The Tomb of Shadows Page 10

  “They all feel the same to me,” Cass said.

  “Don’t they seem kind of small?” Aly held one up, turning it around in her hand. “I mean, think about the carved letters over the columns of the House of Wenders—they’re huge. Imagine this thing at the top of the Mausoleum. No one would see it.”

  I pressed my hand to one of the stones and kept it there. I could feel my palm tingling. Now Aly and Cass were both looking at me.

  “These stones are different.” I carefully separated the rocks, older on the left, newer on the right.

  “I’m feeling something,” I said. “From the lighter-colored ones, the older stones. It’s not like the Song. But it’s something.”

  “Walk one of them around,” Aly said. “Maybe it’s like a Geiger counter. It’ll start singing to you when you’re near a Loculus.”

  I picked up a stone and began pacing through the yard, circling closer to the gate and then back toward the cliff.

  “Young fellow, seekest thou a men’s room?” Canavar’s voice called out.

  “No, I’m good.” I stared out over the coastline to the west. I pictured the ships of the Knights of St. Peter with sails unfurled. Over the bounding main. Whatever that meant. I imagined the holds filled with great statues and polished stones . . .

  If they came from the Mausoleum, they must be returned. It is where they belong. It is where they have their life. Their meaning.

  I turned and walked toward Canavar. He was deep in conversation with Dad and Torquin now. “Canavar—” I said.

  “Dr. Canavar,” he corrected me again.

  “Dr. Canavar. I have a big, big favor to ask you. Can we take your stones to the location of the Mausoleum?”

  “But we were already there,” Cass whispered. “You said you didn’t feel anything at all!”

  “I want to try again,” I said. “With these stones.”

  Canavar looked from Dad to Torquin and chuckled. “Ah, children do love rocks, don’t they? And children, no matter how many times they are told, do not comprehend the value of antiquities. Mr. McKinley, thou wilt, of course, properly discipline thy offspring and restrain him from acts of cultural disrespect.”

  “Excuse me?” Dad said.

  Canavar turned away and sidled back toward the rocks. “Thou art most cordially excused. Good night.”

  Dad looked at Torquin. With an understanding nod, Torquin lumbered past Canavar and scooped up the pile of rocks with two swipes of his massive paws.

  “I—I beg thy pardon—” Canavar stammered. “Is this some sort of jest?”

  Torquin shoved the rocks into his pack, then grabbed Canavar’s collar and lifted him off the ground. “Torquin love rocks, too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SECRET IN THE STONES

  “THIS IS IT?” Dad said. “The whole thing?”

  The pit was about thirty feet long and wide. It was surrounded by piles of rocks and stones, lit by soft lamps that rose from the ground. I knelt by a section of a column that lay on its side, like an uprooted tree trunk.

  Dad was right. It wasn’t much.

  “Good rocks,” Torquin said, dropping his backpack onto the ground with a thud. “Make nice patio.”

  “For this, thou humiliatest me,” Canavar grumbled. “Thou forcest me to let thee inside with a magnetic card, and then thou belittlest a hallowed site.”

  “Can it, Munchkin,” Torquin said.

  “At least with the Colossus, we had the stones we needed,” Cass said. “How can you re-create a Wonder if its parts don’t exist?”

  Aly crouched by a sculpture of an animal’s head. “This one looks like a mushushu.”

  “I think it’s a lion,” Cass remarked. “We’re not in Babylon anymore, Toto.”

  Dr. Bradley pushed Professor Bhegad toward me in a wheelchair. “This will be difficult, Jack,” Bhegad said. “But archaeology is a bit like finding a speck of diamond in a pile of sludge. Do not ignore one pebble, my son.”

  “Right,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Where to begin? I knelt by a small, flat stone that looked a bit like one of the stones Canavar had been working on. I ran my hand over it.

  Aly put hers on top of mine. “I feel it.”

  I flinched, yanking my hand back.

  “What happened?” Aly said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “You startled me.”

  Aly narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re turning red.”

  “No, I’m not.” I turned away. “You . . . said you felt something. What did you feel?”

  “Warmth,” she said.

  I swallowed. “Warmth?”

  “Back up at the castle, you said that the rocks were warm. I was trying to feel that warmth through your hand.” Aly smiled. “What did you think I meant?”

  My face was burning. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  She was staring at me. I stood there, dorking out. I couldn’t help it.

  I felt the slab again. Actually, it was warm. I ran my fingers along the top until I felt a diagonal ridge, a raised area like a vein in a clenched hand.

  “Ah, thou discoverest my favorite relief,” Canavar’s voice piped up. He sidled close, running his gnarled fingers along the carved ridge. “Razor straight. Remarkable.”

  “Looks like it might have been carved by the same Greek dudes who made your M,” Cass said.

  “A trained eye will discern the difference in technique,” Canavar said with cocked eyebrows. “These are raised upward, not carved into the stone. An entirely different process.”

  I noticed another flat stone, and another. Reaching into my pack, I pulled out a flashlight and shone it around, expanding the illumination from the glow of the weak lamps. “There’s a bunch of these, scattered all over this place,” I said, pointing the light at some of the other pieces I’d noticed. “There. And there. And there. I think they may all be parts of a bigger sculpture.”

  “Do you?” Canavar said with a mocking grin. “And perhaps with thy uncanny visual powers thou shalt conjure up a statue of Artemisia herself?”

  “He’s good at this,” Dad said with a grin. “Won the state middle school jigsaw puzzle championship, Division One. We had DQ Blizzards to celebrate.”

  “Competitive jigsaw puzzling?” Aly said. “With divisions?”

  “And Blizzards?” Cass piped up.

  “Sweeeeet,” Torquin said.

  My face was heating up again.

  Focus. Ignore.

  Retaliate later.

  I stared at the pieces, letting my brain assemble them. Then I began to fetch them, putting them close to one another until I could find no more.

  Carefully, I slid them into place.

  “It’s some kind of panel,” Aly said. “With a backward seven, in relief.”

  “Maybe the Persians read from right to left?” Cass said.

  Dad cocked his head curiously. “Any guesses what it means?”

  I wasn’t sure. But my brain was trying to recall the exact pattern of Canavar’s M. There was something about it that didn’t quite make sense. “Torquin,” I said. “Can you give me Canavar’s stones—all of them?”

  “I believe it is proper to address that question to the stone collector himself,” Canavar said, “who risked his life to assemble them.”

  “May I, Dr. Canavar?” I said.

  Canavar lifted his head high with a triumphant grin. “Permission granted.”

  Torquin handed me the stones from the pack. I assembled them, one by one, sorting out the old and the new on the ground. Then, setting the new ones aside, I began shifting around only the old stones.

  “Ah, may I remind thee,” Canavar said, “to include the most important of these stones. To wit, the stones personally carved by me out of necessity to complete the historic M—”

  Sliding the last piece into place, I smiled. “Your stones do not form an M.”

  “It’s a seven!” Cass exclaimed. “I was right—this thing couldn’t have been an M. Yesss!”

>   I could hear Professor Bhegad’s feeble voice call out, “That’s my boy!”

  Canavar’s small eyes seemed to double in size. “Well, I—I suppose it’s a valid possibility—”

  “A seven chiseled into stone . . .” Dad said, his eyes moving toward the flat raised relief I had just put together on the ground. “A bas-relief backward seven of the same size. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I think so.” One by one, I placed the stones from Canavar’s collection upside down on the jigsaw arrangement so that the chiseled lines locked into place.

  When I put the ninth and last stone in place, I felt my body shake.

  Dad gripped my arm. “What’s that? The Heptococcus song?”

  “Heptakiklos,” I said. “Yes. Totally.” Vibrations were coursing from my skull to my toenails.

  Aly was shaking her head. “That’s not the Song, Jack . . .”

  I could hear rocks sliding down the cliff now, splashing into the sea. Aly’s face was blurry, and my legs felt jellylike, as if I were on a train or a surfboard.

  She was right. This was bigger than finding a Loculus.

  It was an earthquake.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THIS IS NOT SCIENCE

  THE PLATE—THE INTERLOCKING stone shape we’d formed—was jumping on the ground with a life of its own. The earth was cracking in jagged lines, radiating outward from the plate like rays from the sun.

  “That . . . thing is causing this!” I shouted. “Pull it apart—the seven!”

  Torquin was already there, digging his stubby fingers into the stone. Cass, Aly, and I jumped in beside him.

  “What are you doing?” Dad called out.

  “Trying to stop it!” I said.

  “Stop an earthquake?” Dad said.

  It was no use. The stones were stuck together as if glued. Torquin panted and grunted, sending flecks of spittle onto the stone. Soon I felt the plate rising off the ground. I figured Torquin was lifting it, so I stood, stubbornly trying to pry the arrangement apart.

  “Set it down!” Aly said. “This isn’t helping!”

  “Won’t go down!” Torquin replied.

  Now the plate was changing. The chipped edges were filling themselves in, straightening, forming a perfect rectangle. The stone itself was smooth to the touch, growing hotter.

  I pulled my fingers away. The cliff and the sea grew blurry, as if a stone-colored curtain had been drawn across them. As I fell back, a network of countless arteries and veins shot outward in all directions from the plate, filling the space all around, exploding into sprays of stone-colored plasma.

  “Get away from that!” I called out.

  Cass and Aly jumped backward. Torquin held on a moment longer, but finally he sprang away with a howl of pain.

  A wall was forming before us, not gas, liquid, or solid, but somewhere in between. Its depths and shadows roiled and slowly hardened, taking on the shape of columns, statues, reliefs. In the center of it all was the plate, the connected seven. Now it was suspended at chest level, embedded into an arched marble door carved with snakes, horses, and oxen. On either side, massive marble columns lined up, spreading outward like sentinels snapping to attention.

  The walls themselves thundered, sending deep echoes into the soaring space they now surrounded. Above the columns, facing us, rose a triangular section that featured a relief of a four-horse chariot. I craned my neck to see a tapered roof taking form, topped by two humanlike figures bubbling and flowing until they took the solid shapes of a man and woman.

  As the earth heaved I fell back into my dad. “What in heaven’s name—?” he said.

  Now the entire columned structure was rising upward, pushed toward the sky by a thick stone base the width of a city block. A wider, thicker base formed beneath that, and another, until the graceful marble building was sitting atop a layer cake of stone. At each setback, statues glared down at us—stern figures in robes, grand horses and woodland animals. Finally, right in front of us, a tremendous stone archway opened within the wall, and a wide set of stairs rippled toward us, kicking up a thick cloud of dust.

  Cass, Aly, Torquin, Dad, and I turned away, coughing.

  “Hee-hee-hee!” came a trumpeting laugh from the dust.

  “This is not . . . a trick of light . . .” Dad said between coughing jags. “This is not explainable by science.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said.

  Cass swallowed hard. “I was kind of hoping it would be.”

  “Haaaa!” As the dust began to settle, I could see the tiny, wizened figure of Canavar dancing in the cloud, coughing and laughing. “It was a seven . . .” Canavar wobbled on unsure feet, lurching toward the door. “By the chariot of Mausolus, it wast not an M but a seven! Hee! Hee-hee-hee! We have unlocked the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus from the earth itself! I shall be world famous! Book me a flight to Sweden to pick up my Nobel Prize! Oh, teedle-de-dee! I float with joy! I float!”

  He was dancing, flailing his arms, jumping onto the stairs. The Mausoleum towered above him, dwarfing the small man.

  “Someone . . . pull him back . . .” Professor Bhegad called out, but his voice was barely audible.

  From the archway came a blast of bluish-white light. Canavar rose off his feet. His legs dangled for a moment as if shaking out the last moves of his dance. Then his body stiffened.

  As if pulled by an invisible arm, he whooshed toward the open door.

  “Floating was an expression!” he shouted. “Wilt someone help me!”

  I jumped to my feet, but Dad pulled me back. “No, Jack, stay here.”

  Torquin, with a speed I didn’t know he had, leaped forward and grabbed Canavar’s ankle.

  “Yeeeow, that hurteth!” Canavar screamed. He was parallel to the ground now, his head pointed toward the door, his leg firmly in Torquin’s beefy hand.

  “Will not let go of leg,” Torquin said.

  “Yes, but leg will rip from torso, head, and arms!” Canavar screamed.

  The archway itself shuddered. From the depth of its blackness a jolt of lightning spat toward the sky, with a blast of sound that hit my ears like a punch. I tumbled backward. Torquin fell, unhanding Canavar.

  The air in front of the archway began to lighten and swirl wildly, like a cloud of fiercely battling mosquitoes. It swelled and settled into a human shape. A woman.

  She raised her arm and Canavar lifted upward until the two of them were face-to-face. She bellowed something in a language I didn’t recognize, and Canavar replied, “Please, spare me! I am so sorry. This was an accident, you see!”

  The woman’s eyes flashed orange red. Canavar shot into the air, toward the roof of the building.

  Aly and Cass drew close to my dad and me. Torquin jumped backward, shielding us with his body.

  The woman stepped down the stairs. Her face was sunken and gray, and the skin seemed to be peeling off. Her hair, white, lifeless, and nearly as long as she was tall. She raised a finger toward us, more like a bone covered with papery skin. Her nail was black and curved like a ram’s horn.

  As her jaw began to work, she let out a voice that was like a scraping of pins against my eardrum.

  “Is that,” she said, thrusting her arm upward, “the best you could do?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  FLYING ZOMBIE SKIN

  GETTING HIT IN the eye with a piece of flying zombie arm skin is not super fun. The sting is as bad as the stink.

  I tried to blink the tiny shard from my eye, which was watering like crazy. “Are you all right?” Dad asked.

  “Answer my question—is that the best you can do?” the woman demanded. Through my one good eye I could see her descending the stairs in lurching steps, leaving tiny fragments of herself all around her. I couldn’t decide if they were pieces of bone, sections of her raggedy toga, or very bad eczema.

  “It is!” Aly blurted out. “Or it isn’t. I don’t know. Could you rephrase the question?”

  As the creature moved
forward, leaving a trail of withered debris, her arm remained pointing upward. My eye was clearing now, awash in tears. I followed the angle of her skeletal finger to the top of the Mausoleum, where Canavar sat uncomfortably on one of the horses of the marble chariot.

  “For a soul, you half-wit!” the woman replied. “Is that the best you could do for a soul? That shriveled prune of a human being?”

  “I have hidden qualities, O Lady of the House,” Canavar shouted, peering down from the marble horse like a gargoyle. “Which I shall be delighted to enumerate, preferably face-to-face. Or . . . face to what remains of thine. Thou wouldst not happen to have a ladder?”

  The woman twirled her finger in a circle, muttering under her breath.

  With a screech, Canavar shot up into the air like a torpedo. He fell toward us, arms and legs flailing. Torquin stood, rocking from side to side as he positioned himself underneath. Canavar landed in his grip silently, as if Torquin had caught a giant marshmallow.

  “Touchdown,” Torquin murmured.

  “We mean no harm,” Aly said, her voice shaky. “My name is Aly, these are Jack, Cass, Torquin, and Mr. Martin McKinley. Those people behind us are Dr. Theresa Bradley and Professor Radamanthus Bhegad. And you?”

  As the woman lowered her hand, the skin peeled off her pinkie, dropping to the stairs. I had to turn away in disgust. “I am Skilaki,” she said.

  “A beautiful name indeed,” Canavar blurted out. “Lovely. Lyrical. My name is Canavar—Dr. Canavar, to be precise—and I owe you a great deal of grati—”

  “My name means ‘little dog,’ and I despise it!” Skilaki shot back. “I was called Sibyl Seventy-three, which was fine with me, but our ruler wouldn’t have it. Too many sibyls, she said. And what the Great Queen Artemisia wants, she gets. Now, if it is entry you seek, let us trade and be done with it. Artemisia does not like to be disturbed! But perhaps I can bring her a better specimen than this . . . homunculus. Caviar.”

  “Canavar,” the shrunken man said. “And thou art so right. I am not worthy. My soul is parched and wrinkled—”