doorway. Computers had been ripped from their housing, glass was everywhere. Weapons gone. Furniture overturned.
Carlos began running through the house, his senses keened, trying to feel for any distinguishable tracer that could tell him where his family had been taken. Unknown human blood and sweat was in the air. He honed in on Damali, but came away with nothing.
One by one he tried to sense each team member's vibration. They were alive, but very far away. In a cell, but where? Prison, a police lockup, military base, where? They had once worked for the government, had done a job in Tibet and in L.A., so how could this be happening?
Carlos spun in a confused circle and gathered the last of his strength to propel himself home. There was no getting around it, attempts to do anything but rest for a moment, eat, drink, and regenerate the expended energy would be futile. Then he'd try again... would go get another soldier to work with him--Yonnie.
Damali stood in awe at a place along the Nile controlled by dams, making the massive river capitulate to being a placid lake dotted by a series of islands, which turned black or red depending on the sun's mood.
Eve had told her about the ancient tombs of the Elephantine nobles that were dug into the rocks of the Gharbi Aswan escarpment, and to use those as a landmark. Here, she'd said, was also Aga Khan's mausoleum, and an ancient Coptic monastery. A place where the ancestors kept watch over the palm groves, temple remains, and massive, old botanical gardens.
This was the beginning point. Damali peered around and became a sparrow, following Eve's directions to go toward the terminus of the valley of the Nile in Upper Nubia, where the river was no longer navigable. Her destination was Lake Nassar. Beneath it were more than twenty-three temples and sanctuaries that had been rebuilt elsewhere. Everything had been submerged, like rumored- about Atlantis.
As she sailed over the surface of the azure blue water, she could almost feel the stones speaking to her, directing her on her quest. She needed the Caduceus, the Staff of Aesclepius... Thoth Hermes, in order to wield enough energy to break into the Land of Nod.
She touched down on Philae Island and hopped about, tilting her head. Where was the temple of Isis and the temple of Hathor? Eve had been sure that the island that bore the forerunner name of Philadelphia would be the one.
Damali quietly and discreetly took her human form. A small rose quartz stone bit into her sandal. When she stooped to collect it, she held the fifth stone she'd received tightly in her fist. Love? But she was on a mission to keep the realms separated.
Rather than argue with the mysteries of the universe, she shoved the stone into her white gauze pants pockets. Immediately the stone warmed her leg and she closed her eyes, sensed the vibration, and once again took flight as a small bird.
Everything had been moved to the island of Ajilka in modern times. Damali saw it mentally as she whirred against the wind, excited. The pavilion of Trajan used for the complex rituals of the goddess, just as Eve had said, was there. Fourteen bell-shaped sepia- hued stone columns on one side of the temple of Hathor marked it. Damali touched down hard, anticipation making her a little clumsy and stirring up dust.
But it took a moment for her feet to move as she stared up at the monumental entrance of a temple of birth dedicated to Isis the Elder. Her palms were moist with both reverence and awe as she began to move along the wide, flat steps toward the second pylon which gave way to a colonnaded room with ten columns and a portico with twelve shrines. Damali stayed extremely still, feeling the vibrations emanating from the interior crypt and the terrace devoted to the funerary shrine of Isis.
"Oh, great Queen Mother Isis, Aset, please guide me in the right path, make my choices wise," Damali whispered.
Instantly Damali's Isis materialized on her hip, not in her hand. She could only take that as a, message to be guarded, but stand down, there was no imminent danger. Damali nodded. "Thank you."
A slight flicker of light flared along the eastern wall of the portico, drawing her attention. A decree from Ptolemy V Epiphanies-- same one as on the famous Rosetta stone? Damali smiled, not needing to know the decree. That wasn't the point. Epiphanies, plural,