A snarling noise made them turn.
Four warriormonks emerged from a cage dug into the wall nearby, holding four large spotted hyenas on leashes.
The doglike animals heaved and strained-they seemed starved, just for occasions like this-and they barked and snapped, saliva spraying from their jaws.
"Tell me again why you brought me along," Alby whispered.
"Because you can read maps better than I can."
"Because I can what?"
"And because you have my digital camera around your neck," Zoe said, looking at him meaningfully, "and my camera holds the secret to this maze."
"How?"
Before Zoe could answer, they were brought to the northern extremity of the maze and the entrance there: a wide arch set into the outermost stone ring.
The stonework of the wall itself was remarkable-a marblecolored rock without any visible joins or seams. Somehow the superhard igneous stone had been cut and smoothed into this incredible configuration, work that was far too advanced for a primitive African tribe.
The warlock addressed the crowd across the lake, calling loudly: "Oh mighty Nepthys, dark lord of the sky, bringer of death and destruction, your humble servants commend this taker of royal blood and her companion to your maze. Do with them as you will!"
With that, Zoe and Alby were thrust through the archway and into the maze, the ancient labyrinth from which no accused had ever emerged alive.
THE MAZE OF THE NEETHA.
THE MAZE OF THE NEETHA.
A HEAVY DOOR boomed shut behind them and Zoe and Alby found themselves standing in a superlong opentopped whitewalled corridor that curved away in both directions.
Looming above the maze"s tenfoothigh walls, rising out of its very center, was the spectacular stone staircase that led up into the volcano, into the priests" inner sepulcher.
Right now ten warriormonks stood on the staircase, guarding the inner sanctum in the unlikely event Zoe and Alby got to the center.
They had three choices.
Left, right or-through a yawning gap in the next circular wall-straight ahead.
On the muddy floor in that gap, however, blocking the way, was the foul decaying skeleton of a very large crocodile that hadn"t quite made it out of the maze. Halfeaten, the skeleton still had rotting flesh on it.
What on earth ate a crocodile?Alby thought.
Then it hit him.
Other crocodiles. There are other crocodiles in here...
"Quickly, this way," Zoe said, dragging Alby left. "Give me the camera."
Alby extracted the camera and gave it to her. As they ran, Zoe clicked through its stored photos, clicking back through their African adventure-shots of the Neetha"s carved tree forest, of Rwanda, then of Lake Na.s.ser and Abu Simbel and...
...the shots Zoe had taken at the First Vertex.
Images of the immense suspended bronze pyramid leaped off the camera"s little screen, and then shots of thewalls in the Vertex"s ma.s.sive pillared hall, including the picture of the golden plaque.
"That one," Zoe said, showing it to Alby. "That"s the one."
He looked at the photo as they hurried down the long, curved pa.s.sageway: The photo showed two curious circular images intricately cut into a rockwall. Images of a maze.This maze. One image showed the maze empty, while the other showed two routes through it, one from the north, the other from the south, both ending at the center.
Alby shook his head. With its ten concentric rings and the straight narrow staircase branching from its center out to the right, it certainlylooked like their maze...
"That warlock and his priests probably have this exact carving somewhere," Zoe said.
"That"s how they alone know how to successfully navigate the maze."
"Zoe! Wait! Stop!" Alby shouted, halting suddenly.
"What?"
"According to this, we"ve gone the wrong way!"
"Already?"
Peering at the camera"s tiny screen, they checked the carving showing the route through the maze. They had gone immediately left, racing around the outermost circle of the maze- "We should have jumped over that crocodile carca.s.s and taken the next circle," Alby said.
"Look. This route only leads to a bunch of dead ends. Quickly! We have to go back before they release the hyenas!"
"Glad I brought you along." Zoe smiled.
Back they ran, arriving at the huge entry gate and again they saw the halfeaten crocodile carca.s.s. They hurdled it.
"Now we go left," Alby directed.
Left they went, running desperately around the curving alleyway.
They saw the high staircase looming above them, coming nearer, saw a semicircular archway in its base, allowing them to run under it if they wished.
"No!" Alby called. "Go right, into the next circle!"
Bam!
A banging noise echoed throughout the maze.
It was closely followed by the barking of the hyenas and the rapid splashing of paws on mud.
"They just let the dogs in," Zoe said.
Through the maze they ran.
Dashing down its long curving alleyways, often hearing the hyenas over the walls.
Occasionally, they came to a pit filled with dank, stinking water and inhabited by a crocodile or two. Human remains were often nearby crocodile skeletons, too, of those reptiles that hadn"t made it out before they"d starved.
These they skirted or jumped, not daring to slow down-although on one occasion, Zoe grabbed a long, thick croc bone from one of the skeletons.
They kept running.
All the while, the central staircase came nearer.
"Zoe," Alby asked. "What are we gonna do if we get out of here? Won"t they just kill us some other way?"
"Not if what I think is going to happen happens," Zoe said. "I needed to buy us some time. That"s why I took so long to kill that a.s.shole prince."
Alby was shocked. "Youdeliberately took that long? Why? What"s going to happen?"
"The bad guys are going to arrive."
"I thought the bad guys already had us."
"The badder guys, then. The ones who chased us out of Egypt and killed Jack. They"re almost here. And when they arrive and attack the Neetha, that"s our chance. That"s when we want to be out of this maze and ready to run."
Out in the main village, Lily sat alone on her high stone platform. Ono sat across from her, as close to her as he could.
Abruptly, the radio around his neck squawked.
"-Ground Team Leader, this is Wolf, come in."
"-This is Ground Team Leader. What is it, sir?"
"-Switchblade, be alert. While you and Broadsword have been rubbernecking at those big carved trees, we"ve spotted some heat signatures coming your way. Human signatures, about a dozen of them, and they"re sneaking up on your choppers from the east."
"-Thanks for the headsup, sir. We"ll handle it. Switchblade, out."
Lily turned to Wizard on the other platform. He"d heard it, too.
"Wolf"s men..." he said. "They"re almost here..."
Zoe and Alby plunged deeper into the maze, racing down its long bending pa.s.sageways, with Alby directing and Zoe looking out for danger. Curiously, as she ran, she also dragged her crocodile bone against the wall, sc.r.a.ping it harshly.
The staircase in the center gradually came nearer and just after they hurried through one of the ten archways cutting through its base, they suddenly found themselves in a perfectly round s.p.a.ce fitted withtwo entrances and, momentarily shocking them both, the base of the narrow staircase itself.
They were in the center of the maze.
Alby gazed up the superhigh staircase. Its steps stretched up and away from him into the lofty heights of the hollowedout volcano, wide enough only for one person at a time and without any kind of safety rail. Fiercelooking warriormonks bearing spears and guns stood along its length.
At the base of the stairs, in the exact center of the entire maze, stood an ornate marble podium. Carved into it was a list of some sort, written in the Word of Thoth: Given the podium"s central position, Alby figured the carvings on it were important, so he quickly snapped off some photos before Zoe yanked on his hand. "Come on, we have to get through the second half, and we still have those dogs on our tai-"
A blur of brown knocked her off her feet, tearing her away from Alby.
Alby fell backward, his mouth falling open as he saw the ma.s.sive animal straddling Zoe.
A hyena.
The thing washuge, with foul brownish fur, matted and speckled, and the signature stunted hind legs of the hyena.
But it was alone. The pack must have split up in their hunt.
Zoe rolled underneath the snarling jaws of the hyena. Then she slammed it with her boot into the marblelike wall of the maze and the animal yelped. But it instantly pounced back at her, jaws bared-only to impale itself on the now sharpened crocodile bone held in Zoe"s outstretched right hand.
Zoe extracted the weapon, allowing the lifeless hyena to slump to the floor.
Alby stared. "This is hardcore..."
"f.u.c.kin"A it is," Zoe said, already on her feet again. "I bet your mother wouldn"t want to see you doing this. Let"s go."
Out in the village, again Lily heard a message over Ono"s radio: "-Rapier, this is Switchblade. Neutralized the bogeys who were sneaking up on our chopper. Natives. Nasty. They were trying to sabotage the chopper. We"ve found the entrance to their base-due east of the carved forest a fortified gate of some sort heavily guarded. Gonna need some more men."
"-Copy that, Switchblade. We"re on the way, coming in on you signal."
Lily looked up in horror.
With Zoe and Alby in the maze, and Wizard and her trapped on their platforms, Wolf"s men were arriving at the main gate and they were about to storm the realm of the Neetha.
Desperate running through the maze.
Zoe and Alby didn"t dare stop. Now they were making their way through the southern half of the maze, heading away from the central staircase.
They encountered more muddy croc pits, a few deep holes, and even more human remains.
Halfway across, a second hyena caught up with them, but Zoe smashed it in the face with a crocodile skull, using the skull"s teeth as a multiedged blade that pierced the side of the snarling hyena"s head. The hyena howled and skulked off, blood all over its face.
They kept running, until after a time, brilliantly guided by Alby, they entered the outermost circle of the maze and charged around its long sweeping curve until they came to a high archway just like the one through which they had entered the maze.
The southern entrance.
Zoe halted twenty yards short of it. "We don"t want to leave the maze too early," she said.
"We have to wait for the time to be just right."
"And when will that be?" Alby asked.
Just then, right on cue, the distinctive blast of a grenade explosion echoed out from somewhere in the Neetha ravine system.
"Now," Zoe said. "The badder guys just arrived."
WOLF"S ROGUECIEF force stormed the main gate of the Neetha, led by the Marine trooper named Switchblade and a Delta man named Broadsword and supplemented by no less than a hundred Congolese Army troops bearing AK47s.
Essentiallybought with Saudi money, the Congolese soldiers were there literally as an army for hire, and Switchblade used them as such, as frontline fodder.
He hurled them at the main Neetha defenses in the mouth of the ravine-a series of b.o.o.by traps and hidden positions that took out a point man or two, but which were soon nullified by the sheer number of advancing troops.