Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx (25 page)

“What's wrong?” Jake asked.

“Those riddles,” he said. “They both speak of the passing of time.”

Jake stood straighter. Bach'uuk was right. Time was the crux of everything: the mysterious crystals were called
timestones
, his mother could be trapped in the past, and now the riddles of the Sphinx. He sensed something important behind this realization.

But before he could ponder it, the ship suddenly rolled and threw them all toward the door. Shouts and horns blared from up top.

Jake helped Marika back to her feet—only to be thrown in the opposite direction.

As they crashed into a heap, Pindor yelled. “What's happening?”

The answer came from the doorway. Nefertiti stood braced there. Her words offered no comfort.

“We're under attack!”

Jake burst topside into chaos.

The crew ran all about, readying the ship for battle. Swords and axes were being handed out. Teams assembled giant crossbows as large as cannons to the port and starboard sides. Others cranked an even larger catapult into position at the prow.

What was going on?

He searched all around looking for the enemy but saw no threat.

“Follow me!” Nefertiti said, and led Jake and the others toward the stern, where Horus, Politor, and Shaduf had their heads bent together.

As Jake climbed the flight of steps to the raised deck, he finally saw what had the crew in a frenzy. A huge ship flew a half mile behind them, silhouetted against the sinking sun.

Jake hurried to the rail to get a better look. He had seen
the ship before at the airfield. With three massive balloons and a battleship-sized deck, it was the royal barge.

Shaduf joined them. “Looks like Kree and the rest of his black-robed ilk grew wings.”

“How dare they steal my father's skybarge?” Nefertiti said hotly.

“Can we outrun them?” Jake asked.

“For a while,” Shaduf answered with a shrug. “Maybe even long enough to reach the Great Wind. But they'll be right up our tails by then.”

Jake turned in the other direction. The smudged line of sandstorms was still miles away. “Then what can we do?”

Shaduf waved an arm over the scrambling crew. “Try our best to survive.” He handed a spyglass to Jake before returning to Horus and Politor. “Take a look. Seems like Kree really wants that pretty rock of yours.”

Jake stepped to the rail and raised his spyglass, adjusting the focus. His friends flanked him to either side. The barge swelled into view. It looked like an entire army gathered atop the deck, ten times the crew of the
Breath of Shu
. He spotted archers with longbows, a trio of catapults at the prow, dozens of giant crossbow cannons.

Not only were they outnumbered … they were outgunned.

A pair of figures stood at the bow. Kree and Heka. As Jake spied on them, he saw the witch's head snap up and
stare straight at him.

Jake tensed, but his hatred kept him rooted in place.

From a fold of her robe, Heka pulled out her small wand made of bone and held it aloft. She waved a clawed hand along its length—where even from here Jake could make out the black shadow of the bloodstone at its tip. Something dribbled from the claw of her hand to the crystal. He could guess what it was, what that dread stone always craved.

Blood.

The end of the wand began to smoke with shadows. The witch bent down and blew on the crystal as if trying to extinguish a candle's flame. Smoke blasted out from the wand's tip, shattering into a thousand bits of shadow—then vanishing.

Jake did not know what sort of alchemy was being cast, but it couldn't be good. He lowered the spyglass.

Pindor held out a hand for his turn. “Is it as bad as it looks?”

“Worse.”

Pindor stared down at the spyglass—then handed it over to Marika. He plainly would rather not look.

“Make ready to turn to starboard!” Horus bellowed from the stern, keeping a hand on the ship's rudder. “On my mark! Go!”

Gears were cranked, the wings below shifted, and the ship tilted to the right.

“Why are we turning?” Jake asked. “That's only going to slow us down.”

Nefertiti leaned over the rail and pointed ahead of the ship. “The Flame Forest. No one flies over it. We must circle around it to reach the Great Wind.”

Jake didn't see the danger. In fact, he didn't see any forest. The land ahead was covered thickly with white crystalline rock formations, like giant versions of the salt crystals he grew in his earth science classes. Some climbed hundreds of feet up in the air, reflecting the setting sun.

As he studied the strange landscape, he saw that the air above the formations shimmered with heat and had a greasy pall to it. Then a pillar of flame shot into the sky, twisting like a fiery tornado. It hovered in the air for several seconds, then fell away. Moments later, another two blasted skyward, one reaching nearly as high as the ship.

He remembered the danger zone marked with a flaming skull on the map. Now he understood why they were turning. Curious, he borrowed the spyglass from Marika and took a closer look.

Before he did so, he spotted the royal barge making the same slow turn. No one wanted to fly over that flaming field. Focusing down on one of the rock formations, Jake saw why it was called a
forest
. The branches of giant crystals, tangled and sticking out at all angles, did sort of look like tortured trees. There even seemed to be clusters
of berries hanging in rows from the lower branches.

“It is where we harvest our firefruit,” Nefertiti said, nodding to the red gourds used to fuel the ship's forges. “But it is dangerous work. Takes a steady hand and great skill. Pluck one that's too ripe, knock one cluster into another, and
boom
.”

Jake lowered the spyglass and stared at the roaring flames shooting into the balloon.

“According to the old stories, the forest used to be far larger and much tamer, planted and tended by the Grand Magisters of Ankh Tawy. Since the city's fall, the forest has grown wilder, slowly consuming itself.” Another twisting tower of flame blasted into the sky. “Eventually it will burn itself out.”

Shouts rose from the front of the boat and drew everyone's attention forward. A black storm rose ahead of them: smoky thunderheads that climbed high into the sky. All knew it to be unnatural.

Jake remembered the spell cast by Heka, dark shadows driven into the wind. It seemed that those seeds had taken hold and grown into something monstrous. But what was it?

A piercing screech cut through the air between the two windriders. Heka was screaming from the bow of the royal barge. Her call came echoing back—from the storm clouds, from a thousand throats.

“Harpies!” Skymaster Horus boomed out.

Jake raised his spyglass toward the storm. As the view zoomed to him, he saw that the captain was right. The sky was packed with the churning, writhing bodies of thousands of beastly creatures. The witch had given a clarion call to the harpy horde, drawing them out of their nesting grounds in the Great Wind.

What had Marika called the witch?

A grakyl brood queen
.

Jake stared at the storm rolling toward them, screeching for blood. Like a queen bee, Heka had summoned her hive to battle.

Jake turned to see the royal barge closing in behind them.

Pindor's eyes shone with fear, but he was never one to miss a clever bit of strategy. “It was a trap all along,” he said. “And we flew right into it. They've boxed us against the Flame Forest. There's nowhere we can go. Death lies in every direction.”

“Maybe not,” Jake said. He ran toward Horus, leading the others.

Busy rallying his crew, the skymaster frowned as Jake confronted him. “What do you want?”

“I think I know a way to escape this noose.”

Horus was ready to wave Jake away, but Shaduf urged patience. “Hear the boy out.”

As Jake explained his idea, the doubtful look on the skymaster's face changed to horror.

“That's pure madness!” Horus said.

Shaduf, already half mad, only grinned.

Politor nodded. “It might work. And it's not like we have many options.”

Outnumbered, Horus stared to either side of the ship. The Flame Forest was on one side, the storm of harpies on the other and out in front. The royal barge had closed in behind.

The skymaster finally sighed, recognizing the grimness of their situation. He took a deep breath and bellowed to the crew: “Ready to hard port!”

The faces of the crew turned to him as if he'd gone crazy. All that lay in that direction was the Flame Forest.

“You heard me! On my mark! Go!”

The crew snapped to action, cranking wildly on their winches. Cables pulled hard, and the
Breath of Shu
turned sharply to the left, tipping up on one wing. Jake and his friends clutched the rail. For a moment, he was staring straight down at the desert. A flutter of vertigo made him woozy.

Then the ship's keel evened out, and the world righted itself.

Shaduf pointed to the front of the boat. “Maybe you'd better go to the bow, get yourselves as far from the flames as possible.”

Jake recognized the wisdom of his words. “Let's go.”

He and his friends fled down the stairs and across the
lower middeck. They passed crew members hauling barrel after barrel of the ruby-red fire gourds toward the rear of the ship. His plan had to work, or Jake had just doomed the ship to a fiery end.

Still, for any chance of survival, they needed as much speed as possible.

“Ready to dive!” Horus hollered.

As Jake crossed to the bow, the front of the ship dropped, tilting the boards under his feet. He slid to the front railing and grabbed on hard. His friends hit the rails to either side of him.

The roar of the balloon's forge died behind him, and the ship began to plummet earthward, diving nosefirst. Again Jake found himself staring at the ground as it rushed toward him. Wind whipped his hair, screamed in his ears. Below him, the sandy desert changed to a tangled forest of giant crystals.

“Pull up! Now!” Horus screamed.

With a groan of wood and the piano-tuning keen of strained cable, the nose of the ship lifted.

Slowly, too slowly.

The ground raced up to them.

Pindor mumbled under his breath. It sounded like both a prayer and a curse. Marika leaned hard against Jake.

At last, the ship evened out and raced only yards above the crystal forest. Trees exploded into flame, blasting up behind the ship as the crew dumped barrel after barrel of
fire gourds over the stern. Soon a twisting forest of flames filled the world behind them, rising into a fiery wall.

The heat washed over the boat like the searing breath of a dragon.

Jake stared past the fires and watched the royal barge turn sharply away, chased back by the flames. The harpy horde scattered before the smoke and heat, not daring to follow.

“It's working!” Pindor called out.

Nefertiti gloated. “It will take them a long time to circle around the forest. We'll reach the Great Wind well ahead of them.”

Jake wanted to be sure. He pulled out the spyglass and focused back through the flames. He steadied his hand to pick out the retreating barge. Black shapes scurried among catapults, and the barge slowly turned to face the forest.

Uh-oh
.

“They're firing!” Jake shouted, his eye still glued to the spyglass.

“But it's too far,” Pindor said, his voice dismayed by Jake's desperation. “They'll never hit us.”

The enemy thought differently. They released a catapult, flinging what looked like a large boulder toward the boat. Then the second catapult fired … and the third.

Jake lowered his glass and stared back toward the flames. The first shot blasted through the fiery wall, sailing high, too high. Pindor was right. The shot wasn't
even close, just a parting potshot. It flew over the top of the ship and crashed into the forest ahead of them.

As it hit, flames burst forth, spiraling high into the sky.

Surprised shouts rang out from the crew.

Jake then knew that Kree wasn't taking potshots at them. He didn't need to be accurate—not when the
Breath of Shu
flew over a smoldering powder keg.

The second and third boulders hit the forest ahead of them, blasting into fresh flames and, in turn, igniting neighboring trees. The firestorm spread wider and wider in a chain reaction.

Horus bellowed, “Dive! Dive!”

Jake's heart pounded with shock.
Dive?
Shouldn't they try to climb above the flames?

As the ship's nose dipped again, building up speed, Jake suddenly realized the captain's plan. They'd never make it over the firestorm. The only chance of survival was speed, to ram straight through and hope for the best.

With no time to get belowdecks, Jake yelled to his friends. “Get down!”