“I have hunches,” replied the teacher, sipping from a canteen. “I agree with David that Bram probably entrusted this Key to the Workshop. Though actually German kings were only chosen in Frankfurt—they were crowned in Aachen.”
“So why do we need the Workshop at all?” asked Max. “Why not go straight to Aachen?”
“And where should we look?” asked Miss Boon with a small smile.
Max pondered that for a moment. A key sounded like a small thing, and a small thing could be hidden nearly anyplace—inside a box or a book or a paving stone.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“That’s why we need to start at the Workshop,” said Miss Boon.
“But at the meeting, Rasmussen didn’t even believe the Book of Thoth existed,” said Max. “Why would he be so skeptical if his own Workshop holds the key to finding it?”
Miss Boon stopped to raise an eyebrow at him. The answer dawned on Max in a flash.
“He was lying!” Max exclaimed, remembering the dry, sardonic expression on the man’s face. “He was only pretending not to know anything about it. They must want to find it themselves!”
“A distinct possibility,” said Miss Boon. “This explains why we must be very careful when we arrive. Rasmussen helped us keep you from the witches only because it served his interests.”
“Why would he care what happens to David and me?” asked Max, watching a large bird circling high above a distant farmhouse.
“He cares very much,” replied Miss Boon. “The Workshop’s relationship with Rowan is a fragile one, but there is peaceful and periodic cooperation. The witches, however, are another story. The witches are sworn enemies of the Workshop, Max. Rasmussen is well aware that you and David might become powerful adversaries should the witches obtain your services.”
Max heard a groan behind him and turned to see his father ease himself down onto a large rock. While Mum had complained often throughout their long days of walking, Mr. McDaniels had soldiered on with an air of quiet determination. Max admired his father’s grit, but knew that the miles were taking a hard toll on his big body. He winced as his father peeled off his sock to reveal a doughy foot riddled with blisters. Cooper stopped up ahead and walked back toward them.
“I’m sorry,” gasped a red-faced Mr. McDaniels as the Agent stooped down for a look. “I know we just stopped a few hours ago.”
Cooper nodded and produced a little jar of light yellow ointment from his pack.
“Moomenhoven balm,” he muttered. “It’ll numb the pain and patch you up.”
Cooper took a small dab from the jar and rubbed it into the foot, causing Mr. McDaniels to exhale with relief. He furrowed his brow and began wiggling his toes.
“This is good stuff!” he suddenly exclaimed, his cheeks flushing pink. “Those Moomenhovens could make a fortune if we brought this goop to market.”
Mum promptly plopped next to Max’s father.
“I want some, too,” she declared, tugging off her thick-soled clog to reveal a gray-green foot with three sharp toes. David looked curiously at the misshapen wedge; Nick sniffed at it and mewled. Cooper shook his head and screwed the lid tight.
“Everyone’s feet hurt, Mum,” said the Agent. “Put your shoe back on. This balm’s for emergencies.”
Max tuned out Mum’s bickering protest as something caught his attention. Up the road, a dull haze was rising into the air. Something was approaching.
“Cooper,” said Max, a warning note in his voice.
The Agent’s head whipped up and followed Max’s pointing finger toward the cloud.
“Off the road,” snapped the Agent, reaching for his pack. “Quick, quick, quick!”
They hurried off the road, running through the field of short-cropped wheat to a neighboring field where the grain had been left untouched. Breathing heavily, Max pressed himself flat to peer through gaps in the tall, graying stalks. He could hear the heavy, unmistakable rumbling of a diesel engine. Moments later, a large white truck eased into view, kicking up a fine cloud of dust in its wake. It slowed to a stop near a lone oak tree. Several men in work clothes climbed out of the back and trudged to the passenger side of the truck’s cab. Each carried a rifle and wore a bright red armband about his upper arm. One of the men pointed at a small, dark object ahead. Nearby, Max heard Cooper curse.
There was Mum’s blocky little shoe, lying by the roadside.
The shoe was retrieved and handed over to the person in the passenger seat.
The truck door promptly opened, and a tall man stepped out. Although he also had an armband, he was dressed more formally, wearing an olive-colored trench coat and black fedora. He strode quickly to where Mum’s clog had been and stooped to examine the ground. The man in the fedora then stood to his full height and surveyed the fields where they lay hidden.
He called to one of the rifle-toting men, who hurried over. The two conversed while the cold wind rose and shook the surrounding wheat. Nearby, Nick’s metallic quills began quivering. Max spied a rat wandering casually amidst the stalks.
“No,” whispered Max, seizing the lymrill and hugging him close against his body. Nick gave an angry snort and struggled for a moment, giving Max a painful nip in the process. Max gritted his teeth and stroked the coppery quills on Nick’s belly until the rat wandered off and Nick finally went still. Max held his breath and peeped through the wheat.
The man in the fedora was scanning the surrounding countryside with binoculars. Long minutes passed before he slipped them back in his trench coat and turned on his heel, walking back toward the truck. Seconds later, the truck made a slow U-turn and sped back up the road.
“No one move,” Cooper hissed. “Keep quiet till I’m back.”
Cooper crawled away through the tall wheat while Max lay on the hard ground, breathing slowly and trying to ignore the dull throbbing in his hand where Nick had nipped him. Almost an hour passed before Cooper returned; not even Mum had dared break the silence in all that time.
“You can get up,” he said quietly. “They stopped farther up the road, but they’re gone now.” The Agent hefted his pack and slung it back over his shoulders.
The rest clambered to their feet, shaking off the dust and bits of wheat. Mum looked abashed.
“I’m sorry about my shoe,” she croaked. “Have I gotten us in trouble?”
“Remains to be seen,” said Cooper. “They know someone was here, and that man in the hat clearly has some sort of authority.”
“He was a vye, you know,” said Mum.
“How do you know that?” asked David nervously.
Mum gave the air an audible sniff, flaring her large, wet nostrils.
“Were they all vyes?” asked Max.
“No, just the tall one,” said Mum conclusively. “Couldn’t you smell that the others were scared silly of him?”
Max shook his head.
“I don’t even know why you’ve got those things,” said Mum, giving Max’s nose a contemptuous glance.
“If he’s a vye, wouldn’t he have smelled us, too?” asked Miss Boon.
“We were downwind, dear,” explained Mum. “And his sniffer’s no match for a hag’s.”
“Can someone please tell me what a vye is?” asked Mr. McDaniels, rubbing his arms and giving a nervous glance up the road.
“Shape-shifter,” replied Cooper. “Highly intelligent. Looks something like a werewolf in its feral state.”
“But vyes are bigger,” added Max.
“And they’ve got awful, squinty eyes,” volunteered David, making Max’s father grimace.
“All true,” said Cooper. “If that was a vye, then I’ve got little doubt they were looking for us, specifically. We must have been seen and reported.”
“Those two children?” asked Miss Boon.
“Most likely,” said Cooper, scanning the countryside that was quickly darkening to dusk. “I shouldn’t have let them go.”
“They were children, Cooper,” said Miss Boon
with a warning tone in her voice.
“No, Miss Boon,” replied the Agent. “We just assumed they were.”
The Agent gave Mum a thick sock to cover her bare foot and led them far from the road.
Five days later, Max stood on the banks of the river Tormes and contemplated Salamanca. The city was lit from within like a brilliant jewel: a conspicuous blaze of golden light after many miles of navigating the dark Spanish countryside.
The city was alive with not only light but music. The distant blare of trumpets and horns and drums carried across the chilly night.
Cooper had taken them on a detour around the city so that they might enter from an unexpected direction. It was clever, Max acknowledged, but now they were required to cross an ancient Roman bridge for entry, and a narrow way was easily guarded.
“Why do you think it’s so light?” asked David. “It’s like they’re celebrating something.”
“I don’t know,” said Cooper, setting down his pack and rifling through several pockets. He produced the black velvet bundle that held Cúchulain’s spear.
“Can you slip this up your sleeve, Max?” he asked.
Max glanced at his travel-worn father. Mr. McDaniels looked gravely at the black shape but nodded his approval. Max reached inside the velvet wrap and removed the broken spear.
“Careful now,” said Cooper. “It’s still very sharp.”
Max loosened his shirtsleeve and slipped the weapon inside, along the inside of his right arm. Even broken, it was a bit too long, extending several inches past his elbow, so he would be forced to keep the arm straight. The cold blade began to grow warm against his skin.
Cooper wrote an address down on a slip of paper and handed it to Miss Boon.
“We’re going to use Mystics to disguise ourselves,” he explained to them. “I’ll enter first, ahead of you, in case they have means of detecting illusions. If anything should happen and we get separated, take them to this address. Will you do that, Miss Boon?”
“Of course,” said the young Mystics instructor, swallowing hard and gazing across the river.
“Mr. McDaniels, you’ll have to carry Nick.”
Max’s father groaned a moment later as he hoisted the improbably dense otter-sized lymrill into his arms. “He must be a hundred pounds!” he huffed before lapsing into awed silence. Cooper was murmuring words in a low strange language while river mist snaked up over the banks to envelop them. The golden lights of Salamanca were obscured for a moment until the mist washed over them and dissipated into the clear night sky.
“Say nothing unless absolutely necessary,” said Cooper. “Follow me.”
As they walked along the river’s edge, Max felt utterly exposed. Cooper walked up ahead of them, tall and terrifying with his black knit cap over his white, scarred face. A pair of Spaniards wearing red armbands stood at the entryway to the bridge, passing a bottle between them. Cooper did not give their pistols a second glance and merely offered a pleasant wave as he strode past.
Miss Boon wiped pearly beads of perspiration from her forehead. “Just follow me,” she whispered, and the group approached the bridge.
“Buenas noches, abuelita,” said one of the guards, nodding at Miss Boon. He was very young—no more than a year or two older than Max and David. He tipped his cap and waved them past the gates. As Max walked past, he glanced at the young man’s armband and saw that it was not merely red but included a circular white design. Max had time to catch a star and several strange symbols that were reminiscent of an illustration he had seen in the Conjuror’s Codex, but he dared not look closer. Up ahead, Cooper was already halfway across the bridge, a dark silhouette against a golden wall of light and music. When Max crossed over to the other side, it was like nothing he had ever seen.
The city was filled with people: young people, old people, all singing and dancing to a blaring cacophony of music played by musicians stationed at every corner. It was almost midnight, but young children ran giggling through the streets. Others were running, too. Max saw tall costumed figures whose faces were hidden behind masks painted in the likeness of grinning, mustachioed men with rosy red cheeks. Atop their heads, they wore tall, spade-shaped hats that rose and fell as the frightening figures ran like a phalanx through the crowds.
Max saw Cooper stop to cheer a masked passerby before striding ahead onto a wide street lined with buildings constructed of a sandy stone. Max made to follow him, but a trumpet blared nearby and he instinctively clapped his hands over his ears. Max saw immediately that his movement had caught the attention of a masked figure that had been running past. It stopped abruptly and swiveled its head to gaze at Max.
“Stay calm,” said Miss Boon, squeezing Max’s hand as the dead-eyed mask bobbed toward him.
Max’s heart pounded in his chest. The hideous mask hovered just inches from his face.
“¿Es tu hora de acostarte, muchacha?” cackled the figure’s high voice. Its gloved hand swung forward to tap him on the shoulder with a wooden baton. Just then, a gaggle of children ran screaming past Max, and the figure lumbered off after them. Max watched as they disappeared down a side street, and his eyes fell upon several men in trench coats and fedoras surveying the scene from beneath a café awning.
Miss Boon tugged at his sleeve, and Max followed her down the street where Cooper had disappeared, the group swimming against a tide of revelers.
They followed Cooper at a cautious distance, passing by a great university. Its doors had been torn off their hinges and lay broken and splintered against its archways. As they walked, Max saw that many buildings had been destroyed, gutted and burned in a panorama of broken glass and charred stone. Other buildings were intact, and Max quickly noticed that these all displayed the same symbol as the red armbands. Some of the marks were painstakingly perfect in their symmetry; others were scrawled in haste upon thresholds or windows in a seeming mad dash for compliance.
They walked for several more blocks before Cooper finally stopped at a small bookstore built of the ubiquitous sandy stone. Its windows were dark, with Astaroth’s sigil painted carefully upon the door.
Glancing up the street, Cooper gestured at them to come quickly. Max shivered and rubbed his arms while Cooper rang the bell. There was no answer. Cooper frowned and pressed the bell again. Another phalanx of masked men ran past them to the crashing accompaniment of a round, jolly man playing cymbals down at the corner. Cooper watched them go before pressing the bell again with rising urgency.
A light appeared at an upstairs window. Half a minute later, the door opened. A white-haired man with intelligent eyes and thick glasses stood in the doorway. His mouth sagged in irritation as he reached into his trouser pocket to flick a few coins onto the step. He gave them a stern, disapproving glance before turning away to close the door.
“We need shelter, Brother Lorca,” said Cooper quickly.
The man’s eyes widened as though he’d seen a ghost.
“Which of you is William?” asked the old man gruffly, blinking from face to face.
“I am,” said Cooper, inclining his head.
“What’s my one true love?” inquired the man, snapping his fingers impatiently.
“You have two,” responded Cooper. “The wines of Rioja and the incomparable María.”
The imperious scowl tightened to a twinkling smile; the door opened wide to admit them.
Max crowded into a small foyer while the white-haired man closed the heavy door and locked it. A woman’s voice called from the top of an elegant staircase that rose and twisted out of sight.
“¿Quién está allí? ¡Envíelos lejos!”
“Tut, tut,” scolded Señor Lorca, with a sharp laugh. “Come down, María. It is William and some friends, although he looks prettier than when I saw him last.”
Cooper nodded, and turned the group’s attention toward their reflection in a nearby baroque mirror. There they stood—two aging men, a plump nurse, an elderly woman wrapped in a brown shawl, and two girls no old
er than six. The plump nurse pointed.
“Is that me?” asked Mr. McDaniels.
“In the flesh,” said Cooper.
Mr. McDaniels turned away from the mirror and looked himself up and down.
“But I look normal,” he exclaimed, wiggling his fingers and examining his clothes.
“Mirrors reflect all illusions,” said Cooper. “Very useful tidbit, that.”
Max waved at himself in the mirror. A bundled, black-haired girl with round cheeks waved back. Everyone wore red armbands—even the children.
“Did anyone follow you?” asked Señor Lorca, bolting the door.
“No,” said Cooper, stealing a peek out the bookshop’s front window while drawing a pair of heavy crimson drapes. The Spaniard grunted his approval and herded the group through a large, two-story room of gleaming, glassed-in bookcases filled with old manuscripts, texts, and tablets. As they filed toward the rear, Max saw that the front of the building was dedicated to the bookstore but that the back rooms were private living quarters. They arrived at a large, comfortable kitchen with frescoed walls, cascading plants, and gleaming copper cookery.
“Ooh!” said Mr. McDaniels, eyeing a large cheese and a hanging ham.
Señor Lorca chuckled as he lit several candles and placed them on a sturdy table of sanded oak. Collapsing into a chair, the old man peered at the group standing assembled in the kitchen doorway.
“William, put your trickery aside so I may see you,” he rumbled.
Cooper murmured several words. Max didn’t feel anything different, but the old man sat straight up and gasped as his attention focused immediately upon Max and David.
“You’ve brought them here?” he asked. “This is a strange omen,” he muttered, glancing at a worn wooden staircase.
“You know them?” asked Cooper quietly. “You know their faces?”
Señor Lorca nodded gravely, rising to his feet.
“I do. And I welcome you, David Menlo and Max McDaniels. I am honored.”
Señor Lorca shuffled forward for introductions. There was a quiet dignity to the man, an elegant assuredness to his movements and a sharp, handsome profile unbowed by age. As they shook hands, Max saw a dozen faded scars on the man’s papery skin. After pecking Mum on the cheek, Señor Lorca stooped and blinked at Nick, who sat on his back haunches sniffing the kitchen’s delicious aromas.
The Second Siege Page 14