The Gate of Days - Book of Time 2

by Guillaume Prevost

  Something unusual, thought Sam. What if that unusual thing was me?

  “I guessed that you had pierced Thoth’s secrets, and I decided to learn more about you,” Setni continued. “To see if you were the cause of these perturbations, for example. You are the first children I have encountered on the paths of Time!”

  “So we led you to the grocery store that evening? You didn’t have any connection with the gangsters inside?”

  “Of course not! I even had to, er, encourage them to leave.” “You chased them away?” exclaimed Sam and Lily together.

  “No, you chased them away; I merely helped convince them to depart. They fired a shot in the air to frighten me, but I have some experience with combat, as these young louts discovered. In any case, that additional agitation piqued my curiosity. So I watched you for a few days and decided yesterday to approach you in the train car. I did not expect you would give me the slip!”

  “How did you find us after that?”

  “There are very few Thoth stones in this era and on this continent. Besides, I have often come to Sainte-Mary.” “Barenboim?” wondered Sam.

  “You know Garry Barenboim!” the old man cried with delight. “You really are very surprising!”

  “We’ve only heard about him,” Lily explained, “but we know that this house belongs to him.”

  “And so does the stone statue,” said Setni.

  Sam pointed downstairs. “Speaking of the stone, I’d like to make sure it’s still there.”

  They silently walked down to the basement. It was very dark, and they had to kick out the boards nailed across the little window to get some light and air. What they saw was appalling. It was likely that nobody had cleaned the basement since Barenboim’s death some fifteen years earlier. It had a thick layer of dust, a tangle of spiderwebs, mold on the walls, at least two dead rats, and a mound of decaying garbage, some of it related to the lack of sanitary facilities they had already observed upstairs.

  “This is disgusting!” said Lily, gagging.

  “It is not much compared to the world’s misery,” answered Setni enigmatically.

  They started to clear the back of the basement, where a jumble of rusty machinery prevented them from reaching its darkest corners.

  “Well, is it here or isn’t it?” asked Lily impatiently.

  Sam frantically tossed loom parts and empty thread bobbins out of the way, his energy fueled by anxiety. Finally he shoved a pile of metal spindles aside and uncovered the stone.

  “It’s beautiful,” Sam murmured. He stroked the statue, seeking the familiar vibration. But he felt only a distant trembling, imperceptible to the uninitiated. Something was missing. He looked up at Setni. “The problem is, we don’t have a coin anymore.”

  The high priest’s expression remained unreadable. Then he said, “Am I to understand that you have been traveling the paths of Time at random, with a single disk of Re?”

  “A disk of Re?” asked Sam, feeling ill at ease. “Well, we started with three of them, but we had really bad luck and had to leave very quickly each time. Either we were in danger, or the stone was threatened. Anyway, we left our three … our three disks of Re behind.”

  The old man looked at him sternly. “Traveling that way is very imprudent, my young friends. There are many things you seem not to know, and …” I Ie rubbed his bald head. “Before going any further, I think we had better talk.”

  17 Revelations

  They gathered in the room with the mattresses, after clearing away the empty bottles and creating a more or less clean space around the armchair. Setni took off his long gabardine and made himself comfortable, sitting cross-legged in the chair. Under the coat he wore a linen tunic and a woven belt with a long leather pouch. He occasionally glanced out the window to make sure no one was coming up the walk, though he remarked once that Paxton’s gang wouldn’t be back anytime soon. “They are like all cowards,” he said. “Strong against the weak and weak against the strong.”

  For a full hour, Sam and Lily told Setni how they had discovered the stone and described the adventures they’d had up until landing in Chicago. The high priest didn’t interrupt, merely nodding when the two described this or that obstacle they’d had to overcome. When their account was finished, Setni gazed into the distance, apparently lost in thought. Then he turned to Lily.

  “Come here, my girl.” The old man carefully examined the whites of her eyes. “How many days did you say the fever lasted?”

  “Three days.”

  “You caught Time sickness, no doubt about it. When it happened to me, I spent a week flat on my back, unable to move. Some people die of it, others never catch it. But you are now cured. You just need some rest.”

  He then questioned Sam about what exactly had happened when the bear attacked the stone in the cave and during the Pompeii earthquake. He also wanted to know more about the Arkeos man and the symbol, though he listened to the answers without any reaction. Finally he folded his hands under his chin and smiled gravely. “Do you know the story of Imhotep and King Djoser, children?”

  Sam and Lily shook their heads.

  “It happened a long, long time ago, more than eighty generations before my birth. Djoser was a wise pharaoh who had conquered many lands. He was the richest and most powerful of the worlds rulers. A word from him was enough to send armies without number to attack an enemy or teams of workers to build the most magnificent palaces. Yet Djoser was unhappy. He had a daughter, Neferur, whom he loved more than anything and who suffered from an incurable illness. Each day when she awoke, her bedding was soaked through, and she was weaker and thinner than the night before, unable to speak or feed herself. Imhotep, who was the kings physician as well as his architect, tried all of the potions known in the Upper and Lower Nile. He sent men to countries near and far in the hope that someone somewhere had heard of a similar illness and knew how to treat it. But in vain.

  “One evening, when Neferur was near death, Imhotep asked Djoser’s permission to speak in his name to the god Thoth, who is both the most skilled of the healing gods and the juggler of hours and seasons. After the kings physician spent a night in prayer, Thoth finally agreed to help him, on the condition that Imhotep build a monument in his honor, the likes of which had never been seen in Egypt before. Imhotep swore that he would.

  “‘The pharaoh’s daughter has but one more day to live,’ the ibis-headed god told Imhotep, ‘and there is no remedy in this country that can cure her. If you want to save her, you will have to travel the paths of Time in search of an appropriate medicine/

  “Imhotep agreed, and Thoth designed a stone carved with a sun that would allow him to travel to seven different eras with the help of seven disks of Re, the sun god.

  “‘You will have but a single day to spend visiting each of these worlds/ said Thoth, ‘and each of those days will be as the seventh part of a day here. Once that day is over, if you have not returned or if you have failed, the princess will die and you will die with her. I will follow your progress on this scroll/

  “He showed Imhotep a papyrus, the scroll of Thoth, that displayed a series of hieroglyphs, always the same ones. Finally the god taught Imhotep how to carve stone statues so he could pursue his quest wherever he was. And thus, before sunrise, Imhotep set out on the paths of Time.”

  Setni paused, opened his leather pouch, and pulled out a sheaf of fine, rolled-up papyri. “I think the scroll of Thoth looked something like this.”

  The sheets were dark yellow, faded and aged, with black handwritten signs repeated in groups of thirty or forty.

  “We have something like that back home,” Sam said. “A Book of Time with a red cover and identical pages.”

  “Do you know where that book is right now?”

  “In Lily’s bedroom, I guess,” he said. She nodded.

  Setni made no comment, but didn’t seem pleased by the answer.

  “What about the rest?” asked Lily.

  “I beg your pardon?”
/>
  “Imhotep! Where did he go in Time?”

  “Oh, the rest of that story! I do not know it.”

  “What do you mean?” insisted Lily. “You promised us the story of Djoser, and you’re stopping halfway through!”

  The old man’s eyes had a sly gleam. “I did not say that. The fact is, I cannot tell you the story of Imhotep’s seven voyages because his account of them disappeared during the invasion by the Hyksos, barbarians from the East. We think his journal was taken out of Egypt, along with many other things. Only a small chest containing a dozen tablets was spared and hidden in the Temple of Amon.”

  “Where you found them,” suggested Sam.

  “Yes, a year after I became the high priest. The tablets were especially interesting because they explained exactly where to find the Thoth stone and how to use it.”

  But Lily wasn’t letting Setni off the hook. “What about Neferur?”

  “Neferur? Imhotep was able to bring her the medicine she needed — antibiotics from your era, I believe. And as promised, Djoser had him erect a monument unlike any seen before: a stone pyramid, the first pyramid in Egypt! Djoser is entombed there, but it was originally dedicated to the god Thoth — something people have forgotten today. As for Neferur, she lived a long and happy life without knowing anything of her physicians exploits.”

  “Imhotep made seven voyages,” Sam said after a few moments. “How many have you made?”

  “Many, many more. How old do you think I am?”

  “Sixty or sixty-five,” Lily guessed.

  “I am forty-seven. What you see in my face are the marks of the distress and suffering of the thousands of lives I have encountered. The world is cruel, whatever century one considers it from.”

  “Then why have you continued to travel?”

  “Because I have no choice. As the guardian of the Thoth stones, I must watch over them and make sure no one uses them for evil purposes. I have even drawn up a map with the location of each one according to its period. It is coming along nicely. Here, take a look.”

  From his bag he took another scroll, which he unrolled with a hint of pride. The outlines of oceans and continents were approximately marked — probably the way Setni imagined them — and there were dozens of black and red notations. One could make out mountains in dark green; the courses of great rivers in blue, with the Nile being the most recognizable; and dots with names that might be cities or notations on the time period involved. Finally, there were a few tiny pinholes. The overall layout was beautiful but quite hard to read. According to Setni’s representation, the Earth was a multicolored archipelago with vague borders.

  Parts of it had apparently been explored, but most remained undiscovered.

  “How many stone statues are on your map?”

  “I have counted about fifty.”

  “About fifty!” cried Lily. “But the legend speaks of Imhotep’s seven voyages. Seven voyages, seven stones, right?”

  “That is also what I thought at first. But do not forget that the god Thoth, in his great wisdom, taught the architect-physician how to carve his own stones in order to help him in his research. So seven is the number of original stones. Imhotep’s knowledge must have later passed on to other travelers, who in turn have seeded the wide world with stones. I know from experience that someone who travels the paths of Time feels the urge to carve the sun of Re at least once. If he chooses the place with care, and especially if his intentions are pure, the spell can work and the stone comes alive. But he who scorns Thoth’s magic and carves a stone solely to become richer or more powerful never gets more than a useless piece of rock.”

  “Is there anything on your map that relates to Bran Castle?” asked Sam.

  To answer, Setni didn’t even need to consult his scroll. “I do not claim that the map is complete, unfortunately, or that it ever will be. But if you really want to find your father, there are some things you must learn, in particular about the disks of Re. The way you are using them now is too uncertain. With just one disk, your destination is in the hands of fate. You could wander the paths of Time for centuries without ever reaching Bran Castle!”

  “That’s exactly why I need those seven coins!” answered Sam forcefully.

  “But the seven coins have a major drawback. They will indeed transport you to the desired period, but they remain behind in the one you left. So while you reach the place you want, you deprive yourself of any way to return!”

  “But I managed to get back,” Sam pointed out. “Several times.”

  “Only thanks to your cousin, my boy. Despite your ignorance of the workings of Time, you have had incredible luck. Very few humans can bring time travelers back to their point of departure. It is a power possessed by only a few women and is said to be transmitted from mother to daughter. As for developing the skill, one must be a very experienced magician. This girl was born with it.”

  Sam suddenly found himself looking at his cousin in a new light. It wasn’t enough for just anyone in the present to be thinking about you. That someone had to have a gift — a special priceless gift — and Lily had it! She was a truly exceptional girl.

  But Lily behaved exactly as if they were talking about someone else, keeping her eyes on Setni as she pursued her line of thought. “If you started drawing a map of the stones, that must mean there’s a way to travel with certainty, right?”

  Setni again reached into his leather sack and took out a kind of wooden button. He unscrewed it, and it came apart in two halves.

  “This capsule was given to me by the widow of a Chinese emperor, who was about to die herself. She told me that by slipping a disk into it, the stone would take me where I wanted to go. But a capsule like this can only be used once, and I never dared try it.”

  “So you have a more reliable way to travel?” Lily pressed him.

  The high priest stood and went to the window to look at the street.

  “As I said, the legend of Djoser does not tell the whole story. To allow Imhotep to make his voyage, Thoth gave him a third gift in addition to the stone statue and the disks of Re: a jewel that the god had forged with his own hands. It was a finely worked bracelet that he called ‘the golden circle.’ Almost no written descriptions of it have survived. Imhotep could slip six of the seven coins onto the bracelet before fitting them into the six rays of the sun. That way, when he applied the seventh coin to the sun, he not only reached his desired destination, but all the coins made the voyage with him — even the coin in the sun. Thanks to the golden circle, Imhotep could move as he pleased among the seven times made available to him by the seven coins. It was his key to the paths of Time!”

  “And that’s why the coins have holes in them!” said Lily excitedly. “So they could be threaded on the golden circle!”

  Driven by a sudden impulse, Sam stood and approached the high priest. “Where is it?”

  Setni patted him on the shoulder. “The golden circle? To my knowledge, a copy of the original was created somewhere in the Orient, probably on the basis of Imhotep’s lost account. As to who has it today …”

  “What about the original?” asked Sam in an unusually sharp tone of voice.

  “It is in my possession,” answered Setni calmly. “But I will not give it to you, as you can well understand; nor will I show it to you, because it might turn your head. Its influence is unpredictable, let us say. Some have gone mad at the idea of possessing it.”

  Sam felt a wave of irrepressible anger rising in him. He must have this golden circle! He needed it to save his father — right away! And if this old man refused to give it to him …

  Almost in spite of himself, he took a step closer to Setni, but the high priest stopped him with a gesture.

  “I can sense your anger, my boy, but think of the treatment I gave Paxton and his gang earlier. You are not yet a match for me.”

  Setni’s firm voice and serene expression made Sam’s aggressiveness evaporate immediately. ‘Tm sorry,” he said, feeling abashed. “I d
on’t know what came over me. I couldn’t help myself.”

  “The fascination exercised by the golden circle can corrupt the best-intentioned minds, my boy. Consider your anger a warning, and try to remember it in the future.”

  “But what’s the point of explaining these things to us if it won’t help us bring Sam’s dad back?” asked Lily.

  “In the kind of quest that you are on, my young friends, the truth is far preferable to a lie. It will allow you to make right and necessary choices when the time comes. That time will surely come, and much sooner than you may wish. Too many things are happening around you and the stone. The bear that attacked it in the cave, the earthquake that submerged and split it, those machines that buried it on the work site — do you to think that was all coincidence? A simple twist of fate? Normally, people barely notice Thoth stones, and as for animals …”

  Setni again unrolled the map and pointed out some of the pinpricks on the papyrus to them. “For my part, a number of signs have warned me that danger was threatening the paths of Time. Look: These points correspond to places where stones have disappeared these last months. Here is the city of Vesuvius, and here is the bear clan’s cave.”

  He pointed to two fairly widely spaced little holes on a colorful and vaguely star-shaped patch that might be Europe. “As I said, it was when visiting another of those places, in Chicago, that I made your acquaintance.” He pointed to a landmass shaped like an elongated figure eight that must have been North and South America. “Having heard your story, here is what I think: I am almost sure that the Oracle of Delphi is right, and someone is trying to close the doors of Time. Someone has decided to destroy the stones to prevent you from going home.”

  A deathly silence followed. Sam and Lily sat petrified, as if an invisible darkness had suddenly shrouded the room.

  “Des-destroy the stones?” Sam finally stammered. “You mean it’s intentional? But how can someone act at a distance to keep us from coming home?”