Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx (28 page)

Jake knew that sandstorms occasionally sparked with static electricity, but never on this scale. How could they even consider entering that savage storm? It was pure madness.

He turned away and watched Politor fall to his knees, covering his face, grieving. There was his answer. Lives had already been lost. He could not balk now.

Still, he suddenly felt hopeless.

“You all might want to see this,” Shaduf called behind him. “Since it's about the bunch of you.”

Jake was happy to turn away from the storm. Shaduf and Nefertiti stood before a sheer cliff, the same spit of
rock he'd rounded a moment ago. The old man held a torch up toward the stone's surface.

Curious, Jake and his friends joined Nefertiti and her uncle. Lit by the torch, a few lines of hieroglyphics that were carved into the stone glowed. Unadorned and without paint, they looked crude and hastily written. Still, there was a simple artistry that Jake found appealing, deeply so. For some reason, his eyes welled with tears.

Feeling stupid, he wiped them away, but he could not escape a feeling of profound loss. The grief hit him unexpectedly. He shook his head. A part of him still struggled to cope with Kady's death. He had bottled it away, plugged it with the thought of killing that murderous witch—but it was still there.

Shaduf held up his torch. “Here is written the Prophecy of Lupi Pini.”

Jake stepped forward. He kept hearing about this prophecy and wanted a closer look. Shaduf's torchlight reflected off a prominent cartouche carved at the top.

Such ringed sets of hieroglyphics were used by the Egyptians to highlight special names: pharaohs, queens, and gods. In this case, the cartouche enclosed the name of the one who had written this prophecy.

Running his torch along the writing below the cartouche, Shaduf translated. “The prophecy states: ‘There shall come from Calypsos another group of wanderers. When that day rises, the great storm will blow its last, and new worlds will open for all the peoples of Deshret.'”

Shaduf faced them, his eyes glistening. “That is why so many good people shed their blood, not only for freedom, but for the hope of a new world.”

Seeing the shine in the old man's eyes, Jake felt ashamed for his momentary lapse in faith. These people had been waiting for so long. He could not fail them.

“But who wrote that?” Marika asked. “How do we even know it's talking about us?”

“Maybe it was just some crazy scribbling,” Pindor agreed.

Bach'uuk looked to Jake for an answer, some final judgment before they risked entering the storm because of the words of a dead fortune-teller.

But what do I know about any of this?

Jake stared at the cartouche. In his mind's eye, he translated the hieroglyphic letters, eight in all, written in two lines.

He shook his head. It was just as Shaduf had stated. It was the Prophecy of Lupi Pini. It meant nothing to him. He began to turn away when he noticed that the hieroglyphic figures—the lion, the quail, the reeds—were all facing
left
. That nagged him for some reason. He turned back to study the cartouche more closely, scratching his head. The direction in which hieroglyphs face often indicate the way in which they should be read. But even that changed over time. In the New Kingdom of Egypt, hieroglyphs were read from top to bottom; but in the Old Kingdom, it was the reverse.

If this prophecy had been carved centuries ago, maybe the name was supposed to be read the opposite way: bottom to top. He flipped the words in his head.

Jake mumbled the name aloud, his voice trembling, “Pini Lupi.”

Marika wrinkled her brow, sensing his growing distress. “What?”

His breathing became heavier, as if the air had been sucked out of his lungs. “It's been read wrong all this time,” he said, and faced the others. “The ancient Egyptian alphabet didn't have letters for
E
and
O
. So modern writers would often replace those letters with the hieroglyphs for
I
and
U
.”

“I don't understand,” Pindor said. “What does that mean?”

It meant everything.

In his head, Jake scratched out the wrong letters and scrawled in the right ones: turning
I
s into
E
s and the single
U
back into an
O
.

Once done, he whispered the true name of the prophet who had carved these words. “Pene Lope.”

He now understood why seeing the hieroglyphics had struck him so deeply, so emotionally. It had nothing to do with Kady. For as long as he could remember, he had poured over his mother's old field notebooks filled with drawing, sketches, and illustrations. Deep inside, a part of
him must have recognized her familiar style, her strokes, the way she drew. It took his brain longer to catch up.

“Penelope,” Jake stammered. “That's my mother's name. She wrote this message.”

Unable to face their stunned expressions, Jake turned to the storm. True night had fallen over the desert. In the dark, the spats of lightning blinded like a camera's flash, crackling and coursing throughout the storm.

Jake stared as a crescendo of bolts lit the depths of the maelstrom. For a moment, the ghostly outline of towers and shadowy structures shimmered deep within the storm's heart.

Ankh Tawy.

He knew he had to reach that lost city.

Not for freedom, not to honor any debt of blood.

But because his mother had told him to.

“I should go in alone,” Jake said.

Everyone gathered fifty paces from the whirlwind. Lightning crackled, brightening the night, while flurries of sand lashed out at them. To protect eyes and skin, cloaks had been pulled over faces and backs were turned to the storm.

“You can't brave those winds by yourself,” Marika argued.

Jake held up the pocket watch. “We don't even know if this will grant safe passage.”

“It must,” Shaduf said. “I am willing to try. I am old. You are young.”

Jake shook his head. It was his father's watch. As the sole surviving Ransom, it was his responsibility to try. According to legend, his mother had called forth this storm. It was up to him to stop it. Before anyone else could protest, he headed out. Marika took a step to follow, but even she
recognized the folly and halted.

“Be careful,” she called to him.

He glanced back, hearing her true heart in those two simple words of concern, and saw something deeper shining in her eyes, something that gave him the strength to turn and march toward the storm.

He could not fail.

Alone, he headed across the storm-swept margin of desert that ended at the savage wall of swirling sand. But he'd taken only ten steps when a shout rose from Politor.

“Fire in the sky!”

Jake stopped and looked up. The night blazed with silvery stars, but that wasn't what roused the man. Overhead, a windrider blazed like a flaming birthday cake, erupting brighter as fresh torches were lit along its rails.

“The royal barge!” Politor yelled.

Jake tensed. Kree had caught up with them. He must have flown in without lights and now had the barge plummet earthward, mimicking the plan that Skymaster Horus had used earlier to rescue the prisoners from the arena. But Kree did not come alone.

A dark cloud obscured the stars behind the royal barge. The shadow spread outward, swooping down with the craft. Jake didn't need to hear the screeching to know what it was: the horde of harpies, still bent to the will of the witch.

“Run!” Pindor called to Jake. “Make for the storm!”

He hated to abandon the others, but his friend was right. He had to get through that barrier if this land had any hope of escaping the yoke of the Skull King, who controlled the witch and would rule them all.

Turning, Jake ran for the edge of the sandstorm. Flaming gourds shot from shipboard crossbows forced him back.

One exploded a yard away, blinding Jake, sending him diving and rolling in the sand. Overhead, jets of flame marked the flights of skyriders rolling off the barge's deck and heading down.