Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx by James Rollins Page A

lips.
    Pindor sat cross-legged next to Jake, his chin resting on his knuckles as he watched the two girls.
    Standing a step away, Bach’uuk dug a broken claw from the railing. Jake pictured again the grakyl leering down at him before being ripped away by an aerial hook.
    Bach’uuk came over and squatted beside Jake and Marika, then placed the claw on the deck. “Not a grakyl.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Jake asked.
    â€œNone had swords. Just claws.” Bach’uuk stared at Jake with his sharp blue eyes and nudged the broken bit he’d dug out. “And teeth.”
    Marika scooted closer. “He’s right. None of them hadany weapons. And these beasts certainly didn’t look exactly like the grakyl back home.”
    â€œThey looked like them to me.”
    Marika shook her head. “Did you not see how gnarled their limbs were? Also their heads were too small, their ears too long. These attackers looked both smaller and more beastlike.”
    Jake remembered those yellow eyes locking on to his, shining with bloodlust and hunger—and nothing else. Back in Calypsos, the grakyl’s eyes and faces had shone with a vicious intelligence, nearly humanlike. He’d seen none of that here. The attack on the windriders had been savage, ill planned.
    Marika offered an explanation. “Maybe the grakyl started out as these beasts. Maybe the Skull King was sniffing around these lands and discovered them. Then Kalverum Rex took their forms and changed them, twisted them with his bloodstone alchemies, forged their flesh into his monstrous army.”
    Jake’s stomach churned sickeningly. “If these beasts aren’t grakyl, then what are they?”
    The answer came from behind him. “We call them harpies.” Jake turned to find Nefertiti standing with Kady. “Hundreds of years ago, one of our slave tribes gave them that name. Said the winged beasts matched stories from their own land: great stinking, winged creatures that were half human.”
    Jake nodded, recognizing the name. According to Greek mythology, the
Harpyiai
—or Harpies—were born from a union of Achilles’s mare and the god of the West Wind. It’s no wonder that some Lost Tribe of Greeks picked that name for the winged creatures here.
    â€œThey nest within the Great Wind,” Nefertiti continued. “They make their home inside that endless howling storm. We seldom see flocks so far from the Great Wind.”
    â€œWhat’s this Great Wind you keep talking about?” Jake asked.
    Nefertiti looked at him as if he were stupid, then sighed. She pointed to the horizon, toward that haziness blurring the place where sky and land met.
    â€œSee that mighty sandstorm? It circles the lands of Deshret. No one can pass through that storm without having their flesh scoured from their bones. One ship tried to sail over it, but it was broken apart and cast back into the desert. You five are the first to come through in hundreds of years.”
    â€œLucky us,” Pindor mumbled.
    So the storm must be some sort of barrier
, Jake thought.
    He pictured the volcanic rim that enclosed the valley of Calypsos and the protective shield generated by the great Temple of Kukulkan. Was this never-ending storm another form of that? A barrier around these people’s homes to protect them? But if so, that meant something had to be generating such a force, along with supplyingthe people here with the All-World tongue.
    But what?
    Nefertiti continued, “Within the Great Wind lay the ruins of our original home, a majestic city named Ankh Tawy. We were driven into these lands as the winds rose. Six generations ago. Our loremasters keep the memory alive in the Temple of Time. Pictures, carvings, sculptures. The bits of Ankh Tawy recovered before the winds rose. We preserve them for eternity.”
    Like some sort of museum.
    Jake had to get a look inside that place.
    Marika spoke. “Can you