The Rosetta Key

Lingering, divine bright Truth awaits himThe fool crazy for flowers, who also trusts with faith What the devil did that mean? The world could avoid a great deal of confusion if everyone just said things straight out, but that doesn’t seem to be our habit, does it? And yet there was something about this phrasing that jarred a memory, a memory I’d never shared with either Astiza or Silano. I felt a chill of recognition.

“We must go to a special place within the City of Ghosts,” Silano said, “and call down the flames of the storm, the lightning, just as your mentor Franklin did in Philadelphia. Call it to the seraphim, and see which part they point to.”

“The part of what?”

“A building or cave, I’m guessing. It will become apparent if this works.”

“The desert drinks from a snail shell?” t h e

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“From the thunderstorm’s rain. A reference to a sacred drinking vessel, I suspect.”

Or something else, I thought to myself. “And the flowers and faith?”

“My theory is that is a reference to the Templars themselves and the Order of the Rose and Cross, or Rosicrucians. Theories of the origin of the Rosy Cross vary, but one is that the Alexandrian sage Ormus was converted to Christianity by the disciple Mark in 46 a .d.

and fused its teachings with that of ancient Egypt, creating a Gnostic creed, or belief in knowledge.” He looked hard at me to make sure I’d make the connection with the Book of Thoth. “Movements fade in and out of history, but the symbol of the cross and the rose is a very old one, symbolizing death and life, or despair and hope. The Resurrection, if you will.”

“And male and female,” Astiza added, “the phallic cross and the yonic flower.”

“Flower and faith symbolize the character required of those who would find the secret,” Silano said.

“A woman?”

“Perhaps, which is one reason we have a woman along.” I decided to keep my own suspicions to myself. “So you want to draw lightning down to my seraphim and see what happens?”

“In the place prescribed by the documents we’ve found, yes.” I considered. “What you’re talking about is a lightning rod, or rather two, since we have two seraphim. We need metal to bring the energy down to the ground, I think.”

“Which is why our tent poles are metal, to mount your angels on.

I’ve been planning this for months. You need our help to find the city, and we need your help to find the hiding place within it.”

“And then what? We cut the book in half?”

“No,” Silano said. “We don’t need Solomon to resolve our rivalry.

We use it together, for mankind’s good, just as the ancients did.”

“Together!”

“Why not, when we have the power to do unlimited good? If the world’s true form is gossamer, it can be spun and shifted. That’s what 2 0 0

w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h

this book apparently tells us how to do. And when all things are possible, stones can be shifted, lives lengthened, enemies reconciled, and wounds healed.” His eyes gleamed.

I looked at his hip. “Made young again.”

“Exactly, and in charge of a world finally run on reason.”

“Bonaparte’s reason?”

Silano glanced at Najac. “I am loyal to the government that commissioned me. And yet politicians and generals only understand so much. It is scholars who will rule the future, Ethan. The old world was the plaything of princes and priests. The new will be the responsibility of scientists. When reason and the occult are joined, a golden age will begin. Priests played that role in Egypt. We will be the priests of the future.”

“But we’re on opposite sides!”

“No, we’re not. All things are dual. And we are linked by Astiza.” His smile was meant to be seductive.

What an unholy trinity. Yet how could I accomplish anything without playing along? I looked at her. She was sitting at Silano’s side, not mine.

“She hasn’t even forgiven me,” I lied.

“I will if you help us, Ethan,” she replied. “We need you to call down fire from the sky. We need you to harness heaven, like your Benjamin Franklin.”

c h a p t e r

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The entrance to the City of Ghosts was a slit of sandstone canyon, tight and pink as a virgin.

The sinuous passageway was no wider than a room at its base, the sky a distant blue line above. The walls rose as high as six hundred feet, at times leaning in like a roof, as if closing like a crack in an earthquake. The embrace was disquieting as we walked with packs down its shadowed floor. Yet if rock can be voluptuous, this rose and blue barbican was a seraglio of rolling flesh, carved by water into a thousand sensuous forms as pleasing to the eye as a sultan’s favorite.

Much of it was banded into layers of coral, gray, white, and laven-der. Here rock dripped down like frozen syrup, there it puffed like frosting, and in yet another place it was a lace curtain. The sand and rock wadi formed a crude road that dipped downward toward our destination, like a causeway to some underworld in a satyr’s dream.