Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon Read online

  At first I didn’t see him. But he appeared in the moonlight about twenty yards away as a flash of gray. He was rushing the wall like a sprinter, leaping, planting his sole against the wall and using the momentum to jump. His outstretched palm loomed upward toward me, and I grabbed it.

  “Piece of cake!” Marco whispered, scrambling to the top. We both leaped to the ground, landing near Cass and Aly. “Now what?” Cass said.

  It was a good question. All we could see were the silhouettes of trees, the curve of walkways. The air was sweet and cool, and Aly stopped to pick something off the ground. “A pomegranate,” she said. “Big one.”

  Zoo-kulululu! Cack! Cack! Cack! Something enormous swooped down with an oddly metallic clacking of wings. Aly dropped the fruit, and a black bird-shape with bright eyes scooped it up with talons and flew off.

  “Sorry, I promise I will not touch fruit ever again,” Aly said.

  But my eyes were on a towering structure not far from us. Its upper corner blotted out a section of the moon. “There it is,” I said.

  Marco was practically shaking with excitement. “Follow me, campers. Move. Let’s hope the crow is the worst they throw at us.”

  He began walking. The Hanging Gardens blotted out the moonlit sky. I could make out long trellises and hear the lapping of water into pools. Along the side of the building was a winding spiral that rose toward the top of the building from a deep pool that was fed by a culvert. It looked like a water slide. “What’s that thing?” Marco whispered.

  “An Archimedes screw,” Aly said. “It was in our lessons from Professor Bhegad. When someone turns it, the motion lifts water out of the well and brings it to the top. That’s how the plants are watered.”

  As we moved closer, I heard rustling. There was movement in the lower levels of the Hanging Gardens. And not just the waving of vines. Shadows were slipping among the trellises.

  “Sssh.” Marco took out the torch and soaked it with the oil from inside Daria’s container. He propped it against a rock and pulled a piece of flint from his pack and struck it against a steel knife. With the first spark, the torch burst into flame.

  “Thank you, Daria,” Marco murmured, holding the torch aloft. “‘Be prepared.’ Motto of the US Marines.”

  “The Boy Scouts,” Aly corrected him.

  A chorus of screeches rang out from the Hanging Gardens. I heard a sharp hissing sound. Something small and liquid arced high in the air coming swiftly toward us.

  Cass recoiled backward. “Yeeeow!”

  A swirl of black mist twined upward from a blotch on his forearm. “What was that?” Marco asked.

  “I don’t know, but it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts!” Cass said, shaking his arm in pain.

  Another tiny liquid missile sailed through the air, heading for Aly. Marco instinctively shoved the torch upward, like a baseball player reaching for a pitch. As the little glob made contact with the flame, it exploded high into the air. “What the—?” Marco murmured.

  From all around us, the high-pitched chittering screams came closer. Marco moved the torch quickly left to right. The walls of the Hanging Gardens were black with swiftly moving shadows, long-limbed and monkeylike. As they fell to the ground, they pounded their narrow leathery chests, grinning at us with hairless, long-snouted faces. Their teeth were long and sharp, their tongues bright red. They shot yellow globs of saliva as they approached.

  “Watch it!” Marco yelled. We jumped away, and the wet missiles landed in small clouds of smoke. I spun and saw Cass was on the ground, writhing in pain.

  Marco charged the creatures with the torch. They screeched, backing away, spitting. The flame erupted again and again, like fireworks. Marco dodged the spit like a dancer, warding them away. Aly was on her knees, hunched over Cass. “Is he all right?” I asked.

  “A severe burn,” Aly said. “He’s in pain.”

  Vizzeet, who kill with their spit, Daria had said.

  Marco let out a cry. Smoke rose from the left side of his face near his chin. He staggered, narrowly missing another liquid projectile. I grabbed the torch and charged toward them. They seemed wary of fire, backing away. A spit missile whizzed by my face, and a hunk of hair on the side of my face went up in flames.

  I dropped the torch and fell. Marco was at my side in a split second, pressing a fistful of sandy dirt into the side of my head, blotting out the fire. He dragged me into the shelter of an archway that led into the center of the building that supported the Hanging Gardens.

  The ground was cool here. We stayed close to the wall, which made a kind of corridor leading into the structure, about ten feet long. Beyond us was solid blackness. Outside, about fifteen feet from the entrance, the torch lay on the ground, its flames protecting us from the vizzeet. Aly was near us, pouring water from an urn onto Cass’s wound.

  I eyed the strips of healing medicine, still stuck to Marco’s calves. “Hold steady,” I said, pulling one of them off. His wound was nearly healed, and I prayed that there was still some of the magic black goo left.

  Dropping to my knees, I laid the strip on Cass’s forearm, directly over the wound. “Don’t take this off!” I replied. “This will make you feel better.”

  Marco was staring out from the archway. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “They hate the flame, but the torch won’t last forever.”

  I peered out too, looking to our right, where the vizzeet paced and fought, spat and argued.

  My head was throbbing. In the midst of the shrieking, an eerie but familiar sound was washing over me. I was hearing the strange song again. The one that I’d first heard near the Heptakiklos in Mount Onyx. Near the first Loculus in Rhodes.

  It was coming from the left. In the light of Marco’s flame I could see the outline of a door, farther down the wall of the Hanging Gardens. Its wood was carpeted with moss and warped. Most of the surface was covered with a great tangled mass of ivy. It looked as if it had not been opened in years.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  “Hear what?” Marco said.

  “The Song,” I said. “Coming from our left. I need to go to that door. I think the Loculus is inside.”

  Marco nodded. “I’ll cover you.”

  With a sudden scream, Marco burst from the entrance. He grabbed the torch from the ground and used it like a fencing sword, swiping it back and forth as he charged toward the vizzeet.

  I crept up to the door. Under the ivy was an intricate carving. It was hard to catch the detail. Marco was moving the torch erratically. But as I got closer, I felt my heart pounding. The carved symbols on the door told me we had found what we were looking for.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  LAMBDA

  I RAN BACK to Cass and Aly, dropping to my knees. “Cass, if you can move, we need to get to that door. I think it’s where the Loculus is hidden.”

  They both leaped to their feet. Cass touched the bandage on his arm. “I feel . . . good,” he said. “What did you do to me?”

  “Rebel painkiller,” I replied. “Keep it there. And remember to thank Zinn.”

  “Yeaaaah!” Marco screamed.

  We turned. He was staggering backward. One of the vizzeet had got him in the face. His knees buckled, and a couple of arrows fell from his quiver.

  I raced up behind him and grabbed his bow and the vial of oil, which hung from his belt. Scooping one of the arrows off the ground, I poured oil over the tip, thrust it into the flame, and inserted it in the bow.

  I pointed it at one of the vizzeet. With a screech, it spat at me, just missing my eye. The glob of goo landed on the ground behind me with a loud tsssss.

  I drew the arrow back and released it. The flame arced through the blackness like a comet, directly toward the slavering beast.

  I missed. The arrow embedded itself in a tangled thicket
of vines that hung from above. Flames shot upward, licking at the feet of the retreating creatures.

  The vizzeet were shrieking now, clawing one another to climb higher . . . away from the fire.

  Marco stumbled toward me, holding the torch with one hand and his face with the other. “Once on the chin and once above my right eye,” he said.

  “Hold still.” I pulled the other healing strip from his calf, ripped it in half, and pressed each section to a wound. “Can you see?”

  “By the dawn’s early light,” Marco replied.

  A sudden whoosh made us all turn. An enormous bush, on the second level of the Hanging Gardens, had burst into flames. “This whole thing’s about to go up!” Cass cried out. “We have to get out of here.”

  I was about to destroy one of the Seven Wonders of the World. And if this thing went up in flames, the entire royal gardens wouldn’t be far behind. Our chance to the find the Loculus would be lost.

  Water.

  We needed lots of it. And fast. I took Marco’s torch and held it high, lighting the second level of the Hanging Gardens. A grand stone stairway to our right, now overgrown with weeds, led directly upward. “Marco, follow me,” I said. “Cass and Aly, get yourselves to the bottom of the Archimedes screw. Find whatever makes it turn, and do it hard! Now.”

  Marco and I raced to the stairs and took them two at a time. Already I could hear a deep, metallic cranking sound. Just to the other side of the banister, the Archimedes screw was slowly starting to turn.

  I held the torch over the banister and saw Cass and Aly working a huge bronze crank below. Water began flowing upward. Just above our head, on the Hanging Garden’s second level, it spilled into a tilted basin that fed a clay gutter that ran through the flowers. “Take a gutter, Marco!” I said to Marco. He looked at me blankly. “Can you shake that gutter loose?”

  He put two hands around one of the curved waterways and pulled. At the third pull, the thing came loose in a shower of clay dust.

  Around us the flames were catching on to the ivy and some nearby bushes. “We need to break the screw!” I shouted.

  Marco nodded. “Hold this,” he said, handing me the gutter.

  The thing weighed about a hundred pounds. I nearly dropped it to the ground but balanced it on the stone railing. Marco was kicking the side of a trellis, knocking loose a decorative carved-bronze border from one for the supports. As the mangled hunk of metal fell to the ground, I shouted, “Give it to me—and hold this thing!”

  I grabbed the bronze shard and began hitting the screw. It sides were curved upward, cupping the water on two sides, keeping it in place as it rose. I battered the outer side until the water was spilling out. “Faster, guys!” I shouted down. “Turn it faster!”

  The water began spattering outward. I took one end of the gutter and tipped it so that the high end would collect the flowing water and deliver it on the other end to the burning bushes. Marco slid in to help. We moved the gutter back and forth like a fire hose. “This is crazy!” Marco said. “We’ll never get enough water!”

  “Cass and Aly—turn harder!” I called down.

  “Hold tight, Jack,” Marco said, letting go of the gutter. “I’ll be right back.”

  I held on as Marco ran downstairs and commandeered the crank.

  The screw began gushing now, dousing the bush. The fire was already spreading downward, snaking along the ivy toward the ground. I lifted the gutter up and down, sending a shower far down the railing. Cass and Aly were behind me in a moment, with two wooden buckets they’d found among some garden tools.

  They held the buckets under the gutter, collecting water. Racing down the railing, they chased the growing flames, pouring bucket after bucket until the fire was out.

  It took a long time. Too long. I couldn’t imagine why no one had caught us. Drenched in sweat, Cass came to my side, resting the bucket on the ground and wiping his forehead. He glanced at me in disbelief. “That was awesome, Jack.”

  “Dudes,” Marco called from below. “The vizzeet are getting restless. Come on!”

  As I raced down the stairs, I looked into the distance, toward the inner wall. Where were the guards? Even this far into the royal gardens, surely they’d seen the flames. “Hurry,” I said, racing to the door. “We have to get in here!”

  Marco was at my side. He held the torch to the door and smiled at the sight of the carving. “Mary had a little lambda. Amazing. Okay, hold this.”

  He gave me the torch, then leaned into the metal latch handle. It wouldn’t budge. He pounded on the door. After waiting a moment, he drew back and lunged at it. His shoulder collided with a dull, pathetic-sounding thud, and he bounced back with a cry of pain.

  From behind the ivy was a dull rattling sound, like knuckles rapping on wood.

  I yanked aside the leaves.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE NUMBER SEVEN

  “LOOKS LIKE THE barrel of an old-time machine gun,” Marco said.

  “Or a Heptakiklos with a hat,” Cass remarked.

  “A spinning roulette wheel,” Aly said.

  My mind was racing. “It could be a code. Think. When we entered the maze at Mount Onyx . . . when we were stuck at the locked door in the underground cavern . . . both times we were able to get in.”

  “Because of hints,” Aly said. “Poems.”

  “The poems were all about numbers,” Cass pointed out. “Mostly about the number seven.”

  Aly grabbed one of the cubes hanging by twine. “There are seven of these things. They look like doorbells.”

  She began pulling them, but nothing happened.

  “This is a carving, not a poem,” Marco said.

  “Yeah, but it’s the Heptakiklos, Marco,” I said. “The Circle of Seven. Seven cubes. Whoever did this knows about the Loculi! It’s got to be in there. I hear the Song.”

  I stepped back. It was impossible to think. My brain was clogged with the sound. My ears were pricked for the screeching of the vizzeet, the guards. Where were the guards?

  Numbers . . . the patterns of decimals . . .

  “Aly, do you remember that weird thing about fractions and decimals?” I said.

  She nodded. “Put any number over seven—one-seventh, two-sevenths, five-sevenths, whatever. Turn that into a decimal, and the numbers repeat. The exact same numbers. Over and over.”

  “I hate fractions,” Marco said.

  “Oot em,” Cass added. (Which he pronounced oot eem—me too.)

  I tried to remember the pattern. “Okay, one over seven. That’s one divided by seven. We used that pattern to open a lock.”

  “Torchlight, please. Now.” Cass knelt and began scratching in the sand:

  “Dude, you remember how to do long division?” Marco said. “You never got a calculator?”

  “Point one-four-two-eight-five-seven!” Cass said. “And if you keep going, you get the same numbers. They just keep repeating.”

  “Okay, I’ll do them in order.” Aly immediately yanked on the first cube, then kept going. “One . . . four . . . two . . . eight . . . five . . . seven!”

  “Voilà!” Marco said, pulling the handle.

  Nothing happened.

  In the distance I could hear voices. They were faint but clearly angry. “We’re not going to get out of this alive,” Aly said.

  I shook my head. “The guards should have been here already,” I said. “I think they’re afraid. With luck, that’ll give us extra time.”

  From under a nearby rock, I saw a sudden movement and jumped back. A giant lizard poked its head out, and then came waddling toward us. Leonard, who had been sitting at the bottom of Cass’s pocket, now jumped out into the soil. “Hey, get back here!” Cass shouted.

  As he bent to scoop his pet off the ground, a shadow swooped down toward us.

  Zoo-kulul
ulu! Cack! Cack! Cack! Wings flapping, the giant black bird descended to the ground. It landed in the spot where Leonard had been, its talons digging into Cass’s mathematical scratching. With a screech of frustration, it jumped on the Babylonian lizard, missed, and flew away with an echoing cry.

  The voices outside the wall stopped. I could hear the guards’ footsteps retreating.

  “He ruined my equation,” Cass said, looking at the talon prints in the sand.

  Those, my boy, are not bird prints. They’re numbers.

  In my mind I saw Bhegad’s impatient face, when he was trying to cram us with info. I looked at the top of the Heptakiklos again:

  “That’s not a hat,” I said. “Those are cuneiform numbers. Bhegad tried to get us to study them. But I don’t remember—”

  “Ones!” Aly blurted out. “Those shapes are number ones.”

  “Okay, there are two of them,” Marco said.

  “Two over seven!” I exclaimed.

  Cass quickly wiped away his division and started again:

  “The same digits,” Cass said. “In a different order. Like I said.”

  Carefully I pulled the second cube. The eighth. The fifth. The seventh. The first. The fourth.

  With a loud clonk, the handle swung down, and the door opened.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ECHOES OF NOTHING

  “HELLO?” I CALLED out.

  Marco swung his torch into the room. It was nearly the size of a gymnasium, and totally empty. Bare walls, stretching out on all sides. “Nothing,” he said.

  Aly leaned in. “All this for a bare room?”

  I took the torch from Marco and held it to my right. “Yo! Anyone in here?”