The Six Sacred Stones

by Matthew Reilly

  Wolf stepped out into daylight—passing several more Ethiopian guards on the way—to behold, seated and smiling in the back of his car, Miss Iolanthe ComptonJones, Keeper of the Royal Personal Records of the United Kingdom, last seen unconscious on the docks at Abu Simbel.

  VULTURE and his companion remained at the base of the gantry elevator on the floor of the mine. Vulture’s companion had requested a few additional moments here before they left.

  The two of them strode across the mine floor and stopped before the lone cage suspended above the pool of arsenic.

  Pooh Bear stood in the tiny medieval cage with his hands manacled, looking like a captured animal.

  From his cage, he had not been able to see Vulture and his companion talking with Wolf at the elevator—so when he suddenly saw them approaching now, he mistook their presence for a rescue.

  “Brother!” he cried.

  Vulture’s companion—Scimitar, Pooh’s older brother—gazed up at Pooh Bear impassively.

  Pooh Bear shook his bars. “Brother, quickly, set me free! Before they return—”

  “They will not be returning,” Scimitar said. “Not for some time anyway. Not until this mine yields its secret.”

  Pooh Bear froze, stopped shaking his bars.

  “Brother, are you not here to release me?”

  “I am not.”

  Scimitar strolled over to the pit in which West had been killed, idly looked down into it, saw the great slab that had crushed Jack West.

  He walked back over to the arsenic pool. “Brother, you have always had a fatal flaw. You ally yourself with the weak. Even as a schoolboy in the playground you defended the scrawny and the frail. This appears noble but it is ultimately foolish. There is no future in such a course.”

  “And what strategy do you champion,brother ?” Pooh Bear said, anger now in his voice.

  “I side with the strong,” Scimitar said, his eyes dead. “I do so for the good of our family and our nation. There is nofuture in your alliance with the small nations of the world.

  Yours is a childish dream, the stuff of fairy tales and children’s stories. Only an alliance with the powerful, with those who will rule, will be of any benefit to the Emirates.”

  “So with your skulking Saudi friend here you side with these renegade Americans?”

  “The American colonel and his Chinese allies are useful to us at the moment. Wolf uses the Chinese, the Chinese are most assuredly using him, and we use both of them. This arrangement has its dangers, but still it is better than your coalition of minnows.”

  “I’d rather be in a coalition of minnows than a coalition of bandits,” Pooh shot back.

  “Remember, brother, there is no honor among thieves. When things go awry, your allies will not remain by your side. They will abandon you in a second.”

  Scimitar gazed steadily at Pooh Bear, genuinely curious. “You value these people?” A nod at the pit: “The tragic Captain West? The Israeli Jew who is right now being sent to face the Mossad? The vulgar daughter of the Siwa Oracle—a girl who presumes it is her right to learn and who disgraces you by addressing you with the name of a fat storybook character?”

  “They have become my family, and now I realize that they are more family to me than you.”

  “There is no honor in living this way, Zahir. It is a slap in the face to every tradition we hold dear. Muslims do not befriend Jews. Girls do not go to school. Nor do they address Muslim men with comical nicknames. The world I shall make will reimpose tradition. It will restore the old notions of honor. You clearly have no place in such a world, which is why you must die.”

  “At least I die for my friends. You, my brother, will surely die alone.”

  “I see.” Scimitar looked down at the ground. “So be it.” He began to walk away. “Out of respect for our father, I shall tell him that you died honorably, Zahir, shielding my body from an enemy bullet. I will not allow him to be shamed by your death. I leave you to the savages.”

  Then, with Vulture beside him, Scimitar departed via the gantry elevator, shooting up out of the mine.

  “Do as you will, my brother,” Pooh Bear said after him. “Do as you will.”

  And thus Pooh Bear was left alone in the vast underground mine, suspended in a medieval cage above a pool of foul liquid, not forty yards from the pit where his good friend, Jack West, Jr. had met a violent death at the hands of his own father.

  Tiny against the vast scale of the mine, abandoned by his own brother, and now totally alone in the darkness, Pooh Bear began to weep.

  KIBUYE PROVINCE, RWANDA

  DECEMBER 11, 2007, 2335 HOURS

  HAMMERED by pouring rain, out of gas, and using only three of its engines, the Halicarnassus made an unseen landing on a stretch of highway in the remote southwestern Rwandan province of Kibuye.

  Once the 747 was down, its rear ramp yawned open and out of it zoomed the Freelander—with Zoe, Wizard, and the kids on board. They took with them Wizard’s laptop computer, a multifrequency radio scanner, some jerry cans filled with petrol, and a couple of Glocks.

  Thirty minutes earlier, a call had gone out to Solomon Kol in Kenya. Ever knowledgeable about the local hazards and safe meeting points, Solomon had instructed them to link up with him at an abandoned United Nations repair depot, number 409, on the outskirts of the Rwandan town of Kamembe, located in the southwesternmost province of the country, Cyangugu.

  Sky Monster, however, did not go with the others.

  He stayed with his beloved plane, alone, wearing twin holsters on his waist and a shotgun on his back. He was going to remain with theHalicarnassus and wait for some companions of Solomon’s who were to bring him some jet fuel, enough to limp over Lake Victoria to the old farm in Kenya when the aerial patrols were called off.

  And so as the Freelander sped away, Sky Monster stood beneath the giantHalicarnassus, alone in the Rwandan hills.

  In the distance, something howled.

  Wizard, Zoe, Lily, and Alby sped along a remote Rwandan highway.

  As Zoe drove, Wizard kept the radio scanner on, searching the airwaves for transmissions.

  Just before sunset, the scanner picked up a military signal instructing all government forces to be on the lookout for a compact Land Rover just like theirs, carrying passengers just like them: a blond woman, an old man with a beard, perhaps a third male, and two children.

  Zoe swore. Unmanned drones patrolling the air over Kenya. Rwandan forces combing the country for them. It felt like every bad guy in Africa was on their tail.

  This wasn’t altogether untrue.

  She didn’t know that twelve hours previously, on instructions from Vulture, a series of multimilliondollar wire transfers had fanned out from the treasury of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into the bank accounts of a dozen desperately poor and hopelessly corrupt African regimes. Each transfer was accompanied by a message: Find a black Boeing 747 that was expected to make an emergency landing somewhere in central Africa. On it would be at least two Western fugitives: an old man with a long white beard, a woman with pinktipped blond hair, and possibly a third man, a pilot from New Zealand. With them would be two children: an Egyptian girl, also with pink in her hair, and a little black boy with glasses.

  Any African nation that partook in the search would receive $50 million simply for their efforts.

  To the country thatfound the fugitives and captured the old man and the little girl alive would go an additional $450 million.

  Thanks to a halfbilliondollar price on their heads, they really did have a dozen African regimes hunting them in the most dangerous place on the planet.

  AFRICA.

  In this age of GPS satellites and rapid air travel, it’s easy to say the world is small, but it is Africa that shows what a lie such a statement is.

  Africa isbig and despite centuries of exploration, much of its junglecovered central region remains untrampled by modern man. Its outer territories—like Nigeria with its oil and South Africa with its diamonds
—have long ago been plundered by European nations, but the unforgiving nature of the interior has defied Western penetration for over five hundred years.

  With isolation comes mystery, and the mysteries of Africa are many.

  Take, for instance, the Dogon tribe of Mali. A primitive tribe, the Dogon have known for centuries that the star Sirius is in fact atrinary system: it is accompanied by two companion stars invisible to the naked eye, stars known as “Sirius B” and “Sirius C.”

  Western astronomers using telescopes only discovered this fact in the late 20th century.

  In their ancient verbal legends, the Dogons also state that stars are in factsuns, an astounding thing for a primitive tribe to know.

  Exactly how the Dogon people know what they know is one of Africa’s great mysteries.

  The thing is, they are not the only African tribe to possess unusual and ancient secrets.

  In the middle of the vast and dark landmass of Africa is the tiny country known as Rwanda.

  Hilly and jungleridden, it is barely 125 miles wide and would fit easily inside the state of Connecticut, one of America’s smallest states.

  Of course, the world now knows of the 800,000 Tutsis massacred by ethnic Hutus in the space of a month in 1994—an orgy of obscenely violent killing in which the murderers used machetes and nailstudded clubs calledmasus. In one month, 10 percent of Rwanda’s 7.5 million people were wiped off the face of the Earth.

  Less wellknown however is the plight of thesurvivors of the genocide: the many Tutsis who were not killed had their arms cut off by the machetewielding Hutus. Today it is not uncommon to see halfarmed or onearmed locals quietly going about their daily farmwork.

  Desperately poor, decimated by an unprecedented bloodletting, and with nothing to sell that the world wants, Rwanda has been cast aside as an ugly example of the worst of human nature.

  In an already dark continent, it is a black hole.

  That night the Freelander stood parked behind an abandoned church in the south of Kibuye Province, covered in branches and a filthy tarp.

  The church near it was a frightening sight.

  Bullet holes and dried blood covered its walls. In the decade since 1994, no one had even bothered to clean it.

  Zoe stood at the back of the building, peering out into the darkness, gripping an MP5.

  Wizard and the kids sat inside the church.

  “During the genocide, the Tutsis fled to churches like this,” Wizard explained. “But often the local priests were in league with the Hutus and their churches became cages into which the villagers willingly ran. The priests would keep the Tutsis inside with promises of safety, while at the same time notifying the dreaded Hutu patrols. A patrol would show up and kill all the Tutsis.”

  The kids stared at the bloody bullet holes in the walls around them, imagining the horrors that had happened in this very room.

  “I don’t like this place,” Lily said, shivering.

  “So, Wizard,” Zoe said from the doorway, deliberately changing the subject. “Tell me something. What does all this really mean? When all the Pillars and sacred stones and underground vertices are stripped away, what’s this mission about?”

  “What’s it all about?” Wizard said. “The Apocalypse, Judgment Day, the end of the world. Every religion has an apocalypse myth. Whether it’s the coming of the four horsemen or a great day on which everyone is judged, ever since humans have walked this planet, they have had the idea that one day it will all end badly.

  “And yet—somehow—we have been provided with this test, this test of tests, this system of vertices built by some advanced civilization in the distant past that will allow us to avert this terrible end,if we are up to the challenge. Which reminds me: Lily, can you have a look at this, please?”

  Wizard grabbed Zoe’s digital camera and clicked through to a photograph she’d taken at the First Vertex, one of the golden plaque they’d seen on the main wall there:

  “Can you translate those lines?” he asked Lily.

  “Sure,” Lily said. “Looks like a list, a list of…do you have a pen and paper?”

  Scanning the image of the plaque, she quickly jotted down a translation. When she was done, it read:

  1st Vertex -The Great Viewing Hall

  2nd Vertex -The City of Bridges

  3rd Vertex -The Fire Maze

  4th Vertex -The City of Waterfalls

  5th Vertex -The Realm of the Sealords

  6th Vertex -The Greatest Shrine of All

  “It’s a description of all six vertices…” Zoe said.

  Wizard said, “And thus perhaps the clearest description of the immense challenge we face.”

  “A city of bridges? A fire maze?” Alby whispered.” What’s a fire maze? Geez…”

  It got Wizard thinking, too. “Lily, can you grab the Pillar, please, the one that was charged at Abu Simbel?”

  Lily extracted the Pillar from its rucksack.

  It still looked extraordinary—no longer cloudy but clear, with its luminescent central liquid and the mysterious white writing on its glasslike exterior.

  “Do you recognize the writing?” Wizard asked her.

  Lily peered at the Pillar closely…and her eyes widened.

  She spun to face Wizard.

  “It’s a variety of the Word of Thoth,” she said. “A very advanced variety, but it’s Thoth for sure.” She scanned the white writing closely.

  After a minute she said, “It seems to be a mix of instructions, diagrams, and symbols grouped into formulas.”

  “Knowledge…” Alby said.

  “Exactly,” Wizard said. “The reward for successfully placing the First Pillar in the First Vertex. The other rewards areheat, sight, life, death, andpower. Those formulae you see on this charged Pillar are some kind of secret knowledge being handed down to us from the builders of the Machine.”

  Lily grabbed another sheet of paper, started copying down the writing on the Pillar. Then, joined by Alby, she began translating it.

  Zoe came beside Wizard and nodded at the two children: “They’re holding up well.”

  “Yes. It’s important to keep their spirits up, because this is going to get scary.”

  “Scarier than the Rwandan genocide stories you’ve been telling them?”

  Wizard went red. “Oh. Yes. Mmmm.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Listen, I got something else that’s bothering me,” Zoe said.

  “What?”

  “You.”

  “Me? What about me?” Wizard asked, confused.

  Zoe was looking at him in a strange almost amused way. Then in answer she held up a toiletry bag, and extracted from it some scissors and a razor.

  “Oh, no, Zoe…” Wizard protested weakly. “No…”

  Ten minutes later, Wizard again sat with the children, only now he was beardless and his usually long shock of white hair had been shaved bald.

  He looked completely different; thinner, more gangly.

  “You look like a shorn sheep,” Lily giggled.

  “I liked my beard,” he said sadly.

  Lily tittered again.

  “All right, Lily,” Zoe said, holding up the scissors. “Take a seat in the barber’s chair.

  Your turn.”

  “Myturn?” Lily’s face went white.

  Five minutes later, she sat beside Wizard, head also bowed, with her own hair cut dramatically short, the pink tips long gone.

  Now Wizard chuckled.

  Alby did, too. “Lily, you look like a boy…”

  “Shut up, Alby,” Lily grumbled.

  “Sorry I had to do that, little one,” Zoe said, reaching around to grab her own hair.

  “Wanna cut mine for me?”

  Lily did so, sadly snipping off the pink end tips from Zoe’s shoulderlength blond hair—

  undoing the work they had performed together in happier times. When she was done, Zoe looked like a shorthaired punk rocker.

  “Come on, it’s time we all got some sl
eep,” Zoe said. “Wizard, you have the first watch.

  I’ll take the late shift.”

  With that they each found a space on the floor, and with Wizard standing guard at the back door, curled up to sleep inside the isolated Rwandan church, a place that stank of death.

  LILY WOKE with a startled gasp to find a hand smothering her mouth.

  It was Zoe.

  “Stay still, we’re in trouble.”

  With frightened eyes, Lily peered around her. They were still in the abandoned church.

  Near her, Alby was crouched on the floor, not daring to make a sound. Wizard was nowhere in sight. Through a dirty cracked window, Lily saw the dim blue glow of predawn—

  A figure crossed the window.

  A black man wearing camouflage fatigues, a helmet, and carrying a machete.

  “They arrived a few minutes ago,” Zoe whispered.

  Wizard arrived at Zoe’s side, staying low. “There are four of them and they have a technical parked at the side of the building.”

  A technical was the name of a truck common in Africa, a large pickup with a machine gun mounted on its open rear tray.

  Wizard said, “Their uniforms are old. Probably ex–Army soldiers that the government couldn’t afford to pay, now a rape gang.”

  In the wasteland that Rwanda now was, rape gangs prowled—human predators looking for women and children in isolated farmhouses and villages. They were known to terrorize whole towns, sometimes for a week at a time.

  Zoe pursed her lips, then said: “You take the kids and wait by the back door. Get ready to make a run for that technical.”

  “The technical?”

  “Yes.” Zoe stood, her eyes fixed and focused. “We need a new car anyway.”

  Several minutes later, the leader of the rape gang rounded the front corner of the church.

  Skinny but muscled, he was dressed in ragged Army fatigues with his shirt open at the front. His helmet, however, was not standard military—it was a vivid skyblue helmet with “UN” written in large white letters on it; a gruesome prize that was highly regarded by the thugs of Rwanda: at some time, this man had killed a UN peacekeeper.