Stealing Sacred Fire (52 page)

At the Sphinx, Tiy still
observed the inside of the central chamber. She saw the giant
crystal fill completely with blinding white light. She saw the
great stone begin to revolve and hum like a spinning top. Rays of
light shot out from all over its surface, inundating the lines,
grooves and circles carved into the chamber’s floor and walls. Soon
this light would flood the whole chamber complex and spill out into
the world. The soul of Mankind was being reconceived. In time, a
golden age would be born. And a new sun would rise in the east to
greet the gaze of the watchful Sphinx. Her son. Now Tiy began to
weep for his loss.

Helen felt
very calm, although she could tell her mother was unnerved by the
masses. They had fought their way onto the Giza plateau and had
found that once the crowd absorbed them, it was impossible to get
out again. The difficulties with the sound system had added tension
to an already explosive atmosphere. People seemed excited and full
of expectation, but there was a sense that violence might break out
at any moment. Egyptian soldiers looked nervous, huddling together
in tight knots around their armoured cars, clutching their guns.
There was little they could do to control the crowds: there were
too many people.

‘The authorities shouldn’t have
allowed this!’ Lily said. She lifted Helen in her arms, because
no-one seemed to care about trampling over a defenceless child.
‘Look at them! Mindless, milling around. It’s a desecration.’ She
shifted her daughter’s weight in her arms. ‘Thank heavens you’re a
slight child!’ She paused. ‘Just why are we here, Helen?’

Helen smiled at her mother. ‘We
have to find the others.’

‘Daniel? Is Daniel here?’ Lily
could not keep the sudden surge of hope from her voice.

Helen did not answer. She
looked up at the shining expanse of the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
Its sheer white face looked like a gleaming road leading right up
to the stars. Overhead, the constellation of Orion burned brightly
in the sky. Helen listened to the haunting tones that whispered
softly in her mind: one, two, three.

Lily finally managed to shove
her way to the lip of the enclosure and went down towards the great
Sphinx. ‘How will we find anyone here?’ she complained. The child
was beginning to weigh heavily in her arms.

‘There, Mum.’ Helen pointed
towards the left paw of the monument.

By this point, weariness and
muscular pain had made Lily quite aggressive. She clasped Helen to
her with one hand and roughly pushed people aside with the other.
This was Bedlam. ‘I can’t see anyone we know, Hel. Are you
sure?’

‘Yes Mum. There.’ Helen shook
her hand in agitation. ‘Those people.’

Lily saw two women pressed up
against the paw of the Sphinx, although strangely enough, the
milling crowd seemed to be giving them a wide berth. Lily walked up
to them and gratefully lowered Helen to the ground.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Hope you don’t
mind us invading your space. My arms were dropping off.’

A rather sinister-looking young
woman with dark, severely-cut hair sat with an aged crone lolling
in her lap. The dark-haired woman did not speak, but glared up at
Lily. The older woman looked as if she might be dead. Lily was
morbidly intrigued, but didn’t like to stare, then noticed the
ancient fingers twitching and slivers of white between the
fluttering eyelids. ‘Is she all right? Can we do anything to
help?’

The younger woman shook her
head belligerently; a gesture which warned, leave us alone.

Helen went up to the old woman
and put her small hands on the lined face.

‘Hel, don’t be rude,’ Lily
began, but Helen ignored her and spoke to the dark-haired
woman.

‘He’s sent us to you,’ she said
earnestly. ‘We had to come.’

The young woman tore her eyes
away from Lily and looked at the child in surprise. Her mouth
dropped open. She said, ‘Shemyaza?’

Helen grinned. ‘Yes!’

Lily noticed then that the
young woman’s face was wet with tears; her eyes were reddened. The
sight made her stomach turned to ice. She anticipated what came
next.

‘He’s dead,’ the woman
said.

‘No!’ Helen squealed. ‘Met-Met
told me he was mine!’

Before Lily could take in this
information, a squealing, humming sound pealed out over the
plateau. Lily winced involuntarily. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘It’s all right,’ Helen told
her. ‘It’s the tones. Everyone can hear them now.’ She turned back
to the young woman. ‘He can’t be dead. He isn’t!’

Lily did not know what Helen
meant about ‘tones’. She could not take in the fact that Shem might
be dead. Who were these two women? What could they know?

Around her, people were looking
at one another in alarm. It was clear that, at first, everyone
believed they’d heard a shriek of feed-back from the stage, for
many of them pantomimed grimaces and stuck their fingers in their
ears. Faces broke into smiles for it seemed the music was about to
be reinstated. But it quickly became obvious that the unearthly
noise was nothing to do with the P.A. It enveloped the entire
plateau, becoming louder all the time; a high-pitched, insistent
screech. Then, the ground began to shake.

Lily stumbled against her
daughter. ‘It’s a bomb! It must be. Oh my god!’

People were becoming
hysterical, perhaps sharing Lily’s belief in a terrorist attack.
The humming was ear-splitting now. Some were affected more greatly
than others, and fell to the ground, writhing, desperately trying
to cover their ears.

Helen, her face solemn, slowly
lifted one hand and pointed towards the pyramids. She did not
attempt to speak. A hot wind had arisen, blowing the girl’s hair
back from her face.

Lily turned. Auroras of blue
and gold light hung above the soaring monuments, dancing and
wafting like enormous veils in the sky. The pyramids themselves
glowed utterly white, capped by brilliant gold.

Deep below, in the Chambers of
Light, the crystal gate had ceased its revolutions, having
discharged all of its life-force to the land above. Inside the
crystal, its substance had transmuted into liquid, which gently
bubbled. Within this new, amniotic energy, a foetus hung, tiny as a
grain of wheat. Yet its growth was rapid. Now a boy-child was
suspended within the stone. His eyes were eyes closed, his
beautiful face at peace, dreaming of the world to come. A son of
gods was growing there, from seed to man.

Daniel and his companions had
left the crypt of St Menas and, following Shemyaza’s final
instructions, had made their way to the Giza complex. Daniel had
not wanted to come, and Gadreel had been forced to drag him
physically from the church. He’d wanted to stay there, unsure
himself as to why. Perhaps he harboured a spark of hope that
Shemyaza might rise up out of the well, as he had clawed his way
from the land-slide in Cornwall, five years before. Daniel could
not hate Salamiel for what he’d done, aware that he’d had no
choice, but neither did he want, at this moment, to be close to
Shem’s killer. Gadreel, however, had been persistent, and
eventually Daniel had given in to her demands.

A hired mini-bus had brought
them out of the city, but they’d had to walk for quite a way, owing
to the congestion on the roads. Chaos reigned on the Giza plateau.
It seemed as if the end of the world had come. Many people were
running around and shouting, while others looked paralysed by shock
and fear. The avatars were forced to push through hysterical
crowds. Around them, a multitude of hands pointed up at the sky.
Daniel stared blearily at the aurora of light dancing above the
pyramids. He could tell that most of the crowd believed it be a
special effect, created purposefully for the party. Those who
perhaps guessed the truth stood quietly, gazing at the sky. The
pyramids were dazzling beacons of raw, white light, each crowned
with a golden sun that illuminated the night. It was a strange and
electrifying sight, but none of the avatars felt capable of
commenting on it. All were wrapped in cauls of isolated grief, and
words did not exist that could express it. Not one of them doubted
that Shemyaza’s journey into the Chambers was somehow responsible
for the phenomena around them. A great change was about to happen,
but for them the greatest and most shattering change had already
taken place. Shemyaza was dead. It was duty that led them here now.
They no longer cared what happened, but there was an urge within
them to join the others who, like them, had been Shemyaza’s
companions: Tiy and Melandra. They all needed to be together at
this time.

Daniel concentrated on locating
the women, extending his psychic perception over the heads of the
frantic crowd. Faintly, he picked up the sound of weeping; sibilant
sobs that echoed in his mind. It came directly from the Sphinx
enclosure. It was Melandra and Tiy. Strangely, he sensed they were
not alone, but accompanied by two other females. These others felt
familiar to Daniel’s senses, but he could not quite recognise them.
There was too much going on around him, and his misery interfered
with the clarity of his sight.

‘The enclosure,’ he said to the
others. ‘The women are by the paws of the Sphinx.’

A mob of people covered in body paint
suddenly surged around them, and the avatars were pushed into one
another.

‘I can’t stand much more of
this,’ Pharmaros said. ‘It’s so claustrophobic. Great Anu, if only
we could fly over their heads!’

Although Penemue could not
understand her words, he clearly read her distress, for he eased
himself to the front of their group and with firm but gentle
strength, began to push people aside, so that the group could pass
through. Silently, he cleared a path for them to the Sphinx
enclosure.

Because of his height, Penemue
noticed the women first and began to gesture urgently at his
companions. Daniel shouldered his way to the front, saw Melandra
squatting beside an old woman who was slumped on the ground, then
noticed a tall younger woman with auburn hair standing beside them.
He cried her name in surprise. ‘Lily!’

Lily turned, paused for moment,
then came loping towards him. She wrapped him in a tight embrace.
‘Daniel, oh Daniel!’ After a few moments, she pulled away from him
a little and took his face in her hands. ‘Is it true, Dan? About
Shem?’

Daniel swallowed thickly and
nodded. He could not stem the tears that came to his eyes. Lily
held him to her fiercely, whispering endearments into his hair;
endearments to which, ultimately, he could never respond. ‘I am
here for you, my love, always here.’

He could not offer up deep,
wrenching sobs of grief, but just an endless river of silent
tears.

Penemue, Pharmaros and Gadreel
went to kneel beside Tiy and Melandra. They seemed numb, shocked.
Helen trotted away from them and joined her mother, clinging to
Daniel’s knees, her face set in a tight expression.

It seemed that none of them could see,
or even sense, the activity around them. They were alone in their
bewilderment, abandoned by light, their parts played.

Salamiel and Kashday stood a
short distance away, observing the others. Kashday felt that their
companions were being hard on Salamiel. They could not speak to
him. Kashday himself was at a loss for words, but felt that someone
should at least stand at Salamiel’s side. He had had the hardest
task of all.

Salamiel put a hand on
Kashday’s shoulder. ‘There is grief and there is sorrow,’ he said
in a weak approximation of his usual cynical tone, ‘but there is
also reunion.’

Kashday reached up and took
Salamiel’s hand. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There is that.’

Salamiel shook his head. ‘No,
you don’t understand. That young woman crushing Daniel is your
daughter. It is Lily.’

Kashday stiffened. ‘Lily…?’

‘Yes.’ Salamiel pushed him
forward. ‘She has her daughter with her. I don’t know why or how
they’re here, but it must be for a reason. For Anu’s sake, go to
them.’

Kashday hesitated for a moment.
He could only think that this stranger was Helen Winter’s daughter
more than his. He had never seen her in the flesh and now, so solid
and alive before him, she did not match the child of his
imagination. She was a woman, not a girl.

‘Kashday,’ Salamiel said
softly, ‘you must. Let something be salvaged from what we have
lost.’

Kashday glanced back at his
companion, then approached his daughter. He was afraid of her.
Would she condemn him for his long absence from her life? Perhaps
she did not want a father. Her mother might have said anything to
her.

Even though Lily’s face was
buried in Daniel’s hair, she seemed to sense Kashday’s presence,
for she raised her head as he drew close. Their eyes met. Lily
frowned, her expression puzzled, as if she struggled to recapture a
memory.

Daniel appeared to become aware
of her anxiety, for he pulled away from her. He rubbed his hands
wearily over his face, managed a weak smile. ‘Lily… this is someone
you must meet. It is your father, Kashday.’

Lily uttered a small sound of
shock. ‘Father?’ she said, as if experimenting with the word.

‘Yes,’ Daniel said. ‘He has
been with us, Lil, through everything that happened tonight.’

Lily took a few steps towards
Kashday, shaking her head. ‘You have come back,’ she said. ‘We
thought you were lost.’

Kashday nodded. ‘For a long
time. Yes.’ He paused. ‘I had not hoped for this.’

Lily studied his face for a
moment, then closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around him. He
could feel her shaking. More tears. She was not like Helen, his
lost love, for in his arms she was tall and felt strong. Helen had
always seemed physically delicate, a creature to be enwrapped and
cherished. He could sense the complexities of Lily’s emotions and
character; there would be much to learn about her.