Water Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  “No. Just another mirage.”

  The first time Kyja had seen what appeared to be a pool of water in the distance, Marcus had been unable to convince her it was an optical illusion. It was only after she chased the heat mirage for almost twenty minutes that she finally admitted he was telling her the truth.

  “I’m s-o-o-o thirsty,” she said, putting her slipper back on. “I’d give anything for a cup of water.”

  “Don’t talk about it. It just makes it worse.” Marcus pulled off his gloves and studied his right palm. His fingers throbbed and the pad of flesh just below his thumb was red and swollen where he’d accidentally brought his hand down on a prickly pear. He hoped it wasn’t infected.

  The only one who seemed to be doing all right was Riph Raph. Once he’d adjusted to the fact that he was a lizard, he’d been trying out his new abilities. Changing colors, looking in two different directions at once, catching things with his tongue.

  As Marcus and Kyja rested, he was perched silently above a small hole in the sand, with his head cocked.

  “What are you doing?” Kyja asked.

  “Quiet,” said Riph Raph. “There’s something in there. I can hear it scurrying around.”

  At that moment, a small, black spider popped its head out of the hole. In an instant, the chameleon flicked its tongue, and the spider disappeared into its mouth.

  “Delicious,” Riph Raph said, munching the spider between his teeth. He smacked his lips. “Spider guts, yum.”

  Kyja wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Maybe I’m not quite so thirsty.”

  Riph Raph grinned a strange little lizard grin and searched for another spider. “You’re just jealous.”

  “How are you feeling?” Marcus asked Kyja. “I mean other than hungry and thirsty.”

  “Hot. I hope I never see another desert again as long as I live.”

  “Me too.” Marcus grimaced. “But that’s not what I meant. I was just thinking that if I wasn’t completely in Farworld, maybe you aren’t completely on Earth. I feel better now—whole. But if . . .”

  Kyja stopped and looked at him. “You think part of me is stuck between worlds?”

  “It makes sense. Do you feel tired or weak?”

  “Of course I do. But that doesn’t have anything to do with being caught between worlds. It’s just this stupid heat.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to stay here on Earth any longer than I could stay on Farworld,” Marcus said. “We’ll have to get you back once it’s safe.”

  “Only if you come with—”

  Kyja’s words were interrupted by a strange chk-chk-chk sound—like a handful of beads being shaken.

  “What’s that?” she asked, looking toward the sound.

  “Get back,” Marcus shouted.

  Kyja turned to him with a puzzled expression.

  “It’s a rattler,” Marcus cried, and suddenly he had the strength to move again.

  “What’s a rattler?” She stared out into the dusk.

  “A rattlesnake,” he said, still trying to yank her away. “It’s poisonous.”

  “A snake!” At once Kyja’s expression changed from confusion to fear, and she nearly tumbled over Marcus as she scrambled away from the coiled serpent. Riph Raph arched his back and bared his teeth.

  “Let it be,” Marcus said “It’s scared of us. That’s why it’s rattling. If we leave it alone, it’ll leave us alone.”

  But as they backed carefully away from the snake, it uncoiled and began slithering toward them.

  “What’s it doing?” Kyja asked in a trembling voice.

  “I don’t know.”

  Marcus slid backward on the seat of his pants across the still-warm sand, not daring to take his eyes off the snake. Its diamond-shaped head swayed back and forth—its glittering, black eyes watching him as its tongue flicked in and out. Stopping a few feet away, it opened its pink mouth, revealing a pair of curved fangs, and hissed, “Marcus-s-s-s.”

  Marcus’s mouth dropped open. “Did you hear that?” he asked Kyja.

  Dipping to the ground, Kyja scooped up a handful of rocks. The first one she fired missed off to the left, but the second missile hit its target, striking one of the snake’s fat coils. As she cocked back to throw another rock, the snake glared darkly at her with its shiny black eyes before slithering off into the desert.

  Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled. Its mournful cry had a distinctly human quality to it, and Marcus remembered Master Therapass saying the Dark Circle had spies everywhere. Did that include Earth?

  “Come on,” he said. “I think we’d better get far away from here as fast as we can.”

  Chapter 38

  The House

  Can’t . . . go . . . on.” Marcus dropped his head to the sand. He couldn’t move. His arms and legs were knotted and screaming out in pain. The ground seemed to spin beneath him, and it was all he could do to keep from passing out.

  “Just rest for a minute,” Kyja said, kneeling beside him. “We have to be getting close.”

  After hours of scooting across the desert, Marcus’s muscles had gone from aching to so numb he could barely feel them anymore. He tried to sit up and couldn’t even do that. He turned his head and squinted, but the white sliver of moon barely gave any light, and beneath the twinkling stars, the wide, empty desert all looked the same.

  “Think we’re . . . lost,” he said, finally admitting he had no idea where they were.

  Riph Raph, who had been riding on Kyja’s shoulder for the last hour, was much more forthcoming with his opinion. “Of course we’re lost. Totally lost in the ugliest place I’ve ever seen. And it’s all his fault.”

  “It is not,” Kyja said. “Marcus is doing the best he can.”

  “I’d rather have taken my chances with the snake,” Riph Raph said. “At least it seemed to know where it was going.”

  Marcus stared into the wide, empty desert, licking his parched lips with a tongue that felt swollen to twice its normal size. Riph Raph was right. They were going to die out here, and it would be his fault. For a moment he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head, but there was only more black night and empty sand.

  “Look,” Kyja said, pointing. “What’s that?”

  “Where?” Marcus tried to follow the direction she was looking, but he could barely turn his head.

  “Over there. Just on the other side of those rocks.”

  He looked to the right, and what he saw made his heart leap. It was the building. So close they’d almost gone right past it.

  “Come on,” Kyja said. Putting her arm under his, she pulled him to his feet and half-supported, half-dragged him toward the building.

  But as they drew closer, they slowed to a halt. Even in the dim light of the moon, Marcus could see the small house or shack was long-since abandoned. The wooden boards of its walls were broken and scattered about. The windows were empty of glass; a few swatches of broken screen flapped from their black openings. He could just make out a slight depression where a road might once have been. If it had been a road, the sand of the desert had reclaimed it many years before.

  Kyja looked from Marcus to the house.

  “Is that what you’ve been leading us to all this time?” Riph Raph asked, rolling his eyes.

  Marcus was too tired to even try to come up with a smart reply. Instead he loosened his arm from around Kyja’s neck and collapsed to the ground.

  “Even if this one is empty, there must be other houses nearby,” said Kyja, kneeling at his side. “If we go just a little farther, we’re bound to find a road.”

  “No use,” Marcus said without looking up. “I can’t go any farther. I can’t.” He knew he would eventually die if he stayed out in the desert, but he didn’t have the strength to move.

  A few minutes later, he heard Kyja walking away. She whispered something to Riph Raph that he couldn’t make out. Good. Let her go on without him. On their own they might stand a chance. With him
slowing them down, they never would.

  He wasn’t sure how long he lay out on the sand, but he must have dozed off, because some time later he felt Kyja shaking his shoulder. He tried to sit up, but his muscles were too stiff and locked with pain to move. “I can’t,” he said, dropping back to the ground.

  But Kyja wouldn’t give up. She was tugging at his arm and leg, rolling him over. “Go without me,” Marcus rasped. He tried to pull away, but was too exhausted to manage even that.

  “Maybe you should listen to him,” Riph Raph said. “He hasn’t been much help so far.”

  “And you have?” Kyja asked sharply. She continued to pull at Marcus, and he felt himself roll onto something soft but a little scratchy.

  Opening his eyes, he found himself lying on an old wool blanket. The blanket was ragged and filled with holes. It smelled musty. “What are you doing?” he asked, trying to sit up.

  Instead of answering, Kyja walked around to the front of the blanket and picked up a pair of splintery boards. As she lifted the boards, the blanket rose up too, settling Marcus into a kind of blanket-and-board hammock.

  “See?” she said, taking a couple of steps forward. “I can pull you this way.”

  When Marcus realized what she intended, he tried to push himself off the blanket with his exhausted arms and legs.

  “Stop that,” Kyja said, dropping the boards. Marcus had managed to get himself halfway off the blanket, but Kyja lifted his legs and pushed him back on.

  “I won’t let you carry me,” he said, scowling. “It’s not right.”

  “Why?” she said, planting her hands on her hips. “Because I’m a girl?”

  Before Marcus could sputter out an answer, she was standing over him with a scowl of her own. “You think you’re better than me, because you’re a boy? That you always have to be the hero? That’s you’re stronger? Well, it doesn’t work that way. You probably saved my life back by the woods with your magic, and we could have died out here if it wasn’t for your umbrella. I may not have magic. But now it’s my turn to save you. We’re getting out of this desert, and we’re going to do it together. Then you’re going to show me these machines you’ve been telling me about.”

  Marcus stared up at her, his jaw clenched and his muscles quivering with rage. He shook his head, biting his lower lip. “It’s not because you’re a . . . a girl. It’s because I’m . . . a cripple. It’s bad enough I can’t help you. But I can’t even help myself. Don’t you see?” He glared at his useless arm and leg. “I’m broken. I’m no good.”

  Kyja knelt beside him, her eyes soft and silvery in the moonlight. “I’m broken, too. When you were in the jaws of the mimicker, I wanted more than anything to cast a spell that would free you. But I couldn’t. And I couldn’t do anything to protect us from the sun. Because when it comes to magic, I’m crippled as well. By ourselves maybe we aren’t much. But together . . .” She let her words fade into the cool desert night air.

  Marcus thought over what she’d said. As much as it hurt his pride to admit it, he did need her help. But maybe she was right. With his useless arm and leg, he’d always thought of himself as a burden to others. It wasn’t until this very minute that he realized Kyja might need his help as much as he needed hers.

  “Okay,” he finally agreed, barely able to raise his arm. “It’s a deal. We’re in this together. You help me, and I help you.”

  She shook his hand. “Deal.”

  A little over an hour later—after too many rest stops to count, and one spill where Kyja accidentally rolled Marcus onto an angry Riph Raph—Kyja spotted something else. This time it wasn’t an abandoned building, though. Kyja didn’t know what the double red lights and row of smaller orange lights were, but to Marcus they were unmistakable. And now that he was listening for it, he could just make out the soft rumble of an idling diesel engine.

  It was a truck—an eighteen-wheeler, parked on the side of the road while its driver caught a little sleep. The trailer was loaded with large rectangles that he thought might be bales of hay.

  “What is it?” Kyja asked with a worried look on her face. “Is it another kind of creature?”

  Marcus grinned. “Come on. I think we just found our way out of here.”

  Chapter 39

  On the Road

  Kyja woke to an ear-splitting wail that shook her entire body. Forgetting where she was and how she’d gotten there, she abruptly sat up and was nearly blown off her knees by a blast of cold wind.

  “Careful,” Marcus shouted, pulling her back into the nest they’d made by digging into several of the hay bales. “Keep your head down or someone will see you.”

  Rubbing her eyes, she remembered helping Marcus climb onto the back of what he’d called a semi—one of Ert’s machines. When she’d gone to sleep, it had been night and the semi had been standing still. But now it was morning, and the semi was jittering and shaking in an alarming fashion. Lifting her head just above the top of the bale of sweet-smelling dry grass, she snuck a peek over the edge of the truck and gasped with shock.

  The semi was not just moving; it was hurtling faster than she’d ever seen anything travel—faster even than the mist steed—along a great black road wide enough for three or four dozen people to walk side-by-side. And racing all around it were more machines of all different colors. Some were as big as the semi, and some were smaller, but all of them had people trapped inside—clinging to the machines for their very lives.

  “What kind of magic is this?” she asked Marcus, her voice filled with terror. “We’d have been better off with the Thrathkin S’Bae.”

  Marcus rubbed at his arm and leg and groaned in pain. “I told you, it’s not magic. It’s just a truck. We’ve gone farther in one night than we could have in three days riding Galespinner.”

  Again, the earsplitting wail filled the air, and Kyja ducked, pressing her hands to the sides of her head.

  Gently, Marcus took her hands from her ears and said, “Don’t be afraid. That’s just an air horn. Drivers use them to warn other drivers. Or sometimes just to be rude.”

  Kyja slowly lowered her hands, her heart thudding. “Drivers? Wizards drive these machines the way people drive . . . carts?” It seemed impossible that anyone, no matter how powerful their magic, could possibly control a beast this big and powerful. But Marcus nodded his head.

  “That’s right. Just like a cart. But you don’t have to be a wizard. Anyone can drive a truck or a car after a few lessons.”

  Anyone? All at once an idea filled Kyja’s head that was so big—so amazing—she could scarcely give it place in her mind. “This machine. It does not require magic?”

  “No magic,” Marcus said.

  “Then I could control it? I could drive this machine?”

  “Sure,” Marcus said with a laugh. “As long as you could see over the steering wheel, that is.”

  “I will drive it then. As soon as we stop,” Kyja said, dreaming of taking the reins of such a wonderful and powerful machine.

  “Not so fast,” Marcus said, shaking his head with a smile. “You can’t just jump out and drive it.”

  Kyja gave him a confused glare. “But you just said I could.”

  “Driving a truck takes practice. And even if you did know how, it doesn’t belong to you. We’re not even supposed to be back here. If someone saw us, they’d probably call the police.”

  Riph Raph briefly blinked one eye open, before curling up and going back to sleep. Kyja had no idea what a police was and didn’t care; she knew what she wanted. “How do I get a semi of my own?”

  Marcus put his head in his hands. “You don’t get a semi. You’d have to buy it, and even the smallest car costs more money than I have. Besides, we’re not old enough to get a license. Let’s just forget about driving right now and focus on what we’re going to do next. Okay?”

  “Fine,” Kyja snapped. She folded her arms across her chest, refusing to meet Marcus’s eyes. What was the point of having machines that didn’t requ
ire magic if you couldn’t use any of them? Lifting her head above the hay bales again, she saw the barren desert was long gone, replaced by boxy-looking buildings and more houses than she’d ever seen.

  The temperature had changed too. Even though the position of the sun indicated it was late morning, the air had a cold bite to it. Walking across the desert, they had tied their cloaks around their waists. Now they untied them and put them back on.

  “Let me help you with that,” Marcus said. He leaned stiffly across Kyja and pulled her cloak over her head.

  “Thanks,” Kyja said. It wasn’t Marcus’s fault they were stuck in this predicament. She was just worried about Master Therapass. She hoped he had managed to escape. At least Galespinner would be all right. She was immune to the dark magic. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Not a plan exactly,” Marcus said, pulling a piece of straw from his hair. “More like an idea.”

  He shifted around in the hay, trying to stay out of the cold air blowing just above their heads. “When you sent me back to Earth, did you choose where I would go? I mean, did you specifically pick the spot where we landed?”

  “No.” Kyja couldn’t help smiling at the idea of choosing to send Marcus to the middle of a desert and then being pulled along behind him. But the truth was, she barely understood how she’d sent him at all. She had no more idea how to send him to a specific spot than she did how to make a mist steed appear.

  “That’s what I thought.” Marcus leaned forward, his eyes glowing. “What if we landed at that spot because that’s where we were on Farworld?”

  “What are you talking about?” she said. “We weren’t in the middle of a desert when I pushed you.”

  Marcus pointed to a spot on the nearest bale of hay. “Let’s say this is the Boys School in Cove Valley, Arizona. That’s where I was when you brought me to Farworld.”

  Next he pointed to a spot farther up on the bale. “Now let’s say this is somewhere north of Mesquite, Nevada. As far as I can tell, that’s close to where we landed here on Earth. It’s about four hundred miles north of Cove Valley. I think that’s about five or six days by horse.”