equinox.
West himself had performed the Tartarus ritual atop the Great Pyramid on March 20, 2006, the day of the vernal equinox, the spring day when the Sun is perfectly overhead and day equals night.
The vernal and autumnal equinoxes are twin celestial moments that occur at opposite times of the year.
Opposites but the same,West thought.Yin and yang.
Someone, somewhere, had done something around the autumnal equinox that had neutralized Tartarus.
West was disturbed from his reverie by a small brown shape cutting across his view to the east.
It was a bird, a falcon, soaring gracefully across the dusty sky, wings wide. It was Horus, his peregrine falcon and loyal companion. The bird landed on the railing next to him, squawking at the eastern horizon.
West looked that way just in time to see several black dots appear in the sky there, flying in formation.
About three hundred miles away, near the coastal town of Wyndham, military exercises were under way, the biennial Talisman Sabre exercises that Australia held with America. Large in scale, they involved all sections of both nations’ armed forces: navy, army, and air force.
Only this year,Talisman Sabre came with a twist: for the first time ever, China was participating. No one was under any illusions. Under the chaperoning of neutral Australia (it had significant trade links with China and long- standing military links with the US), China and America, the two biggest kids on the block, were sizing each other up. At first, the US hadn’t wanted China’s participation, but the Chinese had exerted some considerable trade pressure on Australia to be involved, and the Australians had begged the US to allow it.
But happily, West thought, these weren’t matters that concerned him anymore.
He turned to watch Lily and Alby scamper around the barn, kicking up matching dust trails, when the computer in his kitchen pinged.
Ping, ping, ping, ping.
E-mails.
Lots of them.
Jack stepped inside, still gripping his coffee, and checked the monitor.
Over two dozen e-mails from Max Epper had just come in. Jack clicked on one, and found himself staring at a digital photo of an ancient carved symbol. Chinese by the look of it.
“Oh, Wizard.” He sighed. “What’s happened now? Did you forget to take your extra hard drive again?”
Wizard had done this before. He needed to back something up but had forgotten to take a second hard drive, so he’d e-mailed his photographs to Jack for safekeeping.
With a groan, Jack clicked over to the Internet and brought up a Lord of the Rings chat room, punched in his ID tag:STRIDER 101.
A little-used notice board came up. This was how he and Lily communicated with Wizard: through the anonymity of the Internet. If Wizard was sending a bulk block of e-mails, then he’d probably also sent an explanatory message via the chat room.
Sure enough the last message left on the notice board was from GANDALF 101: Wizard.
West scrolled down to view the message, expecting to see the usual bashful apology from Wizard…
…only to be surprised by what he saw.
He saw numbers.
Lots of numbers, interspersed with parentheses and forward slashes:
(3/289/-5/5) (3/290/-2/6) (3/289/-8/4) (3/290/-8/4) (3/290/-1/12)
(3/291/-3/3) (1/187/15/6) (1/168/-9/11)
(3/47/-3/4) (3/47/-4/12) (3/45/-163) (3/47/-1/5)
(3/305/-3/1) (3/304/-8/10)
(3/43/1/12) (3/30/-3/6)
(3/15/7/4) (3/15/7/3)
(3/63/-20/7) (3/65/5/1-2)
(3/291/-14/2) (3/308/-8/11) (3/232/5/7) (3/290/-1/9)
(3/69/-13/5) (3/302/1/8)
(3/55/-4/11-13) (3/55/-3/1)
Jack frowned, concerned.
It was a coded message from Wizard, a special code known only to the members of their trusted inner circle.
This was serious.
Jack quickly grabbed a paperback novel from the nearby bookshelf—the same novel that Wizard had used to compose the message in China—and began flicking pages, unraveling the coded communication.
He jotted down words underneath each numerical reference until at last he had the full message and his blood ran cold:
