They killed him as a message to me,” I said.
“But why would they kill your friend for something you said you didn’t have? Why didn’t they kill you?” Ashraf asked.
I was wondering the same thing. Poor Talma’s head had been temporarily dipped back into the jar, his hair like river weed. I didn’t want to guess where the body might be.
“Because they don’t believe him,” Astiza reasoned. “Only Ethan knows for sure if the medallion still exists and what it might mean. They want to coerce him, not kill him.”
“This is a damned poor way to do it,” I said grimly.
“And who is they?” Enoch asked.
“The Bedouin, Achmed bin Sadr.”
“He’s a tool, not a master.”
“Then it must be Silano. He warned me to take him seriously. He arrives, and Antoine dies. All this is my fault. I asked Talma to investigate Bin Sadr in Alexandria. Talma was kidnapped, or followed Silano to spy on him. He was caught and wouldn’t talk. What did he even know? And his death is supposed to frighten me.”
Ash clapped my shoulder. “Except that he doesn’t know what a warrior you are!”
Actually, I was human enough to have nightmares for a month, but that’s not what one confesses at times like this. Besides, if there was one thing I was certain of, Silano would never, ever get my medallion.
“It’s my fault,” Astiza said. “You said he went to Alexandria to investigate me.”
“That was his idea, not mine or yours. Don’t blame yourself.”
“Why didn’t he just ask me his questions directly?”
Because you never fully answer them, I thought. Because you enjoy being an enigma. But I said nothing. We sat in gloomy silence for a while, wrestling with self-recrimination. Sometimes the more innocent we are, the more we blame ourselves.
“Your friend will not be the last to perish if Silano gets his way,” Enoch finally said heavily.
It sounded as if the old man knew more than he’d let on. “What do you mean?”
“There is more at stake here than you may realize, or have been told. The more I study, the more I fear, and the more I am convinced.”
“Of what?”
“Your medallion may be some kind of clue or key to open a sacred door to a long-hidden vault. The pendant has been sought and fought over for millennia, and then, its purpose undeciphered, probably lay forgotten on Malta until Cagliostro learned of it in his studies here and sought it out. It curses the unworthy and drives them mad. It taunts the brilliant. It has become a riddle. It is a key with no lock, a map to no destination. None remember what it relates to. It has baffled even me.”
“So perhaps it is useless,” I said with a mixture of hope and regret.
“Or, its time has at last come. Silano wouldn’t have followed you here after his own studies if he didn’t have real expectation.”
“To find treasure?”
“If only it were that. There is treasure, and then there is power. I don’t know which truly motivates this mysterious European and his so-called Egyptian Rite, but were Silano to ever find what so many have sought, he would have not only immortal life and wealth unimaginable, but access to secrets that could undo the very warp and weave of the world. The right man might build with them. The wrong…”
“What secrets? What the devil are all you people really after?”
Enoch sighed, considering what to say. Finally he spoke. “The Book of Thoth.”
“The book of what?”
“Thoth is the Egyptian god of wisdom and knowledge,” Astiza said. “Your English word ‘thought’ comes from his name. He is the thrice great, the one the Greeks called Hermes. When Egypt began, Thoth was there.”
“The origins of our nation are mysterious,” Enoch said. “No history exists. But Egypt came before all. Instead of legends of a gradual awakening, our civilization seems to have sprung from the sand wholly formed. There is no precedent, and then suddenly kingdoms emerge with all the necessary arts. Where did knowledge come from? We attribute this sudden birth to the wisdom of Thoth.”
“It was he who invented writing, drawing, surveying, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine,” Astiza explained. “From whence he came we don’t know, but he started all that has come since. To us he is like Prometheus, who brought fire, or Adam and Eve, who ate from the apple of knowledge. Yes, your Bible story suggests a similar great awakening, but recalls it with dread. We believe men were wiser in those days, and knew magical things. The world was cleaner and happier.” She pointed to a painting on the wall of Enoch’s library. It was of a man with the head of a bird.
“That’s Thoth?” There’s something disturbing about people with the heads of animals. “Why a bird? They’re dumber than donkeys.”
“It’s an ibis, and we Egyptians find the unity of humans and animals quite beautiful.” There was a certain frost in her tone. “He’s also portrayed as a baboon. Egyptians believed there were no sharp differences between humans and animals, man and god, life and death, creator and created. All are part of one. It is Thoth who presides when our hearts are weighed against a feather before a jury of the forty-two gods. We must proclaim the evil we did not commit, lest our soul be devoured by a crocodile.”
“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t.
“Sometimes he would roam the world to observe and would disguise his wisdom as he learned still more. Men called him ‘the Fool.’”
“The Fool?”
“The jester, the wit, the truth teller,” Enoch said. “He emerges again and again. The saying is that the fool shall seek the Fool.”
Now I was really disturbed. Wasn’t that what the gypsy Sarylla had said in the French forest when she dealt the tarot cards? Had what I dismissed as vague nonsense actually been real prophecy? She had called me the fool, as well. “But why all the excitement about one more book?”
“This is not another book, but the first book,” said Enoch. “And surely you agree that books can drive the world, be it the Bible, the Koran, the works of Isaac Newton, or the songs of the Iliad that inspired Alexander. At their best, they are a distillation of thought, wisdom, hope, and desire. The Book of Thoth is reputed to be forty-two papyrus scrolls, a mere sampling of the 36,535 scrolls—one hundred for each day of the solar year—on which Thoth inscribed his secret knowledge and hid around the earth, to be found only by the worthy when the time was right. On these scrolls is a summary of the deepest power of the masters who built the pyramids: Might. Love. Immortality. Joy. Revenge. Levitation. Invisibility. The ability to see the world as it truly is, rather than the dreamlike illusion we live in. There is some pattern that underlies our world, some invisible structure, which legend says can be manipulated to magical effect. The ancient Egyptians knew how to do so. We have forgotten.”
“That’s why everyone is so desperate for this medallion?”
“Yes. It may be a clue for a quest as old as history. What if people didn’t have to die, or could be revived if they did? For an individual, time alone would eventually allow the accumulation of knowledge that would make him master of all other men. For armies, it would mean indestructibility. What would an army be like that knew no fear? What would a tyrant be like who had no end? What if what we call magic was nothing more than ancient science, directed by a book brought by a being, or beings, so ancient and wise that we’ve lost all memory of who they were and why they came?”
“Surely Bonaparte doesn’t expect…”
“I don’t think the French know exactly what they seek or what it could do for them, or else they’d already be taking our nation apart. There are stories, and that is enough. What do they have to lose by seeking? Bonaparte is a manipulator. He has put you to work on the problem, and savants like Jomard, as well. Now Silano. But Silano is different, I suspect. He pretends to work for the French government, but really he uses their support to work for himself. He’s following Cagliostro’s footsteps, trying to see if the legends are real.”
“But they aren’t,” I objected. “I mean, this is crazy. If this book exists, why don’t we see some sign of it? People have always died, even in ancient Egypt. They must, for society to renew, for young people to succeed the old. If they didn’t, people would go crazy with impatience. Natural death would be supplanted by murder.”
“You have wisdom beyond your years!” Enoch cried. “And you have begun to understand why such powerful secrets were rarely used and must continue to sleep. The book exists, but remains dangerous. No mere mortal man can handle godlike power. Thoth knew his knowledge must be safeguarded until our moral and emotional advancement balanced our cleverness and ambition, so he hid his books somewhere. Yet the dream runs through all of history, and perhaps fragments of the writings have been learned. Alexander the Great came to Egypt, visited the oracle, and went on to conquer the world. Caesar and his family triumphed after he studied with Cleopatra here. The Arabs became the world’s most powerful civilization after overrunning Egypt. In the Middle Ages, the Christians came to the Holy Land. For the Crusades? Or for deeper, more secret reasons? Later, other Europeans began to roam the ancient places. Why? Some contended it was for Christian artifacts. Some cite the legend of the Holy Grail. But what if the grail is a metaphor for this book, a metaphor of ultimate wisdom itself? What if it stands for the most dangerous kind of Promethean fire? Have any of the battles you’ve witnessed so far convinced you we are ready for such knowledge? We’re barely more than animals. So our old order slowly wakened from its lethargy, fearing that graves long buried were about to be reopened, that a book of secrets long lost might be rediscovered. Yet we know not ourselves what, precisely, it is we are guarding! Now the godless magi have come with your Bonaparte.”
“You mean the savants.”
“And this conjurer, Silano.”
“Do you want to destroy the medallion, then, so the book can’t be found?”
“No,” said Ashraf. “It has been rediscovered for a reason. Your coming is a sign in itself, Ethan Gage. But these secrets are for Egypt, not for France.”
“We have our own spies,” Astiza went on. “Word came that an American was arriving with something that could be a key to the past, an artifact that had been lost for centuries and was a clue to powers lost for millennia. They warned it would be best just to kill you. But in Alexandria you killed my master instead, and I saw that Isis had another plan.”
“Word came from whom?”
She hesitated. “Gypsies.”
“Gypsies!”
“A band sent warning from France.”
I sat back, rocked by this new revelation. By Jupiter and Jehovah, had I been betrayed by the Rom as well? Had Stefan and Sarylla been distracting me while word was sent ahead of my coming? What kind of string puppet was I? And were these people around me now, these people I liked and trusted, true informants who could lead me to a treasured book—or a nest of lunatics?
“Who are you?”
“The last priests of the old gods, who were earthly manifestations of a time and race with far more wisdom than ours,” Enoch said. “Their origins and purpose are lost in the fog of the past. We are our own kind of Masonry, if you will, the heirs of the beginning and the watchmen of the end. We are guardians not entirely certain of what it is we are guarding, but entrusted to keep this book out of the wrong hands. The old religions never completely die; they are simply absorbed into the new. Our task is to discover the door before unprincipled opportunists do—and then shut it again forever.”
“What door?”
“That is what we don’t know.”
“And you want to shut it only after taking a peek.”
“We cannot decide what best to do with the book until we find it. We should see if it offers hope or peril, redemption or damnation. But until we do find it, we live with the fear that someone else far less scrupulous could find it first.”
I shook my head. “Between bungling my assassination in Alexandria and not having much more of a clue than I do, you’re not much of a priesthood,” I grouched.
“The goddess does things in her own good time,” Astiza said serenely.
“And Silano does his in his.” I looked grimly at our little gathering. “Isis didn’t help poor Talma, and she won’t protect us. I don’t think we’re safe here.”
“My house is guarded…,” Enoch began.
“And known. Your address is no longer a secret, that oil jar tells us. You must move, now. You think he won’t come knocking if he’s desperate enough?”
“Move! I will not run from evil. I will not leave the books and artifacts I’ve spent a lifetime accumulating. My servants can protect me. And besides, trying to move my library would give any new hiding place away. My job is to keep researching, and yours to keep working with the savants, until we learn where this door is and secure it before Silano can enter. We are in a race for rediscovery. Let’s not lose it by fleeing now.” Enoch was glowering. Trying to send him into hiding would be like budging a barnacle.
“Then at least we need a safe place for both Astiza and the medallion,” I argued. “It’s madness to keep it here now. And if I’m assaulted or killed, it’s imperative they not find the medallion on me. In fact, if I’m kidnapped, its absence might be the only thing to keep me alive. Astiza could be used as a hostage. Even Napoleon has noticed my, er, interest in her.” I kept my eyes averted while I said it. “Meanwhile, Bonaparte is about to lead a group of savants to the pyramids. Maybe in combination we’ll learn something to head Silano off.”
“One cannot send a beautiful young woman off by herself,” said Enoch.
“So where does one put a woman, in Egypt?”
“A harem,” Ashraf suggested.
I’ll confess that some erotic fantasies concerning that mysterious institution flickered through my mind. I had a vision of shallow bathing pools, fanning slaves, and half-draped, sex-starved women. Could I visit? But then, if Astiza went into a harem, could she get back out?
“I’m not going to be locked in a seraglio,” Astiza said. “I belong to no man.”
Well, you belong to me, I thought, but it didn’t seem the time to push the issue.
“In a harem, no man except the master can enter, or even learn what goes on,” insisted Ashraf. “I know a nobleman who did not flee the French, Yusuf al-Beni, who has retained possession of his house and his household. He has a harem for his women and could give the priestess refuge. Not as a harem girl, but as a guest.”
“Can Yusuf be trusted?”
“He can be bought, I think.”
“I don’t want to sit blinded from events, sewing with a bunch of silly women,” Astiza said. Damnation, she was independent. It was one of the things I liked about her.
“Nor do you want to be dead or worse,” I replied. “Ashraf ’s idea is excellent. Hide there as a guest, with the medallion, while I go to the pyramids and Enoch and I solve this thing. Don’t go out. Don’t give the neckpiece any significance, should anyone in the harem see it. Our best hope is that Silano’s scheming may be his undoing. Bonaparte will see through it and realize the count wants these powers for himself, not for France.”
“It’s just as risky to leave me alone,” Astiza said.
“You won’t be alone, you’ll be with a bunch of silly women, as you said. Stay hidden and wait. I’ll find this Book of Thoth and come get you.”