"Their booty?" Cass said.

"Pirate booty," Aly explained. "Stolen treasures."

Canavar gestured toward the sea. "The sea bottom is littered with shipwrecks containing pieces of the Mausoleum still within their holds. The sand and coral are nourished with the bodies of those who scoffed at Artemisia's Curse."

"Artemisia," Aly said. "That was the wife of the ruler, Mausolus."

Canavar nodded. "Also his sister."

"Isn't that illegal?" Cass said. "Or at least incredibly gross?"

"The world was a different place." Canavar bowed his head. "I present to you the most important recent Mausoleum find. The rocks before thee were salvaged by the hands of a heroic, prodigiously skilled sea diver. Namely, me. This is my life's work-to find all there is. To bring them back. If they came from the Mausoleum, they must be returned. It is where they belong. It is where they have their life. Their meaning."

I knelt by the stones. They were small, none more than four or five inches long, all of them in sharply cut geometric shapes. Some seemed new, others worn and ancient, and some were etched with straight lines.

Canavar's tiny features expanded with pride. "You see the etched lines on the stones? I believe they formed a kind of symbol, or logo. The Greek letter mu, equivalent to our M, for Mausolus."

"But this place was Persian back then," I said, trying to dredge up my research. "Not Greek."

Canavar nodded. "The Persian kingdom of Caria. But as a port, Caria was home to many nationalities. Mausolus was allowed to be an independent and flexible ruler. He hired Greek architects and Greek sculptors. Hence the Greek M. Wouldst thou like to see how the stones fit together?"

He quickly organized the stones with his spindly fingers.

"Ergo, an M!" Canavar said.

I nodded. "Some of these are lighter in color than the others."

"Yes. Those were the ones I salvaged from the ship. I studied these stones for years, wondering what they meant. I positioned and repositioned them until I saw, in my mind's eye, the possibility of this M, even though the other stones were missing. So I carved new ones, to represent them. To fill in the blanks, as it were. Those are the darker stones. It was the material I had."

"Wait, you made it up?" Cass asked. "You had a bunch of lines and just assumed it was an M? What if it was something else?"

Canavar glared at him. "Thinkest thou perhaps Q would be appropriate for Mausolus?"

He turned in a huff and stomped away toward Torquin and Dad.

Cass, Aly, and I squatted by the stones. I touched them one by one. "They're warm," I said. "Just the old ones. Not the new."

"They all feel the same to me," Cass said.

"Don't they seem kind of small?" Aly held one up, turning it around in her hand. "I mean, think about the carved letters over the columns of the House of Wenders-they're huge. Imagine this thing at the top of the Mausoleum. No one would see it."

I pressed my hand to one of the stones and kept it there. I could feel my palm tingling. Now Aly and Cass were both looking at me.

"These stones are different." I carefully separated the rocks, older on the left, newer on the right.

"I'm feeling something," I said. "From the lighter-colored ones, the older stones. It's not like the Song. But it's something."

"Walk one of them around," Aly said. "Maybe it's like a Geiger counter. It'll start singing to you when you're near a Loculus."

I picked up a stone and began pacing through the yard, circling closer to the gate and then back toward the cliff.

"Young fellow, seekest thou a men's room?" Canavar's voice called out.

"No, I'm good." I stared out over the coastline to the west. I pictured the ships of the Knights of St. Peter with sails unfurled. Over the bounding main. Whatever that meant. I imagined the holds filled with great statues and polished stones . . .

If they came from the Mausoleum, they must be returned. It is where they belong. It is where they have their life. Their meaning.

I turned and walked toward Canavar. He was deep in conversation with Dad and Torquin now. "Canavar-" I said.

"Dr. Canavar," he corrected me again.

"Dr. Canavar. I have a big, big favor to ask you. Can we take your stones to the location of the Mausoleum?"

"But we were already there," Cass whispered. "You said you didn't feel anything at all!"

"I want to try again," I said. "With these stones."

Canavar looked from Dad to Torquin and chuckled. "Ah, children do love rocks, don't they? And children, no matter how many times they are told, do not comprehend the value of antiquities. Mr. McKinley, thou wilt, of course, properly discipline thy offspring and restrain him from acts of cultural disrespect."

"Excuse me?" Dad said.

Canavar turned away and sidled back toward the rocks. "Thou art most cordially excused. Good night."

Dad looked at Torquin. With an understanding nod, Torquin lumbered past Canavar and scooped up the pile of rocks with two swipes of his massive paws.

"I-I beg thy pardon-" Canavar stammered. "Is this some sort of jest?"

Torquin shoved the rocks into his pack, then grabbed Canavar's collar and lifted him off the ground. "Torquin love rocks, too."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

SECRET IN THE STONES.

"THIS IS IT?" Dad said. "The whole thing?"

The pit was about thirty feet long and wide. It was surrounded by piles of rocks and stones, lit by soft lamps that rose from the ground. I knelt by a section of a column that lay on its side, like an uprooted tree trunk.

Dad was right. It wasn't much.

"Good rocks," Torquin said, dropping his backpack onto the ground with a thud. "Make nice patio."

"For this, thou humiliatest me," Canavar grumbled. "Thou forcest me to let thee inside with a magnetic card, and then thou belittlest a hallowed site."

"Can it, Munchkin," Torquin said.

"At least with the Colossus, we had the stones we needed," Cass said. "How can you re-create a Wonder if its parts don't exist?"

Aly crouched by a sculpture of an animal's head. "This one looks like a mushushu."

"I think it's a lion," Cass remarked. "We're not in Babylon anymore, Toto."

Dr. Bradley pushed Professor Bhegad toward me in a wheelchair. "This will be difficult, Jack," Bhegad said. "But archaeology is a bit like finding a speck of diamond in a pile of sludge. Do not ignore one pebble, my son."

"Right," I said. "Thanks."

Where to begin? I knelt by a small, flat stone that looked a bit like one of the stones Canavar had been working on. I ran my hand over it.

Aly put hers on top of mine. "I feel it."

I flinched, yanking my hand back.

"What happened?" Aly said.

"Nothing," I said. "You startled me."

Aly narrowed her eyes at me. "You're turning red."

"No, I'm not." I turned away. "You . . . said you felt something. What did you feel?"

"Warmth," she said.

I swallowed. "Warmth?"

"Back up at the castle, you said that the rocks were warm. I was trying to feel that warmth through your hand." Aly smiled. "What did you think I meant?"

My face was burning. "I wasn't thinking."

She was staring at me. I stood there, dorking out. I couldn't help it.

I felt the slab again. Actually, it was warm. I ran my fingers along the top until I felt a diagonal ridge, a raised area like a vein in a clenched hand.

"Ah, thou discoverest my favorite relief," Canavar's voice piped up. He sidled close, running his gnarled fingers along the carved ridge. "Razor straight. Remarkable."

"Looks like it might have been carved by the same Greek dudes who made your M," Cass said.

"A trained eye will discern the difference in technique," Canavar said with cocked eyebrows. "These are raised upward, not carved into the stone. An entirely different process."

I noticed another flat stone, and another. Reaching into my pack, I pulled out a flashlight and shone it around, expanding the illumination from the glow of the weak lamps. "There's a bunch of these, scattered all over this place," I said, pointing the light at some of the other pieces I'd noticed. "There. And there. And there. I think they may all be parts of a bigger sculpture."

"Do you?" Canavar said with a mocking grin. "And perhaps with thy uncanny visual powers thou shalt conjure up a statue of Artemisia herself?"

"He's good at this," Dad said with a grin. "Won the state middle school jigsaw puzzle championship, Division One. We had DQ Blizzards to celebrate."

"Competitive jigsaw puzzling?" Aly said. "With divisions?"

"And Blizzards?" Cass piped up.

"Sweeeeet," Torquin said.

My face was heating up again.

Focus. Ignore.

Retaliate later.

I stared at the pieces, letting my brain assemble them. Then I began to fetch them, putting them close to one another until I could find no more.

Carefully, I slid them into place.

"It's some kind of panel," Aly said. "With a backward seven, in relief."

"Maybe the Persians read from right to left?" Cass said.

Dad cocked his head curiously. "Any guesses what it means?"

I wasn't sure. But my brain was trying to recall the exact pattern of Canavar's M. There was something about it that didn't quite make sense. "Torquin," I said. "Can you give me Canavar's stones-all of them?"

"I believe it is proper to address that question to the stone collector himself," Canavar said, "who risked his life to assemble them."

"May I, Dr. Canavar?" I said.

Canavar lifted his head high with a triumphant grin. "Permission granted."

Torquin handed me the stones from the pack. I assembled them, one by one, sorting out the old and the new on the ground. Then, setting the new ones aside, I began shifting around only the old stones.

"Ah, may I remind thee," Canavar said, "to include the most important of these stones. To wit, the stones personally carved by me out of necessity to complete the historic M-"

Sliding the last piece into place, I smiled. "Your stones do not form an M."

"It's a seven!" Cass exclaimed. "I was right-this thing couldn't have been an M. Yesss!"

I could hear Professor Bhegad's feeble voice call out, "That's my boy!"

Canavar's small eyes seemed to double in size. "Well, I-I suppose it's a valid possibility-"

"A seven chiseled into stone . . ." Dad said, his eyes moving toward the flat raised relief I had just put together on the ground. "A bas-relief backward seven of the same size. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I think so." One by one, I placed the stones from Canavar's collection upside down on the jigsaw arrangement so that the chiseled lines locked into place.

When I put the ninth and last stone in place, I felt my body shake.