Chapter six
I had a hold of the staff before the old man had even noticed us, Shelley was beside me. He turned his head when he heard the rattle of the staff as I picked it up. I grasped the staff tightly preparing to fight if need be.
The man expression changed from a startled look to amazement when he saw us.
“Svartr Amon,” he wheezed as he grasped his chest and collapsed.
I ran over to his crumpled form and felt his neck for a pulse, there was none, he was dead.
“He’s dead Shelley,” I said.
“Oh... what was that he said svart something...?”
“Svartr Amon... I think, I don’t know what it means.”
“Hmm... I think if he’s from northern Europe svartr sounds kinda like schwarz which means black. He might have said black amon.”
“Oh... that’s not good,” I said.
“Why?”
“I think that’s my name.”
I stood up and turned my attention to the staff in my hand, I examined it carefully looking for the telltale marking that would identify it as my creation. I found it almost immediately.
“See look,” I pointed out a very faint hieroglyphic hallmark to Shelley,” I made this staff.”
“What’s it say?” Shelley asked rubbing her finger over the hallmark.
“Sorcery lies within.”
I picked up the staff with both hands and then broke it in half over my knee. There was a large fire place built into one wall that had a small fire burning in it. I tossed the pieces of the staff into it and watched as the ancient dry wood caught fire.
I then turned my attention to the glass orb, it was beautifully constructed of flawlessly clear glass. I knew it could not be my creation because glass had not been available to me in my time.
I saw a small distortion at the bottom of the orb, I moved around it to change my perspective and at just the right angle I could see a small hieroglyphic phrase, it said: From the City of Magic.
“Well I guess we know where it was made, just not who,” Shelley said from behind me.
“Yes curiouser and curiouser.”
“Are you going to destroy it too?” Shelley asked.
“Too dangerous, I don’t know how it was made.”
Shelley and I dragged the old guy’s body onto the large chair on the dais and then tried to prop him up in a sitting position with is head to one side as if he’d fallen asleep. I then walked back to the room’s entrance and carefully peeked into the hallway. It was still deserted.
“For an invading force they sure don’t have a lot of people,” I said to Shelley.
The both of us left the room and walked to the next open door, we kept as close to the halls wall as possible so as to not be seen.
I looked into the room, it was a jumble of overturned furniture and empty chests, it looked like a robber had ransacked the room. We continued on to the next room, it was much larger and full of cloth sacks and wooden boxes neatly stacked.
We entered it cautiously, it was also vacant of people. I opened one of the sacks, it was full of bronze implements such as cutlery and oil lamps. We randomly looked through the other sacks and boxes, they were full of a wide variety of objects, from gold and jewels to dried beans and wheat.
“They’re taking absolutely everything, who does that?” Shelley asked.
“Yes... I can understand the bronze but wheat and beans do not travel well.”
“How are they going to transport all this stuff, it would take a hundred of their ships,” Shelley asked.
“Magic I bet,” I replied.
I looked around the room for a hiding spot, I noticed there was a long balcony high on one wall near the ceiling. There was a steep set of stairs on the back wall leading up to it.
“Let’s go up there,” I pointed to the balcony.
We climbed up the stairs and walked down the balcony, there were three entrance ways. We walked towards the first entrance. I looked over the balcony’s railing and could tell from the layout of the room below that it was originally designed for large gatherings like a feast.
“This balcony must be for addressing a crowd below,” I said.
We stopped in front of the entrance and looked in, from the jumble of broken high quality furniture I surmised this must have been part of the regents living quarters.
Shelley and I flipped over a couch right side up and sat down on it.
“Now we wait, I’ll take the first watch and you can take a nap,” I said.
Shelley curled up on the comfortable couch and was soon lightly snoring.
I awoke suddenly feeling Shelley gently shake my shoulder. We had been watching for almost four hours and I was now sleeping while Shelley kept vigil.
“I hear something,” Shelley whispered.
“Let’s look,” I replied.
We crawled on our hands and knees until we came to the balcony railing. It was constructed of flat boards about six inches wide slotted into a top and bottom rail. There was a three inch gap between the boards which we could use to spy below.
We laid down on our stomachs and then peeked through the slots in the railing. I saw a large group of people all wearing the distinct three horned helmets of the sea people. They were loading the piles of sacks and boxes onto a long line of push carts.
When a cart became full, two of the men would push it out of the room, a new empty cart would then be pushed into place seconds later.
“They must be loading the ships,” Shelley whispered.
The harbor had been empty of large ships when we had entered the palace, I knew it would be almost impossible to anchor a large number of ships and organize hundreds of men in a few hours.
“I suspect they’re using something else, I’ll use my time spell to get us outside,” I whispered to Shelley.
I took out my pad of paper with the spell, found the spell then flipped the pages bottom up activating it. Everything went silent. I looked below and saw the men all frozen in movement.
We stood up cautiously and then walked down the stairs staying as close together as possible. Thankfully the rooms exit was quite wide and there was no one blocking it, we were able to avoid bringing any of the men into the spells area of effect. We quickly walked down the wide hallway past the long line of men and pushcarts.
I glanced into the room where we had met the old man, his corpse was still propped up on the large chair in a sleeping position.
We soon emerged into the bright afternoon sun, I saw even more men and push carts all gathered around a large wooden platform, it was about thirty feet square. I noticed four sturdy ropes each attached to one corner of the platform and stretching into the sky.
I followed the ropes up to see what they were attached too.
“Oh my god!” I gasped.
There was an enormous wooden flying ship hovering in the sky, it must have been at least five hundred feet long.
“Wow,” I heard Shelley exclaim beside me when she noticed the ship.
“It’s definitely not something I built,” I said.
We continued walking until we were on the wooden platform, we climbed over all the sacks and boxes until we found a crevice we were able to conceal ourselves in.
I deactivated the time spell and soon heard the sound of the men piling more booty onto the platform. This continued for a few more minutes than ceased abruptly, I heard a load shout from one of the men.
The platform jerked suddenly and I felt my stomach fall as we started to smoothly climb into the air. The platform jerked to a stop after about a minute, our little crevice darkened slightly when we had entered the bowels of the large ship.
I heard some men yelling and then felt our platform start to roll towards the front of the ship, it jerked to a stop after a few seconds and then rolled sharply to the left and then made a final jerk as it banged into something and stopped for good.
The voices of the men who were guiding it grew softer as they moved away from the plat
form. Shelley and I cautiously climbed out of our hiding spot and surveyed our surroundings.
We were in an enormous hold half filled with wooden pallets piled high with booty, the pallets lined two aisles that enabled the cargo handlers to move them, I saw that the aisles had a grid of bronze balls about six inches in diameter which hovered an inch or so from the floor.
The hovering balls enabled the pallets to roll smoothly into place.
I saw the work crew about a hundred feet away, they were loading an empty wooden pallet onto the elevator. I saw that each of the elevator ropes were wound around large bronze spools, each spool was attached to a device that looked almost like an electric motor except it had no wires or cooling vents.
“Are those electric motors?” Shelley whispered in my ear.
“I think they’re magic,” I replied.
I had a pretty good idea of how they worked which did not diminish the admiration I had for the anonymous designer.
I looked around the large hold and saw a doorway at the end of one of the aisles. I pointed it out to Shelley, we climbed out of our hiding spot then moved to the edge of the pallet away from the aisle.
The booty had been piled on all the pallets in a mound leaving a navigable valley between them. The mounds of booty would also keep us hidden from the cargo handlers as we made our way to the door.
We slowly started picking our way towards the front of the hold, as we walked I spied a small bronze sword sheathed in a shoulder scabbard. I grabbed it and then hung it across my back with the scabbards strap crossing my chest from my left shoulder to my opposite hip.
We continued gingerly stepping through the mounds of booty until after about twenty minutes we reached the front wall of the hold. We then moved parallel to the wall until we were at the edge of the aisle.
The doorway was a few feet away, I peeked down the long aisle towards the elevator, I could see only one man and his back was turned towards us. I grabbed Shelley’s hand and we sprinted the short distance through the doorway.
We were now in a narrow corridor the ends of which had stairs going upward. The ceiling was about ten feet above us. The wall opposite the door was covered in brightly covered Egyptian hieroglyphs and drawings.
I stood with my back against the far wall and read the hieroglyphs.
The great ship Sobek’s Teeth, born in the City of Magic
Free to fly the skies of the world
To carry the things the city needs to flourish
To strike terror in the hearts of the cities enemies
The ships munificent architects
Isis the beautiful
Qing the wise
Nesa the strong
There were large paintings of the three architects flanking the writing, one was of an Egyptian woman, the other two were men, one looked Asian and the other European.
“Your city is like a cat you let out at night, it comes back in the morning with scratches all over it but you have no clue what’s it’s done or where it’s been,” Shelley murmured beside me after she read the hieroglyphs.
“Ya... we’re obviously going to have to do some kind of survey of the place when we get back,” I replied.
I started walking towards one of the stairs while gesturing Shelley to follow me, the steps squeaked noisily as we placed our feet on them. I felt the wood of the wall with my fingers as I ascended the stairs. It was very dry and had a texture that gave the impression great age.
I reached the top of the stairs after thirty steps, there was an open door beside me which I carefully looked through. It was a large room which looked like the ships bridge, there were all sorts of bronze wheels on wooden pedestals as well as levers emerging from the floor.
Sturdy tables with papyrus charts piled on them sat against the forward wall and large glass windows sat over the tables lighting up the whole room with the afternoon sun.
I walked over to one of the windows, I could see the city below the ship as well as the island and the sea beyond.
I looked at one of the papyrus sea charts, it had been drawn by hand and was covered in hieroglyphs. The land masses portrayed looked eerily accurate, I could easily spot the Italian peninsula and the island of Sicily.
“Kem look behind you,” Shelley whispered.
I turned and looked at the rear wall of the bridge, it was covered in a painting similar to the wall below except there were two large figures in the center flanked by hieroglyphic script.
The two figures looked like man and his wife, the man had his arm around the woman’s waist, she looked to be a young Nubian woman. The man was Egyptian and dressed in garb very similar to the clothing of the era that I had lived.
He had a very unusual device on his nose covering his eyes, I did not recognize it. I read the Hieroglyphs.
The great founders of the City of Magic
They lived a millennia ago and taught us the way
They are the shoulders we stand on
Senbi the brilliant
Kemamonit the graceful
Their love will be eternal
I felt myself hyperventilating. I staggered over to one of the tables and used it to steady myself as I tried to still my racing heart and control my breathing.
“I didn’t know you were married Kem,” Shelley said as she read the hieroglyphs.
“Oh Senbi... what did you do,” I said to myself.
Shelley turned from the portrait and saw me leaning against the table with both my hands.
“Kem! Are you all right,” she ran over to me and grabbed my waist while throwing one of my arms around her neck.
“I’ll be fine, I just need to sit down,” I said.
Shelley helped me up onto one of the tables after sweeping the charts out of the way.
“Is that really you?” Shelley asked.
“It is but it isn’t... you know how easy it is to copy things...”
“Oh...”
“He was infatuated with me... I guess it was love... he taught me math and geometry. He was honest and I trusted him. I gave him my secrets when I thought I was dying.”
“So he used magic to resurrect a new you,” Shelley said.
“Yes... but a different me I suspect, a poor illiterate peasant, easy to seduce and bamboozle,” I felt myself getting angry.
Shelley looked at me and started laughing.
“There is no way he seduced you.”
I felt my face go warm. I looked at the portrait of the woman again, she had an expression of profound confidence and looked in no way subservient to the man.
Senbi was a remarkably intelligent person but socially inept. I thought back to my youth and my desire to see great things. Senbi knew me...
I realized then how he had probably done it, he had just tantalized me with a glimpse of sorcery, exploited my biggest weakness, my insatiable curiosity. In order to satisfy it I would have used my feminine wiles against an all too willing victim.
I felt a grudging respect for him.
“What’s that thing on his nose?” Shelley asked pointing to Senbi’s figure.
“He was very nearsighted, I think they are some kind of magic spectacles.”
“Why didn’t he just use glasses?” Shelley asked.
“Lenses hadn’t been invented yet.”
“Oh... right... so how did nearsighted people see stuff back then?”
“I don’t know... but you didn’t stand in front of them when they had a bow in their hands.”