The Three Secret Cities

by Matthew Reilly

  CORNWALL, ENGLAND

  Mount’s Bay

  Cornwall, England

  25 November, 0900 hours

  After flying into the U.K. from New York, Zoe and Mae had taken the overnight train from London to get here.

  Known as Land’s End, Cornwall lies at the very bottom of England, at its remote southwestern corner. The region is home to several historic places, including St Ives, Penzance and, apparently, the Hall of Royal Records.

  It was a cryptic reference in Iolanthe’s text message that had brought them here.

  I'm in England, researching historical battles from Marathon to Waterloo.

  Jack had figured it out. ‘“I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical / From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical”,’ he had said to Mae before they had parted. ‘It’s a line from the Gilbert and Sullivan musical, The Pirates of Penzance. Iolanthe is directing us to Penzance and the historic castle near there.’

  ‘Oh,’ Mae had said, realising. ‘St Michael’s Mount . . .’ she’d added, a little bit of awe creeping into her voice.

  St Michael’s Mount is one of two striking islands dedicated to the archangel Michael that stand on opposite sides of the English Channel: it sits on the coast of Cornwall while over in France one finds its twin, Mont Saint-Michel.

  Both are large tidal islands whose causeways get flooded at high tide. And both bear on their peaks impressive medieval structures: the French island features a fabulous, towering, many-levelled and multi-spired cathedral that looks like something out of The Lord of the Rings.

  St Michael’s Mount, on the other hand, is far more English.

  There are no fairytale spires to be found on it. No fabulous towers. Rather, it bears a stout, square and sturdy castle on its back, one that has stood for eight hundred years and which has been owned by the same aristocratic family, the St Aubyns, for most of that time. Its mighty walls are pale grey, almost white.

  Old, enigmatic and owned by the bluest of blue-blood families, it was a perfect candidate to house Iolanthe’s place of work, the Hall of Royal Records.

  Zoe and Mae stood on the shore of Mount’s Bay, gazing out at St Michael’s Mount.

  Its curving cobblestone causeway stretched away from them for several hundred metres before arriving at the island. The island had a pier and a little village at its base, then a pleasant forest climbing its steep slopes, before, standing proudly above it all, one found the castle.

  ‘Pretty cool, huh?’ said the young red-haired man standing beside them. ‘Best place to run in the event of a zombie apocalypse, in my humble opinion. It’s very well defended: vertical walls and cliff faces, and the causeway disappears under the incoming tide, although that assumes your zombies can’t breathe underwater.’

  ‘Thanks for that, Julius,’ Zoe said. ‘You always know the best way to reduce something to a zombie apocalypse.’

  Julius Adamson smiled brightly at that.

  He had met them when they landed at Gatwick the night before and taken the overnight train with them. Today he wore an R2-D2 hoodie over a t-shirt that read ‘USCSS NOSTROMO’ (Neither Zoe nor Mae got that movie reference.) His twin brother, Lachlan, had not been able to join them on this occasion: he had family commitments in London.

  For their part, Zoe and Mae wore more regular British tourist attire: blue jeans and a West Ham soccer jersey for Zoe and a large straw hat, floral blouse and sandals for Mae.

  Tagging along behind a gaggle of morning tourists, they set off across the low causeway.

  Julius said, ‘You know this island was Church property until the English crown seized it. There are creepy ruins of a monastery underneath it. The monastery was owned by the same monks who run Mont Saint-Michel over on the other side of the Channel. I wouldn’t be surprised if both islands of St Michael have halls of royal records.’

  ‘I knew we brought you along for a reason,’ Zoe said.

  Mae said, ‘Are you aware that before the monks set up shop here, a pagan religion worshipped at a stone circle on the summit of the island? Druids who counted among their ranks an enigmatic priest known as Merlyn or Merlin.’

  ‘No, I did not know that, Madam Merriweather,’ Julius said. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to join my team for trivia night at the pub this Thursday? We could use you.’

  They arrived at the island.

  It rose before them, soaring into the cloudless morning sky.

  They paid the admission fee and ascended the winding path leading up to the castle.

  They were halfway up it when, abruptly, they heard the sound of a helicopter starting up from their right.

  They hurried to an escarpment branching off the path and, looking down on a grassy clearing, saw a British military chopper sitting beside the base of one of the castle’s taller cliffs.

  A World War II pillbox had been dug into the base of the cliff and to their surprise four figures strode out of it and marched directly to the chopper: three men and a woman.

  The lead man was tall and blond and he wore aristocratic outdoor clothing: a tweed hunting jacket and riding trousers; the second man was shorter, with black hair, a thin black moustache and a black suit with a priest’s collar; the third was a fat Pakistani wearing a Tommy Bahama shirt and several thick gold neck chains.

  The woman was younger, in her mid-twenties and beautiful, with chestnut hair and pale skin. She also wore riding clothes: tweed jacket, form-fitting riding pants and knee-high boots. She walked with her nose held high. Zoe wondered who she was.

  Zoe snapped off a couple of photos of them with her cell phone.

  No sooner had the four figures stepped aboard the big chopper than it took off, banking away into the sky.

  Zoe exchanged a look with Mae. ‘Do you know them?’

  ‘I know the three men,’ Mae said. ‘That was Orlando Compton-Jones, Cardinal Ricardo Mendoza and Sunny Malik. I don’t know the woman. This is very troubling. They beat us here.’

  Once the chopper was long gone, the three ‘tourists’ clambered down to the concrete pillbox at the base of the cliff and, after checking that no-one was looking, ducked inside it.

  Inside, it was barren and musty, the walls coated with wind-tossed salt and graffiti.

  ‘Nice touch,’ Julius said, eyeing the graffiti. ‘Really sells the abandoned look.’

  An iron-barred cell stood at the back of the dark pillbox, held shut by a padlock.

  Zoe picked the lock and it dropped away.

  Stepping into the cell, they quickly discovered a hatch in its floor.

  Zoe opened it . . . to reveal a set of old stone stairs disappearing into darkness.

  She drew a pistol from the back of her jeans. It had a small flashlight attached to its barrel. She flicked it on.

  ‘What do you say, boys and girls?’

  Raising the gun, she led the way into the darkness.

  The stairs opened onto a long horizontal tunnel that delved into the mountain under the castle.

  The walls of the tunnel were solid stone and the passageway itself only one person wide. It stretched away into blackness in a dead-straight line, so far that Zoe’s little flashlight couldn’t find the end of it.

  After two more iron gates—equipped with slightly more modern locks that took Zoe a little longer to pick—they came to some stairs that wound upward in a tight spiral.

  Rising up the stairwell, the stairs ended at a doorway sealed by the largest iron-barred gate yet.

  A pained scream from somewhere on the other side of the gate made them all jump.

  Cautiously, they stepped up to the gate.

  Zoe peered out through it.

  ‘Lord in Heaven . . .’ she gasped.

  Julius and Mae joined her and beheld the grisly sight.

  ‘Jesus Christ . . .’ Julius said.

 
‘Oh, that is messed up,’ Mae said.

  Through the bars of the gate, they saw a dungeon—a genuine medieval dungeon—all stone walls and cages, chains and bloody chopping blocks, racks and other torture devices; all of it lit not by flaming torches but by the harsh white glare of modern fluorescent light-tubes, which, if it were possible, actually made the chamber seem even more horrific.

  And in the middle of it all, her hands and feet manacled to a hideous high-backed wooden chair, bloodied and battered, her head lolling to one side, was Iolanthe.

  Zoe stared in horror through the bars of the gate at Iolanthe.

  Despite their chequered history, what Zoe saw now sickened her to her very core.

  Iolanthe—once beautiful and poised, a modern-day princess with perfect skin and shiny auburn hair—was now a wreck of a human being.

  Her hair had been shaved off.

  Her face was covered with cuts and bruises. One of her eyes was so inflamed it had swollen shut. Her lips were cracked. Dried blood covered her chin in a thick crust.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  It was her nose that was the worst.

  Orlando had put a ring in it.

  A thick brass nose-ring like the kind you put on a bull. It had pierced the septal cartilage that separated her nostrils.

  With her shaven head and chunky nose-ring, the one-time elegant princess looked like a bizarre kind of Goth punk rocker. All she needed were some tattoos.

  A rusty hinge squealed from somewhere and footsteps stomped into the dungeon, trudging heavily down a set of stairs directly above Zoe’s closed gate.

  A fat bald man in a blood-smeared leather apron entered Zoe’s field of vision and stood over Iolanthe.

  He held a gun-like device in one hand.

  ‘Found it!’ he said brightly to Iolanthe.

  She didn’t look up.

  He smacked her hard across the face and her good eye shot open, bloodshot and defiant.

  ‘Now, now, here, here,’ the fat man in the apron said. ‘I is just followin’ orders, missy. Blame yer brother. He’s the one who wanted you to suffer. I just enjoy doin’ it, is all. Call it a fringe benefit. I love to hear the ladies scream.’

  He held up the device again for Iolanthe to see.

  ‘Like I said. I found it. Me tattoo gun. Haven’t used this in a long time. Yer brother told me that he wants you to remember your betrayal every time you look in a mirror.’

  He fired up the tattoo gun. It whirred menacingly.

  Iolanthe—her face a mess, her hair shaved—leaned back in the wooden chair, hyperventilating. But there was nowhere for her to go.

  The torturer leaned in close.

  ‘Keep still now and it won’t—’

  ‘Freeze, asshole,’ Zoe said from behind him.

  Iolanthe’s head snapped up at the voice.

  Her tormenter also turned, holding the tattoo gun pointed upward, more surprised than shocked.

  Neither of them had heard Zoe open the gate and enter the dungeon.

  ‘And who might you be?’ the torturer asked with an unctuous grin.

  Blam!

  Zoe shot him in the face.

  The torturer dropped to the floor, squealing, gripping his bloody face.

  Zoe stepped over him and put two more bullets in the back of his head and he went still.

  ‘No conversations for you, shithead,’ she said. ‘You just die.’

  Iolanthe stared up at Zoe. She seemed dazed, in shock, traumatised.

  Mae and Julius hurried to Iolanthe’s side and quickly released her hands and feet from their manacles.

  ‘Can you stand?’ Julius asked.

  Iolanthe mumbled something in the affirmative.

  She looked dazedly from the body of her torturer to Zoe, her bruised and cut face the picture of confusion. There was no other woman in the world whom she thought less likely to save her than Zoe Kissane.

  Zoe leaned forward, peering closely at the thick nose-ring puncturing Iolanthe’s nose, trying to figure out how it was attached.

  She reached forward and Iolanthe flinched, jerking back from her with a frightened squeal.

  Zoe and Mae swapped a look: what the hell had Orlando done to her?

  ‘It’s okay,’ Zoe said gently. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. No-one’s going to hurt you any more. I just have to remove that nose-ring.’

  She reached forward again, more slowly this time, gently unhooked the nose-ring and tossed it away.

  Then Julius and Mae helped Iolanthe out of the horrible wooden chair, looping her arms over their shoulders.

  ‘Jack sent us,’ Zoe said. ‘We need your help. Let’s move, we have to get out of here before anyone comes back.’

  Iolanthe blinked weakly, and then with great effort, nodded. ‘I . . . I . . . records . . . upstairs.’

  They hurried up many stairs and stairwells even though they were still far below the castle that stood atop St Michael’s Mount.

  Zoe led the way while Julius and Mae carried Iolanthe slung between them.

  ‘After Zahir and Benjamin . . . dropped me off in Dubai, I . . . flew straight here,’ Iolanthe rasped. Her voice was hoarse, parched.

  ‘I thought I could . . . get in and out of the Hall of Royal Records before my brother got back, but he caught me as I was leaving and sent me down here, to the dungeon. To be tortured by Longworth, his personal psychopath and torturer.’

  The four of them rounded a corner.

  Mae said, ‘During my studies, I’ve often wondered what the Hall of Royal Records looks like . . .’

  Her voice trailed off as she saw the space in front of them.

  A gorgeous high-ceilinged chamber the size of a basketball court opened before them, comprising hundreds of shelves filled with leather folios, pigeonholes packed with scrolls, stone tablets on pedestals, and six towering statues of grey stone.

  ‘The Hall of Royal Records,’ Iolanthe croaked. ‘I managed to hide some documents before Orlando caught me. We must grab them and flee before anyone discovers something is amiss.’

  Fifteen minutes later, four figures in tourist garb strode across the cobblestone causeway back to the mainland from St Michael’s Mount.

  No-one noticed that they had gone over to the Mount as a threesome or that the new person in their group could barely walk on her own.

  Mae and Zoe held some ancient books and scrolls under their clothes while Julius helped Iolanthe. She staggered along the causeway with her head bowed, the blue hood of an R2-D2 hoodie worn low, covering her hideously bruised and beaten face.

  They rented a car in Penzance and began the long drive back to London.

  No sooner was Iolanthe safely in the car than she fell into a deep sleep. She slept the whole way.

  When they got to the safehouse that Jack kept in Vauxhall a short distance from the Thames, Mae tended to her facial wounds and gave her a sedative and she slept even more soundly.

  A few hours later, Jack called from Venice.

  ‘Have you got Iolanthe?’ he asked.

  ‘We have her,’ Zoe said, ‘but she’s in bad shape, Jack. Orlando tortured her. She’ll be out of it for a while. How did it go in Venice?’

  ‘Not good. We saw the full triangular tablet at the Accademia. We think Orlando may be rushing too quickly to the first city. But then those Knights of the Golden Eight arrived and took Alby. We need Iolanthe to tell us a few things, including where their home base is so we can rescue him. Are you in London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stay there. We’ll come to you.’

  Stanford University

  California, U.S.A.

  Two months earlier

  A couple of months before he was kidnapped and taken to compete in the Great Games, Jack travelled from his hideaway in the Australian
desert to visit Lily at Stanford.

  It was during that trip that he’d met Dion DeSaxe.

  Dion.

  At that time, Dion had been on a couple of dates with Lily. Of course, back then, Lily had been entirely unaware of the four kingdoms, let alone the fact that Dion was the son and heir of Hades, the King of the Underworld.

  What a difference a few months would make.

  In addition to almost marrying her—in the ultimate royal wedding—and threatening Lily with a sadistic life after that, Dion had held a red-hot poker inches away from Alby’s nose and, later, during the mayhem that had occurred after the Great Games, had aimed a gun at the defenceless Jack.

  As the furious Dion had been about to pull the trigger, Alby had appeared at the last moment and shot him through the back of the head and they’d got away.

  But before all that, back when the world had made sense, Jack’s trip to Stanford had been great.

  Lily had loved showing him around the campus, introducing him to her friends and even taking him to a Giants baseball game in nearby San Francisco.

  But most of all she had just enjoyed spending time with him.

  One evening, as they’d eaten together at a pizza place in San Jose, Lily had said, ‘Daddy, what do you think of Alby?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jack asked, intrigued and a little surprised. This was around the time Lily had introduced Jack to Dion and announced him as ‘boyfriend material’.

  ‘As . . . well . . . more than a friend?’

  Jack smiled. He hadn’t known Lily might have thought of Alby in that way and he kind of liked it. He also hadn’t known that Dion had some competition and he really liked that.

  ‘Kiddo, a lot of parents weigh in on who their kids date, but for me, who you choose is entirely up to you. The only thing I’ll say is this: date a man, not a boy.’

  ‘But what makes a boy into a man?’ Lily asked.

  ‘The loss of innocence,’ Jack said simply and firmly. ‘The moment you find out that the world isn’t always your friend, that bad things happen to good people, that people die. I’ve known Alby since he was twelve years old. His own father wasn’t supportive of him—thought he was a weakling, a nerd—and yet Alby pushed on with his studies anyway and now he’s one of the smartest guys I know. The world wasn’t his friend but he stuck at it. He’s a fine young man.’