Below us the entire courtyard sizzled as the lightning passed through the wet surface. I could hear Artemisia’s Shadows grunting with surprise. I could smell the searing of leathery flesh.
“You cannot escape!” Skilaki’s voice echoed over the din.
“She’s going to destroy the whole place!” Aly said.
The destroyer shall rule. That was what the Newton letter said. It was about Artemisia, not Mausolus. She was ruthless.
But Newton had never met a Select.
I felt the Shadow’s fingers tighten around my ankle. I grabbed Cass, holding tight. The thing was deadweight, but I wasn’t going to fall. I glanced down, past its dangling body, into a dull gray expanse of scrubby trees. We had cleared the palace grounds.
“We’re over!” Cass cried out. “We’re going to do it!”
“Where to now?” Aly shouted.
“The northeast quadrant!” Cass turned to us with a huge smile. “That was where we came in. It was on Skilaki’s map. I remember it! I remember!”
He kicked the griffin hard with his right heel. The lion-bird immediately veered to the left. We were headed to a dense forest now with gargantuan trees, dead gray redwoods that thrust up like barbed spears.
But the griffin was losing altitude. My fingers loosened and I slipped to the left. Toward the clinging Shadow. Aly gripped tighter around my waist. “Jack, can’t you shake it off?” she shouted.
“Does it look like I can?” I said.
I could hear Cass talking gently to the red beast. “You’re not used to carrying so many people, are you? Too heavy, huh? Well, let’s do something about that. Head straight for the tops of those trees, and in a minute we’ll be fine. Ready?”
Cass pointed downward, and the griffin dropped. Now my ankle-grabber was on a direct course for the thick, pointed top of the tallest tree, jutting high above the rest. The body was swinging forward with the momentum.
I looked down. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of the monster’s face. It stared at me with empty, wild-animal eyes, its grimace framed in a salt-and-pepper beard.
I nearly fell off the griffin. It was a face I knew very well.
“Don’t, Cass!” I shouted. “It’s Professor Bhegad!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
NADINE
“UP, GRIFFIN!” CASS commanded.
The beast faltered for a moment, confused.
“No . . .” Aly said, looking downward at Professor Bhegad in stunned disbelief.
“Go up—now!” Cass shouted.
The griffin veered in midflight. We rose so quickly I thought I’d lose my balance. Professor Bhegad’s eyes met mine. Briefly. His irises were gray. His face showed no fear. No recognition. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was an incoherent grunt.
I felt a sharp tug. Saw the blur of a barren gray branch. Heard a dull whump.
I closed my eyes and held tight to the griffin.
My leg was free. But I was crying.
With an exhausted caw, the griffin set down on a dry, dusty plain. My arms were nearly rigid around Cass’s midsection, but I managed to pry them off and slide to the ground. I landed on my side and rolled to my back, staring upward into the unchanging sky. Aly and Cass flopped down beside me. Aly immediately went to work on her shackles, digging bobby pins into the lock.
With two sharp, metallic snaps, she was free. She lay back with a groan of relief, massaging her wrists.
The griffin folded its legs underneath itself, like a lion. It turned its beak toward a long gash on its flank and began licking it. “Great job, Big Bird,” Cass said. “Hey, you’re much nicer than your cousin in Rhodes.”
“Careful, he looks hungry,” Aly warned.
“It’s not a he, it’s a she,” Cass said. “I’m calling her Nadine.”
“How do you know it’s female?” Aly asked.
Cass shrugged. As he scratched underneath the griffin’s chin, she closed her eyes and let out a soft purring noise. “We shared.”
I closed my eyes, but all I could see was the professor’s face. His colorless eyes.
Aly turned onto her side and propped her head on her hand. “Thanks, Jack,” she said.
“For what?” I murmured.
“Saving me in the castle,” she replied. “Breaking the shackles.”
I turned away. “I didn’t save Bhegad.”
“What you did just now—you couldn’t have done anything else,” Aly said.
“He dedicated his life to us,” I said. “We were supposed to save him. We had a plan. And . . . I just let him go . . .”
Cass sat down next to me. “That wasn’t Professor Bhegad hanging on to you, Jack. He was a number, like Nine and Forty-one. A shell of Bhegad. You didn’t kill him. Artemisia did, when she took his soul.”
“We knew the plan had risks,” Aly reasoned. “Even if the Loculus was there, we don’t know if it could have brought him back.”
I nodded. I knew all this. I knew Professor Bhegad would have died even if we hadn’t come to Bo’gloo.
But none of this changed the facts. Bhegad was gone. So was the Loculus of Healing. With them went our own chances of surviving.
And until the day I died, I would never forget those eyes.
Cass gave the griffin one last pat on the neck, then jumped to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”
As he turned and began walking across the field, I stood. My ankle was sore from where Bhegad had been hanging. Aly took my arm. Together we followed Cass into the emptiness before us.
I trained my eyes on the edge of the woods, where the fog snaked like a river. Where was the portal?
Aly stopped. “Do you hear something?”
“No—” Before the word left my lips, I saw a rock flying over our heads.
I spun around. Now I could hear a low grumbling noise. I squinted and saw shifting forms in the trees. Behind us the griffin let out a loud screech.
“Shadows . . .” I said.
“How did they find us?” Aly screamed.
I heard Skilaki’s voice in my head—You cannot escape!
They were everywhere, like insects—lurching toward us on all sides, out of the trees and bushes. There were teams of them, swinging slings, throwing rocks and branches. Snorting and braying like animals. “Cass, how far?” I called out.
He was running into their midst. “This way!” he shouted. “Hurry! We have to get there before they do!”
Two projectiles hurtled through the air toward my head. I dived to the ground and rolled.
Aly let out a scream. She was on the ground, blood oozing from her head.
KIIIIIAAAHHHHH! The griffin’s cry blotted out all sound. She swooped above us, plunging into the zombies’ midst like a cannonball.
I lifted Aly off the ground. “Can you run?”
She blinked her eyes erratically. “Yes. I think.”
“Here!” Cass screamed. He was thirty yards ahead of us, his arm half vanished into thin air.
The portal.
Cass was reaching toward us. I pushed Aly ahead of me. “Take her, she’s hurt!”
I saw Cass’s hand close around Aly’s. In a nanosecond, they both disappeared. I prepared to leap.
But my feet never left the ground. I felt a sharp set of fingers grabbing my arm. Pulling me back.
“Graammpfff.” Cold, musty breath blasted my face, and I gagged.
I swung my body around and faced a Shadow with a massive frame. I lowered my head and thrust it forward, hard. My forehead smashed into the zombie’s head with a dull splat, like a baseball bat hitting a cantaloupe. The fingers loosened for a moment. I tried to pull away, but this one was bigger than Forty-one and not as fragile. It held tight.
My feet left the ground. I looked around desperately for the portal, but it was invisible. The Shadows were converging on me now. In the distance I could see a team of them pelting the griffin with rocks and sticks, overwhelming the screeching beast.
I was moving no
w. The Shadow had me by the arms and was swinging me around. The others backed off, waiting in a circle, grunting, clapping hands. It was a game to them. Dodgeball for the undead. I felt my feet lift upward, parallel to the ground, gaining speed.
I closed my eyes, preparing to be thrown. I thought about Cass and Aly. I thought about Dad. They would be on their own.
Now my ankles smacked against a palm. And another. Fingers closed tight. My hands wrenched away from the Shadow’s grip and my top half fell.
My face and palms hit the ground at the same time. Pebbles dug into my cheek as I scraped along the parched soil.
Something popped in my ears. Around me was a flash of bright white.
I screamed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
BECAUSE OF THE EYES
ARTEMISIA IS YOUNGER. I barely recognize her face. Her skin is smooth, her figure plump. Her robe shines with jewels.
But I know who she is because of the eyes. They are sharp. They see everything, one step ahead.
She tells me she does not want any more responsibilities. Building the temple was difficult. She gestures behind her, to a pair of men eating and drinking at a thick oak table. One is younger than the other by a generation, yet both are tearing into goose shanks, devouring grapes, swigging from flagons that are replenished by slaves.
Mappas. And Mausolus.
He will not approve, Artemisia explains. He will not want anything in his realm that does not belong to him.
It cannot belong to him, I explain. But he must keep it safe. For the safety of the world.
Artemisia shrugs. These are not his concerns, she says. And she bids me farewell.
I snap my fingers and the sky darkens. Overhead the hovering griffin has begun its dive. Artemisia looks up and shrieks. The slaves are running into the castle. The satrap and his vassal jostle to follow them. Neither of them seems concerned with Artemisia.
The creature is hungry. Its mouth froths, sending flecks of spittle into the air.
I can call it off, I say. Or you can grant me this simple request.
The elegant woman’s eyes are wide and desperate. She nods, holding out her palm as I hand her my sack.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
WE TRIED
GRIFFIN SPIT RAN down my face like a warm shower.
I bolted upward with a scream.
“He waketh,” came a voice above me. “O rapture unexampled.”
The surrounding gray had darkened. I took in a gulp and nearly choked.
Humidity.
I could taste the salt in the air.
Above me loomed the face of Canavar, leering down at me as if I were some vaguely interesting ancient relic.
My father’s joy was a lot less restrained. As he lifted me into a big hug, I closed my eyes. I couldn’t believe I was here. Back with him. Back with them all. Cass and Aly were kneeling by my side, along with Dr. Bradley. Torquin was still at the entrance, pacing.
“Dude,” Cass said, “I thought you were going to kick my hand off the wrist.”
“Cass held on,” Aly told me. “So did I. Together we were practically a whole Marco.”
“Well, a fraction of a Marco,” Cass added. “But enough to pull you through.”
I was starting to understand. The hands I’d felt on my ankles had not been zombie claws after all. They’d been Cass and Aly, pulling me to safety.
Dad was grinning, his cheeks moist. “You went in. And then Cass and Aly bounced right back out. What happened?”
I glanced at my watch. The second hand was moving again, but the other hands were still on 3:17. To Dad and the others, no time had passed.
“No Loculus!” called Torquin from the Mausoleum entrance. “No professor. Go back.”
Cass and Aly stared at me.
“Torquin . . . we tried,” I said.
“Tried?” Torquin thundered. “What means tried?”
“He didn’t make it,” Aly said softly.
Torquin’s body sagged. Even in the dark I could see the panic in his eyes and the deepening of his skin’s natural redness. He took a step backward as if he’d been pushed, and his shoulders began to shake. Dr. Bradley rushed toward him, but Canavar got there first. He put his arms around Torquin’s knees in the best comforting gesture he could manage.
A sound welled up from the ground below us, deep and disturbing, like the bowing of a cracked cello. Dr. Bradley and Canavar jumped in surprise. They reached toward Torquin and coaxed him down the steps.
The ground began to vibrate. The wall was glowing now, its solid stone shimmering and blurring. We scrambled backward across the rubble-strewn field.
The Mausoleum seemed to flare with light. Then, just as it had arrived, it began to fade from existence. The chariot went first and then the roof, until the wall gave way to the darkness beyond.
In a moment, all that was left was a moonlit pile of rocks. On top of them lay the matching number seven plates.
Dad knelt beside us, his face drawn and pale. “Your shoulder, Jack,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed . . .”
I looked down. My shirt was torn, and blood had started to well from the gashes where the griffin had clawed me. “It’s only a flesh wound,” I said.
“I’ll have to treat that,” Dr. Bradley called out. “I want to examine all of you.”
As the doctor dabbed at my shoulder, Dad put a warm, comforting hand on mine. “Start from the beginning, Jack. Please.”
Taking a deep breath, I told him everything I could. From the waters of Nostalgikos to the river of fire, from Artemisia’s palace and Bhegad’s death to the flight back on the griffin. Aly and Cass chimed in with details.
Dad listened, quietly nodding, wincing at the painful parts. I knew we’d come a long way from Mongolia. His questioning, skepticism, stubbornness—all of it had peeled back for a moment.
He believed me now. I could tell. He believed everything.
As I finished, Dad let out a deep sigh. “Bhegad followed through. He gave his life for you. And I never had the chance to forgive him. To let him know I didn’t blame him any longer for what happened to Mom.”
Dr. Bradley brushed a tear from her eye. “I think he knew how you felt.”
“Yes,” came the muffled rumble of Torquin’s voice. “He knew.”
He was sitting on the ground, his back to us. Looking straight ahead into the darkness.
Into the space where he had last seen Professor Bhegad.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE GRAND CARBUNCULUS WIZENDUM
I AWOKE FROM a dreamless sleep in an airless hotel. The heat had been jacked up and I was sweating through the sheets. Tinny music blared from a clock radio, and bodies were lying on every surface—Cass on another bed, Aly and Dr. Bradley sharing a fold-out sofa, and Dad on a cot. The closet door was open, and Canavar slept curled up on the floor. I could see Torquin’s silhouette outside, pacing back and forth in the early-morning sunlight. We were all dressed in the same clothing as the day before.
“Rise and shine,” I groaned. As I slipped out of bed and into the bathroom, I threw open a window. We were just off the highway, and a gust of gasoline-scented air blew in.
“This hotel has bad breath,” Cass said.
“Sorry, it was the best we could find at four in the morning,” Dad replied.
One by one we washed up. Dad was last. No one was saying much of anything. Cass busied himself with a pad of paper and a pencil he had taken from the hotel room desk. I watched as he wrote the heading GOING FORWARD? across the top.
He stared at it a moment, then quickly erased the question mark.
I sat on the sofa. My head ached and my shoulder felt swollen and sore. We had agreed on a planning meeting in the morning, to discuss the future in a post-Bhegad world.
A future that was looking very, very brief.
As Dad began pacing the room, the gnarled figure of Canavar emerged from the closet. He sat in a corner, picking something out of his hair and popping it quiet
ly into his mouth.
“I didn’t see that,” Cass murmured.
“Artemisia,” Dad said. “She told you the Loculus was stolen, yes? Did she give proof?”
“Never,” Cass asserted.
“Maybe she was lying,” Dad said.
I shook my head. “The whole time we were there—the forest, the control center, the palace—I never once felt the Song of the Heptakiklos.”
“How big is Bo’gloo?” Dr. Bradley asked.
“We must have passed through maybe half of it, on foot or on the griffin,” Cass said with a scared gulp. “Why? Are you going to suggest we go back?”
“I’m sure Artemisia wasn’t lying,” Aly declared. “She had no reason to hide it from us. She resented the Loculus.”
Cass nodded. “Also, if the Loculus was in Bo’gloo, Nadine would have been all over it. Griffins are bred to protect Loculi.”
“Okay, so who knew about the Loculus—and who’d have the motive to steal it?” Dad continued. “Seems to me there are only two possibilities.”
“The Karai Institute didn’t,” Dr. Bradley said. “Professor Bhegad would have known about it.”
“Which leaves the Massa,” I said. “But we were at their headquarters. They were bragging on how great they were, on all the cool things they could do for us. One thing they didn’t brag about was having a Loculus. If they did, don’t you think they’d say something? Also, we found the safe where they were keeping Loculi—”
“And there were two of them,” Cass said. “The ones they’d taken from us. No others.”
We were back to square one. The room fell silent. Outside a car blew its horn at Torquin, who was wandering a little too close to the highway, muttering to himself.
“Would it be impertinent to speak up?” Canavar squeaked, raising a tentative hand.
We all stared at him, and he flinched.
“Erm, I take that as a yes,” he continued. “Well, as I mentioned upon thy arrival, many of the Mausoleum’s treasures were stolen long ago. Perhaps this Loculus of thine was among them.”
“Impossible,” I said. “Crossing into the Mausoleum requires the mark of the lambda.”