The Stone Warriors

by Michael Northrop

  But as she turned one way and then another, she couldn’t help but think of her own parents. She remembered her own good-bye hugs at the airport. It felt so long ago now. Too long. Her watchful eyes began to brim with tears, and as protective as she felt, she couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit jealous, too.

  And so when Todtman pivoted around the corner on the tip of his cane, she didn’t try to stop him. She knew him well enough by now to know what he would do.

  The old curator took in the moment at a glance, paused barely half a beat, and said, “Maggie!”

  Dr. Bauer gave her son one more squeeze and closed her eyes a little tighter, as if trying to lock in the moment. Then she opened them and looked over her son’s shoulder.

  “Guten Tag, Ernst,” she said, and then, more softly, “Hello, Ren. It’s good to see you.”

  Ren felt her ears get hot — embarrassed to be caught staring — and offered a quick wave.

  “The Order is on its way,” said Todtman, by way of hello. “They may already be here.”

  Maggie sighed heavily and nodded. Then she released her son and looked down at him. Alex looked up at her, his arms still held out for a hug that was now over. “Did you do that sand devil?” she said, eyeing the scarab that had once been hers.

  Alex nodded.

  She reached down and ruffled his hair, something Ren had seen her do a hundred times. “I knew you’d be good with the Returner,” she said. “I’m glad it has kept you safe.”

  “How did you know it would work for me?” said Alex.

  “You got your hands on it once when you were very young — and you blew out the windows in the apartment.”

  “Maggie!” Todtman repeated. “Are the Spells unguarded?”

  She looked up at him and nodded. So she does have them, thought Ren. “Yes,” Dr. Bauer said, her voice hardening as she spoke. “We need to get them out of here. I’m not ready yet.”

  “Ready for what?” said Ren as they all turned to follow Dr. Bauer down the next alley.

  She didn’t answer.

  Alex rushed to catch up with his mom. “I missed you,” he said, so softly that it was nearly drowned out by the steady beat of their footsteps.

  And that she did answer. “Oh, Alex, I so wish you hadn’t found me yet — but I missed you, too. I left little signs to let you know I was still thinking about you.” Ren’s mind flashed back to the Valley of the Kings, to an old name penciled into a sun-scorched logbook. “Because the truth is, I missed you every moment of the day.”

  She led them through the little village, leaving her head uncovered. The time for hiding was over. What they needed now was escape.

  Alex felt a stinging bite on the soft flesh of his neck and slapped down hard. “Oh no,” he said before he even saw the flattened sand fly on his palm. The flies were back.

  “What they see, The Order sees,” said Todtman, waving at the buzzing cloud.

  They were approaching a row of three mud-brick huts on the very edge of the village. The walls were thick, painted a fading blue, and the heavy wooden shutters were closed.

  “They’ll see,” said Alex. “I can create some wind. Maybe —”

  “It’s okay,” said his mom. “Let them.”

  She pulled open the door of the first hut. “Inside,” she said quickly, before turning to her son. “Keep them out, Alex.”

  He nodded and grabbed the scarab. A quick gust scattered their tiny pursuers as the friends — and family — piled inside and quickly closed the door.

  “Uh, Mom,” Alex said into the hot, heavy darkness inside. “Do you want it back? Your scarab?”

  A gas lantern sparked to life and the growing flame revealed a quick smile on her face. “Not now, honeybear,” she said. “But hurry.”

  Alex had always been embarrassed by his mom’s pet names for him, but right now “honeybear” sounded pretty sweet. And then she threw back a dusty old rug that was very nearly the only furnishing in the hut. In the light of the lantern, Alex saw a door in the floor.

  “What’s —” began Ren, but Dr. Bauer was already kneeling down and pulling the trapdoor up and back.

  “Stay quiet and follow me,” she said.

  Alex heard Todtman throw the steel bolt behind them, locking the heavy wooden door from the inside. The next thing Alex knew, he was following his mom down a rusty old ladder into darkness. Sandy clay hardened into sandstone as they climbed twelve feet straight down. The ladder ended. Alex was surprised to find himself in a tunnel nearly high enough to stand in. Stooping slightly, he followed the glow of his mom’s lantern forward.

  He heard Todtman slam the trapdoor behind them. Flecks of sand and clay rained down on Alex’s head as the others waddled forward like ducklings in the dark. The tunnel seemed none too stable, but Alex felt safer and more at ease than he had in weeks.

  Twenty-odd yards later, they arrived at a second ladder. The second hut, Alex realized. His mom ignored this ladder, shimmying around it in the narrow tunnel and continuing on.

  Finally, they reached the third ladder and ascended toward the third and final hut. “How did you dig all of this?” he huffed at his mom’s back as they climbed.

  “Most of the work was done a long time ago,” she answered. “These huts were built over an old dig site here.”

  “When you were in school?” said Alex.

  “Yes. We left them here as a way to ensure our claim of the site.”

  She threw back the trapdoor above them. By the time Alex climbed out, the room was already beginning to glow with the soft light of a larger lantern hanging from the ceiling.

  The others emerged from the ground like desert gophers and Alex began to look around the hut’s one shadowy room. There was a desk, a cot, a pitcher of water, an old trunk, and a backpack leaning against the wall. He didn’t see the Spells, but he felt them. His heart was racing and his head was buzzing. Pinpoints and whirls of light played at the edges of his vision.

  “Is this what it feels like when you drink those huge coffees?” he asked.

  Now and then the swirling lights coalesced into a hieroglyphic symbol. A glowing ankh, the loop-topped cross that meant life, formed in front of Alex. It seemed so real that he reached out for it, but there was nothing there.

  “What are you doing?” said Ren.

  “You didn’t see that?”

  “See what?”

  “The Lost Spells gave you life,” said his mom, once again kneeling down. “You are reacting to them.”

  She opened the lid of the old trunk and took out a square of black leather. Through the swirls, Alex recognized it as a briefcase his mom used to bring to work for important meetings. She lifted it free and carried it across the room. As she placed it down on the desk and clicked both brass clasps open — tik! tik! — Alex felt the sudden need to sit down. He looked around for a chair. There was only one, and it was tucked under the desk.

  His mom opened the briefcase and Alex peered inside through a Milky Way’s worth of stars. He saw a thin sheet of linen, covered in more hieroglyphs.

  “Are those the Lost Spells?” asked Ren.

  “No,” said Dr. Bauer. “These are the protective spells concealing them. Hiding their signal while I … studied them.”

  “You have been looking for a way to undo the damage,” said Todtman, suddenly understanding. “To close the doorways without …”

  They both turned their eyes to Alex and saw him swaying like a sapling in a windstorm.

  “Yes,” she said. “I have been looking for some way to undo the damage the Spells have caused without undoing the magic that healed my son. But now I have run out of time.” She took one more look at Alex, whose buzzing brain was able to form only one simple thought: Why does she look so sad?

  “Watch him, please,” she said.

  And then she lifted the cloth.

  Alex saw a slice of yellow light spread outward like a slow smile.

  And then he fainted, dead away.

  Alex had see
n the pitcher of water in the corner of the room; he just hadn’t expected to end up wearing it.

  “Puhh!” he said, spluttering some of the water running down his face.

  He reached up and wiped his eyes clear with his forearm, and there was Ren, towering above him holding the dripping pitcher. Towering was not a word normally associated with his vertically challenged friend, and that’s when he realized he was on the floor.

  “We have to go,” Ren said apologetically.

  He sat up and looked for his mom, with the sudden panicked thought that maybe he’d dreamed the whole thing. But the soreness from his fall told him how real this was, and then he spotted her over by the desk. She was carefully folding the linen wrapping back over the Lost Spells in her briefcase.

  A powerful image flashed through his mind: his mom, sitting at that little desk, sipping her favorite tea and intensely studying the ancient Spells. Looking for some loophole, some shaded meaning in the hieroglyphic writing that would let her thread the needle, closing the doorways she’d opened to the afterlife without shutting the door on his own new life. She has always taken care of me, he thought.

  Alex’s mind returned to the here and now, and he noticed a small lump under the symbol-covered cloth. He hadn’t seen that the first time. Did she just put something in there with the Spells? He sat up higher for a better look, but as he did, she slammed the briefcase closed and turned to him.

  “Are you okay, hun?” she said. “Because we really do have to go.”

  He gave a woozy, bobbleheaded nod. He was okay-ish.

  “Come out now! And bring the Spells!” called an all-too-familiar voice. “You are completely surrounded and there will be no escape.”

  Alex stiffened at the sound of Aff Neb’s edgy voice. But the voice wasn’t as loud as he expected: clearly shouted, but at a distance.

  “Where are they?” said Alex, rising shakily to his feet.

  Todtman was standing against the wall, peering out a narrow crack in the wooden shutter covering the front window. “They have the hut entirely surrounded,” he said. “But it’s the wrong hut.”

  Alex walked over to the window. With the Spells fully covered and the briefcase closed, his revving system had settled down somewhat. Todtman stepped aside and Alex peered through the crack.

  Aff Neb looked to be about the size of an action figure, standing close to sixty yards away and bellowing threats at the first hut — the one they’d exited through the door in the floor. A squad of rifle-wielding gunmen surrounded the modest structure, looking like army action figures at this distance. Every once in a while, the swarming flies all around them coalesced into a visible pocket of blackness in the air before spreading out again and disappearing from view.

  “They won’t wait long,” said Todtman.

  Alex nodded absently. He was assessing the gunmen.

  They had led The Order straight to his mom — and the Spells. They had made the ultimate mistake — But maybe if it comes to a fight, he thought, we can win. They had three amulets, and the presence of his mom seemed to add to their strength.

  But then a man appeared who changed the math. He walked straight out of the desert heat haze, his golden mask glinting in the sun. Alex’s breath caught and he jumped back from the window.

  “The leader is here, too,” he said.

  He said it to no one in particular, but his mom turned suddenly toward him. “He’s here?” she said.

  He stared at her, too surprised to answer. The tone of her voice — familiar, fearful — made it seem like she’d met the leader before. But when? Where? He had spent his whole life with her — just the two of them — but there was so much about his mom he didn’t know …

  The leader’s voice stretched across the open desert, sounding like a whisper in Alex’s ears but a barked command in his head. “There is something wrong — step aside!”

  The command was meant for the gunmen, but the leader’s presence was so powerful that Alex had the urge to step aside himself. He fought it and took one last peek between the shutters.

  There was a thick crunch of wood as the leader splintered the front door with a wave of his hand and walked unhindered into the hut. Alex watched as the gunmen streamed inside. He pictured them all, rifles pointed at every corner of the empty room. In a moment, they would find the trapdoor.

  A more immediate sound tore his attention from the front window. It was the sound of the shutters being thrown open on the back window.

  “We can climb out here,” said his mom, ducking down to stuff the briefcase into her backpack. “They will try the second hut next — maybe split their forces and send some down into the tunnel.”

  “We have a car,” said Todtman. “Back in the center of the village.”

  Dr. Bauer shook her head. “I have a truck,” she said. “And it’s closer.” Then she boosted herself up and out of the window with the grace of a cat burglar.

  As the friends rushed over to the open window to help boost the old, decidedly graceless German out next, Ren turned to Alex. “Uh, your mom kind of kicks butt,” she said.

  Alex didn’t know what to say. He’d always known his mom made a mean grilled cheese, but this? “I guess so,” he managed. Then they both knelt down and laced their hands together for Todtman to step on.

  Ren was too short to boost herself out the window, so Alex was the last one out. He plopped down onto the sandy ground on the shady side of the little shelter. His mom looked back at him, and once again he saw the familiar worry lines crease the corners of her eyes. He didn’t like it. He knew he’d given her those lines in the first place. And now she was worried about him again. After all the trouble he’d caused. After he’d left his own cousin in a desert cell. After he’d led The Order right to her …

  “It’s all my fault,” he whispered to her. “Everything that’s happened, it’s because of me. I put you in danger.” His eyes flicked around the huddled group. “I put you all in danger.”

  His mom gave him a sad look. “Oh, hun, don’t.”

  “It’s true,” he said, barely able to look her in the eyes.

  She took his chin in her hand to make him. “No,” she said. “It’s not.”

  When he still wouldn’t meet her eyes, she began to talk, her voice soft and warm. “We all had a choice,” she said. “I chose to save you in that hospital room. I knew there was a risk, and I took it. The only thing you are responsible for is what you did after you woke up. And you came looking for me — to make things right. And that” — she gave his chin a shake — “that makes me proud.”

  “We had a choice, too,” whispered Ren. “That’s what I was trying to tell you leaving that pit. It’s not all your fault — and we’re not all your responsibility. We all had a choice.”

  Alex looked over at her, skeptical.

  “I chose to come halfway around the world,” she said, pointing at her own chest. As clear and firm as her statement was, it was her next words that convinced him. Flashing the quickest of grins she added: “Since when do I do what you tell me, anyway?”

  Alex crouched in the sand, trying to process it all, replaying the words of the two people he trusted most. “We all had a choice,” he said, turning it over in his head. He felt a weight lift, a burden ease. “I guess I can live with that.”

  His mom smiled, but just briefly. “Not if we don’t get moving,” she said, reaching over to ruffle his hair. “Now let’s go! We should go straight ahead. Stay in the cover of the buildings as long as we can. The truck isn’t far.”

  A voice carried across the desert. “Not here!” called the leader. “Check the next one!”

  Alex’s mom stopped to listen to the commanding voice, and for once Alex couldn’t identify the look on her face. But as the voice fell silent, her determination returned. “They’re heading for the second hut,” she said, rising from her crouch. “Ready to run?”

  Alex took one last look down at the cool, sheltering shade before heading out into the dangers o
f the open desert. But something was wrong. The ground wasn’t shaded gray anymore; it was glowing a rosy pink.

  “Don’t go,” came a thin, scratchy voice. “Stay a while.”

  Alex knew who he would find even before he looked up.

  Peshwar. The three-hut shell game had fooled the rest of them, but The Order’s heartless huntress had sniffed them out.

  She stood waiting for them ten feet away, gazing out through the eye sockets of the sun-bleached lioness skull. In her hand was a shimmering crimson energy dagger. As soon as he saw it, Alex’s elbow ached at the memory of its bite.

  Quick as a whip, the hand holding the bloodred dagger shot back and rocketed forward. Alex and Ren dove to one side, Todtman and Bauer dropped to the other, and the brutal projectile slammed into the wall between them with a loud, crackling explosion.

  Alex felt little chunks of mud brick spray across the back of his shirt, but what worried him more was the sound. He knew that would carry much farther — and alert the rest of The Order’s forces.

  As he rolled over and popped to his feet, Alex heard the shouts of men on the move and the metallic clicks and shucks of rifles being readied for action. The hunters were on the way. If the friends were to escape, if they were to keep the limitless power of the Spells out of the hands of their pursuers, it would have to be now.

  We all have a choice, thought Alex, and I choose to fight.

  Alex’s hand closed tightly around the scarab, the beetle’s wings digging into his palm, just a hint of the pain and danger to come. He turned to face the lethal lioness.

  Peshwar lowered her hand and another energy dagger formed, spreading downward and crackling with power. Like an Old West gunfighter, Alex knew she was faster on the draw than he was. But her hand was still down, and his was already on the way up. He pointed his fingers like a spear.

  The concentrated gust shot outward with the power of ten sledgehammers, but this time it was Peshwar who ducked nimbly to the side. Her crimson robes fluttered as she tucked and rolled across the sand. In an instant she was up — and releasing her dagger!