Before Jack could process this, heavy return fire from one of the lower buildings slammed into the castle’s battlements around the shooter and hit him, and the Knight fell with a scream off the castle, plummeting for hundreds of feet before he disappeared into one of the alleyways in the labyrinthine city.

‘We just walked into a hornet’s nest with a throne in the middle of it and at least three groups of hornets already fighting,’ Jack said.

Lily’s eyes were on the throne at the top of the pinnacle, the throne that Sphinx was so tantalisingly close to reaching.

‘It’s the presence of that throne that bothers me,’ she said.

‘I know, we must have missed something,’ Jack said. ‘We can figure that out later. All that matters right now is that Sphinx is minutes away from sitting on it. But all our enemies are here, too, and they’re his enemies as well, and they’re pinning him down.’

And then suddenly, from their left, a streak of smoke extended from a buildingtop toward the central castle.

It was the telltale smoke trail of a shoulder-launched missile and it whooshed in a dead-straight line right toward Sphinx and Mendoza on the castle . . .

. . . only to whiz harmlessly past them, missing.

Even from this distance, Jack heard Sphinx laugh: ‘Nice try, Garthon! But I have electromagnetic protection from such weapons!’

Jack spun to see General Rastor off to his left, standing on top of a tower to the south of the castle with his RPG launcher on his shoulder and his grey-clad soldiers at his side.

The general laughed.

‘Is that so?’ Rastor called back to Sphinx. ‘Oh, Hardin, you never understood me and the lengths to which I will go to achieve my goal!’

THE CITY-MAZE

(WHEN SPHINX ARRIVED)

The City-Maze

Sixteen hours previously

Sixteen hours before Jack arrived at the city-maze, a stupendous and historic thing occurred.

Sphinx and his entourage—Cardinal Mendoza, three Knights of the Golden Eight and two remaining Vandals—had steadily made their way here.

Racing to stay ahead of Brother Ezekiel and his Omega monks, but also being careful not to make a deadly mistake, they had picked the correct tunnel mouth out of the six choices, and then cautiously made their way through the Endless Tunnel with its under-tunnels, goldmen and junctions.

They had even stopped to sleep. Sphinx and Mendoza had long planned for this moment, done their research and even trained for it physically, and they were bearing up well.

And then, like Jack, they had come to this city-maze surrounding the castle.

Only when they came to it, it had been underground, the entire spectacular cityscape shrouded in vast echoing darkness.

Emerging from the Endless Tunnel, Sphinx found himself standing on a rooftop—the same rooftop Jack would arrive at later—jutting out from the colossal circular wall ringing the city and the castle.