Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx (19 page)

“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.”

Marika hurried after him. “But, Jake, we can't just let them murder Nefertiti's father. They're going to make it look like she did it.”

“Nefertiti got us thrown into the dungeons,” Jake said
impatiently. “Why should we help her?”

Pindor answered, his voice deep and angry. “Because it's the right thing to do.”

Bach'uuk gave a sharp approving nod.

As Jake reached the door, he stared at his friends. He suspected Pindor's sudden and uncharacteristic interest in risking his neck had more to do with Nefertiti's painted eyes and slender figure than with
doing the right thing
.

Jake tried reasoning with them. “If we hope to get out of this town, we have to reach the Crooked Nail. This is not our fight.”

“So when has that ever stopped you?” Kady asked.

Clearly Jake was outnumbered. He looked to the last, and newest, member of their group for help. But the old man simply scratched his beard, studying Jake as if this were a test.

And maybe it was.

Marika touched the back of Jake's hand. “You know how it feels to lose people you love. Will you do nothing when the same loss befalls Nefertiti? No matter her willfulness, she's still just a girl who's scared for her father.”

Jake knew Marika was right. They all were. He glanced across the hall to the mural, to his mother's face. The shock of seeing her had set his heart to pounding and fired his desire to reach Ankh Tawy. He could not lose this chance to find a clue to his parents' fate.

Still, in the flickering torchlight, his mother's blue
eyes stared back at him. He remembered how they used to dance with delight or fill with love. At that moment, one certainty swayed him more than any argument. Jake knew how disappointed his mother would be if he stood by and did nothing.

He turned back to the others. “Okay, we'll go warn Nefertiti.”

He pictured them barging into her bedroom, babbling about the murder plot. It would likely get them all dumped back into the dungeons. Such a fate would certainly make Dogo happy.

But even before that could happen, one question remained. “How do we find the royal chambers in this giant maze?”

The old man spoke up. “I will show you.”

He headed back to the door, ready to lead the way.

Kady asked the question they were all thinking. She eyed the man up and down, clearly not trusting him. “How come you know where the royal chambers are?”

He gave them all a wink. “Because Pharaoh Neferhotep, the illustrious Glory of Ra … is my brother.”

“My name is Shaduf,” the old man said as he led them through a maze of passageways, slowly winding higher and higher up toward the loftier levels of the pyramid. “Master Kree took me to the dungeons two summers ago. I've been his guest ever since.”

He rubbed the bandaged stump of his wrist, indicating how well Kree had accommodated his guest.

“
Shaduf
,” the old man mumbled into his beard. “I've not spoken that name aloud in many moons. It was forbidden, lest the other prisoners should learn the truth. All of Ka-Tor believes I was killed. To keep that secret, Kree cut the throats of anyone who heard my name down there. So I stopped using it.”

Jake's group gathered into a tight knot around Shaduf, both to hear his story and to stick close together. Whenever they passed anyone, conversation stopped and they all sank deeper into their cloaks.

“Why did he imprison you?” Jake asked.

Shaduf barked out a sharp laugh, laced with a mad twitter. “He came to me two winters past. Wanted me to join the Blood of Ka, to help oust my brother from his throne. He knew my brother and I butted heads. I wanted to unite our people, to cut the slave rings from all necks. But Neferhotep was never one to stray from a path well trodden.”

“Still, you refused to go along with Kree's plot,” Marika said.

“Of course. My brother and I may disagree, but I would never harm him. Besides, I have no interest in being pharaoh. All that pomp, all those tedious laws and rules. Best left to someone like my brother.” Shaduf looked at them, his voice sharper with fury. “That bloody son of a harpy knew I would not take over, knew he'd get to rule if my brother fell; but he couldn't do it himself. Kree needed a royal ally, someone with the blood lineage, if he was to succeed.”

“You,” Jake said.

“And when I refused, he kidnapped me, faked my death, and has kept me prisoner ever since.”

“Why didn't he just kill you?” Pindor asked.

“Do not be fooled by his cruelty. He's a smart one. I think he kept me alive in case he needed another piece for his grand game. But he also knew I had knowledge that no one else did. I was once a hunter of lost alchemies, digging through scraps of our past. My interest centered
on stones of strange power.”

“Crystals,” Marika said.

He glanced sharply at her. “That's correct. Sometimes the Great Wind would blow small shards from the city into the desert sands. I'd dug up dozens, some as large as my thumbnail.” He held up his stumped wrist. “That is, when I still had a thumb.”

Marika looked away. “He did that to you?”

“He had many questions that needed answers.”

“About what?” Jake asked.

“About my brother, my nieces, but mostly about that strange stone carried by his witch, Heka. You saw it, didn't you?” He stared hard at Jake. Madness danced at the edges of his eyes. “A crystal darker than any shadow, but afire with evil.”

Jake nodded. The old man was talking about the bloodstone atop the witch's yellow wand. Somehow the Skull King must have gotten that foul crystal through the storm barrier to stretch his deadly reach.

Shaduf continued, “The witch came out of the desert one day with no past, no face, only that black stone. With it, she helped Kree forge the Blood of Ka. But like I said, Kree is smart. He wanted to know more about that crystal … and about the other stones I've studied. If there's power to be had, he wants it. So he kept me living to answer his questions.” He lifted his stump again. “It cost me fingers to keep my secrets.”

That edge of insanity burned brighter with memory of the torture.

“But I knew I only had so many fingers and toes. Eventually I began to tell. How could I not?” For a moment, he mumbled under his breath as if scolding and arguing with himself. Then his words steadied. “So I pretended to go mad, raving, pulling out my hair. It got them to stop asking questions, but I fear I have feigned madness for too long. I think it might have stuck.”

Marika placed a hand on his elbow. “I don't believe it.”

Jake didn't feel as confident.

When they climbed the last narrow staircase, a wide passageway decorated in rich tapestries opened ahead of them. The floors were covered in the petals of some desert rose, casting a sweet scent to the air.

Kady put her hands on her hips. “Let me guess. The royal quarters.”

Shaduf shushed her and hurried them forward past niches guarded by statues of Egyptian gods. “We've just climbed a private servant stair. The palace guards are not far off. We must move swiftly. The cover of our cloaks will not hide us up here.”

“Where are we going?” Jake asked.

“To Nefertiti's rooms. If we hope to stop Kree's plan, we will need her help.”

The old man guided them through an archway to a polished wooden door carved with hieroglyphics. He
knocked softly. A sharp voice responded. The words were muffled, but the tone was all princess. A moment later the door creaked open, and a tiny face peered out. It was a young girl, barely eight, probably a handmaiden.