Stewart Ian - Wheelers

Giza. 2194

... and in the fifth month of the fifth year of the reign of the child-king Anshethrat, in the city of Gyzer ... a spear of fire pierced the northern sky, harbinger of the wrath of Ysiriz the Sky Goddess. And fire and flame rose from the ocean, which became as molten brass. And the spear of flame sped like a hurled javelin toward the heart of the Sun. It became as a fiery chariot, drawn by four winged horses, with manes of burnished copper, pursued by a trail of shining dust. One horse had the face of a hawk, and one the face of a wolf and one the face of a snake... the face of the fourth was devoid of form... Ysiriz the Sky Goddess had the face of a lion and the claws of a leopard, and her tail was the tail of a lion...

And Y-ra'i the gods-that-dwell-beneath-the-Sun awoke, and saw Ysiriz riding the shaft of flame. And Y-ra'i began to stir, and seethe. And they frightened the horses of Ysiriz. And dust and stones fell upon the Earth, and the ground shook with the thunder of their hooves, and the mountains cracked and the Earth shook... and the child-king Anshethrat called his Priests to him, and he demanded of them what could be done to appease Ysiriz the Sky Goddess. And the priests ordered the sacrifice of five thousand bulls, and five thousand rams, that their blood be shed for the appeasement of Ysiriz.

And so it was.

And still the chariot drew nearer, for the gods were displeased.

And Lofchepsit the Moon Goddess awoke, and shivered with fear... And the Sun trembled and shook, and... Y-ra'i jiung a spear of flame at the heart of Ysiriz.

And the horse with the face of a hawk stumbled, and jell, and was crushed to dust. And the horse with the jace of a wolf stumbled, and jell, and was crushed to dust. And the horse with the jace of a snake stumbled, and jell, and was crushed to dust. And the horse with no manner ojjace stumbled, and jell, and it was as ijit had never been ...

And the jiery chariot of Ysiriz plunged into Lojchepsit the Moon Goddess, striking at her very heart, and the chariot vanished in flame... And Lojchepsit jell in a terrible swoon, as if dead.

And the whole sky shone as a sheet of beaten gold, and the Sun's heart blackened and seethed. And the Priests of the child-king An-shethrat were much ajraid, and they cried out jor jorgiveness jrom their king, jor all were jearjul of the wrath of Ysiriz and the slaying of Lojchepsit. And the king in his great wisdom denounced the Priesthood, and sent them out of the city into the sands of the desert, there to build a monument to Y-ra'i.

But now the gods-that-dwell-beneath-the-Sun arose, and their wrath was as the wrath of a raging torrent, and they spread great wings of burning flame. And their breath became a breath of jire, and they spat at Anshethrat. And the Moon was aflame, and the sky was aflame, and the Earth was aflame, and every tree in the city of Gyzer turned to blackened ashes, and every house in the city became as a pillar of flame...

But the Priests of the child-king Anshethrat hid themselves, and the flames passed them by. And they proclaimed the miracle to be a sign jrom Ysiriz the Sky Goddess, who had protected them jrom the jiery wrath of Y-ra'i. And the High Priest Shephatsut-Mir ordered that the monument to Y-ra'i be torn down and built anew in the image of Ysiriz, multiplied twelvejold, to seal jorever the devotion of her people to the Sky Goddess.

And it was so.

* * * *

C harlie Dunsmoore brushed sand from his rolled-up shirtsleeves, opened another can of beer, and sighed. He focused a small pocket lens on the chipped clay tablet, comparing the incised hieroglyphs with Prudence Odingos transcriptions as they floated holographically before his eyes, and nodded. Then his rubber-gloved finger slid through the air to where she had translated the text into Enghsh, and he shook his head slowly from side to side with a fleeting, wry smile.

Prudence was eager, he had to admit. And she was intelligent. She had the kind of luck that could make an archaeologist's career... Sexy, too, as he had discovered to his surprise the night after her astonishing find. Not that he considered it ethical for academics to have sexual relationships with their studentshe knew that just stored up potential trouble and his department head wouldn't be at all happy if she found out but it had all happened so fast, and so spontaneously, that he'd never even thought about all that until far too late.

Anyway, there were criteria other than ethics. That said, he wasn't sure what their relationship was anymoreor even if they still had onebecause they had both been so tired after working flat out on the tablets for three solid days, snatching a few hours' sleep whenever they could no longer keep themselves awake, that there had been no opportunity for a repeat engagement, and no point in hinting at the possibility of one.

He could hear deep breathing and the occasional snore from Prudence's partitioned-off comer of the big tent that the two of them shared. Administratively straightforward, and cheaper than two big tents, buthe now sawasking for trouble.

If only the funding agency had taken the ethical position into account...

His thoughts returned to Prudence. Motivated, bright, lucky, sexy ... If only she could stop being in such a rush. Her translation was wonderful, it told a fascinating story from an un known pre-Egyptian mythology: Y-ra'i the gods-that-dwell-heneath-the-Sun... Brilliant.

The only problem was, she'd woven the tale from whole cloth. Where a more cautious scholar would have flagged a word as dubious or a sentence as conjectural, Prudence simply jumped right in with what looked like a claim of a definitive text.

She had excellent intuition; he'd seen it in action on conventional Egyptian hieroglyphics. That was why he'd agreed to take her on as a graduate student, and why he'd put her in charge of the most significant part of the dig.

Dig. He laughed under his breaththe term was a reflex, and not at all appropriate. "Disassembly of the Sphinx," that was closer.

He put the notebook down on the small, rickety table, stripped off the gloves, and stepped over to the open flap of the tent. He loved the feel of the desert air, cool and dry on his skin. Fine sand dust gave the air a faint but unforgettable smell, bringing back vivid memories of previous expeditions... Silhouetted against the starry sky he could see the flat triangles of pyramids and the slight swell of desert dunes. To his right, less than half a mile away, was the Great Pyramid, the most famous of all the ancient monuments at Giza. He had seen it so often that he had lost count; he had climbed its crumbling stones, sat at its tip, and stared for hours across the desert, trying to visualize what life must have been like when the stones were newly quarried... and still it possessed the power to move him. There was something elemental about the ancient rock pile even now, nearly five thousand years after it had been built. The Great Pyramid was a symbol of power, the awesome power of Khufu, founder of the Old Kingdom. It was awesome now; just think how effective a reminder it must have been at the peak of the fourth dynasty. And it was just one monument out of many, evidence of a vanished civilization that he would give anything to bring back to life. The three much smaller queen's pyramids were scattered almost as an afterthought along its near right flank. Ahead, diminished by the distance, was the pyramid of Khafre, in reality only marginally smaller and just as impressive. To his left, Menkaures Pyramid, its base a mere hundred yards square, dwarfed by its gigantic companions. And looming above him, still glowing like embers in the dying sunset, was the haunting, battered face of the Great Sphinx. Restored by the eighteenth dynasty in ad 1500, its nose chiseled off, but no one knew when or why. Pockmarked by windblown sand and, more recently, acid rain, it bore a face so similar to that of Khafre that there could be little doubt that it had been fashioned in his image.