The Stone Warriors

by Michael Northrop

  Was his mom in one of these places? He’d heard her mention many of them — but then, she was an Egyptologist. Cairo came up all the time at work. She’d once brought him a King Tut T-shirt from the Valley of the Kings. Was that a clue, or just a T-shirt?

  He looked down at the less-familiar piles. Aswan sounded familiar, and he was pretty sure he’d heard his mom mention Minyahur. He chased the memory but it sped away like an NYC taxi.

  Todtman and Ren came over to see his work.

  “Find anything?” said Ren.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

  “Ren,” Todtman said. “Perhaps if you used the ibis? With all this information in front of us, it could carry us the last step.”

  Alex watched Ren’s expression carefully, but she had a pretty good poker face herself. He hoped she could help, but he knew her amulet was tricky. It flashed fast-forwarded images into her mind. Sometimes they were clues, and sometimes they were warnings — and sometimes she couldn’t tell the difference. Still, what choice did they have now?

  “Okay,” she said.

  She took one last look at the piles. Then she took a deep breath, reached up for her amulet, and closed her eyes. A moment later, she gasped and opened them.

  “What did you see?” Alex said.

  She turned to him, blinking to refocus on the world around her. “Nothing,” she said.

  Alex frowned, annoyed. He knew Ren didn’t like to be wrong, but if she wasn’t sure, they could help her puzzle out the images. “Come on,” he said. “You can tell us.”

  She looked him in the eyes. “No, really, there was nothing. I asked it which of these piles was right, and I just got, like, a blank.”

  “Has that ever happened before?” said Todtman.

  Ren shook her head. “Never. Sometimes I don’t understand what it shows me, but it has always shown me something.”

  Todtman nodded. “Maggie’s location could be masked somehow, protected.” He sized up the stacks of papers and pictures. “Okay,” he said. “There will be no shortcuts. We need to go through everything again. We must ask ourselves: Where would she go, when everyone was looking for her? Where would she feel safest? Let’s forget about the places we have already been for now and concentrate on what is new.”

  He leaned forward and pushed the large piles for Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, and the Valley of the Kings farther back.

  Alex looked at the remaining piles: Abu Simbel, Edfu, Minyahur, Aswan. He’d heard of the famous tombs at Abu Simbel and knew his mom had mentioned Edfu and Minyahur. A memory flashed by, yellow and gray, but he still couldn’t pin it down. And why did Aswan sound so familiar? He reached for that stack, but Ren got it first. He sat down by the Minyahur pile instead, and began going through the pictures.

  He picked up a photo of his mom sitting in the sand in front of a campfire with a big metal cup in her hand. It was early evening and a teakettle was set up above the fire. He looked at her face. She was relaxing after a long day. He lingered over it a little too long and Todtman leaned over to see what he’d found.

  “It’s nothing,” said Alex, slightly embarrassed, “just a shot from camp.”

  Todtman looked more closely. “It’s funny, I never saw your mother drink tea.”

  “Mostly she drank coffee,” Alex said. “For the caffeine. She was so busy all the time. But every once in a while, she drank tea. There’s this one old brand she likes. I forget the name, but it has a purple flower on the label. Sometimes … at home … she …”

  He could barely get the words out. He was chasing that elusive memory: yellow and gray …

  He was sick that day, and her arms were full …

  Of what? When? Why?

  He heard Ren rummaging through the papers, but he didn’t dare look over. He was so close …

  “Alex?” said Todtman.

  “Sometimes she would drink it to relax at home.” And as soon as Alex said “home,” he remembered. They’d been heading home. He could see it clearly.

  “I remember now,” he said, and the others leaned in a little closer.

  “Remember what?” said Todtman.

  “It was a rainy day.” His voice was far away, lost in the memory. “Mom left work early to take me to the doctor — again — and she’d brought a big stack of work home with her. We were waiting to cross Third Ave., and a taxi went by too close to the curb.”

  “Did you get splashed?” said Ren. “I hate that.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” said Alex. “We got blasted with a big puddle of garbage-water, like the kind where you can see the oil floating on the surface.”

  “Nasty,” said Ren.

  “So nasty,” said Alex. “And Mom got the worst of it. I remember looking over and seeing her just hugging the soaked files to her raincoat with a look on her face like I give up.”

  “It sounds like a very bad day,” said Todtman. “But I’m afraid I’m not following.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Ren. “What’s your point?”

  “It’s what she said next. It was kind of under her breath but I was listening so carefully that I heard it. She looked down at her stained coat and soaked files and said: ‘Time to go to Minyahur.’ Then we went home and she had a big mug of hot tea.”

  “Wait!” said Ren. “I saw something in the pictures.”

  She began pawing her way backward through the Minyahur pile, and then: “Here it is.” She held up another snapshot of his mom. “Look at the label,” she said triumphantly.

  Alex looked at the picture. It was the same campsite, even the same teakettle, but his mom was standing now, holding up a small alabaster bowl. It must have been the team’s prize discovery that day. But Alex wasn’t looking at the bowl. He was staring at a small metal container by his mom’s boots. It was a tin of loose tea, with a purple flower on its label.

  “Let me see the photo,” he said.

  They all crowded around as he looked at it closely. He liked it because she was smiling. She was holding the bowl high, raised toward whoever was taking the picture.

  “She looks happy,” said Ren.

  “She looks completely comfortable,” said Alex. “Like she did at home sometimes.”

  Todtman eyed the empty expanse of desert behind the campsite. “It’s a good location,” he said. “Remote and hidden, but familiar to her.”

  Alex thought about it. When life in the city had gotten to her, when just for a moment it had all been too much, the place she wanted to go was a little desert village named Minyahur. It was her place to get away from it all. And was there any better phrase for what she was doing now, pursued by both enemies and friends?

  Getting away from it all, thought Alex.

  But not anymore.

  A crazy mix of emotions bubbled and swirled inside Alex: excitement and anxiety and loyalty and loss. But the one that bubbled highest was love. “I think this is where we need to go,” he said.

  Ren turned to Todtman: “You said we were looking for the place she’d feel safest.” She pointed to the photo. “This fits the description to a tea.”

  Todtman ignored the pun. “Yes,” he said briskly. “Let’s pack this up, and we can leave immediately.”

  Alex slipped the photo into his back pocket, and they began stuffing the material back into the box. Ren picked up the stack she’d been going through. “Aswan,” she said. “Isn’t that where the Temple of Dendur is from?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Alex. The huge, glass-walled room housing the old stone temple was his favorite place in the whole Metropolitan Museum of Art. “That’s why that sounded so familiar.” He allowed himself a quick smile. For just a fleeting moment, things seemed to make sense. But his smile faded as quickly as it had appeared.

  “What is that smell?” said Ren. “I think a rat died down here or something.”

  She reached up and pinched her nostrils, then looked over at Alex for confirmation. His expression wasn’t one of disgust, though. I
t was one of fear.

  “That’s no rat,” he said. “I know that smell.”

  The same words echoed through the maze of shelves behind them. “That’s no rat. I know that smell.” The voice was an exact match for Alex’s, save for a slight buzzing.

  The friends wheeled around and saw a nightmare striding toward them. It wasn’t the first fly that had followed them that day.

  But it was the largest by a good six feet.

  “I knew you were in this building somewhere.” The fly spoke in his own voice this time. It was not an improvement. Scratchy and uneven, it made Alex’s skin crawl. Actually, everything about the fly bugged him: the way his filthy robes clung heavily to his frame, as if greased; the way the small, strange mouth of his mask puckered and smacked, as if alive.

  “Yeah, ’cause that old man told you!” called Ren, doing her best to disguise the fear in her voice. She quickly turned to Todtman and mouthed: Not you. But his attention was divided between the approaching enemy and the piled evidence.

  The fly tilted his mask and considered Ren with its bulbous composite eyes. “The old man told me nothing but lies,” said the fly, his jagged voice betraying a certain amusement. “A little birdy told me you were here.”

  He raised his right hand and extended his long, gnarled index finger. But it wasn’t a little birdy that landed there; it was a buzzing black dot. The fly perched briefly on the hairy digit before buzzing off.

  “That fly …” Ren began.

  “Was a spy,” finished Alex, his eyes beginning to water from the stink.

  “You should never trust old men,” added the fly, directing the comment toward Todtman.

  The elder Amulet Keeper finally tore his attention from the piled papers and focused fully on the fly. Alex’s stomach lurched as he realized the reason for Todtman’s divided attention: If the fly went through those piles, he’d see they were sorted by place. They were all searching for the same person, and unlike the friends, The Order had the manpower to search all of those places at once. Alex glared at the masked operative. Not only was The Order standing in the way of where they needed to go, they were also a threat to get there first!

  “It is not like you to dispense life lessons, Aff Neb,” said Todtman, giving this horror a name. “Death is more your style.”

  Aff Neb’s many eyes shimmered like water as they shifted focus. “True,” he rasped. “Death tastes better … Let me show you.”

  Aff Neb’s mouth puckered and smacked one more time — and then released a thick stream of greenish-brown vapor. The putrid plume billowed forth, filling the little clearing among the shelves.

  “Don’t breathe it in!” shouted Alex before slapping his hand over his mouth and nose.

  “No kidding!” called Ren, her own eyes bugging out from the approaching grossness.

  Just a few feet away now, it smelled more like a thousand sweaty feet. Alex held his breath and shifted his grip, dropping one hand to his amulet and pushing the other out in front of him.

  The mystic wind rose up with merciful swiftness, ruffling books and papers all around — and pushing the stink cloud back where it came from.

  “Guhh!” Alex gasped. He released the sour breath he’d been holding and gulped a fresh lungful that smelled like approaching rain.

  Aff Neb seemed entirely at home in his own stink. “I see you have been hard at work down here,” he said, eyeing the half-full box and remaining stacks of paper. “Tell me, what have you found?”

  Alex tried to step between the thousand-eyed gaze and the table, but there were better ways to obstruct the view.

  “Hey, fly guy!” called Ren.

  Aff Neb’s eyes shimmered as they shifted toward her. They had thousands of lenses — but no lids. Ren squeezed her ibis tightly.

  FOOOP! A bright-white flash lit the dim basement.

  “Grehh!” called the fly, his hands reaching up too late to cover his creepy peepers.

  Alex caught some of the flash, too, but before the swirling spots even faded from his vision he was already at the table, dumping the remaining stacks into the old box with both hands. “Got it!” he said, slapping the top closed.

  “Let’s go!” called Todtman, and the three Amulet Keepers turned to run.

  But as they did, Alex caught a glimpse of movement in the gaps in the bookshelves. In the narrow space between the tops of the old books and files and the shelves above them he saw cloth, arms, legs, a quick flash of metal — guns! “Uh, guys,” he said as they rushed away from Aff Neb and into the nearest row of shelves.

  “I see them,” said Todtman.

  “What are we going to do?” said Alex. Aff Neb had recovered and was in hot pursuit, and an ambush of Order gunmen awaited them among the rows.

  “Get in the clear,” said Todtman.

  His words came out in a sad, almost wistful sigh, and suddenly Alex knew what he was planning. “Oh no,” said Ren, figuring it out, too — and sharing Todtman’s academic reservations.

  The old scholar wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t hesitate. He squeezed down hard on the falcon and grunted slightly with the effort. By the time they reached the narrow gap at the end of the first row, the heavy metal bookcases had already begun falling like dominoes.

  Thousands of pounds of bound books and thick files tipped and toppled, and twice as much weight in metal shelves and stacked boxes came down, too.

  “GAAARARB!” shrieked Aff Neb as the heavy case they’d just rushed past fell over on him, pinning him against the next case as it fell, too. On either side, Order thugs were squashed like Order bugs. Somewhere in the stacks, a pistol went off, the bang muffled as the bullet buried itself in some old book or other.

  Standing in their tiny clearing amid a veritable paper apocalypse, Todtman and Ren cast horrified looks all around. Even Alex was stunned by how fast decades of neatly filed scholarship had been reduced to toppled chaos.

  “That is going to take forever to re-alphabetize,” moaned Ren.

  But even as they surveyed the wreckage, their pursuers began to push free. An arm punched through a stack of books to the left, the sound of shifting, tearing paper was heard to the right, and then: FOOM! A stack of books was blown clear up to the ceiling by the telekinetic might of the fly mask.

  “There!” said Todtman, pointing to a door along the wall. “The staircase.”

  Alex and Ren began picking their way over the fallen books and files and shelves. Ren made decent time hopping from one flat spot among the books and boxes to the next, but Alex was carrying a crumpled box of his own and couldn’t quite manage the jumps. He hunted for level surfaces to place his feet.

  “Hurry, hurry!” called Ren. “I see a gun!”

  Alex turned to look. Sure enough, a hand pushed a black pistol through the piled paperwork. Alex used the scarab to send the weapon flipping end over end across the room, but he knew there would be more. They needed to get to the stairs fast, and if this shifting terrain was tough for him, how would Todtman ever manage on one good leg?

  “Watch out!” Todtman called as he zoomed past.

  Alex stumbled out of the way, then did a double take. Todtman had his hand on his amulet and a book under each foot. Alex couldn’t believe it: He was using his amulet to ride the old books like skates, the flat surface of each one hovering a few inches above the scattered debris. He zipped toward the door like a bug skimming across the surface of a pond.

  Alex spotted some big books in front of him and looked down at his own amulet. No way, he thought. Todtman had had decades to practice with his amulet. If Alex tried, it would be 3, 2, 1: face-plant! Instead, he and Ren hopped and stumbled and hustled across the last half shelf.

  Todtman reached the heavy fire door to the stairwell first, and as soon as the other two arrived, he flung it open.

  Alex’s breath caught in his throat as he stared into the stairwell — and at the wall of guns directly inside.

  A row of three tightly packed men stood in the doorway,
and there were three more a few steps up, all pointing semiautomatic pistols directly at them. With two barrels pointed at his face, Alex knew that any move toward his amulet would mean death. Or maybe they would just shoot them all, anyway.

  “What?” came a jagged voice behind them. “You didn’t think we would cover the exits?”

  Alex and the others slowly turned to face Aff Neb, the guns that had been pointed at their faces now jabbing into their exposed backs.

  “I will take that box now,” the fly said. His greasy robes were torn, and it seemed as if all eight thousand lenses in his eyes were brimming with annoyance. Other gunmen were rising from the scattered debris and filling in alongside their leader. Their bodies were battered, their guns were pointed, and they all seemed pretty eager to pull the trigger.

  Alex knew better than to anger them now, and yet …

  He glanced down at the box. It was because of him that the Death Walkers had been released, because of him that The Order’s plans had been set in motion. Now he was being asked to hand over the keys to victory, as well.

  “Here you go,” he said, pulling the heavy cardboard cube out from under his arm and extending it forward.

  “Alex!” hissed Ren.

  “You mustn’t,” said Todtman.

  He wouldn’t. No matter the cost.

  As Aff Neb took a step forward, Alex continued the motion, using all his strength to toss the box up toward the ceiling.

  “Catch it!” cried Aff Neb.

  But as all eyes followed the modest flight of the box, Alex quickly grasped his amulet, thrust out his free hand, and absolutely obliterated the thing with a concentrated spear of whipping wind. The old cardboard was torn to shreds, and the last thing Alex saw was a shower of paper and pictures and pottery scattering through the air and drifting down toward the waiting chaos all around. Toward a floor full of books and paper and pictures and pottery from all the other fallen files and boxes.

  That ought to keep ’em busy, he thought.

  Then the butt of a pistol smashed down on the back of his head and his whole world went dark.