Their biggest hold-up was the two Knights of the Golden Eight that Sphinx had left behind.

The two Knights put up a good fight, but the monks overcame and shot them and soon the monks were racing at full speed into the inner sections of the maze—exchanging fire with the running figures of Sphinx, Mendoza and Jaeger Sechs up ahead.

Sphinx charged across the maze, head bent, under the constant gunfire of the monks.

But his lead had been good and it held.

After fourteen hours of nonstop movement and near-constant sniper fire, he and his team had almost reached the centre of the vast circle and the base of the castle.

Firing their guns at their pursuers, Sphinx, Mendoza and Jaeger Sechs came to a final bridge—long, slender and rail-less—that led across a sheer greystone ravine to the magnificent castle itself.

They had passed through all the archways of the city-maze and now the castle loomed above them, white and silver, glorious and mysterious, at the far end of the long high bridge.

Sphinx risked a grin.

‘We made it—’

Which was precisely when a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Brother Ezekiel slammed into the bridge and blew it apart.

Sphinx watched in horror as the slender stone bridge in front of him exploded in its middle and its crumbling pieces fell away into the ravine.

‘Fuck!’ he swore.

He couldn’t get across.

His fast-moving eyes saw another bridge giving access to the castle but—given the backtracking and the extra alleyways and bridges he’d need to traverse to get to it—he figured it would take him at least an hour, maybe two, to reach it.

But he had no choice, so he sucked it up and hurried on.

THE CASTLE AND THE LIFE THRONE

Day had fully arrived as Sphinx ran around the castle.

The delay with the broken bridge had cost him two hours but he finally came to the castle and raced inside it as bullets from the Omega monks strafed the walls all around him, Mendoza and Jaeger Sechs.

‘Talk to me,’ Sphinx said urgently, looking up at the interior of the castle above him.

It was a high hollow space, with many soaring stone stairways crisscrossing it.

All the stairways, he saw, in some way touched ten window-platforms arrayed around the castle and each of these platforms was accessed via ancient archways on landings.

‘How do we solve this final maze?’ Sphinx said.

Cardinal Mendoza was riffling through the notes that he carried with him.

‘We call this the Life Throne, but its full name is actually the Throne of the Tree of Life,’ Mendoza said. ‘Indeed, this whole section of the Supreme Labyrinth is depicted on my tattoo as the Tree of Life.’

He pointed to a copy of the tattoo on his head: