The Six Sacred Stones

by Matthew Reilly

  “Look. This route only leads to a bunch of dead ends. Quickly! We have to go back before they release the hyenas!”

  “Glad I brought you along.” Zoe smiled.

  Back they ran, arriving at the huge entry gate and again they saw the halfeaten crocodile carcass. They hurdled it.

  “Now we go left,” Alby directed.

  Left they went, running desperately around the curving alleyway.

  They saw the high staircase looming above them, coming nearer, saw a semicircular archway in its base, allowing them to run under it if they wished.

  “No!” Alby called. “Go right, into the next circle!”

  Bam!

  A banging noise echoed throughout the maze.

  It was closely followed by the barking of the hyenas and the rapid splashing of paws on mud.

  “They just let the dogs in,” Zoe said.

  Through the maze they ran.

  Dashing down its long curving alleyways, often hearing the hyenas over the walls.

  Occasionally, they came to a pit filled with dank, stinking water and inhabited by a crocodile or two. Human remains were often nearby; crocodile skeletons, too, of those reptiles that hadn’t made it out before they’d starved.

  These they skirted or jumped, not daring to slow down—although on one occasion, Zoe grabbed a long, thick croc bone from one of the skeletons.

  They kept running.

  All the while, the central staircase came nearer.

  “Zoe,” Alby asked. “What are we gonna do if we get out of here? Won’t they just kill us some other way?”

  “Not if what I think is going to happen happens,” Zoe said. “I needed to buy us some time. That’s why I took so long to kill that asshole prince.”

  Alby was shocked. “Youdeliberately took that long? Why? What’s going to happen?”

  “The bad guys are going to arrive.”

  “I thought the bad guys already had us.”

  “The badder guys, then. The ones who chased us out of Egypt and killed Jack. They’re almost here. And when they arrive and attack the Neetha, that’s our chance. That’s when we want to be out of this maze and ready to run.”

  Out in the main village, Lily sat alone on her high stone platform. Ono sat across from her, as close to her as he could.

  Abruptly, the radio around his neck squawked.

  “—Ground Team Leader, this is Wolf, come in.”

  “—This is Ground Team Leader. What is it, sir?”

  “—Switchblade, be alert. While you and Broadsword have been rubbernecking at those big carved trees, we’ve spotted some heat signatures coming your way. Human signatures, about a dozen of them, and they’re sneaking up on your choppers from the east.”

  “—Thanks for the headsup, sir. We’ll handle it. Switchblade, out.”

  Lily turned to Wizard on the other platform. He’d heard it, too.

  “Wolf’s men…” he said. “They’re almost here…”

  Zoe and Alby plunged deeper into the maze, racing down its long bending passageways, with Alby directing and Zoe looking out for danger. Curiously, as she ran, she also dragged her crocodile bone against the wall, scraping it harshly.

  The staircase in the center gradually came nearer and just after they hurried through one of the ten archways cutting through its base, they suddenly found themselves in a perfectly round space fitted withtwo entrances and, momentarily shocking them both, the base of the narrow staircase itself.

  They were in the center of the maze.

  Alby gazed up the superhigh staircase. Its steps stretched up and away from him into the lofty heights of the hollowedout volcano, wide enough only for one person at a time and without any kind of safety rail. Fiercelooking warriormonks bearing spears and guns stood along its length.

  At the base of the stairs, in the exact center of the entire maze, stood an ornate marble podium. Carved into it was a list of some sort, written in the Word of Thoth:

  Given the podium’s central position, Alby figured the carvings on it were important, so he quickly snapped off some photos before Zoe yanked on his hand. “Come on, we have to get through the second half, and we still have those dogs on our tai—”

  A blur of brown knocked her off her feet, tearing her away from Alby.

  Alby fell backward, his mouth falling open as he saw the massive animal straddling Zoe.

  A hyena.

  The thing washuge, with foul brownish fur, matted and speckled, and the signature stunted hind legs of the hyena.

  But it was alone. The pack must have split up in their hunt.

  Zoe rolled underneath the snarling jaws of the hyena. Then she slammed it with her boot into the marblelike wall of the maze and the animal yelped. But it instantly pounced back at her, jaws bared—only to impale itself on the now sharpened crocodile bone held in Zoe’s outstretched right hand.

  Zoe extracted the weapon, allowing the lifeless hyena to slump to the floor.

  Alby stared. “This is hardcore…”

  “Fuckin’A it is,” Zoe said, already on her feet again. “I bet your mother wouldn’t want to see you doing this. Let’s go.”

  Out in the village, again Lily heard a message over Ono’s radio:

  “—Rapier, this is Switchblade. Neutralized the bogeys who were sneaking up on our chopper. Natives. Nasty. They were trying to sabotage the chopper. We’ve found the entrance to their base—due east of the carved forest; a fortified gate of some sort; heavily guarded. Gonna need some more men.”

  “—Copy that, Switchblade. We’re on the way, coming in on you signal.”

  Lily looked up in horror.

  With Zoe and Alby in the maze, and Wizard and her trapped on their platforms, Wolf’s men were arriving at the main gate and they were about to storm the realm of the Neetha.

  Desperate running through the maze.

  Zoe and Alby didn’t dare stop. Now they were making their way through the southern half of the maze, heading away from the central staircase.

  They encountered more muddy croc pits, a few deep holes, and even more human remains.

  Halfway across, a second hyena caught up with them, but Zoe smashed it in the face with a crocodile skull, using the skull’s teeth as a multiedged blade that pierced the side of the snarling hyena’s head. The hyena howled and skulked off, blood all over its face.

  They kept running, until after a time, brilliantly guided by Alby, they entered the outermost circle of the maze and charged around its long sweeping curve until they came to a high archway just like the one through which they had entered the maze.

  The southern entrance.

  Zoe halted twenty yards short of it. “We don’t want to leave the maze too early,” she said.

  “We have to wait for the time to be just right.”

  “And when will that be?” Alby asked.

  Just then, right on cue, the distinctive blast of a grenade explosion echoed out from somewhere in the Neetha ravine system.

  “Now,” Zoe said. “The badder guys just arrived.”

  WOLF’S ROGUECIEF force stormed the main gate of the Neetha, led by the Marine trooper named Switchblade and a Delta man named Broadsword and supplemented by no less than a hundred Congolese Army troops bearing AK47s.

  Essentiallybought with Saudi money, the Congolese soldiers were there literally as an army for hire, and Switchblade used them as such, as frontline fodder.

  He hurled them at the main Neetha defenses in the mouth of the ravine—a series of booby traps and hidden positions that took out a point man or two, but which were soon nullified by the sheer number of advancing troops.

  Some of the Neetha guards had guns—but most of them were old and poorly maintained, and they were no match for the modern weapons of the invading force.

  And so Wolf’s force advanced through the ravine system, killing Neetha defenders on every side. The Neetha fought fanatically, giving away nothing, fighting to the bitter end.

  Many Congolese troops were k
illed, either by gun or by arrow, but their numbers were too great and their techniques too good, and soon they were spilling out onto the main village square.

  As the invasion of the ravine system began, pandemonium broke loose all around the prisoner platforms.

  The villagers—until then eagerly awaiting the results of the hunt in the maze—had scattered. So too the royal clan members, taking up their weapons.

  Any warriormonks who had remained near the platforms quickly dashed to the safety of their templefortress, crossing its first drawbridge and taking up positions in their holy tower—the fourstory structure situated out on the lake, halfway between the temple fortress and the opposite shore.

  As for Lily and Wizard, they were simply left on their platforms.

  They could only watch helplessly as explosions and gunfire rang out from the ravine, growing louder and closer.

  But then Lily saw some movement on the other side of the lake.

  She saw the warlock and two monks dash out to the triangular island in the middle of the lake and scoop up the three sacred items sitting there: the Delphic Orb, the Second Pillar, and the inclinometerlike sighting device.

  Then they turned and bolted for the opposite shore, arriving at a narrow path next to the maze’s outer wall just as—

  —Zoe and Alby dashed out along the same path, racing out from the shadows at the southern end of the maze!

  Lily almost cheered.They’d got through the maze…

  A struggle ensued, with Zoe disarming the two warriormonks before jamming the butt end of a spear into the warlock’s face, felling him, knocking him out cold.

  Lily then watched as Zoe and Alby snatched up the three sacred objects and—

  Clunk!

  Lily turned at the sudden sound.

  And saw Ono standing opposite her platform, holding a plank vertically, as if he was ready to lay it down across the void to her platform. Diane Cassidy stood similarly near Wizard’s platform, also with a plank in hand.

  They both held rather oldlooking pistols in their spare hands.

  In the chaos all around them—Neetha warriors rushing to the defenses, exploding grenades, wild gunfire—the prisoner platforms were being ignored.

  Ono said quickly, “Young Lily! There is escape tunnel hidden within priesthood’s island tower! I will show you…if you take us with you.”

  “Deal,” Lily said.

  Ono didn’t understand the word.

  “Yes, yes,” Lily said quickly. “We’ll take you with us.”

  Clunk! Clunk!

  Both planks thunked loudly into position on the two platforms and Lily and Wizard dashed off them, free at last.

  As they ran toward the templefortress of the priesthood, Wizard saw Zoe and Alby on the other side of the lake, running in the same direction, carrying the island’s sacred objects.

  “Zoe!” he called. “Get to the central tower! The priests’ tower! It’s an exit!”

  “Got it!” Zoe yelled.

  No sooner had she spoken than a great explosion blasted out above the huge waterfall at the northern end of the Neetha ravine.

  The awning of bentover trees concealing the ravine there spontaneously erupted in flames, and burning branches and tree trunks rained down onto the lake below, falling a full four hundred feet.

  Then with a terrific roar, two CIEF Black Hawk helicopters swooped down through the opening that had been created, hovering perfectly—noses up, tails down—directly above the priests’ island tower!

  They were modified Black Hawks known as Defender Armed Penetrators, or DAPs—

  although the only modifications they possessed were in the amount of weaponry they carried. These choppers were armed to the teeth with guns, rocket pods, and missile launchers.

  Rockets shot out from the two DAPs, hitting every one of the Neethas’ strategic defensive positions. Stone towers were blown to pieces. Warriors were hurled into the lake.

  Obstacles in the main entry ravine were blown clear out of the water, allowing the Congolese foot soldiers to pour into the village unopposed.

  The priesthood’s templefortress was also hit by a rocket from above.

  In a single instant, flames flared from every one of its narrow stone windows, and a moment later its huge armored doors flew open and burning warriormonks came spilling out of it, rushing down the steps and hurling their flaming bodies into the lake…where the flames were doused, but where the everpatient crocodiles lay waiting.

  Screams. Splashing. Thrashing.

  “This is our chance,” Wizard said. “Inside! Now!”

  With Lily, Ono, and Cassidy behind him, he rushed for the templefortress, ducking arrows and dodging bullets—

  —only to be blocked at the steps of the templefortress by three unexpected players: the obese chief of the Neetha and two of his sons, all of them brandishing pumpaction shotguns aimed right at Wizard’s fleeing group.

  The chief barked some angry words at Ono and Cassidy, and they immediately lowered their little pistols.

  “What’d he say?” Wizard whispered.

  “He says that we cannot leave,” Cassidy said. “He says that I am his, that he owns me.

  When this is all over he says he will teach me a lesson in his bedroom, and that he will thrash Ono to within an inch of his worthless life.”

  Cassidy glared at the chief.

  “There will be no more lessons in your bedroom,” she said flatly, defiantly, just as she whipped up her pistol and fired it twice—expertly—into the foreheads of the two royal sons.

  Both men dropped, the backs of their skulls bursting with blood, dead before they hit the ground.

  Stunned, the chief whipped up his own shotgun, only to find himself already staring into the barrel of Diane Cassidy’s pistol.

  “I’ve been waiting five years for this,” she said.

  Blam!

  The bullet went through the Neetha chief’s nose, breaking it on the way into his brain, causing a massive geyser of blood to splatter all over his face.

  The fat ruler collapsed onto the steps of the templefortress, his body sliding down them, his crackedopen skull oozing brains.

  The King of the Neetha was dead.

  Diane Cassidy stared down at his body with a mix of disgust and bloody triumph.

  Wizard scooped up the fallen chief’s shotgun and grabbed Cassidy’s hand. “Come on!

  Time to go.”

  THE DRAWBRIDGES AND THE TOWER

  WIZARD’S GROUP hurried through the templefortress of the Neetha priesthood.

  It was like running through a Gothic freak show.

  Bloody skeletons hung from torture devices, steaming pots of foul liquids simmered, ancient inscriptions lined the walls.

  They hurried up some stairs and came to a long drawbridge that led to the central tower out on the lake. A second matching drawbridge stretched out from the tower itself, meeting with their lowered bridge in the middle.

  “This way!” Ono said, rushing out onto their drawbridge.

  The group raced across it.

  But when they were halfway across, a call stopped Wizard dead in his stride.

  “Epper! Professor Max Epper!”

  Wizard turned…to see Wolf standing down near the Fighting Stone, looking directly over at him.

  “We found you, Max! You knew we would! You can’t win this! My son couldn’t, so how can you?”

  Wolf held up something for Wizard to see:

  A battered and worn fireman’s helmet, bearing the badge: “FDNY Precinct 17.”

  Jack’s helmet.

  Beside him, Wizard heard Lily gasp as she saw it.

  “I watched him die, Epper!” Wolf called. “My own son! You’re all out of heroes! Why keep running?”

  Wizard instinctively clenched his teeth. “Not completely out,” he said softly, taking Lily by the hand and racing into the tower.

  On their side of the lake, Zoe and Alby were also heading for the central tower inside the priests�
� enclave.

  They were rushing along a narrow lakeside path toward a small fort nestled up against the ravine wall when a new wave of Wolf’s men entered the ravine, this time from the north, from above the waterfall.

  They came abseiling down the cliffs there on drop ropes, two dozen Congolese and American troops, covered by one of the Black Hawks.

  Alby was gazing up at this new wave of attackers when suddenly a Neetha warriormonk popped up into view on the roof of the little fort in front of him and fired—of all things—an Angolan RPG up at the Black Hawk!

  The RPG hit its mark, and hovering above the lake, the Black Hawk exploded, blasting apart. Bleeding smoke, it nosedived into the water, landing with a massive splash not far from the tower.

  “Jesus, I think these Neetha guys have kept every weapon they’ve ever found,” Zoe said.

  As the Black Hawk crashed, the warriormonk who’d fired the rocket ducked from sight, probably to reload.

  His disappearance gave Zoe and Alby the opening they needed to race to the cliffside fort, dash inside it, and climb its internal stone stairs.

  One floor up, they came to a stone halfbridge stretching out from the fort toward the central tower. Mounted on several stone columns, this halfbridge was designed to meet the island tower’s eastern drawbridge when it was fully lowered—as it was now.

  As they looked out across this doublebridge, they spotted Wizard standing in the doorway to the tower, waving them over.

  “This way! Hurry!” he yelled as, without warning, the drawbridge in front of him began to rise.

  Wizard seemed perplexed. He wasn’t doing it. Someone else was.

  “Run!” he called.

  “Run!”Zoe said to Alby.

  She and Alby dashed out into open space, gunfire and explosions ringing out all around them, an RPG zooming past them, its smoke trail slicing through the air before it slammed into the cliffside fort behind them and detonated. The fort erupted. Rocks and debris flew every which way.