Cleopatra's Secret: Keepers of the LIght by LYDIA STORM Page B

looked at her curiously. What game was she up to now? He smiled. “Have no fear of me, pet.”
    Her expression was grave. “You must swear or turn back.”
    “You’re so serious.” He looked at her questioningly, but then shrugged. “I swear before your Gods and mine, I will not betray the trust you put in me.”
    Cleopatra nodded. “Then let us enter.”
    She led him past two snarling lions hewn into the sandstone blocks which guarded the door of the mortuary temple. As he stepped inside, the smell of smoldering frankincense wafted through the air and dancing torchlight illuminated painted walls depicting scenes in the life of the Gods. As they made their way through the dimly lit tunnel, scarlet, gold and turquoise hieroglyphics leaped out at him, though he could not decipher their code.
    At last they reached a small room at the back of the temple where a life-size picture of Osiris and Isis was painted next to a star of shimmering silver. Cleopatra stood before the image of the Gods. The artwork was magnificent, even compared with what Antony had already seen in the temples and palaces of Alexandria. With their translucent flowing white robes covering supple bronzed limbs and jewel-like eyes, heavily lined in black paint, the two Gods seemed eerily lifelike in the flickering light.
    “Is this what you came to show me?” asked Antony, gazing at the painted Gods.
    A strange look clouded Cleopatra’s eyes, as though her mind were somewhere else and his gaze was drawn inexplicably to the old bronze scarab locket that hung between her breasts. “For millennia, the pharaohs and our priests have served in a secret order known as The Keepers of the Light. In our written language of symbols, the word sba means both star and door .” She pointed to the picture of the star on the wall. “Look up above you, Antony. What do you see?”
    Tearing his eyes from the wall painting, he turned his gaze upward. A shaft was cut from the stone ceiling revealing the gleaming fires of the stars burning bright in the sky above. “I see the stars.”
    “Yes, but which stars?”
    “Well, I’m not as schooled in the constellations as you Egyptians, but I seem to remember those make up Orion.”
    “Yes,” she said eagerly, “for us he is Osiris. Below the great star, you see rising just beneath is Sothis, or Isis. When she rises to a certain point, the Nile will flood its banks and the cycle of life will be renewed in Egypt.”
    “So your Gods are the stars?” Antony peered up at the constellations more deeply.
    “Not exactly.” Cleopatra pointed to the three gleaming points of Orion's belt. “You see these three stars that make up Osiris's belt? Then the milky cluster over there that seems almost like a river of diamonds? What do those remind you of?”
    Antony furrowed his brow and searched the sky, trying to find meaning in it. He was growing annoyed. He did not like to be spoken to as if he were a small child at his pedagogue’s knee. “I’ve told you already, I’m no astronomer. I see no meaning in them.”
    Unruffled, Cleopatra put her hand on his shoulder and spoke softly. “These Pyramids are like a map of the stars. See how they mimic Osiris's belt? Three great stars, three Great Pyramids, with one larger and more magnificent than the other two? And the large body of stars over there runs across the sky at precisely the same angle as the Nile flowing past our monuments. Our sacred land of Giza is the very copy of the heavens. This was done by order of the Gods, that those whose blood flows from the First Time will not forget where we come from.”
    A chill went through Antony. “I don’t understand.”
    “Come.” She held out her hand. “I will show you.”
    Antony allowed Cleopatra to close her fingers around his as she turned him to face once more the uncanny painting of Isis and Osiris and the gleaming silver star. “There are many doors into the Pyramids, but there is only one that matters. Behind it lies