The Three Secret Cities

by Matthew Reilly

  They emerged on the flat stone roof of the structure. There Stretch leapt across onto the roof of the adjoining building—since the buildings followed the downward spiral of the road, this second roof was lower than the first.

  And thus Stretch and Pooh Bear traversed their way down the city of Thule—across and down, hurdling parapets, leaping from rooftop to rooftop—paralleling the city’s main descending thoroughfare and thus bypassing the army of bronze automatons filling it.

  After about ten minutes of this kind of running, they came to a high crenellated battlement overlooking the bridge and here their rooftop path ended.

  Now the bridge stretched out below them—a hundred metres long, with the open-sided cupola in its middle, where Mendoza and his last three Swiss troopers were stranded like trapped animals.

  But the bridge had no kind of roof over which Pooh and Stretch could run to bypass the forest of bronzemen gathered on this half of it.

  ‘Okay,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘That was the high road. What’s the low road?’

  ‘Down there,’ Stretch said, pointing.

  Pooh Bear followed his gaze. ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.’

  ‘It’s the only way.’

  ‘Yes, for a skinny Israeli,’ Pooh said. ‘Such routes are not meant for fat Arabs like me.’

  Stretch smiled grimly. ‘Come on, my old friend, you can do it.’

  A minute later, the two of them were climbing, unseen by the mass of bronzemen, down the side of the battlement, using its uneven stone surface for finger and toeholds.

  When they came level with the bridge, however, they kept going, below it, coming to the latticework of stone struts underneath the ancient bridge.

  The low road.

  And so, dangling from the bridge, high above the bottomless drop, moving hand over hand, hanging by only their fingertips, Pooh Bear and Stretch worked their way along the bridge, moving along its underside, underneath the many bronzemen on it, until they came to the cupola and, to the surprise of Cardinal Mendoza and his last three men, hoisted themselves up onto the bridge proper.

  ‘What the—’ Mendoza gasped.

  ‘You should’ve done more homework, Cardinal,’ Stretch said as he marched over to Mendoza and snatched the Sword from him. ‘Now, we have to clean up your mess. Pooh, you ready?’

  Significantly heavier than Stretch, Pooh Bear was still catching his breath from their hand-over-hand journey across the underside of the bridge.

  He drew a pair of Arabian fighting knives from his belt.

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ he puffed.

  Stretch looked at the four silver statues inside the cupola. They stood motionless, for now.

  Then, gripping Excalibur in both hands and with his loyal friend Pooh Bear at his side, Stretch edged into the open-sided cupola and the silver statues stepped forward.

  As soon as he stepped out onto the dizzyingly high cupola, Stretch felt the sword in his hand change.

  It began to vibrate ever so slightly and its grip grew warm. Stretch felt the heat radiating through its gleaming blade.

  The first silverman’s deadly claws slashed at him, whistling as they cut through the air.

  Stretch ducked the blow and stabbed the famous sword directly at his foe’s chest.

  Far from bouncing off the silverman’s metal body as all of Mendoza’s bullets had, the hot blade plunged deep into the silver automaton and the man-shaped thing went instantly still . . . and fell.

  But the other three silvermen were still in the game and they rushed forward, leading with their claws.

  It was here that Pooh Bear stepped in and his two knives flashed as they parried the other silvermen’s lethal blows, the steel of his blades ringing as they deflected the automatons’ metal claws, keeping them away from Stretch.

  This allowed Stretch to turn and kill a second silverman—slashing its head clean off—and then, while Pooh Bear distracted it, Stretch dispatched the third one with a powerful stab in the back.

  But two against four was always going to be tough, and as Pooh Bear helped Stretch dispatch the third silverman, the fourth and last one slashed Stretch across his back.

  ‘Arrgh!’ Stretch yelled as he fell toward the edge of the cupola and dropped Excalibur.

  The last silverman stood over him and raised its clawed hand for the killing blow . . . just as Pooh Bear came sliding across the floor between its legs, scooped up the Sword and swung it laterally, slicing at the silverman’s knees.

  The silver thing toppled to the floor beside Stretch. But it was still ‘alive’ and still trying to kill them. It slashed at Stretch, missing by inches, until Pooh Bear kicked it in the back, sending it sailing off the high bridge and disappearing into the abyss below.

  And suddenly it was over.

  The two friends lay inside the cupola, on the soaring stone bridge: Stretch bloody and wounded, Pooh Bear gripping Excalibur.

  Cardinal Mendoza just stared at them in shock and wonder.

  ‘Stretch,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘You okay?’

  Stretch groaned painfully. ‘I’m . . . all right. Go. You have to get that sword to the vault.’

  Pooh Bear sprang to his feet.

  ‘You!’ he called to Mendoza. ‘Since he saved your worthless life, help my friend! Bring him across the bridge and tend to his wound while I take this sword to the vault and empower it.’

  Mendoza nodded dumbly.

  Pooh Bear took off, hurrying off the bridge and down a steep ladder cut into the far wall. The ladder led to a tiny ledge where a yawning stone doorway could be seen: the entrance to the innermost vault of the secret city of Thule.

  Ra

  ‘The second blinds, the second blinds,’ Iolanthe repeated breathlessly as she and Nobody clambered over the lost city of Ra.

  After Jack had called and told them that the weapons overcame the guardians, Iolanthe had had a realisation.

  ‘I know how the Helmet blinds them,’ she had said. ‘We have to get to that bridge.’

  But to reach the bridge in the heart of Ra, they needed to outflank the three hundred bronzemen filling Ra’s single switchbacking ascending street of gold.

  The way they did it was by going over it, climbing up the vines that had attached themselves to the Y-shaped uprights and then leaping across the slat-like golden roofs of each level.

  It was a perilous path and one that required an athleticism that was too much for Mae. She waited at the base of the city.

  As the two of them danced across the gold slats, hurdling the wide gaps, Iolanthe saw the army of bronzemen only a couple of feet below her, standing ominously to attention.

  The golden slats were covered in a slippery grease of mud plus many creeping vines that had looped around the damaged roof in a thousand different ways.

  As Iolanthe climbed up onto the second level, she tripped on a thick vine and toppled awkwardly through one of the gaps—to be caught by Nobody.

  Beneath her dangling feet, a single bronzeman turned his eyeless beaked head neutrally up at her.

  But the automaton did nothing.

  They continued on, arriving at the city’s third level, a short distance from the bridge where Chloe Carnarvon had stalled in her journey.

  ‘Chloe!’ Iolanthe called.

  At the bridge ten metres away, Chloe spun in surprise, her eyes already wide with panic at her hopeless situation.

  Seeing Chloe up close, Iolanthe now saw that her former assistant looked dirty and drained. Iolanthe didn’t know that, after flying to South America from Iceland and slowly making her way to this godforsaken corner of the jungle, Chloe had been stuck in this humid deathtrap for two-and-half days, slowly losing men, ammunition, water and her mind.

  Now Chloe blanched in disbelief at the unexpected sight of her old boss: shaven-headed and bruised, but alive an
d here.

  ‘Iolanthe?’

  ‘Stay there! I know how to use the—’

  It was then that the bronzemen reacted.

  As Iolanthe crawled across the golden slat-roof toward the bridge with Nobody behind her, a bronzeman below them suddenly punched up at Nobody’s slat, hitting it with such force that the thick gold slat dislodged and abruptly, to Iolanthe’s horror, Nobody dropped from view, disappearing in amongst the sea of deadly bronzemen.

  Nobody landed with a thud on the moss-covered gold floor of the City of Ra amid a dozen shiny bronze legs.

  Above him loomed the defenders of the city, their blank faces looking robotically down at him.

  Schnick!

  The nearest bronzeman’s fist opened, its bladed claws bared.

  ‘Damn . . .’ Nobody breathed.

  The bronzeman slashed. Nobody dived left—to find another bronzeman standing over him and slashing down with its claws.

  He rolled right, slamming into the grime-covered golden wall.

  As soon as Nobody had dropped from her sight, Iolanthe had sprung into action, dancing across the last few slats and racing to Chloe’s side.

  She wasn’t expecting to prove her theory this way, but now she had no choice. She had to do this and she had to do it now.

  ‘I need that!’ She snatched the Helmet of Hades from Chloe’s hands, ran back to the end of the golden street and called, ‘Nobody!’

  Peering through the first few ranks of bronzemen, she saw Nobody evading the slashing claws of the bronzemen before rolling up against the golden wall. She threw the ancient helmet to him.

  ‘Put it on!’

  The Helmet flew through the air before it bounced on the floor and rolled up against Nobody’s leg.

  Iolanthe’s bizarre command rang in Nobody’s ears.

  His brain reeled. I’m about to die! Why on Earth would I put on an old helmet?

  But somehow he told his hands to obey and, as he ducked one last swipe from the nearest bronzeman—a strike that bounced off the golden wall—he snatched up the Helmet of Hades and dropped it onto his head—

  —and the attacking bronzemen paused instantly.

  They pulled back, confused.

  With their eyeless faces, they looked left, then right.

  They’re searching for me, Nobody thought. But they can’t see me.

  The second blinds them . . .

  If you wear the Helmet, they can’t see you.

  And so, very slowly, Dave ‘Nobody’ Black stood and walked—walked—unharmed through the ranks of bronzemen to the golden bridge where Iolanthe stood with the still-shocked Chloe and her last few Brazilian troops.

  Once he was clear of the bronzemen, Nobody took off the Helmet and gave it to Iolanthe.

  ‘Good theory,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks. Let’s see if it works again.’

  And with those words, Iolanthe put on the Helmet and without so much as a pause, stepped into the cupola between the four silver guardians standing in its corners.

  As she strode among them, the four silvermen didn’t move. They remained silent statues.

  While she was wearing the Helmet, they couldn’t see her.

  And then Iolanthe was through, past the deadly cupola.

  After that, she climbed the stepped bridge and came to a doorway that bored into the base of the huge flat-topped mountain.

  The doorway to the city’s innermost vault.

  Iolanthe stepped inside, disappearing into the holy sanctum of the City of Ra.

  Atlas

  Holding the Mace of Poseidon high above his head, Jack West swam—untouched, unattacked—through the ranks of bronzemen standing at the base of the colossal flooded City of Atlas.

  Aloysius Knight swam with him, careful to stay close to Jack, lest he lose the protection of the Mace as well.

  Slowly, they swam upward, in front of the stupendous hourglass-shaped rock formation that supported the most famous lost city on Earth.

  As at the other cities, a single road ran up the flank of the rock formation. Towers, domes, obelisks and even a few small pyramids lined the road as it climbed. Four mighty vertical columns—they were the size of skyscrapers and dotted with windows—supported the upper half of the hourglass.

  Up and up they swam, until they came to the bridge on the bottom half of the city: a bridge with an open-sided cupola in its middle.

  Here they encountered—as the others had at their cities—four silver automatons standing like statues in the four corners of the cupola.

  Jack considered swimming past the bridge, bypassing it, but he figured the rules of this game wouldn’t allow that: he had to confront and overcome the silver ones.

  The silver guardians did not stir as Jack and Aloysius swam through the bridge.

  They were protected by the Mace.

  Ever higher they swam, passing a tall tower and other ancient structures until they came to the waist of the giant hourglass, its narrowest point, where they found a sturdy square-shaped stone doorway.

  And as Jack held the Mace close to it, the door slid open.

  Thus, like Pooh Bear at Thule and Iolanthe at Ra, Jack and Aloysius entered the inner sanctum of the secret City of Atlas.

  The inner vaults of the three secret cities were identical: each was a cube-shaped room with walls of glittering gold and a central waist-high altar cut from a slab of raw diamond.

  The golden walls of each vault were covered with raised glyphs and images.

  At Thule where Pooh Bear held the Sword, the walls were icy cold to touch.

  At Ra, where Iolanthe wore the Helmet, due to the constant humidity, the golden walls were covered in a layer of green mould.

  At Atlas, where Jack and Aloysius had brought the Mace and where everything had been flooded, the gilt walls took on a blueish hue.

  The carvings on the walls swirled around Jack like images from a dream.

  Many of them he had seen before.

  A picture of the Great Pyramid at Giza being struck by a beam of light from the sun.

  The Mystery of the Circles.

  Five warriors standing behind four throned kings.

  The escutcheons of the four legendary kingdoms.

  There were also some he hadn’t seen:

  A planet and its moon.

  And a drawing of five mountains with vertical shafts cut into their middles, shafts that plunged deep into the Earth.

  And one other image: a reproduction of the triangular tablet that had been at the centre of this quest—the one that was a piece of the Altar of the Cosmos—complete with the Thoth text at its edges and the images of the Sword, Helmet and Mace.

  But there was one crucial difference.

  This tablet was not shown standing upright as Jack had seen their triangular tablet displayed.

  No. Here the triangular tablet was shown lying horizontally—flat, face up to the sky—at the bottom of a shallow oblong pool.

  They swam up to the diamond altar, a sturdy chunk of cloudy, translucent, ice-like stone.

  It was at the same time both elegant and rough. Its sides were uneven, coarse, while its flat surface had been planed smooth and polished to a sheen. An eerie glow pulsed gently within it.

  In the exact centre of the diamond altar, embedded in it, was a pale blue gemstone, glittering and astounding, the size of a golf ball.

  An identical gemstone was embedded in the altar at Thule.

  A third was at Ra.

  Jack swam forward, gripping the Mace. He could see what he was meant to do.

  In between the three blades of the Mace was the small setting he’d seen before. It was a perfect match for the blue gemstone.

  Jack held the Mace vertically over the gemstone and gently lowered it until the weapon and the gem touched.

>   The dimly glowing altar now came alive with light.

  Radiant, blinding white light shone out from the diamond slab, lancing out into the water.

  Aloysius shielded his eyes, so bright was the glare.

  And with a sharp snap, the gemstone came free of the altar and became one with the Mace.

  It shone with an ethereal light, pale blue in colour, almost like starlight.

  ‘I think we just empowered the Mace,’ Jack said.

  Aloysius nodded. ‘I think that’s safe to say. Can we get the fuck out of here now?’

  ‘Aye-aye to that,’ Jack said. He keyed his radio. ‘Pooh Bear? Iolanthe? How are you doing out there?’

  In the vault at Thule, Pooh Bear had just performed a similar ritual with Excalibur.

  The sword had a hollow setting at the base of its mighty grip which matched the gemstone perfectly, and soon sword and gem were one, shining brightly in the depths of the remote ice city of Thule.

  ‘The Sword is done,’ he reported.

  At Ra, Iolanthe had found a small hemispherical indentation in the brow of the Helmet of Hades that matched the blue gemstone on her diamond altar.

  She turned the helmet upside-down and lowered it to the altar.

  The blue gemstone attached itself to the helmet and immediately shone like a star in the night sky.

  ‘The Helmet, too,’ she said into her radio.

  Jack and Aloysius swam out of their vault, kicking hard with their fins, emerging from the waist of the magnificent sunken city.

  Jack switched to his facemask’s radio.

  ‘Sphinx,’ he said. ‘We’ve empowered the Three Immortal Weapons. Now we must take them to the Altar of the—’

  Jack cut himself off as something swooped into a hover in the water right in front of him.

  It wasn’t anything ancient. Far from it. It was the most modern thing of all: an unmanned submersible drone with a large metal basket hanging from its underbelly.

  ‘Good work, Captain,’ Sphinx’s voice replied in his earpiece.

  A camera on the drone stared right at him.