The Six Sacred Stones

by Matthew Reilly

  Jack snapped left, then right, but couldn’t see any obvious source of the sound. Wizard and Zoe did the same.

  And then Jack saw it.

  Saw a great narrow bridge emerging from the wall of the abyssdirectly below him. It folded upward as it emerged from the wall, like a drawbridge that foldsup into place not down, a long railless stone bridge.

  Accompanied by the great rumbling, it rose up and up until with a loudboom it stopped perfectly in front of West, a great leaping tongue of stone that formed a half bridge stretching out over the abyss from his feet all the way to…the inverted summit of the pyramid.

  “Nice…” Jack said.

  Gripping his cleansed Pillar, Jack West Jr. stepped out onto the bridge, absolutely tiny against the vastness of the hall, the abyss and the colossal pyramid.

  The sheer rockwalled abyss below him seemed almost bottomless, disappearing into infinite black.

  Jack tried not to think about it and kept his eyes fixed forward as he approached the gigantic bronze pyramid.

  Wizard and Zoe watched him every step of the way.

  Then Jack came to the end of the bridge, to the summit of the upsidedown pyramid…

  …just as the clock struck 6:11A.M.

  UP ON THE SURFACE of the lake, the first rays of dawn were creeping over the horizon.

  Alby had set up his telescope on the surface of the pyramidshaped island, just above the two bobbing Zodiacs.

  He was bent over the eyepiece when he called, “Saturn has just risen over Jupiter! The gap is coming…now!”

  Jack’s watch ticked over to 6:12.

  After all the grandeur of the hall and its staircase and the great pyramid and the vast abyss, Jack found it odd that the peak of the massive structure could be so small when seen up close—

  Suddenly the pyramid began to hum.

  It was a lowthrumm —a deep and powerful vibration that resonated throughout the entire cavern.

  Jack’s eyes went wide.

  “Captain West,”came Alby’s voice on the radio.“The Titanic Rising has just begun. You now have approximately one minute to lay the Pillar.”

  “Thanks,” Jack replied. “Somehow I had the feeling it’d begun.”

  Standing at the very end of the elongated bridge, high above an abyss of indeterminate depth, he examined the summit of the thrumming bronze pyramid.

  As he’d noted from the balcony, the massive pyramid did not end at a sharp triangular point. Rather, it was flat. The great structure ended in a very small squareshaped flat section barely a handspan wide, as if its tiny capstone had once upon a time been sliced off.

  Set into this square summit was an equally square hole—one that, Jack saw immediately, matched the size of his Pillar.

  “Wizard?” he said into his radio. “Any final thoughts? There’s no ceremonial thing I have to do?”

  “Not that I know of,”Wizard replied.“Just insert the Pillar into the pyramid.”

  “OK then…”

  Jack took a final glance at his watch. It was still 6:12A.M.

  Then, gripping his Pillar with both hands, standing high above a bottomless abyss far beneath the surface of the world, he inserted the cleansed Pillar into the matching hole in the pyramid.

  THE PILLAR slotted into the pyramid…

  …and instantly lodged inside it, halfin, halfout of the pyramid, firmly locked in place.

  The ominous thrumming ceased instantly.

  Silence hung in the air.

  Jack held his breath.

  Then—bam!—the clear diamond Pillar, now lodged in the peak of the pyramid,blazed to life, glowing with intense white light.

  Jack reeled away, shielding his eyes.

  The blinding white light illuminated the entire cavernous space around him, showing Jack for the first time just how deep the abyss below him was. It was unimaginably huge, its sheer walls plunging down beyond even the reach of the blazing light of the Pillar.

  But then, with a great thunderclap, a thick column of laserlike white light blasted downward from the Pillar and shot down the shaftlike abyss, rocketing toward the core of the Earth.

  Jack couldn’t watch it properly—it was just too bright.

  Then with startling suddenness, the laser retreated back up into the Pillar and the pyramid, and just as quickly as it had sprung to life, the event was over, and the cavern was dark again—save for the pathetic light of Jack’s amber flares.

  Uncovering his eyes, Jack peered up at the massive pyramid, staring in awe at the ancient mechanism.

  Then he saw the Pillar.

  It waspulsing with light, its liquid core throbbing with a soft luminous glow.

  And then, slowly, gradually, a strange kind of text began to appear on every surface of the Pillar—white symbols on all of the Pillar’s glasslike surfaces.

  Jack recognized the symbols instantly.

  The Word of Thoth.

  The mysterious language found in Egypt and decipherable only by the Siwan Oracles: Lily and her twin brother, Alexander.

  Then he recalled the reward that went with the placing of the first Pillar.

  Knowledge.

  These symbols conveyed some kind of wisdom, highly advanced wisdom.

  Knowledge that nations would kill for.

  He reached out to grab the Pillar. No sooner had he touched it than—shnick—there was a soft slicing noise and the pyramid’s clamping mechanism released the Pillar into his hands, now glowing with its pristine white Thoth symbols.

  Jack examined it, and immediately noticed that a small pyramidal section of the Pillar had been removed, excised, from its upper end.

  Jack looked up in wonder—and saw that the great inverted bronze pyramid was now whole again. Somehow, during the dazzling light show, it had taken a section of the diamond Pillaras its capstone, thus completing its perfect triangular shape.

  “Nice…” Jack said, gazing down at the newly formed pyramidal void in his Pillar.

  “Wizard,” he said into his mike. “This is serious shit…”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Jack tucked the glowing Pillar into his rucksack. “Well,” he said, “all things considered, that was really kinda painless.”

  “Yes, which is most unusual for us—”Wizard began, only for his radio signal to cut off abruptly and be replaced by a long droning monotone.

  Jack’s blood turned to ice. This wasn’t a simple loss of signal. That would produce static or hash. Tone meant something else.

  He turned and saw Wizard at the edge of the balcony, holding his hands out, palms up.

  Beside him, Zoe was waving Jack over hurriedly.

  Jack dashed back across the bridge, holding his rucksack like a football under his arm, keying his radio as he ran. “Astro! Lily! Alby! You guys still on the air?”

  No reply.

  Only the flat monotone.

  He reached Wizard and Zoe. Wizard gazed at the Pillar nestled in the rucksack. Zoe, however, went straight up to him.

  “Jack. All our comms have just been jammed. Someone else is here.”

  THEY ROSE out of the lake on every side of the two Zodiacs—armed men in black wet suits and scuba gear, brandishing MP5 submachine guns.

  Twelve of them. Frogmen.

  “Shit!” Astro cursed. “The moving sonar signal from before. It wasn’t a croc. It was a man.”

  “Quiet, you,” the lead frogman said evenly, his accent all Eton. “Guns down and put your hands in the air.”

  Astro and Pooh Bear complied.

  British troops,Astro thought.Probably SAS or Royal Marines. He spun to glare at Iolanthe, but her face was a mask.

  The British frogmen clambered up into the Zodiacs, their black wet suits dripping, their guns glistening.

  Pooh Bear instinctively pushed Lily and Alby behind him.

  The lead frogman went to Iolanthe, removed his mask and rebreather. He was young, squarejawed, with a pockmarked face. “Lieutenant Colin Ashmont, ma’am. Royal Marines
. We’ve been waiting for you. And, as ordered, monitoring Captain West’s radio signals till we heard the Pillar had been placed.”

  “Good work, Lieutenant,” Iolanthe said, striding over to stand with the British frogmen.

  “West is down there with two others. The old man, whom we need, and the woman, whom we don’t.”

  She handed Ashmont her headset mike, just as he switched off the jamming device on his hip.

  He spoke into the mike. “Captain Jack West. This is the Royal Marines. You have no escape. You know it and we know it. Bring out the Pillar.”

  “Go fuck yourself,”came the reply from the radio.

  Ashmont smiled. Then he looked at Lily and Alby as he spoke again: “Bring out the Pillar, Captain, or I start killing the children. The boy first.”

  “OK. We’re coming.”

  Minutes later, Iolanthe, Ashmont, and three of his men stood inside the docking unit suctioned to the base of the rocky island, staring down the pipelike tunnel filled with Nile crocodiles.

  At the other end of the tunnel stood Jack, Zoe, and Wizard.

  “Send the old man out with the Pillar!” Ashmont called.

  “What’s your name, soldier?” Jack said evenly.

  “Ashmont. Lieutenant. Fifth Regiment, Her Majesty’s Marines.”

  “You threatened my little girl and her friend, Lieutenant Ashmont. I’m gonna make sure you diehard for that.”

  “You don’t scare me, Captain West,” Ashmont replied haughtily. “I’ve heard of you, and I know your kind. Some may think you’re good, but to me you’re loose, undisciplined, reckless. Just another wild animal from acolony that should be kept on a tighter leash. I’ve a mind to kill the boy just on principle. Now send the old man through with the Pillar or I give the order.”

  Jack handed his rucksack to Wizard, who then proceeded to shimmy down the crocodile

  infested tunnel for the second time that morning.

  Again, the big crocs grunted in protest, but they did not attack.

  As Wizard crawled down the tunnel, Jack called, “Iolanthe. I’m disappointed.”

  “Sorry, Huntsman,” she replied. “Blood is thicker than water, especially royal blood.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  At length, Wizard emerged from the hole at the end of the tunnel and stepped out in front of the three guntoting Royal Marines.

  Ashmont snatched the rucksack from him, saw the glowing Pillar within it, handed it to Iolanthe.

  “Up, old man.” He jerked his chin at the ladder leading back up to the boats.

  Wizard protested: “But—”

  “Move!”

  Reluctantly, Wizard ascended the ladder.

  Standing at the tunnel’s entrance, Iolanthe gazed down it, seeing West and Zoe at the far end. She held the Pillar in her hands, brushing the new pyramidshaped hollow in one end of it with her fingers.

  “Enjoy your tomb, Captain,” she said.

  Then she pressed the solid end of the glowing Pillar into the rolledback symbol of the Machine at the entrance and immediately the manholesized symbol rolled back into place, sealing the ancient tunnel with a resoundingboom, locking Jack and Zoe inside.

  IOLANTHE, Ashmont, and the other Royal Marines climbed back up into the Zodiacs.

  Once they were all up, Ashmont broke the seal on the docking unit, and it instantly flooded, covering the entrance to the subterranean system with water again.

  Then he pushed Lily and Wizard onto the first Zodiac, leaving Alby, Pooh Bear, and the American, Astro, on the second one.

  The British lieutenant deferred to Iolanthe. “What about them?”

  “We keep the girl and the old man. The others we don’t need.”

  “So be it,” Ashmont growled. Then he promptly cuffed Pooh, Astro,and Alby to their Zodiac, cut the ropes anchoring their boat to his and to the island, and then—blam!blam! blam!—fired three shots into its rubber sides.

  Lily screamed at the gunshots.

  The second Zodiac instantly began to deflate…and sink…with Pooh Bear, Astro, and Alby handcuffed to it!

  The many crocodiles that had lurked in wait in a wide circle around the two boats now began to stir. Unlike the ones inside the cool interior of the island, these crocs were alert, awake, and mobile.

  “Perhaps you’ll be lucky and drown before the crocs take you,” Ashmont said.

  “Otherwise, I hope your death is not too frightening.”

  “When it comes, I certainly hope yours is,” Pooh Bear retorted. “Bastard.”

  “Alby!” Lily screamed, her eyes filling with tears.

  Alby himself was petrified, turning this way and that, looking from his sinking boat to the wide circle of crocs.

  “Farewell,” Ashmont said.

  Then he gunned the engine of his Zodiac and sped off into the dawn across Lake Nasser, heading back for the docks at Abu Simbel, leaving Pooh Bear, Alby, and Astro to their fate.

  Water began to dribble in over the sides of the sinking Zodiac.

  Standing on the sinking boat, cuffed to it, Alby felt like a passenger on theTitanic : unable to stop his craft’s inexorable sinking and destined to die on it very soon.

  “OK,” Pooh Bear said between anxious breaths. “What would Huntsman do? He’d have some kind of extra oxygen tank hidden on his belt, right? Or a blowtorch to cut through these cuffs.”

  “We’re out of both,” Astro said drily.

  Pooh thought of the small amount of C2 plastic explosive he kept concealed in his beard ring, but no, it was too powerful for his handcuffs. It’d blow his hand off in the process.

  A large croc splashed nearby, whipcracking its tail.

  “How you doing, kid?” Astro said to Alby.

  “Scared out of my mind.”

  “Yeah, I’m feeling about the same,” Astro replied.

  Water began to gush in over the edges of the deflating boat,pouring in, and the whole boat began to sink faster.

  The water came up to Alby’s knees, then his thighs.

  They would go under any moment now.

  A sudden splashing nearby made Alby spin and he turned round in time to see a huge crocodile come launching out of the water at his face, jaws wide, making a lunge for him—only for a booming gunshot to ring out and the croc fell in midlunge, lashing and spasming, shot in the eye by Astro.

  “Holyshit …” Alby breathed. “Oh my God, oh my God…”

  The water level was at his waist now.

  The boat was nearly fully under, tilting dramatically in the water.

  Pooh Bear came alongside Alby. He ripped off his face mask and handed it to Alby, despite the fact it had no oxygen tank attached to it. “Here, put this on. It might give you more time. I’m sorry, lad. I’m sorry we couldn’t do more for you.”

  Then, with a final inward rush, the crippled Zodiac filled fully with water and went under…

  …taking Pooh Bear, Astro, and Alby down with it.

  UNDERWATER.

  Holding his breath, Alby felt the Zodiac pulling him downward by the wrist. As he fell through the murky haze, he could just make out the wall of the rocky island nearby.

  Crocodiles lurked at the perimeter of his vision, hovering in the void, just watching the Zodiac’s slow freefall.

  Then in ultraslow motion the Zodiac hit the bottom, kicking up silt, and one of the crocs moved in.

  It glided through the water, propelled by its thick tail, zeroing in on Alby, jaws opening as it approached, and Alby screamed a soundless underwater scream as it rushed at him and—

  —stopped.

  Stopped dead, three inches from Alby’s face.

  Its snarling teeth were halted right in front of Alby’s bulging eyes, and it was only then that Alby saw the great big KaBar knife—Pooh Bear’s knife—that had been lodged up into the soft underside of the crocodile’s lower jaw.

  Pooh Bear had reached over with his free hand and stabbed it up through the creature’s jaw, just in time.

&nbs
p; But then Alby saw the big man’s eyes—they were wide open and bloodshot, running out of air. That lunge, it appeared, had been Pooh Bear’s last act on this Earth. He visibly sagged.

  Then a second croc advanced from the other side, again coming for Alby, the smallest prey, and this time Alby knew there was no escape. Pooh was done. Astro was too far away.

  The crocodile zoomed in toward him, jaws opening, charging.

  Running out of air and now totally out of heroes, Alby shut his eyes and waited for the end.

  BUT THE END didn’t come.

  There was no explosion of pain or slashing of teeth.

  Alby opened his eyes—to see Jack West, wearing scuba gear, wrestling with the gigantic crocodile, rolling and struggling; the croc bucking and snapping.

  And then suddenly someone jammed a scuba regulator to his mouth and Alby sucked in glorious air. Zoe hovered beside him in the water, also scubaequipped.

  Then she dashed to the limp Pooh Bear’s side and inserted the regulator into his mouth.

  He came to life instantly. She moved on to Astro.

  As for the fight between Jack and the crocodile, it was now a rolling struggle, hidden amid a cloud of roiling bubbles.

  Then all of a sudden, Alby saw the croc bite down hard on Jack’s left hand—only to see, two seconds later, Jackextract his hand from the great beast’s jaws!

  And just as Alby recalled that Jack’s left hand was made of metal, he saw the crocodile’s head explode underwater and spontaneously become a cloud of red. As it bit him, Jack must have left a grenade in its mouth.

  At that moment, Zoe fired a shot through Alby’s handcuff and did likewise with Pooh’s and Astro’s bonds and then Jack was right beside him, sharing his regulator, and Alby found himself being guided to the surface, somehow alive.

  They broke the surface together and swam for the rocky island, where Jack pushed Alby up the slope, clear of the waterline, until he could lie safely on the lesssteep upper surface.