The Three Secret Cities

by Matthew Reilly

‘But he fretted in his anxiousness, awed by the responsibilities of being king, and he was convinced to abdicate. In the shadow royal world, abdication is total: it wipes out that man’s entire line. I was thrown out of the line of succession and Orlando’s father became King of Land. He died of a heart attack within a month and Orlando, as his son, became King.

  ‘Shortly after, it was arranged for me to assume this posting: this ghastly posting at the ends of the Earth, on the tip of Africa, watching over a dead city and its watchtower, observing the machinations of the royal world from afar, hearing about events like the Great Games but generally not attending them.’

  Sphinx gazed out at the magnificent view with unseeing eyes, staring at his memories.

  Then he blinked.

  And turned back to face Lily with his deadly grey eyes.

  ‘I like to think I have a special kind of patience, an unsentimental patience that now, finally—thanks to your second father, Captain West—is about to be rewarded.

  ‘For by denying Orlando, your father has opened the door to someone with superior knowledge, not blood. Have no illusions, Orlando is both cruel and clever and a very dangerous man. But he is not half as cruel as I am or a tenth as knowledgeable in matters of the ancient world.

  ‘We are all the products of our parents,’ Sphinx said wistfully. ‘Your callow birth father gave you life in order to save his own. My anxious father forfeited his crown and, in doing so, condemned me to a life of exile in the service of lesser men. And your adopted father, Jack West Jr, through what seemed a well-meaning and noble act, could well have changed the course of history.’

  As Lily tried to absorb Sphinx’s words, he went on.

  ‘In my exile here, I have spent my time learning. Studying, collecting, researching and understanding everything I can about the Omega Event, the end of all things.’

  As Sphinx spoke, Lily looked at him closely, evaluating him.

  She saw a brilliant yet frustrated man, denied his royal birthright and sent out here to stew.

  Sphinx nodded at a sketch on the wall: a framed pencil sketch of a planet and its moon.

  ‘Take this sketch, drawn by Sir Isaac Newton himself. He only put half of this image in his masterwork, the Principia, and even then he put it there upside-down. It was far too dangerous to reveal in its entirety. There are maybe three people in the world who have seen this full image and understand its terrible meaning.’

  Sphinx stepped over to another framed sheet of paper, this one depicting a handwritten mathematical formula:

  ‘Do you know this equation?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. It’s the Friedmann Equation,’ Lily said. ‘The mathematical model of the expanding universe.’

  Sphinx did a double-take. ‘Goodness me. You are more than just a pretty face.’

  He gazed at the framed equation.

  ‘It is indeed Alexander Friedmann’s famous mathematical equation, written in his own hand. I find it beautiful, elegant in its brevity.

  ‘But this version of his formula comes with a single handwritten annotation by no less a titan than Albert Einstein himself; this small notation at the bottom: k > 0.’

  Lily saw the little addition at the bottom right of the framed sheet.

  Sphinx said, ‘This tiny addition by Einstein is nothing short of earth-shattering. It is monumentally important, for when k is greater than zero, gravity will eventually stop the universe from expanding and the whole universe will collapse in a single cataclysmic moment: The Big Crunch, as some have coarsely put it. The ultimate singularity.’

  ‘The Omega Event,’ Lily said in a low voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a question for you,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘The Zeus Papyrus contained a poem about the Trial of the Cities. It talked about no oceans, no clouds . . .’

  ‘. . . no rivers, no rain. The world a wasteland of misery and pain,’ Sphinx finished for her. ‘I know it well.’

  ‘Do you know what it means?’ Lily asked. ‘Is it referring to some kind of punishment for failing to complete the trial?’

  ‘Oh, Lily, punishment does not even begin to describe what that poem warns of.’

  Airspace over the Mediterranean Sea

  1 December

  Aloysius Knight’s Sukhoi Su-37 shot over the Mediterranean, heading away from Santorini.

  Aloysius’s loyal friend and pilot, Rufus, flew up front while inside its rear hold, Jack and Aloysius were bent over a map of the world.

  They had the photo of Drake’s note in front of them, with its three sets of coordinates, the locations of the Three Secret Cities:

  R: 8°6'N 60°30'W of London

  Follow the hidden river to the base of the tabletop mountain.

  T: 63°30'N 18°01'W of London

  Enter through the tunnel at the tideline below its watchtower.

  A: 35°48'N 5°36'W of London

  Enter through its watchtower.

  Jack grabbed a grease pencil and made three markings on the map based on Drake’s coordinates:

  He paused, thinking.

  Pooh Bear, Stretch and Sky Monster were on their way to Thule.

  Mae, Iolanthe and Nobody were very close to Ra.

  And Zoe, Alby and Hades were in Rome figuring out the location of the Altar and the ceremony to be performed there.

  Getting to Atlas and empowering the Mace was his job.

  Jack stared at the map, biting his lip as he assessed the positions of the three cities.

  ‘Iceland, Venezuela and the Strait of Gibraltar . . .’ he said aloud.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Aloysius asked.

  ‘I’m thinking about punishment.’

  ‘Punishment?’

  ‘We found a poem about all this.’ On his phone, Jack pulled up his copy of the Zeus Papyrus, pointed at the ode on it:

  THE TRIAL OF THE CITIES

  No oceans.

  No clouds.

  No rivers.

  No rain.

  The world a wasteland

  of misery and pain.

  ‘That last line,’ Jack said. ‘“The world a wasteland of misery and pain”. Zoe and my buddy, Nobody, found those same words carved into a sealed underwater doorway in the Mariana Trench. But I still can’t figure them out.’

  Aloysius shrugged. ‘Well, take the whole poem to its logical conclusion: no oceans means no moisture-evaporation, which means no clouds. No clouds means no rain or snow, which means no rivers. No rivers means no fresh water. And no fresh water means no life on Earth: not for plants, animals or humans. I’d say seeing every creature on the planet dying of thirst would definitely amount to “misery and pain”.’

  Jack was staring off into space.

  He spun to face Aloysius. ‘Say that again.’

  ‘I said, seeing every creature on the planet dying of thirst—’

  ‘No, the first part: no oceans means . . .’

  ‘No oceans means no moisture-evaporation, which means no clouds,’ Aloysius said. ‘As the sun warms the oceans, they send evaporation up into the sky which forms clouds.’

  Jack gazed at his map again, a vague yet terrible thought forming in his mind.

  ‘When I was imprisoned at Erebus in that tub of liquid stone, Yago said something to me: he said Erebus was one of six mines in the world that mined greystone powder, the main component of liquid stone. The Underworld was another. He said that, chemically, greystone powder is often mistaken for volcanic soils like picrite basalt.

  ‘Behind that door in the Mariana Trench, Nobody and Zoe detected a massive deposit of what appeared to be picrite basalt. A deposit in the shape of a vast cube, with dozens of other false doorways . . .’

  Jack added the locations of Erebus, Hades and the Mariana Trench t
o the map:

  Jack gazed at the map—at the spacing of the six locations around the world’s three great oceans, the Atlantic, the Indian and the Pacific—and the terrible thought in his mind became clearer.

  ‘Six massive deposits of dry greystone . . .’ he said. ‘Arrayed around the planet. A few specks of that greystone dust turned my tub in Erebus to solid stone.’

  ‘And a couple of pills of it turned that whole chamber in Santorini to rock,’ Aloysius added.

  Jack stared at him. ‘So what would happen if six massive deposits of it were exposed to the world’s oceans?’

  ‘They’d turn large swathes of them to stone,’ Aloysius said.

  Jack said, ‘The oceans would go dry. And as you said, no oceans mean no moisture-evaporation, no clouds and ultimately, no fresh water. Good Lord. That’s what the world’s punishment will be for failing to complete the trial: the oceans turn to stone and we all die in pain.’

  Jack added some expanding lines to his map and the great global punishment became clear:

  He and Aloysius exchanged worried looks.

  ‘We have to get to Atlas and complete this trial,’ Jack said, ‘or else the whole world will become a lifeless rock and everybody on it will die.’

  The Watchtower of the City of Atlas

  The Strait of Gibraltar (Moroccan side)

  At almost the exact same time Jack was figuring it out for himself, Sphinx finished telling Lily about the punishment that would befall the Earth if the Trial of the Cities was not completed.

  He finished his explanation by dropping a couple of grains of black-grey powder into Lily’s glass of water.

  The water turned black before thickening into a foul ooze, and then—crack—it hardened and became solid and suddenly Lily’s glass was filled with dry black-grey stone.

  Lily was silent for a long moment.

  ‘And this will happen on a planetary scale?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A dead dry planet . . .’

  ‘We should not get too down. I am certain that the Trial of the Cities can be overcome and all will be just fine.’

  Sphinx glanced at his computer, pressed an intercom button beside it.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ came a voice.

  ‘Is Dion DeSaxe on his way to the Altar?’

  ‘He is, sir. We sent a plane for him shortly after he called from Naples.’

  ‘Dion?’ Lily said in horror.

  ‘Send out the invitations to the other kings,’ Sphinx said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And what about Captain West’s plane?’

  Lily perked up at that.

  ‘Still heading this way, sir. Thirty miles out. We’re monitoring it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Sphinx abruptly stood.

  He stepped inside the balcony’s door and walked over to his replica of the Great Sphinx. For a moment he seemed to retreat into his own mind.

  He gazed at the fifteen-foot-tall sandstone statue. It loomed before him: the world-famous reclining lion with the face of a man staring with unblinking eyes.

  ‘My namesake,’ Sphinx said, turning to Lily. ‘Since I was a boy, I have loved the Great Sphinx. All my life, it has been my obsession. It is the most mysterious structure on Earth. For thousands of years it has confounded man. Why is it there? What is its purpose? There are three pyramids at Giza, but only one sphinx. The Egyptians carved many sphinxes, but they were all small. Why is there only one giant sphinx, one Great Sphinx? It is the question of questions.’

  He smiled at Lily: a thin sinister smile.

  ‘But that is another part of my studies, to be used at another time,’ he said. ‘Right now, the world stands on a precipice—facing painful destruction—and thanks to your second father, any man can complete the two trials and become the overlord of the world. Which means it is time for me to make my move and make use of my singular knowledge.’

  As she listened to Sphinx, Lily suddenly felt very uneasy.

  Why is he telling me this? she thought. He shouldn’t be telling me this . . .

  Then Sphinx rounded on her, his eyes flaring.

  ‘I imagine you’re wondering why I would tell you all this,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts.

  His look became deadly.

  ‘I am unlike anyone you have ever met, Lily. I don’t need your talent at translating the Word of Thoth. I have my plan to take advantage of this new state of affairs that your father has created and it is playing out exactly as I had hoped. I just needed to tell someone who would understand. But the fact that I have told you this means that you cannot be allowed to live. You will die, young lady, very soon.’

  The Orinoco Delta

  Atlantic Coast, Venezuela

  1 December, 0800 hours local time (four hours earlier)

  Following the coordinates laid down by Sir Francis Drake five hundred years previously, Dave ‘Nobody’ Black—with Iolanthe and Mae by his side—landed his floatplane on a short stretch of open water at the southern edge of the vast Orinoco Delta . . .

  . . . to find himself facing something most peculiar.

  An archway of bent-over swamp trees that formed a natural roof over a placid river.

  Not from any other angle—not from the ocean or the air or the nearest cliff a few miles to the south—would you have seen it.

  Driving it like a boat, Nobody brought his little floatplane up the hidden river. It was eerily dark. The branches of the trees overhead closed above the plane so tightly they all but blocked out the sun.

  To the south, rising like behemoths from the jungle, were several awesome tepuis, the iconic flat-topped mountains for which Venezuela is famous.

  After a time, the little plane rounded a bend in the hidden river and Dave, Iolanthe and Mae saw two seaplanes tied to a crumbling stone dock jutting out from the left-hand bank.

  The dock was covered in moss and mud. Fanning out from the two seaplanes parked at it were many muddy boot prints.

  ‘Orlando’s people are here already,’ Iolanthe said.

  At the dock’s landward end, shrouded by trees and branches, was a small modern structure that contrasted markedly with the ancient dock: a cabin on stilts, made of shiny steel.

  And calmly standing in front of it was a lone man.

  A sign on the cabin read ‘inparques’, denoting it as the property of the Venezuelan National Parks Institute, the government department in charge of protected lands.

  The man in front of it wore a park ranger’s uniform. He looked about sixty and he watched them silently.

  ‘That’s a nice cover for a watchman,’ Mae said, nodding at the man’s uniform. ‘A government ranger. Keeps poachers and the curious away. And he can live out here and guard the City of Ra.’

  Nobody parked the plane and the three of them stepped out onto the dock where the ‘ranger’ waited.

  ‘Greetings,’ he said. ‘My name is Sir Inigo Defenestra. Who might you be?’

  Iolanthe said, ‘I am Iolanthe Compton-Jones, Princess of the Kingdom of Land, Keeper of the Royal Records. These are my companions. We’ve come to enter the secret city.’

  ‘Others are already in there,’ Sir Inigo said. ‘With the weapon.’

  ‘They don’t know what they are doing. We are here to ensure the weapon is properly empowered.’

  The ranger’s face was impassive. ‘Like my father and his father before him, I have watched over this city for most of my adult life, keeping the unworthy away, waiting for this time. On this day of days, it is not for me to prevent anyone versed in the ancient ways from entering, if you are willing to brave its avenue.’

  He stepped aside, revealing a small hemispherical structure hidden under the stilts of his little steel cabin.

  Nobody stopped.

  ‘Geez, Louise . . .’ he g
asped.

  A creepy-looking structure yawned before them. It had a cracked vine-covered dome for a roof.

  On closer inspection, they saw that the structure had been carved in the shape of a giant human skull, and in such a way that its crumbling doorway was the skull’s mouth, gaping in an eternal scream. It looked like the entry to Hell.

  As they approached the huge stone skull, Iolanthe, Mae and Nobody peered inside it and saw a tunnel stretching away into darkness with three archways spanning its width.

  If the tunnel continued in a straight line for about a kilometre, it would end at one of the tepui mountains to the south.

  ‘Wait. Is that floor made of—?’ Nobody began.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Mae said solemnly. ‘It’s made of gold.’

  It was true. While they were covered in a layer of grit and grime, the floorstones of the tunnel before them glimmered dully. The streets of El Dorado really were paved with gold.

  Mae, Nobody and Iolanthe gazed at the first triple-archway.

  A line of muddy boot prints—smearing the golden surface—led into the right-hand arch.

  In front of the middle arch, however, was something else entirely: a mouldy, moss-covered skeleton.

  It had been cut cleanly in two, diagonally across the ribcage. A distinctly European helmet lay beside the skinless skull. The helmet was bowl-shaped and made of brass with curving upswept brims that created sharp points at the front and back.

  Mae crouched in front of it.

  ‘This is a morion,’ she said. ‘The classic Spanish infantry helmet worn by the conquistadors in the 16th and 17th centuries. This poor fellow found El Dorado.’

  ‘Sure did,’ Nobody said, looking up at the archway above the split-skeleton. He threw Iolanthe a look. ‘Thoughts, Ms Royal Expert?’

  Iolanthe said, ‘Only the obvious one: these arches are booby-trapped.’

  She nodded further down the tunnel, where several more triplets of arches could be seen.

  ‘As, I suspect, are those ones. This is the city’s Grand Avenue. At each set of arches, you need to know the correct one to pass through . . . or else you die like this guy did.’