The Legend of the Rift

by Peter Lerangis

  “That’s how all the Loculi work,” Marco said. “It’s the think system. You think about what you need to do, and they do it.”

  Brother Asclepius scratched his head. “As a man of science hired by the Massa, I have had to accept many things. But I’m afraid there’s no scientific basis for the think system.”

  “Can’t wait to hear what you say about time travel,” Marco said.

  Aliyah, who had been quiet this whole time, finally leaned forward on her folding chair. “Jack, where is Brother Dimitrios?”

  The room fell into a heavy silence. I tried to think of a way to word it, but Eloise beat me to it.

  “He died,” she said softly, “trying to get us the Loculus. Which was fake anyway.”

  As I explained what had happened—Dimitrios’s death and the news of his betrayal, Aliyah’s face grew ashen. “Dimitrios . . . had a strong will and could be devious,” she said softly. “But this kind of treachery? I find this very hard to believe. Your source . . . was he, or she, trustworthy?”

  I shrugged. “That wouldn’t be the first word I’d use to describe Herostratus.”

  “Then I—I don’t know what to believe,” Aliyah said, standing up. “I will choose not to convict him without proof. And I will miss him. While you prepare for the final part of your journey tomorrow, I will arrange a service in his memory.”

  “Tomorrow?” I said. “Aliyah, I don’t know if we have that kind of time.”

  “If I’m not mistaken,” Aliyah said, “the last Wonder of the Ancient World is in Egypt—the site of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. How do you expect to go there?”

  Her question lingered unanswered. I thought about Slippy, which we’d left at the airport in Turkey.

  “Jack, if you’re going to suggest the Loculus of Teleportation,” Cass said, “I will personally throw you to the vromaskis.”

  “Well, you will be pleased to know I have given this some thought,” Aliyah said. “I’ve made arrangements with our agents in Turkey to retrieve the stealth jet from Izmir. Upon its arrival here, shortly before sunrise, we will inspect it and prepare it for your departure.”

  “Sunrise?” Cass said. “But that’s nearly a half day—”

  “You will use that time to peruse the writings of your hero, Wenders,” Aliyah said. “We have been examining them to the best of our ability during your absence. He appeared to have written extensively about the Lighthouse. I urge you, with your linguistic abilities, to be fully prepared this time. We cannot risk losing another of our respected comrades. Please wait here while we get the material.”

  She turned and walked toward the door, with her guards in tow.

  “Respected . . .” Torquin said. “Pah!”

  “She’s right,” Cass said. “We can’t be sure Dimitrios said those things.”

  “Dimitrios lying, conniving slime,” Torquin said.

  I nodded. “But why would Herostratus lie to us?”

  “Herostratus lying, conniving, obnoxious, delusional, pyromaniac slime,” Torquin said. “Pick your poison.”

  “The dude begged us to take him with us,” Marco said. “Maybe he was trying to win our trust.”

  “All he had to do was touch one of us,” I said. “He would have teleported with us.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t?” Cass asked.

  “Would have swatted him away,” Torquin grumbled. “Good riddance.”

  Now Aliyah’s guards were bustling in, carrying Herman Wenders’s chest. With a thump, they dropped the oaken box onto the floor.

  Aliyah swept in behind them. “The Loculus of Language is inside this box,” she said. “I advise that you use it. Knowledge is power, my children, and the lack of it can be fatal. I believe my brother’s death years ago could have been prevented. I would never forgive myself if I allowed you to succumb to your youthful eagerness as he did. Am I understood?”

  “Understood,” I said.

  “Come, gentlemen,” she said, turning toward her guards.

  As they left the hospital room, Marco opened the chest and began taking Wenders’s notebooks out. I lifted the Loculus of Language from the box and placed it on the floor.

  “Where do we start?” Eloise asked.

  I placed my hand on the Loculus and began reading the Latin titles on each cover. There were seven altogether. On the covers of six were dates. But the seventh book was different.

  I read the title aloud: “‘Notes on the Nature of Writings Left by Prince Karai of Atlantis and Retrieved from a Devastating Fire in a Chamber of the Labyrinth of Mount Onyx’—”

  “That’s got to be the bat guano cave!” Cass turned to his sister. “I almost died there.”

  On the first page, Wenders had written an introduction.

  “‘I write this in a state of hunger and despair. My sanity leaks away by the day. Praise God for the return of my Malay deckhand, Musa, having survived an abduction by monkeys. His company, and his doggedness, have kept me alive. And his retrieval of these scrolls, after a brave foray into the labyrinth of Onyx, has compelled me to believe that our work must be preserved and will be someday discovered—and that a cure for whatever befell Burt will be found.

  “‘The notes that follow were written in runes of the Atlantean Late Period by Prince Karai upon returning to his devastated homeland after a search for his brother. They give insight into Massarym’s aims and fears. I have attempted to translate as best as possible, but I leave the notes themselves to some future scholar with deeper knowledge. What follows are Karai’s words. Humbly, Herman Wenders.’”

  I put aside the leather book. Under it, carefully folded, was a stack of brittle-looking parchment, filled with ancient symbols.

  Holding onto the Loculus, I lifted the first section and laid it flat. The symbols danced before my eyes, their meanings flying up from the page to me like voices. “I—I can understand this!” I said.

  Now the others were looking over my shoulder, not bothering to touch the Loculus, as I began to read slowly:

  “‘I, Karai of Atlantis, do hereby record for history the diabolical plan of my brother, Massarym, who travels from city to city in search of structures in which to hide the seven Loculi containing the power to animate the most perfect civilization in the history of the world. I have learned of several locations and traveled to them myself. I believe I found one in a great city by the sea called Ephesus. A temple to the goddess Artemis, it was a work of exceeding majesty and beauty, and a fitting tribute to Massarym’s pride. Upon inspection, though, I was nearly consumed by a fire set by the most wretched of human beings. Who would destroy such a holy site? Only a criminal of basest intent, a subhuman lackey by the name Herostratus, whose loyalty was assured by Massarym with the smallest amount of money . . .’”

  “PAH!” Torquin shouted, pounding the windowsill. “Now I wish he came. Want to pound him into the ground myself.”

  Cass sat back, his face darkening. “Jack, are we sure he didn’t touch one of us when we jumped?”

  Before I could answer, the cry of a griffin ripped the evening air. Startled, we all looked out the window.

  The beast fell from the sky in a swoop of red, its talons outstretched. Below it, a small, dark creature that had been near the base of the hospital now ran for the jungle.

  The little thing wasn’t fast enough. The griffin plucked it from the ground, screaming with triumph. As it rose into the darkening sky, the griffin’s prey dangled helplessly.

  We caught a quick glimpse of it as it passed our window. It was a black cat, with unspeakable fear in its eyes.

  Which were bright orange.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  LI’ANU

  THE REST OF the night, it was hard not to be bothered by Torquin’s giggling, a rhythmic wheezing that sounded like a bulldog with allergies. We were trying to decipher Karai’s notes and diagrams. Lots of them were ripped, stained, burned, or missing.

  “You can be cruel, Tork,” Cass said.

  “Did not li
ke Herostratus,” Tork said. “Not as man. Not as kitty cat . . .”

  As he went into another fit of giggles, I looked at my watch—3:07 A.M. I think we were all feeling a little giddy.

  We hadn’t really looked at Wenders’s notebooks. We’d spent most of our time on Karai’s scroll, which had been carefully cut and divided into four sections. Cass, Marco, Eloise, and I had each taken one.

  Mine was the last. The very bottom of it had been burned away. But I was determined to read all of it. “Okay, guys, this is our last Wonder and Loculus,” I said. “We don’t want to mess it up. Did we learn anything here to help us?”

  Cass raised his hand. “I had the earliest part of the scroll. Okay, so, Massarym is like the big show-off of the two bros, right? He goes to the Mediterranean on a ship he steals from the royal Atlantean fleet, and what does he do? Shows off. He figures, ‘Hey, I want everyone to think I’m some kind of god. Then I can park the Loculus in some kind of cool gnidliub—or get some architect to build one. Then—boom—I put some kind of spell on it and—moob—I make sure it’s protected by a beastie.’ He goes to Greece, or whatever they called it back then. They love him so much that this group becomes the Massarene monks. Generous old Massarym rewards them by leaving his seven beautiful codices, woo-hoo!”

  “What’s a codice?” Eloise asked.

  “Singular is codex, plural is codices,” Cass said. “A codex is an ancient text. So, the monks find an architect to make the Colossus, where Massarym hides the Loculus of Flight, guarded by a griffin. Trouble is, Tweety likes to eat monks, so Mass takes the bird back and puts this spell on the statue. It’s totally stone until someone tries to steal the Loculus—then it comes to life and pounds the thief into human moussaka. The monks are like, ‘Great, what a deal!’ and he leaves. Problem is, Massarym’s carrying around those Atlantean beasts on a ship. And the crew are freaking out. The big green blob is oozing out of its cage and managing to eat them.”

  “The one Marco the Magnificent stabbed in the rift?” Marco said proudly.

  “Well, not that one, but maybe its little brother or sister,” Cass replied. “Anyway, that’s where my part ends.”

  “I got the part where Massarym’s sailing up the Euphrates and he meets this shaman from a place called Sippar,” Eloise said. “The guy takes him to Ancient Babylon. When Massarym goes to the palace, the queen is throwing shoes at the king. And her royal highness has a lot of shoes. The king is embarrassed and says she’s really homesick. She’s like a mountain girl, and Babylon is superflat. So Massarym goes, ‘Build her a mountain! You know, like a big structure with Hanging Gardens and stuff, which looks like a mountain. And I’ll leave you with these foul creatures that will protect it and, oh, yeah, can I keep this orb inside it?’ That works out well. Then he gets back to his ship, and there’s been this mutiny. He offloads a bunch of the monsters, which have been spitting acid on the crew and messing up the ship. But that still doesn’t make the crew happy. They’re so angry they nearly kill Massarym. Anyway, that’s all I got.”

  Eloise put her part of the scroll down and looked at Marco. “You guys went to all these places? I am so jealous.”

  Marco shrugged. “Dude, it wasn’t all fun times.”

  “I’m not a dude,” Eloise said.

  “And you’re not fun times.” Marco spun away to avoid being slapped. “JK! Anyway, so yeah. Massarym starts ramping up the magic spells. He gets rid of the crew and enchants a bunch of new sailors to obey his every wish. He makes sure extra guys are on board in case Greenie eats some. And he heads to Halicarnassus, where he knows this famous guy Mausolus has died. He gets the guy’s wife, Artemisia, to build this awesome structure, the Mausoleum. Only now his dad, King Uhla’ar, is hot on the trail, and he shows up in Halicarnassus with his toga in a twist. So Massarym tries to throw him off the trail by pretending to throw the Loculus off a cliff—”

  “And then they meet again near Olympus,” I said, “where Massarym puts a spell on his dad, trapping him in the Statue of Zeus. That’s in my part of the scroll. Afterward, Massarym is feeling guilty about what he did to Uhla’ar. But he got what he wanted. Dad is off his trail, the crew is a bunch of yes-men. The problem is, Greenie has escaped.”

  “That big thing?” Marco said.

  “Yup,” I said. “So most of my scroll is about Massarym’s li’anu.”

  “Which means?” Eloise asked.

  “Well, I couldn’t figure that out, even with the Loculus of Language, but I think I got it from context—you know, get the meaning from the words around it,” I said, reading aloud: “‘Although Massarym was brilliantly skilled in the magic arts and persuasive among the people he met, although he was able to trap his own father and assemble a new crew, he lacked control over many of his fearsome Atlantean beasts. These often acted with wills of their own. Those who lived in or traveled by water proved to be the most difficult. Although Massarym brought them to the Great Lands by cage, the most fearsome of all, the great Atlantean Mu’ankh, broke free. Thus Massarym began his great li’anu, following the sea up through the vast north lands.’”

  “So, li’anu is some kind of search,” Eloise said.

  “Exactly,” I replied, continuing onward: “Anyway, he’s in Greece now, so he sails over to Rhodes to borrow the Loculus of Flight . . . ‘Under cover of night, Massarym traveled to lands covered by forests and swamps. The crude, warring tribes there took him to be a kind of god, which he enjoyed greatly, of course. He created detailed maps of his travels, some of which I was able to steal, some of which I copied. And it was in these cold, dank, horrid places where he heard of sightings of a great green sea beast. There were many names given to it by these people, the most common being kraken. After much searching, he finally found the Mu’ankh frolicking in a long and narrow waterway, frightening the local tribes.’”

  Cass grabbed the map from me, staring at the circle that had been drawn on the map. “Guys, this is Europe,” he said.

  Eloise rolled her eyes. “Tell us something we don’t know.”

  “This area . . .” Cass went on. “It’s Scotland.”

  “Wait,” I said, pointing to the circle drawn on the map. “So this waterway would be . . . ?”

  Cass nodded. “Loch Ness.”

  “Wait,” Marco said. “Nessie is Greenie? How cool is that?”

  “Wait, don’t people claim to see Nessie even now?” Eloise asked.

  “Falsely,” Cass said. “It’s the power of suggestion. The legend sticks and then people see it for years and years . . . mostly because they want to.”

  “‘It took Massarym a great deal of time to guide the Mu’ankh out of the lake and onto the land,’” I read. “‘He proved too unwieldy to fly through the air, so Massarym by necessity used the most dangerous Loculus of all, that of . . . de’alethea’ . . . ?”

  “That’s got to be teleportation,” Cass said. “He teleported Greenie—but where?”

  I kept going: “‘The beast was nearly dead upon arrival. Great was Massarym’s woe, and he set to restoring the hideous monster to life. For while he was gone, the architect Sostratus had completed plans for the greatest of all . . .’”

  “Greatest of all what?” Marco said, slapping his hand down on the Loculus.

  “That’s it,” I said. “That’s where the scroll ends.”

  “Wait. What’s that guy’s name?” Cass raced to the hospital desk and sat at the computer there. As I spelled out the name Sostratus, he did a quick search.

  Torquin, Eloise, Marco, and I followed, looking over his shoulder.

  “Bingo,” Marco said.

  Our answer was glowing on the screen:

  SOSTRATUS: ARCHITECT OF THE LIGHTHOUSE OF ALEXANDRIA.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  SEESAW

  “IT’S DEAD,” MARCO said as the Jeep bounced along the road toward the airfield. “Greenie, I mean.”

  Eloise glared at him. “How do you know it’s d— Owww! Torquin, will you slow down?”


  Much as we begged Aliyah not to let him, Torquin was our driver. Heading directly into potholes at top speed had always been one of his favorite things to do. But today his driving seemed more absentminded. Like he just just wasn’t paying attention. “So . . . sorry,” he said, jamming on the brake. “It is difficult . . . to maneuver a wheeled vessel . . . such as this.”

  “Not funny,” Eloise said.

  “Maneuver a wheeled vessel . . . ?” Marco narrowed his eyes. “Torquin, you don’t need to impress us. Just drive, dude.”

  Torquin immediately began speeding up again.

  “To answer your question, E—think of what that Loculus did to us,” Marco said, putting his hand over his head to cushion his banging against the roof. “Greenie has a gazillion times the number of atoms we have. Like Brother Asclepius said, it’s all about atoms. The more you have, the more complicated it is assembling them all. There’s no way that thing survived being teleported.”

  “What if Massarym had the Loculus of Healing?” Eloise said.

  “What if he didn’t?” Cass replied. “What if it was already hidden away in the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus?”

  The Jeep jolted so suddenly I thought we might have hit a tree. “Yeeeow, I only have one head, Tork!” Marco shouted. “Dang, we’re the ones who need the Loculus of Healing.”

  “Huh?” Torquin grunted as the Jeep fishtailed onto the tarmac. He slammed on the brakes and we did a complete three-sixty, just before plowing into a crowd that nearly covered the entire field.

  The people nearest the Jeep jumped back. Manolo grabbed Aliyah and threw her to another guard who was farther back in the crowd. Torquin skidded to a stop, nearly colliding with Slippy’s landing wheels. He jumped out of the driver’s seat and held his hand up to the waiting crowd.