The Two Lost Mountains Read online

  Nobody muttered, ‘I thought the bronze and silver ones were bad enough.’

  Jack was gazing at the text of the Zeus Papyrus. ‘Okay. Five mountains. Five keys. Five locked doors. Something called the Fall. And a Supreme Labyrinth. This is what Sphinx is up to now and apparently it includes putting whole cities to sleep with those bells. He left this for me in Moscow. A final taunt.’

  Jack held up the rumpled sheet of paper that Aloysius had found on the ground in front of St Basil’s Cathedral, the one Lily had re-used to warn them about what was coming.

  Its cruel words blazed:

  YOU

  WILL

  WAKE

  AS

  SLAVES

  ‘Explanations?’ Jack asked.

  It was Sister Agnes who answered.

  ‘It wasn’t just a taunt, Captain West. It was a very specific reference to an ancient poem, one that is connected to the Trial of the Mountains. It goes like this:

  ‘“Hear the sound of the Sirens’ song,

  Ride its rolling waves.

  But beware that song

  And the bliss it brings,

  For you may wake as slaves.”’

  Sister Lynda took over. ‘It’s an old verse, long known to our order and the secret royal world. Sphinx does not wish to just rule the world. He wishes to rule it as the ultimate tyrant: to plunge everyone into a coma and have them literally awaken as his slaves.’

  ‘Say that again,’ Jack said.

  ‘Let me explain it another way, Jack,’ Hades said. ‘We are coming to a climactic time. The Tartarus Rotation, the Six Sacred Stones, the Great Games, the two trials—they all lead to one place at one time: the Supreme Labyrinth during the Omega Event on December the 29th.’

  He pulled up an image from his laptop. It showed an inscription in ancient Greek. Hades read it aloud, translating it:

  ‘“When the Three Cities are opened

  Make haste

  To the Mountains

  And the Fall!

  The survivors may then enter

  The impossible maze

  And decide the fate of all.”

  ‘This is from Plato,’ he said. ‘Just as he knew fragments about the Trial of the Cities, he was aware of the Trial of the Mountains or, as it is sometimes called, the Fall.’

  ‘An impossible maze?’ Alby said. ‘That’s the Supreme Labyrinth?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hades said. ‘It is a maze of extraordinary magnitude and complexity, a maze of mazes, some believe.’

  ‘Do we know where it is?’ Nobody asked.

  ‘No,’ Iolanthe said. ‘Its location is one of the ancient world’s most closely guarded secrets. It must be remote, since no-one has ever found it, but given that Zeus went there in classical times, it can’t be too far from the Mediterranean Basin.’

  Hades added, ‘I believe that Imhotep the Great, the renowned Egyptian architect and Chief Priest of the Cult of Amon-Ra, made a pilgrimage to the Labyrinth around 2600 B.C.E. so it can’t be far from Egypt, either.’

  ‘What happens at this maze?’ Alby asked.

  Hades said, ‘At the centre of the Supreme Labyrinth sits a great throne. When the Omega Event occurs, so long as someone who has completed the Trial of the Mountains is sitting on that throne, Omega will be averted. That person will also be crowned ruler of the planet. This is what Sphinx desires.’

  ‘So why use the bells?’ Jack asked.

  ‘The bells are a powerful weapon,’ Sister Lynda said. ‘By putting large segments of the world’s population to sleep, Sphinx can prepare the world for his reign. Since they are comatose, he can place troublesome people or even entire populations wherever he wants—deserts, islands, prisons—or simply kill them where they lie. He can even choose who he wakes, if he wakes any of them at all. And those who do wake will do so to find him as their undisputed overlord.’

  There was silence as this sank in.

  Nobody whistled. ‘Whoa.’

  ‘So how do you wake someone from the sleep?’ Alby asked, looking over at the room containing Lily, Stretch and Aloysius.

  ‘The blue bell,’ Sister Agnes said.

  Sister Lynda said, ‘There are fifteen bells in total. Fourteen are of immense size and made of gold and silver. Those are the ones we kept in our convent. One bell, however, is very small. This smallest bell is silver-blue in colour, so it has become known as the blue bell, although to some it is known by its older name, the Orphean Bell, after the legendary musician in Greek mythology, Orpheus.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Because during the voyage of the Argonauts, Orpheus’s music overcame the deadly song of the Sirens.’

  ‘Very good, Captain,’ Lynda said. ‘You’ve read the Argonautica. According to legend, the blue or Orphean Bell is exceedingly small—it can be held in one hand—but it is very powerful, for it possesses the singular ability to awaken those who succumb to the Siren sleep of the other bells.’

  ‘Did Sphinx acquire it when he stormed your convent?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No, the location of the blue bell is unknown. It’s been lost for over two thousand years,’ Sister Agnes said.

  ‘You don’t know where it is?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No-one knows where it is,’ Lynda said. ‘It’s said that the Church has documents related to the blue bell in its Secret Archives at the Vatican. And one of our nuns, Dr Tracy Smith, did some extensive research into its properties, but she left our order some time ago and has since, sadly, disappeared.’

  Sister Lynda’s voice trailed off.

  ‘All right,’ Jack said. ‘So, the Trial of the Mountains flows on directly to the final test at the Supreme Labyrinth: only someone who completes the Trial of the Mountains—this “Fall” thing—can enter the Labyrinth?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Then the Fall is everything,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s hear about it.’

  ‘Well, first, look at the Zeus Papyrus,’ Mae said. ‘Five iron mountains, five bladed keys, five doors, forever locked: at the mountains you get the keys, which you then take to the Labyrinth—with its five entrances—open it and enter it, although what is meant by “bladed keys”, I don’t know.’

  ‘That translation is disputed,’ Lynda said. ‘A Siwan Oracle in the 14th century said it was wrong. It should have been translated as five “burned” or “blazing” keys.’

  ‘Either way, you do the Fall, you acquire a key to the Labyrinth and a ticket to the final main event,’ Mae said.

  ‘So what’s the Fall?’ Zoe asked.

  Hades paused.

  ‘“He cannot be emperor who does not risk his own blood,”’ he recited softly. ‘It’s an old royal maxim related to the Fall. For it is a test like no other, the ultimate test for anyone who would aspire to rule the world, a deadly challenge of strength, will and, most of all, nerve.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Standing on a massive ancient stone temple while it freefalls down a four-kilometre-deep shaft underneath one of the iron mountains at a specific astronomical moment.’

  Jack swallowed. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Let me explain,’ Hades said. ‘It all relates to this image.’

  He brought up a picture on his computer:

  ‘As you know, this image is called Newton’s Mountain, but it should be named Newton’s Planets. It’s from his most famous book, the Principia, and it is the only drawing in the book that Isaac Newton drew himself. Even then, he disguised it a little by flipping the top planet upside down.

  ‘Note the two planets. The smaller one is the moon. The larger one is Earth. Look closely now. Can you see the mountains on them?’

  Jack leaned in closer and peered at the image . . . and he saw them.

  ‘Well, I’ll be . . .’

  He hadn’t noticed them before but there they were.

&
nbsp; They looked like tiny black pimples on the two orbs, protruding slightly from their otherwise smooth outer surfaces.

  There was one little mountain on the moon, pointing downward, and three on the Earth, pointing up and out.

  One of the upward-pointing mountains on the Earth was in perfect alignment with the downward-pointing one on the moon.

  Hades said, ‘You perform the Fall at one of the iron mountains when that mountain is in direct alignment with the lone one on the moon. For on that lunar mountain is a very strange object that is not natural: an ancient stone pedestal, grey in colour, rectangular in shape, roughly the size of an altar.

  ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘due to the differing rotations and orbits of the Earth and the moon, the moments of alignment only happen at very specific times.’

  Mae looked hard at Hades. ‘Back when we were at Jack’s farm, before we found the cities, I asked you a bunch of questions about the royal world, like whether it was involved in the JFK assassination and fixing elections. When I asked about the moon landing, you said not only was it necessary but that the fourth landing was the important one. I looked it up. That was Apollo 15. Is that relevant here?’

  Hades nodded. ‘Very relevant. That pedestal is the reason why Apollo 15 landed where it did. You have to understand, humanity didn’t fly to moon out of some noble spirit of adventure. The entire space program was initiated by the royal world for precisely this time, to locate that pedestal.

  ‘Apollo 15 was also the first moon mission to use a lunar rover. This was important. Because by using that rover, the astronauts were able to explore much farther from their landing site and locate the lunar mountain and its pedestal. They were also able to cover it up from prying eyes here on Earth with a sheet of silver thermal Kapton foil.’

  Mae’s eyes widened.

  Alby gasped.

  Hades went on. ‘While America is the only nation to have successfully sent astronauts to the moon and back, other nations have sent probes and robot vehicles to the moon. Russia sent a remote-controlled rover to the same site as Apollo 15 back in the 1980s. China tried to send an unmanned probe there, but for some reason they never recovered it on its return.’

  ‘Back up a second,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s focus on Earth for now. For unless we find an iron mountain, we’ve got nothing. The papyrus says there are five iron mountains, but there are only three pictured on Newton’s drawing of the Earth.’

  Iolanthe said, ‘Since ancient times, scholars and students of the ancient world—including Newton, Pythagoras and even Albert Einstein—have debated the identities of the five mountains. We only know one of them for sure.’

  ‘Just one?’ Jack said.

  ‘Like many things in the ancient world, due to wars, royal rivalries and simple human carelessness, the identities of the five mountains have been lost through the ages. There are many contenders: Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. A string of volcanoes in Uganda, including the one in which Lily was born. The hanging monasteries of Bhutan. Some even say Potala Palace in Tibet sits atop a giant underground mountain. So, yes, only one of the iron mountains is known for certain.’

  ‘And that is?’ Nobody asked.

  ‘Mont Saint-Michel in France,’ Sister Lynda said. ‘There have long been claims that it contains a mysterious structure within it, but none of the Land Kings have ever let anyone but a few trusted priests inside to see it.’

  Jack knew about Mont Saint-Michel.

  It was a spectacular island-monastery located on a tidal island on the French shore of the English Channel. It was known for the magnificent church built high on its summit and the surging tides that cut the island off from land when they came in.

  It was the sister-island to St Michael’s Mount over on the English side of the Channel, the home of the Land Kingdom’s Hall of Royal Records, where Iolanthe had worked—and been tortured.

  ‘So how do you know this?’ Jack asked.

  Lynda said, ‘I heard it from a nun who saw the Vatican Globe.’

  ‘What’s the Vatican Globe?’

  Iolanthe said, ‘Jack, I actually told you about it when we were in London, after Zoe rescued me from St Michael’s Mount and just before the Knights of the Golden Eight launched their attack there.’

  Jack remembered that attack all too well: it had involved a drone tank, two drone choppers, the death of Lachlan Adamson and his young family, and the dropping of a London bus filled with innocent passengers into the Thames. Jack tried to recall what Iolanthe had told him about some globe connected to the Vatican.

  ‘Wait, I remember. It’s the metal globe that once sat at the peak of the obelisk in St Peter’s Square,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Iolanthe said.

  ‘Uh, excuse me. Explanation for those present who are not experts in superancient global history, please,’ Nobody said.

  Iolanthe smiled. ‘The most sacred shrine in all of the Catholic Church stands proudly out in front of its headquarters, St Peter’s Basilica in Rome: a massive stone obelisk.’

  ‘I thought obelisks were Egyptian monuments dedicated to the worship of the sun,’ Nobody said.

  ‘They are. This is because the Church is actually a sun-cult that came out of ancient Egypt. Its true name is the Cult of Amon-Ra.’

  ‘Wait, the Catholic Church worships the sun—?’ Nobody began.

  ‘Long story. I’ll tell you later,’ Alby whispered to him.

  Iolanthe said, ‘For thousands of years, atop that obelisk sat a very mysterious bronze orb . . .’

  She paused. ‘Hmmm. You know, maybe—’

  Iolanthe stood suddenly. ‘Excuse me a moment. I just had an idea; an idea about someone who might be able to help us. A quirky old mentor of mine who may well have got swept up in all this. Hades, can you take over?’

  Iolanthe stepped out of the room, clutching her phone.

  Hades stood. ‘The obelisk outside St Peter’s is actually unique for several reasons, one of which is the simple fact that no-one knows where it came from. The mad Roman emperor Caligula had it brought to Rome from Egypt in 37 A.D. It is said to have come from Heliopolis but this has never been confirmed. The main reason for its uniqueness is that it is also the only obelisk in the world that is surmounted by a small bronze orb or sphere.

  ‘In 1585, Pope Sixtus V replaced the original metal orb with a brass forgery. The original was taken to a vault deep within the Vatican—the Church’s most secure vault, the famous Vault XXII—and has remained there ever since.

  ‘Few have seen it but those who have say it is amazing. For this orb—which stood undisturbed for two thousand years in ancient Egypt—is a globe, a map of the world, crafted millennia before man flew into space. According to those lucky enough to have laid eyes on it, it depicts the world’s oceans and landmasses plus the locations of the three secret cities and the five iron mountains.’

  There was a short silence as everyone digested this.

  ‘You think this is why Sphinx just silenced Rome?’ Jack asked. ‘To get this globe?’

  ‘And maybe to silence anyone else who has seen it,’ Hades said. ‘If he has the globe, he could complete the Fall at one mountain and destroy all the other mountains and thus stop anyone else from following him into the Labyrinth and competing with him.’

  ‘I thought Sphinx was working with the Catholic Church,’ Alby said. ‘With Cardinal Mendoza. There’s no need for him to put the Vatican to sleep.’

  Zoe said, ‘Maybe Sphinx isn’t the most loyal ally—’

  ‘Wait!’ Iolanthe burst back into the room, holding her phone up. ‘We may still have a chance!’

  Iolanthe showed her phone to Jack, indicating a text conversation on the encrypted app, Telegram.

  ‘This is a chat I just had with my one-time mentor and tutor, Brother Dagobert de Montreuil. He’s an old Jesuit and an adjunct scholar at the S
pecola Vaticana, the Vatican Observatory. He has doctorates in history, astronomy and astrophysics. He was my tutor when I was a teenager. I wondered if the Church might bring him into this.’

  The chat read:

  MOON4

  Bertie,

  Desperate times. I’m with some folks trying to stop Sphinx succeeding during Omega. Need the Vatican Globe to find the five mountains. Thoughts? Animadversions?

  BERTIE

  Which folks?

  MOON4

  Fifth warrior and his people.

  BERTIE

  Ooh, I like him.

  Vatican Globe is not the only way to find the Iron Mtns. Only shows three, and even those not very accurately. Javier Journal is another option. It’s in Vault IX. (If they’d listened to me, it’d be in Vault XXII.) Things moving fast. I’m at MSM and Sphinx’s people are en route. Can’t talk. Snarky young boss is hovering. Meet me at MSM ASAP while there is still time. Use the English tunnel.

  ‘Moon4?’ Jack gave Iolanthe a look.

  ‘Io,’ she said. ‘The fourth moon of Jupiter. It’s what Bertie called me as a child.’

  ‘What’s MSM?’ Alby asked.

  ‘It’s an old shorthand Bertie and I once used for Mont Saint-Michel,’ Iolanthe said.

  Jack looked at Iolanthe, at her shaved head and facial wounds. He jerked his chin at the messages on her phone.

  ‘Your buddy says the Vatican Globe only shows three of the mountains, not five? Is that true?’

  ‘Bertie would know better than me. When I glimpsed it, I only saw one side of it, the hemisphere showing the Atlantic Ocean and a sliver of Europe. So I only saw the city of Thule and the mountain of Mont Saint-Michel. I was young and kind of overwhelmed. It’s pretty mind-blowing.’

  ‘If the globe only shows three, then that would mean there are two mountains out there that Sphinx doesn’t know about and which can still be found,’ Jack said.

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Two lost mountains . . .’ Jack said. ‘This Bertie. Can we trust him?’