He also learned the disturbing fact that the Wedjat were not the only ones to hear of this strange occurrence. The Horus-Guides ruled in Egypt and they too had heard the rumors. The Wedjat departed Giza just two days ahead of an Egyptian military column with the same mission — to search out the truth of these rumors. Instead of going due south along the Nile, as the Egyptians did, the Wedjat traveled east to the coast and took transit in a trader’s vessel that plied the shoreline.
He traveled south, listening at each village and port the vessel stopped at for more stories of the black forest and the Twin Sisters. For weeks he heard nothing as he went farther and farther south along the coast. Finally, he found those who knew of the Twin Sisters. He continued south until he reached a point at which the locals told him the Twin Sisters were due west. He disembarked from the boat and struck out on land. Within a few days he could see one of the Twins himself, a white-capped mountain floating above the haze of the horizon to the west. From what he had heard, though, he needed to go to the second mountain to see the black forest. It took two more days before a second peak loomed on the horizon.
As the Wedjat approached from the east, the column of Egyptian soldiers, minus almost half their number after battling their way south from the headwaters of the Nile, also arrived within sight of the two mountains. The commander saw what was on the northern slope of the eastern-most mountain and, as he had been instructed, completed his report and immediately sent it back with his fastest riders toward the border of Egypt, where it would be forwarded by Imperial dispatch riders.
The Wedjat initially saw nothing strange on the second mountain as he approached it with the rising sun be hind him. He first swung to the south, between the two great peaks, and looped around the farther mountain. Thus it was almost a week after the Egyptians sent back their report before he could see the northern slope and what had caused such consternation among the ranks of the soldiers from Giza: on that slope, above the tree line, was a vast spider web of black, covering over four kilometers in diameter. Strange beasts stalked among the web, continuing to build and expand it.
The Wedjat, who had studied the scrolls in Avalon, had never read of such a thing. He also spotted the Egyptian soldiers about two kilometers away from his position. Seeing that they were doing nothing but observing, he found a position from which he could keep an eye on both the construction on the mountain and the Egyptians.
And then he waited.
Two weeks passed.
Shortly after dawn one day a small, glowing, golden sphere flew by. The Wedjat had read of such a thing — it was a tool of the Airlia. It circled the mountain, then disappeared to the north. He could tell that the Egyptians had seen the golden sphere also. The soldiers began packing up their camp. The Wedjat wondered what to do — stay there, or go back to Avalon and report on what he had seen? But whatever was being built on the slopes of the mountain was still under contruction. He decided to stay.
Two days later the Airlia craft came. Nine lean black forms against the blue sky. They came to a halt about five kilometers above the mountain, bracketing it. A golden light crackled at the tip of each of the craft and pulsed down to the ground, passing into the mountain. There was a momentary pause, then the top of the mountain exploded from within.
As far away as the Wedjat was, the blast wave lifted him off the ground and threw him twenty meters away. The sky darkened from smoke and dirt, turning day into a strange night. As the Wedjat scrambled to his feet, ears ringing, rocks and debris tumbled down about him, and he only narrowly escaped death.
He looked to the south, toward the mountain — or where a mountain had been.
X
2,528 B.C.: THE SOLAR SYSTEM
The starship used a slingshot maneuver around the star to decelerate from interstellar speed. It was a small ship, a scout, and as the craft slowed, its sensors aligned on the signal that had diverted it to this system from its centuries-long patrol. The nose of the ship turned toward the third planet out as the data was analyzed. The signal was strange — a passive one, a uniform reflection of light rays of the system’s star from something on the planet’s surface, but there was little doubt the unusual effect was contrived by intelligence.
Searching out, analyzing, and then eventually reporting back concerning any intelligent life was the ship’s mission. The nature of the species that crewed it was to find, infiltrate, consume, and ultimately destroy any intelligent life not like it.
Having picked up no active scanning in the solar system or signs of advanced weaponry, the ship emitted an energy pulse as it sent a spectrum of scanning signals toward the third planet to determine the source of the crude signal.
Unknown to the crew, the pulse was noted by passive sensors as it penetrated the atmosphere and reached the surface of the planet. A sophisticated computer, operating on low-power mode, intercepted the pulse, analyzed it, and projected possible courses of action in a matter of moments. In low-power mode the options were limited and the course of action was quickly selected.
2,528 B.C.: STONEHENGE
Donnchadh opened the lid of the tube to a flashing red glow. She sat up, her body sluggish and uncoordinated after so many years in the deep sleep. She had to blink several times to focus her eyes. She saw Gwalcmai’s lid slowly swing up and he sat up as she climbed out of the tube, her bare feet touching the cold deckplate of the Fynbar. She quickly threw on a jumpsuit and boots.
“What is it?” Gwalcmai asked, his voice hoarse.
Donnchadh went to the ship’s control console and sat in the pilot’s seat. She powered up the main computer. She shut down the warning light. Data scrolled across the screen and she tried to make sense of it.
“The dish intercepted traffic between the guardians,” she told Gwalcmai. “Something’s happening.”
“What—”
“There’s a spacecraft inbound to this planet,” Donnchadh said.
“Another mothership?”
Donnchadh stiffened as more information was intercepted and interpreted by the equipment they’d taken from the Airlia on their own planet. “It’s not Airlia.”
“The Ancient Enemy?”
Donnchadh nodded. “A Swarm scout ship.”
Gwalcmai sat down in the copilot’s seat. “How are the Airlia responding? Are Aspasia and Artad waking?”
“No.”
“What?”
Donnchadh was concentrating on what the display wastelling her as it decoded the traffic between guardian computers. “They’ve set up an automated defense system.”
“Where?”
“Giza.”
“We can’t take any chances,” Gwalcmai said. “The Swarm scout ship has to be destroyed. If the Airlia system fails, we have to do it.”
Donnchadh turned her attention from the screen for the first time and looked at her partner. “What do you suggest?”
“We go there as backup.”
“Backup to the Airlia?”
“The lesser of two evils,” Gwalcmai said as he began powering up the ship’s systems for the first time in thousands of years.
2,528 B.C.: THE GIZA PLATEAU
Things had changed in Egypt. The Black Sphinx still glowered at the morning sun, but behind its left shoulder the smooth limestone sheathing covering the newly constructed Great Pyramid of Giza caught the rays of light and uniformly reflected them into the sky, producing the radar signal that the Swarm scout ship had picked up. At the very top of the five-hundred-foot-high pyramid, a blood-red capstone, twenty feet tall, glistened, an alien crown to the greatest structure ever built by human hands. The massive structure stood alone on the stone plateau, towering over the surrounding countryside, the nearby Nile, and the Sphinx complex. It had been built by humans according to the plans of Rostau, written down so many years previously.
To the east, in the direction of the Nile, were Khufu’s Temple and the Temple of the Sphinx, where both Pharaoh and stone creature could be worshipped. A covered ramp led from the
right rear of the Sphinx to the Temple at the base of the pyramid. While the pyramid was new, the surface of the Sphinx was scored by weather, having been there since the beginning of Egypt over seven thousand years ago in the time when the Gods ruled.
Between the paws of the Great Sphinx stood the Pharaoh Khufu, under whose leadership the Egyptians had labored for over twenty years, moving stone after stone to build the Great Pyramid. The Pharaoh prostrated himself in front of a statue set before the creature’s stone chest. The statue was three meters tall and roughly man-shaped with polished white skin. The dimensions weren’t quite right — the body was too short and the limbs were too long. The ears had elongated lobes that reached to just above the shoulders and there were two gleaming red stones in place of eyes. On top of the head, the stone representing hair was painted bright red. Even more strangely for the astute observer, each hand ended in six fingers. The statue’s appearance was in great contrast to Khufu’s dark skin and hair and human proportions.
Khufu had succeeded his father when he was just out of his teens and he was now middle-aged. He had ruled for almost three decades and Egypt was at peace with those outside its borders and rich within its own boundaries. The peace and wealth had allowed Khufu to implement the building plan for Giza that had been passed from the Gods, to the Shadows of the Gods, to the Pharaohs over the three ages.
The vast quantity of stone needed for the pyramid had been quarried upriver and brought down by barge. Thousands had labored on it seasonally, moving the stone from the barges and placing each block in its position under the careful eye of engineer priests who worked from the holy plans that had been handed down.
The red capstone had been brought up from the bowels of the Giza Plateau, from one of the duats along the tunneled Roads of Rostau where only the Gods and their priests were allowed to walk. No one knew what exactly the red pyramid was, but they had followed the drawings they had been given to the last detail, from the smooth limestone facing to the placement of the red object as the capstone.
In the Pharaoh’s left hand as he prostrated himself was a scepter, a foot long and two inches in diameter with a lion’s head on one end. The lion image had red eyes similar to that of the statue, but these glowed fiercely as if lit from within. Khufu had been awakened just minutes ago by his senior priest, Asim. The staff had been in the trembling man’s hand, the lion eyes glowing, something never seen before. He had passed it to the Pharaoh.
Khufu had thrown on a robe and dashed from his palace to before the Sphinx, as he had been told by his father he must do if the staff ever came alive. He was now chanting the prayers he had been taught. The statue was of Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, the Gods who had founded Egypt at the dawn of time and ruled during the First Age. According to what Khufu had been told by his father and the priests, in the First Age, the Gods had ruled for many years before passing leadership on to Shadows of themselves, the followers of Horus, during the Second Age. Then even the Shadows had passed the mantle on to men, and the first Pharaohs took command of the Middle Kingdom of the Third Age.
Asim was the only other person in the area. He was the senior priest of the Cult of Isis and garbed in a red robe. The priest’s right arm was withered and deformed where muscles and tendons had been sliced when he was a child. Where his left eye had been, there was an empty socket, the skin around it charred and scarred from the red-hot poker that had taken out the eyeball. Both ankles and calves were carefully boundto allow the priest to move, as the tendons in his legs had also been partially severed when he was a child. The priest had also been castrated before puberty.
The mutilation was what was required of the head priest of the Cult. Khufu knew there was a method to the madness. The idea was to make Asim’s life so miserable that while he would be able to perform his duties, he would not desire to live a long life and thus not hunger for the source of immortality — the Grail — that was said to be located somewhere below them, beyond the statue before which Khufu bowed his head. The scepter that Asim had brought to Khufu was the key to the Roads of Rostau, the underground passageways that ran beneath their feet, and Asim and his followers were the only ones who had ever walked those roads.
Around Asim’s neck was a medallion with an eye carved in the middle, a symbol of his office. The priest stood five paces behind the Pharaoh, muttering his own prayers rapidly in the old tongue that only the priests now knew, his anxiety obvious.
The quick prayers done, Khufu stood and glanced at Asim. The priest nodded. Khufu placed the staff against an indentation in the pedestal on which the statue stood. The carving had the exact same shape as the staff.
The pedestal shimmered, and then the scepter was absorbed into it. The surface of the stone slid down, revealing a six-foot-high opening. The passageway beyond was dimly lit from recesses in the ceiling, although the Pharaoh couldn’t see the source of the strange light. Khufu hesitated, then reluctantly entered the tunnel, the priest following, moving quickly despite his crippled gait. The stone slid shut behind them.
Khufu hurried down the tunnel. The stone walls were cut smoothly, better than even his most skilled artisan could produce, but the Pharaoh, his heart beating furiously in hischest, had no time to admire the handiwork. He ruled supreme from the second cataracts of the Nile, far to the south, to the Middle Sea to the north, and many countries beyond those borders paid tribute, but here, on the Roads of Rostau, inside the Giza Plateau, he knew he was just an errand boy to the Gods. His father had never been down here, nor had his father’s father or anyone in his line. It had always been a possibility fraught with both danger and opportunity.
The priest had not said a word since handing Khufu the scepter, as was law in Egypt — no one spoke until the Pharaoh addressed them.
“Asim.”
“Yes, lord?”
“What awaits us?” Khufu didn’t stop as he spoke, heading deeper into the Earth, his slippers making a slight hissing noise as they passed over the smooth stone.
Asim’s voice was harsh and low. “These are the Roads of Rostau, built by the Gods themselves in the First Age, before the rule of the Shadows of the Gods, and before the rule of Pharaoh. It is written there are six duats down here. I would say, lord, that we are going to one of those.”
“You have not been in all these duats?”
“No, my lord. I have only gone where my duties have required me to.”
Khufu suppressed the wave of irritation he felt with priests and their mysterious ways. “And in the duat we go to now?”
“That, my lord, is unknown, as I have not been to this one. The Hall of Records is said to be in one of the duats— the history of the time before the history we have recorded. This was the time when the Gods ruled beyond the horizon, before even the First Age of Egypt. The Old Kingdom of the Gods beyond the Great Sea.”
Khufu wasn’t interested in history or the Gods but thefuture. “It is said there is also a hall that holds the Grail, which contains the gift of eternal life.”
Asim nodded. “That is so, my lord.”
“But you don’t think that is where we are headed?”
“It is possible, my lord. It has been passed down that we will be given the Grail when the Gods come again and we will join them. Perhaps by building the Great Pyramid and finally at long last completing the plan handed down from the First Age we have earned the honor of the Gods. However, I have not yet laid eyes upon the Hall of Records or the Grail.”
“Maybe you haven’t been looking closely enough,” Khufu muttered. Building the Pyramid had certainly been a feat worthy of some reward from the Gods, he mused. Even with the Gods’ drawings, his engineer priests had been fearful they could not do it. Others had tried on a smaller scale in other places, testing the design, and none had succeeded, such as the one that had collapsed on itself at Saqqara. Using the practical knowledge learned from those attempts over the centuries and the Gods’ plan, Khufu had felt confident he could succeed — and he had.
They reached a junction. The path to the right was level. To the other side, the path curved left and down. Khufu had been taught the directions, even though, as far as he knew, no one in his line of Pharaohs had ever actually been down there. The Pharaohs ruled above, but the Gods ruled there.
He turned left. It was cool in the tunnel but Khufu was sweating. He had watched ten thousand put to death in one day on his orders after a battle and felt nothing. He who held absolute rule over the lives of his people felt fear for the first time in his life. But burning through the fear was hope, for he kept reminding himself what his father had told him — that inside the Roads of Rostau, hidden under the Earth, there was indeed the key to immortality, the golden Grail of the Gods that had been promised. And that there would be a day when the Gods would grant that to the chosen. Was today the day, and was he the chosen one? After all, as Asim had noted, he had completed the Great Pyramid this season after twenty years of labor, a marvel indeed, exactly according to the plans left behind by the Gods. And he had put the red capstone up there, a thing that had come out of one of the duats down here, dragged to the surface by Asim and his priests under the cover of darkness.
The tunnel ended at a stone wall. Asim used the medallion around his neck, placing it against a slight depression in the center of the stone. The outline of a door appeared, then the rock slid up. Asim stepped aside and motioned for the Pharaoh to enter. Khufu stepped through, into a small, circular cavern, about twenty feet wide. In the very center was a tall, narrow red crystal, three feet high and six inches in diameter, the multifaceted surface glinting. Set in the top of the crystal was the handle of a sword. Khufu walked forward, drawn irresistibly toward the crystal. Asim was at his side now. An ornate sheath could be seen buried deep inside the crystal. The Pharaoh had never seen such crystal or metal worked so finely.
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