She nodded at the line of muddy boot prints passing through the right-hand arch. ‘It would seem our adversaries knew exactly which archway to choose.’
A sudden noise made them all snap up.
The clatter of gunfire.
Automatic gunfire.
But it was muffled, distant. Coming from deep within the tunnel. In the gaps between bursts, they heard desperate shouts.
Nobody said, ‘They may have got past the arches, but they haven’t outwitted the city yet. We still might have a chance.’
Following the muddy boot prints through the arches, they hurried down the tunnel—its incredible golden footstones instantly forgotten—leaving the quiet Sir Inigo, the humble keeper of the Great City of Ra, out on the dock.
The City of Thule
Iceland
Deep inside the underground city of Thule, Cardinal Ricardo Mendoza was getting frantic.
‘Send another one in!’ he yelled to the commander of his squad of Swiss Guards.
Gripping the fabled sword known as Excalibur in one hand, Mendoza peered worriedly behind him.
He and his team of Swiss troops were standing on the high bridge in the heart of Thule, hopelessly trapped.
The guardian army of the city—three hundred faceless bronzemen—loomed behind them, filling the curving path that led back out of the city, blocking their retreat.
And every few minutes, the entire army, in perfect robotic unison, took a single step closer. If Mendoza and his men didn’t get across this bridge soon, the army would be on them and it would be all over.
‘Fucking hell!’ Mendoza swore.
It was the bridge that was the problem.
When they had arrived at it a few days ago, it had seemed to be a simple enough structure: an open-sided square cupola, with four silver man-shaped statues standing silently in its corners.
But as soon as Mendoza’s first Swiss Guardsman had set foot on it . . .
. . . the statues had come alive.
It had happened so fast.
The four silver statues—six feet tall and faceless, but with long claw-like fingers—stepped forward, revealing their fingers to actually be pointed blades.
The lead Swiss Guardsman was beheaded in an instant, the force of the blow sending both his head and his body sailing off the bridge into the abyss below.
Then the four faceless silver ‘men’ silently resumed their positions in the corners of the open-sided cupola and were statues once more.
That had been several days ago.
They had been stuck here ever since.
At various intervals, Mendoza had commanded more of his men to enter the bridge. The devout Swiss Guards had obeyed: obedience that had seen them march to grisly deaths.
Each time a guardsman set foot on the bridge, the four silver statues stepped forward to block his way.
One Swiss trooper had fired his gun at the silvermen. His bullets had pinged off their shiny alloy skin without leaving so much as a scratch and the silver statues had cut him to pieces and thrown him into the abyss.
The next man tried his knife. It bounced off their metal throats and he was thrown into the abyss.
The next trooper tossed a grenade at the nearest silver statue. The grenade detonated, enshrouding the silverman in fire and smoke . . . only for the automaton to emerge from it, unscathed. That trooper was also cut to pieces.
And all the while the three hundred bronze-coloured automatons closed in behind them—slowly and steadily stepping down the curved descending road of the city, one ominous step at a time—until now they were almost on them.
Mendoza had entered the lost city of Thule with twenty Swiss troopers.
Now he had only four left.
Their supplies were fine. They’d prepared for three days and dead soldiers didn’t eat or drink, so they had their rations and water. When each soldier entered the cupola, he left his personal canteen behind with the others.
The Swiss commander despaired. ‘My lord Cardinal, please . . .’
‘I said send another one in, damn it!’ Mendoza shouted in his face.
The commander bowed and nodded to the next trooper who, taking a deep breath, placed his water bottle on the ground, drew his gun and stoically stepped onto the bridge to face certain death.
Sphinx’s Mansion
The Strait of Gibraltar
1 December, 1300 hours GMT/local time
Sphinx’s intercom pinged.
A voice came from its speaker. ‘Inbound aircraft, sir. Satellite scans indicate it’s a Sukhoi Su-37 fighter-bomber. It’s the same plane we monitored leaving Aragon Castle. It belongs to the bounty hunter who turned up there with West: Captain Aloysius Knight.’
Sphinx stepped onto his balcony and gazed out at Aloysius Knight’s Sukhoi Su-37 as it approached through the heat haze.
‘Somehow, your father escaped from Erebus,’ he said to Lily. ‘Then he attacked Aragon Castle, I assume to rescue you. Now he is coming here to enter the City of Atlas. This is most fortuitous.’
Two guards suddenly appeared on either side of Lily, grabbing her roughly by the arms.
Sphinx said, ‘Come, dear girl. It is time to put you on display.’
Aloysius Knight’s plane landed vertically on Sphinx’s helipad.
Aloysius and Jack emerged from it cautiously. Aloysius gripped his Remington shotguns. Jack gripped the Mace of Poseidon and a pistol.
The lone figure of Sphinx stood a short distance away from them, waiting politely at the helipad’s exit stairs, unarmed, his hands clasped in front of him.
‘Why, hello, Captain West, Captain Knight,’ he said.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’ve seen you before. In Erebus. You came to see me while I was imprisoned there. You’re Sphinx.’
‘I did, and I am. I must say how impressed I am that you managed to escape. You are impressive in many ways, Captain West.’
‘You’re the keeper of the City of Atlas,’ Jack said. ‘The Trismagi who watches over it.’
‘Like I told you at Erebus, I am but a humble lighthouse keeper.’
Jack cocked his pistol and aimed it at Sphinx’s head. ‘I’ve had a really shitty few days, pal. Some of my closest friends have died, so I’m not in the mood for smart-asses.’
He held up the Mace. ‘Orlando has screwed this up for everybody. He didn’t have the entire triangular tablet, so when he entered the first city, he triggered the defensive mechanisms at the other two. He should have waited until he had people at every city and entered them at the same time. I’ve sent people to each city to fix his mess. We’re here to penetrate Atlas, empower the Mace and get it to the Altar.’
‘A laudable mission, to be sure,’ Sphinx said. ‘One I shall be more than happy to see you perform on my behalf.’
‘On your behalf—?’ Jack said.
Sphinx threw Jack an iPhone.
Jack caught it and looked at it.
A live FaceTime video was on it . . .
. . . showing closed-circuit camera footage of Lily inside a stone cell with iron bars . . .
. . . and with rising seawater sloshing around her. It was currently at knee-height.
Sphinx locked eyes with Jack. ‘She is in a tidal cell, Captain. And the tide comes in fast in these parts.’
‘What do you want?’ Jack demanded.
‘I want to break you,’ Sphinx said.
‘What do you want me to do!’
‘I want you to take the weapon into the city and empower it, just as you wish. But then I want you to bring the Mace back to me. Only when that is done will I spare your daughter. Take Captain Knight with you—I’ll be happy to take advantage of his skills as well. I shall even guide you to the entrance to Atlas myself. That said, Captain Knight’s pilot will now fly his plane one hundred miles from this
place or be blown to pieces. Tick-tock, Captain West, the tide is rising in that cell. It takes perhaps an hour to fill so you really should not delay.’
Jack swallowed hard.
Aloysius glowered at Sphinx. ‘Asshole.’
Jack clenched his teeth. ‘Take us to the entrance. Now.’
Sphinx smiled as he kicked open a trunk behind him.
Diving gear—scuba facemasks, fins, flashlights, air tanks, even two harpoon guns—tumbled out of it.
‘You’re going to need this,’ he said.
Within minutes, Rufus had flown the Black Raven away and Jack and Aloysius—calmly led by Sphinx—had crossed a short bridge leading to the ancient stone lighthouse that stood apart from the mansion. They descended a corkscrewing stairwell within its cylindrical body.
The stone steps wound downward, with no rail, around the empty core in the tower’s middle.
Then abruptly the spiralling stairs plunged into water. They just kept going down into the sloshing waves.
‘The City of Atlas experienced an unfortunate flooding incident some time ago,’ Sphinx said. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of it? I shall leave you to your mission.’ He went back up the stairs.
Alone now, Jack and Aloysius kicked off their boots and donned the scuba gear.
The facemasks that Sphinx had provided them with were sturdy full-face helmets that allowed them to communicate via radio. As he put his on, Jack kept his satellite earpiece lodged in one ear.
Jack also jammed the Mace into his weight-belt. Then he looked at an image on his phone.
‘What’s that?’ Aloysius asked.
‘It’s a translation of a scroll written by Plato. It refers to the three cities and how to get into them.’
Jack read it aloud:
‘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.’
‘Sounds like a fucking cakewalk,’ Aloysius said. ‘Is anything you do easy?’
‘No,’ Jack said.
He dropped into the water and by the light of a Princeton Tec flashlight, began swimming straight down through the core of the corkscrewing stairwell. Aloysius followed him.
Down they swam.
Down and down, past the many steps of the spiralling stairwell, their flashlights carving sabre-like beams through the murk. Schools of fish fluttered away.
At length, they came to the bottom of the stairwell and found themselves hovering in the water at the entrance to a very long and very old tunnel.
At the mouth of this tunnel, spanning its width, were three ominous arches.
Aloysius peered at the arches. ‘So, what, we have to pick the correct one?’
‘Yes. This must be the sacred avenue.’
As he said this, a school of fish swam past them, through one of the arches—
A flash of silver.
Faster than the eye could see.
And suddenly the school of fish scattered, leaving three fish drifting in the flooded archway, cut cleanly in half, blood wafting from their bodies.
‘What in the world was that?’ Aloysius said.
Jack hovered cautiously in the water-filled tunnel.
‘The arches are booby-trapped. As Plato said, we have to navigate this tunnel, which means negotiating the archways: going through the right one each time.’
Beyond the first triplet of arches, Jack saw more stretching away down the long flooded tunnel.
‘Maybe we could just float something through each arch till one doesn’t react,’ Aloysius said.
He unclipped a shuriken throwing blade from his utility vest and tossed it through the middle arch.
It drifted harmlessly through the flooded archway, floating gently to the stone floor on the other side.
‘See?’
Jack shook his head. ‘No. These places were built by an advanced civilisation. I’m guessing the arches can sense when something organic passes through them, like the fish. Your throwing knife won’t set them off. Only something that lives and breathes will.’
At that moment, another school of fish swam past them, heading for the middle arch.
This time, Jack was ready, and he watched closely as—
Another silver flash.
Two more fish were cleaved in two.
And this time, Jack saw it: a silver filament had whizzed down the length of the archway, an ultra-fine and ultra-sharp thread of some kind; so sharp that it had sliced through the fish in an instant.
‘Fuck me . . .’ Aloysius gasped.
‘Damn it,’ Jack said. ‘We’re not going anywhere till we figure out the safe way through these things.’
The City of Thule
Iceland
At the same time as Jack had been arriving at Sphinx’s mansion and Nobody had discovered the entrance to the City of Ra, one other team of his friends was approaching the secret city of Thule in Iceland.
Stretch and Pooh Bear, also guided by the Drake coordinates, were touching down on a forbidding black-sand beach on the remote southern coast of Iceland in Jack’s plane, the Sky Warrior.
As Sky Monster—with one arm still in a sling—brought the plane in to land, Stretch gazed out at the black volcanic soil of the cliffs, beach and mountains.
‘It looks almost prehistoric,’ he said.
‘Other-worldly,’ Pooh Bear agreed.
Within minutes, they found the watchtower and Sir Bjorn.
Stretch said, ‘We’ve come to fulfil the requirements of the trial.’
Bjorn frowned. ‘You are aware that King Orlando has already sent a delegation to do this?’
‘We know,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘But we have reason to believe that they are not fully aware of what must be done. We are here to make sure the trial is completed properly.’
Sir Bjorn shook his head, befuddled. ‘These are unprecedented and puzzling times. As there is no clear emperor, who am I to deny you if you wish to brave the avenue and its defences? Proceed, by all means, but at your own peril.’
And so they ventured down the staircase within the wave-battered cliff.
As they descended the stairs, Pooh Bear noticed something wrong with his sat-radio, something that Mendoza’s team hadn’t realised until it was too late.
‘Satellite signal is cutting in and out,’ he said. ‘Must be from all the seismic activity. We better lay some repeater units along the way to boost our signals.’
They came to the cave inside the cliff and climbed the short flight of stairs at its rear.
The long straight avenue receded into the distance before them. It felt ten degrees colder than the outside air.
And just like Mae’s team had found at Ra, and Jack and Aloysius had experienced at Atlas, Pooh and Stretch found themselves confronted by three arches.
Their arches were slick with icy wetness. Peering through them, Pooh and Stretch saw more sets of arches vanishing down the avenue.
A small pile of six dead seagulls lay before the first set of arches: bloodied or decayed or both. All had been cut cleanly in half.
‘Booby-trapped,’ Stretch said, gazing at all the other sets of arches further down the tunnel.
‘Damnation!’ Pooh Bear spat.
He keyed his satellite radio. ‘Jack, Mae? It’s us. Any idea how to get safely through these archways?’
The City of Ra
Mae, Nobody and Iolanthe were more than halfway down their mud-and-vine-covered tunnel when Pooh Bear’s call came in.
&n
bsp; Jack’s voice also came on the line, slightly garbled by the long-range satellite link: ‘We’ve got a similar problem at Atlas.’
‘We had some help here at Ra,’ Iolanthe said into her radio. ‘Someone got here before us and left a trail to follow.’
Mae’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then let’s try to figure this out.’
She looked back at the way they’d come. Following the muddy path of their rivals, she, Nobody and Iolanthe had passed safely through five sets of arches.
At the first triplet of arches, the right-hand one had been safe.
At the second set, it was the left-most one.
Then right, left, then the middle one.
Mae cocked her head. ‘Wait a second . . .’
‘What is it?’ Iolanthe said. ‘Do you see a pattern?’
‘No, I see an order . . .’ Mae said. ‘An order I’ve seen before.’
She pursed her lips in thought, then suddenly it hit her.
‘Of course. Three options. Why didn’t I see it earlier?’ Mae hurriedly pulled something from her jacket pocket: her now slightly soggy printout of Hades’s triangular tablet with Lily’s added translations.
‘There!’ she pointed at one of the three straight arms extending from the sides of the triangle to its centre.
‘Can you see it?’ Mae said excitedly.
‘Uh, no,’ Nobody said.
‘Look closer. This tablet has told us all we need to know about the three cities. I think it includes how to get into the cities. Those three straight “arms” reaching into the middle of the triangle represent the three Grand Avenues of the cities.’
She was grinning like someone who had just solved a fiendish riddle. ‘Look closely at the right-hand arm, the one between the Helmet and the Mace, beside the description of Ra, “the Great Golden City”. Look at these little black lines along it, jutting into it.’
Iolanthe and Nobody leaned in closer and saw them.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Iolanthe said. ‘I never even noticed them before.’
The Three Secret Cities Page 27