“Um, why do they hate Thorne so?” Delph asked, keeping his gaze away from me.
“Well, they have good reason.” Luc pointed to the creature’s skin and then rubbed it. “Its hide is strong. But it can also do something else.”
“What?” I asked.
“It can expand. Big as you want it to. It’s why Thorne kills ’em.”
“He kills them?” I exclaimed.
“Slaughters ’em, more like it. Least he did.”
“Why is the skin so important to Thorne?” Delph asked.
“For the bladder,” answered Luc.
“The bladder, on the aero ship?” I said. Then I realized what he meant. “He uses the grubb’s skin to make the bladder?” I added, horrified.
Luc nodded. “Has ’em stitched together. And the grubb’s blood? It hardens good and stout when you mix it with a few other ingredients. Where the needle holes are in the bladder when they stitch the hides together? Thorne uses the blood concoction to seal ’em so no air leaks out.”
I turned to look at the grubb. While I knew it probably could not understand us, I sensed a deep misery in its eyes. Her eyes.
Why did there have to be Wugs like Thorne? Whose only interest was furthering their own goals and not caring a whit about the effect on others? I whispered this thought to Delph.
He nodded and said quietly, “ ’Tis a good lesson for us all, Vega Jane.”
Luc said, “But he hasn’t caught a grubb in a long time now.”
“Why?”
Luc said his next words in a low voice. “ ’Cause I come and warn ’em and they go hide.” He shook his head sadly. “They might not be much to look at, I know. But underneath that hide, they’ve a heart as big as any you’re likely to ever see.”
I looked back at the grubb and could see that her yellow eyes were filled with moisture. When I shot a glance at Luc, he had anticipated my question.
“A grubb can sense things like we never can. They can feel what we’re feeling. I don’t know if we give off a scent or what, but they know. They just know. She understands that we’re sad. And so she’s sad too. And with that sadness, it also tells her that we’re, well, that we’re good creatures, not bad.”
I had never been referred to as a creature before. But then again, a Wug was just one thing among many other living things, I reckoned.
I turned to look at the grubb and gently rubbed her face.
I said, “I think you’re very beautiful.” And I smiled.
The purring sound filled the passageway again.
I smiled even more broadly, and though I couldn’t be sure, it seemed that she was smiling back at me.
“Now she senses happiness,” explained Luc.
I said, “Thorne said they’ve tried to kill him, many times. How?”
“They can tunnel through anything. Never know where they might pop out. Only thing gives ’em away is the sound of their tunneling.”
“So I’m sure Thorne, being as cunning as he is, takes precautions?”
“Patrols down the passageways and has things on the wall that measure the smallest of vibrations. Gives him early warning when and where they might be coming. And his sleeping chamber is lined with iron. Grubbs can work their way through iron, but it takes a while. Plenty of time for Thorne to get away, but even so, early on, they came close to getting him.”
He looked at the grubb, and his face became embarrassed. “Right more courage than I got.”
“But you warned them against Thorne,” Delph pointed out. “That takes courage.”
“Not the same, is it?” said Luc. “No, not the same.”
“It’s Cere and Kori, isn’t it?” I said. This statement made Luc glance at me. I continued. “He’d hurt them, right? If you turned against him? She was worried that you were showing us these places. She’s afraid Thorne will find out.”
Luc slowly nodded. “He has ekos fiercely loyal to him. They’d kill their own flesh and blood. I think he’s done something to their minds, but I have no proof of that.”
A great many thoughts were swirling through my head. I turned to Luc, my determination resolute. “How long did it take Thorne to build the aero ship?”
“Ten or more sessions, close as I remember. Lot of work.”
“Ten sessions,” I repeated, and then smiled. That was a good thing, I thought. “And if he can’t catch any more grubbs, he can’t build another bladder or aero ship.”
Delph whispered in my ear, “What are you planning to do, Vega Jane?”
“Escape this place and make sure he can’t attack Wormwood,” I said flatly, as though it were obvious. And it was to me.
I had expected Delph to simply nod in agreement. Only he didn’t.
“ ’Tain’t that simple, Vega.”
“What?” I said, startled.
“What about the ekos and gnomes?” He rubbed the face of the grubb. “And these here creatures?”
“I don’t understand you, Delph.”
“You heard Luc. Thorne has spies. Those loyal to him. If we escape and ruin his plans, you think he won’t take it out on them? On Luc, and Cere and little Kori?”
I couldn’t look at Delph because I knew he was right. My heart was being torn in half with this dilemma. “We … we can’t save everyone, Delph. It’s impossible.”
“Well, we can try,” he replied matter-of-factly.
I started to snap something back at him, but then I realized that he was entirely in the right. I felt both relieved by this but also like a mountain had settled upon my shoulders. We had come in here with the goal of surviving the Quag. Now we would be committing to saving a bunch of others as well. But Delph was right. We had to at least try.
I said slowly, “We can try, Delph. But I’m going to need help. I can’t do this alone.”
“That’s why ya got me, Vega Jane.”
FOR THE NEXT five lights, I carried Thorne in the harness and taught him the intricacies of flying. And each night, we were visited by Luc, sometimes accompanied by Cere. They had continued to provide us with information about Thorne.
Delph and I were doing our best to come up with a plan. We had parts of it in good shape, but how could we ensure that once we left, Thorne would be king no longer?
And I did have one unanswered question that was driving me mad.
Why did Thorne want to go to war with his own kind? What would make a Wug hate other Wugs so much? I talked to Delph about this one night.
“Well,” he said. “Seems to me that to answer that question, we need to know why the bloke came into the Quag in the first place. Pretty desperate thing to do. And he told us that he was forced to leave.”
“That’s right. Although I think he had to flee. If he had done something bad they would have put him in Valhall, not made him go into the Quag.”
“Whatever he did musta been pretty bad, then, to make him choose the Quag. They were probably going to lop off his head if he stayed in Wormwood.”
I shivered a bit. That had almost happened to me.
“So maybe one ties into the other?” I said. “He’s getting back at them for making him leave?”
“Way I see it, yeah.”
An idea came to me. I quickly told Delph about it.
He said thoughtfully, “It may work, but we need to know more.”
“We know who to ask, then,” I replied.
The next night, I queried Luc if he knew why Thorne had come into the Quag.
Luc said, “Well, when he’s been far into the bottles of mead some nights, I’ve heard him say things. Spouting off names and such.”
“What names?” I asked anxiously.
Luc rubbed his cheek, staring off. “Me— Let me think now. Mer. No, Mur–Murgatroyd. Yes, that was it. Murgatroyd.”
The name meant nothing to me. I looked at Delph, who shook his head.
“Anything else?”
“He would go on about Wugs not seeing him for the great leader he was. Oh, he did mention another name,
’cept you already know it.”
“What?” I asked.
“Virgil.”
“They were friends, I guess.”
“In his mead cups, he didn’t sound none too friendly toward him.”
I puzzled over this for a bit. “Luc, is there any way I can get into Thorne’s sleeping chamber?”
“Don’t see how. Keeps it locked when he’s out of it and locked when he’s in it. Why?”
Delph said, “We think the reason he came into the Quag might be in there.”
“Aye, if he wanted to keep it secret, that would be the place, for no one goes in there but him.”
“Can you at least show us where he sleeps, Luc?” I asked.
We passed through quite a few corridors until I was hopelessly lost, but I knew Delph probably wasn’t. I looked back at him to confirm that he could find this place again if need be. He gave a quick nod.
Luc stopped at the beginning of a passage and pointed down the corridor of stone. It was well lighted and thus I could easily see the massive door at the end, set directly into the rock wall. There were no guards posted outside the door, yet it looked impenetrable.
On the return journey, I spoke to Luc in a low voice. At first he was not receptive to my ideas, but I could sense that the courage and spirit Thorne had taken from him was slowly returning to the head ekos.
As soon as we got back to our little chamber, Luc left us.
“We have to get into Thorne’s sleeping chamber,” I said. As I said it, I felt the collywobbles in my stomach, like a million moths were flying around in there.
Delph nodded. “Thorne’s become quite a dab hand at flying. Which means he won’t need us much longer, will he? Then we’ll be bones on a wall.”
“Luc will help, but I need a way to get into his room while Thorne isn’t there.”
“Then what you need is to get him outta his room.”
I frowned. “Brilliant, Delph. I wish I would have thought of that. Well done,” I added sarcastically.
“No, I mean you need a distraction.”
“What sort?” I asked curiously.
“He’s afraid of grubbs, right?”
“Well, yeah, they want to kill him. So?”
“So we start with that and build our plan.”
“You got some grubbs that’ll do your bidding?” I asked skeptically.
My cloak was hanging on a peg on the wall. He reached in one of its pockets, put on my glove, pulled out the Elemental and willed it to full size.
“The Elemental?” I said, completely puzzled.
He nodded. “With this I get to pretend I’m something that I’m not.”
I smiled as I finally understood what he meant. “A grubb,” I said.
THIRTY SLIVERS LATER, Delph and I peered around the corner of the passageway leading to Thorne’s chamber. Delph was holding the Elemental.
“Luc is all ready to go,” I said.
Delph nodded, exhaled a long breath and said, “You best be getting on, then.”
I hurried down the passageway and secreted myself in a niche that would keep me hidden from view. I leaned out, looked back down the passage at Delph and nodded. Then I squeezed myself back into the niche.
I saw the Elemental blast past me, its turbulent wake snuffing out the torches on the wall as it sailed by. Then it struck the door a terrific blow, knocking it down. Moments later, in the near darkness now, I saw it zoom back toward Delph.
There were screams and shouts and I knew Luc had done his task as well. Ekos up and down passages were crying out that the grubbs were attacking.
The next sliver, I heard him.
It was Thorne shouting orders, and I shrunk back as far as I could in the niche when he raced past me in the now darkened passage, a short-barreled morta in one hand and a flickering candle in the other. He was in his sleeping clothes, his hair wild and flying around his face. He had Destin around his waist.
As soon as he was well past me, I turned and ran toward his chamber. I didn’t know how long I would have, but I doubted it would be long.
The illumination from the candle I had brought and just now lighted showed that the chamber had few furnishings. A bed, a nightstand, and an old wardrobe set against one wall. There was nothing on the bed except a pile of sheets and blankets; a pillow was lying on the floor.
I looked at the narrow crevice between the floor and the bed — nothing. Then I hefted the mattress.
Yes!
Wedged in among the ropes that supported the mattress was a book.
I snatched it free and put the mattress back in place. I looked down at the book.
Log of Experiments?
I opened it to the first page. There was neat handwriting that I knew to be Thorne’s, having seen samples of it in his laboratory. I read down some of it quickly, but I could make neither head nor tail of it. I looked down at the mattress. It had been a labor lifting it and I was pretty strong. The book of experiments was full; there wasn’t an empty page left in it. I doubted that Thorne would take it out often just to look at it. And thus he probably wouldn’t notice it missing. I knew it was a risk, yet this might be the only chance I had. I thrust it into my cloak and continued on.
I found nothing in the nightstand. That left the wardrobe. I pulled open the wardrobe doors and rifled quickly through the clothing hanging there. Next, my fingers frantically tugged at drawers, but I found nothing in them.
And then my hand closed around the box.
It was in an open cubby at the bottom of the wardrobe. It was wooden with carvings that made no sense to me. I opened the box and gasped. Inside was my grandfather’s ring, along with the Adder Stone. My first thought was to take them, but Thorne would surely miss them. Unlike the book under the mattress, these objects were new to him and far more easily accessed. On the other hand, I might not get another chance to retrieve them. It was an agonizing choice. Finally, I decided to leave them there, and continued to rummage through the box. My fingers closed around a picture of three Wugs.
One was evidently a younger Thorne. He was standing next to a grown female. Perhaps this was the Murgatroyd that Luc said he had heard Thorne mention. And next to her was a very young female who looked both familiar and foreign to me. There was the hint of something I recognized in the eyes and around the jawline, but the rest of her didn’t jog anything in my mind.
I turned when I heard footsteps and then a morta was fired off. With the labyrinth of passages down here, the echoes played funny tricks on one’s hearing. I couldn’t really tell how close Thorne might be. Another loud explosion caused me to jump and I dropped the picture. I waited, holding my breath, to see if another explosion would come. When it didn’t, I picked up the picture, and this time the other side was facing me. I looked at the handwriting scrawled on the back. I held the candle closer so I could read it clearly.
Thorne, Murgatroyd and —
My breath caught in my throat. Morrigone.
Thorne was Morrigone’s father. And Murgatroyd was her mother. The likeness among them tallied. When I looked at the picture once more, I instantly recognized the younger Morrigone and wondered why I hadn’t the first time.
Morrigone had told me her father suffered an Event when she was six sessions old. He had been down near the edge of the Quag, she said, hunting for a certain type of mushroom. Yet he hadn’t suffered an Event. He had done something bad that had caused him to escape punishment by entering the Quag.
What had happened to Murgatroyd? Morrigone had never mentioned her.
I quickly remembered, though, that Julius Domitar had mentioned her, only not by name. He had said that it was Morrigone’s job to take care of Wormwood and all Wugs in it. He said that such tasks were often passed down in families and that Morrigone’s mother had done it before her.
So Murgatroyd had been Wormwood’s protector prior to Morrigone assuming the role. Then what had happened to Murgatroyd? I needed to know.
The shouts and running feet were g
rowing closer and I knew my time here was limited. Only there was one more thing in the box that needed my attention.
I pulled out the sheet of parchment. It was a letter addressed to Thorne. The handwriting was precise and clear. While I could tell the paper was very old, the ink was still as clear as the sky on a brilliantly bright, cloudless light.
I read the contents of the letter quickly, slowing as I neared the end. When I saw the signature at the bottom, I thought my heart would stop. So many things started to make sense to me. Then I heard Thorne’s voice and shot a glance over my shoulder. He was very nearly at the door.
Which meant I was trapped.
I LOOKED FRANTICALLY AROUND. There was no space under the bed. The nightstand was too small to conceal me. There was only one option. I put out my candle, jumped up into the wardrobe and shut the doors. I was trying to shrink myself behind the clothing when I heard Thorne enter his chamber.
At first, I dared not move. The box was still in my hand. As I bent over to set it down, the contents inside shifted, making a slight sound. I held my breath, hoping beyond hope that he had not heard it. A sliver went by and I finally let out the breath. I figured it had been the ring sliding around that made the noise. I slowly opened the box and felt for the ring in the darkness. My fingers closed around it and I slipped it on. Then I set down the box and waited.
I heard Thorne muttering to himself. He seemed to be spending some slivers around the fallen door. That made sense, I thought. How could so paranoid a Wug safely go back to sleep exposed, particularly after such an attack? Then I heard grunts and more grunts. A group of ekos apparently had joined their king. I heard a great deal of huffing and puffing and then something hard hitting something else hard. The grunts continued for about a sliver and then there were multiple footsteps going away. Then silence.
As I stood there in the wardrobe, I thought about what to do. Finally, I reached an answer. My plan would be to wait until he fell soundly asleep and then make my way out of the chamber through where his door had once been.
His mutterings continued and I grew more and more curious as to what the bloke was doing. I found that if I leaned forward, I could see through a slight gap between the two wardrobe doors. The chamber was lighted now because Thorne had evidently lit the wall torches when he’d returned.
The Keeper Page 6