cedar_grove | I'll try and do one or two of these each day until they're all done.

Star of the Morning - third part in the Sacrifice trilogy.
Word Count to date: 105,700
Chapter: 14
Sequel to: Angel of the Heart

When everything you know... everything you believe is called into question... when all that you know to be good and right brings only darkness and pain... where can you turn for answers?

Although Evelyn has been appointed Head of Antiquities at the British Museum and her career is doing well, she is not as happy as she should be, because her home life is terribly strained. It started when her youngest son was born and the conflict between herself and her husband only escalates when strange and terrible things begin to happen in the manor that seem centered around young Katharine and appear to be connected to the gods of Egypt. Risking almost certain death, and at Alex's urging, the family returns to the desert to see if there are answers to be found.

The young Suhayl begins to have visions and dreams in which he flies like a hawk, like Horus himself over a desert landscape. When a cry for help reaches his ethereal ears, he cannot help but respond and finds himself caught in a nightmare where demons from the underworld seek to become real through the flesh of the one that has called to him for help. Though he appears as a fully sworn, adult Medjai warrior in this strange landscape into which he is drawn time and time again, and feels he has the power to help, a beautiful, gentle woman warns him that he cannot yet act without endangering himself and all of Egypt... perhaps the whole world.

Ayesha Fahas is Ardeth's cousin and the only healer he will trust to see to the care of his family. She is called to help Suhayl when the visions he has debilitate him. She is called to tend to Ashna who suffers injuries at the hands of the Elder Mohammed, and it is she that is beaten and turned from the Healer Hall by the master healer in the coup that follows the raiders attack on the oasis home of the Medjai. Having nowhere else to go - turned out of her own family in the Ninth Tribe because of a family scandal for which even now she is reviled as a bringer of bad luck she is once again rescued by her cousin to whom she must deliver some terrible news.

Medjai Elder Mohammed has never been more vocal against Ardeth and more specifically against Meiri than now. In a direct attack against the wife of the First Medjai he accuses her of having an affair with Rashid. He insists upon a trial before all the commanders of the Twelve Tribes, much as he had before when his manipulations caused Rida Khalifah's execution several years before. His plan to have the trial conducted outside of the medjai is thwarted by men loyal to Ardeth and ultimately he is defeated when Rashid reveals a secret he has kept for almost thirty years. Mohammed's twisted scheming is costly, not only for Ardeth, but for all of the Medjai themselves, who Mohammed attempts to rally to his command following the raid on Al-Kharga.

As Horse Master, Nazir is third in command of the Medjai. Though a capable warrior in his own right he is more content to breed and train the horses, until he becomes thrust into the middle of a coup when Suhayl runs to him for help when the Elders drag his mother away for crimes the young boy cannot understand. Forced to assume command of the Twelve Tribes Nazir tries, unsuccessfully to persuade Ashna's uncle not to separate her from her children when Sulayman believes she has been dishonored by Ardeth. When Ardeth returns he must give up his quiet existence with the horses and join his warrior brothers in the defense of everything sacred to the Medjai.

Anas, a wandering sufi mystic returns to Cairo, drawn by strange events he has seen during his meditations and threats of danger that the Prophets have whispered in his ear. Together with his young daughter he sets off to try and find the source of the troubling events that begin to overtake the people of the most deprived areas of the city. He alone comes to the aid of one of il-Nihaya's fallen women. At first she will not accept his help, but when the Medjai warriors arrive in the city demanding the return of their lost heir she turns to him to mediate on her behalf with the furious and desperate men. He also finds himself drawn to the O'Connells in their struggle against the rising, supernatural powers in the desert and their fight with the hostile Medjai who seem bent on executing the family for crimes from their past, but along the way these dangers touch a little too close to home as he sends his family into the desert where, lost and alone in the great Sahara desert, his daughter dodges the dangers from which her father sent her only to find herself in greater peril when she finds the dangerous cult holding captive a boy of around her age. Moved by strong emotional attachment to the boy that she feels is as much a part of herself as her soul she tries to free him and together they set of on a quest that will bind them together for all eternity... one that is more deadly than even her father could have imagined as they become all that stand between humanity and the unleashed fury of the ancient gods of Egypt.

As civil war tears apart the only protection the peoples of the desert have ever known, the crazed actions of an unstable mind awaken abominations with their own scores to settle and he and his followers becomes drawn into the prelude to apocalypse that crawl from beneath the sands of time itself. Only one man has the key that can unlock the Eternal Gates and send the Armies of the Ancients back to their own world and restore peace and balance to the desert home of his people... but is he the man that everyone believes him to be, and is it already too late to unspeak words that have brought so many years of terror, and pain and strife...?