"Just the tour," Damali responded pleasantly, "and perhaps a peek at the library later."
Motioning for her to follow him, he rounded the desk and smiled. Damali's line of vision swept every facet of the rooms they passed. She could feel electric excitement pass through her.
"I'm Druid, you know."
She smiled politely, not sure how to respond. "That's very nice. I'm just in from L.A."
He laughed, his voice creating a joyful echo within the large room. "We go way back, and have suffered much, too. We've heard you've taken one of our own in under your wing." He stopped and gave her a little bow. "So, for that kindness, you receive thegrand tour."
Damali smiled and nodded, while her mind scrambled to figure out which team member he was talking about. They'd had a lot of additions. Dan? Berkfield? She hurried behind him, amazed at how fast the chubby little man could walk.
"Did you know that George Washington was a Mason, as well as most, if not all of the founding fathers of this country?" The guide winked at her as he whispered the information like a schoolboy telling a secret. "They have his Masonic apron right here in the museum."
"Yeah, the guy in the cab was telling me," Damali murmured, her eyes darting around the glass cases that lined the room. What else could she say? Each case held emblems, shields, swords, rings, coins, and other artifacts that seemed to go as far back as the Middle Ages. Okay, so who was this guide and how did this building get her to Egypt?
Scanning the room, she noted the fine woods and Italian marbles that supported what appeared to her to be fifty-foot ceilings. Nothing Egyptian leapt out at her and the exterior of the building looked like hand-sculpted granite from Westminster Abbey.
"Right you are." The tour guide chimed in with a proud smile in response to her thoughts, "Actually, fashioned after St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice."
Damali didn't say a word. This old guy had read her mind, something only Marlene and Carlos had ever been able to do. It was unnerving.
Her guide nodded and smiled. "Correct again. It would appear that you are now ready for the real tour, now that you've loosened up a bit."
A hundred questions tripped over themselves in her brain as she followed the blue-uniformed gent into the next room and waited. Her mind was on fire, trying to make critical links between the spectacular show of power and wealth that surrounded her, and her own paltry existence as a disinherited Neteru with a magic stick. The fact that her guide reminded her of a leprechaun made her smirk. Now sheknew she had to be losing her mind.
"Ah, I am not one of the wee folks," he said merrily. "Actually it was a coven back then-a good one," he added quickly. "People get semantics all confused and get weird about it, so I detest the word. We learned most of the mystical arts from the Egyptians. They were the true masters." He smiled broadly and clasped his hands. "I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to have a master in my midst, dear young queen. Oh, let us resume the tour!"
She almost ran in the other direction. In her mind, coven was synonymous with witches and black magic. He was right; the word coven had nearly stopped her heart. She planned to ask Marlene about this later, if she could ever get to her. For now, Damali held her peace and just allowed the man to babble on as she followed behind him at an appreciable distance.
"Each of the presently alive grand masters are represented in the life-sized portraits of this room," the guide said with a sweep of his hand, "and behind these two-ton brass doors, you will find portraits of our past, and now deceased, grand masters. These eighty-foot, vaulted ceilings have been lowered to fifty-two feet to accommodate the advent of electricity, but later during the tour, we'll see how the original structure was kept intact, and its grandeur preserved by the skillful use of skylighting. These ceiling frescos are gilded in actual twenty-three-karat gold leaf," he added, motioning for her to pass through the doors to stand before an impressive rear staircase.
"These doors have been hung with such exactness, that they open with the push of a finger, and haven't been rehung since they were originally installed well over a hundred years ago." He leaned in toward her. "Did I tell you how impressive the mathematics were that came from Egypt?" He laughed at his own gushing. "Oh, but I don't have to tell you what you already know in your bones."
Losing patience, Damali edged near the strange tour guide. "Really awesome, but I don't see the point. I was told that if I came here-"
"Patience," he said calmly. "Remember these points. If I take you through sections too quickly you'll experience vertigo."
"Vertigo?"
"Yes," he said, his voice becoming mildly strained with annoyance. "Now pay attention. The lights can interrupt one's depth perception."
"I'm sorry," Damali said. "Thank you for taking your time with me. I've just been very worried about my family."
He smiled and bowed slightly. "We understand, and are not offended."
Damali glanced around to see who thewe he was referring to might be. But the vast hall appeared empty except for the two of them.
"May I go on?" he asked in a recovered, eloquent tone.
"Yes, thank you. I'd be honored," Damali said, feeling very much like Alice through the looking glass. She was almost sure that she saw a glimpse of something in her peripheral vision. A strange white blur, and then it was gone.
"There are seven lodge halls within this temple that we will see during the tour. We are now going to enter the Oriental Room." Her guide motioned for her to follow him through a wide door and he waved his arms as he made a slow circle, pride clear in his expression. "This room is an exact replica of the many impressive rooms within the Moorish empire's architectural palatial achievement known as the Alhambra."
Damali's line of vision fastened to the magnificent hand-cut mosaics and thick burgundy velvets that covered luxurious ornamental benches. "I'm home. And, I remember when it all fell... Granada, Cordoba, Seville... This was the Hall of Dames, and, parts from the Hall of the Ambassadors..."
"Yes," the tour guide remarked with obvious delight, "I see that we have a historian in our midst."
Damali was speechless as her mind drank in the splendor. It was as though she knew this place from firsthand knowledge and the impact of the rushing impressions made her have to sit down on a long, polished bench. She didn't need the guide to explain that each layer of mosaic work had been reproduced from various sections of the palace and brought together into one spectacular fusion of riches.She knew it .