Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx (35 page)

Why you and not me
? she had finally moaned, covering her face.

Jake had no answer; but in the end, they also both recognized a hard truth. The image in Thoth's mirror was centuries old. For all Jake knew, he had been speaking to nothing more than the ghost of his mother.

Afterward, with no resolution, Kady had grown apart from him, perhaps finding it too painful to be near him. Even now Jake saw a glint of sadness in her eyes, laced with jealousy for what he got to experience and she did not. He didn't know what to say to soothe that ache.

Still, she hugged him, her cheek against his. “Dance,” she said to him with the smallest of sad smiles. “Just dance.”

Grabbing his shoulders, she turned him back to Marika.

Maybe that's all they could do for now.

He held out his hand.

Marika took it.

The music had slowed to something quiet yet hopeful. He walked out with Marika, folded her to him, and, step by slow step, he danced and let the world around him turn.

That's all he could do.

Hours later, well into the night, a knock sounded on his door.

Jake woke out of a dream in which his eyes were burning, spitting out black flames that consumed everything he touched. He bolted upright as a knock again echoed across the set of rooms he shared with his sister. He touched his face. His eyes were still there.

At least that was good.

Night after night, that same nightmare plagued him. And he knew why. He hadn't told anyone about the image he'd seen in Thoth's mirror: his eyes blazing with black fire. Maybe it meant nothing; maybe he'd just imagined it amid all that blood and chaos. Either way, he thought it best to keep it to himself. Still, it plainly troubled him enough to invade his dreams.

As a third knock sounded—more loudly now—he rolled from under his covers and headed out in his boxers and socks. His bedroom adjoined a common room. He found his sister, dressed in a long nightshirt, stumbling out through a doorway on the other side.

“Who's bothering us at this hour?” she asked.

Her voice must have been heard through the door. “It's I … Shaduf!”

Frowning, Jake crossed to the door and unlatched it. As he pulled the door open, Nefertiti's uncle came rushing inside. He wore a dusty cloak, spilling sand with each
step. He'd finally shaved his beard, revealing how much he looked like his older brother, the pharaoh. Still, a wildness remained in his eyes.

“Shaduf,” Kady asked, “what's wrong?”

Something had plainly got the man all riled up.

Shaduf crossed to the table and set down a parchment scroll. “I came straight here,” he said. “Knew you two should see this first.”

Jake moved next to him. Kady stepped to Shaduf's other side.

“I was in the desert,” he said. “Exploring near the Crackles.”

Jake knew Shaduf spent most of his time outside now. After two years of being imprisoned in Kree's dungeon, the man found any walls around him hard to take. Plus Shaduf had always had a fascination with the sands around Ankh Tawy and the crystals found there.

“I set up my bedroll in the shadow of the cliffs—but shortly after moonrise, a scraping drew me to the wall.” He glanced to Jake and Kady. “To the Prophecy of Lupi Pini.”

Jake looked to Kady. “The words Mom wrote …”

“Yes, yes, that's right,” Shaduf said in a rush. “But as I reached the cliff, I found new marks carved into the stone.” His eyes grew huge. “As I watched, more and more came to life, stroke by stroke.”

He pantomimed with thrusts of his arm, his eyes glinting too brightly.

“They appeared right below the old prophecy.” He pointed to the scroll. “A new prophecy … but I could not read it, so I sketched it and brought it to you.”

“Why us?” Kady asked.

He turned full upon them, agitated, trying to get them to understand. “It is a new prophecy … a new prophecy of
Lupi Pini
!”

The old man nodded to Jake.

“You think our mother wrote this new message?” Jake asked.

“Yes, of course. Who else?”

With his heart beginning to pound, Jake shared a look with Kady. They both leaned closer.

“Show us,” Jake said.

Nodding vigorously, Shaduf pinched the scroll and unrolled it across the tabletop. Words appeared, scrawled in a crude script.

“I took great care in sketching it,” Shaduf said. “It looks
like it was written with some haste, with some fright.”

Kady turned to Jake. “It's English. Could Mom have really written this? Is this some message from the past?”

Jake pictured his mother escaping the fall of Ankh Tawy but remembering something she needed to say, to tell them. The only way she could do it was to return to the cliffs of the Crackles and add to her older message. The new words must have traveled up through the centuries and appeared here on the cliff face.

From the frantic lettering—so unlike his mother's—he knew she must have written it with some desperation, with little time to spare.

“It has to be important,” he mumbled.

To prove it, he reached to his neck and pulled out the gift his mother had given him: the tiny flute made of animal horn. He squinted at the gold letters imbedded in the surface.

They were clearly Norse runes. Jake had already examined them as best he could with the resources at hand. He'd even consulted the Vikings at Bornholm but had hit a dead end. Elder Ulfsdottir had said the writing was gibberish. But maybe it was written in a script the Vikings in Calypsos didn't know. The only detail that made sense was the large rune in the center. He studied it again.

It was the rune called
algiz
, representing a raised shield. He remembered his mother's words:
the flute will help protect you
.

Jake stared at the scroll.

“Beware of Loki,” he read aloud, and glanced significantly at Kady. “Loki was the Norse god of mischief.” He held up the flute. “Mom gave us this. It's a flute covered in Norse runes. That can't be a coincidence.”

“What is she trying to tell us?” Kady asked.

“I don't know. She must have been in a hurry. That's all she could write.” Jake locked gazes with his sister. “But she also told me to go home. Maybe we should listen to her. If we're going to have any hope of figuring it all out, I'm going to need to consult experts in Norse runes and languages.”

“So you want us to go back home?”

He slowly nodded.

“When?” she asked.

The answer came from the doorway, in a voice hoary and old. “Before the moon sets this night, you must be gone.”

They all turned to find the Elder of the Ur tribe hunched in the doorway, leaning on a thick staff, his heavy brows shadowing his eyes.

Bach'uuk stood at the old man's side and stepped into
the room. “Magister Mer'uuk met with our people's seers, those who dream in the long time.”

The Ur Elder nodded. “Something stirs in the great river. It is coming for you, Jake Ransom. You must be gone from here before that happens. For all our sakes.”

Kady grabbed his arm.

If Jake had any doubts about his decision, the Elder's words ended it. The Ur were the first of the tribes to come to Pangaea. They had been living in the shadow of the great Temple of Kukulkan far longer than anyone else. They'd become uniquely attuned to the energy given off by the Atlantean technology, sensitive to time's flow.

If they said it was time to go …

An hour later, moonlight still bathed the stone serpent wrapped atop the great Temple of Kukulkan. Jake stood with his sister on the top step of the pyramid, alone with Mer'uuk.

Bach'uuk had followed them through the Sacred Woods and stood a lonely vigil at the foot of the steps. Jake had already said his good-byes to his Ur friend, but he hadn't had time to rouse Pindor or Marika. The moon had been too near to setting. Jake and Kady barely had time to dress.

And what could I have said anyway
?

Jake had a hard enough time with Bach'uuk, hugging him tightly, leaving his friend with damp eyes. Jake made
a promise he hoped he could keep.

We'll see each other again
.

“Take my hand,” Mer'uuk ordered.

Jake gripped the man's fingers, then took Kady's. They needed a Magister to lead them through the barrier that sealed this temple's heart. As they passed over the threshold, Jake felt the telltale tingle wash over him.

Once through, Mer'uuk remained at the doorway, leaning on his staff. “From here, your path must be your own.”

Jake nodded. He knew what he must do. Last time, it had been an accident; now it would be on purpose.

“C'mon,” he told Kady.

In silence, lost in their own thoughts, they headed down the tunnel and through the chamber that held the crystal heart of Kukulkan. Jake didn't stop, barely noting the giant sphere turning overhead, twin to the one in Ankh Tawy. He led the way down another tunnel to a room below.

Inside the smaller chamber, circled by maps of Pangaea, a golden mechanism spread across the floor. It looked like a cross between a Mayan calendar wheel and the inner works of some great clock. Jake stepped through a pair of giant gold wheels, one inside the other, intertwined by toothed notches like gears.

As he reached the center, Jake stopped and stared around, sensing something important, something that had been nagging at him since he first saw the Skull
King's pteranodon outside the pyramid.

Kady joined him and must have read his expression. “What?”

As he stood a moment longer, Jake continued to work a puzzle in his head, a riddle as tricky as any posed by a Sphinx. And like those brainteasers from that Greek myth, Jake's puzzle also centered on
time
and involved a
Sphinx
.

“The Skull King's mount,” Jake started, and turned to Kady. “I've been racking my brain trying to think how that monster could be frozen in the distant past.”

“And made into an omelet by your friend a week ago,” Kady added, crinkling her nose at that thought.

“Kalverum Rex rode that same pteranodon when he attacked us in the valley of Calypsos,” Jake explained. “For it to have been frozen in Ankh Tawny, he must have traveled into the past
after
we'd stopped him in Calypsos. Defeated, he went to Ankh Tawy looking for a new weapon, possibly drawn by something Mom was doing. That's the only order of events that makes sense.”

Jake again heard his mother's words.

A great war is coming, spreading across time
.

“But Mom stopped him there,” Kady said, pride sparking in her voice.

Jake nodded. “The Skull King escaped, but his mount got frozen back in time. If I'm right, if Kalverum Rex came to Ankh Tawny because of Mom, I think that
means she must still be alive, still a few steps ahead of him. Which means Mom and Dad could be anywhere, any time.”

“So how do we find them?”

Jake lifted the pocket watch. “First we go home.”

Kady's expression turned reluctant. As she glanced back to the doorway, her heart was easy to read. They'd found their mother in this world, and now they were leaving.

Jake reached and took her hand. “Mom and Dad are out there. Lost in time. But I can feel them. Not out there, but here.”

He squeezed her fingers.

In turn, her hand tightened on his.

“We'll find them, Kady. Wherever Mom and Dad are, we'll be just as close to them at Ravensgate as we will be here in Pangaea.”

Her eyes met his. She took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded again, more determined this time.

With his free hand, Jake took out his father's pocket watch. He'd recovered it from the folds of Kree's abandoned robes. He hoped this method would still get them home again. He seated a fingernail under the watch's stem. It was used to wind the watch—but also to reset the time.