Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow by James Rollins Page A

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    “Let’s go!” he ordered, his face flushed with the excitement of it all.
    With the monstrous escort, the group headed through the gate and into the city proper. Jake didn’t know what to expect, but Calypsos proved as chaotic as it was colorful.
    Inside, the streets were paved with cobblestones, and the homes stacked close together. A woman in an apron leaned out a second-story window and called down to a thin man dragging a wagon. “I’ll take two bloodmelons and one pail of mushberries! But they better be ripe this time, Emmul!”
    “Ripe and mushy as they come!”
    Jake had expected the place to smell bad with so many people and animals in one place, but the city was crisscrossed with flowing canals, along with raised aqueducts and roadside drains. It was amazing engineering. Even the main street formed a spiraling corkscrew that wound around and around. It led toward the crown of the hill where a stone castle, flanked by two towers, waited behind tall walls.
    “Kalakryss,” Heronidus said, naming the place. “Home of the Council of Elders.”
    It was plainly their destination.
    As they continued, Jake stared down alleys and narrowavenues. Everywhere he looked he spotted bits of other cultures from every continent and age: a Native American sweat lodge, a Sumerian temple, a large wooden Buddha. In one square stood the slender Egyptian obelisk carved with hieroglyphics.
    Marika must have noted the wonder in his eyes. “The tribes are many. We number over two score.”
    “How did you all get here?” he asked.
    It was a question that had plagued Jake through the march. The weight of the coin around his neck grew heavier the more he pondered the miracle of their own arrival. There had to be some sort of portal. The coins must have acted like keys. But that could not be the only path here, not with all these people.
    Marika shook her head. “We don’t know. Centuries ago, the Lost Tribes were drawn to this savage world, pulled from their own homelands. We all arrived within a few generations of each other and made our homes here in this valley. Where Kukulkan protects us.”
    Jake stared between Marika and Pindor. How could tribes from so many different eras of human history arrive in this place at relatively the same time? If what Marika said was true, the Tribes hadn’t just been pulled from their homelands, but also from their time lines .
    “There are rumors of other towns like Calypsos,” Marika continued. “In other valleys far out in the jungle. But here we live as best we can, in peace andcooperation with each other and the land. Or at least we used to….”
    Jake heard a trace of worry behind her last words. He could guess the root of it. “The Skull King you mentioned? Who is—”
    “You two shouldn’t be talking!” Pindor urged, stepping between them. “We’re all in enough trouble already.”
    Heronidus glared back. “Hurry up!”
    Marika sighed, but she obeyed.
    With his mind awhirl, Jake continued through the town. Lost Tribes . Jake had heard of matching tales throughout history, of villages that suddenly disappeared, of Roman legions that vanished without a trace, of entire civilizations that were simply swallowed up by time.
    Was this where they all ended up ?
    He sensed there was much more to learn.
    “Ugh!” Kady danced a step away from Jake’s side. She scraped vigorously at the bottom of her left boot on one of the cobblestones.
    Jake glanced over a shoulder and saw her boot print in a pile of dark, earthy-looking material along the edge of the street. Only it wasn’t earth . The ripe smell made that clear. Dinosaur dropping.
    Jake tried not to smile—especially after she came back to his side, her face pale and slightly green.
    “We don’t belong here,” she said. “We have to get home.”
    “We’ll get home,” Jake assured her with more certainty than he felt.
    Kady took a deep breath and nodded.
    “It just might take some time to figure out a way,” Jake