The Stone Warriors
Page 14
The clay lid clinked into place on the last of the jars.
The workers washed their hands in the water buckets and then rubbed the body with natron salt to preserve and dry it. They packed the hollowed-out frame with still more natron and plugged the skull with linen.
By now, the acolytes’ foreheads and bare chests glowed with sweat. They anointed and sealed the body with a thick, sticky resin. They lifted its shoulders from the stone — the broad torso not nearly so heavy now, filled only with salt — and wrapped it in strips of fresh linen.
Finally, they placed a heavy mask on the man’s head, transforming his own sharp features into those of an Egyptian vulture. Solid gold, except for the sharp, iron point of the cunning predator’s beak.
The acolytes repeated their grim work with methodical care, and one by one, the bodies were transformed. As they neared completion on the fifth, blood-spattered and exhausted, a chorus of voices rose in the chamber behind them. Beneath the largest of the torches, a group of three men, priests of The Order, chanted words not heard for millennia. They were reading from the Lost Spells of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, legendary incantations of unimaginable power.
The priests released their final lines with full-throated fervor, then stood winded and wide-eyed in the sudden silence, in thrall to the unearthly power they’d felt surging through them.
The priests watched intently. The acolytes barely dared to blink.
Had it worked?
Had the ancient Spells accomplished their dark task?
These were no idle questions. Far more than a day’s work was at stake here. The figures on these slabs had bet their lives on it. They had died for this.
But they had no intention of staying dead for long. Nor did they intend to remain in these frail human forms. There were other forms waiting for them in the afterlife — if they could get there.
Copyright © 2016 by Scholastic Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Northrop, Michael, author.
The stone warriors / Michael Northrop. — First edition.
pages cm. — (TombQuest ; 4)
Summary: Twelve-year-olds Alex and Renata are on the run from the Order, which is on the brink of creating an army of indestructible stone warriors to carry out their evil schemes, and only the Lost Spells which his mother used to bring Alex back to life can stop them — and undoing the powerful magic that created the chaos that is now loose in Egypt might very well kill him.
ISBN 978-0-545-72341-1 (hardcover)
1. Book of the dead — Juvenile fiction. 2. Mothers and sons — Juvenile fiction. 3. Magic — Juvenile fiction. 4. Death — Juvenile fiction. 5. Adventure stories. 6. Egypt — Antiquities — Juvenile fiction. [1. Book of the dead — Fiction. 2. Mothers and sons — Fiction. 3. Magic — Fiction. 4. Death — Fiction. 5. Adventure and adventurers — Fiction. 6. Egypt — Antiquities — Fiction.] I. Title. II. Series: Northrop, Michael. TombQuest ; 4.
PZ7.N8185St 2016
813.6 — dc23
[Fic]
2015028422
First edition, January 2016
Cover art by Michael Heath. Sakhmet art by Jacey @ début art. Frames by Charice Silverman. All art © Scholastic Inc. Art direction by Keirsten Geise.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-72348-0
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