Skymaster Horus shouted. “Ka-Tor awaits!”
Jake crossed to the rail and stared ahead. Off in the distance, a sprawling metropolis sat atop a plain of black rock. Two walls of stone enclosed the city: an outer ring and an inner one. A massive pyramid rose in the center. It looked like one solid piece of stone.
Ammon came running up from below. “Princess, we must get you ready for our arrival! I’ve polished your headpiece and have your finery ready to grace your beauty.”
Nefertiti grew even more irritated and strode off in a huff.
Ammon scowled at Jake’s group as if they were to blame for the princess’s sour mood. He waved to their Egyptian guard. “Put the prisoners back in their shackles before we arrive.”
Nefertiti disappeared down into the hold, and Ammon scurried to catch up with her.
Marika stood with her hands on her hips. “After all we’ve done, they’re chaining us again. Nefertiti could have ordered us to be set free.”
Jake agreed but understood. The five of them were strangers here, cursed by using the name Calypsos. Until they were questioned, Nefertiti was taking no chances.
“She’s not really that bad,” Kady said, standing up for the princess. “Some girls back at school are way nastier than her. And did you see her with that spear, how she moved?”
Pindor nodded a bit too vigorously.
“She’s good,” Kady concluded. “Even said she’d teach me some of her moves with that spear.”
Jake turned away.
Great, like Kady needs to be any more lethal …
Beyond the rail, he watched the city below grow larger. He didn’t know what to expect down there, but they’d been sent here for a reason. He just knew it. Nefertiti had described the barrier as impenetrable. So how did he and his friends get through?
Jake could think of only one possible answer.
The Skull King’s words played again in his head, scraping out of the darkness between worlds. Jake heard raw desire in that icy voice.
The Key of Time …
Jake pulled out the watch from under his shirt and cracked the case open. Had this somehow brought them here? Was that why Kalverum Rex wanted it from the start? Was he even now searching for another way to get past the Great Wind?
Jake sensed that he was on the right track. He studied the face of the watch. The second hand spun around and around—but something was wrong. The hand was spinning too fast, ticking off minutes twice as fast as it should be.
He frowned. What was wrong?
As the windrider descended toward the city, the sweep of seconds spun even faster, as if sensing the approach to Ka-Tor. The closer they drew, the faster it spun, growing more and more excited as it neared the city.
But why?
Jake guessed a possible answer.
Maybe the watch wasn’t only a key—but also a compass!
Like a Geiger counter tracking radiation, the watch must sense something in Ka-Tor, something so important that it had to be locked within a ring of storms here centuries ago. Something the Skull King desperately wanted.
Jake studied the approaching city with a sharper eye, sensing now why they’d all been dropped into this strange land. He lifted the watch higher as welcoming horns trumpeted below. He stared at the drawing inscribed inside the case—the ankh symbol: a clue left behind by his parents.
It all led here.
Something lost needed to be found.
But what?
Could it be some road marker to the true fate of his mother and father? Jake pictured his parents, flashing to the last photo of them both, smiling and happy. Was that the purpose of the compass built into the pocket watch? To find them?
He stared toward the city.
The only answers lay below.
But will I live long enough to discover them?
PART THREE
12
THE DUNGEONS OF KA-TOR
Back in shackles, Jake and the others were marched down a wide thoroughfare that crossed the sprawling city. The airfield lay outside the main gates. Jake had counted four more windriders parked there, and a royal barge so large that it took three balloons to haul it up.
Townspeople gathered to either side of the street in a carnival atmosphere. Fingers pointed at them. Horns continued to blare. Men shouted and bartered. Children ran everywhere, even hopping from rooftop to rooftop. Built of sandy bricks, the homes and stalls were mostly one story, with high, thin windows. Glancing inside revealed stone floors and little furniture. The place smelled of cooking fires, sweat, and exotic spices.
Princess Nefertiti led the procession in a palanquin painted in crimson and gold. Fine cloths, all dyed sky blue, draped her freshly scrubbed form. She wore a circlet of gold on her head. Jake had trouble picturing this painted and polished girl as the hunter in the desert.
Maintaining her role, she waved in a robotic fashion, plainly out of sorts, as her palanquin was carried aloft by four burly men, all wearing collars. In fact, Jake spotted only a smattering of Egyptians among the throng. All the rest wore collars.
This must be where the slave-class inhabitants made their homes, but the place seemed far from miserable—the opposite in fact. It was raucous and colorful. Desert flowers sprouted from pots and planter boxes. Community fountains babbled and glistened through channels cut in the rock.
A tiny saurian the size of a Chihuahua suddenly zipped past Jake’s toes, tripping him a step. It paused to hiss at him; and before it zipped away, Jake spotted a tiny scroll secured like a bow tie under its jaw. Dozens of other such beasts flitted and stormed through the crowd, running on two legs, often darting between someone’s legs.
Marika hid a smile behind her hand. “They must be like the dartwings back in Calypsos. Running messages around the town.”
As they marched, Jake occasionally saw a house painted black. Its windows would be sealed with stones. The doorway would be barred shut. None of the people in the streets glanced toward these homes. Some even passed by with their eyes shielded against the sight.
Jake noted a crimson symbol smudged on the doors: the image of a skull with horns above it. The symbol looked as if it had been painted in blood.
He counted more than a dozen such homes along the road from the main gate to the inner city.
When Pindor noticed them, he asked, “Are those places cursed?”
“I don’t know,” Jake answered. “The symbol on the top—the one that looks like horns—is the hieroglyph for ka, the Egyptian word for soul or spirit.”
Kady snorted. “And even I can guess what that skull means.”
Death.
Jake shared a worried look with his friends. “From the dripping red paint, I think we’re looking at the symbol for that cult Politor was telling us about.”