Jake and Nefertiti turned and peered overboard. Politor hung there outside a hatch, tightening some cables on the hull. His eyes were on his work, but his words were for them.
“It were all of us. Those wearing the collar”—he tapped the bronze ring around his neck with his wrench—“and those who were not. We turned a blind eye to what was happening just as surely as you.”
Jake remembered how everyone in the city shunned the boarded-up houses sealed with the Blood of Ka’s mark, refusing even to look at them.
“That’s how freedom is lost,” Politor said. “One grain of sand at a time.”
Jake remembered something his father quoted about this very subject. He whispered it aloud. “‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’”
“Aye, well-spoken.” Politor nodded to Jake, then turned his sky blue eyes on Nefertiti. “The people of Ka-Tor—all of us—have been sleeping as deeply as your father.”
Nefertiti stood up, fire entering her voice. “Then it’s time we all woke up.”
A shout rose from the stern.
“It begins,” Politor said, and swung back into the hatch and vanished.
Jake gained his feet and spotted Djer standing beside Skymaster Horus. He was bent over the rail, a spyglass fixed to his eye. Jake hurried toward them, leaping up the steps from the middeck. Nefertiti followed just as swiftly.
“The people gather toward the arena,” Djer said. “It will not be long before Ra’s first rays touch the obelisk and start the games.”
“Can I see?” Jake asked.
Djer passed him the spyglass. Horus slipped a second one from inside his cloak and handed it to Nefertiti.
“Ready the ship!” Horus called out.
As the crew bustled to obey, Jake leaned over the rail and stared through the spyglass. It took him several scared breaths to focus and find the wide pit of sand surrounded by stone bleachers.
“We used to have grand plays and great circuses there,” Nefertiti mumbled sadly. “Now it is a monstrous place, where blood waters the sands and nothing but fear grows.”
The spyglass was dizzyingly powerful, pulling Jake to a bird’s-eye view of the arena. In the darkened streets, people filed toward the stadium from all directions. It looked as if the entire population was coming to this game, to bear witness. Such attendance was not voluntary. Splashes of torchlight revealed soldiers herding people toward the arena.
“Kree means to mark his coming to power with blood,” Nefertiti said. “To show his strength, to threaten all.”
Nefertiti could watch no longer, but Jake focused his glass back to the arena. The sand pit was oval in shape and appeared to be the size of a football field. In the center rose a black obelisk with a golden tip pointing skyward. The place reminded Jake of the coliseum in Calypsos, but the games now played here were deadlier.
“Raise the sails!” Horus called out.
Jake straightened enough to see the ship’s wings unfurl, cranked wide by the crew on both sides of the middeck. With a rattle of bony struts, the rubbery sails snapped into place.
Djer joined Jake. “We will have only the one chance. Timing is critical.”
Shoulder to shoulder, they kept vigil on the city below. Jake watched the new day creep across the landscape, stretching through the desert, over the outer walls, across the city—and finally reaching the arena.
Spectators packed the stadium, which was ringed on the outside by a solid mass of guards. Kree was daring the rebels to risk a rescue. But none thought to look up. Even if they did, the windrider flew so high that it would appear but a speck in the sky, a slowly circling hawk.
Djer nudged Jake and pointed farther out from the stadium. Jake followed with his spyglass. Slipping silently through the empty streets from the west, a force of men flowed toward the stadium led by a giant, who, even from so far away, Jake recognized. It was Grymhorst, the red-bearded gatekeeper from the Crooked Nail. The ragtag force he led could not hope to defeat the mass of royal guards. They were outnumbered four to one. Instead their goal was to distract them, to draw them off, to keep them busy. Hopefully long enough for the Breath of Shu to complete a rescue.
Jake returned his attention to the arena floor. As he watched, holding his breath, the golden tip of the black obelisk was struck by the first rays of the new day. It burst into radiance.
The crowd in the stands surged to their feet.
A handful of figures stumbled through a gate into the open sand.
A distant bugle sounded.
With that cue, Horus bellowed from his post at the rudder, “Drop her beak! Let her dive!”
“Hold tight!” Djer warned.
Jake and Nefertiti obeyed as the prow of the ship tilted at a precarious angle. The constant roar of the balloon’s furnace died. A silence spread across the ship—then the windrider dropped earthward again, diving like a hunting hawk.
Wind ripped across the decks. A barrel, poorly tied, broke free, rolled across the middeck, and crashed into splinters. Horus manned the rudder with one arm, pushing hard to turn their plummet into a circling dive.
Jake held tight to a strut of the railing as his ears popped and wind screamed in his ears. He should have thought to grab his earplugs from his backpack; but the pack was strapped behind him, and he wasn’t about to let go.
Their only hope was the element of surprise. And for that to work, the attack had to be lightning fast. Jake twisted to see a squad of five men hunched to either side of the middeck. Secured to their backs were folded sets of wings.
Skyriders.
Jake continued to hold his breath. It seemed as if they were dropping forever when it was likely less than a minute. At any moment he expected to crash into the ground and shatter as surely as that loose barrel had.
Then Horus shouted, his voice full of wind and verve, “On my mark! Steady the keel, boys! Now!”
With a great creaking, the ship’s prow lifted. Jake felt his stomach crash into his boots. The wings to either side shuddered, shaking the entire ship. Then the furnace blasted with fire, stabbing deeply into the balloon. The black rubber skin glowed a dark ruby. Jake expected it to burst into flames.
But it held.
The Breath of Shu steadied into an even spiral.
Jake risked poking his head between the struts of the railing. The windrider glided five stories above the arena. People had flattened to the ground in terror at the unexpected arrival. Cries and shouts echoed up to the ship.
Then horns blared from outside the stadium, coming from the west.
Jake pictured Grymhorst’s force attacking the guards, all to buy them enough time to snatch the prisoners off the sand.
Jake stood up and leaned over the rail. Marika, Pindor, and Bach’uuk were running across the sand. They carried cudgels and spears. Kady, armed with her sword, helped a limping Shaduf flee in the opposite direction.
Jake searched the sand, trying to see what frightened them. But the field was empty. Had the ship’s arrival scared them, too? Jake leaned farther out. But none of his friends were even staring up. Instead they were staring down.
As Jake watched, a large fin crested out of the sand.
“Sand shark,” Nefertiti exclaimed. “With skin like stone, it’s almost impossible to kill.”
Jake spotted two more fins circling the obelisk.
“We’ll get your friends,” Djer said, and signaled to Horus.
A piercing whistle followed. The skyriders leaped over the railing and dove toward the arena. They plummeted for a breath, then the wings snapped wide and flames burst from their packs, turning hang gliders into one-man jets.
Each skyrider dove toward one of the prisoners.
But would they get there in time?
The dorsal fin of the shark disappeared under the sand as the creature neared the fleeing trio. His friends, sensing the attack, split apart and fled in different directions just as the sand opened up into a maw of teeth. The shark shot
up, exposing most of its snakelike body, then dropped back again and slithered underground.
Still, Jake got a good look. The monster was a cross between a snake and some reptilian fish. It was also eyeless—just teeth, muscle, and armored skin: the perfect desert hunter.
One of skyriders dove and grabbed Pindor by his shoulders, pulling him off his feet and up in the air. Another managed to snatch Bach’uuk by an arm. The pair of riders shot straight up with their prizes.
A third raced low across the sand toward Marika; but before he could reach her, another shark burst out of the sand, drawn perhaps by the heat of the rider’s flame. The flyer tried to get out of the way, but teeth snapped onto one wing. The skyrider crashed to the sand and tumbled end over end in a wash of flame and broken struts. He hit the stony wall of the arena hard and lay still.
Jake clutched, white knuckled, to the rail.
Marika continued to flee, clearly trying to make it to Kady and Shaduf; but they were on the opposite side of the arena. A pair of skyriders missed their first pass at Kady and Shaduf, who leaped away when two sharks came at them from opposite sides.
The sand exploded as the two hungry predators collided and began to fight.
Kady and Shaduf crawled across the sand, trying to escape.
Then a new problem arose.
Guards sprouted all around the arena, positioned on the lower stands.
Bows were raised.
The archers fired at the ship, at the skyriders. One bolt struck Shaduf in the leg, pinning him to the sand. Scenting fresh blood, the pair of fighting sharks turned toward the old man.
A skyrider dove through a volley of arrows and grabbed Kady by the collar of her shirt and hauled her up.
“Let me go!” she screamed, twisting, plainly wanting to help Shaduf.
She got her wish. An arrow struck the skyrider’s jet pack. It burst into flames, blasting them both back to the sand. The skyrider quickly shed his wings, patting flames from the seat of his pants.
Kady scrabbled for her fallen sword, grabbed it, and ran for Shaduf.
The rider went to follow her, but the ground opened beneath him. With a scream, he was yanked underground by a shark.
The entire plan was falling to pieces. Even the skyriders with Pindor and Bach’uuk could not reach the ship because of the volley of arrows.
“Bring us lower!” Horus cried out from the stern, where he manned the ship’s rudder. “Drop lines over the sides!”
The roar of the bellows died, and the great ship’s shadow fell over the arena as it sank until its lower keel scraped the tip of the obelisk.
Sailors tossed ropes while others fired at the archers, using everything on hand, including the fire gourds that exploded amid the bowmen. By now, everyone had fled the stadium, trampling in a mad rush to escape the fiery battle. Several archers fell onto the sand, thrashing amid a wash of flames.
Jake spotted Kady directly below him. She had Shaduf up again, but sharks circled them, spooked by the fire and chaos. The pair could not reach the ship.
Nefertiti shook off her cloak, revealing a hunting outfit and a sheathed sword. “I will help your sister and my uncle! You see to your friend!”
With those words, she sprinted to one of the ropes and vaulted over the rail. Drawn in her wake, Jake reached for another rope, stopping only long enough to stuff a firebomb into his pack.
A shout reached him from the deck. “Jake! Don’t! It’s certain death!”
Djer stood at the stern, holding a shield to protect Horus from the onslaught of an archer trying to take out the ship’s captain. The shield bristled with feathered arrows.
Djer shouted again. “We must leave with those we’ve rescued!”
Ignoring him, Jake leaned far over the edge. He spotted Marika trapped against the obelisk, a shark angling closer and closer. He wasn’t abandoning his friends … any of them.
Grabbing the rope, Jake hopped the rail and swung to the ground. As soon as his boots hit the sand, he took off toward Marika.
To the left, he spotted Nefertiti. She ran with the end of her rope twisted around her wrist. As she reached the end of the line, she leaped up, swung in an arc from the rope, and flew over the circling sharks to land beside Kady and Shaduf.
Jake turned his full attention back on Marika. He called to her. “I’m going to lure the shark to me! Then run for one of the ship’s lines!”
Her emerald eyes shone with terror, but she nodded.
Jake twisted his pack and snatched his Swiss Army knife. Baring the blade, he cut into his palm as he ran. The pain was like placing his hand on a hot stove. Once near enough to the obelisk, he angled away and held out his arm. Blood flowed from his clenched fist and spattered into the sand.
He glanced over his shoulder and watched the circling shark turn in his direction, attracted by the fresh blood.
“Run!” he hollered.
Marika obeyed, and Jake took his own advice. He sprinted, intending to circle the obelisk and head back to the ship. But he needed to keep the shark from following.
Pulling his hand to his chest to stop the bleeding, Jake reached behind him for the firebomb.
Nothing like an explosion to chase a hunter from your trail.
With the fire gourd in hand, he trotted a few steps sideways, like a quarterback readying for a Hail Mary pass.
Two yards away, a towering fin pushed out of the sand, moving faster than he had expected.
He dared wait no longer.
Leaping up and spinning, Jake whipped the gourd at the fin.
He landed off balance on one boot and sprawled headlong across the sand, scattering the contents of his open pack and coming up on his hands and knees.
Not the most graceful move, but at least his aim was good.
The firebomb hit the fin—then bounced off and rolled harmlessly across the sand. It was a dud.
Okay, that’s not good.
22
STONE OF TIME
Jake leaped to the side as the monstrous sand shark lunged at him. He caught a glimpse of rows and rows of teeth opening in the rolling sand dune. He got clipped in the legs as it bulled past him, but he used the momentum to shoulder-roll to his feet.
Across the arena, he spotted Shaduf being hauled aboard the ship by a rope around his shoulders, supported by Nefertiti. Marika had made it aboard, too. Kady hung from another line, her sword in her belt. She waved a free arm at him.
“Get over here!”
What do you think I’m trying to do?
Jake began to run when he spotted a glint in the sand to his left. An emerald shine sparked in the first rays of the sun. He skidded and turned.
It was the crystal from Ankh Tawy, the one he’d taken from the pyramid. It had fallen out of his backpack.
“What are you doing?” Kady screamed.
He bolted toward the crystal. He couldn’t leave it behind, not after everything they’d gone through to get it. Not stopping, he swept his arm down, snatched the emerald crystal off the sand with his bloody hand, and kept going.
Or that was the plan.
As soon as his fingers closed over the crystal, all strength left him. He fell headlong into the sand, sliding on his belly.
“Jake!”
He struggled to his hands and knees, still clutching the stone. But his body felt four times too heavy. His joints ached as if filled with ground glass.
What is happening?
“Behind you!” Kady screamed.
He turned and fell onto his backside. A wall of sand hurtled toward him. The monster burst free of the sand, jaws hinged wide, lined with teeth, gullet bottomless. The shark landed on its belly and twisted and snapped toward him like a downed power line.
Kady dropped from her rope to the sand and sped toward him, yanking out her sword. She would never get here in time.
Jake lifted a trembling arm, raising his only weapon, the crystal. He had read that hitting a shark on the nose could disorient it. He had hoped he would
never have to test that theory.
The shark lunged.
He swung his arm and smacked the emerald crystal into its nose, bracing for the impact; but it never came. As the stone struck, the shark froze in midair. Its writhing body hung for a breath—then its flesh went gray and quickly shriveled down to its bones. Like fast time-lapsed photography, even those bones began to crumble.
Suddenly, the monster’s skeleton crashed to the sand and blasted apart into a cloud of dust.
Jake coughed as he breathed in bits of shark dust.
Kady appeared through the cloud, waving a hand before her nose, a shocked expression fixed to her face.
A screech of fury sounded behind him.
He twisted, still weak.
From the lower stands, a familiar dark figure—all shadow and robe—flew over the bleacher’s wall and landed in the arena. It was Heka, Kree’s witch. Her skeletal arm pointed at him.
“He’s found the sssecond timestone!”
Jake stared at the crystal in his hand.
From the stands, Kree ordered, “Guards! Kill the outlander! Now!”
But before they could be obeyed, a horn sounded from inside the stadium. With a roar, Grymhorst led his warriors, both men and women, into the stands. They flooded down from all directions.
How had they broken through the ranks of the palace guard?
Then Jake saw that many of the warriors were simple townsfolk, both slaves and Egyptians. They carried whatever weapons they could find: clubs, knives, even broken pieces of statuary. The flames of a few had ignited a true wildfire.
Palace guards closed ranks around Kree, whisking him away from the battle; but the witch, Heka, stalked across the sand toward Jake.
The sharks all retreated from her wake, keeping a safe distance back.
With a shake, she parted her robe and pulled out a weapon: not her bloodstone-tipped wand, but a wooden staff about the size of a cane. A fist-sized stone sat atop it and reflected the sunlight into a thousand jeweled shades. It was a ruby crystal, one Jake had seen before. It was the same as the stone held by his mother in the mural.
Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx Page 15
