Fire Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  Riph Raph flicked his tail. “They aren’t Farworld weapons. They’re the kind we saw in the Earth shop where Kyja sold the gem.”

  Marcus remembered the pawn shop where he, Kyja, and Riph Raph had gone to raise money on her first trip to Earth. It had been almost completely filled with power tools and guns. “If they have guns, we need to find a way back to Farworld. Master Therapass sent you here; he must have given you some kind of clue to how we can escape.”

  Riph Raph spotted a beetle-like insect crawling along a floorboard and stalked toward it. “No. He turned me into a bird, said you could change me back, and told me to fly to the place in the Windlash Mountains where Graehl had captured us when he was a cave trulloch.”

  That didn’t make any sense. If the wizard sent Riph Raph to the Unmakers cavern, he obviously knew that the Dark Circle would be taking Marcus there. But why not send a rescue party or plan an escape? What good was a single skyte?

  Riph Raph snatched the bug in his beak, crunched it, and immediately spat it back out. “What kind of bugs do they have here?” he asked, making a face. “I’ve tasted better things scraped off the soles of shoes.”

  Marcus made a gagging noise.

  “What? We skytes are known for our amazing fighting skills—not our taste buds.” Riph Raph wiped his tongue on the back of one leg. “There was something else he mentioned, though.”

  “What?” Marcus leaned forward.

  Riph Raph flapped his ears in concentration. “Hmmm. A note, maybe.”

  “He gave you a note? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He didn’t give me a note. Or if he did, I must have lost it.” Riph Raph studied the bug again before turning away regretfully. “Maybe he mentioned one. Maybe not.”

  Marcus slammed his hand on the floor, sending up a plume of dust. “Which is it? Did he give you a note, or didn’t he?”

  “I don’t remember. It was hard to think as a bird. Their brains are so tiny, and all they think about is seeds and worms.” Riph Raph ran his tongue over the tip of his beak. “Of course, now that I think of it, a worm does sound pretty good.”

  Marcus put his head in his hand. He was trapped in a world of creatures that ate magic and men that carried guns, he might be pulled to Earth at any second, and his only hope of escape was a lost note that might or might not have ever existed. What could be worse?

  In the distance, a high-pitched whistling floated on the air.

  20: Too Many Questions

  Turnip stepped into the vortex and the spinning fire ripped her into a hundred pieces—a thousand. Her body, mind, and soul were split into millions of fragments that combined with millions of other fragments from all the creatures that had entered the flames before her. Voices screamed and she was overwhelmed by the shared sense of shock and fear of those who had disappeared into flame. Like them, she could never be gathered and put back together after the flames had pulled her apart.

  And then she was.

  Whole again.

  But how? She knew the vortex had destroyed her as soon as she entered it. That’s what its magic was designed to do. She’d heard the voices of everyone and everything the fire had eaten, had felt their pain, experienced the terror that had welled up within them when they realized there was no way out.

  She looked down, expecting to find her limbs broken and bruised. But there wasn’t a mark on her. She felt no pain, no fear. Heard no voices. How had she survived when they hadn’t?

  “Hello?” She tried to look around, but couldn’t make out anything beyond the light.

  She tugged on the sleeves of her gown. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  Marcus watched a pair of soldiers enter one end of the alley. They glanced at the doorway he and Riph Raph had come through, but didn’t go inside. When they walked out of sight, he gave a sigh of relief. But it was only a matter of time before they’d be back. Riph Raph was right; they definitely had Earth guns strapped to their shoulders.

  “Have you come up with a plan yet?” Riph Raph asked from a spot on the floor where he was sharpening his talons. “Or are you going to stand there looking out that window until someone discovers us?”

  Marcus turned and limped across the room. “If you could remember what was in the note, maybe I could come up with a plan.”

  “I told you. I’m almost positive there wasn’t a note.”

  “Then why did you mention one in the first place?”

  The skyte dug a furrow in the floor. “The wizard said something about a note. I think. I don’t remember what.”

  “How am I supposed to figure out anything from a note you can’t remember?” Marcus ran his fingers through his hair. "Maybe you lost it,”

  “I didn’t lose it,” the skyte snapped.

  “Well whatever you did with it, it’s not here. Which means I can’t read it.”

  Riph Raph looked up, gold eyes wide. “That’s what he said. He asked if you’d read the note.”

  “How could I have read something I don’t have?”

  The skyte blinked. “I have no idea.”

  Marcus paced around the room, the rusty pole thumping with each step. “We’ve gone over this so many times, I don’t know what else to ask. He didn’t give you a note. He didn’t give me a note. So neither of us has read any note.”

  “Except for the one you found under your pillow.”

  Marcus froze, left foot in the air. The note Graehl had left him in the cabin. The one that had turned to ash after he’d read it. “Do you think that’s what Master Therapass was talking about?”

  “Could be.”

  What had it said? “Something about not trusting the wizard, I think.”

  “Because he wasn’t telling you everything,” Riph Raph added.

  Marcus stared at him. “Now you can remember?”

  Riph Raph flicked his floppy blue ears. “You told me about it when I was a skyte. Skytes are far more intelligent than birds, remember? I told you, our brains are, like, twenty times bigger.”

  “Okay, okay, good.” Marcus lowered himself to the ground to think. “So the note said not to trust the wizard because he wasn’t telling me everything. Master Therapass must have heard about the note, and he wanted to make sure I didn’t fall for it. Because . . .” He pinched his lower lip, trying to think. “Because he knew Graehl had left it, and since Graehl was the one who kidnapped me, Master Therapass wanted to make sure I realized that Graehl was a liar and a traitor.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  Marcus stared at the skyte. “What?”

  “I don’t think that’s it.” With the tip of his tail, Riph Raph flicked the dead bug he’d tried to eat earlier, as if he were a cat playing with a ball of yarn. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  After three hours of Gosh, I don’t know. Maybe there was a note or maybe there wasn’t, Riph Raph was suddenly some kind of master detective? Marcus tried to hold his temper, but it wasn’t easy.

  “What doesn’t make sense?”

  Riph Raph flicked the bug into the air and speared it with the tip of one talon. “For one thing, by the time the wizard talked to me about the note, Graehl had already taken you. Everyone knew he was a traitor. Therapass would only have needed to tell you that if he thought you were, um, not so sharp in the reasoning department.”

  Marcus had to admit he was right.

  “For another thing, how would Therapass have known about the note? We were the only ones who read it.”

  True. The note had been hidden under his pillow. If someone else had discovered the paper, it wouldn’t have meant anything to them, because the words hadn’t appeared until Marcus had touched them. And it had burned up right after.

  “Since you and I didn’t tell Master Therapass, the only one who could have told him about the note was the person who wrote it. Why would Graehl tell me not to trust Master Therapass, and then tell Master Therapass he wrote the note?”

  Had Graehl been trying to make the wizard trust him? Had he c
onfided in someone else at the camp who then gave away his secret? Were more people than Graehl involved in the deceit? So many possibilities, but so few clues. Marcus tried to think, but it was hard with the threat of being discovered at any moment.

  Riph Raph sniffed at the bug. “Maybe Graehl didn’t write the note.” He touched the bug with the tip of his tongue, made a face, and flicked it into the corner. “That’s disgusting. It tastes like boogers.”

  Marcus looked up. “Say that again.”

  “That bug tastes like boogers. You know, the long, green kind you pull out of your nose when you have a cold and it’s all backed up until—”

  “Hush.” Marcus stood up. “I asked Graehl about the note when he was taking me into the woods. He claimed not to know anything about it. I’ve been thinking it was another one of his lies. But what if it wasn’t? What if . . .”

  Like a match struck in a dark room, making everything clear, Marcus remembered something else that had happened the night he’d been kidnapped. Graehl had been carrying him back to his cabin. Marcus had screamed at the wizard, and the wizard had told him . . .

  “Sleep on my words,” Marcus whispered. “He told me to sleep on his words, that sometimes you know the right thing to do, but you have to put your finger on it.” He stared at Riph Raph, all of the pieces that had confused him finally coming together. “Sleep on my words. Put your finger on it. He was talking about the note. Master Therapass wrote me a note telling me not to trust what he said.”

  Holding her hands in front of her, Turnip stepped into the blinding light. She still thought she could hear traces of the voices that had filled her head moments before, but now they were only distant echoes, fading with every passing second.

  Why hadn’t the fire destroyed her? It should have. It was made to destroy those without magic, and clearly she had none.

  Except . . . something was different about her. Turnip had felt the vortex try to react with her body, and then . . . pull back. In some way, it couldn’t tear her apart the way it had done to everyone else. She felt like she should know why, only the reason was lost with everything else she couldn’t remember.

  She walked through the light for what seemed like a very long time. Unable to see in any direction, she might have been passing through deserts, mountains, or forests. She might have been within arm’s reach of monsters, traps, or unknown dangers of any kind. She might have been walking in circles. But she wasn’t. She felt an odd assurance that she was going the right way.

  At last, the light began to fade—or maybe her eyes had finally adjusted to the brightness. In the distance, a dark rectangle came into view. As she drew closer, she made out a door—twice as tall as she was and nearly as wide as it was tall—made from the same black stone as Fire Keep.

  In the center of the door was a flaming symbol, which again tugged at the memories she couldn’t recall. Standing on tiptoes, she traced her finger along the shape, which had a loop on one end and a sort of curlicue on the other. For some reason, the word water came into her head—although there wasn’t any water to be seen.

  She stepped back and studied the door. Was this one of the gates the fire elementals had told her about? If so, trying to enter it without magic might be the most dangerous thing she could do. She could still go back. Now that she knew the vortex wouldn’t destroy her, she might be able to learn more that would help her here. Maybe she could convince the lizard to let her read his book. And there were plenty of other people she could help.

  She looked back the way she had come, and something on the floor caught her attention. It was a blue ball—her retinentia. It must have followed her into the vortex. But something was different about it. The magical flames, which hadn’t affected her, had cracked the surface of the globe in so many places that the clouds inside were only blue blurs. It was a wonder the ball was still holding together at all. Even now, it shivered slightly, and another crack, larger than the others, ran across one side.

  Those were her memories. The Pyrinths had warned her against viewing them. That her nightmares were better left alone. But what if the globe contained something she needed to know? So many times since she’d awoken in Fire Keep, she’d felt on the verge of some important revelation. Could touching the retinentia—even if doing so caused her unbearable pain—help her to understand why she was here?

  Yellow light flashed on the globe, and another crack formed across the top.

  “Stop fooling around and help me think,” Marcus said.

  Riph Raph, who was lying on his back, scratched his stomach. “I think best when I’m getting a belly rub. What are we thinking about again?”

  Marcus banged his pole on the wall, knocking loose a carpet of green mold. “What was Master Therapass warning us not to trust him about? It has to be something important, or he wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.”

  “Um-hum. Um-hum.” Riph Raph nodded thoughtfully. “I never trusted that beard of his. Scraggly and full of weird things. Kind of freaked me out, if you want to know the truth. I definitely didn’t trust him when he turned into a wolf—all those sharp teeth. And remember that flying cookie jar with . . .”

  Marcus tuned him out. He needed to know what the wizard had said to him that wasn’t the truth. But more than that, he wished he could understand why Master Therapass had lied to him. The idea that the wizard might not trust him stung. What hurt worse was that Marcus hadn’t trusted the wizard. The only reason he’d gone with Graehl in the first place was because he’d thought Master Therapass and Tankum had failed Kyja.

  “His beady eyes,” Riph Raph said—still listing things about Master Therapass he didn’t trust. “And that robe. Did you ever notice how many things he pulled out of it? And Kyja. How he said we couldn’t rescue her. It also occurs to me that I’ve never seen him eat cheese. Not a single slice. Do you think he could be hiding some sort of allergy?”

  “Kyja,” Marcus muttered. He’d been so sure that there had to be a way to save her, but the wizard had insisted it was impossible to . . .

  Wait. What if that’s what the wizard had lied about? Marcus had been so disappointed when Therapass and Tankum appeared to have given up. What if they hadn’t? Marcus walked slowly around the room.

  “Let’s say that Master Therapass thought there might be a way to save Kyja. What’s the first thing he’d do?”

  Riph Raph stopped scratching himself and rolled over. “Rescue her.”

  “Right.” Marcus wanted to think the wizard would have come to him about a rescue, but most of the time Kyja had been trapped, he’d been moping in a prison cell. “Since he didn’t save her, we have to assume he couldn’t for some reason. But why wouldn’t he say so? Why pretend that he’d given up?”

  “Because . . . that was part of the plan?”

  “Yes, but part of what plan? All they had to do was tell me that they had a plan to rescue Kyja, and I never would have gone with Graehl. I never would have gotten captured, and the Dark Circle wouldn’t have learned that I couldn’t be sent to the shadow realm, and—”

  Marcus stared at Riph Raph. Riph Raph stared at Marcus. What if Master Therapass’s plan was for Marcus to end up in the shadow realm all along?

  “We’re here to save Kyja!” they both said at once.

  21: So Close

  Turnip looked from the door to the ball. She shuddered, remembering how the woman in Fire Keep had reacted to seeing her memories. Turnip brushed her hair back from her face. Did she really want to see the person she loved the most murdering her? Did she want to find out how she’d lost her magic? She liked to believe the best about people. What would seeing something like that do to her?

  On the other hand, she’d come here for a reason. If her suffering allowed her to discover that reason—to understand a little bit more about her background—wasn’t there a chance that her memories could help her find a way to get through the gate?

  The globe cracked again, and a tiny blue drop of liquid—of her memories—leaked o
ut. There was no more time. She had to decide now. Biting her lower lip, she reached for the retinentia.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” Marcus said.

  Riph Raph, who was perched by the window, looked over his shoulder. “You’d better figure it out fast. I think they’re closing in. Four more soldiers in the last five minutes, and lots of snifflers.”

  Marcus placed his hands flat on the ground. Master Therapass had claimed that the Dark Circle was protecting the realm of shadows because they wanted to put Marcus into it. But it wasn’t until the Master forced Marcus to reveal what he knew that the Dark Circle sent him here. Which meant that either the wizard was wrong, or he’d told the story as an elaborate trick to get the Dark Circle to send Marcus to the realm of shadows.

  What if, in their search for Kyja, Master Therapass and Tankum had discovered that there was only one place Marcus could reach out to her from? The army outside the Unmakers’ cavern had been too strong to get past. Maybe that’s what Therapass and Tankum had been trying to do while Marcus had been training. With no way to get him into the realm of shadows on their own, they had to trick the Master into doing it for them.

  If that was true, it meant . . . Marcus’s throat tightened until he could barely breathe.

  Graehl had been in on the plan the whole time.

  Master Therapass had sent him to the Windlash Mountains. Having spent more time there than anyone, he would have known that there was no way in. Had he contacted the Dark Circle to convince the Master he was on their side? With as much time as Graehl had spent around the Master, he had to be aware that there was a good chance that returning to the Dark Circle was a death sentence.

  Marcus remembered the way Graehl had looked at him when the Master’s dagger had plunged into his chest.