Six Sacred Stones

by Matthew Reilly

  “The Huntsman,” she said, relishing the word. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  “Ms. ComptonJones.”

  “Call me Iolanthe. I am the Official Keeper of the Royal Personal Records for the House of Windsor, a position that has existed for nearly seven hundred years and that can only be held by a blood relative of the monarch.”

  “And then only by a talented one,” Robertson added. “One in whom the Queen has the utmost confidence.”

  Iolanthe ignored the compliment and handed West her velveteen box. “I was instructed to give this to you personally.”

  He opened the box to reveal the Pillar inside it.

  Jack suppressed a gasp.

  It was the first time he had seen one of these fabled Pillars, and its magnificence took him by surprise.

  Resting in a fitted velvet hollow inside the box, it was an uncut diamond the size and shape of a house brick. But it wasn’t shiny like any diamond he had seen before. Rather it was cloudy, translucent, more like a piece of ice than a diamond. Nevertheless it was still breathtaking.

  Robertson said, “Princess Iolanthe is the emissary of the House of Windsor in this matter.”

  “PrincessIolanthe?” Lily blurted. “You’re a real princess?”

  Iolanthe turned and saw Lily as if for the first time. She smiled kindly and crouched down in the most ladylike manner Lily had ever witnessed. “Why, hello there. You must be Lily. I’ve heard a lot about you. You’re practically royalty yourself and from a far older line than I. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  They shook hands. Lily blushed, twirling her pinktipped hair nervously.

  “And yes, I suppose technically I am a princess,” Iolanthe said. “I am a distant member of the Royal Family, second cousin to Princes William and Harry.”

  “Noway… ”

  Beside Lily, Zoe rolled her eyes, at which point Iolanthe noticed her.

  “And who might you be?” she inquired politely.

  “Zoe Kissane, Irish commandos. No royal blood, I fear.”

  Lily jumped in quickly. “Zoe’s a princess, too, you know. Well, hernickname is Princess.”

  “Is that so?” Iolanthe said, glancing at the pink end tips of Zoe’s blond hair, before saying, deadpan, “How positively quaint.”

  Jack saw Zoe’s eyes flash and he quickly jumped in.

  “As you of all people should know, Iolanthe, names are important,” he said. “One can do many things with a name, including hiding one’s past. Today, you’ve brought us your family’s Pillar, an object it has held far longer than it has held its current name.”

  Now Iolanthe’s eyes flashed, seeing where he was going with this.

  Jack turned to Lily. “You see, the House ofWindsor —the name by which the world knows the British Royal Family—has only existed since 1914. But while the name is young, the House is old, very old. Once known as the House of Tudor, then Stuart, in the 1800s it became known as the House of SaxeCoburgGotha, a very Germanic name that not only betrayed the British Royal Family’s strong links to European royalty but which also became most embarrassing during the First World War. To save face, the British Royal Family changed their moniker, naming themselves after their favorite manor, Windsor.”

  “You’re named after ahouse ?” Lily asked incredulously.

  Iolanthe clenched her jaw. “The handsome captain is indeed correct.” Then in a lower voice: “He is also clearly loyal to his people”—a nod at Zoe. “Once again, your reputation precedes you, Captain.”

  Jack nodded. The subtle battle for control of this room was over.

  And so he turned to the rest of the gathered crowd: “OK people. Let’s do this. Let’s all open our treasure chests.”

  The base had several examination labs, two of which—Labs 1 and 2—were sterile rooms, with twoway observation windows in their walls.

  In Lab 1, Wizard had set up the Philosopher’s Stone on a workbench.

  In Lab 2, the second clean room, the Killing Stone of the Maya was also placed on a bench. Chunky and solid, with a triangular void on its uppermost side—a void that had once perfectly matched a triangular headchopping blade—and with rather frightening Mayan inscriptions of human sacrifice all over it, it resonated with menace.

  Last of all, in Lab 3, the twins had set up several data projectors ready to roll their startling footage from Stonehenge.

  Taking the Firestone from Zoe, West said, “Before we cleanse any Pillars, we need to know where and when they have to be placed. We start in Lab 3. Lachlan, Julius. You’re on.”

  THE LIGHTS went out in Lab 3, and as the assembled audience watched in silent awe, Julius and Lachlan played back the video footage of their spectacular ritual at Stonehenge.

  Purple light played over Jack’s face as he saw the Firestone burst to life in the midst of the dark circle of ancient stones.

  Julius commented: “Note the shapes on the stones, formed by the indentations, the lichens, and the Firestone’s light. We’ll look at those shapes in more detail later, but for now—”

  At that moment, the Firestone let loose its six shafts of purple light, sending the laserlike beams into some of the uprights of the henge, one after the other.

  And then it was over—Stonehenge was plunged back into darkness—and Julius stopped the playback and projected some digital snapshots onto the screen.

  “OK,” he began. “Now let’s go through it all a little more methodically. This is how one of the trilithons looked before the light show…”

  He flashed up a digital still:

  “During the ritual, however, as the lightbeams from the Firestone hit it and the lichens came to life, it appeared like this:

  “Note the righthand upright,” Lachlan said. “And see how the outline of the African continent can be clearly discerned. You can even seen the Mediterranean Sea at the top.

  The Red Sea, which only flooded in recent geological times, is not yet in existence.”

  Lachlan quickly outlined the twins’ theory that the shapes on the stones represented the continents and oceans as they existed millions of years ago, before the melting of the ice caps and the worldwide rising of sea levels had produced the present coastlines.

  “What about the outline on the lefthand upright?” Paul Robertson asked from the darkness.

  Julius said, “That one’s more difficult. As you can see, it only depicts a sliver of land on the right and at the top, so we’re guessing that it depicts a section of ocean, but we haven’t figured which one yet.”

  Lachlan went on. “You will further see on the righthand upright, three luminous little starlike objects. These are the points at which the shafts of light struck the upright. We have numbered them 1, 2, and 4—while No. 6, as you’ll see, is on the lefthand upright.

  This is the order in which the light shafts hit the stones of the henge.”

  “The order in which the Pillars must be placed,” Wizard said.

  “Yes,” Julius said. “That’s right. That’s what we think.”

  “I’m glad my years of studying this matter meet with your approval, Julius,” Wizard said with a half smile.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry,” Julius said. “Here’s the other trilithon that was hit by light shafts 3 and 5:

  “Again, we are still working on the exact locations of these points. As you can see, the coastlines are exceedingly old—representing the Earth as it was hundreds of millions of years ago—and so don’t match any existing coastlines. So, like the previous example, we do not yet have a match for these locations.”

  Lachlan took over. “In any case, according to Professor Epper’s research, each of these sparkling points represents a vertex, or corner, of a giant sixpointed Machine—”

  Julius said: “—Think of two pyramids sitting base to base, forming a diamond within the Earth’s spherical shape.”

  Wizard interrupted. “Point of clarification, boys. They represent no less than the locations of six greattempleshrines, underground st
ructures of a magnificence that we cannot even begin to contemplate. It is at each of these templeshrines that a cleansed Pillar must be placed.”

  Julius nodded. “Yes, sorry, good point that.”

  “So where are they?” Paul Robertson asked gruffly. “The first one looks like it’s somewhere in Egypt…”

  “That’s not a bad guess,” Lachlan said. “The African ones are the easiest to figure out, thanks to the relative stability of the continent’s shape over the millennia. GPSimaging and satellite photography have proved to be very helpful.”

  “Not to mention Google Earth,” Julius added.

  “Oh yes, Google Earth, too,” Lachlan said. “In the end, according to the data, the first site lies in southern Egypt, not far from the Sudanese border.But…”

  “But what?” Scimitar asked warily.

  Julius winced. “But there’s a problem with our analysis. We’ve run the data over and over again, and one issue remains. This first site, it seems, lies underneath a lake.”

  “A lake?” Vulture said.

  “Yes, Lake Nasser, in the deep south of Egypt,” Lachlan said. “One of the largest lakes in the world.”

  Julius said, “And sadly, that’s as precise as we can be from the available data. We’re not sure how you find the exact location of the templeshrine if it’s underwater, let alone its entrance.”

  A general murmur of disappointment went through the room, and the twins—Lily saw—

  seemed a little embarrassed not to have done better. She felt for them.

  But then a voice spoke up from the darkness.

  The voice of Jack West Jr.

  “Whichend of the lake was it?”

  “The southern end,” Lachlan said.

  Jack nodded. “Thank you, gentlemen. Well done. I think I know where the first temple shrine is.”

  “WHERE?” Vulture asked quickly.

  “Yes, where?” Iolanthe snapped around in her chair.

  Jack stood up, examining the image on the screen closely.

  “Lake Nasser is a not a natural lake,” he said, gazing at the picture of the first trilithon.

  “Technically, it’s part of the Nile. It’s an artificial lake that formed behind the Aswan High Dam in 1971; stretches for about two hundred miles to the south. It could easily have covered the entrance to an ancient subterranean structure.

  “The dam was also built by the Soviets, after the US pulled out at the last minute.” A glance at Paul Robertson. “Its construction was a Cold War battlefield for Egypt’s allegiance. After much initial excitement and promisemaking, during which the Americans did extensive surveying of the area, the US suddenly decided that they didn’t want to go ahead with the project. Maybe their surveyors just didn’t find what they were looking for.”

  Paul Robertson was pokerfaced.

  Jack looked directly at him. “You guys have been at work on this Dark Sun project for a long time.”

  Robertson shrugged. “We all have our secrets.”

  Jack’s gaze lingered on him before he went on, grabbing a sheet from Wizard’s black folder and placing it on the projector:

  “This is a scan from Wizard’s notes. It’s a carving from the sarcophagus of Rameses II, written in the Word of Thoth. Translated by my learned colleague”—a nod to Lily—“it reads:

  “With my beloved, Nefertari,

  I, Rameses, son of Ra,

  Keep watch over the most sacred shrine.

  We shall watch over it forever.

  Great sentinels,

  With our third eyes, we see all.

  “‘With our third eyes, we see all.’ That line didn’t make sense to me until now.”

  Astro said, “What are you saying?”

  “At the extreme southern end of Lake Nasser stands one of Egypt’s greatest monuments, the four colossal seated statues of Rameses II at Abu Simbel. Each one is oversixty feet tall. Gigantic.

  “Back in Rameses’ time, they sat on the banks of the Nile at the border of Egypt and Nubia as a warning to any wouldbe intruders: ‘This is how powerful the King of Egypt is. Think twice before you enter our lands.’

  “Abu Simbel, as it’s called, is also the most distant monument in Egypt—its distance from the major Egyptian centers of Thebes and Cairo is astonishing, making it the subject of much speculation. Why build such a dazzling monument so far from the centers of your civilization?

  “The thing is,” Jack said, “there’s asecond set of statues at Abu Simbel, about a hundred yards from the four wellknown ones of Rameses. It’s a smaller rockcut temple dedicated to his favorite wife, Nefertari. That second temple features some giant statues of Nefertari, all of whichalso gaze out over the lake.

  “These two sets of immense statues are still there today, sitting on the banks of the Nile, now Lake Nasser. But they don’t just keep watch over an old border. According to this carving from Rameses’ own sarcophagus, they keep watch overthe most sacred shrine.

  The templeshrine.”

  A hush fell over the room as the magnitude of what he was saying set in.

  “So how do these statues reveal the shrine’s location?” Vulture asked.

  “With their third eyes,” Jack said, smiling.

  “Oh, Jack…” Wizard said. “You’re a genius.”

  “What? What do you mean?” Scimitar said.

  Jack’s eyes glowed as he spoke. “I imagine if we go to Abu Simbel and carefully calibrate theeye lines from the third eye of each set of statues—of Rameses and of Nefertari—the meeting point of those eye lines will be the location of the first templeshrine.”

  THE KILLING STONE OF THE MAYA

  THE GROUP MOVE Don to Lab 2, to where the Killing Stone of the Maya sat on its workbench. They all filed in to the observation room that looked into the lab.

  Leading the way, Wizard said, “In addition to the locations of the templeshrines, we need to know thedates by which the Pillars must be placed in them.

  “Now, in Laozi’s entry chamber in China, Tank and I discovered this reference to the laying of the first Pillar:

  THE 1ST PILLAR MUST BE INLAID

  EXACTLY 100 DAYS BEFORE THE RETURN.

  THE PRIZE SHALL BEKNOWLEDGE.

  “We had previously calculated the Return—being the full return of the Dark Sun, when its orbit brings it to the outer reaches of our solar system—to be the day of next year’s vernal equinox, March 20, 2008. Working backward then, we deduced that the first Pillar—duly cleansed—must be set in place by December 10, this year, by the light of the Dark Sun, which means during a Titanic Rising.”

  “December 10,” Stretch said drily. “Tomorrow.”

  “Yes.”

  “Cutting it a little close, aren’t we?”

  Wizard shrugged as he headed for the door. “When ancient knowledge is lost, sometimes it is never found in time. We’ve been very lucky so far. Tank and I were aware of the 2008 deadline, so we thought we had more time than this. We were surprised that the laying of the first two Pillars was required so soon, and so far in advance of the latter four.

  Jack? Do you have the Firestone?”

  Jack produced the Firestone from its pack, handed it to Wizard.

  The old professor then stepped out of the observation room and into an airlocktype doorway, emerging inside Lab 2, now alone with the Killing Stone.

  Everyone watched intently through the twoway mirror as Wizard brought the little golden pyramid over to the Killing Stone. Two HDV video cameras whirred in the silence, recording the scene through the glass. Four more were inside the lab with Wizard, filming the Killing Stone from every angle.

  The two stones could not have been more different—the Firestone was ultrasmooth, gold, and glittering; the Killing Stone rough and scratched, with dry maroon stains all over it.

  And yet somehow they seemed connected. Fashioned by the same maker.

  One of the two flat sections on the upper surface of the Killing Stone bore a shallow squareshaped recess that perfectly
matched the base of the Firestone.

  “OK,”Wizard’s voice said over the speakers in the observation room,“I am now going to set the Firestone atop the Killing Stone…”

  Slowly and with great reverence, he held the Firestone above the recess in the Killing Stone…

  …and then he lowered the pyramidion onto it.

  As he gazed through the twoway window, Jack found himself holding his breath.

  The Firestone slotted into the recess perfectly, now married to the Killing Stone.

  Wizard stepped back.

  Nothing happened.

  And then the crystal on the Firestone’s peak began to glimmer.

  An ominous humming began to thrum from the paired stones.

  Wizard’s eyes went wide.

  Then, abruptly, the humming stopped.

  Silence.

  No one moved.

  But then, in beautiful silence, some symbols on the Killing Stone—individual symbols mixed among the dozens of others carved into it—began to glow dazzling white, one after the other.

  One symbol would glow brightly—in total silence—before it went dull again and another shone to life, and another, and another.

  A sequence of some kind.

  As it played out, the twins jotted down each symbol as it glowed.

  “Numbers and Mayan epochs,”Wizard said over the intercom.“Only the numerical symbols for dates are glowing. Crucial dates.”

  The sequence went for about forty seconds, before the glowing subsided and both ancient stones resumed their normal appearance once again.

  Half an hour later, after Wizard, Tank, and the twins had watched and rewatched the video footage of the event and crunched the numbers, Wizard announced, “The date from Laozi’s chamber is correct. The first Pillar must be set in place during the Titanic Rising just before dawn tomorrow, the 10th of December. The second Pillar must be laid a week from now, on December 17, again during a Titanic Rising.”