In the lab, the Philosopher's Stone sat still, lifeless, yet somehow it radiated energy, power.

Wizard and Vulture then used some tongs to gently lift away its lid.

The lid came clear......to reveal the Pillar still nestled within the Stone.

Wizard lifted the Pillar from its slot and gasped.

Whereas before the diamond Pillar was cloudy and translucent, now it was perfectly clear, like polished gla.s.s or crystal. And the liquid trapped inside it, which had previously been colorless, was now a vivid shiny silver.

The First Pillar had been transformed.

It had been cleansed.

"WE'VE GOT NO time to waste," Jack said, striding through the corridors of the base.

"We have to get this cleansed Pillar to the templeshrine at Abu Simbel by dawn."

Hustling to keep up, Iolanthe said, "Captain! Captain, please! There are other issues about the Pillars that I must discuss with you."

"You can discuss them on the way to Egypt," Jack said, heading for the door.

"I'm going with you?"

"She's going with us?" Zoe asked.

"She is now."

Things started moving very quickly.

In a hangar near the base's runway, theHalicarna.s.sus stood in all its glory, black and huge, bathed in arc lights.

The doors to the hangar parted, and a chill Atlantic storm rushed in, rain and wind lashing the nose of the plane.

Jack's team hotfooted it across the hangar floor to the airstairs leading up to the 747.

The trusted regulars: Wizard, Zoe, Pooh Bear, Stretch.

And the new players: Vulture, Scimitar, Astro, and now Iolanthe.

And the kids: Lily and Alby. This time, Jack decided, they'd come with him. In Egypt, the home of the Word of Thoth, he had a feeling he might need Lily's linguistic skills.

The only ones not going were Tank and the twins, Lachlan and Julius Adamson. They would stay here on Mortimer Island and continue their studies, searching for the locations of the other templeshrines.

In an office elsewhere on the island base, the American colonel known as Wolf watched the eleven members of West's Abu Simbel team arrive at theHalicarna.s.sus on a closed circuit TV monitor.

Flanking him as always were his two junior men, Rapier and Switchblade.

The door behind them opened, and Paul Robertson entered.

"What do you think, Colonel?" he asked.

At first, Wolf didn't reply. He just kept watching Jack on the monitor.

"Judah was right," he said at last. "West is good. He puts together puzzles very well- Abu Simbel was smart. He's also slippery. He got the better of Judah at Giza and escaped Black Dragon's attack in Australia."

"Iolanthe?" Robertson asked.

"She is to be watched like a hawk," Wolf said. "They might appear helpful now, but the Great Houses of Europe only ever act in their own interests. They have their own agenda here. Make no mistake, the Royals will abandon us the instant it suits them."

"Do you want me to give Astro or Vulture any special instructions?" Robertson asked.

"As far as Astro is concerned, definitely not. At this stage, his actions must be completely unconnected to us. Astro must be completely ignorant of his role in this otherwise West will almost certainly find him out. As for the Saudi, he knows we're watching."

"What about this mission to Abu Simbel to place the First Pillar?" Robertson said.

"Should we step in?"

Wolf thought about that for a moment.

"No. Not yet. It's not the first reward that interests us. It's thesecond. Thus we have an interest in Captain West succeeding in placing this First Pillar. We can also learn from his experience."

Wolf turned to Robertson, his blue eyes glinting. "Let young West lay this one, and when it is done, grab the little f.u.c.k and all his people and bring them to me."

Lashed by the driving rain, theHalicarna.s.sus lifted off from Mortimer Island in the Bristol Channel.

As it banked round on a heading that would take it to Egypt, another encrypted signal went out from the island base, but not one related to Jack or Wolf or even Iolanthe. To those who could decrypt it, the message read: FIRST PILLAR SUCCESSFULLY CLEANSED.

WEST GOING TO ABU SIMBEL IN.

SOUTHERN EGYPT TO SET IT IN PLACE.

DO WHAT MUST BE DONE.

TEMPLE OF RAMESES II AT ABU SIMBEL.

TEMPLE OF NEFERTARI AT ABU SIMBEL.

AIRs.p.a.cE OVER THE SAHARA DESERT.

DECEMBER 10, 2007, 0135 HOURS.

THE HALICARNa.s.sUS soared toward southern Egypt, zooming through the night sky, racing the coming dawn.

Despite the late hour, there was activity going on all over the plane: Jack and Iolanthe checking the layout of Abu Simbel and its surrounds Wizard, Zoe, and Alby doing mathematical and astronomical calculations while Lily, Stretch, and Pooh Bear studied Lake Na.s.ser.

"So," Jack said, coming over to Wizard's desk, "when exactly do we need to have the Pillar in place?"

Wizard tapped some astronomical charts with his pen. "Again, everything depends on Jupiter. According to these charts, the t.i.tanic Rising will occur at 6:12A.M. local time, just around dawn.

"It'll be difficult to see Jupiter due to the light of the rising Sun-so we'll have to use an infrared telescope. The duration of the Rising will also be shorter than the one Zoe saw at Stonehenge because we're on a different lat.i.tude-at the high lat.i.tude of Stonehenge, the Firestone received a flat, almost tangential blow from the Dark Sun. But at Abu Simbel we'll be a lot closer to the Equator and thus more perpendicular to the Dark Sun, so we'll receive a more direct hit from it. Which means it'll be shorter, lasting about a minute."

Jack nodded. "Six twelve it is then."

Wizard asked, "How are you going with the location of the templeshrine?"

"I think we have a candidate."

Jack turned a book around for Wizard and the others to see. It showed the two ma.s.sive temples dedicated to Rameses II and his wife Nefertari at Abu Simbel.

The larger temple featured four sixtyfoothigh figures of Rameses, all seated on thrones, while the facade of the second temple-one hundred yards from the first-featured six thirty foot high figures: four of Rameses and two of his favorite wife, Nefertari. Both sets of statues gazed out over Lake Na.s.ser at a curious collection of pyramidshaped islands that jutted above the flat surface of the lake.

"What we have to remember about Abu Simbel," Jack said, "is that it does not stand where it originally stood. When the Soviets built the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, they knew that the lake it created would cover the statues. So UNESCO had the statues of Abu Simbel moved to higher ground, block by block, piece by piece. They erected the statues on higher ground, in almost exactly the same alignment as they originally stood."

"Almostexactly the same alignment?" Astro said, alarmed. "You mean the statues aren't correctly aligned anymore? If they're not-"

"They're a couple of degrees out," Jack said calmly. "But the discrepancy is known, so we can account for it. You can see the difference in this picture: the original and present day positions of the statues."

"They don't look so big," Astro said.

"Trust me. They're big."

The plane flew south.

At one point on its journey, Iolanthe disappeared into the aft crew quarters to get changed into something more rugged.

As soon as she was gone, Vulture spun to face West. "Huntsman. A moment with you.

Can the British Royal be trusted?"

Jack turned, gazing at the rear section of the plane.

"Not at all," he said. "She's here to represent her family, her Royal House, just as you are here representing yours, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-so I guess I trust her about as much as I trust you. Right now, we're useful to her and she's useful to us. But the moment we cease to be useful, she'll cut us loose."

"Or cut our throats," Zoe said.

The American Marine, Astro, frowned, confused. "I'm sorry, but what are you talking about? Great Houses? Royal Houses?"

Stretch said, "When we ventured out to locate the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, we did so in compet.i.tion with the United States on the one hand and Old Europe on the other-France, Germany, Italy, Austria. The Catholic Church, knowledgeable in ancient matters, also formed part of this Old Europe coalition."

"Think of it as Old Money versus New Money," Jack said. "America is New Money, recently attained and acquired. Europe is Old Money, wealth that is acquired through heredity, land ownership, family name. Remember Jane Austen: a gentleman does not work, he receives income from his lands."

Astro reddened. "I didn't read Jane Austen in high school..."

Stretch said, "While we like to think of Europe today as a patchwork of modern democracies run by and for the people, this is an illusion. Almost 55 percent of mainland Europe is owned by three families: the SaxeCoburgs of the United Kingdom-which, through war and marriage, acquired the lands of the old Habsburg family of Austria Germany-the Romanovs of Russia, and the Oldenburgs of Denmark, the canniest and most cunning royal line in history. Through multiple royal marriages, Danish blood runs thick through nearly all the Houses of Europe, and thus the Danish Royal Family controls a quarter of continental Europe all by itself."

"The Romanovs of Russia?" Astro said. "I thought the Russian royal family was executed out of existence in 1918 by the Soviets."

"Not at all," Stretch said. "Two of the royal children survived, Alexei and one of the girls.

And royals do not like to see other royals deposed-they look after their own. The surviving Romanov children of Tsar Nicholas II were sheltered by the Danish Royal Family in Copenhagen and ultimately married off to wellbred families. While they might not use formal royal t.i.tles likeTsar anymore, the Romanov line certainly still exists, just out of popular sight."

Stretch then turned an eye to Vulture, who was sitting a little too silently in the corner.

"There is, of course, one other rather old Royal House that holds much sway in the world today: the House of Saud in Arabia. But it is not held in high esteem by the Great Houses of Europe-since its rise from obscurity in the 1700s, it has always been seen by the European Houses as a quaint band of tribesmen merely affecting royal traits. Even the discovery of oil in Arabia during the twentieth century, by which the Saudis gained enormous wealth and power, did not gain for them the respect they so desired."

"Old Money only respects Old Money," Jack said.

Vulture said nothing, but the look in his eyes suggested that he agreed.

"So, these Royal Houses, what's their link to the Machine?" Astro asked.

"Think of royalty throughout history," Wizard said, "going all the way back to primitive tribes. What made one tribal family worthy of greater respect than all the other families of the tribe?"

"Strength. Their ability to fight on behalf of the tribe."

"Sometimes, yes," Jack said. "But not always."

Astro shrugged. "What else is there then?"

Wizard said, "More often it was the familythat held some kind of sacred talisman that was regarded as the head family of the tribe. It might be a mace, or a crown, or a holy stone.

The ability to fight was often collateral to the ability to maintain possession of a sacred object."

Jack said, "Macbeth slays Duncan and takes his mace, thus Macbeth, as holder of the mace, becomes king."

Wizard said, "And the Three Great Houses of Europe have always held something that has made themgreater than other n.o.ble households..."

"Pillars," Astro said, getting it.

"Exactly," Wizard said, "and the knowledge that goes with them: hereditary knowledge, pa.s.sed down from generation to generation, about the use and purpose of those Pillars."

Jack added, "And the fact that our Princess Iolanthe is the current Keeper of the Royal Personal Records means that she is a key holder of that knowledge."

Astro said, "So if there are only three European Houses, does that mean they only have three Pillars?"

"I believe so," Wizard said. "But-"

"-but that doesn't mean we don't know where the other three are," Iolanthe said from the doorway at the rear of the main cabin.

Everyone spun.

Iolanthe was the picture of calm and not, it seemed, the least bit offended that they had been talking about her behind her back.

Now dressed in a cream jacket, Oakley boots, and slim cargo pants, she strolled back into the cabin and slid onto a spare couch.

"If I may contribute to the discussion," she said. "Throughout history commoners have activelysought someone to look up to. Someone of higher birth, of n.o.ble blood, of superior sensibility. Royalty. Those who would willingly undertake an obligation to keep safe both the people and certain important objects. And because royalty are known to subscribe to a higher standard of honor, they are trusted to do so.

"The common folk, on the other hand-knowing in their hearts that they themselves are too fickle, too greedy, to stay true to any such notion of honor-seek a family of renown who will. Thus the strong rule and the weak get ruled over, by their own choice. It is the natural order of things. It has been so since humans began to walk upright."