The Stone Warriors

by Michael Northrop

  Alex looked up at him. “You mean the Lost Spells?”

  Alshuff gave him a look he couldn’t interpret: Sad? Patient?

  A buzzing grew in Alex’s right ear, and he reached up and swatted at the fly. Missed it. They were almost to the door now.

  “Oh, one more thing,” said Alshuff, his voice soft and casual. “You might take a look at her dissertation. I doubt it will offer any more than I have already told you, but you might find it interesting. It should be in the main library, along with her notes. Tell them I sent you.”

  He took one last look at the scarab as the three guests filed out of the office. “With such an impressive pedigree,” he said quietly to Alex, forcing a smile, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you found a space already set aside for you in there.” Then he turned to Todtman. “Danke, Doktor.”

  And with that, Alshuff swung the door shut.

  Todtman stopped it with his good foot. “One more question,” he said. “Do you still host the department’s poker night?”

  Alshuff gave a quick grin, this one somehow more genuine than the others. “Every Friday,” he said. Todtman nodded and removed his foot, and Alshuff slammed the door for good.

  The friends headed down the hallway toward the nearest exit. The fly, Alex couldn’t help but notice, came with them.

  “That dude was lying through his teeth,” said Alex once they’d put some distance between themselves and Alshuff’s office.

  “Definitely shady,” agreed Ren.

  “And what was all that Ptolemaic stuff?” said Alex. “My mom was always going on about the Middle Kingdom, the Early Kingdom — the Egypt part of ancient Egypt. I mean, I seriously doubt the Lost Spells were written in Greek!”

  Alex looked up to see if Todtman would weigh in on his “old friend,” but the German seemed lost in thought. So Alex pushed open the big exit door and squinted into the bright sunlight.

  “And he was just so bad at it,” continued Ren as they headed across a wide courtyard. “He was practically sweating bullets, wouldn’t make eye contact. That guy is a horrible liar.”

  “But that’s the thing,” said Todtman, his cane thumping softly beside him as he walked. “He is a terrific liar.”

  “Uh, are we talking about the same guy?” said Alex.

  “Yes,” said Todtman. “I have lost many games of poker to that man. He is notorious. You can never tell what he is thinking. His expression never betrays him. He is well known for it in … certain circles.”

  “Wait,” said Ren. “Is he a member of your, what do you call it, book club?”

  “That is what you call it,” Todtman pointed out. “We consider ourselves more of an international association of scholars.”

  Alex tried to wrap his brain around that. How could that shifty old dude be a member of the same secret group as Todtman?

  His mom had been a member, too, but now she seemed to be playing a dangerous game all her own. He didn’t know what the objective of that game was, but he knew that, just like in poker, deception was key.

  “So, should we check out that temple he mentioned, or what?” said Alex, trying to figure out if this whole thing had been a waste of time.

  “No,” said Todtman. “You are right, he was lying about that. Maggie was never very interested in the Ptolemaic Dynasty — she doesn’t even speak Greek.”

  “Do most Egyptologists speak Greek?” said Ren.

  “The ones who are interested in that period do,” said Todtman. “As they say in Athens, Mía glóssa then íne poté arketí.”

  “Uh, sure,” said Ren. “So, he was lying and, what? He wanted us to know he was lying? Why?”

  “I don’t think he was speaking entirely for our benefit,” said Todtman.

  Alex remembered the black eye. “Maybe The Order has already been here,” he said. He remembered Alshuff’s raised voice, practically shouting “Temple of Philae.” “Maybe they still are. Maybe he thought they were listening in somehow.”

  Alex swung his head all around as they reached the edge of a large courtyard. No one behind them. Todtman led them down a narrow walk between two old redbrick buildings. “This way,” he said.

  “Where are we going?” said Alex.

  “I think perhaps it was the other place he mentioned that we are meant to go,” said Todtman.

  “The one he mentioned quietly,” added Ren.

  Now Alex got it, too: “The one he said wasn’t very important.”

  Todtman nodded: “Her old dissertation, in the library.”

  “Gah!” blurted Ren, slapping down hard on her neck. “This fly is driving me crazy!”

  That thing is persistent, thought Alex. They turned the corner and he saw a large, six-story building rising into view. This place had library written all over it.

  “Let’s see what she was really studying — and, more importantly, where,” said Todtman, eyeing the impressive structure. “Whatever is in these files represents her roots in this country — a paper trail of her first years here. But keep your eyes open and your amulets ready.” And on that note, they entered the cool, hushed world of the central library. The swirl of air as the doors opened caused the persistent little fly to tumble end over end, and the doors closed before it could recover. It landed on the glass and peered in with its many-sectioned eyes. Then, finally, it buzzed off.

  “Whoa, this place is huge,” said Alex. “There are miles of books.”

  “It’s so beautiful,” said Ren.

  Alex looked over and thought, not unkindly, Nerd.

  A guard near the entrance looked at them skeptically and asked to see their university IDs.

  “Dr. Alshuff sent us!” proclaimed Ren, standing on tiptoes so that more than her head was visible above the top of the man’s tall desk.

  But the guard’s interest in their credentials had already vanished — the moment Todtman had wrapped his hand around his amulet. “We are visiting scholars,” he said. That seemed true enough to Alex. He and Ren, for example, were in middle school. “And we are expected.” That seemed true enough, too: Alex just hoped it wasn’t by The Order.

  “Of course,” said the man, as if talking in his sleep.

  They headed toward the information desk.

  “I am a professor from Berlin,” Todtman said to the young lady behind the desk. He left his amulet out of it this time, but made his normally faint accent almost comically thick. “I need to see the dissertation and notes of one of my colleagues.”

  The graduate student looked up at Todtman and then down at Alex and Ren. “Yes,” she said. “Professor Alshuff told me to expect you. You are looking for an older file, I believe. Those files are in the archives now. Please follow me.” She stood up. “My name is Hasnaa, by the way.”

  Hasnaa led them to the elevator bank and pressed DOWN. She moved with calm confidence, completely at home here. Like so many things, it reminded Alex of his mom. He wondered if she’d also worked in the library when she was studying here.

  Everyone else was going up, so they were the only ones who got in when the door dinged open with the down arrow lit up above it. Hasnaa pulled out a key chain and flipped it around until she was holding a very small key. Alex had one just like it for the elevators at the Met. She put the key in its slot at the bottom of the panel, turned it, and then pressed the button that read BASEMENT ARCHIVES: STAFF ONLY.

  It lit up in red and they began to descend.

  “Uh, are there any other exits?” said Alex, not sure how much of the sinking feeling in his gut was coming from the elevator. “In case of, like” — an Order ambush — “a fire?”

  Hasnaa gave him a curious look. “There are stairs, of course,” she said. The elevator bumped to a stop and the doors slid open. Hasnaa stayed inside as the others got out.

  “Here you are,” she said. “But please, no fires.”

  “It’s not here,” said Ren.

  “Are you sure?” said Alex, leaning in to look over her shoulder.

  “Now you
’re in my light,” she protested. “But yes, I’m sure.”

  She’d been given the job of checking not because she was diligent and detail-oriented, although she was both, but because her small stature and nimble fingers were perfect for searching the overstuffed bottom shelf. She flipped through the files one more time to be sure: BATTAR, BATTEN … And then straight to BAVALAQUA.

  “No Bauer,” she confirmed. “But there is something odd …”

  “What?” said Alex, leaning in and casting everything into shadow again.

  Ren sighed deeply.

  “Oh, right,” said Alex, stepping back.

  Ren eyed the little gap in the files. It seemed strange, considering how jammed the rest of these shelves were. Old, yellowing paper and dry manila folders spilled out like overgrown plants. She touched the gap with her finger. No dust. Then she reached in with both hands and pushed Batten’s file away from Bavalaqua’s. She peered into the space beyond. It was dark back there, so she raised her amulet, not to ask it questions or offer more inscrutable images but just for …

  A flash of brilliant white light lit the space — and told Ren what she needed to know. Boxes of additional material were stacked behind the archaeology department dissertations. Notes, fieldwork, maybe the occasional bone fragment or piece of pottery … She wasn’t sure, exactly, but she could see the spot where a large box had been plucked out like a bad tooth.

  “The file’s gone,” she said. “Someone took it.”

  She stood up and brushed her dusty hands on her shorts. “I guess Alshuff told The Order first,” said Ren. “And now they have it.”

  She looked over at Alex and Todtman. They both looked like they’d just been slapped. “I never thought Alshuff would betray us,” muttered Todtman. “Even fearing for his life …”

  “Betrayed,” mumbled Alex. “But I thought …” He let his voice trail off, and then Ren saw him shake his head hard, like he did sometimes. “There’s got to be something else. It really seemed like he was trying to tell us something.”

  “Yeah,” said Ren. “He was telling us to go to the library — but the file is gone.”

  Alex looked down at the floor, “We must be missing something …”

  Ren decided to ignore him this time. It was a dead end, and they needed to let it go. Determination without information just got them into trouble. But his hangdog expression bothered her — and now that she thought about it, Alshuff had said something else. She remembered, because the comment had made her slightly jealous.

  “Well,” she said, sighing, “he did say that weird thing about you having a spot down here someday.”

  Todtman stared at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “Not someday,” he said. “Now.”

  Ren searched her memory banks for the exact words: “He said, I wouldn’t be surprised if you found a space already set aside for you.”

  “Yeah,” said Alex. “A spot set aside for me. That’s what he wanted us to find. I knew it!”

  Ren looked at him, goggle-eyed. “You knew it?”

  Alex shrugged. “Okay, you knew it — but I suspected!”

  A spot set aside for Alex Sennefer … Ren headed straight for the shelf that held the S’s. Unfortunately for her, it was the top shelf this time. Maybe if I stand on my tiptoes … Todtman brushed past. “I think perhaps I should handle this one,” he said.

  “Fine.” She sighed. Everyone told her she was due for a growth spurt, and all she had to say to that was WHEN? She was getting pretty sick of coming up short.

  She squinted up at the faded labels.

  “I see a B!” whooped Todtman. “Yes, here it is!”

  He reached in to pull out several thick folders.

  “Hold this,” he said, shoving them behind him.

  Alex grabby-handed them away from Ren. “Let me see,” he said.

  Ren leaned in for a look of her own.

  “You’re in my light!” he chirped.

  Meanwhile, Todtman was staring up at the top of the bookcase. The boxes of notes and supporting materials for the files on the upper shelves were piled on top of the case. Ren began to scan the names on the boxes: old black marker on old brown cardboard. “There!” she said, pointing.

  And there it was, the name of the woman everyone was looking for, hidden in plain sight behind a simple veil of alphabetical misdirection.

  “Prima!” exclaimed Todtman. Awesome.

  A moment later, his hand closed around his falcon amulet, and the chunky old box floated free and drifted feather-like to the floor.

  They got to work immediately, hauling the box and files over to a little cluster of desks in the middle of the room. The lights hummed overhead and even the tall shelves seemed to lean in for a closer look as Alex carefully peeled back the dry old tape holding the top of the box shut. It came off with only the faintest whisper of protest.

  Next to him, Todtman and Ren split the files containing the hefty dissertation and finished papers in half. That seemed like a good place to start for the two more academically minded members of the group. Alex was happy to do the dirty work.

  He peered inside the old box and pawed through the top layer with his hands. In jumbled piles and half-spilled files, in ziplock baggies and Tupperware tubs lay his mother’s fieldwork. There were notes and photos and bits of carved stone and pottery pulled from the Egyptian ground.

  Alex wished he knew what he was looking for. Could she have come here? Snuck a note for him into the box? Or would he have to be on the lookout for something less obvious? He began pulling stuff out and arranging it on top of the nearest desk, trying to make some sense of the jumbled mess.

  Unlike the neatly typed pages Todtman and Ren were poring over, the papers Alex found were often handwritten: notes and dates and circles and underlines. “BIG DISCOVERY!” was written in fat, dull pencil at the top of one page. The rest of the page was taken up with numbers — coordinates, maybe, or measurements? Alex wasn’t sure, but he set that one aside, anyway.

  He picked up the largest of the Tupperware containers and peered through the opaque plastic at the ancient pottery shards inside.

  Alex’s head swam as he went through the old material. He tried to focus and be rational instead of emotional. More than once he asked himself: What would Ren do? She was sitting just a few feet away, of course, but was far too absorbed power-skimming the old dissertation to talk.

  He glanced over and saw the title page, set carefully aside on the top corner of Ren’s desk: BURIED SECRETS: THE LOST — AND FORBIDDEN — ASPECTS OF MIDDLE KINGDOM FUNERARY RITES. Now that sounded like his mom.

  But his attempts at an even-keeled approach capsized among the messy piles. Going through the materials in the box felt too personal for that. Even in grad school, his mom’s distinctive handwriting had already taken shape. The precise, sharp-edged capital A’s Alex knew so well shared the page with little loop-de-loop e’s and the guesswork mystery of her nearly identical g’s and q’s.

  Sometimes, it was thrilling. Could this note on hotel stationery be a clue to his mom’s current location? Or this unsent postcard from the temples at Abu Simbel?

  And all of it — all of it — felt dangerous. Pushing through these old papers and baggies of little clay statuettes and unlabeled, unexplained stone fragments felt risky, as if somewhere in all of it was a single poisoned pin … Because if they did find something that led them through the decades and straight to her, what then?

  He’d had these thoughts before, but they felt closer now, more possible: His mom had always looked out for him, always done what was best — and necessary. If he needed to go to the doctor again, she took him. It didn’t matter if he’d just gotten back or if he begged her to wait. She made the tough calls, and she’d always been right. So what about now?

  You are trying to find her, Alshuff had said. And she does not want to be found. He was telling the truth then, too. It was hard to keep ignoring that fact while they were pawing through her o
ld work. Still, as he zipped a plastic bag closed, he wished he could seal those thoughts up with it.

  We need to find her, he told himself for the one-hundredth time. We need to find the Spells. The entire world depended on it — She just doesn’t realize how high the stakes are. That had to be it.

  Or maybe she knows exactly … He shook his head hard to dislodge the thought. This one was so sharp that it caused the contents of the folder he’d just picked up to spill out. Old photos went everywhere, some on his desk and some on the floor. The others looked over.

  “Ooooh,” said Ren. “Pictures.”

  Clearly tired of reading, she stood up and headed over. How long had they been at this? Alex wondered. He’d been so wrapped up in the process that he wasn’t exactly sure. He looked down at the scattered snapshots along the desk’s edge. And there she was, looking up at him, the woman who would become his mom. She looked so much younger: her cheeks fuller and her skin red from the sun, but it was unmistakably her.

  It was like looking at pictures from a family vacation he hadn’t been invited to. And then he saw a shot of her leaning over to inspect a hole in the ground. Even wearing a loose, untucked shirt, the bulge in her belly was clearly visible. He’d been there after all.

  Ren reached over and grabbed the photo, along with a handful of others. “The dates are written on the back,” she said. “We should put them back in order. Because somebody dropped them.”

  Time slipped by unnoticed down in the sunless, shadow-cornered archive. Once the box was empty, Alex stared down at the piles he’d made on the table. He’d hoped he’d see something that would jog his memory, some secret clue that only he would know. But there’d been no lightning bolts of recognition, no revelations. He’d ended up sorting the carefully labeled pages and pictures and pieces by place. He’d made big stacks for Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, and the Valley of the Kings — places they had already been — and another pile for Abu Simbel to the south. Then there were smaller stacks: Edfu, Minyahur, Aswan.