Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx (29 page)

But they were not the first to the ground. Like crows flocking into a cornfield, the gnarled forms of harpies hit the sand all around. And they kept coming and coming, swirling in the air and scrabbling across the sand. They encircled the small camp and trapped everyone inside, including Jake.

He had no choice but to retreat toward the others.

Before he could reach them, a larger shape struck the earth between him and the others, claws digging deep, wings snapping wide. Jake skidded to a stop. At the sight of the grakyl witch, a fury as hot as molten magma flowed through his veins. He wanted to rip the emerald crystal from his pack and pound it into the sand, turning her to dust; but he knew that the resulting blast wave would take out his friends as well as his enemies.

A moment later, Kree joined Heka. As he landed,
ferried down from the barge by a skyrider, he took in the situation with a steely-eyed glance. More fliers unloaded the rest of his shadowy cult. Jake was shocked at how much he had changed. Kree's once-handsome face was now raw and swollen, both eyebrows missing, burned away. But the middle eye remained on his forehead.

As Kree spotted Jake, he stalked angrily toward him. He pulled something from his robe and tossed it onto the sand. It was Kady's cell phone. “That was
not
the Key of Time.”

So Kree had finally caught on to Jake's earlier ruse. From the condition of his face, Jake guessed that the master of the Blood of Ka had tried to use it to enter the Great Wind and had been rebuffed.

“I will have the Key!” Kree waved at the others. “Or do you wish all your friends turned into statues for my new palace?”

Heka hobbled forward, bearing her staff topped by the ruby crystal. Her eyes shone in the firelight, wicked with delight.

“And this time I will not be denied!” Kree declared. “I will summon Ka, who will make you obey.”

Kree stepped to Heka, who lifted her small wand in her other claw. She bit into a knuckle and let the blood run onto the black crystal at its tip. With the bloodstone fueled, she turned to Kree, who spread his arms and bared
his forehead. Reaching out, she touched the bloodstone to his tattooed eye.

Kree gasped and fell to one knee, dropping his head in agony. Jake held his breath, knowing what was coming. Kree slowly raised his face and turned to Jake. The third eye had opened, blazing with black fire.

The true master had arrived.

But it was not the Egyptian spirit god, Ka. In this matter, too, Kree had been deceived. In this case, by the witch. But at least Kree got the first two letters of the name correct. Unfortunately, he did not know who he truly worshipped.

Ka
was
Kalverum Rex
.

“No more games …”
the Skull King said, his voice scratching out of Kree's voice box. An arm rose and pointed toward Jake's friends.
“Kill one of the Calypsians …”

A pair of Blood of Ka priests grabbed Bach'uuk by the arms and dragged him forward. It was rare to see the Ur show fear; but at the moment, his eyes were huge, bright with terror. And with good reason.

Heka hobbled toward Bach'uuk, lifting her staff topped by the ruby crystal.

“No!” came a cry from among the prisoners. “Please don't!”

Marika burst from the group and ran forward. She fell to her knees between Jake and the creature that inhabited Kree. Her eyes swung between that monster and Jake.

“Just give him what he wants,” Marika pleaded with Jake. “Enough have died.”

Jake balked at obeying, but he saw the tears shining in her eyes and knew she was right. In the end, they'd rip him apart, find the pocket watch, and have the Key of Time. Enough blood had been spilled. He stared at the army around him and recognized the truth.

They had lost.

Jake reached out his arm and opened his fingers. The gold watch rested in his palm, reflecting the firelight. “Take it,” he said.

Kree came forward.
“The Key of Time … at last …”

Fingers clawed the timepiece from Jake's hand.

“Mine at last …”

Jake let his arm drop, defeated. He did not fight as a guard shoved him toward the other captives. Marika came with him, hunched and withdrawn. But once among the others, she snatched Jake's hand and drew him more deeply into the group, almost tugging his arm out of its socket in her haste.

Bach'uuk and Pindor joined them.

Marika waved them all down, shielded by the other prisoners.

“Did you get it?” Pindor asked.

Marika opened her hand, revealing Kady's cell phone. Jake's eyes widened, surprised. She must have snatched it from the sand as she dropped to her knees. The shock in
Jake's eyes drew a crooked smile from her.

“We're not giving up that easily,” she said.

She still had hold of his hand and gave it a squeeze before letting go. She wiggled and removed something from a pocket. Between her fingers, she held a piece of green crystal.

“The farspeaker,” Jake said. He remembered he'd dropped it in their dungeon cell, but Marika must have recovered it.

She handed both the phone and the crystal to Jake.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Call for help.”

“We certainly need it,” Pindor added.

Marika kept her attention on Jake. “We're swimming in water that's much too deep. We can't do this alone.”

Despite her bravery a moment ago, he read the fear in the paleness of her face. He didn't know if he could get any help over the phone; but if nothing else, he could let Marika hear her father's voice one last time. That alone would be worth the effort.

Kneeling in the sand, Jake flipped over the cell phone, saw that the battery was still in place. Hopefully there was enough charge to make one call.

He snapped the farspeaker crystal against the battery pack, held his breath, and flipped open the phone. Again a glowing picture of Kady's cheerleading squad appeared. Kady stood at the center, holding her sword aloft, defiant
and bold. He flashed to his sister as she stood frozen forever in gray stone. As if caught by that same spell, he couldn't move, couldn't take his eyes off the photo.

Then the phone vibrated and a weak voice whispered up at him. “Jacob … Jacob, is that you?”

He snapped back to the moment and raised the phone to his ear, ducking lower. The others all leaned their heads closer, listening in.

“Magister Balam, it's me.” Marika's father must have been glued to his farspeaker after the last call had been interrupted. “We're in trouble. We've reached the storm barrier around Ankh Tawy, but creatures of the Skull King have us trapped. We don't know what to do.”

There followed a long pause. Jake couldn't blame Marika's father. It was a lot to digest at once.

“Magister Balam …”

“Yes, Jacob … a moment.”

Jake peered between bodies. The Skull King, wearing Kree's body, crouched with the grakyl witch. Jake didn't know if he even had a moment. It looked as if Kalverum Rex was preparing to move through the storm. Straining with his ears, Jake heard Balam talking to someone in the background—then he was back.

“After we spoke last, Magister Zahur has been sifting through the legends of Ankh Tawy. He found one scroll, as old as his tribe. It spoke of the storm, supposedly written by one of the ancient Magisters of that lost city, a fellow named Oolof. The writer had clearly gone mad, but he
was firm on one point.”

“What's that?”

“The storm you speak of … it's not a storm, but something unnatural.”

That was not news to Jake. He glanced at the bolts of lightning shooting through the howling winds.

“At its heart,” Balam continued, “the barrier is not a storm but a river.”

Jake frowned. “A river?”

“That's right. A river of time, a torrent of past, present, and future all muddled together, sweeping around and around that cursed land.”

Jake considered the Magister's words, sensing the strange truth to them. It always came back to
time
. He remembered Kady using the exact same words. Time is fluid, like a river.

Balam explained more. “Anyone from this period of time—from the present age—who tries to enter that storm will be shredded out of existence. But there is a key—”

Jake closed his eyes, despondent. “The Key of Time. I know. My father's pocket watch.”

“What? No. According to the ancient text, the key is nothing one can build or construct.”

Jake opened his eyes, surprised. “Then what is it?”

A crackle of static ate away the last of the Magister's words. The battery was running low, the connection weakening.

“How do we get across?” Jake asked loudly, risking
being heard but needing an answer.

“The question is not
how
, Jacob … but
who
.”

Jake frowned. He must not have heard that correctly. “Say that again.”

The answer came back stuttering. “Since this is … river of time, only someone
outside
of time … cross safely.”

A sharp spat of static cut off the rest, then the phone went dead, the last of the battery's charge gone. Jake closed the phone but held it.

“That didn't make any sense,” Pindor said. “If your father's watch isn't the Key—”

Jake shook his head, realizing the truth. “It's just a compass. Engineered and imbued with alchemical power to lead us to the lost timestones. But that's all it does.”

He recalled his journey to this land. When he jumped from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the compass must have drawn him here, pulling him toward the timestones. The magnetite wristbands then drew the others in his wake. But, in the end, it wasn't the watch that had let them all pass through the barrier unscathed.

Only someone outside of time
…

The truth turned Jake cold. They had all followed him. There was only one person here
outside
of time.

“The Key of Time is not my father's watch,” he said, staring dumbfounded at the others, knowing it to be true. “It's me.”

Being buried alive seemed like a poor escape plan.

Jake lay on his back in a shallow pit, hastily scooped out of the sand. The milling bodies of the other captives hid their actions. Sand already covered him from the neck down. To either side, his three friends faced the same predicament. Pindor fidgeted as Nefertiti pushed a mound across his friend's neck.

“Quit wiggling like a sandworm!” Nefertiti scolded.

“It itches. I've got sand up my …” He stammered, blushing. “Up everywhere.”

“You'll survive.”

Jake hoped that was true. Turning his head, he shared a worried look with Marika. She seemed just as doubtful about this plan. Next to her, Bach'uuk simply sprawled flat on his back, resigned, knowing they had no other options.

If they were to stop the Skull King, Jake had to attempt to cross the storm barrier. To do that, he needed a
distraction, some way to escape the noose around the camp. Nefertiti had come up with this plan. It was crazy, but he couldn't come up with anything better.

The princess returned from the stack of desert survival gear salvaged from the
Breath of Shu
. She dropped to a knee in the sand next to Jake. “Quick now. Some of the guards are getting suspicious.”

She reached down and pulled a leather hood over Jake's face. With sand weighing down his body, he had a momentary flare of claustrophobia, as if she were pulling a death shroud over his head.

Then her hands adjusted a set of goggles built into the leather hood. She fitted it over his eyes, and firelight flared as he peered through a diffracted spyglass built into the garment. It was one of the same hoods used by Nefertiti's hunting party to ambush the velociraptors. It had allowed her and her hunters to hide under the sand.

Nefertiti moved a tube to his lips. “Breathe through the hollow reed. Keep watch. Break free when you think it's safe.”

There was nothing
safe
about any of this. But he tested the breathing tube. At least it worked.

She leaned down and filled the vision of his scope. The certainty of her voice fractured into something softer and more sincere. “Jake Ransom … if it's in your power, please save my people.”

With the reed between his lips, he could only nod.

He would do his best.

She pressed her cheek against his as if thanking him. Instead she said, “Hold still,” and pulled a big scoopful of sand over his face, finishing his burial.

His friends suffered the same fate. Jake had insisted on making this journey by himself, but no one would listen.

Pindor had offered the best reasoning. “If we can't get through the barrier with you, we can at least guard your back.”

With no time to argue, Jake had relented.