by J. A. White
He left. Kara sighed with relief.
Taking a cautious peek around the cauldron, she saw the twins looking at their grimoire like a map, as Bethany had done. They marched down the center of the dining hall, their footsteps perfectly in sync, until they were standing just to the right of Kara’s hiding place. She slipped around to the left side of the cauldron, keeping it between them. Took another peek. The twins rotated the book, like someone turning a map to understand their location better, and nodded with recognition.
They started toward the door at the back of the room.
Safi is the one that Rygoth wants. That’s why they’re here. That’s who the grimoire is tracking.
I can’t let them get her.
Kara ran.
Her footfalls fell heavy on the floor, but that was okay—that was, in fact, the point. Kara was trying to make as much noise as possible in order to distract the twins. This is a big place. I can lose them, double back, find Safi and Taff. Once I get through the archway, I’ll break left toward the stairs. If I’m fast enough, they won’t even know what floor I’m on. She heard the twins read from the grimoire together, not in unison but each completing the other’s incantation, their deformed tongues producing slurred, impossible words. Kara thought, This is the only language they speak, and then one of the circular dining tables rolled in front of the archway, blocking her exit. She tried to push past it and jumped back when the wooden surface of the table parted, revealing a mouth composed of jagged splinter-teeth. Benches slid across the room and joined the table, became legs and arms; tin plates embedded themselves in the places eyes would go. As the new creation got unsteadily to its feet, these plates burned themselves into the wood and then fell away, leaving horrible black stains that blinked with abrupt cognition.
The wooden monster roared.
It swung a bench at Kara and she dropped to the floor just in time, feeling the makeshift arm skim over the top of her body. The monster swung its other bench-arm high into the air and brought it downward with hissing speed. Kara rolled out of the way. The bench shattered. Splintered wood pricked the back of her neck.
The monster stared stupidly at the place where its arm had been and tottered to one side, as though unsure how to compensate for this sudden change in equilibrium. Kara tried to use this opportunity to escape, but the twins spoke more words and something cold and wet grabbed her ankle, throwing her off balance. She slammed to the floor. Pain ran up the length of her arm and numbed it. Turning on her side she saw a whiplike tongue wrapped around her ankle, from a shadowy mouth that used to be a fire pit. It yanked her across the floor toward the hungry darkness. The twins spoke more words. Kara heard a loud rattle, like a clapper rolling around inside a bell, and saw long, jointed legs emerging from the body of the cauldron, heard the gentle clink as they touched down on the stone surface of the floor. The tongue of the fire pit dragged her closer.
She sat up—and found herself inches from the gaping mouth of the wooden monster.
It roared, and without thinking Kara reached into its mouth and snapped off a wooden tooth. The monster threw its head back, hollowing in pain, and Kara stabbed the tongue around her ankle, again and again, until the fire pit finally released her.
She ran out of the dining hall.
Before she could head toward the stairs, however, the cauldron skittered through the archway on spiderlike legs, blocking her path. Kara turned right, opened the first door she saw, and dashed into the room. It was a kitchen. Tables piled with pots and pans, racks of knives, metal basins. There was a door on the far right that, Kara guessed, had been the one that Taff and Safi had passed through, and a small set of stairs in the back of the room, leading down. The knives came to life first, folding and reshaping into tiny metallic insects with serrated wings and needle-sharp antennae. Kara didn’t need to see anything else. She ran for the stairs, trying to ignore to deafening rattle to either side of her as cookware and cutlery shifted into unexpected new things. Something buzzed past her and she felt a sharp pain in her earlobe. And then she was through the back door and into the narrow stairwell, latching the door shut just as hundreds of metal knives thudded against it and clattered to the ground in defeat.
Kara ran down a winding, narrow staircase, listening carefully for the sound of a door opening behind her. Though her fingertips came away wet when she touched her ear, the pain was no worse than a bee sting. The stairs went down and down and down, finally emptying into another dining hall, this one smaller but with fancier furniture: marble tabletops, crystal goblets, fine cutlery.
Safi was running toward her.
“Where were you?” she asked. “You said you were coming! We were so—”
“They’re right behind me,” Kara said, out of breath. “Where’s Taff?”
“Come on,” Safi said, pulling her forward. They broke into a run. “We found the entrance to Phadeen.”
“Great!”
“Not great. There’s a problem. Taff’s working on it.”
“What kind of problem?”
Kara heard the door at the top of the stairs creak open, followed by soft footsteps in no particular hurry. She followed Safi, running hard now, into a gargantuan hallway framed by stone arches. The walls were covered with large tapestries: cloaked figures sitting in a field of flowers; a still lake glistening beneath a lavender sky; tranquil animals with splendid wings grazing in a field of grass.
These are depictions of Phadeen, back when it was a paradise.
Suddenly the tapestries began to rattle on their hooks like wild beasts eager to be uncaged. The girls exchanged a look and ran faster. Kara could see a pair of double doors in the distance now, a crack of light between them. Keep running. Don’t look back. Tapestries fell around them like a flock of bats, their edges tearing and shaping into jagged wings that enabled them to sail through the air.
We’re not going to make it, Kara thought, the door still painfully small in the distance.
The tapestries attacked.
Safi stopped running and read from the grimoire. Her voice was soft but navigated the strange syllables with confidence. The tapestries fluttered upward and began to unspool with impossible speed. Colored thread streamed through the air like confetti.
“I did it,” Safi said, laughing. “I actually did—”
“Watch out!” Kara screamed.
Safi started to look up but it was already too late. The last remaining tapestry, out of range when the spell was cast, swooped down and absorbed her, spreading across the ground as flat as a rug.
Safi was gone.
“No!” Kara screamed.
She flipped the tapestry over and stared at the picture. A majestic waterfall crashed into the banks of a river. On the shore stood a gorgeous tree with buds of delicate mauve, providing shade for a small girl holding a book.
“Safi?” Kara asked.
The girl didn’t reply. She was just thread.
Fluttering its false wings, the tapestry pulled itself from Kara’s grasp but could not quite propel itself into the air. Instead, it slunk along the stone floor of the gallery, as though the girl caught inside its world now made it too heavy to fly.
It came to a stop at the feet of the twins.
The left twin picked it up, and her omnipresent smile reached new heights as she saw Safi within the tapestry’s borders. She showed her sister, who clicked her teeth together in appreciation, some sort of strange language they shared.
A tear zigzagged across the surface of the tapestry.
Kara shielded her eyes as rays of purple light burst forth from the tear and sent the twins flying. The light quickly vanished—and there was Safi, trying to crawl out of the tapestry. Kara grabbed her hands and pulled backward, taking a moment to eye the twins.
Still breathing.
Kara and Safi ran through the double doors and quickly pushed them closed. Together, they slid a wooden beam through two brackets in order to secure it.
“I’m not sure that wil
l hold them if they wake up,” Safi said. “Maybe I can make the door stronger.” She opened the grimoire and winced at the spell she saw. “Except it doesn’t want me to. It wants me to attack them. Finish them off. Of course.”
Kara touched her arm. “Show it who’s in charge.”
She turned and examined the room. The floor was covered with gears: small gears and big gears; hexagonal and square and round gears; silver, bronze, and stone gears. A case of books leaned against the wall nearest her. Across the room was a single door embedded with countless pegs. Gears hung from almost all of them. In the place where a doorknob would go was a large wheel that would only turn, Kara assumed, when the gears were in their proper places.
Taff, trying to find the right gear for one of the empty pegs, grunted in frustration.
“Sordyr mentioned there was a puzzle,” Kara said. “So only the worthy could cross into Phadeen.”
Taff brightened.
“Did he give you the answer?”
“No.”
“So he told you about the puzzle but didn’t tell you how to solve it?” Taff asked, combing through the gears. “I think I liked him better when he was a Forest Demon.”
“You can do it.”
“I know. But I need more time. I’m not completely sure if all the gears I used are the right ones.”
“One of the twins just moved!” Safi exclaimed, her eye pressed to the crack between the doors. “We have to hurry!”
Taff hung the last gear on the door and, pausing a heartbeat, turned the wheel. The gears grinded together, did not move. He nodded, took off a single gear, replaced it with another one. Still no luck. Taff stepped back, taking in the entirety of the door, and then smacked himself in the forehead before quickly switching two gears.
When he turned the wheel this time all the pieces of the door spun like clockwork.
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”
He continued to turn the handle, but the door did not open. Instead, a cheerful song began to play, a tune for dancing around the fire. Taff spun the handle faster and the pace of the music increased.
“The door will open when the song is over,” Taff said. “That must be it.”
The final note played, and the pegs retracted into the door. The gears fell to the floor, some clattering directly in front of Taff’s feet, others rolling across the room. The pegs returned to their usual position.
The door did not open.
“But I did it right,” Taff said. “That’s not fair!”
Something crashed into the double doors and the wooden beam rattled in its brackets. Safi remained intent on her grimoire, beads of sweat rolling down her temples. “Come on! Give me the spell I want! Come on!”
“Any other bright ideas?” Kara asked Taff.
Another crash. A crack split the beam.
“Got it!” Safi exclaimed in delight.
She spoke the words of her spell and the double doors glowed purple with magical reinforcement.
“That should buy us a little more time,” Safi said.
“Great,” said Taff, “but it doesn’t help us with our other problem.”
Ask the right question, Kara thought. Ask the right question.
“Why is that shelf of books there?” she asked.
“I already thought of that,” Taff said. “They just contain a bunch of names and dates. Nothing important at all.”
“Then why did Minoth store them in the most important room in Sablethorn? Unless they’re a lot more important than they seem.”
Taff, seeing her point, ran over and started pulling books off the shelf. Kara joined him. She didn’t see anything special inside their pages—Taff was right, just records of some kind—but on the fourth book she noticed a thick line burned across its leather cover, like a brand. The fifth and sixth books had no such distinguishing marks, but the eighth and ninth books did: a straight line and a curved one. She found another line, this one L-shaped. . . .
“I know what to do,” Kara said, kicking gears away to make an empty space on the floor. “The books are the puzzle we need to solve. Put them together the right way and they form the entrance to Phadeen.”
“What about the door with all the gears?” Taff asked.
“It’s a giant music box. Apparently this Minoth has a sense of humor.”
The three children worked together, laying the books on the floor and connecting the black lines burned into their covers. A perfect outline of a door began to form. Safi slid the last book into place and the stone floor within the borders of the book vanished, replaced by a portal of black liquid.
“Yuck,” said Taff, eyeing the dark portal nervously. “We really have to go through that to get to the Well of Witches?”
The purple light surrounding the double doors began to dim as the twins pummeled it furiously with magic.
“They’re going to break through,” said Safi. “And then they’ll follow us into the Well. How are you going to find your father with those two on your tail?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Kara said.
“No,” Safi said, straightening. “It’s me they want. That’s why they tried to trap me in the tapestry. So they could bring me back to Rygoth. They won’t hurt me. I know it.”
The double doors rattled, the purple light almost gone now.
“We have to go!” shouted Taff.
“You have to go,” said Safi. “After you’re gone I’ll put the books back. I’ll tell the twins you went through the door with the gears. They might try to figure it out, but they don’t seem like the smartest pair, and eventually they’ll give up.”
“We’re not leaving you behind!” Kara exclaimed. “Rygoth might not hurt you, but there are other things she can do to make you help her. She’ll change you.”
“Safi,” said Taff. “Please come with us.”
But the young witch refused to look in his direction. Instead, she tore a page out of her grimoire and pressed it into Kara’s hand.
“You’ll need this to save your father,” she said, and pushed Kara through the portal.
BOOK THREE
THE FACELESS
“It is how we address the questions without answers that makes us who we are.”
—Minoth Dravania
64th Sablethorn Lecture
When Kara opened her eyes she was staring at a sand-colored sky splotched with dark brown. Her head felt heavy. Where am I? How did I get here? Beneath her fingertips the ground felt strangely smooth, the air as musty as the bottom of a well. Kara heard a steady scratching, the sound of quill on parchment, and slowly pushed herself up to see what was making the noise. The ground, as impossible as it seemed, was cream-colored paper, and across it the words Where am I? How did I get here? were in the process of being written. Kara recognized the neat, steady penmanship, the stubborn flourish on the hanging tail of the g.
It was her handwriting.
What is this? she wondered, and the three words scratched themselves into the ground as she thought them. Kara tried to touch the letters but they were located just beneath the paper ground like veins. Her two earlier thoughts began to glide away as though caught on some unseen current, rising over a slight hill and then slipping out of sight.
She remembered.
Safi pushed me. I’m in the Well of Witches.
These new thoughts scrawled themselves into the ground, followed by an additional one: TAFF! Kara jumped to her feet—too fast!—and the world spun for a moment. Her brother was lying next to her. He groaned as he got to his knees. No doubt he was suffering from the same disorientation as Kara, but other than that he seemed fine.
“My head,” Taff said, rubbing it with his knuckles. “Safi pushed me. Did you know she was that fast? I didn’t know she was that fast.” His face flashed with anger. “I can’t believe she did that!”
Kara watched the words I thought she was my friend! etch just beneath the ground. The handwriting was Taff’s, a childlike, blocky print.
“She is your friend. She was trying to keep us safe.”
Although Taff didn’t reply, Kara read his next thought: But who’s going to keep her safe?
“She’s on her own until we get out of here,” admitted Kara. “But she’s a strong witch, and an even stronger girl. I wouldn’t underestimate her.”
“I guess you’re right,” Taff said. And then, shaking his head in surprise, added, “Wait! How do you know what I’m thinking? Are you magic again?”
Kara showed him the words on the ground, and explained, as best she could, what little she had learned. Taff proceeded to waste several giggling minutes making the ground inscribe random thoughts such as Mashed potatoes! and My shoe is leaking! and Yellowglobbyflowything!
“Are you about done?” Kara finally asked.
“Absolutely,” Taff said, but his true thoughts spilled across the ground: I’ll just do it when she’s not looking.
Kara raised her eyebrows.
“Nuts,” said Taff. “This might not be as much fun as I thought it would be.”
Behind them a huge rose-colored wall towered into the sky, cutting off any travel in that direction. Kara ran her fingers along its surface, which was strangely wet to the touch.
“It feels like the cover of a grimoire,” she said.
“And the ground and the sky are like pages,” Taff said. “What does it mean? Are we inside a grimoire?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t like it.”
“My toys!” Taff exclaimed. “I took the satchel off because it kept banging against the gears! I still have my slingshot, but I left everything else in Sablethorn! Can we go back?”
“I don’t think so.”
She pointed to a black rectangle on the wall, the same size and shape as the door through which Safi had pushed them. It looked as though it had been burned into the surface.