Three minutes later, Sphinx burst out onto the summit of the castle—springing into daylight—and found himself standing at the base of the black-and-gold pinnacle there.

He gazed up its towering height and immediately started climbing it.

Jack emerged on the roof of the ancient castle seconds later and looked up at the pinnacle.

THE PINNACLE

Seen up close, it was actually quite a complicated and intricate thing.

It was essentially a supertall cylinder, covered with irregularly shaped protrusions, ledges and indentations.

The protrusions took the form of two huge serpents, each five feet in diameter, that wrapped around the pinnacle, as if climbing it themselves, before ending at snarling snake heads that jutted out from the upper reaches of the pinnacle like massive gargoyles on a cathedral.

Hand- and footholds were carved into it for one to climb yet they rose in bending and diverging pathways that wended their way past all the snake bodies and ledges.

And it was tall, really tall, maybe a hundred and fifty feet.

Standing atop the already massive black castle, high above the quicksand floor of this mighty space, to climb it was a dizzying and terrifying prospect.

Yet that’s exactly what Jack did.

With his one good hand and the crumpled fingers of his broken artificial one, he started climbing up the pinnacle after Sphinx.

After all the secret cities, the iron mountains, the altars at Gibraltar and on the moon, it was a simple flat-out race now.

A 150-foot dash to the top of this pinnacle, high above the forbidding black castle.

Six minutes to Omega . . .

Sphinx gripped every handhold firmly.

One hundred feet to go and he was still ahead.

Jack gasped as he pushed himself upward.

Seventy feet to go and Jack was getting closer, only a few feet below him now.

Five minutes to Omega . . .

Fifty feet to go and Sphinx took a fork going right, moving toward a huge silver-and-gold snake head springing out from the pinnacle.

Jack went left, around the other way, running briefly across a silver-floored ledge indented into the pinnacle.

Four minutes to Omega . . .

Forty feet to go and Jack came level with Sphinx—they were on opposite sides of the slender shaft now, almost level with the fierce snake heads—and for the first time, Jack saw the underside of the peak of the pinnacle: a cleanly cut squared-off ledge.

Three minutes . . .

Energised, he increased his speed, grabbing the next handhold, and for a moment he saw Sphinx, off to his right . . . a couple of metres below him.

He had pulled ahead!

Twenty feet . . .

. . . and Jack stepped out onto a final silver ledge that lay on top of the giant snake head that jutted out from his side of the pinnacle. He looked up at the summit.

‘Oh, damn . . .’ he breathed when he saw it.

The squared-off edge of the pinnacle’s peak was an overhang.