The Four Legendary Kingdoms

by Matthew Reilly

  The figure stopped at a cell a few doors down from Jack’s and whispered something to one of its occupants before fleeing as quickly as it had arrived.

  Jack watched the robed figure leave.

  What was this?

  He shook his head, not sure if he was asleep or awake. His weary brain tried to make sense of it but he was unable to ponder the matter any further, for right then all the fatigue and stress of the previous day finally overcame him and he fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

  Jack was awoken by a sharp jolt and the clang of metal on metal.

  His carriage was moving. The train of hostage chambers shunted slowly along its track.

  Sunlight rushed into Jack’s cell and as the train moved away from the pinnacles of the Third Challenge, he saw the landscape around him for the first time in the cold light of day.

  Alby, Sky Monster and E-147 awoke with the movement and joined Jack at the bars.

  On the far side of the pinnacles, they saw a colossal stone wall, perfectly vertical and gently curved.

  Alby said, ‘Looks like we’re inside a meteor crater . . .’

  Jack couldn’t yet see the whole mountain-like formation that housed their moveable cell, but he could now see why he had been confused as to whether or not this Underworld was situated in a large cavern.

  Looking upward through the bars of his cell, he saw camouflage netting extending out from somewhere high above him over to the rim of the curved stone wall opposite him.

  The camouflage netting caused the landscape inside the crater to be shrouded in dense shadow. Only the odd shaft of sunlight pierced it. At night the netting had made it too difficult to even see stars in the sky.

  But it also allowed fresh air to get in, hence the half-cave, half-not effect.

  The carriages came around a bend and suddenly Jack saw something else on the vertical wall of the crater opposite him.

  A vast and complex vertical maze protruded from the face of the sheer cliff. In front of it was a broad lake of steaming yellow-tinged liquid.

  ‘What is that?’ Alby gasped.

  ‘That, I’m guessing,’ Jack said, ‘is the arena for the next challenge.’

  CHAMPION PROFILE

  NAME: ZAITAN DESAXE

  AGE: 22

  RANK TO WIN: 4

  REPRESENTING: UNDERWORLD

  PROFILE:

  Second son of Lord Hades.

  A gifted warrior, fighter and student of history. He will be there at the end.

  Ranked 4th out of 16 to win the Games.

  FROM HIS PATRON:

  ‘Zaitan is both my son and my champion. He has studied all the previous Great Games. He has the talent, skill and ruthlessness required to win. When he does, his name will echo throughout the ages.’

  Anthony DeSaxe, Hades,King of the Underworld

  Jack stood on a low stone bridge in front of the dizzying vertical maze.

  He was still not wearing any shoes.

  Sky Monster wore a size thirteen: way too big for Jack. And E’s boots were similarly too large.

  His bare feet stood only inches above a broad lake.

  By the smell of it and the steam rising from it, the lake was fed by some kind of sulphurous thermal spring.

  It lapped against his stone bridge, leaving a yellow residue near his feet. It looked hot and unpleasant and the odour it gave off smelled toxic, almost cancerous.

  Don’t fall in, Jack thought.

  Even though he was standing in front of the elaborate wall-maze, Jack had his back to it. He was looking in the opposite direction.

  Having stepped a short way out onto the sulphurous lake via the bridge, he could now, in the full light of day, see Hades’s mountain-palace in all its glory.

  It stood in the centre of what was indeed a vast circular meteor crater, and in addition to the various castles and fortresses Jack had seen before, he now saw an observatory-like structure high up on this side.

  Looking lower, he saw the hostage carriages. The rails on which they stood ran in a flat circle that swept all the way around the bottom reaches of the mount, below a few royal viewing balconies.

  In the better light, he could also see the summit of the peak now. An elaborate cupola-like structure occupied the summit and from it, like an immense spider web, spread the vast camouflage netting that shaded the entire crater.

  ‘The Kingdom of Hades,’ Jack said softly.

  His thoughts were cut off by Monsieur Vacheron, speaking into his microphone.

  ‘My lords and ladies, welcome to the Fourth Challenge! The famous vertical labyrinth. Ten champions shall enter the maze, but there is only one exit from it. Once that exit is used by seven champions, it will be closed and sealed.

  ‘As you can see, two Golden Spheres sit inside the maze. To the champions who emerge from the maze with the spheres, the usual rewards shall go.’

  Jack looked up at the maze.

  It was cut into a sheer flat-faced slab of stone that jutted out from the curved wall of the crater. Roughly twenty storeys tall, it was a confusing tangle of horizontal walkways and vertical chutes, all cut at right angles to each other.

  As he gazed up at the monstrously complex labyrinth, Jack saw the two Golden Spheres sitting in separate dead-end sections on either side of the central axis.

  Jack tried to take in all the different levels of the maze.

  As he did so, he noticed that not every horizontal section of walkway was made of thick stone.

  Some sections were thinner and they seemed to be attached to hinges.

  Trap doors, he thought.

  Jesus . . .

  Two gigantic water wheels turned at either end of the massive maze, lifting foul yellow water out of the lake in large steel dumptrays.

  Each tray probably held a thousand litres, Jack guessed, and every few minutes, they dumped their contents into the maze. Gravity and a mechanism that caused the trap doors to open did the rest: the occasional trayloads of water plunged down through the maze as powerful waterfalls, ready to knock the unwary to injury or death.

  Vacheron wasn’t done.

  He grinned malevolently. ‘It is not just the maze that defends the spheres.’

  At that moment, Hades’s two lion-headed warriors, the black-clad Chaos and white-clad Fear, entered the maze via the exit at the top and quickly climbed down to the two dead ends containing the spheres, one for each sphere.

  ‘To get the spheres, our champions will not only have to negotiate the maze, they will also have to best Chaos or Fear.’

  Vacheron grinned. ‘Although, keep your eyes open, for we may also see the arrival of another of Lord Hades’s finest warriors,’ he said teasingly.

  The royal audience murmured their awe and approval.

  Up on the royal balcony, standing beside Iolanthe, Lily watched all this fearfully. She had spent the night in a very comfortable spare bedroom in Iolanthe’s quarters, even though she would much rather have stayed with Jack and the others in their cell.

  Vacheron held up a finger.

  ‘As we all know, the goddess Artemis has always favoured brave hunters, so there is one other way for a champion to escape the maze, even after the exit is closed. If a champion can catch the goddess’s prize stag and bring it to the exit, he shall be allowed out. Of course he must do this while he himself is being hunted. Now, I hear you ask, what will be the Sacred Stag?’

  At that moment, a small figure dressed in red appeared at the top of the maze.

  Lily gasped.

  It was the jester from the previous night’s dinner, Mephisto. The cunning little fellow who had casually murdered the minotaur to entertain the royal guests.

  The little jester wore a gaudy crown of antlers on his head. He waved his deadly flail and bowed gaily for the royal crowd.

 
From his position on the lake, Jack could only just see the little man in red with the antlers. He didn’t know what to make of him.

  Vacheron said, ‘Finally, each champion has chosen two companions to accompany him on this challenge. They will not be shackled to him this time. They may help him. They may hinder him. But their survival is not necessary. Only the champion’s is. Luck to all.’

  Jack had been informed of this requirement when Vacheron had come to the hostage carriages earlier, and so now he stood on his stone platform with his two chosen companions:

  Alby and Roxy, his little black poodle.

  The Bridge to the Maze

  To be fair, once he had laid eyes on the vertical maze and seen what it would require to traverse it, Jack really didn’t have much choice in the matter of his partners.

  Sky Monster’s right forearm had been badly hurt during the Third Challenge: he wasn’t going to be able to climb, let alone leap across voids or hang from edges. And Lily was away with the royals.

  Which left Alby and the two dogs.

  He could count on Alby. The kid, now twenty-one, was reliable and smart. When it came to a maze, Jack would’ve picked Alby anyway.

  Since Roxy was smaller and lighter than Ash, he could carry her, like he was doing now. It helped that she was a dog with a serious protective streak. Who knew, maybe she could sniff out danger ahead of them.

  Vacheron called, ‘Let the Fourth Challenge commence!’

  And the madness began.

  The other champions bolted off the mark, racing over the low stone bridge that led across the stinking lake to the base of the maze.

  Alby made to move but Jack held him back with his hand.

  ‘Wait. Not yet.’

  ‘Why?’ Alby said.

  And then it happened.

  Two of the champions—a handsome young man wearing the crimson uniform of Hades’s team and one of the Brazilian special forces men that Iolanthe had pointed out earlier—ran ahead of the others and leapt up to the lowest level of the maze . . .

  . . . leaving their companions, two each, to take up defensive positions behind them, blocking the way of the other champions.

  Those four defensive men then began fighting the other champions as they tried to get to the maze.

  Punches were thrown. Men flew every which way. One fell into the steaming lake and screamed on contact with the hot yellow water.

  ‘Jesus . . .’ Alby breathed.

  ‘It’s a time-winning gambit,’ Jack said. ‘I figured someone might do it. Those four defensive guys aren’t going to hold off all the other champions for long. It’s literally a sacrifice play.’

  He was right.

  The four defensive men were soon overwhelmed by the oncoming champions and tossed into the deadly pool, but not before they had taken out three men—all companions. In the meantime, their two champions, Hades’s man and the Brazilian, had already reached the second level of the maze.

  A great head start.

  Jack turned to Alby. ‘Okay. Focus now. I want you to look at this maze, figure out a path through it and memorise it.’

  Alby blanched. ‘Memorise a way through that? It’s like looking at a plate of spaghetti.’

  ‘Once we’re in it, we won’t be able to see anything, so we’ll be guessing,’ Jack said. ‘Do the best you can. Pick one side, left or right. That cuts it in half. Count the levels next, so we always know how far we are from the top. Then try to memorise the exit.’

  ‘Okay, I’m on it—’ Alby replied, before he cut himself off.

  Something over Jack’s shoulder had caught his eye.

  Jack spun.

  An absolute giant of a man was striding down the bridge behind them, having emerged from a doorway set into the base of Hades’s mountain.

  Like the two lion-helmeted warriors up in the maze, this man wore an elaborate helmet, only his was forged into the shape of a snarling snake. He wore modern body armour, with forearm and shin guards, all painted deep grey.

  Most distinctively, however, he carried two vicious-looking whips, one in each massive hand.

  Jack recognised them from his history books.

  They were a particularly nasty variety of whip called a scourge. Used by the Romans, the scourge was a short whip, with perhaps five strands of rope or leather stretching out from a wooden handle. At the end of each rope were sharp blades designed to slash the skin of the victim.

  The blades at the ends of this fellow’s whips glistened in the light.

  On the royal stage, Vacheron held up his hands in delight.

  ‘My lords and ladies, welcome the Hydra!’ he called. ‘There is no backing out of this challenge now!’

  The royal spectators started clapping.

  Lily just stared down in horror at Jack and Alby as they took off for the maze, fleeing from the advancing snake-headed warrior.

  The Lower Reaches of the Maze

  ‘Go left!’ Alby yelled to Jack and they made for that side of the maze.

  The vertical labyrinth soared up into the air above them, eighteen levels high, as tall as an office building.

  Its railless ledges were shallow and they were positioned at intervals of about six feet.

  There were several ways to advance up the maze.

  First, you could scale the vertical chutes using ladder-like handholds cut into the sheer walls of each chute.

  Second, you could leap across a short void to another level. This was harder: it would take a healthy upward leap to wrap your elbows over the edge of the next level and then you had to haul yourself up onto it.

  And third, well, the maze did face outward: you could—if you dared—climb up and around the forward edge of a ledge, dangling precariously above the sulphurous lake below.

  Jack tucked Roxy inside his t-shirt as he leapt up from the ground level to the first level, poking his head above the ledge just in time to see a bulky Navy SEAL—a companion of the American champion named Monroe, left behind by his boss—come lunging at him with a knife!

  Before Jack could even react, Roxy exploded from his t-shirt, barking and snapping, and she clamped her jaws around the SEAL’s knife-hand and clung to it like a terrier.

  Startled, the SEAL recoiled, giving Jack the chance to reach up, grab him by the arm, and hurl him down into the lake, yanking his poodle from him as he did so.

  The Navy SEAL splashed into the stinking lake and shouted in pain before going under.

  Jack placed Roxy down on the ledge.

  ‘Good dog,’ he said as he clambered up, then reached back down for Alby.

  Alby joined them on the first level.

  ‘Christ, a maze is hard enough,’ Jack breathed. ‘But getting through one with all these assholes also in it, that’s just messed up. Come on.’

  Scarecrow vs The Indian MARCOS

  The US Marine named Scarecrow had chosen the right-hand side of the maze.

  He ran with Astro and the other male Marine, a nuggety lieutenant with sandy blond hair named Tim Bowles, call sign Tomahawk. Seeing the maze from his hostage carriage—and the nimbleness it would require to scale it—Scarecrow had decided to let Mother sit this one out.

  After ascending five levels, his crew had come face-to-face with the team of another champion: an Indian soldier who wore the black headband of the elite Indian Marine Commando force, abbreviated as MARCOS.

  A scuffle ensued as the Indian commando fled, leaving his men to fight—and delay—Scarecrow’s crew.

  Scarecrow tossed one of the Indian’s companions off the ledge and he plummeted to the foul lake thirty feet below.

  Tomahawk grappled with the other companion and they fell to the ledge together. They rolled for a few moments until the floor beneath them just spontaneously dropped away!

  Trap door.

  As th
e two men fell through the trap door, Astro dove forward and grasped Tomahawk’s wrist, stopping his fall.

  The Indian man wasn’t so lucky. He fell all the way down the chute, splashing into the scalding water.

  Jack and Alby also encountered more hostile foes.

  When they were four levels up, they were confronted by the other swarthy companion of the Navy SEAL, DeShawn Monroe, who had also been left behind by his champion.

  The SEAL lunged at Jack with a knife, but Jack ducked, grabbed the man’s wrist and threw him judo-style, slamming him down onto the ledge—

  —only to discover it wasn’t a solid section of ledge but a trap door.

  The moment the SEAL hit it, the small section of floor beneath him flipped downward on a hinge and, to Jack’s surprise, the man instantly dropped from view.

  Watching from the royal balcony, Lily saw the SEAL drop through the trap door and fall.

  Thanks to a fiendish mechanism of the maze system, all the trap doors positioned directly beneath the one he had fallen through opened at the same time: causing the SEAL to fall all the way to the bottom of the maze, where he plunged into the stinking lake with a pained shout, never to surface again.

  Lily gasped. ‘Oh my God.’

  The Golden Spheres

  When viewed from the royal balcony, the maze was alive with movement.

  With ten champions in there and each—at least initially—accompanied by two partners, there were close on thirty people zigging and zagging, climbing and leaping, searching and prowling through the vertical labyrinth.

  To Lily it looked like an ants’ nest: a convoluted series of ledges and shafts filled with moving people.

  And then she saw the two leading champions—the pair who had left their partners on the bridge to delay all the others—as they came to the two dead ends containing the Golden Spheres, up in the higher reaches of the maze.

  The first champion was one of Iolanthe’s two Brazilian men.

  His name was Sergeant Mauricio Corazon and he had once been a member of the Brazilian Army’s crack special forces unit known as the Comando de Operações Especiais. After being found guilty with five other troopers of the gang rape of a pretty young secretary on their base, he had been dishonourably discharged and sentenced to twenty years in prison.