The Four Legendary Kingdoms

by Matthew Reilly

  But then he glimpsed a weak point in the big warrior’s armour: beneath the jawline of the man’s snake helmet, there was a sliver of bare skin. It was the only section of bare skin visible on his entire body.

  Scarecrow sprang up from the floor, leading with a superfast fist. The blow connected with the Hydra’s exposed throat and the Hydra doubled over, gagging.

  Scarecrow didn’t hang around to finish him off. He just leapt like a hurdler onto the bent-over Hydra’s back and used him as a human platform to jump up into Tomahawk’s waiting hands.

  The three Marines then took off, found an aperture that took them up to the topmost level and moments later, to their great relief, they slithered up and out through the exit hatch.

  On the royal balcony, Vacheron kept the spectators updated.

  ‘Ten champions entered the maze! Two have been killed—one of the Land Kingdom’s champions from Brazil, killed by Chaos during an attempt to grab a sphere; and one Indian commando representing our illustrious host, the Lord of the Underworld, who met his fate at the hands of that little rascal, Mephisto.’

  Vacheron grinned. ‘Of the eight still alive, six others have now left the labyrinth. Two remain: the fifth warrior representing the Land Kingdom and Warrant Officer Monroe from the Sea Kingdom. But when the next champion leaves the labyrinth, the exit will be sealed. The other champion left in the maze will be hunted by Chaos, Fear and the Hydra until he is dead or . . . if he dares . . . until that champion catches Mephisto in his capacity as the Sacred Stag and brings him to the exit. Some would say it is better to die at the hands of Hades’s warriors than to attempt such a task.’

  Jack and Alby hurried through the maze, carrying Roxy between them.

  Up they scrambled, guided by Alby, racing across the horizontal ledges, hurdling voids and trap doors, and scaling the vertical shafts.

  Because of the route Alby had taken, they had gone almost all the way to the left-hand edge of the maze, over near the giant water wheel there. The great wheel turned, dumping megalitres of superheated sulphurous water into the maze every so often; cascades of the sickly yellow fluid would tumble down several chutes before falling to the lake in spectacular waterfalls.

  At length, they reached the topmost level and saw the exit: it was in the exact centre of the eighteenth level, an illuminated square hatch cut into the stone ceiling perhaps twenty metres away.

  ‘Nice work, Alby,’ Jack said.

  Standing on the top level of the maze was like standing on the roof of an eighteen-storey building. The maze dropped away beneath them. The steaming lake at the bottom was a long way down.

  ‘No lingering,’ Jack said. ‘We don’t know how many other champions have already left the maze—’

  Just then, another champion popped up out of a vertical shaft a short way in front of them—halfway between them and the exit—bloodied and alone and scrambling on his hands and knees . . .

  . . . because right behind him was the white lion, Fear.

  The champion scrambled away from Jack, Alby and Roxy, heading for the exit. Fear followed him, his back to Jack.

  Jack recognised the champion.

  It was the black Navy SEAL with the tatts on his arms: DeShawn Monroe, The Finisher, the guy who had left his companions behind earlier to fight.

  And right now, he wasn’t doing well.

  He had blood all over his face and neck, and as he half ran, half crawled down the length of the ledge, he favoured his left leg.

  Fear, on the other hand, was moving freely, unhurt. He was casually stalking the wounded SEAL. Fear kicked Monroe from behind, sending the wounded man sprawling forward.

  Then Fear calmly wiped the bloody blade of his sword on his pantleg, preparing to finish off The Finisher.

  Jack clenched his teeth.

  Whether it arose out of loyalty to a fellow soldier or from an overdeveloped sense of justice at seeing a wounded man about to be callously killed, either way, what Jack saw just plain pissed him off and despite himself, he charged forward.

  Since he’d lost his knife in the fight with Mephisto, he just took ten quick strides forward and launched himself at Fear from behind, slamming into his back, crash-tackling the giant warrior.

  Fear grunted as he dropped to his knees and Jack went sprawling on top of him.

  The Navy SEAL, Monroe, turned in surprise. He’d clearly thought he was done for and now this had happened.

  Fear kicked Jack off him, almost tossing him off the ledge and down the face of the maze. But Jack landed on his feet and he unleashed a big sidekick to the kneeling lion-helmeted warrior’s mask.

  The kick sent Fear’s head flailing backwards and it hit the rear wall of the ledge hard.

  The blow against the wall cracked the visor of Fear’s helmet and in a fleeting instant, as the warrior turned back to face Jack, Jack saw his eyes.

  Angry brown eyes.

  Jack called, ‘Finisher! Help me! We can beat him together!’

  The Finisher was still lying dumbly on the ground on the other side of Fear, clearly stunned at this turn of events.

  Fear began to stand.

  ‘I can’t beat him by myself,’ Jack urged. ‘Help me!’

  Inhaling deeply, gathering his strength, The Finisher rose to his feet . . . and bolted away down the ledge, loping toward the exit.

  Jack’s mouth fell open. ‘Son of a bitch . . .’

  Fear reached his full height.

  And now stood between Jack and the exit to the maze.

  Jack watched as DeShawn Monroe climbed up through the exit. No sooner was he out than a hatch slammed shut and the illuminated exit hole went dark.

  ‘Oh no,’ Alby gasped. ‘He must have been the seventh champion to get out. The maze is closed. We’re stuck in here unless we . . .’

  Jack backed away from the advancing figure of Fear. ‘Unless we find that jester dressed as a stag and bring him to the exit. Quickly! Go back down, now!’

  Alby leapt back down the nearest chute, with Roxy tucked into his jacket. Jack followed as Fear broke into a run down the topmost ledge after them.

  The Hunt for the Sacred Stag

  The Fourth Challenge entered a new phase.

  The maze was quiet now. The sounds of men running and shouting and of swords clashing had ceased.

  The creaking of the two water wheels on either side of the maze and the sloshing of their buckets collecting water from the lake were the only sounds.

  It was now a three-sided hunt: while Jack and Alby hunted the antler-clad Mephisto, Chaos, Fear and the Hydra hunted them.

  The spectators on the royal balcony watched with rapt attention as Jack, Alby and Roxy descended through the left-hand side of the maze, heading for the spot where they had left the unconscious Mephisto.

  While Jack couldn’t see it, the royals could: Hades’s three warriors were closing in on him from three sides. White Fear from above, black Chaos from the right, and the grey-suited Hydra from below.

  With Alby and Roxy behind him, Jack came to the ledge where he had last seen Mephisto.

  Stepping down onto it from a vertical shaft, he saw the body of the dead Indian MARCOS trooper lying exactly where he had last seen it.

  Jack whispered to Alby: ‘That creepy little red guy should be just on the other side of that corpse—’

  He stepped down fully onto the ledge.

  The jester’s body was gone.

  Mephisto was no longer lying unconscious beside the corpse of the Indian commando.

  Jack spun. ‘Shit, he woke up—’

  A shrill cackle echoed out from somewhere nearby.

  ‘Looking for meeeeee?’ a high-pitched voice sang out.

  The royal spectators were enthralled.

  Mephisto was barely four feet from Jack, on the other side of the vertical stone wall th
at separated them.

  ‘Such good theatre . . .’ the prince named George said.

  Gripping the balcony’s handrail with white knuckles, Lily scowled at him.

  Jack hadn’t heard Mephisto speak before, but now that he had, he wished he hadn’t. The jester’s twee voice sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  ‘Because I seeeeeee you!’ he called.

  Jack whirled and glimpsed the little man above and behind him—a moment before Mephisto yanked his head from view.

  He’s playing with me.

  ‘Be careful when you hunt the Sacred Stag!’ Mephisto’s voice called. ‘We wouldn’t want the hunter to become the hunted.’

  A sudden thump made Jack turn again and now he saw the towering black figure of Chaos standing on his level, not twenty metres away and approaching fast.

  Jack turned to Alby. ‘Go! Follow that jester!’

  Mephisto danced away into the far left-hand reaches of the maze, heading toward the slow-turning water wheel there.

  Jack and Alby gave chase, crossing a vertical chute before moving up a step-like section of ledges and shafts.

  As they moved, Jack would periodically turn to look behind them.

  Their pursuers were close now: Fear, the Hydra and Chaos.

  Jack pressed on. He couldn’t see it but he guessed his three pursuers would fan out and seal off all the available escape routes from this section of the maze.

  Lily watched the deadly endgame taking place in front of her.

  ‘They’re fanning out,’ the prince named George explained to the woman beside him. ‘Fear, Chaos and the Hydra are sealing off all the escape routes. The fifth warrior is a rat in a trap. This won’t take long.’

  ‘Got any ideas?’ Alby asked breathlessly as he scaled a vertical wall behind Jack. Roxy’s furry black head poked out of his jacket’s front zipper.

  ‘I remember this section of the maze,’ Jack said. ‘There’s only one vertical outlet and two horizontal ones. I imagine that little red creep is blocking the upper exit. He lured us in here and now those other bastards are blocking the horizontal outlets behind us.’

  ‘He lured us here?’ Alby asked, looking at the ledges around them.

  ‘I imagine these assholes have practised in this maze many times before the Games,’ Jack said. ‘Probably practised by hunting some poor minotaurs. To finish someone off, you lure them into a containable section of the maze, a section with few exits, and then you slowly close the noose.’

  ‘So, do you have a plan for getting out of this noose?’ Alby asked anxiously.

  Fear was only a couple of diagonal ledges below them now and closing in. A sudden gush of stinking yellow water from the water wheel whooshed through the ledges near them.

  Jack looked out and around their ledge. His gaze fell on the slow-turning water wheel at the edge of the maze, its iron dumptrays going up and down. The dumptrays looked like heavy-duty mine cars.

  ‘Maybe . . .’ he said absently.

  He turned back to Alby. ‘If we’re gonna live, I have to catch this slippery little red guy and he’s not gonna give up without a fight. I can’t win this in a straight-up fight. I’m gonna have to “win ugly”.’

  At that moment, Jack reached the top of their ascending diagonally path and peered over it . . .

  . . . to behold Mephisto standing on a ledge on the other side of a narrow void, lazily twirling his flail, smiling nastily at him, waiting for him.

  Jack turned to Alby and whispered, ‘Okay, listen. When the fighting starts, you’ll have a chance to get out through the top outlet. Go through it and get to the top level of the maze. I’ll meet you up there . . . if I live.’

  ‘If you live,’ Alby said softly.

  ‘Alby Calvin,’ Jack said, taking the Indian’s knuckleduster knife from Alby and looking him in the eye. ‘If I don’t survive this, you won’t either. They’ll hunt you down and kill you. So let me say this: I love you, kid. You’ve been a loyal friend to Lily and to me. You’ve grown into a fine young man and I love you like a son. If this is it, give ’em hell.’

  He held out his hand and they clasped firmly.

  ‘No matter what happens, we’ll see each other again,’ Jack said, and with those words, knife in hand, he leapt across the little void to do battle with the jester.

  Jack landed in front of Mephisto.

  It was a small ledge. It had a wall on one side. On the other there was nothing but a short drop down a chute to a trap door. Below that trap door, Jack knew, was nothing but a long drop to the deadly lake below.

  ‘Greetings, fifth warrior,’ the jester said in his eerie voice. ‘Are you ready to die?’

  ‘Let’s dance,’ Jack said flatly.

  The jester bared his sharpened teeth. ‘Let’s.’

  With shocking speed, he rushed at Jack, hurling his blurring flail.

  Only for Jack to do a most unexpected thing.

  He held his knife out in front of him, pointing the blade vertically.

  The deadly flail wrapped around the blade, its speeding brass balls clanging together loudly and harmlessly two feet in front of Jack’s face.

  Mephisto frowned, perplexed. This was the only way to defuse the power of a flail: give it something other than your own head to wrap itself around.

  As the jester paused, Jack took his chance and did something that he figured Mephisto had never experienced in his practice sessions in the maze.

  He grabbed the jester by the lapels and leapt off the ledge with him, dropping back-first down the nearby chute toward the trap door one level below.

  Jack slammed into the trap door and, as it was designed to do, at the impact, it swung open . . .

  . . . and suddenly Jack and Mephisto were clear of the maze, falling together through open air toward the lake.

  The royal spectators gasped as one as they saw the two tiny figures of Jack and Mephisto drop from the left-hand end of the maze.

  As he fell, Mephisto squealed in terror. He definitely hadn’t anticipated this.

  But Jack had.

  As he fell, he drew from his belt the grapple gun he’d taken from the dead Indian commando earlier and fired it up and to the left.

  With a gaseous whump, the gun’s grappling hook flew upward, its cable extending out behind it, and it grabbed a purchase on one of the ledges near the extreme left-hand edge of the maze.

  With a sudden snap, the cable went taut and abruptly Jack—still gripping Mephisto roughly—swung to the left, toward the slow-turning water wheel.

  Their swing curved upward and Jack landed perfectly on one of the large iron dumptrays that lifted water from the lake, his feet standing on its four-inch-thick rust-covered edge.

  The moment they were on the dumptray, Jack ruthlessly slammed the little jester’s head against the iron edge. The jester’s head bounced hard off it and he went limp, knocked out for the second time in an hour.

  Jack then reeled in his grappling hook and, to the astonishment of the royal audience, rode the water wheel upward.

  When he leapt off the water wheel up near the top of the maze, Alby was there waiting.

  Holding the limp antler-headed body of Mephisto over his shoulder, Jack landed beside him.

  ‘Nice plan,’ Alby said.

  ‘Like I said, win ugly. Let’s move,’ Jack said.

  Chaos, Fury and the Hydra were still rising up through the levels below them.

  Jack and Alby bolted for the exit.

  They arrived at the closed exit hatch just as their three pursuers appeared on the topmost level, running hard.

  Jack pounded on the hatch, yelling, ‘We have the stag! We have the stag!’

  The hatch was opened from above.

  Jack pushed Alby up through the exit hole, handed Mephisto up to him and then leapt up and out of the deadly
maze a bare few seconds before Chaos arrived behind him.

  Jack and Alby lay on their backs on the roof of the giant maze, panting and breathless, nineteen storeys above the lake.

  ‘I don’t know . . . how much more of this . . . I can take,’ Jack gasped between heaving breaths.

  ‘Me neither,’ Alby agreed.

  Roxy crawled out from Alby’s jacket-front and began licking Jack on the nose.

  Beside them, Mephisto groaned. Slowly, painfully, he opened his eyes.

  Still lying on his back, Jack looked over at the deadly jester.

  ‘Got you, motherfucker,’ he said.

  Mae Merriweather’s home

  Broome, Australia

  ‘Okay, so what have we got?’ Mae said.

  She, Stretch and Pooh Bear sat in her living room, surrounded by a mess of books, scrolls, three laptop computers, two iPads and even some statues.

  They had worked through the night looking into any and every reference to the Hydra Galaxy and the tetra-gammadion that had been used over the millennia to represent it.

  ‘This Hydra image appeared all over the ancient world,’ Stretch said. ‘There are records of it being carved into temples and shrines in places as diverse as India, Pakistan, Ireland, England, Belize, Guatemala, Australia, Cambodia, even Easter Island.’

  He glanced at Pooh Bear. ‘We never got there ourselves, but Easter Island was where Jack—’

  He caught himself before he said it, throwing an awkward glance at Mae.

  ‘It’s okay, Benjamin,’ she said. ‘Easter Island was where my son confronted and killed his father, my ex-husband. It’s all right. Jack told me everything about that incident. For the record, his father was a jackass who got what was coming to him. More importantly, where was the symbol found on Easter Island?’

  Stretch checked his notes. ‘On a small rocky islet just off the southern shore of Easter Island called Motu Nui.’

  ‘Motu Nui . . .’ Mae said, thinking. ‘Ever heard of Motu Nui, Benjamin?’

  Stretch shook his head. ‘Should I have?’

  ‘Easter Island is famous for its long-faced stone statues called moai. But few know about Motu Nui. As a geographical feature, it’s not that special, just a small rocky mount half a mile off the southern tip of the island. But it played a key role in Easter Island’s most important ritual. Motu Nui was the islet that the Easter Islanders used for their famous ritual contest, the Birdman Race.’