Water Keep

by J. Scott Savage

A horrible screaming filled the air, tearing at Kyja’s eardrums. Overhead the clouds began to spin like an upside-down whirlpool. Multiple bolts of lightning crashed to the ground, starting several patches of grass on fire. A huge, dark shape swooped out of the clouds and landed on the ground just behind the Thrathkin S’Bae, towering over them. At its appearance, the cloaked figures dropped to their knees.

  Moonlight glimmered against its blood-red scales. Bony, red wings flapped from its serpent-like body. Talons the size of the mist steed ripped up the ground. It opened its mouth, revealing double rows of glittering teeth, and gave another mind-numbing scream. It was the creature from Kyja’s amulet—from Marcus’s brand.

  “It’s a Summoner,” Master Therapass shouted. “Run!”

  For a moment Kyja sat frozen, staring at the Summoner as it swayed gently back and forth. The creature raised its claw, and the sky above Master Therapass opened. A funnel of twisting fire shot down from the sky, knocking the wizard to the ground.

  When Master Therapass looked up at her, Kyja saw a trickle of blood dripping from his cheek. She tried to leap from the mist steed’s back, but the wizard held out his hand.

  “Leave,” he gasped, “while you still have time.”

  “No.” Kyja tried to climb off Galespinner’s back, but the mist steed reared up on its back legs.

  “We can help you,” Marcus cried.

  The wizard shook his head and waved both hands toward them. “Galespinner, go now!”

  Instantly the mist steed turned and raced down the hill.

  “We have to do something,” Marcus shouted in Kyja’s ear.

  But what could they do? The Fallen Ones were everywhere now. Not a few dozen like there had been back at the Westland Woods, but hundreds, filling the night air with their grunts and cries.

  “He can protect himself,” she said, hoping it was true.

  “Over here,” Riph Raph called from overhead. The skyte shot out a ball of flame to show them which way to go, and Galespinner changed direction.

  A two-headed snake with rotting green scales rose up from the grass, and the mist steed leapt over it, just clearing its dirt-crusted fangs.

  “Look out,” Riph Raph shouted down at them, and Kyja watched a humpbacked figure with a skull-like face launch a deadly sharp spear. His throw was on target, but just before the spear hit them, Kyja heard Marcus mutter something that sounded like breeze, and the spear sailed off to the left.

  Creatures appeared all around, and the mist steed was forced to constantly cut left and right to avoid them. Kyja had no idea where they were, or how far they’d gone. She looked back toward the hill but couldn’t see Master Therapass anywhere.

  “Thrathkin S’Bae!” Marcus shouted.

  Kyja turned to see one of the dark-cloaked figures raise his staff. A second later a ball of green fire crackled through the air. Kyja leaned forward, putting herself between Marcus and the Thrathkin S’Bae. Amazingly the fire bounced off her, directly back at the dark wizard, and Kyja caught a glimpse of surprise on his shadowed face before he was knocked off his feet.

  “Nice one,” Marcus said.

  Riph Raph flew just above Kyja’s shoulder. “I think we’re safe now, we—”

  Suddenly, Galespinner stumbled, and Kyja and Marcus were nearly thrown off her back. Before the mist steed could regain her footing, there was a loud twang, and something dropped over them.

  “A trap!” Marcus shouted as a net descended.

  The mist steed reared into the air, pawing at the net, but the ropes pulled tight, jerking them all to the ground. Kyja had the wind knocked out of her. Gasping for breath, she turned her head to

  see Riph Raph clawing at the ropes from inside. Past him, one Thrathkin S’Bae approached the net cautiously, its staff held up before it.

  “Return to the grave,” Marcus screamed holding out his hand.

  Kyja knew he was trying to duplicate the spell he’d seen Master Therapass cast, but he lacked either the strength or the knowledge, or both. The Thrathkin S’Bae had paused at his words, but now it surged forward, confident of success.

  Kyja knew what she had to do. She might not be able to save herself, but she wouldn’t let them get Marcus. Closing her eyes, she gripped her amulet and focused on her memory of Marcus floating in the mist. The image came instantly.

  “Kyja, no!” she heard Marcus shout distantly.

  Just as it had before, the golden rope appeared before her eyes, and along with it the voice. Bring him to you. Use your magic. Your powerful magic.

  But this time Kyja was ready. No! she cried out inside her head. Steeling herself against the pull of whatever waited in the mist for Marcus, Kyja forced herself to shake off its power. The rope winked out of sight, and Kyja thought she felt a sense of surprise and anger. Before the presence could try any other tricks, she reached out to the floating Marcus. Using all her strength, she pushed him as hard as she could.

  It worked. One second he was drifting in front of her, and the next second, he was gone. She opened her eyes, and Marcus was no longer in the net.

  “Good-bye,” she whispered. “Be safe on Ert.”

  She braced herself as the Thrathkin S’Bae closed in. One of them leaned over her, and something strange happened. She felt a tug on her middle as if someone had grabbed her robe. She looked down, but nothing was there. Sudden terror flared inside her head. The thing in the mist. Had it managed to capture her after all?

  “Ghet tei nak,” one of the figures grunted. “Where is the boy?”

  “Gone,” Kyja said.

  The tug came again. Kyja tried to shake it off.

  The Thrathkin S’Bae reached toward Kyja, but before its black-gloved hand could touch her, she felt herself jerked so hard it seemed as if she would turn inside out.

  All at once everything disappeared, and she was falling.

  Chapter 36

  Home

  Kyja came to with a start. She raised her arm, trying to shield herself from the Thrathkin S’Bae. But something was wrong. The tall grass she’d been lying in was gone, replaced by fine sand that burned her skin. And it was daytime. The sun beat down with a fierce heat she didn’t recognize. She rolled over and felt a stab in the side of the leg.

  “Ouch,” she cried. She reached for her leg, and needle-sharp teeth bit her hand.

  “Oh!” She pulled her hand back to find three sharp spines sticking out of her finger.

  “Careful. That’s a prickly pear cactus. There’re lots of them around here.”

  “Marcus?” She shielded her eyes from the sun, sure she must be hallucinating. “How did you get here?”

  Marcus scratched the back of his head. “I’m pretty sure you sent me. Let me get those cactus spines.”

  As Marcus scooted across the sand to her, Kyja saw the way his right leg twisted beneath him. “Your leg?”

  He shrugged. “Guess I’ll need to get used to crawling everywhere again. Unless someone’s conveniently left an unused wheelchair nearby.” He tried to play it off as nothing, but Kyja could see the way his disability embarrassed him, and she quickly changed the subject.

  “Where are we?” she asked as Marcus pulled the quills from her hand and leg. She’d never seen anything like the landscape that surrounded them. Unending waves of the same dun-colored sand without a tree in sight, and in the distance, high, red cliffs.

  Marcus tossed the needles aside and pointed to a small, dusty-green plant with purple flowers. “Careful, that’s another prickly pear.” He scanned the area. “I don’t think we’re in Arizona. Maybe Nevada. Or possibly Utah.”

  “Arizona? Utah?” Understanding dawned on her, and Kyja’s heart leapt in her throat. “Are we on . . .”

  “Earth?” Marcus chuckled. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

  Standing up unsteadily, she looked around. Heat baked up from the sand through the soles of her slippers. This was her world—her home. “It’s . . . ugly.”

  Marcus laughed out loud. “Well it’s not all
this bad,” he said with a smile. “I think you set us down in the middle of a desert.”

  “What’s a desert?” Kyja asked.

  “This is a desert,” he said, sitting on the hot ground. He kicked at the sand and something almost the same color as the ground moved.

  “What’s that?” Kyja squawked, dancing backward.

  Marcus studied the long-tailed creature crawling sluggishly across the sand. “Looks like some kind of lizard.”

  “Who’s calling me a lizard?” the lizard growled, cocking its head. One eye turned right and the other looked left.

  “Riph Raph?” Kyja gasped.

  “Why does your voice sound so strange?” The lizard asked. It waggled its front legs and jumped a few inches into the air before falling back to the sand. “Where are we? And what’s wrong with my wings?”

  Kyja gawked down at the lizard, unable to believe it was actually Riph Raph. “You don’t have any wings.”

  “What!” The lizard twisted its head around to look back at its body, and its already bulgy eyes bulged even more. “What happened to me?”

  Kyja pressed her hands to her mouth, trying to keep from giggling. “You’re a . . . lizard.”

  “I’m a what?” The lizard danced angrily around on the sand, shaking its front legs. It opened its mouth, and a long pink tongue unfurled.

  “Awk,” he cried, sticking out his tongue. “What’s this in my mouth and why can’t I breathe fire?”

  Unable to stop herself, Kyja giggled helplessly, and Marcus soon joined in.

  “I told you,” Marcus said. “There are no such things as skytes on Earth. I guess a lizard is the closest thing we have. I think you’re a chameleon. They don’t have any middle ears, so they can only hear vibrations through the ground and things. That’s probably why we sound funny to you.”

  “I don’t want to be a lizard,” Riph Raph cried. “I won’t be a lizard! Change me back now.”

  “Actually, chameleons are pretty cool,” Marcus said. “They can change colors, and I think if their tails fall off, they grow new ones. A family I used to live with had one as a pet.”

  “I . . . am . . . not . . . a . . . pet!” Riph Raph screamed. Puffing up his cheeks in anger, he accidentally uncurled his tongue onto the ground, covering the sticky pink tip with sand. “Ack. Ack.” He coughed and spat, trying to wipe off the grains of sand.

  “It could be worse,” Kyja said. “You could still be trapped in the Thrathkin S’Bae’s net.” All at once, understanding dawned on her, and she turned to Marcus, her face blanching. She could still have been trapped with the Thrathkin S’Bae too—should have been trapped.

  “You brought me here, didn’t you?”

  Marcus shrugged, averting his gaze. “I guess. I’m not really sure.”

  “But how did you?”

  Finally he looked up at her, his expression both firm and embarrassed. “I told you not to send me, but you did anyway. For just a minute I found myself in the between place. I knew you were trying to send me back to Earth. I didn’t want to leave you and Riph Raph alone with the Fallen Ones. I tried to hold on to you. When you pushed, I must have pulled you with me. Riph Raph, too.”

  “You held on?” Kyja stared at him, feelings at war with each other inside her. He’d saved her life, and Riph Raph’s. But he’d taken a huge chance. “What if instead of pulling us with you, you’d stayed on Farworld? You risked your life.”

  Marcus stared back. “So did you.”

  Kyja swallowed. “That’s . . . different.”

  “It isn’t. But that doesn’t matter, because we’re here, whether we like it or not. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

  Kyja studied the forbidding landscape. She’d never seen anything like it in her world. Not even in pictures. It was terribly hot, and neither of them had any water. Their food bag apparently hadn’t come across with them. “I could try to send you back,” she said hesitantly.

  “No.” Marcus shook his head at once. “The Thrathkin S’Bae are still there. Probably the Summoner, too.” They were both silent at the thought of the great, winged creature that had brought fire crashing down from the sky.

  “What about Master Therapass?” Kyja said. “What if he’s hurt or captured?”

  Marcus sighed. “Like you said, he can protect himself without having to worry about us. That’s probably why he stayed up on the hill—to keep the Dark Circle focused on him so we’d have a chance of escaping.”

  Kyja knelt on the hot sand and ran her finger along Riph Raph’s new, pebbly skin. “Did you see Master Therapass?” she asked the brown lizard. “While you were flying?”

  Riph Raph shook his ridged head. “I wouldn’t worry. He was probably just waiting for the three of us to get safely away before he fried that overgrown snake with a fireball.”

  “I hope so,” Kyja said. She looked from Marcus to the miles of empty desert. “This is your world. What do you think we should do?”

  Marcus wiped the sweat from his forehead and shifted his weight from one side of his body to the other. “We’ve got to get out of the sun soon, or we’ll die of heat or thirst or both.”

  The two of them searched the barren landscape. Other than the cliffs, which were much too far to reach on foot, there was no sign of shade anywhere.

  Cupping her palm above her eyes, Kyja pointed toward a dark smudge far to the west. “Does that look like something to you?”

  “Where?” Marcus asked, looking in the direction she pointed.

  “Over there. Way off to the left of the little hill in the distance. If you squint your eyes, it almost looks like a building.”

  Marcus studied the horizon. “I guess it could be,” he said with a dubious frown. “But even if it is, it’s a lot farther than it looks. The desert plays tricks on your eyes. The sun would cook us before we got halfway there.”

  “What other choice do we have?” Kyja asked, fanning her face with her hands. Her robe, which had been so comfortable on Farworld, felt like a hot blanket, cooking her inside. “Come on.” She picked up Marcus’s staff and started to leave, but Marcus caught the edge of her cloak.

  “Wait.” Marcus glanced up at the bright desert sky, absently running his fingers through his hair. “I wonder . . .”

  “What?” Kyja asked, flapping the front of her robe. Whatever they were going to do, it had to be soon.

  Marcus stared hard at the ground.

  “The sun’s gone to his head,” Riph Raph said. “It’s baked his brain.” Of the three of them, the now-lizard seemed the least bothered by the heat.

  Ignoring Riph Raph, Marcus picked up a bone-dry sagebrush branch and began tossing it in the air with a faraway look.

  “I think it might work,” he said. He let the stick drop to the ground, pinched his eyes shut with an expression of deep concentration, and began mumbling something Kyja couldn’t understand. Immediately the air just above their heads began to waver.

  “What—” Riph Raph started to speak. But Kyja shushed him, pressing her finger to her lips. Something strange was happening. A silver-tinted circle was slowly growing a few feet above and behind Marcus. Looking through it was like looking at the desert through a lens of flowing water. The sand behind him shifted and danced beneath the circle’s quivering surface.

  As Marcus continued to mumble something that sounded like thicken, the circle grew until it was nearly six feet across, almost like a giant—

  With a gasp, Kyja realized the sun no longer burned against her skin quite so intently. Looking down, she could see a clear shadow on the desert floor that continued to grow darker as the circle above them grew more and more solid. It was an umbrella—an umbrella made entirely of air.

  When the circle had grown so dark that gazing up through it was like looking at the night sky, Marcus finally opened his eyes. Beads of sweat rolled off his forehead and cheeks, but he was smiling widely.

  “I thought you said there was no magic on Ert,” Kyja said, marveling at how
much cooler it felt in the shade of Marcus’s circle.

  “I guess I was wrong.” As Marcus wiped a hand across his face, Kyja noticed the way his fingers trembled. It was clear the magic he’d used to make the umbrella had taken more out of him than the shield Master Therapass had taught him on Farworld.

  Chapter 37

  Spies Everywhere

  o you want to stop and rest?” Kyja asked.

  “Just for . . . a . . . minute.” Marcus tried not to show how exhausted his muscles were, but he couldn’t help the way his watery arm and leg collapsed him to the sand as soon as he stopped moving, or the way every breath seemed harder to draw than the last.

  Heat was no longer a problem. As the sun began to disappear on the western horizon, the blisteringly hot air was getting a chilly edge to it. But they were still far from the building—if that’s even what it was—and he wasn’t sure how much farther he could go on. He’d been okay at first, but now he couldn’t seem to go more than a few hundred feet without stopping. Even his good arm and leg were nearly played out.

  “Maybe I could carry you or something?” Kyja suggested.

  “No!” he said, his eyes blazing. “I just need a minute, okay?”

  “Fine.” Kyja leaned against the side of a wind-smoothed rock and emptied sand out of her slippers for the fourth time that afternoon. “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

  “No. But I’m sure I don’t want to go back the way we came.” Marcus stared longingly at the object that had grown from a smudge to a blob, hoping it didn’t turn out to be nothing but a bunch of rocks. He flexed his arms and stretched out his leg, wincing at the pain. He had to go on somehow.

  Maintaining the air umbrella had kept the sun from burning their skin, but it had also drained him much more than he’d expected. He didn’t know if doing magic on Earth was harder than on Farworld or if it was the type of spell he had performed. Either way, his head ached almost as badly as his body from the effort, and he’d been hugely relived to release the umbrella once the sun had dropped low enough in the sky.

  Kyja pointed toward a shimmer in the distance. “Is that one water?”