Northern Cambodia, 2000 B.C. The first columns of sunlight stabbed through the canopy of tangled branches. Birds took flight, cawing a greeting to the dawn, their scarlet wings staining the pale sky as they skimmed the hard gray angles of a massive stone pyramid. Nearby, the air quaked with the incessant rumble of the river as it pulsed over a serrated cliff then broke on the ragged rocks far b
