Win

  “What astounding strength and courage!” a second announcer responds. “She’s down, Grail Games worshippers, without the use of her legs, and yet she drags herself along the stone! Is that a Limited Mobility Form I see being used, correct me if I’m wrong—”

  “Yes, absolutely! Thalassa is using that particular LM Form to keep her upper torso angled properly as she advances forward with her hands and arms, refusing to wait for the paralysis effect to wear off—”

  “Ah, let the big famous chazufs fight it out,” Kateb says in a tired voice, huddled on the stone next to me.

  “How much longer until evening?” Zaap says, sitting in a crouch on a stone across from us.

  Chihar checks his clock gadget. “Sunset in half an hour.”

  Lolu wraps her arms around her, shivering. “Good.”

  Brie Walton’s guess about the increasing speed of the pyramid’s rotation turns out to be correct. By the time twilight comes and the artificial illumination lights up the Game Zone, the pyramid is definitely turning much faster than it did a few hours ago.

  By eleventh hour, it is noticeably unpleasant. If you’re on one of the outer stones, the landmarks pass by fast enough that it’s hard to spot details. The ocean and the brightly lit cliffs coastline displace each other so quickly that they start to blur slightly.

  We try to stay in the interior to minimize feeling acute dizziness on top of all our other miserable symptoms.

  “Close your eyes,” Chihar says to Zaap who retches yet again with motion sickness and looks very ill. “It will make it . . . easier.”

  I take shallow breaths and hold on to the stone on which I sit, leaning forward partially from queasiness, as the shadows and lights sweep across all things around me in an endless circle.

  “You’re doing great, sis,” Gordie’s voice sounds in my ear. “Makes me think of rotisserie chicken. Going round and round. . . . Come to think of it, wouldn’t mind having some right now, with mashed potatoes. . . .”

  I squeeze my eyes hard, then cover my ears.

  Nearby, Brie seems to be staring at her lap. In fact, her eyes are narrowed and she’s breathing heavily. Kateb, Lolu, and Tuar appear no better. Only Kokayi seems to be unaffected by the turning motion and instead continues to stand and stretch. He even jumps in place, only shivering occasionally and glancing behind him with a nervous look at his own personal ghosts.

  When twelfth hour arrives with the sound of bells, the pyramid rearranges itself for the final time, while continuing to spin. We barely make the leaps necessary to anchor ourselves on the newly configured blocks. And we continue to wait.

  “One more hour . . .” Lolu mutters. “And then comes thirteenth hour when all the stones come together and we have to be outside or be crushed. So when do we go out there? When should we move closer to the outside?”

  I look up at her and then in the direction of the exterior which begins just a few stones away, where light and night darkness displace each other rapidly, sweeping by. “Let’s not—” I start to speak then stop because my empty stomach threatens to rise up. “Let’s just wait here . . . until ten minutes before the hour.”

  “I will continue to check the time,” Chihar says quietly. I notice his forehead is covered with sweat and his hands are trembling as he goes through the contents of his bag.

  I nod and close my eyes, continuing to breathe lightly, falling in and out of awareness. The sound of the audience and Games announcers is low, indicating little action out there, and now the whispering Egyptian gods are louder in my head, clamoring for my attention.

  “Go away . . .” I whisper.

  Just. Go. Away.

  “Ten minutes!” Chihar’s nervously high-pitched voice interrupts my dream-state, bringing me back to the present.

  Immediately my heart starts pounding as my eyes fly open. My teammates come alive also, dazed and barely conscious.

  “Everyone key your bags!” I manage to say. Then I clear my throat to sing the voice command, and grasp my equipment bag tightly as it rises to hover at my chest.

  We begin our last wretched climb over about three or four stones to the exterior, trying to keep our balance amidst the spinning dizziness.

  Once outside, we look around carefully for hostile Contenders nearby while trying to ignore the horrible rotation speed and the sensation of vertigo. . . .

  A few Contenders are scattered on the slope around us, but no one is interested in picking a fight, not now. I vaguely recognize members of Team Irtiu emerging somewhere near the top on the same side of the pyramid. . . . Thank goodness they are very far up-slope.

  “This is crazy!” Brie says, squatting down close to the slab surface as soon as she climbs onto the stone next to me. She spreads out her hands for balance then grabs the corners for a better grip.

  I just shake my head and imitate her, finding edges to grasp with my fingers. “Hold on tight.”

  Lolu gets up on the block on the other side of me while Kokayi, Chihar, and the others crowd nearby.

  In minutes, the bells ring to signal thirteenth hour.

  “Here we go!” Brie cries as the familiar deep rumble of grinding stones begins for the last time.

  The Games audience screams as a commentator voice announces loudly, “This is it, Grail Games worshippers! The final hour is a true test of their abilities to hold on!”

  With painfully raw hands I grip the surface of the stone block beneath me, squinting from the harsh wind and the hard rotation speed, just as I see the nearby blocks coming in closer and closer to mine. . . .

  “Ah, bashtooh! Watch your fingers!” Zaap calls above us as the limestone surfaces of our adjacent stones connect.

  I adjust my grip on the edges of the stone just as the gaps close in on the left and right . . . then I have to move my hands again as the other stones approach from above and below, settling in their original ancient places with the deep dull impact of many tons.

  Zaap’s shoes narrowly miss hitting Brie on the head, as he repositions his feet. Kateb cusses, pulling up his own long legs to make room for Kokayi. Lolu’s bag bumps against me as she sidles closer.

  The sight of the giant stones coming together perfectly, a million gaps narrowing so that there are no seams between them, is truly amazing.

  We continue to hug our stones and stare around us as the pyramid slope becomes a uniform staircase-wall once again, exactly as it had been for thousands of years on Earth. . . .

  Just for a moment I hear the whispering Egyptian gods sigh in relief. And suddenly Horus and Thoth walk down the pyramid slope toward me. They’ve grown to the size of giants, so that each oversized block is a mere stepping stone for their divine feet. Their pounding footsteps along the limestone and granite surfaces evoke a strange harmonic vibration in my inner ear. I flinch, feeling chills at the nape of my neck and a hammering in my head. Ugh, no, go away. . . .

  I close my eyes, squeezing them tight.

  The Great Pyramid of Giza is now reassembled. The immense monument hovers several feet above the sand, all parts in their precise original configuration.

  Then suddenly it’s spinning faster and faster. . . .

  The rest of thirteenth hour is a hellish nightmare of turning motion. I honestly can’t say I’m aware of anything but the grip and pressure of my body parts against the stone surface of the slope to which I cling.

  There are a few small advantages to having the pyramid back in one piece—at least now we can hold on to more than one stone and can use corners of different blocks for leverage. Plus, the cold ocean wind is no longer sweeping through the interior and coming at us from all sides.

  Nothing else is good.

  A few minutes in, Brie whips her head around to look back at the night world flying around us, the scenery flashing by. “No, just no . . .” she mutters, then squeezes her eyes shut and faces the slope again.

  “For your own good, don’t look back,” Chihar says nearby. “Don’t turn around.”

  “We’
re spinning so fast!” Zaap moans, also closing his eyes while keeping his nose against the stone he’s clinging to.

  “Hold on.” I grind my teeth together as I speak, to hold back the rising bile from my stomach. “Just hold on. . . .”

  And then I hear Kokayi’s voice: “I am trying to hold on, mamai, stop it! Stop screaming, crazy old woman!”

  I shut my eyes once again, this time for good, because the vertigo is overwhelming now.

  The clamor of the Egyptian gods returns and I am forced to listen to them for at least half an hour, maybe longer, as the thirteenth hour comes to a close. They’re arguing—horrible, loud, brash, in alien voices. . . . Maybe they are confronting the Atlantean gods for putting all of us through this damned ordeal.

  At the same time the audience noise is deafening and I vaguely wonder why. Then I find out—it swells periodically whenever the Games announcers report that Contenders have lost their desperate grip and gone flying off the pyramid . . . to die or be disqualified.

  “. . . But oh, oh! What a sight, Grail Games worshippers!” one announcer cries in sudden wild excitement. “The elusive Artist Rurim Kiv has been discovered at last! There he is, clinging to one of the cornerstones near the bottom of the pyramid, right under the nose of Team Gratu! And it appears the Blue Grail is still in his possession—”

  “Just a few minutes longer,” Lolu whispers to herself, pressing her cheek against the stone, her arms hugging the slope in misery.

  And then the Technician screams suddenly, as her shaking fingers lose their grip.

  Lolu Eetatu goes sliding down past me, her body flying outward with centrifugal motion. . . . The only thing that stops her is the strap of her equipment bag catching onto the edge of one block, and my left hand which lashes out in reflex.

  In that split second I reach out with a death-hold—my arm slides against hers, while my fingers lock around her wrist in a Grip of Friendship.

  Chapter 71

  Holding Lolu with one hand, I grasp the upper edge of the stone with the other. At the same time, I straddle the block and press my knees and thighs around it, squeezing them together in an LM Form-based stance that keeps me anchored somehow. At the same time, I dig in with my toes into the crevices between blocks, pressing with all my strength.

  “Hold on, Lolu!” I cry, even though it feels like my arm is being ripped out of its socket from her flying weight. “I’ve got you, don’t let go!”

  And the next moment I feel Brie Walton’s hand grasp my shoulder as her arm wraps around me, pressing me down to better anchor us.

  Hold on, just hold on. . . .

  Together we spin, plastered against the pyramid slope, holding on for dear life.

  When at last the Games choir sings the hymn to indicate Midnight Ghost Time, all time has blurred.

  It’s over and somehow I’ve survived it. No—we survived it, my teammates and I.

  The audience thunders on the cliffs as the commentators announce the ending of Stage Two of the Games of the Atlantis Grail.

  “Rurim Kiv! Rurim Kiv!” The chant rises to overpower all other sound.

  But the only thing the rest of us care about is that the pyramid is slowing down, spinning slower and slower.

  Agony is diminishing. I can open my eyes now . . . and Lolu has found her footing and resumed her own grasp of the stone next to me. Her weight is no longer wrenching my arm out of its socket.

  My teammates are groaning all around me, as we ease our death-grips. The pyramid comes to a complete stop, with one side facing the cliffs in the same precisely parallel alignment as its original position four days ago. We end up on the left side, partially facing the beach and the ocean.

  “Holy crap-burrito in the sky!” Brie exclaims on my other side, moving back from our common embrace while looking up and around with a stunned, almost amazed expression.

  My head is still spinning with residual vertigo. But I turn my head at her and then at Lolu and suddenly I grin at them, breathing raggedly, even though I’m seeing double once more and I’m not even sure which one of them is real.

  Who and what is real?

  “Why? Why did you do it?” the triple Lolu chorus says, snapping back into single focus, into a single Lolu. “Why did you hold me?”

  I take a deep breath and it comes out in an involuntary shaking laugh.

  But Lolu’s staring at me with her big, intense, kohl-rimmed eyes. She’s suddenly very young and vulnerable, and her voice reflects it, angry and confused. “You could’ve let me fall. I wronged you, you had every right—”

  My ears are ringing, my vision blurs again, but I continue to grin at her.

  “Ah, Lolu,” I say. “We made it. Does it matter now? I’m glad you’re here.”

  There’s a strange moment of pause on Lolu’s face. And then a muscle twitches at her mouth and her forehead. She swipes at her face with the back of her hand—an angry, choppy movement that doesn’t happen quickly enough to conceal the fat tears running down her cheeks.

  Before I can say anything, Lolu hides her face and shakes silently, hugging the pyramid stone.

  Even as we speak, the glass walls marking the Game Zone retract back into the sand, allowing access to Games staff, medical techs, and anyone else to enter freely. Most of the Contenders continue to cling to the pyramid slopes for a while longer to gain their bearings. But soon we start moving, in a hurry to get off this infernal rock structure that has been our prison these past four days.

  “Hey, Lark!” Brie says next to me. Her purple-streaked hair is tousled, sweat and exhaustion lining her face. I can only imagine what I must look like to her. “Not too bad, eh? We’re still breathing. Ready to get out of this ancient piss hole?”

  “Oh, yeah. . . . And—thanks, Brie.”

  The purple-haired girl merely snorts and raises her eyebrows, then cranes her neck sideways to look at me. There’s a complicated expression in her eyes that I’m not sure how to interpret, but I believe it’s a good thing.

  I nod, then take a deep breath, steadying my footing, chortling softly to myself in a hysterical state of hyperarousal.

  And then I begin to carefully climb down the slope of the Great Pyramid of Giza onto the beach of Atlantis.

  At some point I look up and see a strange sight—flowers falling. There are rose, pink, white, red, and peach-colored blossoms raining down on the pyramid and on all of us from an unknown invisible source high above. As high as the stars, it seems. . . .

  “What—What’s that?” I begin to mutter, raising one trembling finger skyward to tap a falling flower that spins past my face.

  “Tomorrow is Flower Day,” Kateb says tiredly, climbing next to me. “They are greeting us early. Go ahead and take some.” And he snatches up an orange flower out of the air and sticks it in his pocket.

  I’m too tired to wonder beyond his explanation or ask my usual curious questions. Instead I open my hand, allowing a cream-colored and a lavender flower pair to settle on my palm. I stare at them for a moment, seeing for some reason not two but four flowers, doubling in my vision. Then, because it’s just too much to deal with, I let them slip and fall from my hand . . . and I continue moving.

  As soon as I and the others leap off the bottom stone onto the sand, we are met by crowds of supporters, friends, and family.

  There’s no time to exchange words with my teammates, because Aeson is here. Before I can manage a stifled scream of joy, he moves toward me and lifts me up bodily, taking me in a hard desperate embrace as I cling to him, starting to sob, and all at once we are surrounded by Imperial guards.

  I can’t begin to describe the happy chaos that follows.

  “Gwen . . . my Gwen!” im amrevu keeps repeating, and I mutter some kind of feeble nonsense and hide my face in his shirt.

  I experience the musky scent of him, the very real hard planes of his chest, as my shaking arms wrap around his neck. My fingers caress the back of his head, the soft golden pleats of hair, grasping him all to me, greedy,
greedy. . . .

  “Oh, Aeson! It’s okay, I’m okay, I made it! Aeson, Aeson! How are you? Is that really you? Oh God! It’s you! Please, how are—”

  I tear myself away momentarily, and see a crowd of familiar faces, surrounding us. Gracie is there, tear-streaked and anxious but holding back, and so’s my brother Gordie. . . . There’s Laronda and Dawn, Chiyoko, Blayne, Hasmik, and Oalla and the various astra daimon . . . and then I see my brother George! And Mom and Dad are here, and even my best friend Ann Finnbar from Vermont . . . and some kind of large spotted cow that I’ve seen often right outside a neighbor’s barn whenever we drove by it on the main road to the post office. . . .

  No, this is not real.

  The Egyptian gods stand up all around us, shadow-giants, while the illuminated pyramid towers in silhouette against the darkness of ocean, and the night sky is full of colorful stars and falling flowers.

  Aeson’s face looms up-close, intense with exhaustion and beautiful, as he leans in closer to me with alarm. “Gwen? Are you okay? Gwen!”

  I see Aeson’s face multiply until there are many copies of him, all wonderful, all looking down at me . . . and the night spins in circles around me while the Egyptian gods whisper their farewells.

  And then everything rushes away and I sink with relief into darkness.

  The next time I wake up, it is morning, and I’m lying in my own soft bed in Aeson’s estate in Phoinios Heights.

  The familiar heavy curtains, specially made to protect me from the harshness of daylight, are drawn, filling the room with soothing darkness. However, a small streak of light manages to cast its length along the bedcovers—not the full fierce light of midday but the gentle, bearable color that comes right after dawn.