Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx

by James Rollins

  As she blushed, Jake followed her example and urged the others to do the same. The cloaks would help disguise them.

  Pindor sniffed at his clothes and wrinkled his nose. “Mine smells like my brother’s dirty sandals.”

  Kady perked up. “Your brother? That reminds me. How’s Heron doing?” Her casual tone was clearly forced. “I’m sure he’s got a slew of girlfriends by now.”

  Pindor made a rude noise with his lips. “He’s always training with the Saddlebacks. He barely has time to wipe his—”

  Pindor realized what he was about to say. Now it was his turn to blush.

  Still, this news clearly pleased Kady. A skip entered her step as she swept into a cloak and tried various poses in it. “Not bad,” she decided.

  Once they all were dressed, Jake returned to the hallway.

  Djer’s eye found Jake again, the question plain in his gaze.

  Are you prepared?

  Jake nodded and turned to his friends.

  “Be ready to run.”

  17

  MICE IN A MAZE

  Jake had no time to question his decision.

  Djer quickly snuck forward with the other two men, staying low. The Egyptian guards remained unaware, focused on the singing crowd in the square. Once a step away, Djer made a chopping motion with his arm—and the trio of prisoners rushed upon the guards.

  Bodies fell without a sound.

  In a breath, the way was open.

  “Go!” Djer yelled—both to the other prisoners and to Jake’s group.

  In a mad rush, they all fled toward the arched exit. Most headed out into the square, igniting surprised shouts from the crowd. Jake and his friends took off in the opposite direction, sprinting down the main hall and up the closest set of stairs. Even disguised, Jake wanted to avoid the most traveled sections of the pyramid.

  It proved a wise choice.

  As they raced up the stairwell, the pounding of hard sandals and the rattle of swords and shields echoed from the lower hall. Jake waved, and they flattened against the wall. Below, a line of Egyptian soldiers swept down the main hall, heading toward the square, spears in hand. None of them noticed the outsiders hiding up the steps.

  Jake also realized that it wasn’t just his friends who were skulking in the stairwell. The gray-bearded madman sat on a lower step, digging dirt from under a toenail as if he’d merely stopped during a pleasant hike. He’d somehow managed to get a cloak and had followed them rather than flee with Djer.

  Why?

  Noting Jake’s attention, the man looked up and winked again. Jake didn’t have time to question or shoo him off. It looked like they had a new companion on their quest.

  Jake lifted the gold watch and checked his bearings. The needle continued to lead them deeper into the pyramid.

  “C’mon,” he said, and got everyone moving.

  Creeping more cautiously now, Jake led them up to the next level, where the hallways were narrower than below, crisscrossing in all directions.

  Jake kept checking his father’s watch, making sure they were on the right path. Still, even with the Key in hand, he felt like a blind mouse searching for a hidden piece of cheese.

  Luckily, they only encountered a few people in the upper halls, mostly servants scurrying with armfuls of folded linens or marching with brooms on their shoulders. Buried in their cloaks, Jake’s group was ignored.

  At last, his father’s watch led them to a set of tall wooden doors strapped in gold. Hieroglyphics had been painted on the lintel above. If Jake had the time, he knew he could figure out what they said; but instead his full attention focused on a single symbol done in a mosaic of metals that was imbedded in the center of the door.

  He flipped open the watch and compared the symbol to the inscribed ankh inside. They were almost identical.

  The scarecrow of a man stepped forward and touched the emblem on the door. “Ankh Tawy.”

  Jake understood. The symbol inside the watch and the one on the door both represented the lost city. He should have made the connection. The watch’s inscription was an ankh, and the city was called Ankh Tawy. He mentally slapped himself on the forehead.

  The madman leaned forward and shoved one half of the great door open, splitting the symbol in half. He waved them inside, mumbling all the while.

  Jake was the last one through. The others stood only a few steps past the threshold, transfixed. He knew why. Possibly at the very heart of the pyramid, a giant sandstone model of a city glowed in the torchlight. Dominating the cavernous chamber, it had to be a mock-up of Ankh Tawy.

  Bach’uuk tugged on Jake’s sleeve and directed his friend’s gaze to a stepped pyramid in the center of the city. It looked identical to the great temple of Kukulkan in the valley of Calypsos, but for one detail. This one was missing the winged serpent at the top.

  All around the model of the city were stands of broken bits of statuary, shelves full of pottery, even standing chunks of walls covered in tiled murals.

  Jake stumbled forward, studying the cat-headed painting of the goddess Bast. Beyond it stood a broken-winged statue of the falcon-god Horus. A few steps away, a black obelisk carved in hieroglyphics pointed toward the roof.

  Jake remembered hearing about this place aboard the skyship. Nefertiti had called it the Temple of Time. “These must be the remains of Ankh Tawy,” he said. “Bits and pieces salvaged from before it fell.”

  The madman nodded, his face a mask of sorrow as he wandered with them.

  Jake stopped before a complicated set of giant bronze gears, toothed and fitted together perfectly. It reminded him of the insides of a broken clock.

  Marika had her own take on it. “Looks like a piece of the Astromicon.”

  With a start, he realized she was right. He pictured the giant mechanism with spinning crystals driven by the sun atop the Castle of Kalakryss.

  “Come see this,” Pindor said, calling him over to a plate of shiny metal.

  The gray surface was mirror smooth, reflecting the room. Though clearly solid, it looked wet, as if someone could dip a hand into it. Curious, Jake touched the surface, and felt a slight vibration that stood his hairs on end. But that wasn’t the only oddity. Letters had been inscribed onto the surface.

  Jake couldn’t make out what they said, but he had seen this writing before in Calypsos. It was Atlantean. He leaned closer, studying the stylized figure in the center. It looked like a winged serpent biting its own tail, like the mythic dragon Ouroboros that he’d read about in one of his books.

  “A wisling,” the bearded old man said, noting his attention. “At least that’s what it was called. A nasty little scrapper, according to the old legends. They were said to live in the shadow of Ankh Tawy long before anyone else. But no one’s ever seen one.”

  Retreating a step, Jake took in the room in its entirety. Everything pointed to the lost city of Ankh Tawy: the model, the broken fragments of the former city, the bits of Atlantean technology. He knew that if there was any hope of ever getting out of this desert, it would be found at Ankh Tawy.

  But before he could contemplate that journey, he had a mystery to solve. Jake lifted his father’s watch again. He turned, found where it spun the fastest, and headed in that direction.

  As he walked, he studied the model of the stepped pyramid while picturing the great Temple of Kukulkan. A thought came to him. If there were two pyramids in Pangaea—one here and one in Calypsos—why not more? Could there be other lands in Pangaea, other pockets of Atlantean technology still undiscovered? That thought was quickly followed by another, one closer to his heart. Could his parents be trapped in one of those other lands?

  Jake pushed aside those questions for now as he reached an odd display: a small fountain made of sand. Grains flowed down the four sides of a tiny stepped pyramid. At the bottom of the fountain, the sand pooled into a shallow basin, where it was sucked away and siphoned back to the top in an ever-continuous cycle.

  “Sand is a river,” Bach’uuk s
aid. “Never stops.”

  Jake glanced to his friend, sensing some deeper meaning to his words. But it was the way of the Ur to be ever cryptic. Bach’uuk would make a great tribal Elder one of these days.

  Jake circled around the fountain, ready to continue his search; but as he stepped past it, the spinning second hand of the watch slowed. Holding his breath, he faced the fountain and lifted the timepiece.

  The tiny hand spun again in a blur.

  “This is it!” he called.

  As the others gathered closer, Jake waved his father’s watch like a Geiger counter over the sandy pyramid. Every time he neared one side, the timepiece went crazy, vibrating in his palm.

  He remembered the golden pyramid in the British Museum, the one that his mom and dad had found at their last dig site. A miniature version of the great Temple of Kukulkan, it had been a portal to another world. By inserting the two halves of a broken Mayan coin into a hole in the miniature temple, he and Kady had been transported to Calypsos.

  Could this pyramid also be a portal?

  He reached out to block the stream of sand that ran over this side of the pyramid. The diverted flow revealed a circular hole. Far larger than the hole in the pyramid in the British Museum, it had to be important.

  But they had no coin this time.

  He lifted his father’s watch. The hands spun wildly as he brought the watch near the hole. He finally understood. “The Key of Time …” he mumbled. “We had the key and just found the lock.”

  Leaning over, he pushed the watchcase into the hole. It was an exact fit. Immediately the spinning hands stopped.

  A loud ticking sounded—not from the watch, but from the pyramid.

  They all backed away as the pyramid split into four equal pieces and fell open, revealing an inner clockwork of bronze gears. At the heart of the mechanism rested an emerald crystal, polished into a perfect sphere, about the size of his fist.

  Jake reached out.

  “Don’t touch it!” Pindor warned.

  “My father’s watch led us here. The stone must be important. Important enough to draw the attention of the Skull King.” Jake’s hand hovered over the stone. “I can’t let him have it.”

  “Be careful,” Marika warned.

  Jake didn’t have the time for caution. They could be discovered at any moment. He wanted to get the stone, then find a way to meet Djer at the Crooked Nail. That was the extent of his plan.

  As his fingers closed over the crystal, he expected some shock. But nothing happened. He lifted the emerald crystal free; and as he stepped back, the pyramid slowly closed again, sealing as if it had never been touched.

  Only now the sand did not flow.

  The crystal must have been powering it somehow.

  Jake retrieved his father’s watch as both Mari and Pindor let out a breath of relief—then they all jumped at the sharp shout behind them.

  “Jake!” It was Kady. As usual, she had wandered off on her own. Probably looking for the jewelry section. But Jake heard the ring of fear in her voice. “You’d better come see this! Now!”

  He shoved the crystal into his backpack and headed toward her, trailed by the others. She stood near the back wall, where a huge mural made of tiles graced the entire arc of the chamber. The work was a mosaic masterpiece, so finely detailed that it looked like a painting.

  Jake headed toward Kady, who stood on the far side of the mural. He realized that the mosaic was a triptych, a piece of art broken into three pieces. Each section told a story. The first showed Ankh Tawy as a vibrant city, bustling with activity, the sun shining brightly on it. The next showed the city in ruins. Blasted by great winds, people were running in terror. At the top of the mosaic, a monstrous, shadowy beast, its eyes made up of fiery red tiles, sailed on wide wings. From its open mouth, the winds blew forth.

  “The Howling Sphinx of Ankh Tawy,” the madman explained.

  This was the story of the fall of the great city, a history written in bits of glass and tile.

  “Jake!” Kady yelled, and waved for him to join her.

  He hurried forward, irritated. “What?”

  Her eyes were huge as she pointed at the third mosaic. The city still lay in ruins, but it was now dead quiet. Nothing moved but the wind, whipping the sand. But in place of the Sphinx, a single figure stood over the lost city, looking like a giant ready to crush the ruins to dust.

  The madman spoke. “She who came from Calypsos. She who woke the Great Sphinx and destroyed Ankh Tawy.”

  Kady turned to Jake, but he could not speak. His sister choked out the impossibility of it. “It’s Mom.”

  18

  TWO WILL FALL

  How could that be?

  Jake struggled to understand what he was seeing. How could his mother be up on that wall? But there was no mistaking her yellow hair, the curve of her cheek, or her bright eyes made of sky blue glass tiles. Even her clothes resembled the khaki safari outfit she always wore in the field.

  “It’s Mom,” Kady said again, with a tremble in her voice. “Now we know she made it here.”

  Jake felt a similar surge of hopefulness. Despite the recovery of his father’s watch in the great Temple of Kukulkan, neither of them could be certain their parents had made it to the valley of Calypsos, that they weren’t murdered by grave robbers as the world believed.

  But Jake’s mood was tempered by what the mosaic implied. “Ankh Tawy fell hundreds of years ago. If Mom and Dad landed here … if they stayed …”

  He couldn’t finish that sentence.

  A shadow fell over Kady’s face. “Then they’d be dead.”

  Marika hurried forward and hugged Kady. But her emerald green eyes also found Jake’s. “You can’t know that.”

  Bach’uuk nodded. “Sand is a river. Flows back and forth. But never stops.”

  Lost in a dark funk, Jake had little patience for his friend’s Ur philosophy.

  Kady gave Marika a quick return hug, then stepped back. “Bach’uuk is right.”

  Jake stared at her.

  She gave him an exasperated look. “He’s clearly talking about time. Sand’s a metaphor. Try taking some English classes sometime instead of all that geek stuff. He’s saying time is fluid, like a river.” She waved her hand back and forth. “You can travel up or down it. I mean, look what happened to us. Who knows where Mom and Dad ended up?”

  Jake wanted to believe her, but he couldn’t shake off his despair. Still, Kady’s words did stoke a small ember of hope in his heart. In the end, she was right. Who knew where—or when—his parents were? All he knew for sure was that they had to get moving.

  Jake turned toward the main doors; but Pindor tugged him back, coming close to pulling him off his feet. “Did you see this?”

  “What?”

  Pindor moved him a few steps farther along the mosaic. “In your mother’s hand. Look!”

  Too shocked at seeing his mother’s face, Jake had missed the obvious. In his mother’s right hand he saw a ruby crystal, perfectly round, fashioned to look like an eye.

  “Looks the same size as the emerald crystal you just took.”

  Could Pindor be right?

  Jake wiggled around and snagged his backpack. He pulled out the green crystal. He hadn’t given it much of a look. He lifted it toward one of the torches. Through the fiery light, he saw a streak of black, like a vein of obsidian that cut through the center, making the gem look like a cat’s eye.

  In the mosaic, his mother’s crystal had the same defect.

  At that moment, Jake felt a close connection to his mother. He held a stone, twin to hers, only a different color. She must have taken it, too. From Ankh Tawy.

  Like mother, like son.

  As he lowered the stone, he found the old man’s gaze upon him. His eyes glowed with strange contemplation, hinting at a sharper intelligence than he’d shown. Then he dug something out of his gray beard, something tiny with squirming legs, and crunched it between his teeth.

  At the soun
d of a door opening, Jake jumped, then waved everyone down.

  Voices echoed across the hall as two people entered the chamber. Jake crawled over to get a look. Were they guards? Were they dangerous?

  He spotted the pair standing under one of the torches by the door. The two men searched the chamber for a breath, then hunched together in a conspiratorial fashion. One was a thin shadow cloaked in the priestly black robe of the Blood of Ka; the other had a round belly, draped in fancy linens. He wore the soft sandals of a palace servant. From his red-painted face and tattooed black eyeliner, Jake guessed that he was someone of importance, perhaps a royal attendant.

  The pair must have ducked out of the busier passages to keep their conversation private. But the acoustics in the chamber carried their words clearly.

  “Kree has the girl calmed again,” the priest said. “At least for now. But her suspicions are likely to rise again. Especially after the nightshadow elixir sends the pharaoh back into a deathly slumber.”

  “How does this change your master’s plans?” the other asked. He lifted a black glass vial in the shape of a teardrop and studied it.

  “Kree is done waiting. Omens from burnt offerings foretell that this is the time to act.”

  The Blood of Ka priest slipped a second vial from his robe and held it out toward the palace servant.

  Refusing, the servant backed away, his black-lined eyes growing huge. “But twice the draught will kill him.”

  “Precisely.” The priest nodded to the vial. “Once done, you are to place the empty bottles within Nefertiti’s bedchamber.”

  This drew the other closer again. “You plan to blame the princess? To make it look like she poisoned the pharaoh?”

  A nod. The priest held out the vial again. “Two draughts. Two will fall.”

  This time the servant took it, tucking the two vials up a billowing sleeve. “With both gone, the throne will be open for your master.”

  “As it should be. The Blood of Ka will rise to full power!”