The Curse of the King

by Peter Lerangis

  “The shards are locked in a box, Jack,” Cass said. “It’s not your fault he died.”

  “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine,” Marco said. “I never should have left you guys in the first place.”

  “Stop it,” Aly said. “It’s done. We can’t just stay here. How long till Dimitrios wakes up, or till the Massa back at camp come after the missing goons—”

  “Or come after the missing Loculi,” Cass added.

  Nirvana stood. “We’ll take Fiddle into the headquarters and bury him there. Let’s move.”

  Marco crouched down and lifted up Fiddle’s shoulders. “Help me lift him, Tork.”

  “I’ll grab some flashlights from the Massa,” I said.

  Fritz nodded grimly. “I’ll get their weapons.”

  Grieving would have to wait. Speed and silence were crucial.

  We hit the path with only a few flashlights as guides, to conserve batteries. Mine was already almost dead. The walk was silent and steady. Marco held Fiddle’s arms and Torquin his legs. Aly and I stayed together, while behind us Cass and Eloise walked single file among the other Karai.

  I could not shake the image of Fiddle’s body going slack.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Aly said.

  I smiled and shook my head, concentrating on the narrow path.

  “Okay, a dollar.” I felt her slipping her fingers into mine. “Hey. Mr. Moody Broody. It’s not your fault.”

  “Right.” I took a deep breath. “We . . . we have to look on the bright side.”

  “Yes,” Aly said.

  “We found the rebels,” I said.

  “And got Marco back again,” Aly added.

  I nodded. “Also, my mom turned out not to be evil after all.”

  “Exactly!” Aly said. “Plus we have the two Loculi back, and all the shards.”

  “And I guess I’ll be king soon,” I added, forcing a smile.

  “Heaven help us all,” Aly muttered.

  We were at the base of Mount Onyx now. The volcano’s peak rose pitch-black against the star-freckled sky. Nirvana’s flashlight beam strafed the vines and bushes lining the sides. When the vegetation gave way to an expanse of silver-gray rock, we stopped. Above us, a deep crevice in the rock formed a giant seven. The bottom of the seven’s diagonal pointed to a small bush that seemed to have grown into the wall, about eye level.

  I knew immediately that the bush must have been fake. Under it was a carving of a griffin’s head, which was actually a secret keyhole into the volcano’s inner labyrinth.

  Aly looked around nervously. “No cameras?”

  Nirvana eyed the trees. “One,” she said. “But we moved it.”

  She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a familiar-looking rock that contained a code left by Herman Wenders, the discoverer of the island. “Can I do the honors?” I said.

  “Quickly,” Nirvana said, shoving the black stone into my hand.

  I inserted the stone into the carving. With a deep scraping noise, the entrance slowly slid open.

  As the black triangle opened into the thick inner wall of the mountain, a gust of cool, vaguely rotten-smelling air blasted out. Nirvana looked nervously over her shoulder. “It’s a miracle the Massa haven’t found this yet.”

  She went in first, followed by Marco and Torquin with Fiddle’s body, then the other Karai rebels.

  Cass, Aly, and I hung for a moment at the dark entrance. “I hate this place,” Cass said, gazing in at the dark, mossy-walled corridor of the labyrinth. “I almost died in here.”

  Aly nodded. “Marco did die.”

  The memories flooded out like ghosts in the rock: Cass on fire, screaming with pain. Marco’s body, limp and crushed after a fall into the volcano. The waterfall that miraculously healed them both. Back then the journey was baffling, with the promise of death at every wrong turn.

  But now, as we finally entered, we were following a group who had walked the path a hundred times. “Welcome back,” I said.

  The air quickly grew stale in the narrow passage. I avoided stepping into the crevice where Aly had long ago dropped her flashlight. I caught the acrid smell of roasted bat guano, from the wrong turn that had led to Cass’s accident. In one of the other intersecting paths, I saw the skeleton of a horse-sized animal. Yet another contained a set of manacles bolted into the wall. “Ch-ch-cheery, huh?” Cass said.

  I kept a quick pace, but I had to slow down at the entrance to one of the side tunnels. Just inside it hung a large, faded, ancient tapestry. We’d seen a work like this before, but it had burned in the guano fire. This one was different. It depicted a fierce argument between the king and queen. Qalani was standing regally behind the Heptakiklos, which was filled with seven glowing Loculi of different, rich colors. Beside her was Massarym, kneeling before the creation, with an expression of awe. In the foreground, King Uhla’ar pointed at them with furious accusation. His face was stern and sharp boned, his eyebrows arched and his hair thickly curled.

  There was something familiar about the face, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “Jack! What are you doing?” Aly cried out.

  “I’m looking . . .” I said, tilting my head toward the tapestry. “Why do I think I’ve seen this guy before?”

  “Because, duh, it’s Uhla’ar, and you’ve been dreaming about him since Bodrum,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Now come on. We’ll do the museum tour later.”

  She pulled me away, but the face was stuck in my head. The dream had been vivid; Aly was right about that. But I wasn’t sure that was it. I felt like I’d met this guy.

  We caught up with the others and trudged over cold stone toward the center. I’d forgotten how long the path was. Even with people who knew the way, it seemed to take forever.

  I knew we were close to the center when I felt a prickling sensation in my brain that grew to a steady hum.

  Aly gave me a look. “You’ve got that Song-of-the-Heptakiklos expression on your face. Either that or diarrhea.”

  “Don’t you hear it, too?” I asked.

  Aly shrugged. “Cass, Marco, and I—not being king material—we have to be right on top of it to hear it. You go ahead of me.”

  I walked forward. The sound seeped into me, like little gremlins twanging the nerves of my brain.

  Soon the Song was mixed with the whoosh of falling water. Just ahead, Marco and Torquin had stopped by the edge of the waterfall’s pool. Marco was holding Fiddle’s wrists with one hand now, and with the other he stooped to splash water onto Fiddle’s face. “I know, I know, you said it won’t work,” he said. “But I had to try.”

  “Okay,” Torquin said quietly, “but we go.”

  He and Marco continued onward with Fiddle’s body, into the caldera.

  I had to adjust to the eerie glow. It was the dead of night, but the moon seemed to be concentrating its rays here, making the whole place glow green-gold as if the walls themselves held light.

  “Did you ever try to imagine what this must have been like?” Cass whispered. “I mean, back when it was the center of a whole continent?”

  “It was a valley . . .” I said. “Beautiful, too, with tall trees ringing the top, and a carpet of flowers . . .”

  My early dreams of Atlantis were so vivid I felt like I’d been there. I would always be running through that valley toward my own death. Talking about it scared me.

  But I had no fear right now. I had work to do.

  Marco and Torquin settled Fiddle down by the vast, rounded wall. Lisa and Fritz began digging a grave, using a shovel and a pickax.

  Nirvana looked away, her lip quivering. “Well,” she said, trying to be cheerful, “shall we show you around our vast complex?”

  She and Hiro began lighting torches that were made of dried thatch set on tripods of tree branches. A motley collection of tools had been propped up against the caldera walls, along with a few pots and some canvas bags.

  “These contain dried food—hardtack, pemmican,” Nirva
na explained. “The stuff is pretty foul but edible. Way back when, Professor Bhegad and the old-timers made sure to hide emergency supplies in some undisclosed locations. Fiddle was the only one who knew how to get to those places. We have some communications, but it’s all pretty basic.”

  I followed her to a table made of three flat rocks. On it was an old laptop connected to a set of wires, a heavy-duty battery, and an antenna made of wire hangers and tinfoil. Next to the table were three other spare batteries. “Needless to say, no internet,” Nirvana went on. “But we use walkie-talkies to keep in touch on recon operations. Two of our best people, Bird Eye and Squawker, are out in the field now. They’re keeping an eye on Dimitrios and the sleeping beauties. If anything bad happens, we’ll know. Unfortunately, we have to be careful about energy—everything’s shut off most of the time, except for extreme emergencies.”

  “Wow . . .” Aly said. “Stone Age living.”

  Nirvana laughed. “That’s me, Wilma Flintstone.”

  As they went back to talking tech, I walked toward the shadows at the rear of the caldera. The Song was deafening, drawing me to its source. A strange mist rose from the shadows, disappearing upward in swirling wisps. I hadn’t seen the Heptakiklos since our last visit, and I had no real reason to see it now. But I couldn’t help wanting to.

  As I got closer, the mist cleared. I saw the outline of the round temple, sunken into the rock floor. It seemed to glow from a light source below the surface of the earth.

  It was the place where Queen Qalani had first harnessed the energy of Atlantis into the seven Loculi. And it had sat empty ever since Massarym had stolen them away.

  I knew not to touch the shaft. I’d pulled the whole thing out once before. It had opened the rift and allowed the griffin to fly through. Professor Bhegad called this a space-time flux point—yet another wonderful horrible thing that only Select could access.

  This time we had two Loculi. Three, if we could put together the Loculus of Healing. Once we got the boxes open and reconstructed the Loculus of Healing—if that was still possible—we could insert them in their places. I was dying to do that ASAP.

  Three Loculi was three-sevenths of the way to completion. Or .428571. Forty-three percent.

  Almost half.

  “Jack?” Marco’s voice called out. “You let a griffin loose and I will personally pound your head into oatmeal.”

  I began to back away. From behind me came the sharp chink . . . chink . . . chink . . . of the digging. Marco was waiting nervously. “Let’s see if we can put together Number Three,” I called out.

  Aly crouched by the wall, opening the canvas bag to reveal the three boxes. Each was sealed by a thick brass latch with a metal LCD plate. Under each plate was a number keypad. “What the—?”

  “I know the codes.” Nirvana ran over. She began tapping out numbers on the pad, and finally let out a big groan. “Great. First they steal these lockboxes from us, and then go and reprogram the locks! That’s military-grade encryption. We’ll never get it.”

  Aly nodded thoughtfully. “Give me a few minutes.”

  She pulled back a chair and sat at the table, jiggling the laptop’s mouse. Numbers began flowing down the screen like a weird digital rainstorm.

  “That’ll take days,” Nirvana said, “even with our encryption software.”

  “Not if I improve the software,” Aly said, her fingers clattering on the keyboard.

  “I have a better idea.” Marco shoved the boxes back into the sack, strapped it to his belt, and began climbing the caldera wall. “Bet you I can get to the top and drop these babies before you finish. That’ll open them.”

  “Whoa, Marco, no!” I shouted.

  Cass and I ran to the wall. But Marco was quicker by far. He dug his hands and feet into the crevices and jutting roots, as if he were climbing a ladder.

  Aly looked up from the desk. My heart was quickening, and I had a realization—something I hadn’t wanted to admit till now. “I’m still not sure I trust him,” I whispered. “What if he escapes?”

  I expected them to argue. Aly had a crush on Marco, that much I knew. Cass idolized him. But neither of them disagreed. There wasn’t much we could do. None of us could possibly follow him.

  As we all watched him, I tried to mentally block the Song of the Heptakiklos, which was giving me a headache. But now another sound was almost drowning it out—a distant, steady rumbling from above.

  “What the heck is that?” Cass murmured.

  “A plane?” Nirvana said.

  Nirvana’s walkie-talkie squawked, and she picked it up. “Base.”

  A tinny reply echoed through the caldera. “Bird Eye. Unknown craft in island airspace. Repeat . . . aircraft overhead!”

  Nirvana frowned. “Copy. Is the craft Massa, Bird Eye?”

  “Negative,” the voice crackled in response. “It looks . . . military? Maybe trying for a beach landing?”

  “Military?” Nirvana said.

  “Greek.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  A tremendous boom shook the mountain, nearly knocking me off my feet. Above us, Marco screamed in surprise. Rocks and soil tumbled down the side of the caldera, landing in clouds of dust.

  Nirvana dropped the walkie-talkie. “I don’t think it’s a beach landing!” she cried out. “It just crashed!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  IS NOT GORILLA

  “MARCO!” ALY SCREAMED up into the caldera.

  Nirvana shone her flashlight upward, pinning Marco in its beam. The crash had shaken him away from the wall. He swayed back and forth in the air, gripping a tree root. The bag of Loculi came crashing down, landing on the ground with a sharp clatter. “They couldn’t use the airport?” he called down.

  “Marco, get down now!” I said.

  “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing!” Marco managed to grab a sturdier root with his free hand, then dig his feet into the wall. In a few seconds, he was heading steadily downward.

  Aly turned back to her screen. “Okay, good news, guys. The Massa have a limited-range VPN, which means probably some sort of satellite rig accessing a small part of the broadband spectrum. If I use command-line code to avoid the GUI, I think I can exploit security holes in the back end and avoid detection, at least temporarily.”

  Cass and I looked over her shoulder. “And the English translation?” Cass said.

  “I’m able to hack into their system,” Aly said, typing lines of code into a black screen, “including the surveillance network. I’m trying to locate the video feeds from those cameras they planted in the jungle. Maybe one of them will let us see our location. And we’ll identify what just happened. The problem is, everything’s labeled randomly. Hang on, I’ll scroll through them . . .”

  The lines of code vanished, and eight small images appeared. All of them were practically pitch-black—except for the scene in the lower left, which showed a flash of bright orange.

  Aly clicked on it. The image filled the screen, showing the black cone of Mount Onyx against the gray sky—and a plume of smoke rising from flames near the top of the volcano.

  She zoomed in. Flaming chunks of airplane wreckage dotted the bushes. Above them, the outline of a small tail section emerged from a cluster of trees, ringed by flame. It looked exactly like the planes I’d seen overhead while we were outside Routhouni.

  I was staring so closely at the wreck, I almost didn’t notice a small gray shadow moving through the nearby trees.

  “Is that a person?” I asked.

  “Unless a gorilla flew the plane,” Aly said.

  “Possible, considering the landing technique,” Cass said.

  Now the whole group was gathered around Aly, including the gravediggers—and Marco, covered with dirt.

  “Pay attention.” Aly zoomed as close as she could on the small, moving blotch. But it wasn’t going downward. “It’s climbing.”

  “Is not gorilla,” Torquin grumbled.

  “Is there a camera at the
top of the volcano?” Cass asked.

  Nirvana shook her head. “There were three. But we destroyed them.”

  “How about on the sides?” Aly began typing in more commands. “Okay. I’m picking up feeds from a couple of locations on the volcano slope . . . hang on . . .”

  As Aly clicked, three completely black images showed on her laptop screen. She was about to click away from them when I thought I saw a small movement in the middle one. “Hold it. On that one. Can you adjust the brightness?”

  Aly clicked on the middle image. It filled the screen. With a few more clicks, she managed to make the blackness a lot lighter, but it was extremely grainy. “This is the best I can do. The moonlight helps.”

  I leaned closer. A silvery figure was making its way slowly up the side of the mountain. Definitely human. And quickly passing upward and out of the frame.

  “Let me access the camera’s remote motion control,” Aly said. “I think I can swivel it.”

  The image vibrated as the camera began to turn. For a long moment everything was a blur, until the lens pointed directly up the slope.

  The tree cover was sparse, the flat summit of Mount Onyx visible at the top. The moon must have been directly over the frame, because the figure was using the light to climb. There was no doubt now that it was a man.

  We watched silently as he hauled himself over the rim of Mount Onyx, where he stood to full height. A leather sack, cinched with rope, was slung over his shoulders. Silhouetted by the moon, he turned in the direction of the camera, and I got a good view of a few characteristics.

  Thick beard. Bare calves. Sandals.

  “I don’t believe this . . .” I murmured under my breath.

  As the man glanced over the island below, he threw back his head and opened his mouth wide. From above us, we heard a muffled cry that echoed a fraction of a second later through the video feed:

  “ATLAAANNNNTIS!”

  “If I’m dreaming, someone kick me awake,” Aly said. “And if not—ladies and gentlemen, meet Zeus.”

  “Zeus?” Nirvana said.

  “How did he get here?” Cass asked.