Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon (21 page)

“Lucky . . . me,” Marco said with a clenched jaw. “The edges . . . are sharp.”

The spike had four serrated ridges. It had sliced clear through his sandal. Although it hadn't impaled his foot, it had come up between his big toe and second toe and cut them pretty badly. I unfastened the buckle. Gently I pulled Marco's toes apart, away from the blade edges, and lifted his foot out of the sandal. Then I ripped the sandal off the spike tried to clean it as best I could. “Good as new, sort of,” I said, setting the blood-soaked sandal down and picking up the torch.

“Thanks . . .” Marco grunted, slipping his foot back in. “I may wait a few months before I try the marathon. Let's go.”

Cass and Aly were staring at him, slack-jawed. Cass pointed off to the right. “I—I think we go this way now . . .”

“I promise not to vary an inch from the path,” Marco said.

“I promise not to move my torch away too,” I added.

Cass went slower. Much slower. Our footsteps echoed, bouncing off the back wall as if there were another set of people there. I could hear my breaths echoing, in rhythm with the strange music.

EEEEEE!
Another vizzeet screech was followed by a metallic clang.

I nearly jumped but kept my cool. The creature had tried to jump in but hit the bars of the invisible cage. It was scrambling away on all fours, chattering hysterically.

Cass soon slowed to a stop, not far from the rear wall. “We're here,” he announced.

“Where?” Aly said.

“The spot where I drew the star.” Cass was trembling. He was moving his ankle along a curved form, tracing a rounded shape. “Okay, this is invisible, but it's some kind of platform. I can feel it. It's raised.”

I reached forward, about knee high. I felt a cool, tiled surface that sloped inward toward the top, like a sculpture of a volcano. I slid my hand upward until I reached a rim about three feet high. Slowly I ran my hand to the right and left. “It's a circle,” I said. “Some kind of pit.”

As I grabbed the rim with both hands, I felt my knees weaken. My entire body shook with the vibrations of the strange music.
Concentrate
.

I reached downward into the invisible pit. The blackness below me turned a muddy gray. I could see floating faces. A beautiful woman with sandy hair, smiling.

Queen Qalani
. She was dressed in a fine gown gathered at the waist with a sash. On her head was a ring of bejeweled gold. Her laughter was like the running of water over stones.

But her image instantly pixelated into a confetti of colors, which spread and dulled into a whitish silver that spread from my outstretched palm downward.

It became a sphere of glowing, pulsing white.

I smiled. I began to laugh. My body felt weightless but I was still on the ground. The song and I were one now. It was the blood flowing through my veins, the snapping of electricity in my brain. For a moment I wasn't aware of any other sound at all.

Until a piercing cry broke the spell.

“Jack!” came Aly's voice.
“Jack, where are you?”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I
FELT THE
back of a hand brushing my arm. “Got him!” Marco said.

Fingers closed around my wrist. I was reeling back now, losing my balance.

The Loculus disappeared. All I could see was the panicked look on Marco's face as he wrenched me away from the pit.

“Don't let him fall backward!” Cass was shouting. “There's a trap behind him!”

Marco held tight, lifting me upward with one arm. I came down hard on my feet and looked into three utterly astonished faces. “What happened?” I said.

“You were gone,” Aly said. “You were there one second and gone the next.”

“Just—
foop
!” Cass said, practically dancing with excitement. “You found it, Jack—right? You found the invisibility Loculus!”

“I guess I did,” I said.

Cass jumped, clapping his hands. From his pocket, Leonard leaped out. He hit the ground and began to run. We all stood gaping as he climbed thin air, up the wall of the pit, and then fell inside.

“Come back here, little yug!” Cass shouted. The scaly creature rolled around the bottom of the pit, looking oddly squashed, panicked by the fact that he was up against something solid that he couldn't see.

As Cass reached down, he seemed to lose color. His outline became a trace line of gray. In a nanosecond he was gone.

And so was Leonard.

For a moment I saw and heard nothing. Then a disembodied “Gotcha!” and a spray of random color, which morphed in fraction of a second into Cass.

He was standing before us again, grinning, with Leonard in his hand, as if nothing had happened.

“Beam me up, Scotty . . .” Aly mumbled.

Marco pumped his fist. “Epic! Let's snatch that thing and get back home!”

I leaned back over the rim and dug my fingers down under the Loculus. It was cool, smooth to the touch. I could tell how heavy it was, because it seemed to move with my hand, as if powered from within. I didn't know whether I was lifting it or it was lifting itself, guided by my motions. “Got it.”

I knew the others couldn't see me. I also knew we had to get the heck out of there. But I couldn't keep my eyes off the sphere. Its insides were a translucent swirl of colors, making patterns like an ocean.

All around us, a low rumbling noise grew. I wasn't fully aware of it until I felt the ground shake and the Loculus itself almost fall from my hand.

“Jack?” came Aly's voice. “Wh-what's going on?”

I heard a cracking sound from above. A piece of the ceiling dislodged and crashed to the floor. Then another.

Was this another booby trap?

Through the thick, rocky roof I could hear the cawing of birds and screeching of vizzeet. I could see black smoke from the fire in Kranag's hut.

I held the Loculus to my chest and stepped backward. I felt Marco's hand on my arm. Aly's. Cass's. With my free arm I guided Aly's hand to the Loculus itself. “You don't need to do that,” she said loudly, over the sound of the rumbling. “I can see it. As long as I'm touching you, I can see it. It's like the power passes through us.”

The torch was now guttering and weak. A chunk of stone nearly dropped on my head. It crashed to the floor and broke into pieces.

The shaking was going on everywhere, not just in this room. It wasn't a booby trap. It was an earthquake. The last thing we needed.

“Hurry!” Marco shouted.
“Move!”

“Be careful of the traps!” Cass warned.

Too late. A door swung open in the floor. My foot sank inside. I let go of the Loculus, windmilling my arms. Marco and Cass both grabbed me and pulled. “Don't let the Loculus go!” I shouted.

Aly caught it. I was able to swing my foot upward. It landed on solid ground.

A boom, like a plane breaking the sound barrier, passed from left to right. I heard a massive crash outside, followed by the cawing of the black bird and the wild keening of the vizzeet. Through the hole in floor came a river of fur and whisker, undulating, growing . . .

“Rats!”
Cass screamed. “
I hate rats!”

My hair stood on end. The slithery creatures were sliding over my toes, squeaking, chattering, their little legs pumping frantically.

I saw teeth flashing in the light. Cass was swinging the torch downward, trying to scare them away.
“Getoutofheregetoutofhere getoutofhere!”
he shouted.

Aly shrieked. For the first time since I'd known him, Marco was screaming. We stumbled backward. I felt myself falling and willed my body to stay upright. “Run!” Aly's voice called out.

“No, don't!” Cass said. “Follow me!
Force yourselves!
”

Squeals bounced off the walls as a badly trembling Cass walked the correct, trap-free path through a wriggling carpet of rodents. They crawled up his ankles, jumped off his knees. He screamed, brushing away a couple that had run up into his tunic. I could feel their claws digging into my skin. They were too small, too light, too low to set off the traps. But any false move on our part could be lethal.

Cass was screaming now, tearing rodents from his hair. But he forced one foot in front of the other, tracing a path that no ordinary person would be able to remember. I could feel the squealing in my ears, as if one of them had burrowed inside my head.

The door loomed closer. Rats were scampering up and down the invisible iron bars of the cage. When Cass neared that—our last obstacle—he jumped straight for the entrance.

I flung myself out after him, kicking the nasty creatures away. Aly and Marco landed on top of me. I let go of the torch and it flew away on the ground.

We scrambled to our feet. Standing on a ledge, directly above the door, were four vizzeet.

As I frantically scraped rodents from my tunic, the screaming creatures jumped.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I
LEAPED AWAY
,
screaming. Marco was running, lifting Aly clear off the ground. Cass was on the ground, scrabbling backward.

The vizzeet landed in the sea of rats, hooting with glee. They spat fountains, nailing rats with pellets of saliva. The rodents screamed and fell, the acid searing their entire bodies, nearly cooking them on the spot. The monkeylike creatures scooped up the rats one by one, swallowing them whole.

Beneath our feet, the ground was still. The vizzeet were beating a retreat around the side of the Hanging Gardens, following the rats. A helix of black smoke rose from behind the structure and I could smell the burning wood of Kranag's hut. “The earthquake,” I said. “It's gone.”

“So are most of the rats,” Marco said, his face twisted with disgust. “Hallelujah.”

“I can see four of us,” Cass said. “Which means the Loculus is not here.”

“I dropped it,” Aly said, looking back into the room. “Back into the pit.”

“You
what
?” Marco snapped. “We have to go back?”

“I couldn't hold it with rats nibbling at my toes!”
Aly said.

“Okay,” Cass said, still trembling. “It's okay. We wait a minute for the last of the rats to disperse. Then Marco goes back in and gets the Loculus—”

“Marco
goes back in?” Marco sputtered.

“You're the fearless one,” Aly said.

Marco swallowed hard. “Yeah. True. Okay. Give me a minute to regain my Marconess.”

“Never mind—I'll do it,” Cass said. “I'm the one who knows the path best.”

Before Marco could protest, Cass was running back inside, threading his way along his own perfectly imagined path. We stood in the doorway, too wise to follow. Minutes later I could see him stopping in the back . . . leaning over . . . disappearing.

A bolt of electricity ripped the sky like a sudden cannon shot. The ground heaved again, and on the second level of the Hanging Gardens, pillars of a marble trellis cracked in two. A thick thatch of vines crashed down, spilling over the sides. At the top, a gargoyle fell from a perch like a shot bird.

The moon disappeared into the swelling curtain of Sippar, which streaked across the sky like a spider's web.

As I fell to the ground, the realization hit me.

It's the Loculus
.

Removing it was causing the earthquake. The tightening of Sippar. If we tried to take it, the earthquake would continue. The earth would open, torches in Babylon would tumble, buildings would collapse.