Water Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  Illustrations © 2008 Brandon Dorman

  Text © 2008 J. Scott Savage

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Shadow Mountain¨. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of Shadow Mountain.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Visit us at ShadowMountain.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Savage, J. Scott.

  Water Keep / J. Scott Savage.

  p. cm. — (Farworld ; bk. 1)

  Summary: Found in the desert as a baby by monks who named him,

  thirteen-year-old Marcus, who has been confined to a wheelchair ever

  since he can remember, knows nothing of his background and endures the

  difficulties of his daily life in various foster homes and schools by

  dreaming of Farworld, a magical place whose pull seems to be getting

  increasingly stronger.

  ISBN 978-1-59038-962-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  [1. Foundlings—Fiction. 2. People with disabilities—Fiction.

  3. Magic—Fiction. 4. Fantasy.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S25897Wa 2008

  [Fic]—dc22 2008010392

  Printed in the United States of America

  Worzalla Publishing Co., Stevens Point, WI

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To my kid brother, Mark Savage, who encouraged,

  browbeat, and cheered me all the way to the finish of this book.

  Thanks for all the years of solving Ultima games and

  reading fantasy novels. You’re the best.

  Contents

  Part 1: Escape

  1. Bonesplinter

  2. The Freak

  3. Now You See Him

  4. Crime and Punishment

  5. Secrets

  6. Getting Down from a Tree

  7. Master Therapass

  8. Magic Lessons

  9. Lost and Found

  10. The All-Seeing Eye

  11. Rhymes and Revelations

  12. The Boy in the Window

  13. Problem Solver

  14. Taking a Chance

  15. The Golden Rope

  16. An Elastic Escape

  Part 2: Discovery

  17. Poison Polly

  18. Magic and Machines

  19. The Visitor

  20. The Mimicker

  21. The Blame Game

  22. Signs

  23. Balanced Scales

  24. Questions and Answers

  25. Thrathkin S’Bae

  26. The Weather Guardians

  27. Olden

  28. The Dark Circle

  29. A Dark Fate

  30. Nowhere

  31. The Best of Intentions

  Part 3: Journey

  32. Y’sdine’s Feint

  33. Galespinner

  34. Sticks and Air

  35. Back from the Dead

  36. Home

  37. Spies Everywhere

  38. The House

  39. On the Road

  40. Fries and a Shake

  41. Wheeling and Dealing

  42. The Magic Box

  43. Discovered

  44. The Windlash Mountains

  45. Caverns and Cages

  46. The Unmakers

  47. Rhaidnan’s Hope

  48. The Cave Maze

  49. The Frost Pinnois

  50. City Walls

  Part 4: Negotiation

  51. Something Fishy

  52. Basselball

  53. The Good and the Bad

  54. Water Keep

  55. Caught

  56. Trial and Error

  57. The Verdict

  58. Outside the Walls

  59. Rescue

  60. The Plan

  61. Strange Weather

  62. Flight of the Broken Bird

  63. Dawn Chimes

  Discussion Questions

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Bonesplinter

  Bundled safe in her underground burrow with eight fuzzy babies snuggled against her warm body, the ishkabiddle woke to a curious rumbling. Her milky-white eyes—interested, but not yet frightened—slid open as she tilted her head, listening. For a moment the rumbling seemed to be fading away. Then, all at once, it grew much louder, and bits of dirt crumbled onto the ishkabiddle’s dappled, gray fur. Alarmed, she clawed her way up through the dark, dusty tunnel she had dug out years earlier, and stopped at the edge of the opening.

  Perched half-in, half-out of the burrow entrance, she paused. A pair of bald, pink feelers rose quivering from her fur-covered body. Cautiously, she slipped out of her hole and blinked. Somewhere far off a bird screeched, but that wasn’t what was making the ground tremble so the tops of the grass shivered to and fro.

  From the tips of her feelers, the ishkabiddle sent out a cloud of gray specks—each no bigger than a grain of sand. One by one, the specks floated out into the cold night air, buzzing and spinning as they bounced from one blade of grass to another. Had she found any sign of a predator, the ishkabiddle would have scurried back into her hole quick as two winks. But nothing she discovered was threatening.

  For a moment everything was perfectly still, and the insects that had gone silent resumed making their nighttime music. Without any warning, the ground exploded into the air less than ten feet away, and the ishkabiddle found herself staring into a pair of deadly yellow eyes. The glistening diamond-shaped head of a huge black snake narrowed, and its eyes—each bigger than the entire ishkabiddle—fixed on the poor, shivering creature. The snake rose out of the ground, its scaled body—thick as the trunk of a mature tree—gliding skyward.

  The ishkabiddle could not move. Her body paralyzed by fear, the poor creature could only watch as death slithered to her very doorstep. The nightmare snake opened its mouth, revealing wickedly shining fangs. Its tongue flicked out and touched the tip of the ish-kabiddle’s wilting, pink feelers.

  “Boo!” the snake said, and the ishkabiddle’s muscles turned to water. She dropped into her tunnel and rolled all the way to the bottom of her burrow where she hid, trembling, for the rest of the night.

  The iskabiddle didn’t see how the snake’s armor-like scales began to slide and change. She didn’t see how its long body twisted and shortened, or how its head filled out as its mouth and nose shrunk. Above the burrow, the snake disappeared and was replaced by a man in a flowing black cape and hood. The man raised his forked staff and slammed it on the ground with a wicked laugh.

  “Lucky for you, I’ve already had dinner,” he whispered with dark mirth. “Perhaps I’ll come back for you later.”

  But the man had no time for such trivial things now. The three moons were almost directly overhead, one a full white face staring watchfully down from the inky black sky, another an orange three-quarter, and the last a tiny reddish sliver. It was nearly midnight.

  Glancing about to be sure no one was watching, the figure stole quickly over a brush-covered hill and stopped at a tall outcropping of stone. Placing the tip of his staff into an all but invisible moss-lined crevice in the rock, he bowed his head and uttered a quick series of grunts and hisses. At once the outcropping slid aside, revealing a damp, downward-sloping tunnel.

  The man entered the opening, and the rock slammed shut behind him, turning the tunnel pitch-black. He could have lit the way with his staff, but there was no need. He could see perfectly well in the dark. He followed the passage deep into the earth over slick, wet stone. He had only been summoned here once before, and a thrill of exciteme
nt ran up his spine as he licked his dry lips, wondering what might be asked of him—and how he might turn it to his advantage.

  At last, the floor of the passageway leveled out, and the man’s keen eyes spotted a closed door in the distance. He approached the door and rapped his staff, once, three times, and once again—the heavy black metal echoing in the close corridor. The door opened, and the stench of rotted meat drifted out. The man tried not to show his disgust at the foul smell of the figure that stood before him.

  “Remove your hood,” said the creature that looked as though it had only recently pulled itself out of the grave. Though the creature’s head barely came to the man’s waist, its twisted arms and legs appeared too long for its body. From the neck down it could have been human, but the feather-covered head had the sharp beak and wide probing eyes of an owl. Body and head were coated in wet, green mold.

  The man pulled back the hood of his dark cloak, revealing a narrow face with thin, pale lips and glittering, silver eyes. A twisting scar, nearly as thick as a finger, ran from the base of his jaw to just below the hairline on his right temple.

  “You have come alone?” the owl asked.

  “Of course,” the man hissed, anxious to get away from the stink.

  “In a hurry to meet him, are you?”

  All at once the man remembered who this shriveled little creature worked for, and his calculating eyes flicked from the owl to the dark corridor beyond as he fingered the scar on the side of his face. “I only wish to be . . . prompt, so I do not keep the master waiting.”

  “Of course,” the owl said, its dark eyes gleaming. “Keeping him waiting would be unwise.”

  The creature stepped aside, and the man walked through the doorway. As he began to climb the steep staircase, a pair of eight-legged, skin-and-bone dogs appeared out of the darkness, flanking him at either side. Foam dripped off the twin tongues that dangled from their hungry-looking jaws, and their red eyes studied him voraciously.

  At the top of the stairs he paused before a long, damp-smelling hallway. The rough stone walls seemed to radiate a cold that sank deep into his bones. Beside him, the dogs snarled, urging him forward with their glowing eyes.

  The sides of the hall were lined with hundreds of strange and obscure objects, many of which even he didn’t recognize. As he passed a three-pronged spear with something like dried blood crusted on its tips, it swiveled as though waiting for a chance to strike. A few steps later, a pair of spiked balls hanging from a rusty chain rattled at his passing, and a tiny, stone statue with the face of a pig whispered, “Come closer, my pretty.”

  The robed man ignored them all, just as he ignored the many other doors behind which unknown creatures snarled and moaned. Only when he arrived at an ornate, blood-red door at the end of the hallway did he stop. As he reached for the gleaming brass latch, a pair of sharp talons mounted in the center of the door snapped closed onto his hand, and it was only with the strongest resolve that he managed not to cry out. But when the claws released their grip, the skin of his hand was unmarked.

  Silently, the door swung open, and the man stepped through.

  Inside, the icy cold of the hallway was replaced by an oppressive heat that brought beads of sweat to his forehead. Sulfur-smelling smoke swirled in the cathedral-like room, glowing orange from the light of the sputtering torches. Dimly-seen arches along the walls rose into the darkness far overhead. The man walked to the center of the room and dropped to one knee, laying his staff crosswise on the floor at his feet.

  He bowed his head, and in a voice that trembled only slightly said, “Your obedient follower desires to serve.”

  “Approach,” said a voice that sounded like the sizzle of hot steel plunged into icy water.

  The man rose and moved forward. He could see only a short distance in front of him through the swirling smoke. It wasn’t until he reached the curved steps where the smoke cleared away that he craned his neck to stare up at the two chained, red beasts watching him hungrily from either side of the stairway.

  Summoners. Terrifying creatures of mythic power.

  Even with bony wings folded against the sides of their red, serpent-like bodies and thick, magically-enhanced chains locked around their necks, they made the spit in his mouth dry up. From the razor-sharp talons—which were taller than the man—to the mouths filled with two rows of spear-like teeth, they towered almost to the ceiling of the room.

  Even more fearsome than their physical weapons was their magic, the man knew. Stories were told of how they could drive a human insane with only a look, call tornadoes out of clear skies, command the ground itself to swallow armies of the living, and summon back the dead under the control of dark magic. No one knew for sure what twisted magic was used to create such terrifying monsters. But those who dared speak of them at all agreed that somewhere deep inside the Summoners remained the warped souls of those who had once been human, twisted and defiled until nothing could stand against their dark rage.

  That the master had not one, but two Summoners under his control was a clear demonstration of the power he wielded. The thought of commanding such force made the man dizzy. And yet he had to be so very, very careful.

  Turning his eyes from the Summoners’ hypnotic gaze, he climbed the steps and approached the figure that he knew sat hidden in the shadows. The man gazed intently into the darkness, but not even his keen eyes could penetrate the gloom surrounding the jeweled throne.

  “Master, what is it you desire of me?” he asked, dropping to his knees. He tried to hide the eagerness in his voice, but he could do nothing about the way his heart thumped like a trapped animal in his chest.

  “Thirteen years I have searched,” the voice spoke from the darkness. “Armies of creatures at my disposal scoured the mountains and forests. At times I nearly despaired. It wasn’t until I ripped open the doorway that I finally knew the prize was within my grasp. And today . . . I found it.”

  The man desperately searched his memory. He knew he should understand what the Master was talking about. But he couldn’t quite . . . Then it came to him, and his throat constricted.

  “The child?” he blurted out, unable to hide his surprise. “But I thought . . .” Unconsciously, the fingers of his right hand reached toward the scar on his face, but he managed to pull them back.

  “You thought the child was dead?” the voice questioned dryly. “Everyone assumed the child’s wounds were mortal. But not I.

  I vowed to search until I touched the remains with my own hands. Now I discover the child lives and . . . there is not one, but two.”

  “Two children?” The man licked his lips, trying to decide what to make of the unexpected news. How would this play out? Was the Master giving him another chance to prove himself? To show he could be trusted with more responsibility?

  “A boy and a girl.” The voice in the darkness sounded hungry, and the man hungered as well for the rewards the Master could grant—if he succeeded in whatever task was placed before him.

  “What do you wish me to do, Master?”

  The voice was silent for a moment, as though considering the question. “You failed me once before,” it said at last.

  From his spot in front of the throne, the man couldn’t keep from trembling—not in fear, but excitement. One more chance, he thought. Only one more chance to prove I am worthy. This time his fingers did go to the scar, where they traced the twisting line that disfigured his face. His thirst for power was so strong he could feel it thrumming in his veins like a beating drum. “I won’t fail you again. Only tell me what I must do.”

  “You need not worry yourself with the girl,” the voice said. “She will be taken care of shortly. You must go to the world called Earth and take the boy.”

  A withered hand extended out of the darkness, its skin gray and papery. At the base of its longest finger, a gold ring glittered. The man had never seen the symbol carved into the top of the ring, but he’d heard about it. It showed two creatures locked in mortal batt
le. One was clearly a Summoner. The other he didn’t recognize.

  Quickly, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to the ring. The skin beneath the gold ring burned his lips with a cold fire, but he did not pull back. Instead, he imagined what it would be like to wear that ring on his own finger. He kept his mouth pressed against the wrinkled hand until it retreated into the darkness.

  “Once I have him?” the man asked.

  “Bonesplinter,” the voice said, and the man thought he heard the sound of a tongue rasp across paper-dry lips. “You have been my most faithful Thrathkin S’Bae for many years. Once you find the boy, do as you will with him. Just be sure he is dead when you are finished.”

  Chapter 2

  The Freak

  Hurry up, you losers. The freak’s gonna be here any minute.” Chet Hawkins hunched outside the entrance to the second floor dormitory of the Philo T. Justice Boys School in Cove Valley, Arizona. He peered through the doorway before turning his beefy red face back toward the small group of boys gathered around a mop bucket in the dimly-lit hallway.

  At nearly sixteen—a year older than any of the other boys, and a full head taller—Chet was the meanest kid in the school and didn’t mind proving it. He balled up his large, freckled fists, and the others immediately stepped away. “Finish up. And make sure it’s slippery!”

  Crowded together around the top of the narrow, wooden staircase, the boys had been mopping a puddle of soapy, gray water onto the splintered, oak boards of the hall floor.

  “Gimme that.” Pete Lampson, a gawky, twelve-year-old boy with greasy black hair and a neck like an underfed turkey, yanked the mop from Squint, the smaller boy standing next to him. He splashed the mop into the metal bucket, swirled it around and added a final coat to the floor in front of the top step.

  Squint tested the boards with the tip of his sneaker. As he ran his shoe across the wet boards, his foot slipped out from under him, and he nearly fell over backwards.

  “Clumsy idiot,” Chet said. He sneaked a quick peek into the dormitory again, but there was no sign of the freak’s wheelchair. Good thing, too. This was the third time he’d tried to get the kid alone. If the boys in the hallway messed it up this time, he’d pound them all.