...
The shadow was darker than the night itself. It hovered over the boy, but it did not belong to him. Where it came from was impossible to see, but Alex knew one thing about it: It was in front of him, whichever way he turned, and it made finding his way out of the corn maze that much more difficult.
The darkness seemed to breathe and seethe, like an angry blacksmith’s bellows stoking a hot, invisible flame. It rustled through the corn stalks like a palpable wind, taking form gradually as a thousand coal-black wings that took to the air and rushed at Alex as if from nowhere.
The boy ducked, then fell to his knees beneath the bat wings that buffeted the night, fighting against it even as they became one with it. He screamed as they flew at him, parting just in time to rush on a wind of their own making past his ears and over his head.
Then, they were gone, and the night was still once more.
But the shadow remained.
And out of it, straight in front of Alex as he rose to his feet, strode a short figure in peasant’s garb no taller than himself. Slightly hunched over and barefoot, he clenched a large smoking pipe between his teeth, from which there rose a dancing flame. He wore a peaked, flat checkerboard cap, and a wiry tuft of beard sprouted from his angular chin.
“Who are you?” said Alex, who was less scared of this newcomer than he had been of the bats. For one thing, the diminutive pipe-smoker was no taller than he was. For another, he seemed to be a bit scared himself, or, at the very least, perturbed. Beady eyes darted this way and that, and he kept looking over his shoulder to see if someone or something was behind him. He chewed on his pipe almost voraciously, and the flame that rose from the end of it flounced and bounced about as he did. The boy could tell the little man couldn’t be trusted, but he sensed more mischief than meanness in him.
It took a moment for the boy’s question to register with the distracted man, but when it did, he blinked twice and faced Alex full-on. “Oh. Sorry,” he said, taking the pipe from his mouth. “King Goldemar, at my service,” he said, bowing stiffly.
“Don’t you mean, ‘at your service?’” Alex said.
“No, I don’t,” the man said. “Kings only serve themselves.”
“Kings are supposed to wear crowns and fancy clothes,” said Alex. “The way I see it, you don’t look much like a king.”
The little man straightened his hunched back as much as Alex guessed he could, and tugged downward on the ends of a too-short lime green vest. “Most people can’t see me at all, so consider yourself blessed, young man,” he said. Then he boasted: “And I am a king. I’m the king of the kobolds. Not that I care if you believe me.” He snorted.
“I don’t know what a kobold is,” Alex told him.
“Well, now you do,” Goldemar said, sweeping both arms outward in a flourish before him. It seemed more mocking than sincere.
“All right,” said Alex. “What do you want with me?”
“You have been summoned,” Goldemar said, and the moment he did so, his eyes began darting back and forth again.
That seemed, to the boy, unlikely. No one knew he was here except for the owner of the maze, who had shown no interest in him before and would have returned home long before this. His eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you,” he said matter-of-factly. “Who would have summoned me? No one knows or cares that I’m here.”
“He knows,” Goldemar said. “He knows everything.”
That seemed most improbable. “Who is he?” Alex said, mimicking Goldemar’s tone.
“My master.”
“But you said you were a king!”
“I am a king,” the little man protested. “Stop asking so many questions. Just follow me. He isn’t particularly patient.” Goldemar was getting more agitated.
Alex didn’t answer right away. He wanted a moment to think, and besides, he rather enjoyed making the impatient imp wait.
Finally, he said: “If I go with you, will you show me the way out of this maze?”
The kobold was tapping his toe impatiently on the ground. “Yes, yes. Of course I will. It’s very easy. But you must go to the center of the maze first, and you cannot get there unless you follow me.”
Alex wasn’t sure whether to believe Goldemar. In fact, he was pretty sure he didn’t believe him. Moreover, he didn’t like the way this ‘master’ of his made the kobold act, and he was not eager to meet him. Not at all. Still, he had no better option, when it came right down to it. He was no closer to—and, for all he knew, was farther away from—finding a way out than he had been before. He didn’t trust this “king” Goldemar at all, but he trusted his own ability to find his way out, being upside-down and turned around as he was.
“All right,” he said finally. “I’ll come with you, but if you don’t keep your promise to me, I’ll...” He didn’t say anything more. The boy remembered he had been taught not to threaten people, and even though this kobold was not a human person, he suspected that lesson applied to him, too—even if Goldemar was the most annoying individual he had come across in quite some time.
The kobold turned and started ambling, almost running, back the way he had come, into the darkness.
Alex stood there, watching him, still unsure whether he should follow or just let the little man go on his way. But a few steps on, when the blackness had almost enveloped him, the kobold stopped and glanced back over his shoulder, beckoning: “Hurry!” he called back. “We mustn’t keep him waiting!”
Despite his misgivings, the boy started after him.
...
Chapter Six
Wild Card
As he moved forward, the night got so dark that the boy could no longer see at all. The kobold reached back toward him with a gnarled hand, and he reluctantly took it, wincing at the feel of Goldemar’s calloused fingers on his skin. It was either endure that touch or become stranded in the darkness, which he had no wish to do.
“How far is this place?” he asked.
“You will see. You will see,” came the cryptic answer. The kobold seemed slightly out of breath as he hurried forward, being less fit than his young companion.
After a time, the darkness began to give way to a silvery glow, and Alex could see again. And what he saw amazed him, for he was no longer surrounded by corn stalks, but by a tall, dense thicket of trees that lined the path on either side. Alex could not see the source of the light, but it seemed to come from all around him. It was bright enough to see by, but just barely, and it made the bare trees of mid-autumn seem like wooden skeletons of some gigantic ghost.
A mist had rolled in from the depth of night, like a veil suspended over the land of the living.
“Well, it is Halloween,” he said to himself, and remembered one of his foster parents once telling him that this was the time of year when—how had she put it?—“the veil was thinning.” When time wound in and around itself, meeting at either end: That’s how she had explained it, making a circle with her fingers. And through that circle, she said, passed the souls of loved ones past and future, spirits known from memory and from hope.
The path gradually widened into a roadway, which made Alex wonder if he’d found his way out of the maze. Somehow, he didn’t think so.
The kobold shuffled-scampered even faster now in front of him, panting like a hound dog running back to his master with a trophy from the hunt.
“I suppose I’m the trophy,” the boy said to himself, and he didn’t like the sound of that. It didn’t help that that Goldemar seemed to be gripping his hand more tightly now. His fingers were being squished together mercilessly.
“Hey, that hurts!” he protested.
The kobold ignored him, which made him feel even more like captured quarry. He wondered if an iron cage awaited him at the end of the road. No matter how badly he wanted to find his way back home, this wasn’t worth it. “Let me go!” he demanded, but the kobold only squeezed his hand that much tighter, and he was stronger than he looked... or perhaps just desperate. Yes, prob
ably that.
Unable to extricate himself from Goldemar’s grasp, Alex resigned himself to his predicament, running apace with the kobold to avoid being dragged along. At least, he had reason to believe, the journey was finally nearing its end. Up ahead, through the layer of mist, he could see an odd-shaped structure, rising like a giant tombstone out of the earth. At least, that’s how it was shaped, but as he got closer, Alex could see it was a dwelling of some sort: tall and oddly, almost impossibly narrow. It was six stories tall, but each was only wide enough to accommodate a single, narrow room. It almost seemed as though it might fall over at any moment, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“Come! He’s waiting!” the kobold said.
“I know. I know,” Alex said as he followed Goldemar up the steps to the tower, which seemed to have been built on a low mound. He wondered for a moment whether he could see over the corn maze and find a way back to where he’d been. Then he realized, though, that he no longer seemed to be in the maze at all, and that he had never seen this tower from his house or anywhere nearby. And that didn’t make sense. No, not at all. In the maze, he was sure that he’d been going in circles, not really getting any farther from anywhere else, so he should have been able to see it. But nothing was as it should be here.
Goldemar led him up a rickety wooden staircase, where half the steps seemed to have been cracked in two from being stepped on in the middle by a giant ogre. On the other hand, they might have just been old and rotted through. It was probably that, he told himself as he tried to make sure he didn’t trip on one of the broken steps. This was more difficult than it might seem, because the kobold was still pulling him along very fast and obviously was so familiar with the stairs that he knew which places to step and which ones to avoid.
Fortunately, he managed to avoid twisting an ankle or stumbling face-first forward, following the kobold through a pair of oak-panel doors that had been left slightly ajar and into a dank, narrow foyer with a low ceiling that made Alex feel as though he’d stepped into an oversized coffin. The place smelled so musty he almost expected to walk through an unseen spiderweb, but he found no arachnids lurking in the shadows. In fact, nothing at all seemed alive here except for himself and the kobold.
A dark wind suddenly rose up from out of nowhere. Alex saw no open window through which it might have gained access; indeed, he saw no windows in the place at all, and the door seemed to have closed of its own accord behind him. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any other entrances or exits, either. There was not even any staircase that offered access to the upper floors—the ones he had seen from outside—at least, not as far as he could tell.
But the wind, as it turned out, wasn’t a wind, after all. Not exactly, anyway. As Alex watched in astonishment, it began to swivel and swerve around itself, like a miniature tornado twisting itself up like a pretzel or a shoelace. Flecks of what looked like soot and ash danced around its invisible, windswept seams, spewed out like darkened sparks and flying into the twister’s orbit like tiny moons. Alex noticed something strange about them: What little light there was, they didn’t seem to reflect it. The only way to distinguish them from the dreary backdrop was their relative darkness, and their movement.
The whirling ashes rushed around in a mania, circling the center of the tiny tornado. They didn’t stay in that orbit long, though, falling back in upon themselves as more and more of them appeared, then coalescing into something more than ashes. More than wind. More unusual than anything the boy had ever seen. The thing that took shape was nebulous at first, and even as it began to appear more substantial, it retained a certain hazy character around the edges. It flickered like static on an old black-and-white TV screen, but silently, in shadow.
Alex rubbed his eyes with both hands, struggling to focus. But his eyes had not betrayed him, and there was no way to clear his vision. Even where the image gained substance, it seemed to flow like thick mud, but smooth and black. The boy had seen oil bubbling up out of the earth once, and it seemed closer to that than anything else, but in the form of a flowing robe so long that it covered the feet of the person—or thing—that wore it and rose up over his head in a hood that obscured all but his eyes.
Those eyes were milky white, with no pupils, which left Alex with the impression that they were staring directly through him. Or perhaps into him.
The boy shivered, and not at the cold, dank air surrounding him, and he shivered again when he saw a long object form in the figure’s right hand. The heavy wooden handle rose from the ground all the way above the hooded head, terminating in a curved, silver blade that appeared sharper than any Alex had ever seen. He had, however, seen pictures of the figure that stood before him, and he knew what grown-ups had named in him stories told to him past bedtime: the Grim Reaper.
It occurred to him, in that moment, that he was about to die. Here in the middle of an endless night. Here at the edge of nowhere. Here in a building that felt for all the world, from the inside of it, like a casket made to be his final resting place.
He wanted to run, but his legs were rooted to the floor. Even had they obeyed his impulse, the kobold still had firm hold of his hand. And he was not about to let go.
Panic rose in the boy’s breast, and the shivering he had experienced became shuddering, even shaking.
“But I... don’t want to die!”
A sound like air escaping from a balloon came out of somewhere: He couldn’t be sure if it was the Reaper’s mouth or just in a general sense, from all over. It echoed and reverberated around the room, a ghost wind touching each of the corners in turn before it reached his ears and he realized it was a voice. It was saying something.
“Nooo one doesssss.” The last “s” started off like a snake hissing and ended in a sound like the buzz of flies.
The boy felt this was anything but reassuring. Therefore, he did not stop shaking.
The voice came again. “Deattthhh isssss only a portal... unlesssss you resisssst it.”
This didn’t make Alex feel any better, either. It was at the core of human nature to resist it, so the information seemed useless at the very best.
“You... cannot cheat time.”
Alex felt desperate. He looked at the scythe the Reaper held, gleaming and shimmering like a crystal even in the dull, almost stifling murk. Then, suddenly, with his free hand—the one Goldemar wasn’t holding—he reached into his pocket and produced the Lou Gehrig baseball card Mr. Rrawk had given him.
“He did!” Alex proclaimed triumphantly.
And in that moment, all his fear fled from him. Holding the card up boldly, he waved it like a flag in front of his face for the Reaper to see.
“A talisman!” the kobold exclaimed.
“Yessss. I ssseee,” said the Reaper, his tone barely changing but now laced with just a hint of agitation. “Seisszzze it!”
The kobold’s pipe fell out of his mouth and clattered to the floor as he grabbed at the card, but Alex was able to pull it away in the nick of time, holding it up just out of Goldemar’s reach. The kobold was as short as a child, and hunched at the shoulders, as kobolds are wont to be, and his arms were stocky and stubby. As he lunged for it, though, he let loose of Alex’s hand, and the boy dashed to the far side of the room. Goldemar tried to go after him, but Alex’s youth made him quicker and more agile than the kobold.
The hissing sound of air escaping grew louder. “That card isssszz the only thing... protecting him!” the Reaper said, his voice louder and more insistent. “If he finds the other talisssmenssszz...!”
Alex stopped abruptly, stuck out his foot and watched Goldemar stumble over it, crashing face-first into the wooden floor. His hard head thumped against the gray stone wall, and he didn’t get up. The boy thought for a moment he might be dead, but then saw his chest was still rising and falling at regular intervals. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned. On the one hand, the kobold had led him into a trap that had put him in mortal danger, a state he still found himself in a
t this moment. On the other, he didn’t wish anyone ill, and Goldemar had promised to show him the way out of here—wherever “here” was. Not that he believed the kobold.
For good or for ill, he was on his own again, and still facing the Reaper.
“Give it toooo him!” the tall robed figure demanded.
“To him?” the boy said, confused, looking down at Goldemar.
“Yessszz. I will not allow you to leave... until you do.”
Alex thought for a moment, wondering why the Reaper would demand that he give the card to an unconscious kobold. Why wouldn’t he just demand it himself, or try to take it? Unless, for some reason, he couldn’t.
The boy hesitated, then took a step toward the Reaper. He had the germ of an idea, but he had no way of knowing whether his hunch was correct; if he was wrong, he knew the price to pay would be high, but if he was right. ...
The Reaper did not move forward to meet him. If anything, he leaned back slightly.
The boy took another step, and then another. And the Reaper, grudgingly, took a step of his own.
Backward.
He was right! The Reaper was afraid of him. Or, more precisely, he was afraid of the card. That’s why he had demanded that Alex give it to the unconscious kobold—he stole a glance over his shoulder to be sure Goldemar was still unconscious (he was). For some reason, the Reaper was scared of the baseball card!
Alex felt courage building within him. “What happens if I find the other talismans?” he asked.
The Reaper said nothing and retreated another step.
“You don’t like this, do you?”
Again, the Reaper did not answer, but the hazy, staticky aura that surrounded him seemed to flicker and flutter more quickly. He was nervous. What could possibly scare Death itself?
Alex remembered what the Reaper had said. “You can’t cheat time.”
But what if he could? Anything that might cheat time would be a threat to Death, and to its purveyor.
Alex took a more resolute step forward, and the Reaper took another step back—only to find himself trapped in a corner of the room. “Tell me what happens if I find the other talismans?”
The Talismans of Time (Academy of the Lost Labyrinth Book 1) Page 5