The Four Legendary Kingdoms

by Matthew Reilly

  Hades looked imperiously down at Jack.

  Vacheron glared at him in apoplectic rage, the veins on his forehead bulging.

  The remaining champions stood off to the side, watching warily.

  The Hydra guided Jack up the stairs. They stopped at the edge of the dent halfway up the staircase, a hundred feet below Hades, Vacheron and Lily.

  Hades nodded to his Master of the Games.

  Vacheron spoke. ‘My lords and ladies, may I offer my most sincere apologies. Never have these Games seen such an outrageous act, such an abomination. Champions do not flee the Games. Champions do not try to free hostages. This champion foolishly attempted to do both and in doing so, has brought shame on himself and embarrassed his sponsoring king.’

  Vacheron pulled something from behind his back and Jack’s heart sank.

  It was another remote. A second remote control unit that detonated the explosive charge in his neck.

  ‘You thought I would not have a spare?’ Vacheron waved the remote at him. ‘You are lucky I retrieved it only after you were apprehended. But, then, now everyone gets to enjoy your death.’

  Vacheron held up the remote.

  ‘There can be only one punishment for this outrage and that is death. Immediate death.’

  He aimed the remote at Jack and Jack squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the end—

  ‘Wait!’ a voice called. ‘Not yet!’

  A figure stepped out from the group of champions, gazing up at Hades and Vacheron.

  Jack opened his eyes again and looked at the figure in shock.

  It was Scarecrow.

  Scarecrow held up the Golden Sphere from the challenge as he said, ‘I won the Fifth Challenge and I haven’t claimed my reward. I wish to claim it now. I want Captain West spared.’

  Vacheron was speechless.

  The royal spectators were aghast.

  Lily’s eyes lit up.

  But Hades’s face was a mask. He gave nothing away. He stared at Scarecrow long and hard.

  Scarecrow just returned his gaze, eyes level and unblinking. ‘My reward is anything that is in your power to give, is it not? And you can spare his life with a single command.’

  Every eye in the space was now turned to the Lord of the Underworld.

  Hades kept staring at Scarecrow.

  Jack was thunderstruck. Not even he had expected this. But Scarecrow was clever: he’d backed Hades into a corner by making this a test of his power, of his authority in his own kingdom.

  At last, Hades spoke.

  ‘Champion,’ he said. ‘Never in the history of the Great Games has one champion asked for another to be spared. Are you sure this is your wish? This man could kill you in a later challenge.’

  Scarecrow said, ‘It is my wish, yes.’

  Hades shrugged. ‘The rewards for winning challenges are ancient. They are not mine to choose nor are they mine to deny if they are within my power to give. Your reward is granted, champion. The fifth warrior’s life is spared and he may thus continue in the Games.’

  Audible gasps were heard from the royal balcony. Whispers and murmurs abounded.

  Lily grinned with relief.

  Jack exhaled.

  He threw Scarecrow a nod of thanks and Scarecrow returned it.

  Vacheron scowled, his face blazing with fury.

  Hades turned. ‘Monsieur Vacheron, if you will, please prepare the minor temple for the First Ceremony. Once the ceremony is completed, we shall commence the second and final phase of the Games.’

  Karachi, Pakistan

  While Jack had been whipping through the early straights of the Fifth Challenge, an old rental van had been whipping through the streets of Karachi at unusual speed.

  It was unusual because Karachi—Pakistan’s largest city and a sprawling grimy metropolis of twenty-four million people—was not known for fast driving. Normally it was a traffic nightmare, but today was not normal. For today a big cricket match was being held at the National Stadium—a Twenty20 exhibition match between Pakistan’s beloved national team and a specially-selected World XI team—and it seemed as if the whole city was watching it. The streets were delightfully empty, so Mae and Pooh Bear made good time.

  Mae drove, while Pooh gazed out at the vast city with his good eye. Stretch wasn’t with them.

  ‘Karachi,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘What a dump.’

  ‘Highest murder rate in the world,’ Mae observed. ‘Warlords, slumlords, crimelords, ganglords. It’s a viper pit of terrorists from Afghanistan and all kinds of ethnic criminal gangs who hate each other. Karachi is the birthplace of “target killing”: masked assassins on motorbikes who pull up beside your car and gun you down.’

  ‘Who is this guy we’re seeing again?’

  ‘Sunny Malik, illegal antiquities broker. According to your phone trace, he sold some kind of artefact to Anthony DeSaxe two months ago. I want to know what it was.’

  ‘He has the expertise to know about it?’ Pooh Bear asked.

  ‘Not every authority on a subject resides in a university, Zahir,’ Mae said as she drove. ‘Sunny won his expertise in the toughest environment of them all: the black market. A dealer in blood antiquities knows history better than a tenured professor at Yale.’

  ‘Can we trust him?’

  ‘Not for a second,’ Mae said. ‘In addition to his international trade in historical artefacts, Sunny Malik is a local Karachi gangster who’d shoot us as soon as look at us. Once we get the information we need, we should be ready to run.’

  The van pulled to a stop in front of a walled mansion just off Ghosia Road, about a mile from the National Stadium. The polished mansion was an island of cleanliness in a sea of dust and grime. The roars of the crowd at the stadium could be heard, even from this far away.

  Pooh Bear and Mae got out.

  After a short discussion with the two armed gate-guards—during which a call was made and both Mae and Pooh were patted down for weapons—they were ushered inside.

  Mae and Pooh Bear entered a wide marble-floored room where four Pakistani men sat gathered around a gigantic television.

  On the television, of course, was the cricket match, and watching it with three goons was Sunny Malik.

  Sunny sat in a huge leather La-Z-Boy recliner. He swivelled it around to face his visitors.

  He was an enormously fat man of sixty, with a bulging belly, a bushy grey moustache and multiple chins. He wore a loud Hawaiian shirt, open at the neck, and he practically glittered with gold: three chunky chains around his neck, four bracelets on his wrists, and a pair of garish 70s-era Elvis sunglasses over his eyes.

  Sunny lazily blew cigarette smoke into the air above him as he spoke.

  ‘Mrs Mabel West. Mother of Jack West Jr, ex-wife of the late Jack West Sr, a.k.a. Wolf. It is an honour to finally meet you. I was a fan of your articles in the historical journals before you went into hiding after your divorce. I must say I was glad to see your work reappear after Wolf’s untimely death. It’s always a pleasure to meet someone as interested in the ancient world as I am.’ He grinned slyly. ‘What brings you to my humble abode this fine day?’

  ‘Information,’ Mae said. She held up a wad of hundred-dollar bills that Pooh had provided. ‘And I’m willing to pay for it.’

  Five minutes later, Mae and Pooh Bear stood with Sunny in an office adjoining the television room, looking at Sunny’s computer screen. On it was a photo of a beautiful ancient tablet covered in cuneiform.

  ‘This is what I sold DeSaxe,’ Sunny said. ‘A clay tablet found in Mosul a year ago. 14th century B.C. It’s the ninth tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh.’

  ‘The ninth tablet, you say?’ Mae said. She glanced at Pooh Bear. ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest and greatest poems in history. Gilgamesh was a hero not unlike Hercules: a great king and warrior who went on ar
duous quests. The Epic of Gilgamesh consists of twelve tablets. The ninth tablet describes Gilgamesh’s journey to an “Underworld” at the ends of the Earth.’

  Her eyes began scanning the cuneiform text.

  ‘And the buyer was Anthony DeSaxe?’ Pooh Bear asked.

  ‘No, it was his son, Dion. Said it was a gift for his father, for a special occasion. I like Anthony DeSaxe. He has bought several quality items from me over the years. Discreetly, of course. I’m less fond of Dion. He’s a cocky fucking brat.’

  Mae looked up from the tablet. ‘It’s the ninth tablet, all right. Although it has some extra lines I’ve never seen before. It seems to be giving directions.’ She translated: ‘“Gilgamesh began his journey at the northern city of the Hydra and proceeded toward its southern twin until three-fourteenths of the way, he came across a tunnel guarded by two hairy men giving entrance to the realm of the Lord of the Underworld . . .”’

  Mae cut herself off. ‘Three-fourteenths of the way . . .’

  She blinked as she looked up at Sunny, trying to hide her excitement. ‘This tablet was found in Mosul, you say? Islamic State?’

  ‘They are the best looters since the Nazis,’ Sunny said, smiling.

  Then he removed his gaudy sunglasses to reveal hard bloodshot eyes that stared directly at her. He’d seen her excitement.

  ‘Mrs West, nothing in this world pains me more than selling something for less than market value. Dion DeSaxe paid me US$600,000 for this tablet yet now I get the feeling I should have charged him more. Much more.’

  ‘No, no . . .’ Mae stammered. ‘It’s nothing that makes it any more valuable to you—’

  ‘But it’s something that makes it very valuable to you,’ Sunny said. ‘People think I deal in artefacts, guns and drugs, but I don’t. I deal in value. I deal in anything that people want.’

  ‘We should go—’ Mae said.

  ‘Only after you tell me what this is all about,’ Sunny said. ‘Or perhaps I should call Anthony DeSaxe and ask him why Mabel West just turned ashen white when she read the tablet I just sold to his son. Boys—’

  The three thugs watching the cricket stood up, drawing pistols. They entered the office . . .

  . . . just as Pooh Bear yanked off the jewelled brass ring holding his long beard in check and threw it at their feet.

  The small wad of C-2 plastic explosive that he always kept hidden inside the ring went off like a flash-bang grenade, hurling Sunny and his henchmen off their feet.

  Pooh Bear grabbed Mae by the hand and they rushed out the door.

  They burst out into sunlight, dived into their van and peeled out just as Sunny’s henchmen ran out onto the street after them, guns drawn.

  Sunny appeared behind his men. ‘Kill the Arab! Bring the woman back to me!’

  The thugs mounted some nearby motorcycles and sped off after the van.

  Pooh Bear swung the van at speed onto Ghosia Road, chased by the three bikes. Thanks to the cricket match, traffic on the wide straight road was still moving pretty well and Pooh Bear banked and weaved through the various vehicles on it.

  He glanced in his side mirror and glimpsed one of the riders behind him raising an AK-47. The gun flashed and his side mirror exploded.

  ‘Target killers!’ Mae shouted above the din.

  The first motorcycle-riding assassin sped up, slicing through the traffic on his sleek bike, and swept up alongside their crappy little van, aiming his rifle a split second before he was blasted clear off the bike by a shot that no-one heard. It was as if he’d been yanked backwards by an invisible rope. One second he was there, the next he wasn’t. His riderless motorcycle kept going for twenty metres before it clattered to the roadway.

  ‘Leave it to the last second next time,’ Pooh Bear said.

  ‘Sorry, there was a truck in my sightline,’ Stretch’s voice said in Pooh Bear’s ear.

  Stretch sat perched on a rooftop at the far end of Ghosia Road, beside an enormous Pepsi billboard, in a perfect sniper’s position that looked all the way down the dead-straight road. Through the crosshairs of his Barrett sniper rifle he saw Pooh and Mae’s van coming toward him, chased by the killers and weaving through all the slower-moving vehicles on the dusty road.

  At that moment, the remaining two killer-bikers zoomed up on both sides of Pooh’s van and opened fire on it.

  ‘I got the one on your right!’ Stretch called. ‘You take the one on the left!’

  Pooh Bear heaved left on his steering wheel and rammed the armed biker on that side up against a lorry in the next lane. The biker was crushed for a moment before he dropped out of sight, tumbling with his motorcycle beneath the wheels of the lorry.

  At the same instant, the killer on the right-hand side of their van was hit by a sniper round right in the heart and he was hurled backwards.

  Now free of their pursuers, Pooh Bear swung his van left, off the main road and into a maze of back alleys.

  Sunny Malik would find the van two hours later, abandoned in a lane at the base of a building with an enormous Pepsi billboard on its roof.

  He saw the dirty tyre marks of two trailbikes on the floor of the van’s rear compartment: Mae and the Arab had come prepared. If they were on bikes now, speeding away through the labyrinth that was Karachi, Sunny’s people would never catch them.

  Sunny gazed at the empty van with narrowed eyes and began to think.

  Inside Pooh Bear’s jet parked at a private airport west of Karachi, Mae, Stretch and Pooh sat down in front of a laptop computer.

  ‘Benjamin, could you pull up India and Pakistan on Google Earth, please,’ Mae said.

  Stretch did so.

  ‘Now, pinpoint the two cities named Hyderabad in India and Pakistan, and plot a line between them.’

  After a few clicks of Stretch’s mouse, the map looked like this:

  ‘Okay. Starting at the northern one, plot a point three-fourteenths of the way between the two Hyderabads,’ Mae said. She looked at Pooh Bear. ‘If it worked for Gilgamesh, maybe it’ll work for us.’

  After a few more mouse-clicks, a point appeared on the line.

  The point between the two Hyderabads was situated in northwestern India, where the Thar Desert met the Arabian Sea.

  ‘If this is right, the Underworld is in Gujarat Province, India,’ Mae said, ‘near the coast of the Arabian Sea. That’s seriously remote, a long way from anywhere . . .’

  ‘. . . yet suspiciously close to where our wealthy friend Mr Anthony DeSaxe has several mines and a thirty-mile stretch of private beach with a ship graveyard,’ Stretch said. ‘A modern mine would be a great cover for an ancient underground kingdom.’

  Pooh said, ‘You think DeSaxe might be the modern Lord Hades?’

  Mae said, ‘He has the wealth, the royal connections and the bloodline. His blood is as blue as it gets. He’d be an excellent candidate.’

  She tapped her finger on the computer screen. ‘Zahir. Benjamin. In the absence of any other viable alternatives, this is where we need to go next.’

  Jack West shot skyward in eerie silence.

  He was standing inside a modern gantry elevator that rose up the side of Hades’s gigantic mountain-palace. With its steel-girdered skeletal shaft bolted to the outer flank of the mountain’s upper reaches, the elevator made a soft whir as it glided upward.

  Jack stood with the other remaining champions, covered by armed minotaur guards and the black lion, Chaos.

  He saw Chaos eyeing his own new armour: the white armour he had taken from Chaos’s brother-in-arms, Fear. The outfit already looked odd over his jeans and t-shirt, but it looked even odder when combined with his fireman’s helmet.

  There were only seven champions left now: Jack, Scarecrow, Major Brigham, Sergeant Vargas, the Delta guy Edwards, the Tibetan monk Renzin Depon and, of course, Hades’s own son, Zaitan.

&nb
sp; They variously looked dirty and weary, beaten and bruised—except for Vargas and Zaitan, who had wisely exempted themselves from the Fifth Challenge. They looked fresh and rested.

  As he’d entered the elevator, Jack had overheard someone saying that all the other remaining hostages had just been executed.

  The elevator rose. Jack noticed Zaitan staring smugly at him.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Jack said.

  Zaitan smirked. ‘No.’

  ‘Then maybe you can help me,’ Jack said. ‘What’s this ceremony we’re going to? What’s it all about?’

  ‘It’s about informing the universe that someone is still here on Earth,’ Zaitan said.

  Jack said, ‘You don’t seem bothered that your hostages just got killed.’

  Zaitan shrugged. ‘They served their purpose.’

  A moment later, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open and the champions were guided out of it.

  Jack stepped out onto a narrow steel catwalk suspended high above the world. They were right up near the summit of Hades’s mountain.

  Far beneath him, he could make out the various stadiums of the challenges he had survived thus far: the round water maze of the Second Challenge, the chasm and the bridges of the Third Challenge, the wall-maze of the Fourth and the circus of the Fifth. He was so high up, they looked tiny.

  The camouflage netting that encased Hades’s crater fanned out from dozens of sturdy-looking brackets mounted just above his head.

  To the side of the elevator was a set of metal spiral stairs that jutted out over the drop and led upward . . . above the camouflage netting.

  The champions were shoved toward those stairs and they climbed them, one after the other.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, Jack stepped up onto a platform above the camouflage netting and at the sight that met him, his breath caught in his throat.

  Night had fallen and Jack found himself standing in open air, on a superhigh platform underneath the star-filled sky.