Lost in Babylon

It gave me an idea.

  I threaded my arm through the cage’s bars and reached inside. Fumbling in the pocket of Cass’s tunic, I extracted a pack of Wrigley’s spearmint. It took all the concentration I could muster to unwrap one piece and begin to chew it. My mouth was dry, but I worked it, willing the saliva to come. I would need it.

  I turned and took another breath of fresh air. Then, against all instincts, I forced myself to hold my breath and walk into the room.

  Sshhhish.

  This projectile grazed my tunic. I flinched, stepping aside. I was trembling, oxygen-starved.

  Move.

  I was also standing. But no one was firing at me.

  I threw the gum wrapper to my right. Toward the direction I’d come.

  Sshhhish.

  The wrapper’s presence in the air had drawn a shot. There was a zone—an area where the projectiles would be activated. Outside the zone you were safe.

  But the gas was still hissing. Although I couldn’t see it, I could hear it. As I stepped closer to the wall, to the sound, my eyes began to blur.

  There.

  I blinked. In a seam between stones, I could see a hole. A dime-sized blackness. I dropped to my knees, avoiding the direct path of the gas trail. And I reached into my mouth.

  My fingers shook. I couldn’t make my thumb and index finger meet. With my tongue, I thrust the chewed gum to the edge of my teeth.

  It fell to the floor.

  Steady.

  I could see the lump. In fact, I could see two. Three.

  My vision was doubling and tripling, and I blinked hard as I reached down. I tried to grab the wet wad but missed, poking it with my index finger.

  As I lifted my arm, the gum rose, too, stuck to the pad of my finger.

  I fell forward—eyes focused on the hole, finger extended with a feeble burst of energy.

  And I went unconscious.

  “Jack!”

  Aly’s voice stirred me from a dreamless sleep. “Whaaaa—?”

  I felt as if my head had been split open with a cast-iron skillet. I sat up, rubbing my head.

  “Get down, Jack—you’ll be shot at!” Cass screamed.

  I ducked. I caught my breath.

  To my astonishment, I realized I had breath. The tiny, poisonous stream that was closing my windpipe was gone.

  Glancing at the wall, I saw the tiny clump of gum, stuck in the hole. And I no longer heard the hissing of gas.

  “That was amazing, Jack,” Aly said.

  “Thanks,” I replied, gathering my thoughts, “Okay, I’m thinking this room has some kind of sensor—some primitive form of electric eye, without the electricity. When we were in one area, it shot at us. In other, we tripped the gas. In each zone, a different trap. All, unfortunately, invisible.”

  “And we’re in the cage district,” Cass said.

  Marco knelt and began shaking the invisible bars. “We have to lift this thing,” he said. “On the count of three! One . . .”

  Aly and Cass struggled to their feet. Cass was still coughing.

  In the light of the torch, which was still resting on the ground outside the door, the back wall was a long wash of dull yellow. But off to the right, I saw a door opening. In a small rectangle of moonlight, I caught a quick glimpse of what seemed to be a wooden cottage just beyond the Hanging Gardens. But that was quickly blotted out by the silhouette of a cloaked man, filling the doorframe.

  “Two . . .” Marco said.

  A face peered out of the cloak’s hood. From here I couldn’t make out any features, just a pale white oval.

  “M-M-Marco . . . ?” Cass said, staring at the apparition.

  “Thrrrreeee!” Marco shouted. “That means lift!”

  Snapping out of our fearful trance, we all crouched down. The bars might not be visible, but they felt as solid as iron. I quickly dug my fingers along the bottom, to where the cagelike structure met the ground. Crouching, I pulled from my side, they from theirs.

  The cage was massively heavy. We raised it maybe two inches.

  The apparition moved closer. One eye penetrated the gloom like a flashlight beam—no pupil of any color, just a disk of dull greenish-white. Where his other eye should have been was instead a dark socket. His legs were the shape of parentheses, and his feet dragged across the ground as if he couldn’t lift them. A cape hung loosely over his shoulders, which were thin as bamboo.

  Aly, Cass, and I stared, stiff with fear.

  “I think,” Aly said, “this is Kranag.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  KRANAG

  “LIFT AGAIN!” MARCO shouted. “Three!”

  This time we pulled at the same time. I could feel the cage rising . . . maybe six inches. Kranag was walking across the room strangely. And slowly. Zigzagging one way, then the other. He raised his hand, revealing a rusted sword. It took a moment for me to realize he was talking. His voice was like the fluttering of dry wings, all air with a few consonants.

  “Keep it . . . up . . . !” Marco grunted.

  Knee high . . .

  “Go,” Marco said. “Go! Now!”

  Aly ducked first. She slid her body under the cage, not letting her hands leave the bottom. Cass followed. As Marco slid under, the cage dropped with a loud thump. He grimaced, hopping on one foot. “Out! Out now!”

  As we raced out the door and into the night, I heard a sharp clang. Instinctively I spun around. Kranag had struck the side of the invisible cage with his sword. I don’t know if he thought someone was still in there or he was frustrated. He stood rigid now, moving his head toward us.

  “What’s with his eyes?” Marco asked.

  “Daria told us he was blind,” Aly said.

  “He doesn’t need to see,” Cass said. “His other senses do it for him.”

  I grabbed the torch and held it high. The night air was surprisingly cool on my skin. The vizzeet had retreated to the second level of the Hanging Gardens, still shrieking and spitting. Their fear of fire kept them far enough away from us, but the torch wasn’t going to last forever.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Aly shouted.

  “I say we ambush this guy and snatch the Loculus!” Marco hissed.

  I shushed them. Cass was right about Kranag. He was responding to our smallest sound. His hearing was super-sharp. As he moved toward us, he sheathed his sword with one hand. With one uncannily fast motion, his other hand disappeared into his tunic, pulled out a tiny dagger, and threw it.

  The shaft spiraled toward my face.

  “Down!” Marco shouted, pulling me from behind. I crashed to the ground, nearly letting go of the torch. Above us, the vizzeet cackled and jumped, slavering hungrily.

  But I knew how noisy they could be.

  Quickly I ran toward them, waving the flame, causing their screeches to become deafening. I gestured toward Cass, Aly, and Marco to move away from the open cavern.

  Kranag pulled out another knife and paused. He moved in the direction of the footsteps and threw again. The blade passed harmlessly into the garden.

  We huddled at the base of the Hanging Gardens, our ears clanging with the deathly cries of the vizzeet. Kranag stared in their direction and didn’t move. The loud shrieks were blotting out all other sounds—including our voices and footfalls.

  But he was not moving. He looked like he could stand there for ages.

  We had to distract him, and fast.

  I looked to the left, away from the open door. If we followed the wall, we could circle around the Hanging Gardens, pass by his little cottage out back, come out on the other side. Maybe we could attack from there, where he wasn’t looking.

  Right, McKinley. He’ll hear you—or the vizzeet will follow you the whole way.

  But at least it would confuse him momentarily. He might follow us. Maybe we could hide in that old weed-choked cottage and ambush him.

  No. There was a better way. I turned to Cass, Aly, and Marco and mouthed: Come on.

  I booked it to the left. A gob of viz
zeet spit hit my pinkie finger and I nearly dropped the torch. Holding back a cry of pain, I veered farther from the wall.

  We made a right and raced down the long structure. I could see the protective wall, off to our left. From the other side, guards shouted. There were more voices than before. They must have gathered backup. They were too chicken—or too smart—to face the vizzeet without a big crowd.

  Our next right put us at the opposite side of the Hanging Gardens from where we’d started. Kranag’s hut was illuminated in the moonlight, a shabby rectangle of wood slats with a broken roof and a door that hung off rusted hinges.

  “What are we doing, Jack?” Cass asked, speaking for the first time since we’d left Kranag’s earshot.

  I raced toward a dry, scraggly bush that seemed to be growing from the base of the hut’s wall. The whole structure was neglected and overgrown. Dead vines twined up through the wall’s slats, threatening to overwhelm the house. To turn it into a tiny mockery of the Hanging Gardens themselves.

  As I touched the torch to the bush, it—and the wall—burst instantly into flames.

  “I’m distracting him,” I said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  TRAPS!

  THE AROMA OF burning wood penetrated the night air. When we ran around the Hanging Gardens and reached the door to the cavernous room, Kranag was gone. A massive black shape flapped its wings nearby, from the base of the Archimedes screw. Zoo-kulululu! Cack! Cack! Cack!

  “Careful!” Aly warned.

  We watched in astonishment as the bird used its beak to turn the crank. Water began spilling from the broken mechanism into a wooden bucket. When it was full, the bird grabbed the bucket’s handle and flew off in the direction of the cottage.

  Marco shook his head, hard. “Am I hallucinating?”

  People said he can become an animal himself . . . That was what Daria had said. “It’s him,” I said. “Kranag.”

  “That bird is Kranag?” Aly whispered.

  I nodded. “He’s trying to save his home.”

  “The flames will roast him,” Cass said.

  I felt the pang of guilt. Setting fires went against everything I had ever been taught. I reminded myself that Kranag had wanted to kill us.

  Sometimes you had to make choices.

  I watched Cass drop to his knees and start scribbling in the sand. “Okay, Kranag can do some amazing stuff. He knew where all the traps are in that room. To the inch! Did you see how he was walking? Wherever he went—no gas, no arrows, nothing.”

  “He probably set them up himself,” Aly said. “Of course he knows where they are. He doesn’t need to see them.”

  “The point is, we can’t see them,” I said. “We can’t see anything.”

  “Let’s go back a step,” Aly said. “Daria says he’s guarding the Hanging Gardens. But we know different. He’s guarding the Loculus. Jack feels it. I can feel it, too—I felt it more the closer we got to the back of the chamber. Marco, you say it might be underground, but I don’t believe that.”

  “Where do think it is?” I asked.

  “In plain sight, but invisible,” Aly said, a smile inching across her face. “Think about that. The first Loculus gave us the power of flight. I think this one has a whole other power.”

  Her words hung in the air. I could feel their meaning seep into our brains. I saw a projectile of vizzeet spit hurtle by and hit the far wall and I almost didn’t care.

  If what Aly was saying was true, this Loculus could help us unbelievably. “So if we find it and make contact with it,” I said, “it may give us its power. . . .”

  Aly nodded. “In the words of the Immortal One, bingo.”

  “Aly, you are the bomb.” Cass dropped to his knees and started drawing in the dirt. “Okay, this is how the room is laid out.”

  We all looked at him in astonishment. “How do you know this?” Marco asked.

  “Don’t you?” he asked.

  “No!” we answered in unison.

  “I watched Kranag’s walking pattern, that’s all,” Cass said. “The areas inside the dotted lines—those are the places he wouldn’t go. So we need to avoid them. As for that star, he definitely walked a circle around that area. As if there were something inside it. I bet it marks the place with the Loculus.”

  Marco shook his head in awe. “Brother Cass, you scare me.”

  Aly put an arm around Cass’s shoulder. “Remind me not to worry again when you complain about losing your powers.”

  “But this was easy,” Cass said.

  “To you it’s all easy,” Aly said. “Because you are good. That’s why we need you. You never lost a thing. Well, confidence, maybe.”

  I gave Cass the torch. “You ready to be our leader?”

  Cass blinked, then nodded. “Okay. Right. Follow me.”

  He took the torch, casting a wary eye up toward the vizzeet. Stepping over the door jamb, he reached out with his free hand and waved it into the cage area. “The metal bars are still there. Follow me. Walk in my footsteps, exactly. Don’t vary left or right. Marco, narrow your shoulders.”

  “Narrow my shoulders?” Marco said.

  “Yeah, you know, hunch up,” Cass said. “Don’t take up so much space.”

  The song of the Heptakiklos twanged into my ears. It was so close. I fought the desire to run to it across the room that taunted us with emptiness.

  Aly and Marco fell in behind Cass. I brought up the rear. We walked quietly, our sandals shuffling against the hard-packed dirt. The torch flames made our shadows dance on the walls.

  “EEEEEEEEE . . . ”

  Outside, a vizzeet had leaped down from a ledge, landing in front of the open door. Cass swung my torch toward it, trying to scare it away.

  I grabbed the torch. Marco and I lunged forward, shouting. “Yaaaaahhh!”

  The vizzeet jumped back, but I felt the ground shaking below my feet. A spike broke through the soil, thrusting upward, inches from my foot. I screamed, jumping back.

  Marco caught me. He held me off the ground, his arms around my chest.

  “Thanks . . .” I said. “But you’re choking me . . .”

  He didn’t answer. His face was rigid. I looked down. There hadn’t been only one spike. There had been four. Three of them stood alone, victimless. But one of them had pierced Marco’s foot.

  “Hhhhh . . . ” The only sound Marco could manage was a shocked gasp. His grip loosened and I slid downward. I positioned my feet to avoid the blades.

  “He’s hurt!” Aly cried out, moving toward Marco.

  “Stay put, Aly!” Cass commanded.

  The floor was a bloody mess. I set down the torch, quickly ripped a section from my tunic, and wiped the blood away. Marco’s foot was intact. “It came up between your toes,” I said.

  “Lucky . . . me,” Marco said with a clenched jaw. “The edges . . . are sharp.”

  The spike had four serrated ridges. It had sliced clear through his sandal. Although it hadn’t impaled his foot, it had come up between his big toe and second toe and cut them pretty badly. I unfastened the buckle. Gently I pulled Marco’s toes apart, away from the blade edges, and lifted his foot out of the sandal. Then I ripped the sandal off the spike and tried to clean it as best I could. “Good as new, sort of,” I said, setting the blood-soaked sandal down and picking up the torch.

  “Thanks . . .” Marco grunted, slipping his foot back in. “I may wait a few months before I try the marathon. Let’s go.”

  Cass and Aly were staring at him, slack-jawed. Cass pointed off to the right. “I—I think we go this way now . . .”

  “I promise not to vary an inch from the path,” Marco said.

  “I promise not to move my torch away, too,” I added.

  Cass went slower. Much slower. Our footsteps echoed, bouncing off the back wall as if there were another set of people there. I could hear my breaths echoing, in rhythm with the strange music.

  EEEEEE! Another vizzeet screech was followed by a metallic clang.

>   I nearly jumped but kept my cool. The creature had tried to jump in but hit the bars of the invisible cage. It was scrambling away on all fours, chattering hysterically.

  Cass soon slowed to a stop, not far from the rear wall. “We’re here,” he announced.

  “Where?” Aly said.

  “The spot where I drew the star.” Cass was trembling. He was moving his ankle along a curved form, tracing a rounded shape. “Okay, this is invisible, but it’s some kind of platform. I can feel it. It’s raised.”

  I reached forward, about knee high. I felt a cool, tiled surface that sloped inward toward the top, like a sculpture of a volcano. I slid my hand upward until I reached a rim about three feet high. Slowly I ran my hand to the right and left. “It’s a circle,” I said. “Some kind of pit.”

  As I grabbed the rim with both hands, I felt my knees weaken. My entire body shook with the vibrations of the strange music. Concentrate.

  I reached downward into the invisible pit. The blackness below me turned a muddy gray. I could see floating faces. A beautiful woman with sandy hair, smiling.

  Queen Qalani. She was dressed in a fine gown gathered at the waist with a sash. On her head was a ring of bejeweled gold. Her laughter was like the running of water over stones.

  But her image instantly pixelated into a confetti of colors, which spread and dulled into a whitish silver that flowed from my outstretched palm downward.

  It became a sphere of glowing, pulsing white.

  I smiled. I began to laugh. My body felt weightless but I was still on the ground. The song and I were one now. It was the blood flowing through my veins, the snapping of electricity in my brain. For a moment I wasn’t aware of any other sound at all.

  Until a piercing cry broke the spell.

  “Jack!” came Aly’s voice. “Jack, where are you?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  NOW YOU SEE IT

  I FELT THE back of a hand brushing my arm. “Got him!” Marco said.

  Fingers closed around my wrist. I was reeling back now, losing my balance.

  The Loculus disappeared. All I could see was the panicked look on Marco’s face as he wrenched me away from the pit.