Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx (13 page)

During the cleanup, Jake and his friends had returned to their spots at the front of the boat. But the crew's attitude toward them had changed. Sailors nodded and waved. Fresh water was brought to them, along with platters of something that looked like cheese but was sweeter and chewier.

Even Nefertiti spent time with Kady on the middeck, examining her sword. The two talked with much gesturing. Jake caught glimpses of a smile on the princess's lips.

Pindor sat cross-legged next to Jake, his chin resting on his knuckles as he watched the two girls.

Standing a step away, Bach'uuk dug a broken claw from the railing. Jake pictured again the grakyl leering down at him before being ripped away by an aerial hook.

Bach'uuk came over and squatted beside Jake and Marika, then placed the claw on the deck. “Not a grakyl.”

“What do you mean?” Jake asked.

“None had swords. Just claws.” Bach'uuk stared at Jake with his sharp blue eyes and nudged the broken bit he'd dug out. “And teeth.”

Marika scooted closer. “He's right. None of them had
any weapons. And these beasts certainly didn't look exactly like the grakyl back home.”

“They looked like them to me.”

Marika shook her head. “Did you not see how gnarled their limbs were? Also their heads were too small, their ears too long. These attackers looked both smaller and more beastlike.”

Jake remembered those yellow eyes locking on to his, shining with bloodlust and hunger—and nothing else. Back in Calypsos, the grakyl's eyes and faces had shone with a vicious intelligence, nearly humanlike. He'd seen none of that here. The attack on the windriders had been savage, ill planned.

Marika offered an explanation. “Maybe the grakyl started out as these beasts. Maybe the Skull King was sniffing around these lands and discovered them. Then Kalverum Rex took their forms and changed them, twisted them with his bloodstone alchemies, forged their flesh into his monstrous army.”

Jake's stomach churned sickeningly. “If these beasts aren't grakyl, then what are they?”

The answer came from behind him. “We call them harpies.” Jake turned to find Nefertiti standing with Kady. “Hundreds of years ago, one of our slave tribes gave them that name. Said the winged beasts matched stories from their own land: great stinking, winged creatures that were half human.”

Jake nodded, recognizing the name. According to Greek mythology, the
Harpyiai
—or Harpies—were born from a union of Achilles's mare and the god of the West Wind. It's no wonder that some Lost Tribe of Greeks picked that name for the winged creatures here.

“They nest within the Great Wind,” Nefertiti continued. “They make their home inside that endless howling storm. We seldom see flocks so far from the Great Wind.”

“What's this Great Wind you keep talking about?” Jake asked.

Nefertiti looked at him as if he were stupid, then sighed. She pointed to the horizon, toward that haziness blurring the place where sky and land met.

“See that mighty sandstorm? It circles the lands of Deshret. No one can pass through that storm without having their flesh scoured from their bones. One ship tried to sail over it, but it was broken apart and cast back into the desert. You five are the first to come through in hundreds of years.”

“Lucky us,” Pindor mumbled.

So the storm must be some sort of barrier
, Jake thought.

He pictured the volcanic rim that enclosed the valley of Calypsos and the protective shield generated by the great Temple of Kukulkan. Was this never-ending storm another form of that? A barrier around these people's homes to protect them? But if so, that meant something had to be generating such a force, along with supplying
the people here with the All-World tongue.

But what?

Nefertiti continued, “Within the Great Wind lay the ruins of our original home, a majestic city named Ankh Tawy. We were driven into these lands as the winds rose. Six generations ago. Our loremasters keep the memory alive in the Temple of Time. Pictures, carvings, sculptures. The bits of Ankh Tawy recovered before the winds rose. We preserve them for eternity.”

Like some sort of museum.

Jake had to get a look inside that place.

Marika spoke. “Can you tell us more about what happened? How Ankh Tawy was destroyed?”

Anger grew in Nefertiti's voice. “Outlanders came to us, of a most strange sort. They disturbed the sleeping Sphinx. It woke in fury and howled out the Great Winds, driving us from our homes.” Her eyes sparked, going hard. “They were travelers from Calypsos.”

“I've never heard of such a story,” Marika insisted. “We know nothing about any of this.”

Nefertiti looked down her nose at Marika. “That is what we will discover in Ka-Tor. The masters of the Blood of Ka will get the truth from you.”

A horn blared under Jake's feet, cutting off their conversation. Then a moment later, another horn answered from far away, sounding like an echo.

Skymaster Horus shouted. “Ka-Tor awaits!”

Jake crossed to the rail and stared ahead. Off in the distance, a sprawling metropolis sat atop a plain of black rock. Two walls of stone enclosed the city: an outer ring and an inner one. A massive pyramid rose in the center. It looked like one solid piece of stone.

Ammon came running up from below. “Princess, we must get you ready for our arrival! I've polished your headpiece and have your finery ready to grace your beauty.”

Nefertiti grew even more irritated and strode off in a huff.

Ammon scowled at Jake's group as if they were to blame for the princess's sour mood. He waved to their Egyptian guard. “Put the prisoners back in their shackles before we arrive.”

Nefertiti disappeared down into the hold, and Ammon scurried to catch up with her.

Marika stood with her hands on her hips. “After all we've done, they're chaining us again. Nefertiti could have ordered us to be set free.”

Jake agreed but understood. The five of them were strangers here, cursed by using the name
Calypsos
. Until they were questioned, Nefertiti was taking no chances.

“She's not really that bad,” Kady said, standing up for the princess. “Some girls back at school are
way
nastier than her. And did you see her with that spear, how she moved?”

Pindor nodded a bit too vigorously.

“She's good,” Kady concluded. “Even said she'd teach me some of her moves with that spear.”

Jake turned away.

Great, like Kady needs to be any more lethal
…

Beyond the rail, he watched the city below grow larger. He didn't know what to expect down there, but they'd been sent here for a reason. He just knew it. Nefertiti had described the barrier as impenetrable. So how did he and his friends get through?

Jake could think of only one possible answer.

The Skull King's words played again in his head, scraping out of the darkness between worlds. Jake heard raw desire in that icy voice.

The Key of Time …

Jake pulled out the watch from under his shirt and cracked the case open. Had this somehow brought them here? Was that why Kalverum Rex wanted it from the start? Was he even now searching for another way to get past the Great Wind?

Jake sensed that he was on the right track. He studied the face of the watch. The second hand spun around and around—but something was wrong. The hand was spinning too fast, ticking off minutes twice as fast as it should be.

He frowned. What was wrong?

As the windrider descended toward the city, the sweep of seconds spun even faster, as if sensing the approach to
Ka-Tor. The closer they drew, the faster it spun, growing more and more excited as it neared the city.

But why?

Jake guessed a possible answer.

Maybe the watch wasn't only a key—but also a compass
!

Like a Geiger counter tracking radiation, the watch must sense something in Ka-Tor, something so important that it had to be locked within a ring of storms here centuries ago. Something the Skull King desperately wanted.

Jake studied the approaching city with a sharper eye, sensing now
why
they'd all been dropped into this strange land. He lifted the watch higher as welcoming horns trumpeted below. He stared at the drawing inscribed inside the case—the ankh symbol: a clue left behind by his parents.

It all led here.

Something lost needed to be found.

But what?

Could it be some road marker to the true fate of his mother and father? Jake pictured his parents, flashing to the last photo of them both, smiling and happy. Was that the purpose of the compass built into the pocket watch? To find them?

He stared toward the city.

The only answers lay below.

But will I live long enough to discover them?

Back in shackles, Jake and the others were marched down a wide thoroughfare that crossed the sprawling city. The airfield lay outside the main gates. Jake had counted four more windriders parked there, and a royal barge so large that it took three balloons to haul it up.

Townspeople gathered to either side of the street in a carnival atmosphere. Fingers pointed at them. Horns continued to blare. Men shouted and bartered. Children ran everywhere, even hopping from rooftop to rooftop. Built of sandy bricks, the homes and stalls were mostly one story, with high, thin windows. Glancing inside revealed stone floors and little furniture. The place smelled of cooking fires, sweat, and exotic spices.

Princess Nefertiti led the procession in a palanquin painted in crimson and gold. Fine cloths, all dyed sky blue, draped her freshly scrubbed form. She wore a circlet of gold on her head. Jake had trouble picturing
this painted and polished girl as the hunter in the desert.

Maintaining her role, she waved in a robotic fashion, plainly out of sorts, as her palanquin was carried aloft by four burly men, all wearing collars. In fact, Jake spotted only a smattering of Egyptians among the throng. All the rest wore collars.

This must be where the slave-class inhabitants made their homes, but the place seemed far from miserable—the opposite in fact. It was raucous and colorful. Desert flowers sprouted from pots and planter boxes. Community fountains babbled and glistened through channels cut in the rock.

A tiny saurian the size of a Chihuahua suddenly zipped past Jake's toes, tripping him a step. It paused to hiss at him; and before it zipped away, Jake spotted a tiny scroll secured like a bow tie under its jaw. Dozens of other such beasts flitted and stormed through the crowd, running on two legs, often darting between someone's legs.

Marika hid a smile behind her hand. “They must be like the dartwings back in Calypsos. Running messages around the town.”

As they marched, Jake occasionally saw a house painted black. Its windows would be sealed with stones. The doorway would be barred shut. None of the people in the streets glanced toward these homes. Some even passed by with their eyes shielded against the sight.

Jake noted a crimson symbol smudged on the doors: the image of a skull with horns above it. The symbol looked as if it had been painted in blood.

He counted more than a dozen such homes along the road from the main gate to the inner city.

When Pindor noticed them, he asked, “Are those places cursed?”

“I don't know,” Jake answered. “The symbol on the top—the one that looks like horns—is the hieroglyph for
ka
, the Egyptian word for
soul
or
spirit
.”