The Crescent Stone

by Matt Mikalatos

  Baileya shivered. “I would not call it water.”

  “They will hear the splash,” the knight said.

  “They will be waiting for you at the lip of the moat,” Fernanda said.

  A chorus of shouts came from below, as well as the trumpeting of an enraged rhinoceros. Sounded like she was winning.

  “I don’t think they’ll hear us,” Jason said. Celebratory battle cries, followed by surprised shrieks of terror, drifted up the stairs. “I don’t think we have much time.”

  Fernanda picked up the stone. She kissed the knight. “Until next year, my beloved.” She walked to a mirror. She looked over her shoulder once, then stepped into the mirror, the knight running up behind her and pressing his hands flat against the glass. She put her hands on the glass too.

  “Quickly,” the knight said to Jason. “Head for the garderobe.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I? I will make the Scim believe there are a hundred of us fighting them.”

  In the garderobe, Jason moved the stool and sat with his legs in the hole. It was a long fall to the moat. “Hurry,” Baileya said. “So the knight can retreat to his solar and block the doorway.” Jason had to wiggle a bit to get himself moving through, and he didn’t want to think what he might be touching or about to touch in the sewage of the moat. Then he wasn’t thinking anything at all but how fast and far he was falling, and he hoped he survived so he could avoid being murdered by all the Scim.

  The water closed over his head, surprisingly warm. He made the dire mistake of opening his eyes, but in that darkness and the cloudy moat water, he couldn’t see much. He surfaced and headed for the side of the moat.

  Baileya splashed down near him. They pulled themselves from the water, and they both crouched low. Scim were everywhere . . . fighting, shouting, pulling the city apart.

  Baileya checked the mask. She still had it. “Come, Wu Song. Stick to the shadows, and we may yet escape.”

  “I forgot my weapon,” Jason said lamely.

  Baileya squeezed his shoulder. “You also made our escape from Westwind possible. Fear not. We will avoid the fighting if we can.”

  They darted into an alley. Baileya said, “If something happens to me, Wu Song, you must keep this mask out of the hands of the Scim. Go to my people, the Kakri. If they do not kill you, then you will be safe.”

  If they don’t kill me, I’ll be safe, Jason thought. What a laugh. That nicely summed up his entire time in the Sunlit Lands so far. If they don’t kill you, you will be safe.

  He ducked low and followed Baileya across a shadowed street, his sneakers squeaking with water. They ran for the eastern gates of Far Seeing.

  29

  CAPTURED

  Thou Scim I banish to outer darkness,

  a land as black as thy heart.

  FROM “THE ORDERING OF THE WORLD,” AN ELENIL STORY

  Madeline woke lying on her belly. She couldn’t move. Leather straps held her tight against a saddle of some kind. The wind was in her face, and she wondered if she had imagined falling. Had Shula tied her onto the saddle to keep her safe as they flew to Pastisia? “Shula?” she asked, but her voice swept away, drowned out by the wind.

  A harsh, guttural voice answered. “I didn’t kill her. I left her stranded beside the river.”

  She tried to lift her head and couldn’t. Her breath came in such limited doses. She tried to remember what had happened. She had fallen from their bird, fallen through darkness. The bird must have been making its way down already. She had fallen into water—the voice had mentioned a river. She couldn’t breathe. She had a vague memory of someone taking hold of her . . . She thought hard. Her neck? Yes, her neck ached still where she had been grabbed. They had taken hold of her neck and pulled her from the river. Someone with gloves and big hands.

  She forced her eyes open and managed to lift her head. She was strapped to a giant bird. Its rider’s white robes snapped and flowed around him like a flag. The black antelope skull gleamed in the starlight. He turned his head slightly, and the horns of his mask looked sharp even in this darkness. “It will be dawn soon. You will breathe easier then.”

  No.

  “How did you . . .” But she couldn’t get enough breath for the question. She coughed.

  “I saw you leave from the knight’s castle. I followed. I couldn’t see you in the darkness, but my owl saw you easily enough. When you fell from your bird, I fished you out of the river.”

  “What do . . . you want?”

  The Black Skull patted a canvas-wrapped parcel strapped beside him. The Sword of Years. “You are needed in the Wasted Lands. I don’t know which of the other artifacts may have been recovered.”

  Madeline’s heart sank. If they’d captured her when she had escaped the city, what were the chances the others had made it out at all? No doubt the Scim had already collected all their artifacts and were returning to their homeland now. The knight was right to worry that the Court of Far Seeing might fall.

  She couldn’t move her upper arms, but her forearms could still pivot. She studied the saddle, trying to see if there was something she could reach. The Black Skull was too far away. The Sword of Years couldn’t be reached, either. There was a small saddle pouch near her left arm. She stretched for it. With the tips of her fingers she managed to get it open. The Black Skull didn’t look back at her, didn’t seem to notice.

  Inside, she found a knife. It was smaller than a butcher knife but big enough to do some damage. Sharp, with a wooden handle. She tested it on the leather band around her arms. It was an awkward angle for her arms, but the band fell away easily once she got her blade on it. There was another band over her back and shoulders and one over her thighs, a fourth on her lower legs. Apparently the Black Skull believed in strapping in before flight. She couldn’t reach the Skull, not yet. Then another thought came to her. She could see the edge of the bird’s saddle. What if it had a strap?

  She had seen the Black Skulls in battle and knew they shrugged off even mortal wounds. A simple gash from a knife would do nothing more than annoy him. If she could cut the saddle loose, though . . . At least it would slow their progress toward the Scim homeland and give her a chance to escape. The band holding the saddle to the owl was thick. It didn’t immediately give way when she found it with her knife. Her breathing came in uneven gasps, slowing her progress. She was sweating profusely and trying to keep an eye on her captor.

  She was halfway through the strap when he saw her.

  “What are you doing? We’ll fall.” The grotesque voice of the thing sounded almost panicked. The owl descended immediately, headed for the desert floor. The sun was almost here. Madeline could see the ground. She cut faster. She was still held tight by multiple straps. The one over her thighs and the one on her shoulder she was able to cut with relative ease, but she couldn’t reach where it crossed her ankles, not without sitting up or moving, something she was afraid to do while the owl was still so far above the ground.

  When the owl touched down, Madeline sliced the last remaining fraction of the saddle band, then cut the strap holding her ankles. She slid off, out of control, landing on her back in the sand. The Black Skull jumped from the bird, landing on his feet and facing her.

  “Give me the sword!” Madeline shouted, lungs aching, the knife held toward the Black Skull. Her hand shook with adrenaline.

  He stood before her in his white robes, his black gloves held up in supplication, his horrible horned head facing her. “That can’t hurt me.”

  “Come closer and . . . we’ll find . . . out.”

  The Black Skull reached up and put his hands on his mask. “Madeline.”

  His voice sounded rough and deep, but something about the way he said her name was almost familiar.

  The Black Skull pulled off his mask. It came away as a complete whole, more helmet than mask. He set it aside in the sand. She couldn’t breathe. She struggled to keep upright in the sand, to keep the blade pointed at him, but she wasn�
��t sure she could do it. Consciousness was shrinking down, pushed to a small pinpoint with blurred nothingness pressing in on the edges.

  “Look at me,” he said. “Maddie, look.”

  She knew that voice.

  She focused, or tried to. He had stepped closer. She spat a warning at him, swinging the knife wildly. He said her name again, crouched down in front of her. Her vision cleared, and she saw him—saw the face of the man who wore the Black Skull.

  “Darius?”

  “Hey,” he said with a gentle smile. She knew that smile. This was her boyfriend. He wasn’t a hallucination or a shape-shifter. It wasn’t magic. It was him—she knew it with an immediate certainty.

  Her heart beat faster, her chest hurt, she took a deep breath, tried to speak, passed out.

  She came back to consciousness with an enormous, gulping, chest-expanding breath of deep air. Oxygen flooded her body, making her light headed and giddy. Her left wrist felt like it had been burned, and the sensation spread like liquid flame up her arm, over her shoulder, down her back, onto the bicep of her right arm. It throbbed a few times, then lessened. She scrambled to her feet, stumbling away from Darius.

  He sat on a small folding stool made of a wooden frame with a piece of canvas stretched over it. He gestured to a second one beside him. “Sunrise,” he said. “Your magic just came back.”

  She put her hand on her chest and took two deep breaths, forcing air through her nostrils. The scent of cool water and the faint perfume of desert flowers permeated the air.

  “We’ve had a misunderstanding,” Darius said.

  “You stole my sword!” she shouted.

  “It’s beside you. I returned it while you slept.”

  Slept? While she was unconscious, he meant. But there it was, still wrapped in canvas. She pulled the rope off and inspected the sword. “How did you get here? Why are you fighting for the Scim?”

  He didn’t move from his stool. He watched her carefully, as if she were a wild animal and he wasn’t sure what she would do. “When you and Jason disappeared into that pipe, I went crazy. I had to find you. Your parents . . . Madeline, your parents went insane. They thought maybe I had done something to you. They said maybe . . . Well, they said they thought I might have helped you commit suicide.”

  “WHAT?”

  He made calming gestures with his hands. “They were upset. You’d been missing for months, Mads.”

  “For months? What are you talking about?”

  “Time . . . time works strangely in the Sunlit Lands. A day here might be a few months at home. Or a century here could be four weeks there.”

  Madeline let that sink in before she spoke. That meant . . . a human year could be a millennium in the Sunlit Lands. Or a few weeks. “That makes no sense—is time faster or slower here?”

  “Neither. Both. It’s magic, Maddie. It’s the weirdest thing. I came here months after you. Six months after you.”

  “Six? Darius, I haven’t even been here two months.”

  “Two months in the Sunlit Lands. Six back home. And get this, Mads. I arrived before you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I left six months after you, and I’ve been in the Sunlit Lands for a year and a half looking for you.”

  Madeline took another deep breath, running that through her head. “Okay. It’s magic, so it doesn’t make complete sense. It’s not like science.”

  He shook his head. “Different rules. Right.”

  “What did Jason’s parents say when the police talked with them?”

  Darius threw his hands up. “Weirdest thing. They said he wasn’t missing. Said he was in China visiting relatives, that they had picked him up from the hospital and taken him straight to the airport.”

  “Did the police believe them?”

  Darius shrugged. “They didn’t arrest them or anything, so I guess so. His dad acted like I wasn’t in the room the one time I saw him.”

  Wow. Jason had said his dad hated him, but that was really strange. “So . . . how did you get here?”

  “You had been gone six months. I was reading fantasy novels, trying to figure out if there was some clue, some piece of reality between the lines. Every day I hung out by that pipe where you and Jason disappeared. I had gone through Lewis and L’Engle and was almost done rereading the Meselia books. I had just started The Azure World, and I kept coming back to those first three chapters—”

  Madeline interrupted. “The part where Okuz gathers the adventurers from across space and time.”

  “Right. I kept wondering, what if one of these is real? Something about the story of Karu stuck with me.”

  Madeline smiled despite herself. Karu had always been one of Darius’s favorite characters in the Meselia books. He only appeared in a few of the books, but he was a charming adventurer who always saw the positive side of things. “Karu notices an owl in the middle of the day, blinded by sunlight, and follows it into the deep woods,” Madeline said.

  “Right. And I remembered that hummingbird with you and Jason. That day I went back down to the pipe where you had disappeared, and I sat by the fence and read the book. It was Saturday, just about noon, and this possum came walking down the street. All the dogs in the neighborhood howled and barked. Possums aren’t usually out during the day. It stopped when it saw me, then turned and walked back the way it had come. So I followed it.”

  “Did it take you into the pipe?”

  “No. Into an empty lot behind the houses. There was this weird dome of—I don’t know how to say it—a dome of darkness. About the size of a one-person tent. The possum went into it and didn’t come out. I waited for about ten minutes, then I followed.” He shifted in his chair and looked off to the side. She recognized that look . . . He wasn’t telling her everything. “I ended up in the Wasted Lands with the Scim. I told them I was looking for you, that the Elenil had kidnapped you . . . and they agreed to help me rescue you.”

  “Rescue me?”

  “From the Elenil. Right. I became a Black Skull. Using Scim magic, I can go into battle and never be harmed, so long as I keep my helmet on. I spearheaded the new campaign against those monsters.”

  She crossed over to him. “Darius, you don’t understand. The Elenil aren’t monsters . . . they saved me. Their magic is why I can breathe. You’ve been to Far Seeing. You’ve seen who they are. The city is beautiful . . . It’s amazing.”

  “Yes,” Darius said, his face still as a stone. “Meanwhile everything in the Scim territories is broken, rotting, and falling apart. It’s abject poverty and ruin. And while Far Seeing has sunlight all day, every day, the Wasted Lands have night. The brightness of their day is a weak twilight. Their brightness and Far Seeing’s darkness are the same. Do you see?”

  She grabbed his hands. She couldn’t understand how he had gone so wrong, how he had been twisted so badly. “Darius, listen to me. The Scim are evil. They want to destroy the Elenil. I’ve heard them say it themselves—they want to bring a thousand years of darkness to Far Seeing, they want to break bones and murder people. You were there tonight, you saw it!” She fell back from him, sudden realization coming to her. “You were part of it. You were part of the attack on Far Seeing.”

  Darius stood, anger flashing across his face. “How did they get utopia, Mads? Who paid for it? The Scim, that’s who. The center of their magic, what is it called? Do you know?”

  “The Heart of the Scim.”

  “Yes. If they want sunlight, they take it . . . from the Scim. If they want to construct a building faster, that can be accomplished by magic . . . so long as a Scim building goes up slower. If they need rain for their crops, the Scim get drought. If they need to get rid of their waste, their garbage, their sewage, they just have to find a place to put it. Why not the Wasted Lands?”

  “All their magic,” Madeline said. “All their wealth, their power. What are you saying?”

  “Stolen, Madeline. Stolen! Is that so hard to understand, so hard to believe?
” He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Maybe it is. You’ve been their prisoner so long, been hearing their propaganda, of course you believe it.”

  Madeline’s own anger flared up. “I wasn’t a prisoner!”

  His face softened, and he reached up with his hands, as if to put them on her shoulders. “Madeline. Were you allowed to leave the city?”

  “Yes, I—” She thought of the knight. Hadn’t he specifically said they weren’t to leave the city? “Not without a chaperone,” she said.

  “Chaperone? Or guard?” Madeline didn’t answer, so Darius went on: “Did they want to make sure you heard their side of things? Did they have some sort of class or book you had to read or something like that? Something that told you all about how the Elenil are the chosen ones who are meant to rule the Sunlit Lands?”

  She thought of the woman in the ivy. The storyteller. “Something like that,” she said.

  “Did they make you take an oath of loyalty? Threaten to take away the magic if you didn’t obey them?”

  Yes. They had done both those things, and she had scarcely noticed. She bit her lip, willing herself not to cry. She felt the world tipping. “Darius. They gave me back my breath. I’m alive.”

  Tears welled up in Darius’s eyes, and he spread his arms wide. She melted into his hug. “I know,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I know.”

  He held her for a long time.

  A sudden thought occurred to her, and she pushed him away. “Are you the one who kidnapped Shula?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I would have done worse things if I thought it would get me to you.”

  “You almost killed Jason,” she said.

  “I never—” he said. “Wait. The kid in the white armor?”

  The kid in the white armor. Her hands balled into fists, and she pounded on his chest. “You didn’t know it was him? Is that what you’re trying to say? How does that make it any better, that you thought you were killing a stranger?”

  Darius stepped away from her, the hurt clear on his face. “Do you remember in—which one was it—The Gold Firethorns, I think. Do you remember when Lily betrayed the Eagle King?”