“You gave up a Loculus?” Aliyah said.
“We’ll get it back,” Marco said.
“If I hadn’t given it up, that Loculus would be heading back to Egypt in the Sphinx’s paws,” I said. “And the Behemoth would be all over us. The rift is blocked now, so there shouldn’t be more disturbances on the island. At least for now.”
“It’s brilliant,” Nirvana said.
“Until it’s not,” I replied. “Which might be soon. What happened to Eloise?”
Nirvana’s face was lined with worry. “Okay, we’re standing there being all ineffectual while you and Marco are whaling on the beasts, and I see Torquin taking Eloise’s hand and walking her back, farther from the action. This seems totally okay to me, Mr. Protector and all, but I’m noticing he’s saying stuff like, ‘My dear, I’m afraid this is too perilous a venue right now.’ Which would be borderline normal for anyone else to say—”
“But not Torquin,” Aliyah added. “Next thing we know, Eloise is pulling at him, telling him to leave her alone. Also not an unreasonable thing to do, but under the circumstances no one paid much attention. The screaming came a few seconds later.”
“I told you he was acting weird!” Cass said.
“I’ve sent Brutus and a couple of others to follow them,” Nirvana replied, looking back into the dark passageway. “They were on Torquin’s tail. Come.”
She handed Cass and me flashlights. Marco followed. We raced past the waterfall and into the tunnel. At the first fork in the path, where we would turn left to get through the maze, Brutus stood pointing to the right. “Hurry.”
Going as fast as we could, we raced to the next intersection, where Fritz pointed us to the left. “I asked them to do this,” Nirvana said. “Sort of like the crumbs Hansel left to get out of the woods.”
“Huh?” said Marco.
“The string Theseus left in the labyrinth to escape the Minotaur?” Nirvana called over her shoulder.
“What?” Marco said.
“Forget it,” Nirvana replied.
“Left!” shouted a rebel who was just ahead of us.
“This is starting to look familiar,” Cass said.
The tunnel was wider here. On the walls were paintings of griffins and hose-beaked vromaskis. Just ahead, on a corner that led off in another direction, I shone my flashlight on a mark carved into the wall. “I made that,” I said. “And if I remember right, we should be pretty close to—”
My foot hit something that slid against the wall in a brittle-sounding crash. I quickly shone my flashlight downward to see a pile of human bones. “That is so gross,” Nirvana said.
“Cass, we saw this skeleton—remember?” I said. “When we were first exploring the maze?”
“Right,” Cass said. “It was after we fell—well, you fell—into that pool, in that weird karst environment.”
“I don’t want to sound like an idiot,” Marco said, “but . . .”
“Karst,” Cass said. “It’s a geology thing. A place that has sinkholes, underground pools, cenotes. That’s where Jack fell—a cenote, which is like a round pool. In Ancient Mexico they were considered holy and used for sacrifices and stuff. The weird thing is, you see this kind of stuff in areas that have lots of limestone—but not usually in a jungle.”
“Sacrifices?” Aliyah’s voice echoed in the hallway. Without another word, she barreled past us. We followed her in a hurry.
The tunnel narrowed. Nirvana was directly ahead of me, and she smacked her head on a long stalactite, which cracked off and crashed to the ground. “Yeow!” she cried out. “Watch your head.”
“EEEEEEEE!” came a cry from directly ahead of us.
Monkeys?
What were they doing here?
Aliyah was standing at the entrance to the cave. As we gathered around her, we all stopped cold.
I remembered the layout of the place: Rock walls, dripping with water and rising up into darkness. A stone slab with a hole in the middle, about twenty feet in diameter, which dropped into a pool of icy-cold water. A room carved into the rock of the opposite wall, with a stone table and a set of steps.
At this point I could actually see little more than the walls. A few monkeys were climbing them, leaping from rock perch to rock perch. The last time we’d been here, the place was empty, but not now.
Old priesty-looking guys in gilded robes and sandals stood around the hole, chanting in a language I didn’t recognize. They were more walking skeletons than men, all small and hunched and fine boned like birds. Their skin was papery and white, their movements excruciatingly slow. From thick candles on the floor, soft light shone upward, making the moisture on the walls seem to flicker with the rhythm of the chanting.
“What the—?” Marco said. “Hello?”
At the opposite end, one of the old priests began slowly climbing the steps into the room. He didn’t react to Marco’s call for a second or two. I think it took these guys time to do anything.
At last the priests turned toward us. They began to shuffle quietly backward, away from the hole, back toward the cave wall. In a few moments we could see the room from end to end. Back when we’d first explored the underground paths, this place had been bare and dusty. Now it had become a kind of shrine, decorated with leafy branches and flowers. The walls were painted with scenes of battle, a portrait of a royal couple with two sons, an armada of ships. Dozens of candles had been elaborately arranged, along with some kind of chalice with incense that smelled like pine trees.
A priest unlike the others stood in the center, with his back to us. He wore a jewel-encrusted hood and his shoulders were immense, completely blocking from sight the table that I knew was there.
“Who are you?” Cass called out. “You. The big guy. In the center.”
But the man said nothing. Standing to his right, one of the older priests announced in a whispery voice, “I am R’amphos.”
Now the giant priest turned. I could see, under the hood, a thatch of bright red hair and a thick white beard.
“Torquin?” I fought the urge to laugh. I wanted this to be a joke. Was there any other possibility? Why else would he be there?
“He’s playing,” Marco murmured.
“He’s crazy,” Cass said.
“He scares me,” Nirvana said.
What scared me was Aliyah’s reaction. I could see her trembling.
As Torquin descended the steps, the table behind him became visible. On it, lying unconscious, was Eloise.
“All bow,” said R’amphos, “to the Omphalos.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
THE MOTHER OF INVENTION
IMPOSSIBLE.
Of all the crazy things we’d seen, all the unpredictable behavior, all the betrayals—this was the one I just. Could. Not.
Marco tensed up, clenching tight to Ischis. “Ohhhh, no, Big Guy,” he growled. “You don’t get away with this.”
Springing upward, he leaped past the priests. He pinned Torquin against the wall, the sword to his neck. “Tell me this is some kind of joke, Torquin. Tell me. And then, guess what? Even if it is, I am going to kill you.”
“What did you do to my sister?” Cass raced up to the altar.
“She is sleeping,” Torquin said. “Don’t worry, Cassius.”
His voice was soft, not rough. His words were perfectly formed. Had this been an act, all along? How could he have fooled us? How could we not know we were sharing all our adventures with . . . giving all our trust to . . .
The Omphalos.
Torquin was not Torquin. He was the head of the Karai Institute. The man who had accused Mom of betraying the group’s ideals. This was the monster who had put a contract on her life, causing her to fake her own death. Because of the Omphalos, I spent years of my life thinking I did not have a mother.
As someone touched my hand gently from behind, I jumped. Turning quickly, I looked upward into a very familiar face. “M—” I started to blurt out but kept myself from completing Mom. “Sister N
ancy! How—?”
“I was commandeering rowboats,” she explained, “on a salvage mission. I came as soon as I heard.”
“Did you hear . . . ?” I gestured toward Torquin. Tears began to flow down my cheeks.
“Yes,” she said in a measured voice that didn’t disguise her disgust. “I am as surprised as everyone else.”
Marco hadn’t budged, but Torquin didn’t seem to care much about the blade to his throat. “How . . . how could you do this?” I blurted. “You won our trust. You took us to find the Loculi. You . . . you—”
“You nearly died for us in Greece,” Cass said. “It makes no sense.”
Aliyah walked forward, her face calm and quizzical. “Well, well. All these years I suspected the Omphalos was a figure of imagination. A lie. Perhaps a modern-day Oz, a figment dreamed up by a committee to frighten people. At other times I thought he was Radamanthus Bhegad. I’m not often wrong, dear Torquin. But this time you blindsided me. Free him, Marco. I will not give him the satisfaction of a swift death without an explanation.”
Marco cautiously lowered his sword and let Torquin free. “Omphalos,” Torquin said in his weirdly normal voice, “is a word the Atlanteans gave to the Greeks. Surely you know this.”
“It means the center of all things,” said Aliyah softly.
“It was the word used in Atlantis to describe the office of royal rule. You could call the king Omphalos, or the queen. This is called, in your tongue, an honorific?” Torquin smiled. “I believe you have already met my charming husband, Uhla’ar.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or slap myself in the face just to see if I was dreaming.
“Dude, I don’t know what these old geezers gave you to smoke,” Marco said, raising the sword again, “but you are Torquin. Victor Rafael Quiñones. You are not and could not be married to King Uhla’ar of Atlantis of a gazillion years ago. And no offense, Tork, you’re not Omphalos material. Now take off the costume, wake up Eloise, and let’s book. We got a Sphinx and green blob to deal with.”
Torquin raised a finger and Ischis tore out of Marco’s grip. It flipped over and flew toward Torquin, who grabbed it by the hilt and pointed it downward, the tip resting on the stone floor.
“Dude, okay, whatever,” Marco said.
“Your beloved Torquin will be returned to you in the fullness of time,” said Torquin. “You look upon his countenance. You hear his voice. This is because I, Qalani, no longer exist in my own form. My own consciousness is, shall we say, homeless? For the moment I am borrowing your large friend’s body. Which has its great advantages, to be sure. But it is not easy speaking these words through lips untrained to move with such dexterity.”
“I’ll say,” Nirvana squeaked.
Okay. Okay. Time out.
My head spun. I needed to sort this out. So the Omphalos was Qalani—had been Qalani all along. Only now Qalani was living inside Torquin—which would explain why he’d been acting so weird lately. The idea was crazy. It flitted around my brain like a lost bat, frantic and impossible to pin down.
“You don’t believe me, my golden boy,” said Torquin, aka Qalani, walking closer. “Yet you have seen evidence of Massarym’s curse upon my husband, cruelly confined in the form of a stone statue.”
“H-he cursed you, too?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” Qalani said. “After I created the Loculi, Massarym was the one who appreciated them most. I so loved watching his joy as he flew and disappeared and performed all the feats the Loculi allowed. Karai was wary of my achievement, but I shut him out, so proud was I. In this regard I, Qalani, had put myself above nature, taming and containing it! But as the attacks on Atlantis began from other armies, as the earthquakes and disastrous weather descended, Karai won my ear. He blamed my tampering for the disturbance of the Telion.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Telion?”
“It was the name we gave to the energy that seeped through the great rift,” Qalani said. “And that energy, as you know, was the source of all that was good and perfect in Atlantis. Now, through Karai’s wisdom, I saw that the Loculi should be destroyed. But when I urged Massarym to return the Loculi, he grew angry and vindictive. And, as I discovered, he had secretly learned magics I never even knew existed.
“He punished me, though I was his mother and the queen. I was to spend eternity as a fallen monarch, the lowest of the low. After my physical death, even my consciousness was cursed to remain fully sentient on whatever was left of Atlantis. Over time I learned to inhabit the consciousness of the basest of earth’s creatures, the rats and vultures and crabs and bugs. It took centuries to grow strong enough to implant myself in more complex beings. And when I finally was able to inhabit the various monkeys of the island, my fortunes began to change.”
“So the ones who guided us in the jungle to safety, back when we first tried to escape the Karai Institute . . .” I said. “They seemed so human . . .”
“Ah, you’re welcome.” Qalani chuckled. “I was heartened by the arrival of Herman Wenders, even more so at the development of the Karai Institute. I learned much in my animal disguises, spying on their procedures. As you can imagine, my capabilities as a scientist had been seriously impaired in my primitive physical state. But over the last century I was able to commandeer, then build, communication equipment—all in secret, all while in the form of a highly dexterous chimpanzee. Imagine! Without the capability of speech, I could make my presence known to Radamanthus and the others, in messages. Upon your arrival on the island, Jack, I was on the verge of cracking my most vexing problem—the ability to transfer my consciousness from monkey to human being. My breakthrough was Torquin.”
“Figures,” Marco said.
“So back when we were in New York City, running from Artemisia’s Shadows,” I said. “You summoned Torquin away from us . . .”
“The island had been invaded,” Qalani said. “Necessity is the mother of invention. I needed a human surrogate. It took some time for me to figure out the details.”
I swallowed, standing in front of my mother. The explanation cleared up a few things, but this was the person who had ordered Mom’s death. He, or she, would have to get to me first before coming near her.
“Anne McKinley!” Qalani shouted. “Stand before the Omphalos!”
Aliyah’s brow scrunched. “Who?”
“No!” I shouted. “You can’t!”
Qalani focused directly on Mom. “Your son has proved worthy, Anne. And he bares an uncanny resemblance to my own fair Karai, you know.”
“Wait,” Aliyah said. “Sister Nancy is . . . Jack’s mother?”
“Among everything else I learned today,” Nirvana said, “that’s actually pretty far down on the strangeness ladder.”
I have no words to describe the utter weirdness of Torquin smiling at me like a proud grandmother. Qalani stepped down and began lumbering toward us. The sword sent up sparks as it scraped the stone floor.
Mom stood tall. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she wasn’t shaking a bit. “What I did, Omphalos, was to prevent your taking me from my son. It is what any mother would do. I had to find a cure before he turned fourteen, if I was going to save his life. I gave up everything. I worked for people whose ideals I loathed. But I would do it again—in a heartbeat.”
“You will not need to,” Qalani said. “The time when your death might have served my purpose is long past. You have paid your price, as have I.”
Mom’s shoulders dropped. “Wait—the contract on my life is off?”
“Of course,” Qalani said. “Things have changed. Our quest has come a long way. And I realize now that you acted not to stop us but to save the mission. Now, because of the brave actions of your son and his friends, Karai’s dreams may finally be realized. You have a right to be proud, as do I.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I didn’t care that everyone knew the truth. I threw my arms around my mom for the first time since I was a little boy, and it felt amazing.
“So . . . you?
??re going to help us?” Cass asked.
“Your cause and mine are inextricably linked,” Qalani replied. Then she snapped her—Torquin’s—fingers. “But we are Atlanteans, and this must be done the Atlantean way.”
Four of the priests rose to the altar. They seemed to be floating above the ground as they walked, and together they lifted Eloise. Chanting in a weird, high-pitched gibberish, they carried her over to a hole in the stone floor. Her eyes fluttered, and then focused on her brother. “Cass?” Eloise said.
It was the only word out of her mouth before the priests dropped her through the hole.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
SOLDIER YIELDS TO TAILOR
THE LOUD SPLASH made me flinch. It echoed up into the chamber as Eloise hit the pool at the bottom of the pit. The other priests dropped to their knees, caterwauling at the top of their wizened lungs. Marco lunged for Qalani. Screaming his sister’s name, Cass ran to the edge of the hole and leaped.
Qalani flicked the sword in Marco’s direction. R’amphos pointed a bony finger at Cass. Both Marco and Cass were suspended in midair for a long moment. As if plucked by invisible strings, they both changed direction and landed harmlessly on the stone floor.
“You’re a monster!” Mom said to Qalani. She, Aliyah, and I all tried to vault over the side to get to Eloise, but we bounced back, too.
“If you want to sacrifice someone, sacrifice me!” Cass yelled, scrambling to the edge of the hole. “ELOISE!”
His voice echoed in the darkness below. We were all on our knees now, shining our flashlights.
I heard a cough and a splash from below.
“ELOISE, CAN YOU HEAR ME?” Cass shouted. “ARE YOU OKAY?”
Eloise’s voice floated up. “Well, the water’s cold. But actually kinda refreshing.”
Qalani knelt near us by the cenote and peered down. “How does your head feel, my child?”
“Fine, I guess—” Her voice dropped off, and then she screamed: “Yeeow! Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!”
We all stiffened. What was happening?
Qalani smiled calmly and held out her hand. From an urn at the altar, R’amphos extracted a rope and gave it to her.