The world of Khenti was composed of three things: the rhythmic clink-clink of copper on stone, the taste of limestone dust, and the blistering lash of the sun. In the quarries of Tura, men did not live; they merely eroded.
Khenti swung his heavy bronze mallet with a precision that defied his exhaustion. He didn’t see the block of stone as a slab of dead earth. To him, the stone had a pulse. It had veins. If you listened closely enough—past the groans of the dying and the cracks of the overseer’s whip—the stone sang. It sang of the weight of the mountains and the coolness of the deep earth.
“Easy, brothers,” Khenti whispered to the stone, his voice a dry rasp. “One more breath, and you are free of the cliff.”
He struck the final wedge. A sound like a thunderclap echoed through the canyon as the ten-ton block of fine white limestone shivered and separated from the mountain. The other prisoners, skeletal men with hollow eyes and skin baked to the color of old leather, let out a collective, ragged cheer. It was the third block of the day. A record, even for Khenti.
“Work! Don’t celebrate!” a guard bellowed, his whip snapping the air just inches from Khenti’s ear. “The Pharaoh needs his monuments, and you are nothing but the dirt that builds them!”
Khenti didn’t look up. He knew better than to meet the eyes of a guard. In the three years since he had been cast into this hell, he had learned that his hands were his only protection. As long as he was the only man who could split a block without shattering its heart, he was allowed to live.
He wiped the sweat and grit from his brow, leaving a white smear across his dark forehead. He looked toward the north, toward the Great River. Usually, the Nile was a ribbon of vibrant blue, the life-blood of Khem. But for months, a terrifying change had taken hold. A rust-colored mist hung over the water. The crops were shriveling, turning into a fine, red powder that blew away in the wind. The “Red Death” was no longer a rumor whispered in the barracks; it was a shroud falling over the world.
“It’s coming closer,” a voice said beside him.
It was Bak, an old man whose lungs were more dust than flesh. He was pointing toward the horizon, where the red haze seemed to be creeping up the valley like a slow-moving fire.
“The gods are angry, Khenti,” Bak wheezed. “They say the Pharaoh’s firstborn turned to dust in his crib this morning. They say the priests are burning the libraries to find a way to stop it.”
“The gods don’t care about dust, Bak,” Khenti said, though a cold shiver that had nothing to do with the wind ran down his spine. “They care about tribute. And the Pharaoh has run out of gold.”
A sudden commotion at the entrance of the quarry cut their conversation short. A column of dust rose from the valley road, and soon, a squadron of the Royal Chariotry swept into the canyon. Their gilded armor reflected the dying sun with such intensity that the prisoners had to shield their eyes. At the center of the column was a palanquin of cedar and ebony, carried by eight massive Nubian guards.
The overseers fell to their knees, their whips discarded. The prisoners followed suit, pressed into the hot limestone dust.
The curtains of the palanquin parted. Out stepped Vizier Hori, the second most powerful man in Khem. He was thin, dressed in pleated linen so white it hurt to look at, and his face was a mask of aristocratic boredom that couldn’t quite hide a flicker of desperation. Beside him stood a woman draped in the leopard skin of a High Priestess. Her head was shaved, and her eyes were lined with thick kohl, making them look like the eyes of a hawk.
“Where is the one they call the Master of Veins?” Hori’s voice carried across the silent quarry, sharp and impatient.
The head overseer pointed a trembling finger toward Khenti. “There, My Lord. The murderer. The one who killed the Royal Architect.”
Khenti felt the weight of the Priestess’s gaze before he saw her. She walked toward him, her sandals crunching on the gravel. She stopped three paces away, studying him as if he were a specimen of rare mineral.
“Rise, Khenti of Thebes,” she commanded. Her voice was like the sound of a sistrum—metallic and rhythmic.
Khenti stood, his legs trembling from a day of labor. He stood a full head taller than the Priestess, his muscles roped and scarred, his body a map of the quarry’s brutality.
“I am Nefertari, Eye of the Goddess Hathor,” she said. “The Vizier says you were the finest mason in the realm before you spilled blood in the House of Life.”
“I did what honor required,” Khenti said, his voice flat.
“Honor is a luxury for the living,” Hori said, stepping up beside the Priestess. “And the living are becoming a rarity in Khem. The Red Death has reached the palace. The sacrifices have failed. The prayers have gone unheard. There is only one hope left.”
He gestured to a scroll the Priestess held. She unfurled it. Khenti’s eyes widened. It wasn’t a map of a tomb or a temple. It was a schematic for a structure that defied the laws of weight and balance. An archway so tall it would pierce the clouds, designed to be built of pure alabaster, reinforced with celestial bronze.
“The Alabaster Gate,” Khenti whispered. “The legend of the First Dynasty.”
“It is no legend,” Nefertari said. “It is a machine. A bridge to the Duat. We intend to open a path to the Ancestors and beg for the waters of the Hidden River to wash away the Red Death. But to build it, we need the stone to speak. We need a man who can hear the fractures before they happen.”
“And why me?” Khenti asked. “There are a dozen architects in the capital.”
“The others say it is impossible,” Hori snapped. “They say the weight will crush the foundations. They say the Alabaster Gate cannot stand. We need a man who has nothing to lose and a talent that borders on the divine.”
Khenti looked at the scroll again. He saw the flaws in the design immediately—the stress points on the keystone, the precarious angle of the supports. But he also saw the beauty of it. It was the project he had dreamed of in his youth, the one that had been deemed a madman’s fantasy.
“It requires the Heart-Stone,” Khenti said, looking Nefertari in the eye. “The legends say the Gate only opens if the keystone is carved from a fallen star. A stone that glows with the light of the moon.”
Nefertari nodded. “The stone is in the Mountains of the Moon, ten days’ journey into the forbidden lands of the South. We have the laborers. We have the soldiers. We lack only the Master.”
Hori stepped closer, the smell of expensive myrrh clashing with the stench of the quarry. “Build this gate, Khenti, and your crimes are erased. Fail, or refuse, and you will be tied to a stake at the edge of the Red Mist to watch your own skin turn to dust.”
Khenti looked at his hands—calloused, bloodied, but still capable of incredible things. He looked at Bak and the other prisoners, men who would be dead within a moon if the plague didn’t get them first.
“I will need my own crew,” Khenti said. “Not slaves. Men who know the stone. And I will need the woman.” He pointed to Nefertari. “If we are building a bridge to the gods, I need someone who speaks their language.”
Nefertari’s lips curled into a thin, dangerous smile. “I was already planning on it, mason. But be warned: the Mountains of the Moon do not welcome the living. Many have gone searching for the Heart-Stone. None have returned with their souls intact.”
“Then it’s a good thing I lost mine a long time ago,” Khenti said.
The Vizier signaled the guards. Within the hour, Khenti was washed, dressed in clean linen, and seated on the back of a sturdy donkey. As the caravan moved out of the quarry, he looked back one last time at the white cliffs of Tura.
The red mist was visible now, a low-hanging cloud on the southern horizon, shimmering with an unnatural, sickly light. It looked like a giant beast, slowly swallowing the world.
Khenti turned his gaze forward, toward the jagged peaks of the mountains that bit into the sky. He could already hear it—a new song, faint and cold, calling to him from the heart of the forbidden heights. It wasn’t the song of the earth. It was the song of the stars, and it was terrified.
The Master Mason gripped the reins, his mind already calculating the angles of the Alabaster Gate. He was no longer a prisoner. He was the architect of the end of the world.