‘On the way, we’re all going to study up. I want to know everything we can about the Three Immortal Weapons, the Three Secret Cities and the Altar of the Cosmos.
‘I also want to know about the royal prison they’ve taken Hades to, the place called Erebus, plus those Knights who are hunting us, the ones who scared off Hades’s brother and destroyed a building in New York. That clear?’
Everyone nodded.
‘All right. Hit the books.’
The team scattered around the plane and began tapping away on computers, reading books or perusing old notepads.
At one point, Jack took his mother aside.
‘Mum, these guys who attacked us in New York, these Knights of the Golden Eight, who are they?’
Mae looked downward. ‘I’ve read about them a few times. They’re a very dangerous element of the royal world. In royal systems like the four kingdoms, there is always a hierarchy: kings and queens, princes and princesses, then earls and knights. Earls and knights pledge their allegiance to their kings and thus garner their patronage and support.
‘The Knights of the Golden Eight, however, are different. They pledge their allegiance to no-one. They are the original knights-errant, guns for hire. The paid assassins of the royal courts.
‘Over the centuries, they have acquired substantial land holdings and wealth which has afforded them a unique kind of independence from the four kingdoms. And as we saw very clearly this morning, they have no fear even of senior office-holders like the Governor of the Royal Prison.’
Jack swallowed.
‘Their price is notoriously high,’ Mae added, ‘which means only the wealthiest royals can hire them. But then, according to the Knights’ version of chivalry, they serve only their employer of the moment and they will not rest until they have accomplished their mission. They say: “When the price is paid, the mark is made.” The death mark.’
‘What’s their price?’ Jack asked ominously.
‘The Knights don’t work for money,’ Mae said. ‘They work for land. Regions. Sometimes whole countries. One thing is clear, whoever tasked them with killing you and grabbing Lily and Alby has the ability to pay them handsomely.’
Shortly after that conversation, while everyone else was working away, Jack slipped into his bedroom at the back of the plane, pulled out his phone and texted a new friend of his.
Hey Scarecrow,
Hope you're on the mend after your time in the U-world. Something came up and I’m back into it in a big way.
Question: ever heard of some bounty hunters called the ‘Knights of the Golden Eight’?
A few minutes later, he got a reply from Shane Schofield:
Jack.
I just showed your text to Mother. She says you're the fucking Energizer Bunny. (She also says hi.)
I've still got a hole in my shoulder from a stab wound I got in the Underworld, so I'm not going anywhere for a month.
Never heard of any ‘Knights of the Golden Eight’ but let me ask a friend of mine who might have.
A few hours later, after doing some research of his own, Jack gathered everyone together in the main cabin.
As the others joined him, he got Lily to add her translations of the Thoth markings on the tablet to the image of it on the electronic whiteboard:
‘Let’s start with the three cities,’ Jack said. He added the words THULE, RA and ATLAS to the whiteboard. ‘Their histories, origins, special features and possible locations?’
Mae stood up. ‘First of all, the names of the three secret, or hidden, cities—Thule, Ra and Atlas—are actually very widely known, as are the various legends about them. Having said that, all three cities remain stubbornly unfound despite centuries of searching for them.
‘Thule is probably the least well known, so let’s start with it. It’s sometimes referred to as Ultima Thule and is mentioned by many Greek and Roman writers including Plato, Geminus and Virgil.
‘Thule was said to be a fabulous city, built in a cold and icy land far to the north. The ancient writers claimed that during summer the sun never set there, and in winter it never rose. Thule was reputed to be four days’ sail northwest of the British Isles.
‘All this—especially the part about long days in summer and long nights in winter—has led modern scholars to speculate that Thule was actually a reference to Iceland, Svalbard or perhaps Greenland. But it remains speculation, because Thule has never been found.’
‘Anything about fathomless depths?’ Jack asked.
‘Not that I’ve seen,’ Mae said. ‘I should also add that Thule was a topic of extreme interest to the Nazis.’
‘The Nazis?’ Lily said.
Mae said, ‘As everyone knows, the Nazis believed in the Aryan race, a superior race of blond-haired, blue-eyed supermen and women. It was the Nazis’ belief that the Aryan race began at Thule. Indeed, one of the key groups within the early Nazi Party, the one that looked into people’s ancestry to ensure they had “pure” Aryan blood, was a very nasty group called the Thule-Gesellschaft, the Thule Society. Its symbol was a proto-swastika.’
‘Charming,’ Jack said. ‘Okay, what about Ra? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a lost city of Ra.’
‘Believe it or not, but I bet you have,’ Mae said. ‘The city of Ra is actually far more well known than Thule, only you probably know it by another name: the name given to it by Spanish explorers in the days of the conquest of South America.’
Mae turned to Lily. ‘Lily helped me with this. Perhaps she can explain it better.’
Lily said, ‘In Thoth, to say “the City of Ra”, you say “Do-Ra”. To say “the Great City of Ra”, you would say “Do-Ra-Do”.’
‘Oh, no way . . .’ Jack said, seeing it.
‘That’s right,’ Lily said. ‘One ancient Thoth carving we found stated that in honour of Ra, the streets of the great city dedicated to him were paved with gold, the metal most like the sun. Later, in their travels in the jungles of the new continent of South America, the Spanish conquistadors heard from the natives about a fabulous and ancient hidden city with streets of gold. To many, finding it would become an obsession and as rumours spread, this city dedicated to Ra the Sun-God—the Great City of Ra, Do-Ra-Do—soon became known by its crude Spanish equivalent: Dorado. El Dorado.’
‘Is there any way to know where it might be?’ Zoe asked.
‘Given that word of the city only came to Europeans when they encountered the natives of Central and South America, it is presumed to be somewhere in the jungles there.’ Mae held up her hands helplessly. ‘For over five hundred years, many explorers—men like Hernán Cortés and Sir Francis Drake—have searched for El Dorado and not found it.’
‘And Atlas?’ Jack said.
‘The name speaks for itself,’ Mae said. ‘It is the most famous lost city of them all. Plato was the first to write about it and countless others have pondered it ever since, from Francis Bacon to Jules Verne. Deep-sea divers have searched in vain for it while pseudo-historians have claimed that every advanced ancient civilisation, from the Egyptians to the Mayans, stemmed from it.
‘It is the great cautionary tale that every schoolchild knows, the tale of a wondrous city that rose too high and was punished for its hubris when it was flooded under the waves of the Atlantic Ocean and lost forever. That’s the City of Atlas, or as it is more commonly known, Atlantis.’
‘Atlantis . . .’ Jack said dubiously.
The others looked at him expectantly.
Then he shrugged. ‘Hey, if you’d told me a week ago that I’d go to the Underworld and back, I’d have laughed in your face. A guy’s got to keep an open mind in this business. And, clearly, they’re not called secret cities for nothing. We’ve got our work cut out for us. Anything else about them?’
Lily raised her hand. ‘One thing.’ She pulled up a copy of Hades’s snapshot of the Zeus Papy
rus on her computer.
‘The symbols for “the Three Secret Cities” in the Word of Thoth are in this note written by Zeus. You can see them on the fourth line:
‘Now, if you look at the triangular tablet from the altar, you’ll see those same three symbols carved into the corners of the triangle: the first upside-down triangle is Thule, the next one represents Ra, and the last symbol, two triangles forming an hourglass-like shape, is Atlas.’
Lily grabbed a whiteboard marker and drew three circles around the three segments of the tablet:
‘This links each weapon with its city: Thule and the Sword; Ra and the Helmet; Atlas and the Mace.’
Jack nodded. ‘Nice work, kiddo. Nice work.’
Lily smiled. She may have been a young woman of twenty now, educated and accomplished, but she still loved it when he called her that.
‘I heard something about the Three Secret Cities during the Games,’ Jack said. ‘About their guardians.’
‘The Trismagi,’ Mae said.
‘Yes. Cardinal Mendoza said that while the word translates as three magicians, I should think of them not as magicians but as the three most senior initiates of the civilisation that built the cities.’
Mae said, ‘You do realise that trismagi is the name given to the “three wise men” who attended the birth of Christ by the light of an especially bright star.’
‘Mendoza mentioned that, too,’ Jack said. ‘He said that very occasionally the three guardians venture forth from their cities to share their knowledge with each other. I assume they also emerge to attend major royal events. The birth of a royal scion like Jesus Christ—the merging of two great royal lines—was clearly one such event.’
‘So who are they?’ Alby said. ‘Are they royalty? Maybe lower-ranked siblings like that Yago guy?’
‘Hades mentioned that one of them is known as Sphinx,’ Jack said. ‘Beyond that, all I know is they’re waiting at the cities and so will have to be taken into account.’ He looked to his mother questioningly.
Mae shrugged and shook her head. ‘This is where having an insider like Hades comes in handy. In all my studies of the kingdoms, I’ve only encountered two references to the Trismagi: the Christ visit, of course, and one reference where they were called the “three watchmen”, because they watch over the cities. All I can say is that being the guardian of a secret city must be a tough job: lonely, isolated and a very long way from the luxuries of the royal world. Like being the Governor of the Royal Prison, I doubt being the watchman of a secret city is a sought-after position in royal circles.’
‘Watchman . . .’ Alby said thoughtfully, before standing up and grabbing his laptop. ‘Funny you should use that word. Plato used a similar one: watchtowers.’
He brought up a scan of a tattered old scroll.
‘Since Plato described two of the three cities—Thule and Atlas—I decided to look him up a little further. This is a scan of a scroll that Jack found at the Library at Alexandria, written by Plato himself.’
He started reading:
‘To enter each city, you must first pass through its watchtower and navigate its sacred avenue. At its bridge you must overcome its silver guardians. Only then can you advance to its innermost vault and empower the weapon.
‘But beware, the three cities are well defended. Woe betide he who awakens their silent bronze armies. For the armies will only allow one versed in the Mysteries to pass and keep his life. False claimants and intruders will suffer only death.’
‘Silent bronze armies?’ Lily said. ‘Those bronze things.’
A silence fell over the group.
Jack gave voice to their fears.
‘These cities,’ he said, ‘are starting to sound like very dangerous places.’
He stood up.
‘This is a good start, people. Given that the tablet says Thule is the first city, let’s focus on finding its location—’
At that moment, all at once, all four of the televisions behind Jack suddenly crashed to static, their signals seemingly lost.
Alby went over to them. ‘Must be a glitch of some—’
And then the TVs came on again, all by themselves, and a face appeared on them: the same face on all four televisions.
It was the face of a man and he was wearing a black ceramic half facemask, black goggles, and a black helmet.
‘Hello, world,’ he said in a peculiar European accent.
Jack froze.
He knew that voice. It was the same one that had come over the PA system in Hades’s penthouse earlier that day.
The voice of Jaeger Eins, the leader of the Knights of the Golden Eight.
Alby changed the channel on one of the televisions, only to find the same ominous masked figure on that channel . . . and the next one . . . and the next.
‘He’s on every channel,’ Alby gasped. ‘That’s not possible. It would mean they’ve hacked every broadcast signal in the—’
‘People of the world,’ the masked figure said. ‘You do not know me, but then, who I am is unimportant. Allow me, however, to introduce you to someone who is very, very important.’
The screen changed . . .
. . . to a photo of Jack.
Jack stared in horror at the four TV screens.
On each of them was a still frame of him taken that morning from a security camera in New York. It showed him in mid-stride, looking desperately behind himself as he ran across the roof of One Tribeca.
Jack’s mind reeled.
Right now, at this very moment, his face was on every television in the world.
The voice of Jaeger Eins spoke over his image. ‘Good people, you do not know this man, but you should. His name is Captain Jack West Jr. He is a hero, one of the greatest men you have never heard of.’
He said the word ‘hero’ derisively.
‘Hello, Jack. You didn’t think we would stop, did you? I gather by now you know who we are. The price has been paid so the mark has been made. We will not stop until the warrant on your head has been executed. You should be afraid, Jack, that we are coming for you. No-one has ever outrun the Knights. But do not fret too much. In time, you will come to us.’
And then, just as quickly as they had been interrupted, all the televisions resumed their regular transmissions.
On a couple of the TVs, the cable news anchors were visibly perplexed and mentioned something about the signal being lost.
If the others hadn’t been there with him and seen it happen, Jack would have sworn it had been a dream.
‘What just happened?’ he said.
Alby said, ‘They must have the master codes to all the TV satellites in orbit. They then utilised every country’s Emergency Broadcast Network and took over the signal. Man, that’s power.’
‘Jack,’ Mae said seriously. ‘We’re out of our depth. The cities, the weapons, the watchmen, the Knights. We can’t figure all this out on our own. We need an insider, someone with specific real knowledge of the royal world, like someone who was, say, the Keeper of the Royal Records for one of the kingdoms.’
Jack knew who she was suggesting.
He threw a look at Zoe. She wouldn’t like this at all.
Zoe just nodded. ‘Mae’s right. Do it.’
Jack pulled out his burner phone and the slip of paper Iolanthe had given him back on the runway at his farm.
He texted:
Need your help on a few royal matters. Are you free to meet? Maybe in England somewhere?
Moments later, his phone pinged with a reply.
Just saw you on TV. Thought I might be hearing from you. I can meet: I'm in England, researching historical battles from Marathon to Waterloo.
Zoe cocked her head to the side. ‘What does that mean?’
Jack said. ‘She’s not revealing her location in writing, just in case someon
e intercepts this. But I get it. I know where she is.’
He typed:
Done. See you there.
Then he smashed the phone under his boot.
‘All right,’ he said to the group. ‘We split up. Alby and Lily, you come with me to Venice: I might need some fast Thoth-translating and an astrophysical mind. Zoe and Mum, you go meet Iolanthe in England and find out whatever you can about the cities.’
‘But where is she?’ Mae said.
Jack pulled out a map and showed her.
‘Oh,’ Mae said.
Minutes later, Alby came over to Jack.
‘Jack, given its value, that rubbing of the triangular tablet is going to be hidden deep inside the Gallerie dell’Accademia. And that museum is on the Grand Canal in Venice, one of the busiest tourist districts in the world. How are we going to get in and out without being spotted?’
Jack showed him a picture from one of Sky Monster’s luxury jet and yacht magazines. ‘I thought we’d steal this and use one of its special features to get inside the museum.’
Alby looked at the picture in the magazine and his mouth fell open.
‘Oh,’ he said.
Somewhere in England
Jack’s message lingered on the screen of Iolanthe’s phone:
Done. See you there.
Iolanthe quickly put the phone down, smashed it and tossed it in a trashcan.
Then she hurried back to her wheeled ladder: it was leaning against some high wooden shelves in a stone-walled medieval library.
She needed to grab as many documents related to the trials as she could find.
She found a parchment from Seville written by King Alfonso X—Alfonso the Wise—that she knew mentioned the Altar of the Cosmos, although here it was called the Altar for the Rebirth of the Cosmos.
She also grabbed an original copy of the Book of Genesis. It was the notorious copy that the writers of the King James Bible had rewritten because of its perceived blasphemies and shocking tales.
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