dismissed. Every year there were at least a dozen UFO sightings over the Salisbury Plain and numerous other crackpot claims.

  And so as dawn came, Stonehenge stood once again, tall and silent, maintaining its centuriesold watch over the ancient landscape.


  SICHUAN MOUNTAINS, CHINA

  DECEMBER5, 2007, 5:35P.M.

  AROUND the same time Zoe and the twins were watching the wondrous lightshow at Stonehenge, Jack and Wizard were soaring over the wild, rugged mountains of central China in the hold of their stolen Hind helicopter, aware that a sizeable portion of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army—some 1.2 million men—were at that very moment mobilizing to hunt them down.

  With them were Stretch, Astro, Scimitar, Vulture, and the injured Tank Tanaka.

  Sky Monster had taken theHalicarnassus south, just over the Burmese border, where he waited patiently for the extraction call.

  “It is absolutely imperative that we get the Philosopher’s Stone,” Wizard said to Jack when they were alone in a corner of the hold. He munched hungrily on some food while he put on clean clothes.

  “I got that impression from your notes,” Jack said. “So that’s where we’re going right now. It’s also why we needed to get this helicopter.”

  Jack told Wizard about the meeting in Dubai, about the new coalition of nations helping them in this quest—including America and Saudi Arabia—and most importantly, what they had so far deduced from Wizard’s research.

  “But I need to know more, Max,” he concluded. “Your notes were good, but we could only piece together so much.”

  “Yes, yes…”

  “For instance, the part where you said theSaBenben and the Philosopher’s Stone were central to everything. Why?”

  Wizard’s head snapped up. “Good God, Jack, you didn’t bring the Firestone with you, did you? We can’t allow our enemies to have both it and Laozi’s Stone.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Jack said. “Zoe has it. In England. She’s gone to Stonehenge with the Firestone, the twins, and the kids.”

  “You got in touch with the twins? Oh,excellent,” Wizard said, sighing deeply. “And Stonehenge. Stonehenge and theSaBenben. But, wait, it must be done during the Titanic Ris—”

  “Got it covered.”

  Wizard stared off into space, smiled. “I only wish I could have been there to see it. I’m glad you figured that out.”

  “Wasn’t me. It was Lily’s friend, Alby.”

  “Ah, Alby. Smart boy. And such a good friend to Lily. As things get more difficult, she will need companions like him…” Wizard’s voice trailed off, his eyes glazing over into a deep sadness.

  As he spoke, Jack scanned the torture scars on the old man’s face, the bruises and gashes, the dried blood on his beard. Wizard had been through the wringer in that prison.

  "Oh, Jack,” Wizard said. “The situation is dire. Most dire. It’s like nothing we’ve ever encountered before.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The world has reached a critical stage in its existence. A turning point has come, atesting point, a time at which the Earth can either renew itself or be destroyed. The Tartarus Rotation was just the beginning, merely the first step in a far larger drama.”

  “The coming of this Dark Sun?” Jack prompted.

  “The coming of the Dark Sun is only part of it. There are many unexplained things in our world, Jack, and with the coming of the zeropoint field, this Dark Sun, many of them will reveal their true purpose. The Great Pyramid and its Capstone are just the start.

  Stonehenge. Nazca. Easter Island. It all comes together now, with the coming of the Dark Sun. A coalescence of ancient things. But the greatest thing to fear, as always, is man himself.”

  “Why?”

  Wizard said, “Let me backtrack.”

  He grabbed a sheet from his notes, indicated a picture on it that Jack recalled seeing before:

  Wizard said, “This is the common symbol for the Great Machine. Now, as you deduced correctly from my notes, the Machine is simply our planet. As the image shows, at six locations around our planet are six underground shrines, pyramidal in shape and inverted, but gigantic, and all pointing down toward the center of the Earth. Note the downward pointing pyramids in the picture, with the white rectangular pillars sticking out of them.

  “While the Machine is depicted in this image as a flat twodimensional structure, we should picture it threedimensionally, with the sixvertices situated just below the Earth’s surface, arrayed around the spherical planet. Like this.”

  Wizard drew a rough sketch:

  “Now, at each of these locations, acleansed pillar must be set in place, the pillars being small oblongshaped uncut diamonds whose whereabouts are largely unknown.”

  “Not totally unknown,” Jack said. “We’re working on that.”

  “Oh, good. Now, let me come to the Ramesean Stones, and the most unique part that they play in this challenge. We call them ‘Ramesean’ stones but their true name is actually

  ‘Guidestones.’ The Six Guidestones of Ra’s Dark Twin. For when each comes into contact with the Suncharged SaBenben, they reveal something about this Machine.

  “For instance, at Stonehenge: when theSaBenben is placed atop the guidestone there at the rising of Saturn over Jupiter, thelocations of the six vertices will be revealed. How this actually occurs at the site of Stonehenge, I don’t know. Hopefully, Zoe now does.”

  “And the Philosopher’s Stone?” Jack asked.

  Wizard again rifled through his notes, came up with another image:

  “This is a carving of Laozi’s Stone,” Wizard said, “otherwise known as the Philosopher’s Stone. Note the pyramidal capstone hovering above it and the rectangular recess in it.

  “To cleanse a pillar, one needs three things: theSaBenben, the Philosopher’s Stone, and one of the pillars. You place the pillar inside the recess in the Philosopher’s Stone, close the lid, and then place the chargedSaBenben on the lid. The pillar is thus cleansed and is then ready for placement in one of the six vertices.”

  “Which is why theSaBenben and the Philosopher’s Stone are central to everything…”

  Jack said, understanding.

  “Correct. The next most important Ramesean stone is the Killing Stone of the Maya: when united with theSaBenben, it will specify the astronomical dates by which the pillars must be set in place at the vertices. Now, I already understand that the placing of the six pillars is divided into two distinct time frames—the first two pillars must be set in place within the next week or so; the remaining four must be placed later, about three months from now, just before the equinox on March 20, 2008, when the Dark Sun will make its longawaited return.”

  Jack’s mind spun. This was sounding very big indeed: stars, stones, pillars, vertices, astronomical dates. In a vague corner of his mind he recalled that the Americans had said they possessed the Mayan Killing Stone.

  Clearing his head, he brought Wizard back: “So why in all this isMan the greatest thing to fear?”

  Wizard sighed.

  “Because of the rewards,” he said simply. “The rewards. ‘To he who lays each pillar goes a fabulous reward.’ So it is said on the walls of Abydos. It was there that I found the six rewards listed underneath a carving of Rameses II and his father, Seti I—a carving that scholars have long dismissed as a mere adornment. The six rewards were listed as:knowledge, heat, sight, death, life, andpower.”

  Wizard’s face went grim. “Jack. What the rewards are exactly, no one knows, but by all accounts, they are of immense value. For instance, I believeheat is a fabulous power source, anunending power source; andknowledge is some great insight that we are yet to discover.”

  Jack listened intently to what Wizard was saying. Power sources, great knowledge.

  Suddenly the USSaudi interest in the success of his mission made more sense, not to mention China’s grab for the Firestone at his farm.

  Wizard said, “Given these stakes, and the arrival of this Dark Sun and the possible end of our world, I can see nations taking great risks to acquire and then place these pillars. And if history teaches us nothing, it teaches us this: where items of great worth are at stake, men will do anything to possess them.”

  Just then, the cargo hold was
plunged into red emergency lighting, a buzzer sounding repeatedly. The intercom over Jack’s head crackled.

  “Huntsman, we’re coming up on the Wu Gorge system,”Astro’s voice said.“ETA is nine minutes, and we’re about to pop up on their radars like a big friggin’ Christmas light. I hope you’re right about this.”

  “Come on,” Jack said, standing. “We’d better suit up. The target is guarded and we’re on top of the local Most Wanted List, so we’ll be going in hard and going in fast. Just stay close to me. It’s time for us to finish what you started; it’s time to get the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  THE ENTRY CHAMBER

  LAOZI’S TRAP SYSTEM,

  BENEATH WITCH MOUNTAIN

  SICHUAN PROVINCE, CENTRAL CHINA

  DECEMBER5, 2007

  COLONEL Mao Gongli swore loudly.

  In the four days since he’d captured Max Epper and sent him off to Xintan for interrogation, his force of Chinese troops had made little headway through the underground tunnel system that protected Laozi’s legendary stone.

  Chiefly, their progress had been hindered by numerous antiintruder devices: booby traps.

  Mao cursed himself. He should have known better.

  For over three thousand years, Chinese tombs have been renowned for their ingenious protective mechanisms: for instance, the tomb complex of Emperor Qin in Xi’an—the home of China’s famous terracotta warriors—was equipped with automatic crossbows and “murder holes,” out of which oil and liquid tar once poured onto unwary archaeologists.

  But the traps protecting this system were of a higher order, beyond anything Mao had seen, as clever as they were vicious.

  He’d already lost nine men, all in horrific ways.

  The first three to die had not got past the very first threshold of the trap system: the cylindrical doorway set into the wall. The doorway had rotated abruptly, trapping each man inside it…before dropping a foulsmelling, skinsearing yellow liquid from its hollow ceiling onto the trapped man, a liquid Mao now knew to be a primitive form of sulfuric acid.