LIU FAI SENT WORD to the Archivist to meet them in the vault and set off with the others. Laohu followed at a respectful distance. Xiaoquan followed at a not-so-respectful distance, doing loops and turns and occasionally cutting back and forth between the humans.
Jack laughed as the water dragon whipped past Gwen’s nose. “You should let Spec out for a playdate. Those two would be peas in a pod.”
“Perhaps later.” Gwen fended off another pass of the blue tail. “Releasing Spec in a garden full of dragons is not a good plan.”
The dragonite path they followed wound through a grove of trees, finally circling a deep well of pure dragonite, perhaps fifty feet across. Jack came to a stunned halt at the upper landing of the well’s staircase, blocking his little sister from starting down. “Huh. That looks familiar.”
“The Archive,” said Gwen, stopping beside him.
There were differences. For starters, the walls of the long wushi well looked more natural, with no shelves. Rough-hewn striations spiraled all the way down, broken only by the steep, winding stair. Jack scrunched up his brow. “Did the long wushi dig this?”
“No.” Liu Fai passed his emerald ring over a carbon fiber plate, and a luminescent strip lit the stairway. “The main well and its caves were here when the long wushi found the haven.”
“Caves?” Gwen took Sadie’s hand as she followed him down.
Jack paused on the second step. Their dragon entourage had stalled at the edge of the trees. “You fellas coming or what?”
Laohu snorted. Xiaoquan looped backward, rolled over, and disappeared into the grove.
The caves Liu Fai had mentioned branched off from the well at random, not unlike the four ministry collections that branched off from the Archive. Jack had to wonder at the connection. These, however, were not filled with books or map tables.
In the first cavern, a light green dragon with silver swirls snuggled with a larger companion, speckled gray and black. Liu Fai pointed them out to Sadie. “Stone dragons, like your friend Biyu. Many of our shilong and fucanglong wards prefer to live down here, below the surface.”
The most impressive group played in the last and largest of the open chambers. A platinum dragon with coppery leopard spots clutched a pearl the size of Jack’s head in its claws. Two others—a gold dragon with opal antlers and a third covered in silver scrollwork—clawed and tussled with the first, trying to claim its prize.
“I bet that pearl is worth a fortune,” said Gwen.
Jack let out a quiet laugh. “But who would be crazy enough to try and take it?”
The chamber with the wrestling dragons was the last of the side caves, and still the four descended. The thumping of their steps became a rhythmic cycle of concentric brown circles in Jack’s brain, like endless ripples in a muddy pond.
Sadie tugged on the hem of Liu Fai’s canvas jacket. “How much longer?”
“Not far now. The vault is just . . . below . . .” His voice faded. Liu Fai stared downward, at the next turn of the stairs across the well. There on the steps, elbows on her knees, chin resting in her hands, sat the Archivist. Before any of them could call out, she put a finger to her lips.
“How did you get down here ahead of us?” asked Liu Fai once they reached her.
The Archivist kept her voice at a whisper. Her sightless gaze remained fixed on the other side of the well. “I was already here.” She raised a hand to Jack.
He hooked her fingers and helped her to her feet. “Doing what?”
Gwen, who was already looking in the same direction as the Archivist, caught Jack’s chin and turned his head. “Looking at that, I presume.”
Recessed into the wall across the well, hidden from the stairway above was a giant cave barred with dragonite pillars. The inside was huge. At the sight of so many visitors, a massive dragon let out a low rumble—a sound Jack had heard before, way down among the lower reaches of the Archive.
At first, the new dragon looked black, with obsidian claws and horns. But as she moved a bulky, sinuous arm into the pale glow of the stairwell’s luminescent strip, Jack caught a muted glint of purplish blue. The dragon tucked a full-size wing against its flank, sending a warm gust across the well to greet them.
Sadie brushed a strand of auburn hair out of her eyes. “Why is she caged?”
“This dragon is too dangerous to roam free—too powerful.” Liu Fai glanced at Jack. “We believe it was she who bored the well, more than two thousand years ago.”
“Oh no. Not her.” The Archivist turned toward their host, contradicting him. “An ancestor, perhaps, but not this dragon. She’s too young and small.”
“Young?” asked Gwen.
“Small?” asked Jack at the same time.
They both gave the Archivist the same dumbfounded stare.
“Most definitely.” She started down the steps. “I assume you’ve come down to see the Qin artifacts. Excellent. This way, please.”
Two levels down, they entered a four-story chamber filled with artifacts from all throughout history. They fanned out among the shelves and display cases. Jack walked down an aisle between stone dragon skulls. He might have assumed they were sculptures if he had not seen the same minerals in the talons of live dragons. At the end of the line, he found a bronze urn with eight dragon heads sticking out on all sides, each with a ball in its mouth. A circle of gaping frogs surrounded the base. Frogs and dragons. He had no idea what that was all about.
The Archivist and Sadie had walked straight to a table set with a black velvet cloth. Laid in a rough circle on the cloth was a collection of artifacts—a polished meteorite etched with Chinese script, an iron sledgehammer, a misshapen glass bottle of red powder, and a jade disc with many geometric figures cut out.
“These are the Qin relics,” said Liu Fai as he, Gwen, and Jack joined the other two. He lifted the glass bottle, turning it over so that the powder tumbled inside. “They were among the emperor’s most prized possessions.”
Sadie frowned. “How is red dust a prized possession?”
“This bottle contains cinnabar, a form of mercury. Time has ground them into powder, but two thousand years ago, this ‘red dust,’ as you say, was pills. The emperor took them every day to infuse his organs with eternal silver.”
“Well, it looks like a bottle of rust.” Sadie tried to lift the meteorite. “I like this one better.”
“Sadie, don’t—” said Jack.
Too late.
The space rock was too heavy. It slipped from Sadie’s hands.
Jack lunged and caught it a millimeter above the floor.
Instantly, the long wushi vault disappeared, and Jack fell through a night sky onto a field of tall gray grass. The blades looked a lot like pumice, and waved in a jerky, rhythmless motion beside a flat black sea. The burst of adrenaline pumping to his brain as he caught the falling artifact had caused him to spark.
Jack no longer held the rock. Instead, it seemed, a rock held him. A man composed of the same conglomerate of minerals held the meteorite aloft, shouting at it—and thus, at Jack, whose point of view was confined to the artifact. Even so, Jack dared not step out into the vision on such a frightening, shifting landscape.
Streaks of visible flesh scarred Shouting-rock-guy’s face. Likely these clear portions were the result of veins of nickel or iron running through meteorite. The effect was grotesque, like the tormented faces in the Templar church, yet Jack recognized him as the king he had watched during the spark from the jade fan. This was the same man, only older and wilder.
Gone was the brilliant general who had used a river to end a siege. Gone was the leader who had commanded such respect and praise from his army. Zhao Zheng had become the emperor Qin Shi Huang. He had also become a raving lunatic.
The emperor dropped the meteorite—and Jack—into the black sand on the seashore and picked up an oversize crossbow. He waded into the watery void, waving the weapon back and forth to challenge some unseen foe. As soon as he fired, other stone men
rushed in to retrieve him. They dragged him kicking and snarling back to the shore and dropped him on his back in the pumice grass.
That, Jack suspected, was the end of Qin Shi Huang. With a mental cringe, he backed out of the spark. The vault—and his friends—descended around him in a rush of gray.
“Thank you,” breathed Liu Fai, retrieving the meteorite from Jack’s hands. “I could not have faced my father if this were damaged. The script on its face dates from the emperor’s lifetime, and has remained pristine for millennia. It is a prophecy, predicting the emperor’s death.”
“And yet somehow I don’t think it was a fortune-telling space rock that killed him.” Jack cast a sidelong glance at Gwen.
Her expression told him she knew that he had sparked. It also said we’ll-talk-about-this-later. She walked around the table to the last artifact, a jade disc a little larger than a Frisbee. “Um . . . Liu Fai, why don’t you tell us about this one?”
Some of the confidence dropped from his expression. “We are not really sure about that piece. The record of the emperor’s possessions refers to it as bùxiu túlì, the Immortal Key.”
A half freckle bounce lifted the corners of Gwen’s mouth. “The key,” she said, partly to herself. “ ‘In dungeon deep they’ll find the key that sets long-hidden secrets free.’ ” She let out a little laugh. “Jack, this is it. This is the next clue your dad wanted us to find.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
JACK EYED THE GEOMETRIC cutouts. “The Immortal Key . . . ,” he mused. The disc didn’t look much like a key. “Maybe it fits over some pegs and works like a crank.”
“May I?” asked the Archivist, touching Gwen’s shoulder.
Gwen stepped out of her way and the Archivist passed her fingers slowly around the disc, examining by feel. “Hmm. Is this a notch?” She kept going. “Yes. There are four such cuts spaced evenly around the rim, dividing the disc into wedges.”
“Or fans,” said Gwen, looking over her shoulder.
Liu Fai turned pale as Gwen produced the fan from Gall’s cave and spread it out on the table beside the disc. His hands hovered over the silk, quivering. “The Eight Immortals. This fan is—”
“A precious piece of your nation’s heritage that I’ve been carrying around in my coat pocket this whole time?” Gwen patted him on the arm. “True. But let’s circle back to that, shall we? I think your ‘Immortal Key’ unlocks a cipher, not a door.” Ignoring the emissary’s stunned glower, she lifted the disc and laid it on top of the fan, aligning two of the notches with the edges of the silk. In the painting, captured in the pattern of geometric cutouts, were Chinese characters.
The frustration faded from Liu Fai’s brow. “It is a cipher key.” He translated the top arc of characters. “ ‘The formula of the elixir of life, recorded by my hand, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the True Man.’ Incredible.”
Sadie poked her head around his arm to get a look. “It’s not that impressive.”
Liu Fai’s lips parted. He crossed arms, looking down his nose at her. “Isn’t it?”
“Look.” Sadie lifted the disc away. “You can see the writing in the painting with or without the disc. The cutouts make it easier to read, that’s all.”
She was right. Jack shook his head. “That’s why Gall left it behind. He must have deciphered the formula long ago.”
“Gall?” Liu Fai’s frustrated glower returned. He cocked his head at Jack. “As in Ignatius Gall?”
“Um . . . Yeah . . . That Gall. Don’t be angry—we might know more about your missing artifacts than we’ve let on.” Jack winced. “And the clockwork dragon.”
Don’t be angry had to be the worst conversation starter ever. He dove in anyway, and Liu Fai’s glower deepened as Jack described Gall’s obsession with immortality and brain transfers, his collusion with the Clockmaker, and his vendetta against the Buckles family.
“Hey,” said Sadie, fiddling with the disc and the fan. “Watch this.” She lined up the second set of notches, shifting the disc around the painting. The geometric cutouts isolated new characters. A few formed pictures, like a diagram. A square isolated a constellation of stars among the clouds. An oval and a triangle became a dish filled with blue fire.
“Those stars represent a specific location and time,” said Liu Fai, shooting a final frown at Jack before turning his full attention to the fan. “And these shapes, here, form alchemical symbols. But this . . .” He rested his finger on the disc next to a red ball.
Sadie turned the disc twice more, revealing new steps in the formula. Each set of steps ended with a ball—red, white, and green.
Liu Fai pored over the script, but he shook his head. “I do not know what those are.”
“We do.” Gwen drew out the Mind of Paracelsus, letting its silk wrappings fall free in her hand. “The emperor created a mind transfer device to make the brain permanent, the way he wanted to make his organs permanent by taking pills to replace them with mercury. The alchemist Paracelsus acquired the fan and made his own version. It was red when Jack found it.”
“But Paracelsus didn’t have the key,” said Jack. He grimaced, remembering the way the Mind had eaten away at his consciousness. “I don’t think he got his version quite—”
A plink from the urn with all the dragon heads stole Jack’s attention. A ball had dropped from a dragon’s jaw into a frog’s gaping mouth. He eyed the device. A silent boom rippled through his subconscious. Plink. A second ball dropped. “Um . . . What’s that supposed to mean?”
There was an earsplitting crack from above, and great chunks of dragonite rained down, shattering glass display cases. Steel jaws and blue-green wings came crashing through the wall.
Jack’s nightmare was real. “Run!”
With Liu Fai in the lead, they all made for the vault door—all except one.
Jack looked back and saw the Archivist, still at the table with the relics. A huge dragon composed of several alloys hovered above her, held aloft by thrusters on each wing. “Gwen, get my sister out of here! I’ll help the Archivist.”
Liu Fai had already reached the vault door. He hauled it open, wheeling his arm as the girls raced through and calling back to Jack. “Come on! We—”
Jack never heard the rest. A massive section of the dragonite wall collapsed between them, cutting off Jack and the Archivist’s escape. The echo of the falling stones blended in Jack’s ears with a deep, cackling laugh. Fire filled his vision. Something hit Jack on the head, and sharp red pain seared his body. The fire and the light—all the data flooding his brain—faded to black.
* * *
Out in the well, Gwen shouted for Jack, but she heard no response.
The stairs shook beneath her feet, and Liu Fai tugged at her arm. “The entire well may crumble. We must go, Gwen!”
She tore at the rubble covering the vault door, fingernails scraping the stone, unable to move a single rock. “Jack and the Archivist are still in there!”
“And so we must get help for them!” Liu Fai yanked her back as fire flared through gaps. “Now, Gwen!”
Behind them, Sadie had crumpled to the steps, crying. Jack had told Gwen to get his sister out of there. Reluctantly, sharing the younger girl’s tears, Gwen lifted Sadie to her feet, and with Liu Fai’s help she half dragged, half carried Sadie up the winding stair.
As they climbed, Sadie mumbled the same phrase over and over. “I can’t see my brother. I can’t feel his heart.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
DARKNESS SURROUNDED JACK. THICK. Impenetrable. Yet even in that darkness, the deep voice from his nightmares found him.
“Jack. Lucky Jack.”
He opened his eyes. The darkness remained, tinted bloodred by the pain. As consciousness returned, though, Jack found an orange sensation of heat as well. Broken slabs of dragonite lay on either side of him. He pressed his palms flat against them and pulled with nerve endings. Warmth coursed into his muscles. The pain lessened.
“Jack.”
&n
bsp; The voice called to him again—no longer deep, but soft and frail.
“Archivist?”
“I’m over here, Jack.”
“I . . . I can’t see.” He rolled his eyes at his own declaration. What a dumb thing to say to a blind woman.
“Follow my voice. Use the skills you’ve learned.”
She began to hum. Waves of glowing pink pushed through the throbbing in his head. The gentle tones reflected off ten thousand facets of broken stone, making the topography of the ruined chamber hard to read.
The words that belonged to the melody rose up from his memory, a lullaby his mother used to sing.
Sleep my child, and peace attend thee
All through the night.
The pink waves formed a dense center. That had to be the source, the Archivist. He began to crawl. “It’s working. Keep humming. I think I can get to you.”
Guardian angels God will send thee
All through the night.
Jack dragged himself across rocks and shattered glass until finally, he touched the hand of that guardian angel. It was wet with blood.
She squeezed his fingers. “Well done, Jack. You found me.”
“You’re hurt.” He slipped his hand free to check the area around her. Most of it was taken up by the largest dragonite slab he had yet encountered. “And you’re trapped, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.” The Archivist had never been one to mince words.
Jack didn’t know what to do with that information. He slipped his hand back into hers.
“He took the Immortal Key, Jack. I tried to stop him, but the clockwork dragon took the key—the emperor’s fan, as well.”
That was why she had lagged behind, to save the artifacts. “I should have seen. I should have stopped him and gotten you out with Gwen and Sadie. Why did the dragon even come? Gall didn’t know about the key.”
“He knew of the key, Jack. Surely.” The Archivist let out a long shaky breath that Jack took to be a sigh. “Chances are he went to the museum where it came from and forced the curator to confess that the long wushi had been there. That was all the information he needed.” She fell silent for several seconds and then squeezed Jack’s fingers again. It seemed to be the only motion she could make. “I’m glad that you and I have a quiet moment to chat.”
The Clockwork Dragon Page 14