Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [40]
‘Certainly.’
‘Ballet, you say . . .’ West said.
It came as a surprise to Lily when she arrived at breakfast one day—again ignoring the sheet on the fridge—and found West waiting for her in the kitchen, alone, dressed and ready to go somewhere.
‘Hey, kiddo. Want to go out for a surprise?’
‘Sure.’
The surprise was a private plane trip to Cape Town and a visit to a performance of The Nutcracker Suite by the South African Royal Ballet.
Lily sat through the entire performance with her mouth agape, her eyes wide with wonder, entranced.
West just looked at her the whole time—and maybe once, just once, he even smiled.
In 2001, she saw the first Lord of the Rings movie. That Christmas, Sky Monster, proud of the New Zealand–born team behind the film, gave her the three books by Tolkien and read them with her.
By the time the third film had come and gone in 2003, Lily and Sky Monster had re-read the books to within an inch of their lives.
And from those readings of The Lord of the Rings, Lily got her own callsign.
Sky Monster bestowed it on her, naming her after her favourite character in the epic.
Eowyn.
The feisty shieldmaiden from Rohan who kills the Witch-King of Angmar, the Ringwraith whom no man can kill.
Lily loved her callsign.
And still, every day, she would enter the kitchen and get her juice— and see the sheet of paper with the strange writing on it stuck to the fridge door.
Then one morning, a few days before her tenth birthday, she looked at the uppermost box on it and said, ‘Huh. I get it now. I know what that says.’
Everyone in the kitchen at the time—Doris, Wizard, Zoe and Pooh Bear—whirled around instantly.
‘What does it say, Lily?’ Wizard said, gulping, trying not to show his excitement.
‘It’s a funny language, uses letters and pictures to create sounds. It says,
Colossus.
Two entrances, one plain, one not,
Carved by the fifth Great Architect,
Out of Great Soter’s tenth mine.
The easier route lies below the old mouth. Yet
In the Nubian swamp to the south of Soter’s mine,
Among Sobek’s minions,
Find the four symbols of the Lower Kingdom.
Therein lies the portal to the harder route.’
The next day, the entire team left Victoria Station on board the Halicarnassus, bound for the Sudan.
That same day the Sun rotated on its axis and the small sunspot that the Egyptians called Ra’s Prophet appeared on its surface.
In seven days, on March 20, the Tartarus Rotation would occur.
TUNISIA
15 MARCH, 2006
5 DAYS BEFORE TARTARUS
THE PHAROS
As a Wonder of the World, the Lighthouse at Alexandria has always been, terribly unfairly, the perennial runner-up.
It is second in height to the Great Pyramid at Giza—by a mere 29 metres.
It stood, intact and functioning, for 1,600 years, until it was hit by a pair of devastating earthquakes in 1300 AD. Only the Great Pyramid survived for longer.
But ultimately it would defeat the Pyramid on one important count: it was useful.
And because it survived for so long, we have many descriptions of it: Greek, Roman, Islamic.
By today’s standards, it was a skyscraper.
Built on three colossal levels, it stood 117 metres high, the equivalent of a 40-storey building.
The first level was square—broad, solid and powerful. The foundation level.
The second level was octagonal and hollow.
The third and uppermost level was cylindrical and also hollow— to allow for the raising of fuel to the peak.
At the summit of the tower stood its crowning glory, Sostratus’s masterpiece: the mirror.
Ten feet high and shaped like a modern satellite dish, the mirror was mounted on a sturdy base and could rotate 360 degrees. Its concave bronze shape reflected the rays of the Sun to warn approaching ships of the dangerous shoals and submerged rocks just off Alexandria.
By night, a huge bonfire was lit in front of the mirror, allowing the great lighthouse to send its beam twenty kilometres out into the darkened