Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon (20 page)

The apparition moved closer. One eye penetrated the gloom like a flashlight beam—no pupil of any color, just a disk of dull greenish-white. Where his other eye should have been was instead a dark socket. His legs were the shape of parentheses, and his feet dragged across the ground as if he couldn't lift them. A cape hung loosely over his shoulders, which were thin as bamboo.

Aly, Cass, and I stared, stiff with fear.

“I think,” Aly said, “this is Kranag.”

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“L
IFT AGAIN
!” M
ARCO
shouted.
“Three!”

This time we pulled at the same time. I could feel the cage rising . . . maybe six inches. Kranag was walking across the room strangely. And slowly. Zigzagging one way, then the other. He raised his hand, revealing a rusted sword. It took a moment for me to realize he was talking. His voice was like the fluttering of dry wings, all air with a few consonants.

“Keep it . . . up . . . !”
Marco grunted.

Knee high . . .

“Go,” Marco said.
“Go! Now!”

Aly ducked first. She slid her body under the cage, not letting her hands leave the bottom. Cass followed. As Marco slid under, the cage dropped with a loud thump. He grimaced, hopping on one foot. “Out! Out now!”

As we raced out the door and into the night, I heard a sharp clang. Instinctively I spun around. Kranag had struck the side of the invisible cage with his sword. I don't know if he thought someone was still in there or he was frustrated. He was standing rigid now, moving his head toward us.

“What's with his eyes?” Marco asked.

“Daria told us he was blind,” Aly said.

“He doesn't need to see,” Cass said. “His other senses do it for him.”

I grabbed the torch and held it high. The night air was surprisingly cool on my skin. The vizzeet had retreated to the second level of the Hanging Gardens, still shrieking and spitting. Their fear of fire kept them far enough away from us, but the torch wasn't going to last forever.

“Let's get out of here!” Aly shouted.

“I say we ambush this guy and snatch the Loculus!” Marco hissed.

I shushed them silently. Cass was right about Kranag. He was responding to our smallest sound. His hearing was super-sharp. As he moved toward us, he sheathed his sword with one hand. With one uncannily fast motion, his other hand disappeared into his tunic, pulled out a tiny dagger, and threw it.

The shaft spiraled toward my face.

“Down!” Marco shouted, pulling me from behind. I crashed to the ground, nearly letting go of the torch. Above us, the vizzeet cackled and jumped, slavering hungrily.

I realized I could use the beasts to help us.

Quickly I ran toward them, waving the flame, causing their screeches to become deafening. I gestured toward Cass, Aly, and Marco to move away from the open cavern.

Kranag pulled out another knife and paused. He moved in the direction of the footsteps and threw again. The blade passed harmlessly into the garden.

We huddled at the base of the Hanging Gardens, our ears clanging with the deathly cries of the vizzeet. Kranag stared in their direction and didn't move. The loud shrieks were blotting out all other sounds—including our voices and footfalls.

But he was not moving. He looked like he could stand there for ages like a statue.

We had to distract him, and fast.

I looked to the left, away from the open door. If we followed the wall, we could circle around the Hanging Gardens, pass by his little cottage out back, come out on the other side. Maybe we could attack from there, where he wasn't looking.

Right, McKinley. He'll hear you—or the vizzeet will follow you the whole way
.

But at least it would confuse him momentarily. He might follow us. Maybe we could hide in his cottage and ambush him.

Then the solution hit me. I turned to Cass, Aly, and Marco and mouthed:
Come on
.

I booked it to the left. A gob of vizzeet spit hit my pinkie finger and I nearly dropped the torch. Holding back a cry of pain, I veered farther from the wall.

We made a right and raced down the long structure. I could see the protective wall, off to our left. From the other side, guards shouted. There were more voices than before. They must have gathered backup. They were too chicken—or too smart—to face the vizzeet without a big crowd.

Our next right put us at the opposite side of the Hanging Gardens from where we'd started. Kranag's hut was illuminated in the moonlight, a shabby rectangle of wood slats with a broken roof and a door that hung off rusted hinges.

“What are we doing, Jack?” Cass asked, speaking for the first time since we'd left Kranag's earshot.

I raced toward a dry, scraggly bush that seemed to be growing from the base of the hut's wall. The whole structure was neglected and choked with weeds. Dead vines twined up through the wall's slats, threatening to overwhelm the house. To turn it into a tiny mockery of the Hanging Gardens themselves.

As I touched the torch to the bush, it—and the wall—burst instantly into flames.

“I'm distracting him,” I said.

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HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

T
HE AROMA OF
burning penetrated the night air. When we ran around the Hanging Gardens and reached the door to the cavernous room, Kranag was gone. A massive black shape flapped its wings nearby, from the base of the Archimedes screw.
Zoo-kulululu! Cack! Cack! Cack!

“Careful!” Aly warned.

We watched in astonishment as the bird used its beak to turn the crank. Water began spilling from the broken mechanism into a wooden bucket. When it was full, the bird grabbed the bucket's handle and flew off in the direction of the cottage.

Marco shook his head, hard. “Am I hallucinating?”

People said he can become an animal himself
. . . That was what Daria had said. “It's him,” I said. “Kranag.”

“That bird is Kranag?” Aly whispered.

I nodded. “He's trying to save his home.”

“The flames will roast him,” Cass said.

I felt the pang of guilt. Setting fires went against everything I had ever been taught. I reminded myself that Kranag had wanted to kill us.

Sometimes you had to make choices.

I watched Cass drop to his knees and start scribbling in the sand. “Okay, Kranag can do some amazing stuff. He knew where all the traps are in that room. To the inch! Did you see how he was walking? Wherever he went—no gas, no arrows, nothing.”

“He probably set them up himself,” Aly said. “Of course he knows where they are. He doesn't need to see them.”

“The point is,
we
can't see them,” I said. “We can't see anything.”

“Let's go back a step,” Aly said. “Daria says he's guarding the Hanging Gardens. But we know different. He's guarding the Loculus. Jack feels it. I can feel it too—I felt it more the closer we got to the back of the chamber. Marco, you say it might be underground, but I don't believe that.”

“Where do think it is?” I asked.

“In plain sight, but invisible,” Aly said, a smile inching across her face. “Think about that. The first Loculus gave us the power of flight. I think this one has a whole other power.”

Her words hung in the air. I could feel their meaning seep into our brains. I saw a projectile of vizzeet spit hurtle by and hit the far wall and I almost didn't care.

If what Aly was saying was true, this Loculus could help us unbelievably. “So if we find it and make contact with it,” I said, “it may give us its power . . .”Aly nodded. “In the words of the Immortal One, bingo.”

“Aly, you are the bomb.” Cass dropped to his knees and started drawing in the dirt. “Okay, this is how the room is laid out.”

We all looked at him in astonishment. “How do you know this?” Marco asked.

“Don't you?” he asked.

“No!” we answered in unison.

“I watched Kranag's walking pattern, that's all,” Cass said. “The areas inside the dotted lines—those are the places he wouldn't go. So we need to avoid them. As for that star, he definitely walked a circle around that area. As if there were something inside it. I bet it marks the place with the Loculus.”

Marco shook his head in awe. “Brother Cass, you scare me.”

Aly put an arm around Cass's shoulder. “Remind me not to worry again when you complain about losing your powers.”

“But this was easy,” Cass said.

“To you it's all easy,” Aly said. “Because you are
good
. Superhumanly good. You never lost a thing, except your faith. Once that goes, it blinds you to what you have.”

I gave Cass the torch. “You ready to be our leader?”

Cass blinked, then nodded. “Okay. Right. Follow me.”

He took the torch, casting a wary eye up toward the vizzeet. Stepping over the door jamb, he reached out with his free hand and waved it into the cage area. “The metal bars are still there. Follow me. Walk in my footsteps, exactly. Don't vary left or right. Marco, narrow your shoulders.”

“Narrow my shoulders?”
Marco said.

“Yeah, you know, hunch up,” Cass said. “Don't take up so much space.”

The song of the Heptakiklos twanged into my ears. It was so close. I fought the desire to run to it across the room that taunted us with emptiness.

Aly and Marco fell in behind Cass. I brought up the rear. We walked quietly, our sandals shuffling against the hard-packed dirt. The torch flames made our shadows dance on the walls.

“EEEEEEEEE . . .”

Outside, a vizzeet had leapt down from a ledge, landing in front of the open door. Cass swung my torch toward it, trying to scare it away.

I grabbed the torch. Marco and I lunged forward, shouting. “Yaaaaahhh!”

The vizzeet jumped back, but I felt a shaking below my feet. A spike broke through the soil, thrusting upward, inches from my foot. I screamed, jumping back.

Marco caught me. He held me off the ground, his arms around my chest.

“Thanks . . .” I said. “But you're choking me . . .”

He didn't answer. His face was rigid. I looked down. There hadn't been only one spike. There had been four. Three of them stood alone, victimless. But one of them had pierced Marco's foot.

“Chhhh . . .” The only sound Marco could manage was a shocked gasp. His grip loosened and I slid downward. I positioned my feet to avoid the blades.

“He's hurt!” Aly cried out, moving toward Marco.

“Stay put, Aly!” Cass commanded.

The floor was a bloody mess. I set down the torch, quickly ripped a section from my tunic, and wiped the blood away. Marco's foot was intact. “It came up between your toes,” I said.