“The dish intercepted traffic between the guardians,” she told Gwalcmai. “Something’s happening.”
“What—”
“There’s a spacecraft inbound to this planet,” Donnchadh said.
“Another mothership?”
Donnchadh stiffened as more information was intercepted and interpreted by the equipment they’d taken from the Airlia on their own planet. “It’s not Airlia.”
“The Ancient Enemy?”
Donnchadh nodded. “A Swarm scout ship.”
Gwalcmai sat down in the copilot’s seat. “How are the Airlia responding? Are Aspasia and Artad waking?”
“No.”
“What?”
Donnchadh was concentrating on what the display wastelling her as it decoded the traffic between guardian computers. “They’ve set up an automated defense system.”
“Where?”
“Giza.”
“We can’t take any chances,” Gwalcmai said. “The Swarm scout ship has to be destroyed. If the Airlia system fails, we have to do it.”
Donnchadh turned her attention from the screen for the first time and looked at her partner. “What do you suggest?”
“We go there as backup.”
“Backup to the Airlia?”
“The lesser of two evils,” Gwalcmai said as he began powering up the ship’s systems for the first time in thousands of years.
Things had changed in Egypt. The Black Sphinx still glowered at the morning sun, but behind its left shoulder the smooth limestone sheathing covering the newly constructed Great Pyramid of Giza caught the rays of light and uniformly reflected them into the sky, producing the radar signal that the Swarm scout ship had picked up. At the very top of the five-hundred-foot-high pyramid, a blood-red capstone, twenty feet tall, glistened, an alien crown to the greatest structure ever built by human hands. The massive structure stood alone on the stone plateau, towering over the surrounding countryside, the nearby Nile, and the Sphinx complex. It had been built by humans according to the plans of Rostau, written down so many years previously.
To the east, in the direction of the Nile, were Khufu’s Temple and the Temple of the Sphinx, where both Pharaoh and stone creature could be worshipped. A covered ramp led from the right rear of the Sphinx to the Temple at the base of the pyramid. While the pyramid was new, the surface of the Sphinx was scored by weather, having been there since the beginning of Egypt over seven thousand years ago in the time when the Gods ruled.
Between the paws of the Great Sphinx stood the Pharaoh Khufu, under whose leadership the Egyptians had labored for over twenty years, moving stone after stone to build the Great Pyramid. The Pharaoh prostrated himself in front of a statue set before the creature’s stone chest. The statue was three meters tall and roughly man-shaped with polished white skin. The dimensions weren’t quite right — the body was too short and the limbs were too long. The ears had elongated lobes that reached to just above the shoulders and there were two gleaming red stones in place of eyes. On top of the head, the stone representing hair was painted bright red. Even more strangely for the astute observer, each hand ended in six fingers. The statue’s appearance was in great contrast to Khufu’s dark skin and hair and human proportions.
Khufu had succeeded his father when he was just out of his teens and he was now middle-aged. He had ruled for almost three decades and Egypt was at peace with those outside its borders and rich within its own boundaries. The peace and wealth had allowed Khufu to implement the building plan for Giza that had been passed from the Gods, to the Shadows of the Gods, to the Pharaohs over the three ages.
The vast quantity of stone needed for the pyramid had been quarried upriver and brought down by barge. Thousands had labored on it seasonally, moving the stone from the barges and placing each block in its position under the careful eye of engineer priests who worked from the holy plans that had been handed down.
The red capstone had been brought up from the bowels of the Giza Plateau, from one of the duats along the tunneled Roads of Rostau where only the Gods and their priests were allowed to walk. No one knew what exactly the red pyramid was, but they had followed the drawings they had been given to the last detail, from the smooth limestone facing to the placement of the red object as the capstone.
In the Pharaoh’s left hand as he prostrated himself was a scepter, a foot long and two inches in diameter with a lion’s head on one end. The lion image had red eyes similar to that of the statue, but these glowed fiercely as if lit from within. Khufu had been awakened just minutes ago by his senior priest, Asim. The staff had been in the trembling man’s hand, the lion eyes glowing, something never seen before. He had passed it to the Pharaoh.
Khufu had thrown on a robe and dashed from his palace to before the Sphinx, as he had been told by his father he must do if the staff ever came alive. He was now chanting the prayers he had been taught. The statue was of Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, the Gods who had founded Egypt at the dawn of time and ruled during the First Age. According to what Khufu had been told by his father and the priests, in the First Age, the Gods had ruled for many years before passing leadership on to Shadows of themselves, the followers of Horus, during the Second Age. Then even the Shadows had passed the mantle on to men, and the first Pharaohs took command of the Middle Kingdom of the Third Age.
Asim was the only other person in the area. He was the senior priest of the Cult of Isis and garbed in a red robe. The priest’s right arm was withered and deformed where muscles and tendons had been sliced when he was a child. Where his left eye had been, there was an empty socket, the skin around it charred and scarred from the red-hot poker that had taken out the eyeball. Both ankles and calves were carefully boundto allow the priest to move, as the tendons in his legs had also been partially severed when he was a child. The priest had also been castrated before puberty.
The mutilation was what was required of the head priest of the Cult. Khufu knew there was a method to the madness. The idea was to make Asim’s life so miserable that while he would be able to perform his duties, he would not desire to live a long life and thus not hunger for the source of immortality — the Grail — that was said to be located somewhere below them, beyond the statue before which Khufu bowed his head. The scepter that Asim had brought to Khufu was the key to the Roads of Rostau, the underground passageways that ran beneath their feet, and Asim and his followers were the only ones who had ever walked those roads.
Around Asim’s neck was a medallion with an eye carved in the middle, a symbol of his office. The priest stood five paces behind the Pharaoh, muttering his own prayers rapidly in the old tongue that only the priests now knew, his anxiety obvious.
The quick prayers done, Khufu stood and glanced at Asim. The priest nodded. Khufu placed the staff against an indentation in the pedestal on which the statue stood. The carving had the exact same shape as the staff.
The pedestal shimmered, and then the scepter was absorbed into it. The surface of the stone slid down, revealing a six-foot-high opening. The passageway beyond was dimly lit from recesses in the ceiling, although the Pharaoh couldn’t see the source of the strange light. Khufu hesitated, then reluctantly entered the tunnel, the priest following, moving quickly despite his crippled gait. The stone slid shut behind them.
Khufu hurried down the tunnel. The stone walls were cut smoothly, better than even his most skilled artisan could produce, but the Pharaoh, his heart beating furiously in hischest, had no time to admire the handiwork. He ruled supreme from the second cataracts of the Nile, far to the south, to the Middle Sea to the north, and many countries beyond those borders paid tribute, but here, on the Roads of Rostau, inside the Giza Plateau, he knew he was just an errand boy to the Gods. His father had never been down here, nor had his father’s father or anyone in his line. It had always been a possibility fraught with both danger and opportunity.