Kingdom Keepers VII

by Pearson, Ridley

  “I scared you,” Maybeck says proudly.

  “Startled. The only advantage we have, Terry, is staying pure DHI. If we go even a little bit solid…not good.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

  An apology from Maybeck would typically be cause for a national holiday, a parade, and fireworks. The glee on Finn’s face expresses this. Maybeck shifts closer to the street leading into Adventureland.

  “We’re close,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, let’s get going.”

  “Not that way. We’re going to head toward the front gates.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if anyone saw us as we crossed over, we can’t afford to lead them into the Bazaar. We’ll be trapped. It’s called the art of deception.”

  “But if they can follow us on camera, how does deception help? What does it matter? That’s stupid, Whitman. The enemy here is time, not park Security. We’ve got to hurry. The only thing your deception does is waste time.”

  “We head away from our destination,” Finn explains. “Then we get backstage where there aren’t cameras following our every move. Look, arguing about it wastes even more time. Follow me.”

  Finn sets out down Main Street. Maybeck keeps a step behind, grunting his displeasure. Finn cuts to the right, staying in shadow; arriving at a white wall, he walks through it, Maybeck right behind him.

  “How cool is it to be one of the Keeps?” Maybeck says, forgetting his earlier aggravation.

  They’re in the woods of the Jungle Cruise. Finn heads off to the right, in the direction of the docks.

  “Okay, I get it,” Maybeck says. “You could have said we were going to sneak around back of the Jolly Holiday. Good idea.”

  “What have you done with the real Terry Maybeck?” Finn asks.

  “Ha-ha. Very funny. Credit where credit’s due.”

  “Since when?”

  “Charlene,” Maybeck says. “Since Charlene.”

  “Yeah,” Finn says. “Changes things, doesn’t it?”

  “You, too?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I can be a real jerk,” Maybeck says, seeing Finn’s reaction. “Have been, at times. But my life has been radically different from any of you guys’.”

  “Understood. No argument.”

  “Charlene accepts me for who I am. You know? And I don’t exactly get it, but that makes me want to be different from who I am. Better. Not sure that makes sense.”

  “It does.”

  Maybeck feels exposed, like he’s lost his pants or something. In that moment, a thread connects him to Finn, and it’s as though electricity is being exchanged between their DHIs, as though something strange is happening. He senses it’s a moment he will not only remember but treasure for a long time. Friendship is an elusive, gooey thing; it shrinks with the cold, expands in the heat; it has ways of vanishing right before your eyes; or of appearing out of nowhere. This is a moment—right now—in which it proves sticky.

  “Let’s do this thing,” Maybeck says. “Let’s go rub ourselves a genie!”

  Finn doesn’t speak, but despite his silence, despite the v1.6 software and projection, despite the fact that they come from different worlds and were thrown together only by chance, he shows excitement, acceptance, and…

  Finn takes off across the open concourse, glows briefly, and then is absorbed by the darkness of the Bazaar. Maybeck follows at a run.

  Inside, Finn can see by the glow of his own DHI. A newcomer to the Bazaar, Finn moves to his right, arriving at shelves of hammered brass plates, cups, and pitchers. He might be able to convince himself that the pitchers are the lantern he seeks, but there are a dozen of them and they’re tall and narrow, nothing like Jess’s sketch.

  Maybeck passes behind him. “This way,” he says, though he has no more clue where he’s going than Finn does. Yet, he leads them to a small alcove, more like an open closet containing a low table. A bejeweled lantern sits atop it. On the wall above it is a sign, but the area’s too dark to read it.

  “You suppose I just rub it?” Finn asks Maybeck.

  “There’s something not right about this,” Maybeck says.

  “The jewels? I don’t remember any jewels in her drawing.”

  “Something else, I think.”

  Finn’s hand pauses over the ancient oil lamp. He lowers his palm and rubs it. Nothing happens.

  “Try again. Are you thinking of something you want?”

  Finn removes his hand, pauses. He rubs it again.

  Nothing.

  “Well, that’s awkward,” Maybeck says.

  “It isn’t real. It’s a tourist attraction. Nothing more.”

  The voice does not belong to Maybeck.

  Finn turns to see Jafar, Aladdin’s nemesis, standing with his legs spread wide, arms crossed, his red-lined robe flowing, scepter in hand. His parrot, Iago, perches on his left shoulder, shifting its head back and forth inquisitively.

  Maybeck gives in to his bad habit of swearing at such moments.

  The Keepers have faced Jafar before to bad results. Finn wants nothing to do with him. With Maleficent’s death, Jafar is among the most powerful sorcerers in all the Kingdom, capable of levitation, fire breathing, and transfiguration; his scepter can hypnotize with the barest gesture from its master. Even his parrot is smarter and more dangerous than he looks.

  “Keep clear,” Finn says, reminding Maybeck to keep fear out of his DHI.

  Easier said than done; Finn’s hands and feet tingle, causing him to wonder how vulnerable he might be to attack.

  Most troubling of all, Jafar, an expert at impersonation, has not bothered to put on any disguise. He apparently has no use for such a ruse, which suggests he has no reason to attempt to manipulate the two boys.

  Which suggests he intends to kill them.

  “No way I’m clear,” Maybeck whispers in a rare admission of weakness.

  It’s a complication they didn’t need. Finn had hoped to make a run for it, possibly through the wall to his left into the hat display beyond.

  “I wonder what it is you wished for,” Jafar says. His inquisitive eyes bore into Finn, as if Jafar is attempting to read his thoughts.

  As long as Finn can keep the sorcerer’s mind active, he can buy time for himself and Maybeck. “I killed Maleficent.”

  Turns out not even a sorcerer can keep surprise from his face.

  “I tore her heart out.” Finn reaches over to Maybeck and demonstrates, sliding his hand into Maybeck’s DHI shoulder. “I’ll do it to you if you make me.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Yes, you do. Our mission is to end you. We didn’t understand that at first—we’re just kids, after all,” he says sarcastically. “No one has ever told us straight out. They didn’t hire us as assassins. We think of ourselves more as bounty hunters. Capture you. Bring all of you to justice. But it’s not as if you’ll go willingly. It’s not as if there’s any other justice for murderers.”

  Maybeck has stopped breathing. Still as stone, he stares at Finn as if it’s the first time they’ve met and he’s not sure he likes this guy.

  “Tia Dalma tricked me into killing my friend,” Finn confesses. He struggles to get his words out. “I will end her for it.”

  The tingling has receded; Finn knows he can endure any amount of magic or ill intent this wizened old man can dish out. He has Dill on his side; he has Lady Justice.

  He takes a step forward. Jafar involuntarily takes a step back, and Finn knows he has him. The sense of power he experiences is its own poison; it’s how the Overtakers must feel, and he wants nothing to do with them, nothing to do with the assumption of personal power. He makes it about Dillard, about working toward a greater good—not vengeance, but liberation. He’s a freedom fighter, not a hired gun.

  The slight bluish glow from his DHI reveals a set of muddy prints on the concrete floor, a trail Finn hasn’t seen until now. He does not dare to take his eyes off Jafar fo
r another millisecond, but he processes what he’s seen and counts his blessings that Jess and the Fairlies are on their side. Her drawing showed cat’s paw tracks going in two directions. Another glance at the floor confirms it: there’s a concave arc of prints traced on the concrete.

  How to communicate what he’s discovered to Maybeck?

  He addresses Jafar. “There is a song—music—my parents play. One of my dad’s favorites.” He shoots a look at Maybeck to make sure he has his attention. Maybeck has not moved. All good. “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Another glance to Maybeck; this time Finn sweeps his eyes to include the floor. Is Maybeck paying attention? He appears to be in a trance. “Iago!” Finn calls to the parrot. “The band was called the Byrds.” He pauses and quotes, “‘To everything, turn, turn, turn.’” Another hot glance at Maybeck and then the floor.

  “Why should I care for such a song?” Jafar says irritably. Finn has rattled him with the news of Maleficent’s death. But he and the remaining Overtakers must have assumed such an outcome. Or has Tia Dalma been in touch and assumed control but withheld the truth of the tragedy from them? Will she, could she, cause division in their ranks?

  Perhaps there is a way to defeat the Overtakers other than violence.

  Maybeck speaks. “Was it vinyl?” he asks Finn. “A vinyl album?”

  “Yes!” Finn says.

  “Played on a turntable?”

  “Yes!”

  “Quiet!” Jafar strikes the floor with the base of his scepter. The eyes of its snake’s head glow.

  “Don’t look!” Finn admonishes, lowering his gaze, knowing Jafar has the advantage now. The snake’s head can and will hypnotize them if they slip even fractionally out of their DHI state. Unable to see Jafar, he cannot possibly anticipate what might come next. He must remind the sorcerer that he is still of substantial value alive.

  Finn says, “My wish is a powerful one.”

  “And I will hear it before you die,” Jafar says.

  “Unlikely,” Finn says.

  “We’ll rip your lungs out,” Maybeck tells Jafar. “We’ll watch you suffocate.” Maybeck knows such bravado will win a telling and condemning look, Finn realizes, watching his friend take a step toward the lantern. Maybeck reaches for it.

  “Unhand that!” Jafar roars.

  “It’s just a tourist attraction,” Finn says, moving to screen Maybeck with his body. Maybeck isn’t rubbing the lantern, but wrestling it back and forth in an attempt to turn it right or left. He lets go.

  “Zilch,” Maybeck says.

  Finn can hardly believe it. “But it must—!” he gasps.

  “No,” Maybeck says.

  “Silence!” Jafar thumps his scepter again. Behind him, pieces of jewelry fall from the displays, and as they strike the ground, the necklaces break and stretch and morph into black snakes. Slithering into a writhing knot, they roil on the ground at Jafar’s feet, hissing and striking at each other, so eager are they for a kill.

  “Relieve yourself of the trinket!” Jafar instructs Maybeck.

  “Was the song rock or folk?” Maybeck asks.

  “Ah!” Finn says.

  The snakes unwind, fan out, and approach the boys. Finn steps back, bumping into the table holding the lantern. Maybeck smacks into the wall, and he and Finn start poking and pulling the stones that comprise it.

  “Stop!” Jafar opens his mouth and spews a stream of molten fire. It hits the wall next to Maybeck and begins to spread. Maybeck falls, reaching for a tassel hanging from the sign to catch himself. He grabs hold of it, his fear giving weight to his DHI. The tassel pulls down and stops.

  The concrete floor spins beneath their feet.

  Maybeck jumps away from the snakes, landing on top of the table that bears the genie’s lamp. He and Finn, along with the lamp, table, and wall behind them, have spun 180 degrees. They’re on the other side of the same wall, the Bazaar and Jafar safely behind them. They find themselves in a tunnel, with flaming torches like sconces lining its stone walls.

  “Took me a second,” Maybeck says. “Turn, turn, turn. Turntable. The floor. How’d you know? I must be tired.”

  “Nice job with the tassel.” Finn is propped on the opposite end of the short table, looking down at the snakes that made the trip with them.

  “Yeah. That was certainly my first choice.”

  “Jafar’ll be—”

  “Whitman!” Maybeck stabs the air, indicating something behind Finn. It’s the head of a cobra, pinched in the crack in the moveable wall like a shoe keeping a door from closing. Its head is the size of a football, its body like a fire hose. To the naked eye, it appears stationary, but the head is moving away from the gap in the wall. The cobra is pushing through to their side.

  “—right behind us!” Finn cries, finishing his thought while leaping away from the wall. Half the small snakes immediately swim toward him in an undulating wave of shiny skin. “Come on!”

  “Finn, I hate snakes.”

  “Hate them down here with me before that thing has you for lunch.” He points to Jafar’s transfigured snake shape. “It’s him! We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Maybeck lands next to Finn, and they run. The tunnel arcs to their left.

  “If he gets stuck, we’re in luck,” Maybeck says.

  “Since when have we ever been lucky?”

  “Point to you.”

  From behind them comes the sound of the partition closing. Jafar, the cobra, is through.

  Finn gets another look at the floor, illuminated in flashes by the flickering torchlight. The same muddy prints are there. Too big for a cat. His brain is in the act of processing this difference when a bone-chilling roar sounds from the flame-lit dusk.

  “Oh!” Finn says, skidding to a stop. “That kind of cat.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Finn says.

  A Bengal tiger the size of a Smart car appears out of the darkness. Its rumbling growl resounds to the depths of the cavelike tunnel.

  Sighting the boys, it lowers onto its front haunches, ready to spring.

  Maybeck looks back. The giant cobra is moving toward them faster than the boys can run, catching up to the smaller snakes that are also hard on the boys’ heels. “Pickle!” Maybeck says, citing a baseball term, though he doesn’t have much patience for the sport: when a runner trapped between bases is run down by the opposing team’s players, who are trying to tag the runner out, that’s a pickle. The runner rarely, if ever, escapes.

  The tiger leaps. Maybeck’s far-too-solid DHI is knocked to the ground. His life flashes before his eyes. He feels the jaws tear into his shoulder, can picture the pool of—

  “Come on!”

  Maybeck opens his eyes. It’s Finn’s face; and it’s Finn’s fingers tearing into his shoulder, not the cat’s teeth. Maybeck is paralyzed—he can’t move. The tiger snaps up two of the black snakes like a robin feasting on worms. Then it skids to a stop, facing the giant cobra.

  “Hurry!” Finn says, giving Maybeck a hand and pulling him to his feet. The boys flee down the tunnel. “That’s Rajah, Princess Jasmine’s protector.”

  “I think I missed that movie.”

  “Rajah must know we’re the good guys, or at least, that a fifteen-foot cobra can’t be.”

  The cat roars. The boys stop and turn to watch. Rajah and Jafar face each other, first moving counterclockwise, then doubling back. Counterclockwise again. Testing. Challenging.

  The cat’s claws swipe the snake, which hisses and rears up. It flares its hood and strikes. Rajah jukes to the side; Jafar misses. But Jafar is wily; he’s slowly turning Rajah, pushing the cat’s tail up against the stone and limiting Rajah’s movements. Turning Rajah like this also provides the cobra with an opening down the tunnel toward the boys.

  “He’s coming! Let’s go!” Maybeck says.

  “I can’t!” says Finn, edging closer to the duel.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “He saved us.”

  The cobra has pinned Ra
jah back onto his rear haunches. Rajah paws at the snake, but Jafar’s too clever by far.

  “Go! Find out where this leads!”

  “As if!” Maybeck says.

  “Find a door. Hold it for me and the cat. Be ready to close it the second we’re through!”

  “Finn—”

  “Do it! Now!”

  Maybeck shakes his head, takes in the scene. “I—”

  “Move!”

  Maybeck runs.

  Finn gathers himself as he has a dozen times. He silences the noises of the battle, quiets the doubting voices in his head, imagines a pinprick of light in a sea of darkness. Normally, he need not do this routine when in his DHI state, but he’s terrified, and it takes several long seconds to calm himself. His DHI glows a shade brighter.

  Rajah’s in trouble. Finn has no time to test his transparency. He runs toward the cobra, skidding to a stop. “I thought you wanted me, you withered old man!”

  The cobra’s head snaps toward Finn, its black tongue licking the air, tasting his scent. Without further warning, it strikes.

  Finn closes his eyes.

  The cobra soars through his DHI. Finn dares to peek; he spreads his legs to straddle the reptile.

  Rajah sinks a claw into the body of the cobra. The snake rears up in pain. Finn, allowing panic to steal into him, rides the snake backward and is crushed against the overhead stone ceiling. The world goes black.

  Finn comes awake bouncing, feeling what must be warm blood oozing over him. It takes him a second to realize he’s in Rajah’s mouth. The big cat has him in his jaws. The liquid he feels is not blood but cat drool—Rajah is carrying him as if a kitten.

  A rectangle of artificial light glows ahead. Finn shifts slightly to adjust his vision: it’s not a window, but a doorway. Maybeck is holding a door open twenty yards ahead.

  Fifteen…

  Ten…

  Finn steals a look behind Rajah. Jafar in cobra form is coming for them as fast as a freight train. Fluid leaks from his fat tube of a body where Rajah tore him open. He’s one unhappy cobra. His black eyes glitter with vengeance. He’ll kill them both and revel in it.

  Five…

  The cat’s head swings left, snaps right and releases Finn, who flies through the air—and through the door. Finn crashes to the pavement and rolls.