Fire Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  Riph Raph checked to make sure he was still in one piece.

  “What happened?” Kyja asked. “Why am I still here?”

  “Where’s the door?” Marcus asked. “Did we fail?”

  “I don’t think so.” Master Therapass’s eyes were filled with wonder as he stared up at the sky. “No. I don’t think so at all.”

  Marcus and Kyja looked upward together and stared at a long white line that had appeared in the evening sky.

  It was the vapor trail from a plane flying overhead.

  40: A New World

  Marcus and Kyja waited outside the door to Master Therapass’s office. It had been six months since Earth and Farworld had combined, and he still couldn’t get over the weird combinations of magic and technology he ran into every day, like the elevator that went from the top of the tower to the dungeon while chatting about the weather, local politics, and the chances of fire elementals defeating water elementals in an upcoming debate.

  After a minute, a fairy with a postage-stamp-sized wireless tablet opened the door and ushered them inside. In some ways, the room looked like the wizard’s study Marcus remembered. Shelves still covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Only now, they were as likely to hold a digital music player or a charging station as a jar of bat’s eyes or a vial of powdered frog tongue.

  As soon as they came in, Master Therapass jumped to his feet and hugged them both. “It’s good to see you. I was starting to think you might have outgrown the town. It doesn’t seem nearly as big as it used to.”

  Kyja shook her head. “Terra ne Staric will always be home. We’ve been spending some time visiting friends—and family.” Her eyes twinkled. “I have a baby brother. Did you know that? He’s only three years old, and already he can do magic better than my mom.

  The wizard smiled. “And you? Are you still . . . ?”

  “Immune to magic?” Kyja raised her hands. “So far. No one’s sure why. Cascade thinks it could be because I’m from Earth but was on Farworld when the worlds combined. Some weird combination that doesn’t seem to have affected anyone else.”

  “I’m sorry,” the wizard said.

  “I’m not.” Kyja laughed. “Maybe that will change some day. But for now, I’m kind of enjoying being the way I am. So many Earth things don’t require magic. Also, it’s kind of neat to know that I’m the only person in the whole world magic doesn’t affect. Besides, someone told me once that the most powerful magic isn’t spells or wands or potions.”

  “But what’s inside you,” the wizard finished. “Who you are, what you do, and most importantly of all, what you may become. You’ve certainly lived up to that.” He turned to Marcus. “With Farworld well, I see that . . .”

  “My leg and arm aren’t healed?” Marcus asked.

  The wizard nodded. “Opening the gate should have broken the link between your health and Farworld’s. With the new combinations of magic and medicine, it would appear that you have plenty of options.”

  “I do,” Marcus said. “I could be like everyone else tomorrow. But . . .”

  “I used to want magic more than anything,” Kyja said. “Not because of what I could do with it, but because it would make me like everyone else.”

  Marcus nodded. “And I wanted to have my arm and leg healed because I thought it would make me whole. But I realized I’m not a broken version of someone else. I’m a perfect version of me.”

  Kyja took Marcus’s hand in hers. “The things we were able to accomplish weren’t in spite of our differences but because of them. Our differences make us who we are.”

  Marcus patted his magic wheelchair. “Besides, you should see what this thing can do. I won’t be able to get a driver’s license for a couple more months, but I’m not sure I need one anyway. Divum fixed this thing up so I can go faster than most cars and soar from zero to a thousand feet in less than six seconds.”

  The wizard laughed. “You’ve learned everything I could have hoped for.” He looked around. “I don’t see Riph Raph.”

  Marcus grinned. “He’s still a little bit freaked out about coming here. He says skytes never intentionally enter a wolf’s den.”

  “Besides,” Kyja said. “He’s been a little preoccupied ever since meeting Sasha.”

  The wizard raised an eyebrow.

  “A girl skyte,” Marcus said. “Who apparently has a thing for little blue fireballs.”

  “I see.” Master Therapass chuckled. “Love in the skies.”

  Marcus raised his wheelchair a few inches and moved close enough to take Kyja’s hand. “When you asked us to come visit today, you said something about finding a clue as to why Earth and Farworld combined when we opened the drift.”

  “Do you understand why it happened?” Kyja asked. “Was it something we did wrong?”

  “One moment.” The wizard pulled a lightweight laptop out of his robe and waved his wand at the screen. “This device is fascinating. Did you know I can access every record in Land Keep without ever leaving my office? It’s like magic.”

  Marcus grinned. The internet had always seemed a little bit like magic to him too. And now, it definitely had some magical elements added to it.

  “Here we are.” The wizard waved his hand again, and a mass of text flew through the air. Marcus tried to read it as it scrolled by, but he didn’t recognize the characters. “Ever since I began researching Earth and Farworld, the links between them seemed unusually large in number.”

  “Like the fact that when we moved on one world, we moved on the other,” Kyja said.

  “Or how many places in both worlds seemed unusually similar,” Marcus added. “And that some of the animals and plants in both worlds were the same.”

  The wizard nodded. “I found many more similarities that I won’t bore you with now. Suffice it to say that the coincidences made me reexamine things. It seemed far too unlikely that two worlds would randomly combine when a door was opened between them. Not to mention that the combination could occur so seamlessly. I went back to the oldest records I could find. I believe that it is not a mistake, or a coincidence. I think that once, long ago, Earth and Farworld were the same planet.”

  Marcus and Kyja stared at him.

  “How could that be?” Kyja asked. “They were so different. Until we opened the drift, Earth had no magic at all.”

  “It did once,” the wizard said. “Look at the oldest Earth records, and you’ll discover stories of dragons, alchemy, and spell casters. Things that until recent events, had been viewed as fantasy. I believe that a cataclysm of some kind—most likely manmade—split the world in two, leaving one half with magic and the other with technology. I believe the four you spoke of meeting in Fire Keep may know more about it, and that they were waiting for the right time to reunite the worlds.”

  Kyja sat up straight. “The prophecy!”

  “What about it?” Marcus asked.

  “We always thought we were supposed to save Farworld and Earth from some force threatening to tear them apart. But it makes so much more sense if they were once the same world. He shall make whole that which was torn asunder. Restore that which was lost. And all shall be as one. It was talking about bringing Earth and Farworld back together all along.”

  Marcus shook his head. Of course. How could he have missed that? It seemed so obvious now. “That’s why Kyja and I were supposed to save our own worlds. We were never trying to open a doorway. And the gate wasn’t a portal; it was a lock. When we turned the key, we brought our worlds back together.”

  “What about the realm of shadows?” Kyja asked. “Was that a third world?”

  The wizard shut his computer. “I don’t think so. I don’t have any proof for my theory, and I can’t find anything about it in the writings I’ve searched so far. But my best guess is that when Earth and Farworld split, it wasn’t complete. A small bit of overlap remained. Like when the two of you jumped to each other’s worlds, a small part of you remained behind. I think the realm of shadows was the intersecti
on of the split—a place where technology and magic could coexist.”

  Marcus nodded. That made sense too.

  “What now?” the wizard asked. “What are the two of you up to next? I’ve heard there are a lot of people who’d like to meet the boy and girl who brought their worlds together. You could both be quite famous.”

  “No thanks,” Marcus said. “I’ve had enough of fame.”

  Kyja nodded. “Now that Earth people have magic and Farworld people have technology, it seems like so much good can be done,” she said. “A lot of people need help, and we thought who better to help them than a couple of kids who’ve been to both worlds?”

  Marcus rubbed his thumb across the arm of his wheelchair. “Also, this may sound crazy, but no one seems to know what happened to the people in the realm of shadows when Earth and Farworld combined. And I was thinking . . .”

  Kyja squeezed his hand and nodded encouragingly.

  Marcus blew out a long slow breath. “What you said when we were planning the attack on the Dark Circle, about no one being beyond hope. I’ve thinking that even though my dad kind of went off the deep end, that maybe there’s still a part of him—the part my mom fell in love with—that is still a good person.”

  “Like the good part of Bonesplinter that was inside the Summoner,” Kyja said.

  “I’d like to see if I could maybe find him and bring him around.” Marcus stared at his hands, feeling his face burn. He was sure the wizard would tell him it was a terrible idea—that the man was definitely dead, and that if he wasn’t, that he was still too dangerous to try and help.

  “That doesn’t sound crazy at all,” Master Therapass said. “In fact, it sounds like a wonderful plan.” The wizard looked at Marcus and Kyja and beamed. He tugged at his beard and nodded. “Even after meeting all of the elementals I have, after spending my whole life learning spells, and after seeing technology I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams, I have to say, the most powerful magic I have ever seen is inside the two of you.”

  Epilogue

  “Double or nothing," Folium said, leaning over the log. His leaves shook with excitement, and his dark eyes gleamed.

  “If you insist,” Mr. Z said. “But I’m telling you, I have the best jousters in the world.”

  “What is it with men and snails?” Naiad asked from a nearby pool, where she floated serenely.

  Mr. Z was so surprised by her words that he nearly tumbled off his log. “Surely you jest. Snails are the pinnacle of athletic achievement. Smooth as a glacier. Graceful as a dancer. Nimble enough to climb a perpendicular surface while carrying their houses on their backs.”

  “And slow as the movement of continents,” Nebula added from a swirl of silvery fog. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure the one on the left is alive. It hasn’t moved for as long I’ve been watching it.”

  Mr. Z winked and put a finger along the side of his nose. “It’s thinking. Plotting. Waiting for the right moment to strike. Snail jousting is not a game of speed. It’s a game of cunning.”

  “Besides,” Folium said, his wrinkly brown skin breaking into an infectious grin, “it’s not as if we’re in a rush. What are a couple of hundred centuries among friends?”

  “Do you think they’ll get it right this time around?” Naiad asked. “Will they finally use the power of magic and technology for good instead of using it to destroy each other?”

  “They haven’t before,” Nebula said. “What is this, the seventy-eighth time we’ve let them try?”

  “Seventy-ninth,” Folium said. “But who’s counting?” He flicked a twig toward the green-and-black snail. “Go on. Make your move while he’s looking the other way.”

  “No fair,” Mr. Z said. “That’s cheating.”

  Naiad reached out a languid hand and brushed a couple of fish swimming around her head. “I have a good feeling about the boy and girl. I bet they can actually keep their worlds from blowing apart again.”

  Folium ran his twigs through his leaf hair. “I’ll take that bet. Double or nothing.”

  Acknowledgments

  Over five years ago, I started writing this series to prove to myself that I couldn’t do it. The fact that you are now reading the final book is testament to the facts that a) you should always give yourself permission to try things you don’t think you can do, b) I have been blessed by many incredible people who made these books a reality, and c) I have the best readers in the world. If I tried to list everyone whose encouragement made these books possible, it would easily add another hundred pages, but I would like to recognize the following.

  The great people at Shadow Mountain who believed in these books and in me. The series would never have happened without you.

  The people who edited, drew, formatted, and did all the hard work that turns words into a book, including: Brandon Dorman, Annette Lyon, Lisa Mangum, Richard Erickson, and Mikey Brooks.

  My amazing critique group, the Women (and Men) of Wednesday night. Your feedback has been invaluable to my writing success, but your encouragement has meant even more.

  My wonderful wife Jennifer and our amazing family Nick and Erica Thurman, Scott and Natalie Savage, Jacob, Nicholas, Graysen, Lizzie, and Jack-Jack. Thanks for understanding when I disappeared into my office so many nights and for loving this series as much as I did.

  And most of all to the readers who believed in my books, loved the characters, and told me in no uncertain terms that Fire Keep was being anxiously awaited.

  I hope you love the end of this story as much as I do.

  —J Scott Savage

  Author of Farworld, Case File 13, & the new

  Mysteries of Cove Series coming Fall 2015

  About the Author

  J. Scott Savage is the author of fifteen published novels including Farworld, Case File 13, and Mysteries of Cove. He lives in a windy little valley of the Rocky Mountains with his wife Jennifer. He has four children, and three grandchildren. He enjoys reading, writing, camping, games, and visiting schools. He loves hearing from his readers, who can e-mail him at scott@jscottsavage.com