“Now,” Gwalcmai said.
Donnchadh pressed the button.
A dozen charges on each sand ridge detonated, opening ten-meter-wide gaps at each spot. The water that had been held at bay for millennia surged in. Draped with armor and burdened with weapons, the Egyptians closest to the gaps had no chance. They were washed under and drowned. Those further away desperately dropped their weapons and tried to tear off their gear.
Those closest to the Sinai, and Gwalcmai and Donnchadh’s location, threw down their weapons and ran forward, arms held high in supplication as the water roared toward them. Gwalcmai showed no mercy, firing his bow as quickly as he could notch an arrow and draw and release the string. A dozen Egyptians died by his hand before the water surged over the rest and they were gone. Within a minute, the Bitter Sea had reclaimed the small strip of dry land that had divided it. The only indication that an army was drowned under the water were a few floating pieces of debris — awooden arrow here, the feathers from an officer’s helmet there. It was almost as if the Pharaoh’s army had never existed.
“I do not think they will follow us again,” Gwalcmai said as he slipped the bow over his shoulders.
Donnchadh stood still, the enormity of what she had just caused sinking in.
Gwalcmai saw her hesitation. “It had to be done.”
“I know.” But she still did not move.
“There will be much more death,” Gwalcmai said.
“And you say that to make me feel better?” Donnchadh snapped.
“I say that to let you know that is the reality of our mission.”
“I know the reality,” Donnchadh said. She turned toward her husband. “But we must mourn the death of humans, even those under the thrall of the Airlia. Because if we do not mourn them, then we are like the Airlia. We must be human.”
There was another who had watched the Egyptian army drown. One with a human body. But an Airlia personality. And he did not mourn the deaths. He was wrapped in the long robes of one who lived in the desert, but he was not one of them. He hid on the reverse slope of a sand dune on the Sinai side of the Sea of Reeds and had been observing all day.
Among the desert people, the Bedu, he was known as Al-Iblis, the evil one. Some said he was not a man but a demon, and they were partially right. He was Aspasia’s Shadow, left behind in the chamber deep inside Mount Sinai.
He had been awoken as programmed a thousand years after Aspasia left him there. Since then, he had roamed thedesert and beyond, taking in the wonders of the world. He had reincarnated many times, using the Airlia technology to implant his personality into a new body when needed. While he had originally had Aspasia’s personality, the cumulative experiences since he had awoken had changed him and made him a creature still bound to its master, but with its own twisted personality.
So Aspasia’s Shadow laughed as he watched the Egyptians drown. He found great pleasure in disaster and chaos. He knew of both the Egyptians and the Judeans and all the other people in this part of the world. But he did not know of the two who had planned this ambush. A man and a woman who obviously had access to Airlia technology, as he had recognized both the small black sphere the woman had used and the type of explosive that had destroyed the two sand ridges.
The Judeans were a strange people. He had watched their small kingdom grow along the banks of the great sea for many years. A people who believed in prophets and one God — a most strange development, which Aspasia’s Shadow had never quite been able to account for. When the Egyptians had swept over the Judeans’ land and taken them into captivity, Aspasia’s Shadow had been content to see these dangerous people with their radical views brought to heel.
But now they were free and there were two who obviously knew something of the Airlia with them. He did not know what it meant, but he felt it was a threat. And his mission was to stop threats.
So as the Judeans moved farther into the Sinai, Aspasia’s Shadow followed them and he plotted.
Donnchadh and Gwalcmai stayed on the fringes of the Judean exodus. They let Moses lead the people into the desert. Gwalcmai wanted to leave, to go back to theirship. But Donnchadh could not bear to depart with the Grail so close. She knew that Gwalcmai was right — that it was too soon to do anything with the Grail — but she felt a visceral attraction toward the alien artifact. With all the terrible things she had witnessed on her own world and on Earth, she felt that the Grail was the only possibility for something good enough to outweigh all of that.
If they could defeat the Airlia without destroying this planet. And if they could hold on to the Grail. And if they could stay hidden from both the Airlia and the Swarm. Then, just maybe, this planet could be the start of a human empire peopled by immortals. These were the thoughts and hopes that swirled through Donnchadh’s head as she and her mate followed the mass of humanity across the desert toward the land Moses had promised the people.
They were not completely idle. They scoured the camp in the evening, listening and judging the people they met. They were searching for the best candidate for the role of Wedjat, the Watcher who would begin the line responsible for keeping an eye on the Ark and Grail, now that the artifacts were no longer under the watch of the Wedjat of Giza. After two weeks they found a young man who they felt would fit the mold. He was a man who questioned the preachings of the priests regarding the one God — or any gods for that matter, as there were still sects among the Judeans who worshipped differently — and who eyed Moses — and indeed the two of them — with suspicion. They took him out into the desert and spent three days briefing him and preparing him for the role he was to play. For two days he refused to believe their story of the Airlia, Atlantis, and the Great Civil War, until Donnchadh demonstrated the pieces of Airlia technology she had brought with her. They took him out of earshot of the camp and remotely set off one of the explosive charges, shattering a boulder. This sufficiently impressed him, thatwhile they did not claim to be Gods, the two had more power than anyone else he had seen.
They gave him a Wedjat ring and as much information as they dared, including the location of the Watcher headquarters in Avalon, with orders to try to get reports there as often as possible. Donnchadh had found that humans became energized when given a solid goal, a focus for their lives, and she used this to her advantage. She knew, and tried not to reflect too heavily on, that this was not much different from the Airlia use of religion to control people. She did not know whether this desire to believe in something larger than oneself was a trait that had just developed in humans, or whether it was something the Airlia had deliberately injected into their genetic makeup. Ultimately, she had decided that it did not matter — it existed, and therefore had to be calculated into any plan.
At the camp, despite Moses’ best efforts and what had happened in the Sea of Reeds, he could not allay the people’s fear that the Egyptians were still chasing after them and would return them to slavery. Because of this, the route he was taking across the Sinai was anything but direct. They were swinging far to the south to avoid any possibility of running into Egyptian patrols.
Gwalcmai, as Donnchadh had feared, quickly grew weary of the long loop to the south through desolate terrain. He saw it as unnecessary and dangerous for both of them. Already there were factions among the Judeans, groups opposed to Moses because he was not one of them. To counteract that, Moses had begun spreading a story that his mother had been a Judean slave. Such politicking disgusted Gwalcmai and, given that Donnchadh could give him no valid reason for their continued presence in this sun-blasted land, his patience was wearing very thin.