“The trail leads to Egypt, where golems were used as slaves, along with the Jews, to help build the pyramids. Once you understand that golems were fairly common in the ancient world, you can trace their history and involvement in ancient cultures around the world. The pyramids in Central America, Stonehenge, Easter Island—”

“The ziggurats of Sumer.” King could finally see where Alexander was going. The ziggurats of Sumer were mankind’s first truly amazing construction projects. It was also the cradle of modern civilization, giving us our first written human language, cities, and code of laws.

“And it is there, in Babylon—the capital city of Sumer—that we discover how this ancient language was lost to humanity, hidden within the scores of languages developed shortly after that period of history.”

The answer came to King before Alexander could speak it. “The Tower of Babel.” King knew the biblical account well enough. God, upset that the people had built a tower to reach Heaven, had confused the population’s language and scattered them around the planet. And he didn’t buy a word of it.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“It’s another Jewish myth given a few verses in the Bible.”

“Not just the Bible, or more accurately, the Pentateuch. It is also mentioned in the Book of Jubiless, Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews, the Greek Third Apocalypse of the Baruch, the Midrash, Kabbalah, and the Qur’an. The Sumerians tell the story as Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. But perhaps most interesting are the Central American traditions. In one, a tower is built that will allow Xelhua, a survivor of a great flood, to storm Heaven. But the tower is destroyed and those who built the tower had their language confused. Then again from the Toltecs; a tower known as a zacuali, is built by the survivors of a deluge, but once more their language was confused and they were scattered around the planet. The ancient history of the world is recorded very similarly in most cultures, including a great flood, the Tower of Babel, and, most importantly, a protolanguage that every human being had been speaking since the dawn of Homo sapiens.”

*   *   *

THE DIM LIGHT wasn’t exactly easy to read by, but it was better than nothing. The same could be said for Fiona’s reading material—a three-week-old copy of the New York Times. After reading the movie and book reviews she searched for a comics section, but found none. What a rip-off! She had hoped a little humor might distract her from the growing tension of those around her.

The revelation that she knew about the wraiths before being imprisoned made her a pariah. Her confidence about being rescued by her father, whose identity she refused to divulge, only made the others more skeptical of her presence. Some thought she was a spy. Only Elma continued to speak to her.