I was intrigued by this news, and had a dozen questions, but before I could ask them the passage we traveled opened into a huge, circular chamber a hundred yards across, ringed with columns. We all craned our necks as we entered, looking up at the high cone-shaped roof. A checkerboard pattern spiraled up the steep walls, producing a feeling of vertigo.
In the center of the chamber was a raised platform. Upon this sat a mirrored glass pyramid roughly ten feet along the base. Sitting upon this, perfectly balanced, was a cube of what looked to be black, seamless iron the same height. Perched atop this was an equally large sphere of polished jade, seemingly carved from a single block of stone. My ghost heart skipped a beat as I looked at it. I couldn’t even begin to guess its value.
Finally, on top of these three, perfect solids, sat a throne of gold.
“Muh fuh uh,” said No-Face, softly.
“It’s magnificent,” whispered Zetetic, sounding awed as he looked at the tower of geometric shapes. “I wonder what these objects must have meant?”
The boa constrictor rose up next to him, its eyes glazed. “I can tell you what the throne meant,” he said. “The man who ssssat upon that throne ruled the damn world.”
Father Ver spat on the dusty floor. “The man who sat on that throne is dead. No one remembers his name.”
As dazzled as I was by the wealth before me, Father Ver’s words struck me. What did wealth mean if you could afford to build something like this, then vanish so completely from memory? The man who sat upon that throne had probably thought he was pretty important, but time had swept him away completely. Since everything a man might do with his life would be erased by time, perhaps my grandfather was right. Maybe the only sensible path was to live naked in a tree, eat fruit and bask in the sun. Not that this had been Father Ver’s point at all.
Menagerie, however, had different feelings on the matter. He slithered across the room, his serpentine belly somehow finding purchase on the smooth surfaces of the pyramid.
“Don’t climb it!” cried Zetetic. “It’s precariously balanced!”
“Precariousss my assss,” said Menagerie as he zipped up the cube and slid over the sphere to the throne. “There’sss an iron rod or sssomething ssstuck through the middle to hold everything in place.”
He slid his chin on the throne itself. The boa pulled loop after loop of his body onto the seat. In a flicker, Menagerie’s human form appeared on the throne. “I know you said the debate about treasure was over, but look at this! We have to take measures to protect our finds. We can’t leave this here for Hookhand to just walk in and grab!”
“No one is going to grab it,” said Tower. “The sheer weight will protect it from being stolen.”
“Are you really willing to take that chance? If you come back tomorrow and it’s gone, you’ll hate yourself.” Menagerie rubbed his hands along the golden arms of the throne.
“I assure you, I’ll be able to sleep in peace,” said Tower. “Come down at once and let’s move on.”
Menagerie ground his teeth, glaring at the knight. Then he said, tersely, “As you wish.”
He clamped his hands around the armrests as he stood up, his feet on the jade sphere. As he rose, there was a loud click. From beneath the floor, there was a ticking sound, like the world’s largest clock counting off seconds.
“That can’t be good,” said Zetetic.
Menagerie picked up his hands from the armrests. “Nobody panic. It’s probably just-”
Before he could finish the sentence, the ticking stopped. The jade globe snapped open, a wedge widening into a giant mouth full of saw-edged green teeth. The mouth proved larger than the footprint of the throne. The golden chair dropped straight down into the maw, carrying Menagerie with it.
The jaws clamped shut with a loud clang that bit right through the throne. The metal posts and backrest spun off through the air, flying twenty feet before clattering loudly on the floor. Menagerie’s torso from the belly-button up tumbled through the air. His legs were completely gone. The sphere spun around to face the rest of the party with an eyeless face, as its mouth once more opened in a toothy smile.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Menagerie’s torso bounced once on the floor. His left hand flopped limply against a small squiggle tattooed behind his ear and he suddenly vanished. I blinked, wondering where he’d gone, but had no time to dwell on the matter.
The sphere, the cube, and the pyramid had all separated, hovering in the air, spinning to face new targets. The jade sphere shot toward No-Face as a deafening, high-pitched scream erupted from within. With only inches to spare, the faceless mercenary leaped from the path of the green ball, leaving the toothy maw aimed at Father Ver. Yet as No-Face dodged, he let his iron ball and chain trail behind him. The giant mouth snapped down as the weapon passed through its mineral lips. Shards of jade sprayed out as the teeth snapped on the iron links. With a grunt, No-Face planted his feet and jerked the chain taut. The jade orb spun dizzily as it cut an arc, narrowly missing Father Ver. Infidel dropped her pack and leapt into the curving path of the spinning sphere, drawing back her fist.
A thunderclap echoed through the chamber as she landed her punch. The gleaming green stone shattered, sending sharp, fist-sized chunks in all directions. Chewed-up bits of golden throne bounced on the marble floor. What must have been hundreds of concentric platinum hoops, in diameters from ten feet to smaller than a wedding ring, spilled out, rolling everywhere.
There was no sign of Menagerie’s legs amid the rubble, though I didn’t exactly spend a lot of time looking. My attention was drawn to the cube and the pyramid, which were hanging in the air, unseen motors within whining like a billion mosquitoes. Unlike the sphere, no mouths opened on these solids as they selected targets and launched forward.
The iron cube raced toward Infidel. She reared back to punch it, but the flying cube smashed her in mid-swing, flattening her against its face. The whining, buzzing noise within rose in pitch as it built speed, pushing her with it. With a shock wave that knocked Relic, Father Ver, and the Deceiver from their feet, the cube hammered into the chamber wall.
I thought of the flattened skeletons I’d found embedded in stone and felt sick. Any normal person would be nothing more than a smear of blood after such a blow. Yet, when the cube pulled back, Infidel looked intact; the marble panel behind her was shattered into gravel, and she was driven into the dense volcanic soil behind. She looked dazed, but was plainly alive.
The cube whirled and targeted Lord Tower, zipping in a straight line toward the knight. Tower was hovering an inch or two in the air. Steel spikes snapped out of the soles of his metal boots and he kicked down onto the marble floor, driving the spikes into the stone. The cube hit him with an ear-splitting WHANG, driving him backward. Marble fragments flew as Tower’s boot carved a long, ragged gouge in the floor. The pitch of the unseen engines grew ever louder, but the cube’s speed was visibly diminishing. I wondered if Tower could actually stop it before they reached the wall.
My eyes were drawn elsewhere before I saw the outcome of Tower’s braking action. Amidst the larger chunks of chewed-up throne, I spotted what looked like a bit of brownish red intestine wriggling on a scrap of purple silk. I looked closer, in morbid fascination, wondering if Menagerie had been chewed up so completely by the inner workings of the sphere that this was all that was left. I stared closer, and suddenly understood what I was seeing: half an earthworm, pinched off at one end, writhing in pain.