flying overhead, the ravine—already hidden among three extinct volcanoes—would have been indistinguishable from the sea of green jungle above it.
During the daytime, Zoe figured, dappled light would shine through the canopy, but right now, thin shafts of moonlight cut through it, illuminating the gorge in a haunting bluish glow.
As she gazed up at the enormous walls, Lily saw that they possessed a strange kind of movement: a constant trickle that flowed down the uneven rock walls, feeding the clumps of twisted vines that had attached themselves there. Among the snakelike vines were all manner of real snakes, speckled African rock pythons, black mambas, and various others slithering in and out of every available orifice.
“Do you see them?” she gasped.
Alby nodded vigorously, terrified. “Yuh-huh.”
The ravine before them stretched away into misty darkness, twisting and bending, blocked in places by stone forts that prevented an intruder from moving in a straight line.
Likewise, the gorge’s base was made up of difficult-to-pass substances.
Mostly, it was just water, a flowing stream that ultimately flowed out through the gate. But along the way, this stream passed through two dense reed fields, three mud ponds, and one foul stinking bog inhabited by several semihidden Nile crocodiles.
As the group emerged from the great gate, the lead guard blew another horn and a huge cogwheel at one of the forts upstream was turned by a slave gang. Without warning, a series of stone platforms that had previously been hidden beneath the waters of the stream rose up from beneath the waves right in front of Zoe’s team, instantly providing a zigzagging walkway that allowed one to proceed up the ravine unhindered.
“These people are most able,” Solomon said, “for a tribe of cannibals untouched by civilization.”
“Just untouched by our civilization,” Wizard said.
“Wizard,” Zoe whispered, “what’s going to happen?”
Wizard stole a glance at the children, made sure they couldn’t hear. “We’re marching to our deaths, Zoe,” he said. “The only question is how long the Neetha keep us alive before they eat us one severed limb at a time.”
But then he was shoved onward by the guards and thus they progressed through the dark ravine, passing the various fortifications until they turned a final bend and emerged into a wider space, lit by grim firelight.
“God in all creation…” Wizard breathed as he beheld the realm of the Neetha.
THE REALM OF THE NEETHA
THEY HAD COME to a point where their ravine met another smaller one—a T-junction of two ravines nestled among three extinct volcanoes—and suddenly they found themselves in a very wide space.
A broad lake lay in the middle of what could only be described as an ancient village built into the walls of the giant ravine junction.
It looked like nothing they had ever seen.
Dozens of stone stuctures dotted the walls of the junction, some at dizzying heights, and they ranged in size from small huts to a large free-standing tower that rose up from the waters of the lake itself.
Ladders led to the upper huts while swooping rope bridges crisscrossed the minor ravine to the left, connecting the structures.
For Zoe, it was the bridge-building skills of these people that was most remarkable: rope bridges; the concealed stone bridges that she had walked on from the main gate; she even saw a series of drawbridges giving access to the tower out on the lake.
“Wizard,” she said, “did these people—”
“No. They didn’t build this place. They just moved in. Like the Aztecs did at Teotihuacan.”
“So what civilization did?”
“I imagine the same one that built the Machine. Would you look at that…”
They’d stepped out onto the main square of the town and Wizard was gazing off to the right, out over the lake.
Zoe turned. “At what—”
She cut herself off.
An incredible structure lay across the lake.
It was utterly immense, literally carved out of the cone of the extinct volcano that lay on the far side of the ravine.
It looked like a modern stadium, an enormous circular arena. A series of round walls could be seen inside it —a maze of some sort. And rising up out of the very center of the circular maze like the needle on a sundial was a superthin yet superhigh stone-staircase easily ten stories high.
Made of hundreds of steps, the thin staircase was wide enough for one person only and had no rail, and it rose precariously to a squat trapezoidal doorway built into the rock face on the far side of the maze.
The challenge was clear: only if you made it to the center of the maze could you ascend this mysterious staircase.
There was one other thing that Zoe noticed about the village area: there was a small triangular island located out in the middle of the lake, in the exact center of everything, as if it were the focal point of the entire ravine junction.
Erected on this little island was a bronze tripod-like device that looked to Zoe like some ancient kind of inclinometer.
