Area 51: The Legend (17 page)

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.

“What is it?”

“It is called Excalibur,” Asim said. “Take hold of the sword, my Pharaoh. Remove it from the crystal.”

Khufu reached down and grabbed the handle of the sword. The sword, still covered by the sheath, slid smoothly out of the crystal.

“Now free the blade, my lord.”

Khufu hesitated. “Why?”

“My Pharaoh, it will free the red capstone we just put on top of the pyramid to act outside of itself.”

“That makes no sense. What can the capstone do?”

“I am telling you only what I was instructed, my lord. It is important.”

Khufu began to draw back the blade. A shock coursed out of the handle through his hand and into his body as he pulled it out of the sheath.

Khufu staggered back as a golden glow filled the entire chamber. Khufu blinked as the smoothly cut walls flickered and then came to life. A flurry of images flashed across them, so quickly he could barely note them: a massive golden palace that dwarfed the pyramid he had just built, set on a hill above a beautiful city of white stone surrounded by seven moats of water; a wave-battered island with three volcanic mountains in each corner sitting alone in an endless ocean; a rocky uninhabited desert with mountains surrounding a dry lake bed; a desolate land swept by snow and ice; a strange land where the sand was red and a massive mountain dominated the horizon, and other images flashing by faster and faster so that he lost track.

Suddenly the walls went black, then a new image appeared, of a field of stars, so many Khufu could not even begin to count, and the stars were moving rapidly, wheeling across the walls.

Then blank again, before revealing a view of the surface above but from a perspective he didn’t recognize at first. He could see the Sphinx and the Nile beyond as if from a great height, and he then realized that in some manner the walls in this deep cavern were reflecting the view from the top of the Great Pyramid. The red capstone was now glowing as if lit from within.

He started as a seven-foot-high red line appeared between him and the vision on the walls. The line wavered, then widened until a figure appeared, a twin to the statue above. Yet Khufu could see through the figure, to the display on the wall.

He was trying to take all this in, when the figure began speaking. The language was singsong, one the Pharaoh had never heard.

“Do you understand the words?” he asked Asim, his voice a whisper, as if the image could hear.

“It is the language of the Gods, my lord. I was taught as much of the language as has been passed down and remembered among the high priests.”

Khufu waited impatiently for the priest to translate.

“It was hoped the Great Pyramid would bring more of the Gods,” Asim finally said, his head cocked to one side, his single eye closed as he listened closely and tried to understand. “That was the design.” Asim’s thin tongue snaked around his lips as he listened further. “It has not worked that way. Instead an enemy comes.” Asim’s good arm slowly raised until it pointed upward. “From the sky above.”

Khufu looked at the ceiling of the chamber. He could see the sky displayed. It was clear, not a cloud or bird visible.

“What kind of enemy?” Khufu asked, but Asim was again listening and didn’t respond right away.

“The Ancient Enemy of the Gods,” Asim finally said. “The killer of all life. The enemy with the patience of “— Asim shook his head—”I know not the word, but something like the patience of a stone, infinite. And the specific word for the enemy, the closest I can come to is when the locusts gather—a Swarm.”

Khufu had seen swarms of locusts passing overhead so thick they made day into night. When they alighted in a field, they stripped it bare within minutes. He tried to imagine a Swarm that could be a threat to the Gods but could not conceive of it. The vision continued speaking, the sound almost like that of a bird, Khufu thought.