“Do you?” Canavar said with a mocking grin. “And perhaps with thy uncanny visual powers thou shalt conjure up a statue of Artemisia herself?”
“He’s good at this,” Dad said with a grin. “Won the state middle school jigsaw puzzle championship, Division One. We had DQ Blizzards to celebrate.”
“Competitive jigsaw puzzling?” Aly said. “With divisions?”
“And Blizzards?” Cass piped up.
“Sweeeeet,” Torquin said.
My face was heating up again.
Focus. Ignore.
Retaliate later.
I stared at the pieces, letting my brain assemble them. Then I began to fetch them, putting them close to one another until I could find no more.
Carefully, I slid them into place.
“It’s some kind of panel,” Aly said. “With a backward seven, in relief.”
“Maybe the Persians read from right to left?” Cass said.
Dad cocked his head curiously. “Any guesses what it means?”
I wasn’t sure. But my brain was trying to recall the exact pattern of Canavar’s M. There was something about it that didn’t quite make sense. “Torquin,” I said. “Can you give me Canavar’s stones—all of them?”
“I believe it is proper to address that question to the stone collector himself,” Canavar said, “who risked his life to assemble them.”
“May I, Dr. Canavar?” I said.
Canavar lifted his head high with a triumphant grin. “Permission granted.”
Torquin handed me the stones from the pack. I assembled them, one by one, sorting out the old and the new on the ground. Then, setting the new ones aside, I began shifting around only the old stones.
“Ah, may I remind thee,” Canavar said, “to include the most important of these stones. To wit, the stones personally carved by me out of necessity to complete the historic M—”
Sliding the last piece into place, I smiled. “Your stones do not form an M.”
“It’s a seven!” Cass exclaimed. “I was right—this thing couldn’t have been an M. Yesss!”
I could hear Professor Bhegad’s feeble voice call out, “That’s my boy!”
Canavar’s small eyes seemed to double in size. “Well, I—I suppose it’s a valid possibility—”
“A seven chiseled into stone . . .” Dad said, his eyes moving toward the flat raised relief I had just put together on the ground. “A bas-relief backward seven of the same size. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I think so.” One by one, I placed the stones from Canavar’s collection upside down on the jigsaw arrangement so that the chiseled lines locked into place.
When I put the ninth and last stone in place, I felt my body shake.
Dad gripped my arm. “What’s that? The Heptococcus song?”
“Heptakiklos,” I said. “Yes. Totally.” Vibrations were coursing from my skull to my toenails.
Aly was shaking her head. “That’s not the Song, Jack . . .”
I could hear rocks sliding down the cliff now, splashing into the sea. Aly’s face was blurry, and my legs felt jellylike, as if I were on a train or a surfboard.
She was right. This was bigger than finding a Loculus.
It was an earthquake.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THIS IS NOT SCIENCE
THE PLATE—THE INTERLOCKING stone shape we’d formed—was jumping on the ground with a life of its own. The earth was cracking in jagged lines, radiating outward from the plate like rays from the sun.
“That . . . thing is causing this!” I shouted. “Pull it apart—the seven!”
Torquin was already there, digging his stubby fingers into the stone. Cass, Aly, and I jumped in beside him.
“What are you doing?” Dad called out.
“Trying to stop it!” I said.
“Stop an earthquake?” Dad said.
It was no use. The stones were stuck together as if glued. Torquin panted and grunted, sending flecks of spittle onto the stone. Soon I felt the plate rising off the ground. I figured Torquin was lifting it, so I stood, stubbornly trying to pry the arrangement apart.
“Set it down!” Aly said. “This isn’t helping!”
“Won’t go down!” Torquin replied.
Now the plate was changing. The chipped edges were filling themselves in, straightening, forming a perfect rectangle. The stone itself was smooth to the touch, growing hotter.
I pulled my fingers away. The cliff and the sea grew blurry, as if a stone-colored curtain had been drawn across them. As I fell back, a network of countless arteries and veins shot outward in all directions from the plate, filling the space all around, exploding into sprays of stone-colored plasma.
“Get away from that!” I called out.
Cass and Aly jumped backward. Torquin held on a moment longer, but finally he sprang away with a howl of pain.
A wall was forming before us, not gas, liquid, or solid, but somewhere in between. Its depths and shadows roiled and slowly hardened, taking on the shape of columns, statues, reliefs. In the center of it all was the plate, the connected seven. Now it was suspended at chest level, embedded into an arched marble door carved with snakes, horses, and oxen. On either side, massive marble columns lined up, spreading outward like sentinels snapping to attention.
The walls themselves thundered, sending deep echoes into the soaring space they now surrounded. Above the columns, facing us, rose a triangular section that featured a relief of a four-horse chariot. I craned my neck to see a tapered roof taking form, topped by two humanlike figures bubbling and flowing until they took the solid shapes of a man and woman.
As the earth heaved I fell back into my dad. “What in heaven’s name—?” he said.
Now the entire columned structure was rising upward, pushed toward the sky by a thick stone base the width of a city block. A wider, thicker base formed beneath that, and another, until the graceful marble building was sitting atop a layer cake of stone. At each setback, statues glared down at us—stern figures in robes, grand horses and woodland animals. Finally, right in front of us, a tremendous stone archway opened within the wall, and a wide set of stairs rippled toward us, kicking up a thick cloud of dust.
Cass, Aly, Torquin, Dad, and I turned away, coughing.
“Hee-hee-hee!” came a trumpeting laugh from the dust.
“This is not . . . a trick of light . . .” Dad said between coughing jags. “This is not explainable by science.”
“No, it’s not,” I said.
Cass swallowed hard. “I was kind of hoping it would be.”
“Haaaa!” As the dust began to settle, I could see the tiny, wizened figure of Canavar dancing in the cloud, coughing and laughing. “It was a seven . . .” Canavar wobbled on unsure feet, lurching toward the door. “By the chariot of Mausolus, it wast not an M but a seven! Hee! Hee-hee-hee! We have unlocked the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus from the earth itself! I shall be world famous! Book me a flight to Sweden to pick up my Nobel Prize! Oh, teedle-de-dee! I float with joy! I float!”
He was dancing, flailing his arms, jumping onto the stairs. The Mausoleum towered above him, dwarfing the small man.
“Someone . . . pull him back . . .” Professor Bhegad called out, but his voice was barely audible.
From the archway came a blast of bluish-white light. Canavar rose off his feet. His legs dangled for a moment as if shaking out the last moves of his dance. Then his body stiffened.
As if pulled by an invisible arm, he whooshed toward the open door.
“Floating was an expression!” he shouted. “Wilt someone help me!”
I jumped to my feet, but Dad pulled me back. “No, Jack, stay here.”
Torquin, with a speed I didn’t know he had, leaped forward and grabbed Canavar’s ankle.
“Yeeeow, that hurteth!” Canavar screamed. He was parallel to the ground now, his head pointed toward the door, his leg firmly in Torquin’s beefy hand.
“Will not let go of leg,” To
rquin said.
“Yes, but leg will rip from torso, head, and arms!” Canavar screamed.
The archway itself shuddered. From the depth of its blackness a jolt of lightning spat toward the sky, with a blast of sound that hit my ears like a punch. I tumbled backward. Torquin fell, unhanding Canavar.
The air in front of the archway began to lighten and swirl wildly, like a cloud of fiercely battling mosquitoes. It swelled and settled into a human shape. A woman.
She raised her arm and Canavar lifted upward until the two of them were face-to-face. She bellowed something in a language I didn’t recognize, and Canavar replied, “Please, spare me! I am so sorry. This was an accident, you see!”
The woman’s eyes flashed orange red. Canavar shot into the air, toward the roof of the building.
Aly and Cass drew close to my dad and me. Torquin jumped backward, shielding us with his body.
The woman stepped down the stairs. Her face was sunken and gray, and the skin seemed to be peeling off. Her hair, white, lifeless, and nearly as long as she was tall. She raised a finger toward us, more like a bone covered with papery skin. Her nail was black and curved like a ram’s horn.
As her jaw began to work, she let out a voice that was like a scraping of pins against my eardrum.
“Is that,” she said, thrusting her arm upward, “the best you could do?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
FLYING ZOMBIE SKIN
GETTING HIT IN the eye with a piece of flying zombie arm skin is not super fun. The sting is as bad as the stink.
I tried to blink the tiny shard from my eye, which was watering like crazy. “Are you all right?” Dad asked.
“Answer my question—is that the best you can do?” the woman demanded. Through my one good eye I could see her descending the stairs in lurching steps, leaving tiny fragments of herself all around her. I couldn’t decide if they were pieces of bone, sections of her raggedy toga, or very bad eczema.
“It is!” Aly blurted out. “Or it isn’t. I don’t know. Could you rephrase the question?”
As the creature moved forward, leaving a trail of withered debris, her arm remained pointing upward. My eye was clearing now, awash in tears. I followed the angle of her skeletal finger to the top of the Mausoleum, where Canavar sat uncomfortably on one of the horses of the marble chariot.
“For a soul, you half-wit!” the woman replied. “Is that the best you could do for a soul? That shriveled prune of a human being?”
“I have hidden qualities, O Lady of the House,” Canavar shouted, peering down from the marble horse like a gargoyle. “Which I shall be delighted to enumerate, preferably face-to-face. Or . . . face to what remains of thine. Thou wouldst not happen to have a ladder?”
The woman twirled her finger in a circle, muttering under her breath.
With a screech, Canavar shot up into the air like a torpedo. He fell toward us, arms and legs flailing. Torquin stood, rocking from side to side as he positioned himself underneath. Canavar landed in his grip silently, as if Torquin had caught a giant marshmallow.
“Touchdown,” Torquin murmured.
“We mean no harm,” Aly said, her voice shaky. “My name is Aly, these are Jack, Cass, Torquin, and Mr. Martin McKinley. Those people behind us are Dr. Theresa Bradley and Professor Radamanthus Bhegad. And you?”
As the woman lowered her hand, the skin peeled off her pinkie, dropping to the stairs. I had to turn away in disgust. “I am Skilaki,” she said.
“A beautiful name indeed,” Canavar blurted out. “Lovely. Lyrical. My name is Canavar—Dr. Canavar, to be precise—and I owe you a great deal of grati—”
“My name means ‘little dog,’ and I despise it!” Skilaki shot back. “I was called Sibyl Seventy-three, which was fine with me, but our ruler wouldn’t have it. Too many sibyls, she said. And what the Great Queen Artemisia wants, she gets. Now, if it is entry you seek, let us trade and be done with it. Artemisia does not like to be disturbed! But perhaps I can bring her a better specimen than this . . . homunculus. Caviar.”
“Canavar,” the shrunken man said. “And thou art so right. I am not worthy. My soul is parched and wrinkled—”
“Silence, dwarfling, or you return to the chariot!” Skilaki shouted.
I swallowed. Facing Skilaki was not easy. Her eyes seemed to float in their sockets, as if they might fall out at any second. I tried to control my trembling as I spoke. “We’re seeking the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus,” I said. “We just want to walk in, find something we need, and leave.”
“And what is it you need, child?” Skilaki asked.
Cass and Aly looked at me in panic.
Did she know about the powers of the Loculi? I had no idea. I couldn’t tip our hand. If she knew what we were really after, and why, it could make our job harder.
“A . . . stone ball,” I said. “Nothing of much importance. But we humans prize its beauty. We understand it was given to Artemisia many years ago. Maybe you can help us.”
Skilaki looked at me blankly for a long second, then stomped her feet angrily. I turned away, not wanting to see any more peelings. “Do not talk to me of silly rocks! The queen. Requires. A soul. For entry.”
“I have a feeling you don’t mean sole, like a shoe,” Cass said. “Or a fish. Because those we could do—”
Skilaki narrowed her eyes, releasing a few eyelashes to the ground. “You try my patience!”
Cass backed away. “Just checking.”
“Okay, you take a soul from us, just say,” Aly said. “What happens to that person after the soul is gone?”
“The soul enters a glorious state,” Skilaki said. “Floating free of physical constraints. Absorbing knowledge and wisdom. Eventually, perhaps, finding a home in another body. The original body is freed also—freed of emotions and thought, able to function at the level of pure action, as would the most industrious of insects.”
“So you’re asking us for a volunteer to become a zombie?” I said.
“I do not know this word. I am merely a gatekeeper for Artemisia,” Skilaki said. “Does this request cause a problem?”
“Of course it does!” Aly shot back.
“Then fare thee well,” Skilaki said, turning her back to us.
As she ascended the steps, the entire Mausoleum structure vibrated. The ground shook again, and the walls began to fade.
“Oh, great, it’s all going to disappear,” Cass said.
I broke away from Dad and ran after her. “Wait!” I shouted.
“Jack, get back here!” Dad called out.
I could hear him running after me. I raced past Skilaki and turned, blocking her way to the door. “I want to see Artemisia,” I said. “Tell her I’m . . . I’m a descendant of Massarym.”
Skilaki nearly lost her balance. “You dare ask for—” She cut herself off, leaning forward. “Massarym, you say? Actually, there is a resemblance.”
“Tell your queen we will consider giving her a soul, but only if she gives us the stone ball and safe passage back,” I demanded.
From the baring of what were left of her teeth, I knew that yes was not in the ballpark. Skilaki took a step back and began raising her hand. “You have no power to bargain.”
I could feel my feet leaving the ground. I turned, trying to wrap my arm around a column to keep from being flung into the air.
“Keep away from him!” Dad grabbed her arm. He tried to pull her back but only came up with handfuls of shredded skin and toga. I was lurching upward as if my body were being pulled by a curtain cord.
“Stop!” a voice called out. “I volunteer!”
Skilaki turned. Dad froze. I felt my legs jamming back onto the ground.
Far behind us, Professor Bhegad stood up from his wheelchair. With a strength I didn’t know he had, he held his head high. “I will do it. I give my soul to the Lady Artemisia freely.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A GAME MOST DANGEROUS
WE RUSHED TO Professor Bhegad so quickly he fe
ll back into his wheelchair. “You can’t do this, Professor,” I said.
Professor Bhegad shook his head defiantly. “My children,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “look at me. I don’t have long to live. You cannot conceive the pain I have been through. Once I’m gone, I’m useless to you. Please . . . let my death help in the quest for the Loculi.”
Dad looked at the old man in bewilderment. “You’re willing to die for them?”
Professor Bhegad nodded. “I am willing to do what’s right.”
“We can’t let you,” Aly said.
“You wouldn’t like the life of a zombie, Professor,” Cass said.
“Skilaki,” I said. “Please. Let us have a minute or so.”
She rolled her eyes, and one of them slipped out of the socket. As it fell toward the ground, she caught it in her right hand and popped it back in. “I have all the time in the world,” she said. “Literally.”
“I did not see her do that,” Cass said.
I raced down the stairs, gesturing for the others to follow. Torquin stepped behind Professor Bhegad’s chair and fastened a seat belt around him. He bent his knees, gripped the handrests, and lifted the chair chest high. As Torquin walked carefully down the stairs, Bhegad placed his hand on the big guy’s. “I will miss you, old friend,” he said.
Torquin coughed. His face was extra red. As he set the old man down, he wouldn’t look at us.
What would Professor Bhegad’s death do to him?
What would it do to us?
I glanced at Bhegad. Behind his watery, bloodshot eyes was a strength as solid as the marble columns above us.
“Jack . . . ?” Aly’s voice brought me back to the present.
“Here’s the plan,” I said. “We let her take him. But we act superfast. We get Artemisia to give us the Loculus before they actually do anything to him.”