Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

The tumi is a sacrificial knife. It was given to him by the prince of the Inca tribe just before we left Vilcabamba. I could understand Richard wanting to keep it close to him. It was made of solid gold, with semi-precious stones in the hilt, and it must have been worth a small fortune. But this was a mistake. He might try to argue that the tumi was an antique, an ornament or just a souvenir, but given that the airlines wouldn’t even allow you to carry a teaspoon unless it was made of plastic, there was no way it was going to be allowed on the plane.

It was too late to do anything now. There was a long line of people behind us and we wouldn’t have been allowed to turn back. Richard dumped the bag on the moving belt and grimaced as it disappeared inside the X-ray machine. I suppose he was hoping that the security people might glance away at the right moment and miss it. But that wasn’t going to happen. The bag came out again. It was grabbed by an unsmiling woman with her name – Monica Smith – on a badge on her blue, short-sleeved shirt.

“Is this yours?” she asked.

“Yes.” Richard prepared for the worst.

“Can you unzip this, please?”

“I can explain…” Richard began.

“Just open it, please.”

The tumi was right on the top. I could see the golden figure of the Inca god that squatted above the blade. I watched as the woman, wearing latex gloves, began to rifle through Richard’s clothes. Briefly, she picked up the diary, then put it back again. She examined a magnifying glass that Richard had bought in Miami, trying to decipher the monk’s handwriting. But she didn’t even seem to notice that the tumi was there. She closed the bag again.

“Thank you,” she said.

Richard looked at me. Neither of us said anything. We snatched up our belongings and hurried forward. It was only afterwards that we understood what had happened.

The tumi has another name. It’s also known as the invisible blade. When the prince of the Incas gave it to Richard, he said that no one would ever find it, that he would be able to carry it with him at any time. He also warned Richard that one day he would regret having it – something neither of us really like to think about.

But now we both realized what we had just seen. It was a bit of ancient magic. And it was all the more amazing because it happened in the setting of a modern, international airport.

Monday night

We took off exactly on time and once the seat belt signs had been turned off, I sat back in my seat and began to write this. In the seat next to me, Jamie had plugged himself straight into the TV console, watching a film. Richard was across the aisle, working with a Spanish dictionary, trying to unravel the diary.

A bit later, I fell asleep.

And that was when I went back. I had wanted to visit the dreamworld again, ever since I had discovered the path set into the side of the hill. Was it really possible that a civilization of some sort had once lived there? Might they be living there still? The dreamworld was a sort of in-between place, connecting where we were now with the world that Jamie had visited and where he had fought his battle, ten thousand years ago. It was there to help us. The more we knew about it, the better prepared we would be.

I was right where I wanted to be, back on the hillside, half-way up the path. But that was how the dreamworld worked. Every time I fell asleep, I picked up exactly where I had left off. So if I woke up throwing a stone into the air, when I went back to sleep I would immediately catch it again. And I was wearing the same clothes that I had on the plane. That was how it worked too.

The hill became steeper and the path turned into a series of steps. They had definitely been made by human hand. As I continued climbing up, they became ever more defined and when I finally reached the summit I found myself on a square platform with some sort of design – it looked like a series of Arabic letters – cut into it. The letters made no sense to me, but then I lifted my head and what I saw was so amazing that I’m surprised I didn’t wake up at once and find myself back on the plane.

I was looking at a city, sprawling out in all directions, as far as the eye could see. More than that. From where I was standing, high up on the hill, I could see thousands of rooftops stretching all the way to the horizon, perhaps ten miles away, but I got the impression that if I managed to walk all the way to the other side, it would continue to the next horizon and maybe to the one after that.

It was impossible to say if the city was ancient or modern. It somehow managed to be both at the same time. Some of the buildings were huge, cathedral-like with arched windows and domes covered in tiles that could have been silver or zinc. Others were steel and glass structures that reminded me of an airport terminal and then I realized that there were actually dozens of them and they were all identical, radiating out of central courtyards like the spokes of a wheel. Towers rose up at intervals, again with silver turrets. Everything was connected, either by spiral staircases or covered walkways.

There were no parks and no trees. There weren’t any cars or people. In fact, I wasn’t looking at a city at all. This vast construction was one single building: a massive cathedral, a massive museum, a massive… something. It was a mishmash of styles, some parts must have been added hundreds or even thousands of years after others – but it was all locked together. It was one. I couldn’t work out where the centre was. I couldn’t see where it had originally begun. Nor could I imagine how it had come into being. It was as if someone had taken a single seed – one brick – and dropped it into a bubbling swamp. And this, after thousands of years of growth, was the result.

Leaving the platform behind me, I walked down the other side of the hill and made my way towards the outer wall. I was now following a road with a marble-like surface and it was taking me directly towards a great big arch and, on the other side of it, an open door. The air was very still. I could actually hear my heart beating as I approached. I didn’t think I was in danger, but there was something so weird about this place, so far removed from my experience, that I admit I was afraid. I didn’t hesitate though. I passed through the arch and suddenly I was inside, in a long corridor with a tiled, very polished floor and a high, vaulted ceiling held up by stone pillars: not quite a church, not quite a museum, but something similar to both.

“Can I help you?”

Another shock. I wasn’t on my own. And the question was so normal, so polite that it just didn’t seem to belong to this extraordinary place.

There was a man standing behind a lectern, the sort of things lecturers have in front of them when they talk. He was quite small, a couple of inches shorter than me, and he had one of those faces… I won’t say it was carved out of stone (it was too warm and human for that) but it somehow seemed ages old, gnarled by time and experience.

From the look of him, I would have said he was an Arab, a desert tribesman, but without any of the trappings such as a headdress, white robes or a dagger. Instead, he was dressed in a long, silk jacket – faded mauve and silver – with a large pocket on each side and baggy, white trousers. A beard would have suited him but he didn’t have one. His hair was steel grey. His eyes were the same colour. They were regarding me with polite amusement.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“This place?” The man seemed surprised that I had asked. “This is the great library. And it’s very good to see you again.”

A library. I remembered something Jamie had told me. When he met Scarlett at Scathack Hill, she had mentioned visiting a library to him .