Moments later, Wizard, Zoe, and Lily were gathered around the videophone monitor peering at the feed coming from Jack’s helmet-mounted camera.
Wizard saw the underground city and breathed, “The city of bridges…” but Jack directed their attention to the carved words of Thoth on the first rooftop’s tonguelike platform:
“Lily?”Jack asked.
Lily read the text quickly.
“It says, ‘What is the best number of lies?’” she said.
Standing to Lily’s left, Wizard frowned. “The best number of—wait a minute…”
But then, from her right, Zoe said, “Hey! I’ve seen that carving!”
“Where?” Wizard asked.
It was Jack who answered over the radio: “Somewhere in the Neetha realm, I imagine. Along with a list of other carvings, carvings that looked like numbers maybe.”
“Yes,” Zoe said. “Yes. They were in the very center of the maze there. Carved onto a beautiful white-marble podium. But how could you know that, Jack?”
“Because this is one of Aristotle’s Riddles,”he said.
“Of course,” Wizard said. “Of course…”
“I don’t get it,” Zoe said.
Jack explained, “At the Academy in Greece, Aristotle was Hieronymus’s favorite student, the same Hieronymus who found the Neetha. It makes sense that Hieronymus told his favorite student about the Neetha and what he’d discovered there. Aristotle’s Riddles aren’t Aristotle’s at all. They’re Hieronymus’s. Riddles that Hieronymus found during his time with the Neetha, riddles that I imagine he got someone among the Neetha to translate for him.”
“So what is the best number of lies?” Lily asked.
“One,” Wizard said. “You know the old saying, if you tell one lie, then soon you’ll find yourself telling another and then another to sustain it. But if you can tell only one, it is optimal.”
In the vast cavern of the Second Vertex, Jack checked the carvings on the three stepping-stones in front of him.
“You sure about that, Wizard?”
“Yes.”
“Would you stake your life on it?”
“Yes.”
“Would you stake mine on it?”
“Er…well…I, I mean, I think…”
“It’s OK, Max. I’m not stupid,” Jack said. “I’m gonna wear a rope around my waist when I make the jump.”
Jack gazed at the stepping-stone to his right: it bore a single horizontal slash on it. One.
The stepping-stone seemed to hover above the black void beneath it. Jack still had Astro’s mini-Maghook with him, so he cinched its cable around his waist and handed its launcher to Wickham.
“Here we go,” he said.
Then without another thought, he jumped, out over the void, leaping for the stepping-stone to the right—
—JACK’S BOOTS landed on the stepping-stone and it caught him, holding his weight.
Jack stood on the small flat stone, high above the dark hollow core of the tower beneath him.
After another leap, he was standing at the base of a long stepped bridge that soared upward to the roof of the next tower.
“Hey, Cowboys,” he called back to the twins. “Go grab some spray paint or something from the Raider and then follow us, painting the correct stones as we go. Oh, and if something happens to us, you’ll have to take our place, jumping across these stones.”
Lachlan and Julius both gulped. Then they raced back to the submarine to find some paint.
And so Jack made his way across the labyrinth of high bridges—leaping onto stepping-stones—guided by the voices coming in over his headset, answering the riddles.
“What is the best number of eyes…”
“One,”Wizard’s voice had answered. “The all-seeing eye that appeared on capstones.”
“What is the best life…”
“The second life, the afterlife,”Wizard said. “Jump onto the stone saying ‘Two.’”
He made good progress, with the Sea Ranger and the twins running after him across the bridges and over the hollow towers.
As they advanced across the dazzling bridged city, Jack looked out across the cavern, trying to gauge Wolf’s progress—and to his dismay, he saw that Wolf was moving just as fast, if not faster, than he was.
