“The Howling Sphinx of Ankh Tawy,” the madman explained.
This was the story of the fall of the great city, a history written in bits of glass and tile.
“Jake!” Kady yelled, and waved for him to join her.
He hurried forward, irritated. “What?”
Her eyes were huge as she pointed at the third mosaic. The city still lay in ruins, but it was now dead quiet. Nothing moved but the wind, whipping the sand. But in place of the Sphinx, a single figure stood over the lost city, looking like a giant ready to crush the ruins to dust.
The madman spoke. “She who came from Calypsos. She who woke the Great Sphinx and destroyed Ankh Tawy.”
Kady turned to Jake, but he could not speak. His sister choked out the impossibility of it. “It’s Mom.”
18
TWO WILL FALL
How could that be?
Jake struggled to understand what he was seeing. How could his mother be up on that wall? But there was no mistaking her yellow hair, the curve of her cheek, or her bright eyes made of sky blue glass tiles. Even her clothes resembled the khaki safari outfit she always wore in the field.
“It’s Mom,” Kady said again, with a tremble in her voice. “Now we know she made it here.”
Jake felt a similar surge of hopefulness. Despite the recovery of his father’s watch in the great Temple of Kukulkan, neither of them could be certain their parents had made it to the valley of Calypsos, that they weren’t murdered by grave robbers as the world believed.
But Jake’s mood was tempered by what the mosaic implied. “Ankh Tawy fell hundreds of years ago. If Mom and Dad landed here … if they stayed …”
He couldn’t finish that sentence.
A shadow fell over Kady’s face. “Then they’d be dead.”
Marika hurried forward and hugged Kady. But her emerald green eyes also found Jake’s. “You can’t know that.”
Bach’uuk nodded. “Sand is a river. Flows back and forth. But never stops.”
Lost in a dark funk, Jake had little patience for his friend’s Ur philosophy.
Kady gave Marika a quick return hug, then stepped back. “Bach’uuk is right.”
Jake stared at her.
She gave him an exasperated look. “He’s clearly talking about time. Sand’s a metaphor. Try taking some English classes sometime instead of all that geek stuff. He’s saying time is fluid, like a river.” She waved her hand back and forth. “You can travel up or down it. I mean, look what happened to us. Who knows where Mom and Dad ended up?”
Jake wanted to believe her, but he couldn’t shake off his despair. Still, Kady’s words did stoke a small ember of hope in his heart. In the end, she was right. Who knew where—or when—his parents were? All he knew for sure was that they had to get moving.
Jake turned toward the main doors; but Pindor tugged him back, coming close to pulling him off his feet. “Did you see this?”
“What?”
Pindor moved him a few steps farther along the mosaic. “In your mother’s hand. Look!”
Too shocked at seeing his mother’s face, Jake had missed the obvious. In his mother’s right hand he saw a ruby crystal, perfectly round, fashioned to look like an eye.
“Looks the same size as the emerald crystal you just took.”
Could Pindor be right?
Jake wiggled around and snagged his backpack. He pulled out the green crystal. He hadn’t given it much of a look. He lifted it toward one of the torches. Through the fiery light, he saw a streak of black, like a vein of obsidian that cut through the center, making the gem look like a cat’s eye.
In the mosaic, his mother’s crystal had the same defect.
At that moment, Jake felt a close connection to his mother. He held a stone, twin to hers, only a different color. She must have taken it, too. From Ankh Tawy.
Like mother, like son.
As he lowered the stone, he found the old man’s gaze upon him. His eyes glowed with strange contemplation, hinting at a sharper intelligence than he’d shown. Then he dug something out of his gray beard, something tiny with squirming legs, and crunched it between his teeth.
At the sound of a door opening, Jake jumped, then waved everyone down.
Voices echoed across the hall as two people entered the chamber. Jake crawled over to get a look. Were they guards? Were they dangerous?
He spotted the pair standing under one of the torches by the door. The two men searched the chamber for a breath, then hunched together in a conspiratorial fashion. One was a thin shadow cloaked in the priestly black robe of the Blood of Ka; the other had a round belly, draped in fancy linens. He wore the soft sandals of a palace servant. From his red-painted face and tattooed black eyeliner, Jake guessed that he was someone of importance, perhaps a royal attendant.
The pair must have ducked out of the busier passages to keep their conversation private. But the acoustics in the chamber carried their words clearly.
“Kree has the girl calmed again,” the priest said. “At least for now. But her suspicions are likely to rise again. Especially after the nightshadow elixir sends the pharaoh back into a deathly slumber.”
“How does this change your master’s plans?” the other asked. He lifted a black glass vial in the shape of a teardrop and studied it.
“Kree is done waiting. Omens from burnt offerings foretell that this is the time to act.”
The Blood of Ka priest slipped a second vial from his robe and held it out toward the palace servant.
Refusing, the servant backed away, his black-lined eyes growing huge. “But twice the draught will kill him.”
“Precisely.” The priest nodded to the vial. “Once done, you are to place the empty bottles within Nefertiti’s bedchamber.”
This drew the other closer again. “You plan to blame the princess? To make it look like she poisoned the pharaoh?”
A nod. The priest held out the vial again. “Two draughts. Two will fall.”
This time the servant took it, tucking the two vials up a billowing sleeve. “With both gone, the throne will be open for your master.”
“As it should be. The Blood of Ka will rise to full power!”
With a flare of his robe, the priest led the way out. The door slammed behind them.
Jake and the others stood up.
Marika clenched her hands together. “What are we going to do?”
As answer, Jake headed across the room. “We’re getting out of here. If the pharaoh is killed, they’ll lock down this whole place. We can’t be caught skulking about when word spreads that the guy was poisoned.”