me that title once, at a banquet before Napoleon, Ethan Gage. You insulted my reputation to make me seem petty.” I reddened despite myself. The man forgot nothing. “Yet I’ve probed these mysteries for twenty years. I came to Cairo when it was still in the thrall of the Mamelukes, and explored old mysteries while you were frittering your life away. I followed the trail of the ancients while you hooked your opportunism to the French. I’ve tried to understand the enigmatic hints left behind for us, while the rest of you wrestled in the mud.” He hadn’t lost his high opinion of himself, either. “And now I understand what we’re seeking, and what we must harness to find it. We have to catch the lightning!”
“Catch what?” Ned asked dubiously.
“Gage, I understand you have succeeded in using electricity as a weapon against Bonaparte’s troops.”
“As a necessity of war.”
“I think we’re going to need Franklin’s expertise when we near the Book of Thoth. Are you electrician enough?”
“I’m a man of science, but I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“It’s why we need the seraphim, Ethan,” Astiza broke in, more softly. “We think that somehow they’re going to point to a final hiding point the Knights Templar used after destruction of their order. They brought what they’d found beneath Jerusalem to the desert and concealed it in the City of Ghosts. The documents are enigmatic, but Alessandro and I believe that Thoth, too, knew of electricity, and that the Templars set that as a test to find the book. We need to draw down the lightning like Franklin did.”
“So I agree with Mohammad. You’re both mad.”
“In the vaults beneath Jerusalem,” Silano said, “you found a curious floor, with a lightning design. And a strange door. Did you not?”
“How do you know that?” Najac, I was certain, had never penetrated to the rooms we’d explored, and had not seen Miriam’s oddly decorated door.
“I’ve been studying, as you said. And upon this Templar door you saw a Jewish pattern, did you not? The ten sefiroth of the kabbalah?” t h e
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“What has that to do with lightning?”
“Watch.” Bending to the dust on the floor by our fire, he drew two circles, their edges joined.
“All things are dual,” Astiza murmured.
“And yet united,” the count said. He drew another circle, as big as the first two, overlapping both. Then circles upon those circles, more upon more, the pattern becoming ever more intricate. “The prophets knew this,” he said. “Perhaps Jesus did as well. The Templars relearned it.” Then where circles intersected he began drawing lines, forming patterns: both a five-sided and a six-sided star. “The one is Egyptian and the other Jewish,” he said. “Both are equally sacred. The Egyptian star you use for your nation’s new flag. Do you not think this was the intent of the Freemasons who helped found your country?” And finally, at the interstices, he jabbed out ten points, which made the same peculiar pattern we’d seen in the Templar Hall under the Temple Mount. The sefiroth, Haim Farhi had called them.
Once again, everyone seemed to be speaking ancient tongues I wasn’t privy too, and finding import in what I would have assumed was mere decoration.
“Recognize it?” Silano asked.
“What of it?” I said guardedly.
“The Templars drew another pattern from this design,” he said.
From dot to dot he drew a zigzagging, overlapping line. “There. A lightning bolt. Eerie, is it not?”
“Maybe.”
“Not maybe. Their clues tell us to harness the sky if we wish to find where the book is. The lightning symbol is in the map we found here, and then there is the poem.”
“Poem?”
“Couplets. They’re quite eloquent.” He recited: Aether cum radiis solis fulgore relucet Angelus et pinnis indicat ore Dei,
Cum region deserta bibens ex murice torto Siccatis labris arida sorbet aquas
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Tum demum partem quandam lux clara revelat Quae prius ignota est nec repute tibi Opperiens cunctatur eum dea candida Veri Floribus insanum qui furit atque fide
“That’s Greek to me, Silano.”
“Latin. Do they not teach the classics on the frontier, Monsieur Gage?”
“On the frontier, the classics make good fire starter.”
“The translation of this document, which I found in my travels, explains why I was anxious to make your reacquaintance:” When heaven blazes with the lightning of the sun’s rays And with his feathers the angel points out at God ’s command When the desert, drinking from the twisted snail shell Thirstily sucks up water with dried-out lips Then at last the clear light reveals a certain part Which formerly was both unknown, nor was it cognized in your estimation
Lingering, divine bright Truth awaits him The fool crazy for flowers, who also trusts with faith What the devil did that mean? The world could avoid a great deal of confusion if everyone just said things straight out, but that doesn’t seem to be our habit, does it? And yet there was something about this phrasing that jarred a memory, a memory I’d never shared with either Astiza or Silano. I felt a chill of recognition.
“We must go to a special place within the City of Ghosts,” Silano said, “and call down the flames of the storm, the lightning, just as your mentor Franklin did in Philadelphia. Call it to the seraphim, and see which part they point to.”
“The part of what?”
“A building or cave, I’m guessing. It will become apparent if this works.”
“The desert drinks from a snail shell?” t h e
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“From the thunderstorm’s rain. A reference to a sacred drinking vessel, I suspect.”
Or something else, I thought to myself. “And the flowers and faith?”
“My theory is that is a reference to the Templars themselves and the Order of the Rose and Cross, or Rosicrucians. Theories of the origin of the Rosy Cross vary, but one is that the Alexandrian sage Ormus was converted to Christianity by the disciple Mark in 46 a .d.
and fused its teachings with that of ancient Egypt, creating a Gnostic creed, or belief in knowledge.” He looked hard at me to make sure I’d make the connection with the Book of Thoth. “Movements fade in and out of history, but the symbol of the cross and the rose is a very old one, symbolizing death and life, or despair and hope. The Resurrection, if you will.”
“And male and female,” Astiza added, “the phallic cross and the yonic flower.”
“Flower and faith symbolize the character required of those who would find the secret,” Silano said.
“A woman?”
“Perhaps, which is one reason we have a woman along.” I decided to keep my own suspicions to myself. “So you want to draw lightning down to my seraphim and see what happens?”
“In the place prescribed by the documents we’ve found, yes.” I considered. “What you’re talking about is a lightning rod, or rather two, since we have two seraphim. We need metal to bring the energy down to the ground, I think.”
“Which is why our tent poles are metal, to mount your angels on.
I’ve been planning this for months. You need our help to find the city, and we need your help to find the hiding place within it.”
“And then what? We cut the book in half?”
“No,” Silano said. “We don’t need Solomon to resolve our rivalry.
We use it together, for mankind’s good, just as the ancients did.”
“Together!”
“Why not, when we have the power to do unlimited good? If the world’s true form is gossamer, it can be spun and shifted. That’s what 2 0 0