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 now. 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 quietly 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.”
“Indeed, yes.” Canavar nodded. “Many tomb robbers were known to employ youths for their ability to enter small spaces. Is it inconceivable that among them may have been one marked with the lambda? Or have there never been such genetic prodigies in any of the generations before thee?”
His words hung in the stale hotel air.
Cass, Aly, and I shared a look. Of course there had been Selects through the years. Dad and Mom had been studying them. But the likelihood that one had lived in Turkey and managed to get into the Mausoleum?
“I guess it’s possible,” Aly said.
“Of course it is!” Canavar said. “I may be small of stature, but I bow to no one regarding powers of deduction—”
“Get to point!” Torquin was standing in the doorway now. His face was drawn, his eyes swollen.
“I am saying thou must . . . follow the money,” Canavar replied, “as they say.”
“Canavar, are there any records of the thefts in the museum?” I asked. “Have there been projects to recover the stolen loot?”
“No,” the small man replied. “Not at the museum. But in a grand ancient chamber convenes a regular meeting of scholars, the Homunculi, dedicated to the return of such purloined treasures.”
“The Homunculi?” Aly said in an undertone. “You mean there’s a whole group of creepy little humanoids like Canavar?”
Canavar gave her a severe look and raised his voice slightly. “A group to which, I must add, I have been elected Grand Carbunculus Wizendum for twelve years straight.”
“Grand what?” Cass asked.
“Roughly equivalent to treasurer,” Canavar said. He slipped off the sofa and moved toward the door. “Our rituals are sacred, our methods arcane. Thou shall be the first of the noninitiates to enter the inner sanctum.” He smiled. “It is fitting, I suppose, for those named Select.”
CHAPTER FORTY
THE FENCE
OUR VAN PUTTERED to a stop in an empty, weed-choked lot. Torquin parked right up next to the entrance of a warehouse building with corrugated metal walls. A cardboard sign hung lopsided over the front door. On it, in thick marker, were three lines of words in Greek, Turkish, and English. The bottom line read GRAND AND SECRET ORDER OF THE HOMUNCULI MAUSOLIENSIS.
“Behold!” Canavar said, his face pinched with pride.
“I quiver with awe,” Cass drawled.
“Very secret,” I whispered to Aly. She smothered a laugh.
As we poured out of the van, Canavar skittered to the front door and fiddled with the rusty combination lock. After a few unsuccessful tries, he gave the door a swift kick and it swung open.
He reached in and flicked on a light switch. A chain of bare lightbulbs illuminated a vast, musty room. It was lined with metal bookshelves, file cabinets, piles of papers, tables containing unfinished jigsaw puzzles, and a spilled container of congealed orange liquid labeled SEA BUCKTHORN JUICE. Black streaks wriggled along the baseboards as unidentified small creatures ran for shelter.
“Love the scent,” Cass said. “Mold, mildew, or mouse?”
Canavar went straight to a desktop PC with a monitor the size of a small doghouse. He pressed a button on a giant CPU and waited as a logo lit up the screen: WINDOWS 98.
“Even the computer is an antiquity,” Aly said.
Canavar let out a disturbed fnirf-fnirf-fnirf sound, which I realized was a laugh. “Ah youth, thou canst not envision a world without the flash and blaze of computerweb. I shall now us
e the mouse-clicker upon its pad, to activate the documents folder . . .”
Aly slipped by him and sat in a ragged office chair. “I’ll do it.”
She stared at the screen for a moment, motionless. I gulped, remembering our encounter with the river Nostalgikos. “Aly,” I said. “It’s okay if you can’t do it. You’ll be able to build your skills again . . .”
Aly raised an eyebrow in my direction. “Dude, that griffin scared the pants off all of us. Whatever it was that I lost—it’s back, big-time.” She turned back, clicking confidently away at the keyboard. “Lots of data here. Shipwrecks . . . sonar scans . . . correspondence . . . auction house records . . . periodical archives . . .”
“Yes. That one—the archives!” Canavar blurted. “Most are in Turkish, of course, but owing to my English education, I have endeavored to include many translated pieces from the international press. I would draw thy attention to a newspaper report dated March of 1962 . . .”
“Got it,” Aly said, clicking on a pdf that instantly filled the screen:
“‘Glowing blue ball,’” Cass said. “That could be it.”
“It could be the ale talking,” Aly said. “Do you have anything on this guy Gencer?”
“Naturally,” Canavar said, directing Aly to another folder marked RESEARCH: LOOTING, PERSONNEL.
Another pdf opened on the screen, and Aly read aloud from a blurry image of a typewritten list: “‘Arrested for public misconduct, 1962 . . . arrested for impersonation of public official, 1961 . . . arrested for forging the name of the Beatle Ringo Starr on a check, 1963 . . . arrested for assaulting a prominent German art and antiquities dealer named Dieter Herbst, 1965 . . .’ Nothing on Gencer after that . . .”
“Dieter Herbst?” Cass said. “I would kill for a name like that.”
“Why would an art dealer consort with a small-timer like Gencer?” I asked.
“Fence,” Torquin grumbled.
Cass scratched his head. “They had sword fights?”
“A fence is someone who sells stolen goods,” Dad spoke up, “someone who has a side deal with a thief. Since the fence didn’t actually steal the stuff, he or she can claim ignorance. Fences can be a sleazy lot, but sometimes they run outwardly respectable businesses.”