Empire of Ruins (30 page)

Despite her attempts to stand her ground and prove her courage, involuntarily she stepped back. And once she’d stepped back, her body responded on its own and continued backing away. It terrified her. Modo, that masked creature, was following, holding that horrible severed head. The voices were growing louder. This, then, was the madness she’d seen in her men—it had found a way to get inside her head too.

M
odo held the head high, taunting his enemies with it whenever they turned around.

“It’s working!” Mr. Socrates exclaimed. “The God Face is driving them away. Step aside, Modo, and let us get a clear shot at Miss Hakkandottir.”

Modo heard the order, but couldn’t obey. He was too caught up in the moment to stop. “I’ll get her!” he shouted. “I will!” He had relished the fear in Miss Hakkandottir’s eyes.
I hope you go completely insane
, he wanted to shout after her. His wounded hand throbbed as though urging him on. He dashed after her and the soldiers.
You cut me! You hurt my friends! Murdered my colleagues! Go mad, you evil woman!

“Modo! Stand aside!” Mr. Socrates commanded, but his voice was already distant.

Miss Hakkandottir was running now, over the fallen
pillars. Modo matched her step for step. If his companions were following, he was unaware of them. At one point Miss Hakkandottir turned to face him, a snarl on her lips, but her eyes were immediately drawn to the God Face and her strength waned again. She fled.

The remaining passages and stairs were a blur. At one point Modo jumped a crevasse without even stopping to gauge the distance. The God Face was guiding him, pulling him toward the destruction of his enemies.

Once outside in the sunlight he saw Miss Hakkandottir running pell-mell down the temple stairs. He stopped cold, gasping for air. It was his own face he was holding up to the world. His own face he was using to drive them away.

But a triumphant thought followed: his face was a powerful weapon.

A pack of Guild soldiers were running up the stairs, rifles raised, but they were shocked to see their leader and fellow soldiers fleeing the cave. Modo removed his mask and walked toward them.
What are you doing?
he asked himself. There were more than fifty of them.

They took one good look and bolted, their rifles rattling to the ground.

Modo stopped beside the paws of the sphinx and looked down. With great satisfaction he watched as Miss Hakkandottir scurried down the hillside below the temple and through the ruins of the city.

A loud blast at his side barely made him shudder. Tharpa was firing the elephant gun. A second blast, and sparks flew near Miss Hakkandottir. She didn’t pause, was pulling at her hair with her metal hand as she ran past the
Prometheus
and disappeared into the cover of the forest. In less than a minute the temple and the city had been abandoned by the Guild soldiers.

Modo put his mask back on and turned around to find his companions standing behind him in the doorway of the temple, the mouth of the sphinx. The lionlike statue was looking directly at Modo. Did it approve? He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had lifted its stone paws and shaken off a thousand years of waiting. It felt as though anything could happen on a day like this.

Mr. Socrates’ lips were moving, but he wasn’t making a sound. Then Modo felt a sharp pain in his ears and the sound flooded in. He’d been deafened by the report of the gun.

“… she’ll be dead soon enough. But that was a stunning display!” Mr. Socrates exclaimed. His eyes had a glow that disturbed Modo. “To drive the enemy back like that. Such a weapon! We’ll have to study this God Face. There must be a way to duplicate the effects.”

“Don’t you wonder why
we
weren’t driven mad?” Modo asked.

“Mad?” Mr. Socrates’ eyes were focused on the God Face, so Modo tucked it inside the folds of his cloak. “Yes, that’s an oddity, but with enough experimentation we will get to the bottom of that, too.”

Modo looked from Mr. Socrates to Octavia, Lizzie, and Tharpa. What was the one thing they all had in common? The reason was clear. “Don’t you see?” Modo asked.

“See what?” Octavia asked. “Modo, are you feeling unwell?”

“I am feeling perfectly fine,” he said. “All of you had
seen my face before. Our enemies hadn’t. That’s why you weren’t driven insane by the God Face. You saw
me
in that stone head.”

“Hmm.” Mr. Socrates scratched his head. “You do seem to have a penchant for self-aggrandizement, Modo. You cling to these notions of your own importance. Perhaps it’s a lingering effect of being abandoned as a child.”

Modo gritted his teeth.

Mr. Socrates raised a hand. “This is not the place or time to argue. Let me hold the head.”

Modo didn’t want to give it up before he had to do so.

Someone in the distance began beating a drum. The first sign of a counterattack? A choir began to sing.

Modo and the others looked around, perplexed, until Octavia said, “Look—down there!”

Crossing the ruins and climbing the long stairway was a group of half-naked people, moving in single file. As they approached the steps to the temple, Modo recognized them as the Rain People—fifteen warriors followed by Nulu and her grandfather.

One warrior was pounding on a hand drum. The remaining warriors carried spears, and shields painted with the God Face image. They stopped singing and continued up the steps toward Modo.

“They’re friends,” Modo said to his companions. “Please, no guns.”

Nulu pointed at him with her little finger and said, “Moh-Doh.” Then she said several more words.

“Nulu,” he replied. Seeing her calmed him, and he was moved by the way the tribesmen gazed at his face with such reverence.

She tugged on his cloak until he got down on one knee in front of her; then she pushed back his mask and touched his face. Her fingers were warm.

“
Walu. Ngulkurrijin. Yulu,
” she whispered as she stroked his cheek.

He didn’t know what any of the words meant, but listened intently. She repeated them softly several times.

Then, gently, she took the God Face from him, so heavy in her little arms that she nearly dropped it. She bowed slightly and handed the God Face to her grandfather. Then the warriors and her grandfather bowed and followed her down the steps toward the rain forest.

“But … but …” Mr. Socrates pointed at the tribe. “They can’t take the God Face!” He took a few steps after them, then turned to Modo. “Command them to return it! Now!”

“I can’t, Mr. Socrates. I don’t speak their language. Besides, it belongs to them, more than it does to us.”

“
Belongs
to them?”

“You saw the symbols on their shields. We’d alter their lives if we took it.”

“That God Face could end wars!”

“Or start new ones,” Lizzie said. Her face was solemn.

“What does that mean?” Mr. Socrates asked.

Lizzie shrugged. “Weapons are designed to be used.”

“Of course they are,” Mr. Socrates replied.

Modo saw that the Rain People had gone back into the forest. “It’s too late, either way,” he said. “We can’t get it back now.”

Mr. Socrates stared after them, looking flabbergasted, his face contorted by a cold rage.

Modo put his mask back on. “Mr. Socrates …,” he began.

“Don’t speak of this, Modo.” Mr. Socrates waved his hand. “Lizzie, get us out of here on that airship. Who knows whether or not those natives will be back in force? Or Miss Hakkandottir, for that matter?”

They hurried down to the
Prometheus
and boarded. In no time, Lizzie fired up the boiler, and soon they were airborne, the roaring engine announcing their departure. As the
Prometheus
rose slowly above the ruins, Modo looked out over the edge of the car, searching for a sign of the Rain People in the forest. Nothing. He could clearly see the sphinx and the tomb entrance they had escaped from. The temple where a replica of him, a part of him, had been waiting for over two thousand years. The God Face hadn’t driven him mad, but trying to understand how it had come to exist just might.

Octavia stood beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. He wanted to lean in to her but was afraid to. Instead he leaned even farther over the edge of the car.

“What do you see down there?” Octavia asked.

“My new beginning,” Modo answered.

N
ulu and the warriors watched as the man with the God Face climbed into a large basket and it floated into the sky, pulled by a large gray thundering cloud. Soon he was gone, returning to the heavens.

There were so many questions. Why had Moh-Doh come? Why had he given them the God Face? No Rain Warrior before him had been brave enough to actually touch it. And he had brought it out of the cave for them.

“Did he explain what we are to do with it?” her grandfather asked in a whisper.

She shook her head.

“It’s not easy to know the will of the gods,” he said to the gathered warriors and tribespeople. “It’s a gift, though. A gift.”

Nulu thought about that. Moh-Doh had come. There had been a battle against the gray enemies, which he had
won. Then he had given them the God Face. No longer would they have to travel into the temple. They would carry it with them.

It was a new way of being, she decided. A new way of doing things. That much, at least, she understood.

F
irst, Miss Hakkandottir banished the voices and images of madness from her head, one by one. Then she tromped through the rain forest and, gathering what soldiers she could find, seven in all, she began the journey on foot to Port Douglas. The soldiers’ minds were weaker than usual, but by pure force of will she drove them forward. Later, she discovered Visser tangled in the roots of a gnarled mangrove tree, his eyes empty, the mechanical falcons on his arm screeching softly. She shouted at him until he got up and joined the band of weary travelers.

They marched through the mud, the vines and roots, the murky water, and didn’t stop to eat. She smashed branches aside, cut through vines with the extended nails on her metal fingers. At nightfall two of the soldiers died, each struck through the heart with a spear that flew out of the darkness. This threw the rest of the troop into a muttering
panic, and one ran screaming into the jungle. His scream was soon cut short.

No one slept the rest of the night.

In the morning as they struggled on, a lieutenant trailed a few steps behind the group and vanished. A short time later another soldier was struck through the heart by a spear. Miss Hakkandottir had to give it to the natives: their aim was impeccable, and they were as invisible and silent as snakes.

By midafternoon, she and Visser were the only ones left to trudge over the stones in the gorge. Visser was still dazed, his birds clinging to his now bloodied arm. As they waded across a shallow section of the river, a crocodile grabbed Visser by the back of his neck and yanked him down. The falcons, too dumb to fly away, joined their master in his watery, bloody death. A second later the crocodile’s mate lunged at Miss Hakkandottir’s throat, but she slammed her metal fist into the beast’s skull and it sank, dead, to the bottom of the river.