Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon Page 18

  Daria contemplated what we’d said. She turned toward the rebels and explained. They listened impassively, skeptically. Zinn especially seemed to have a lot to say.

  Finally Daria turned to us and asked, “Zinn would like to know if Sippar is in your world.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head toward her and toward the rebels. They murmured among each other, and Yassur blurted something out.

  “They want to know,” Daria said, “if we help you, will you allow us to see your world?”

  “I can’t promise that—” I began.

  “Yes!” Marco chimed in. “Yes, we can. Get us in there, guys. Help us. And we’ll do whatever you want.”

  Cass, Aly, and I gave him a baffled look, but his eyes were intent on Daria. He smiled as she turned to the others and explained once again.

  “How could you say that?” Aly hissed.

  Marco shrugged. “How could I not?”

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  CHAPTER FORTY

  MISSLES OF SPIT

  I STOOD AND followed the others at the entrance gate. Zinn and the rebels ran inside. “Wait here,” Daria said. “Zinn must be sure there are no more guards.”

  “Arrr . . . !” came a guttural cry deep in the garden. Then a sharp whistle.

  “All clear,” Daria said.

  We sprinted over the lazy, winding paths. Daria led us to the inner wall, just inside which I could see a giant tree bowed with plump fruit. “When we are inside, Marco, take one of the pomegranates,” Daria said. “They are magic and will heal you when you’re sick.”

  Marco boosted us all up and over. He climbed last, snatching a pomegranate off the tree as we began to run.

  The screaming of the vizzeet hit us like a fist of sound when we emerged into the plaza of the Hanging Gardens. They spilled from among the fallen columns and the cracked-open walls, arms flailing, teeth gnashing. Missiles of spit hurtled toward us like poison rain.

  “Yeeeeah!” cried Yassur, dropping to the ground, his hand clutching his eye.

  Zinn and Shirath fell to their knees. With quick, sure movements, they picked darts from pouches and began blowing them into the horde. A vizzeet hurtled backward with a keening scream. It knocked over another three, who panicked and began clawing the first. “They do not like confusion!” Daria shouted, her shawl pulled protectively over her head. “Very nervous!”

  The darts flew fast, tinting the air with green. As vizzeet fell upon vizzeet, Daria and I crawled over to Yassur. Daria pulled a leather pouch from the sash around his waist, held his head back, and began dripping a clear potion from the pouch into his eye. I grabbed Yassur’s blowpipe, loaded it, and put it to my mouth.

  The first three shots landed in the dust, but the fourth caught one of the mangy beasts in the shoulder. There were dozens of them now, as if the quake had knocked a whole new tribe of them out of their hiding place. Marco was on his knees beside me, pulling from his tunic pocket a set of matches, a balloon, a string, and a small flask.

  “What are you doing?” Aly demanded.

  “Kerosene from the KI!” he shouted, first wetting the string and then filling the balloon. He tied the end of the balloon tight and flung it toward the vizzeet. As it landed, just in front of them, he lit a match.

  The flame shot along the soaked string. As the balloon exploded, the vizzeet retreated like a tide, rolling in the dirt, tumbling over each other. “Move!” Marco shouted.

  We ran around the building. The carved oak doorway was shut fast. Marco reached the cubes first. “What’s the combo again?”

  I reached around him and pulled: two . . . eight . . . five . . . seven . . . one . . . four.

  The door opened into blackness. We stood at the threshold, willing our eyes to adjust, glancing at the empty chamber that was not empty.

  Shirath and Daria raced toward us. Zinn was right behind them, helping Yassur. Marco turned, holding out his arms. “There are traps,” he said. “You cannot see them. We have to follow Cass.”

  Cass took a deep breath. He stood before the opening, his eyes scanning the floor.

  From the back of the chamber I heard a soft click. The back door slowly opened. Kranag.

  But the skeletal old man was nowhere to be seen. In his place was a flash of yellow eyes. A low-slung body walking on all fours. A sleek, scaly neck.

  Marco picked up the spear he had taken from the guards. He reared back with his arm.

  “No!” Daria shouted. “One has been killed already. You must not kill this one!”

  Its feet blindingly quick and sure, the mushushu ran the jagged pathway around the traps and leaped toward me with its jaw wide.

  Marco thrust the spear. Daria screamed.

  The point caught the mushushu in its flank and passed right through. With a croaking cry, the beast fell to the ground at my feet. I caught a rush of stinking, warm breath.

  Daria, Shirath, and Yassur knelt before the beast. The mushushu convulsed on the ground, its mouth wide open but emitting only a soft hiss.

  Its face began to change before my eyes. Below the skin, bones seemed to liquefy, shifting position. The lizard snout contracted, the buggy eyes sank inward. As the face became more human, the body was wriggling into a different shape, too.

  “No . . .” Daria said, her face twisted into an expression of such shock that it almost made her unrecognizable.

  People said he could become an animal himself . . . Daria’s words came back to me.

  The mushushu was gone. Transformed.

  We were staring into the face of Kranag.

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  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  FALLING BACK

  DARIA AND I knelt by Kranag. His mouth moved without sound, his papery-white face seeming to shrivel as we watched.

  “Let’s go!” Marco said.

  He was looking nervously to our left. I could hear the approach of distant footsteps. Shirath, Zinn, and Yassur were lifting Kranag’s body, taking it away from the front of the door.

  In a moment I saw why.

  Vizzeet began screaming, leaping down from the upper levels of the Hanging Gardens. Black birds swooped down out of nowhere. In a swarm, they descended on the lifeless body of the man who had controlled them.

  I turned away. This was a party I did not want to see.

  “That is disgusting,” Cass said.

  “Forget that!” Marco urged. “Get us back to the Loculus, dude.”

  Cass nodded. He turned and led the way into the chamber, zigging and zagging around the invisible traps. As we made our way to the back, Marco was sweating.

  We were as careful as could be this time. This time, nothing shot at us and no gas tried to choke us. We felt our way around the cage and the spikes, which still jutted invisibly up from the ground.

  “Okay, now,” Cass finally said as we safely reached the rear wall.

  Marco unhooked his pack and pulled out Shelley. Setting the trapezoid quickly on the ground, he gave it a sharp slap.

  With a clunk, Shelley fell over onto the dirt. “It’s not working,” he said in disbelief. “Bhegad said all we had to do was tap it!”

  From the pit, the eerie music was washing over me. I could feel all my senses sharpening, my vision focusing. I lifted the metal contraption. It was heavier than I expected, but I held it over my head.

  Then I dropped it.

  It landed hard on the ground. With a loud clang, it popped to full size, bounced up off the stone floor. It hit me square in the nose. Like a rubber ball, only metal and magical.

  As I cried out in pain, Marco caught it in midair.

  I took it from him and held it high. It was dull and bronze and strangely translucent. As I brought it toward the pit, I could see
through to the other side of it. Holding it steady, I leaned in to find the invisible Loculus.

  The music intensified. I knew I was disappearing, even though everything around me seemed pretty much the same. I could tell by the looks on my friends’ faces.

  And by Daria’s gasp. “Where is he?”

  “Disappeared,” Marco said. “But still here.”

  Daria reached toward me but she stumbled on the invisible lip of the pit. Losing her balance, she fell forward, her hand smacking against the surface of the Loculus. Instinctively I grabbed her arm. Screaming, she lurched away.

  We both stumbled back into the room. Marco thrust him arm to keep us from falling back into a potential trap.

  Cass and Aly were staring, dumbfounded. “She disappeared,” Cass said.

  “I know,” I replied. “I touched her.”

  “Did you touch her right at the beginning?” Aly asked. “The moment she fell in? Because she vanished the moment she stumbled, Jack.”

  “She . . . she touched the Loculus,” I said. “Are you telling me she vanished on contact? All by herself?”

  Daria stared at me, then back at the now-invisible pit. “What is this thing, Jack? I—I can no longer see it.”

  “Try to find it, Daria,” Cass said intensely. “Show us what you mean.”

  Daria reached back toward the area and instantly dissolved to nothingness. “It is here!”

  My mind was racing. “Daria,” I said, “when you told me the story of Kranag’s life, you said he came from a strange land. With some other people. A man with a strange mark. What did that look like? Do you know?”

  “Nitacris spoke of it,” Daria said tentatively, stepping forward and materializing again. “Two lines of gray. Coming to a point at the top. On the back of his head.”

  “Do you have it, Daria?” I asked.

  “Why do you ask?” she said.

  “Because we have it,” I replied. “All four of us. We are covering it up with dye.”

  Daria looked at the floor. Slowly she lifted her arm and brought it around to the back of her head.

  Then, for the first time since we’d met her, she removed the head scarf.

  “I don’t believe this . . .” Aly whispered.

  On the back of Daria’s head, amid the shock of red hair, was a white lambda.

  Daria was one of us.

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  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  THE MARK

  “That insane language skill,” Marco said. “It makes sense now. Daria’s got G7W.”

  “She’s also got a pedigree,” I said. “Because G7W comes from the royal family of Atlantis. Which means King Uhla’ar and Queen Qalani.”

  Aly nodded. “Who had only two sons . . .”

  “Daria,” I said. “Your parents . . . what do you know about them?”

  “Nothing,” she said quietly. “I was a foundling. For my first years I lived on the streets, until I was taken into slavery. Nabu-na’id and Bel-Sharu-Usur often remind what a great kindness this was.”

  “It’s got to be a lie,” Aly said. “She has to be Massarym’s daughter. It’s the only way she could have the mark.”

  “Or Karai’s daughter,” Cass offered. “Or the daughter of Queen Qalani’s sister. Or King Uhla’ar’s cousin. Or the brother’s fifth cousin twice removed. Royal families can have a lot of people, Aly.”

  Outside the cavernous room, Zinn and the others were shouting. I could see them sinking to their knees, blowpipes to their lips. Someone was coming.

  “Forget the explanation,” Marco said. “Let’s go!”

  I picked up Shelley. “How close do we need to get?”

  But Shelley seemed to be giving me the answer. It began to pulse on its own, lifting upward, out of my palm and into the air. The Song of the Heptakiklos twanged through my body now. Marco, Cass, Aly, and Daria were cringing. They felt it too.

  I could no longer see the pit’s smoothly curved bottom. It was covered with a gaseous plasma of light, ebbing and swelling like a living cell. Before my eyes the contours of the Loculus began to form into a translucent sphere, a bright storm cloud of visible energy.

  On the shining metallic rim of the pit, a red tile flared like the flash of a camera. Then the next one did too, and the next and the next, until the light was circling the rim in a spinning pattern that zapped Shelley with electric jolts like lizards’ tongues. Inside, the ball of gas swelled steadily to fill the shape of the Loculus.

  Shelley’s hinged metallic surface was growing smooth. It changed colors, its dull brown growing silvery, until the two shapes were mirror images. When they were nearly touching, a shadowy bruise grew on the Loculus and another on Shelley—two blue-back shadows facing each other.

  The plasma boiled violently as they came closer. It gathered below the bruise, pushing at it, then finally breaking through. The boom rocked the chamber, knocking us off our feet. The Atlantean energy blasted out of the black circle and into Shelley’s, with a force so strong I thought the contraption would vaporize.

  “It’s working!” Cass said.

  An hour. That was what Bhegad said it needed. Then Shelley would turn green. And we could go.

  I could no longer see Zinn and the others outside. But I could hear yelling and a clash of metal. “What’s happening out there?”

  “Must be more guards,” Aly said.

  The Loculus was heating up, vibrating like crazy. Already Cass and Aly were letting go. Marco’s hand was turning red. Finally he too had to pull it away. His face poured sweat. I heard a bloodthirsty scream outside. A rebel slid across the pathway just outside the door, bloodied and screaming. “How many guards are there?” Cass asked.

  Marco was staring at Shelley. “This thing is supposed to take an hour,” he said, “until it turns green. That’s what my notes say.”

  Aly looked nervously at the door. “We won’t have that long!”

  “No,” Marco said. “It’s not supposed to happen this way. The timing is all wrong.”

  “What’s not supposed to happen?” I asked. “Timing of what?”

  “Come on, Shelley babe, turn green,” Marco said, shaking it roughly. “Turn green!”

  “Leave it alone, Marco!” Cass shouted.

  I grabbed Marco’s arm. I was afraid he’d break the mechanical Loculus. “What has gotten into you? Let it do its work!”

  Dropping his hands, Marco stepped back. He glanced over his shoulder toward the commotion outside. Behind him, Shelley was starting to make noises. To vibrate jerkily.

  “Okay, guys,” he said, “you know who brought this Loculus here, right? I mean, the legend is pretty clear . . .”

  “Duh, Massarym, the evil brother of Karai,” Aly said. “This is no time for a history lesson, Marco—”

  “And what did he do?” Marco demanded.

  “Stole the Loculi and hid them in the Seven Wonders!” I shouted.

  “He did it because Karai wanted to destroy them!” Marco said. “Karai was mad at his mom, Qalani, for doing what she did. And he had a point. Isolating the Atlantean energy into seven parts was bad. It upset the energy balance. But Karai was too dumb to realize that destroying the Loculi would nuke Atlantis.”

  “Marco, Atlantis was nuked anyway!” I said.

  “Why are we talking about this now?” Aly demanded.

  “Don’t you see?” Marco said. “Karai was wrong. If he’d just left the Loculi alone, he and Massarym could have done something. Repaired them. Adjusted the energy. Whatever. The smartest minds in the history of the world lived in Atlantis. So Massarym had to take the Loculi—”

  A shadow moved into the light. At the doorway, across the width of the cavern, stood a tall man in a simple brown robe, his face shrouded by a hood, his feet in simple leather sandals.

  I had seen a similar outfit before—many of them—on a hillsid
e full of monks on the island of Rhodes in Greece. Monks who were protectors of the relics of the Colossus of Rhodes. Who called themselves Massarene, after the Atlantean prince they worshipped. Who, under the leadership of a guy named Dimitrios, had tried to kill us.

  Cass and Aly backed away slowly as the man put his hand on either side of his hood and pulled it down. In the darkness, his salt-and-pepper hair looked mostly black.

  It can’t be. I stared at him, blinking. It had to be a lookalike. A coincidence. His being here was a physical impossibility.

  “Brother Dimitrios?” Aly said.

  “Well, well,” the man replied in a heavily accented voice, “what a pleasure to be sharing such a rousing adventure with old friends.”

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “How can you possibly be here?”

  As two other hooded figures moved into the torchlight, Brother Dimitrios said, “I would be rude if I did not introduce my colleagues, Brothers Stavros and Yiorgos. We are here to collect something we have sought for a long time.”

  He doesn’t see the traps—the projectiles, the gas . . .

  “Come and get us,” I said with a smile.

  Brother Dimitrios threw back his head and laughed. “Nice try, my boy. We know what’s in here. You see, we have been briefed by one of the best. An expert at both access and intelligence. A young man with his heart and mind finally in the right place.”

  “You found another Select?” Cass asked.

  “I didn’t need to.” Brother Dimitrios looked into the chamber and smiled.

  “Good work, Marco.”

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  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  THE BETRAYAL

  “MARCO . . . ?” CASS SAID, his face bone-white.

  Marco looked away.

  I tried not to see that. I tried to tell myself that he was looking at the Loculus. That he would lunge at Brother Dimitrios and punch him in the face for his brazen insult. But he said nothing. No denial at all. Which meant he had betrayed us. The idea clanged around inside my head, as if someone had just revealed that the sky was made of jelly.