“Not exactly a cheery place,” Riph Raph’s voice said next to her ear.
Water Keep had a wall of mist to keep people out. So it only made sense that Land Keep would have something similar. Maybe this secret staircase was designed to turn back unwanted visitors. But if so, why have the stairs at all? And if the land elementals wanted to keep people away, why send creatures to capture Marcus? And why take him and not her?
Going deeper and deeper into the pitch-black darkness, she came up with no answers. Instead, she counted stairs, trying to determine how far underground they were. Master Therapass’s study in the Terra ne Staric tower was two hundred and eighty steps high. The balcony above that was four hundred and eighty. After five-hundred and sixty steps, she and Riph Raph had gone farther underground than the entire tower was tall. As she continued to descend, an unsettling thought occurred to her. What if the staircase never ended? What if it was a trap after all?
Apparently the same thought had occurred to Riph Raph. “Let’s go back,” he said, breathing heavily against her cheek.
“No,” Kyja concentrated on taking things step by step. But she’d lost count. Was she on six or seven hundred?
“I think the space is getting smaller,” Riph Raph said.
“Don’t be silly,” she answered. But was it? The wall felt cooler against her hand than it had when they started. But the air felt just as hot, and thicker than it had above. What if there was only so much oxygen in this bubble of protection? What if they used it all up? At the thought, her lungs began to burn, and she picked up her pace.
Once she opened her mind to fear, her imagination took over. Was the mud closing in on her? Could she hear sounds in the darkness—what Marcus had called the songs of the dead? With each breath, she tried to tell if she was still getting enough oxygen. Would she know if she wasn’t, or would she simply pass out and die here, far underground where no one would ever find her?
Without even realizing it, she began running—leaping from step to step, the wall brushing past her fingers the only thing that kept her from total panic. She might have given in completely to her terror and thrown herself headlong down the stairs if it hadn’t been for Riph Raph’s voice.
“Look there.”
What was he talking about? There was nothing to see, and no way to see it in the pitch black.
Except it was no longer black. At some point, the total darkness had given way to a murky gray without her noticing. And the mud was gone. Turning slowly, she saw she was now standing in a gently sloping tunnel more than twice her height, wide enough for eight or nine people to stand side by side on the stairs. The air had lost its sulfurous stench, replaced with a musky scent that made her think of the Goodnuffs’ barn.
High up, she saw what had attracted Riph Raph’s attention. It was a picture painted directly onto the wall. The image looked like one of the tiny creatures Cascade had shown her in the mud from the bottom of the Noble River. But was it painted? Squinting in the dim light, it seemed the picture had more depth than a painting could possibly have—as though the image had first been carved into stone and the color added later.
“Here’s another one,” Riph Raph called, flying several feet ahead.
Kyja followed, walking down the stairs to inspect the next image—a painting of a plant. The plant itself wasn’t all that spectacular—nothing more than a stem and a couple of leaves. But the detail was amazing. It was definitely carved. You could almost believe you were seeing the real thing hanging on the wall.
The farther they moved down the tunnel, the more images appeared on the walls. Plants and animals, rocks and streams. Soon, both walls turned into continuous carved murals teaming with birds, mammals, fish, snakes, lizards, and even humans. Whoever had done this work was an incredibly talented artist. She knew the things she was seeing weren’t real, yet they were so life-like she could almost smell the blossoms of the silver teardrops and hear the buzz of twilight flitters.
“Look,” she said, pointing to a carving of a skyte soaring above a flock of geese. “It’s you, Riph Raph.”
“My ears aren’t nearly that floppy,” he said, tilting his head. “But it does capture the magnificence of my wings.”
Kyja couldn’t help laughing in delight. Moving down the hallway was like strolling through a forest. The tunnel was getting brighter, too. It took her a moment to realize the light came from constellations of glittering stars overhead. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn she was standing outside and looking up at a crystal-clear night sky. She could have spent hours studying the walls, but Marcus was down here somewhere, and she needed to make sure he was all right.
Still, she couldn’t take her eyes from the murals as she hurried down the steps. It wasn’t until she finally reached the bottom of the staircase that she looked ahead and saw what was lying on the cold stone floor in front of her.
“Oh,” she gasped, her voice small and filled with shock. Her hand went to her mouth, and for a moment she let herself hope what she was seeing was only another mural. But these were no paintings. Strewn across the floor like toys left behind by a distracted child, were one, two, three, four—at least a dozen, she counted with growing horror—human skeletons.
Chapter 19
Keepers’ Hold
Are you a vil or a scaler?” Marcus looked up from where he sat with his head in his hands. A boy about his age was speaking.
“No offense intended.” The boy squatted next to him, a rolled rush mat tucked under one arm. He looked younger than most of the people Marcus had seen down here. The boy must not have been here too long; he didn’t have the same pasty, white complexion as the others, and still wore his own clothes, not the roughly-woven, gray robes. “You don’t look like a vil—not that I would hold it against you if you were. Everyone’s got their own reasons for what they do. But if you’re a murderer or something, I’ll keep my distance. No offense.”
Overhead, the glow lighting most of the enormous cavern was fading. Soon the ceiling would turn from yellow to red and finally to a deep, midnight blue pricked by the twinkling of millions of fake stars. All across the open stone floor, people were preparing to sleep. It would be Marcus’s second night trapped here, and he knew from experience that in the morning he’d wake up with the beginnings of a pounding headache—the first sign that he needed to get back to Earth soon.
“I’m not a murderer.”
“Great!” the boy said, unrolling his mat beside Marcus’s. “A word of advice—stay away from the vils. Nothing here to steal to speak of, and the harbingers don’t allow for no killing—less they’re the ones doing it, of course. But those vils are a nasty group anyway. My name’s Jaklah.” He held out his arm, and Marcus bumped elbows with him—the way he’d seen these people greet each other.
“I’m Marcus.”
The boy stretched out on his mat and pulled off one of his boots. “Harbingers do that to your arm and leg?”
“No. It’s a long story.”
“Well, Toonuk was a healer in the nother life. He might be able to get you fixed up if you ask him nice. It’s good to not be the only new one here. The others say that eventually, I’ll wish I’d given in, but I’m glad I ran from the scaling. How ’bout you?”
Marcus sighed. Whether they should have let the Keepers scale them seemed to be the only thing these people talked about. That, and what they’d done in what they called their nother life. “I didn’t commit a crime, and I wasn’t about to be scaled. I was running from the Keepers, but I went into the swamp looking for a place called Land Keep.”
Halfway through unlacing his second boot, the boy froze and stared at Marcus. “The only people who go into the swamp are vils sent there by the Keepers and folks who run into it on their own trying to escape being scaled. Nobody goes there lest they have to. You sure you’re not a vil?”
“I’m not a vil. I’m not even from Aster’s Bay. I’m from . . . well, somewhere pretty far away.”
“Ah, tha
t explains it.” Jaklah relaxed and finished pulling off his boot. “Didn’t nobody tell you not to go out the south gate?”
“They did but we didn’t have a lot of choice.” Marcus rubbed his temples, hoping Kyja would think to send him back to Earth soon. From the time the harbingers carried him down through the long, black tunnel and dropped him here, he’d been expecting the familiar tingling in his stomach.
“We?” the boy asked.
“My friend and I. Her name’s Kyja. We were together when those creatures grabbed me.”
Jaklah burst into laughter as if Marcus had told an especially funny joke. “You’re twisting my ear, you are. Harbingers take everybody who goes into the swamp. Less she wasn’t human. Your friend wasn’t a fairy or something, was she?”
Over the two days that he’d been here, Marcus had given a lot of thought as to why the harbingers had taken him and not Kyja. “It has to be because she’s immune to magic. The creatures must be magical in some way that keeps them from being able to touch her. Or it could be that they can only see people that have magic. Kyja doesn’t have any. ”
“No magic? Never heard of anyone with no magic. That’d be awful. Did the snifflers do it?”
“No, she was born that way.”
“No magic.” Jaklah shook his head. “That’s why I ran. Keepers were going to take my magic. But even they leave you at least a little. Guess I’d kill myself if I had no magic.”
“That’s crazy,” Marcus said. “Magic is cool, but it’s not important enough to kill yourself over. You just live with it.”
Jaklah looked at him as if he’d spoken gibberish. “What’d be the point of living without magic? Couldn’t get a job. Couldn’t buy nothing. Nobody’d want to marry you or even be your friend for long. You’d be a freak.”
Freak. Marcus had heard that word directed at him often enough. The more time he spent in Farworld, the more he was coming to realize that maybe Kyja had heard it just as often. Something else occurred to him—when the harbingers attacked, he’d tried to use magic to protect himself. But like a car with no gas, when he’d reached for his magic, there was nothing there. He still couldn’t use it here. He’d assumed it was the harbingers affecting him. But if what Jaklah was saying was true . . .
“Can you . . . use your magic here?”
“Sure,” Jaklah said. “How else’d they harvest crops and make these robes and such? Harbingers won’t let you do anything that looks like causing trouble—or like you’re trying to escape. But otherwise, you’re free to do what you want. Guess I’d go crazy down here if they didn’t.”
So the harbingers weren’t keeping him from casting spells. That meant the snifflers had done something to him, something that affected his magic. What if it didn’t come back? What if his condition was permanent? If he and Kyja succeeded in opening a drift, at least she’d be like everyone on Earth. But how would he save Farworld with a broken body and no magic? The thought sent his heart racing.
“Tell me about the Keepers,” he said. “What does scaling mean, and what do the snifflers have to do with it?”
Jaklah yawned and lay back on his mat, lacing his hands behind his head. The ceiling of the cavern looked indistinguishable from the real night sky. “The Keepers of the Balance teach that magic should be put in control of those who can use it best. About the time you turn twelve, they come to your house and scale you to see how much magic you have and how much you need. They take magic from those that don’t need so much and give to those who can use more.”
“Are those the lowbals and the highbals?” Marcus asked, remembering the kids who had tormented Kyja at the academy.
“Yep. Lowbals are the ones who lose their magic. Highbals are the ones who get more. Course, that’s usually the leaders and families with the most money. It’s all a big show, if you ask me. Just another way to keep the rest of us down.”
“But how do they take your magic?”
Jaklah closed his eyes. “Nobody knows, except it has to do with the snifflers. They’re the ones that suck the magic out of one person and give it to another. Some folks think the Keepers take a little for themselves, too.”
That would explain why the one Keeper’s magic had seemed so strong when Marcus tried to attack him. “But what if they make a mistake? How do you get your magic back?”
Jaklah was breathing heavily now, his words little more than mumbles. “Can’t. Once . . . taken . . . never . . . back.”
Never? The thought sent icy tendrils into Marcus’s stomach. He couldn’t have lost his magic forever. There had to be some way to get it back.
He was lying on his mat, trying to convince himself that his magic wasn’t really gone at all, when a shout arose. “Something’s coming!” cried a voice out of the darkness. All around, small lights began to appear as people rolled out of their beds.
“What is it?” a woman shouted.
“Some kind of monster,” said a man with shoulder-length hair.
“Help me up.” Marcus woke Jaklah, who pulled him to his feet. Together, the two headed over to see what was happening. A group of people crowded near the entrance to the cavern. Leaving plenty of distance between themselves and the harbingers that kept anyone from escaping, they shined their lights at a lumpish figure that shambled slowly toward them.
“It’s a harbinger,” called a girl. “Run!”
“It’s not a harbinger,” said a man toward the front of the crowd. “It doesn’t have any claws.” But he fell back a few steps anyway.
“Can’t be human,” said Jaklah. “Or the harbingers would have brought it in.”
Jaklah helped Marcus push to the front of the crowd. Whatever the creature was, it looked frightening. Brown and lumpy, with long, mud-caked fur, it carried a staff and had a weird lump on its shoulder that moved and flipped about with each step. It passed through the patrolling harbingers as if they didn’t even exist. The creature paused for a moment, looking at the crowd of people, then turned and came straight toward him. It raised its arms as though reaching for him.
“Come on,” said Jaklah, pulling him backward.
But a cracked voice said, “Marcus?”
Marcus stared at the muddy creature, and the lump on the monster’s shoulder fluttered. “I told you we should have left him here.”
“Kyja!” he shouted, and she ran forward, wrapped her arms around his neck, and gave him a loud, muddy, smacking kiss on the cheek.
Chapter 20
No Way Out
Kyja, bathed and dressed in a clean, homespun robe, stood looking around the huge, domed cavern. It was still night. For the last few hours, people had pestered her with questions about how she got past the harbingers and if there was any way she could help them escape. Once they finally accepted it was only because she had no magic and that she had no way of helping them, they’d drifted off to their beds. She, Marcus, and Jaklah were gathered near the wall of one of the few stone buildings.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“They call it ‘Keepers’ Hold,’” Marcus told her. “But it’s really just a dressed-up prison.”
“So many people,” she said. There had to be at least a thousand of them sleeping out on the wide expanse of stone floor. “They can’t all have been sent here by the Keepers of the Balance?”
“Yes, miss,” said Jaklah, who for some reason wouldn’t meet Kyja’s eyes. “We’re all either scalers or vils.”
“People running from the Keepers so they can keep their magic, or those the Keepers consider criminals,” Marcus explained. “Although, I think some of the so-called criminals might just be people who spoke out against scaling.”
Kyja still couldn’t believe there were so many. This had to have been going on for decades, at least. “And they’re all from Aster’s Bay?”
“Oh, no, miss,” said Jaklah. “Those of us from around here know about the swamp and the harbingers. So most just give in. But people from away know only that the swamp is the one place Keepe
rs won’t hunt you down if you run from them. They think the harbingers are just children’s spooks.”
“But you knew they were real. Why did you run into the swamp anyway?”
Jaklah scuffed his boots against the floor. “Figured it couldn’t be any worse than being scaled.”
Looking toward the cavern entrance, Kyja still found the harbingers hard to believe in. All she could see was a wide, empty space that the people kept a healthy distance from. “What do they look like?” she asked.
“Like something dragged out of the grave,” Marcus said. “White skin covered with sores, moss, and toadstools. Their hair grows down to their feet, and it streams out behind them when they fly. Most of the time, they’re quiet—unless you get too close. Then they start this terrible singing about death and the grave that makes you feel like you’re already dead. But the worst part is the claws.” He held his good hand above his head, fingers curled. “They’re as long as swords and they gleam like bone.”
“And if you try to leave?”
Jaklah pointed to the tunnel Kyja had entered through. “Didn’t you see the bones?”
Kyja shivered. “But there has to be some way to escape?”
“No, miss. You can outrun ’em for a while. They aren’t all that fast. But once they see you trying to escape, you’re as good as dead.”
“Why not just go back up the stairs?” Kyja asked. “If you run fast enough couldn’t you stay ahead of them?”
“Every few years someone gets that idea,” Jaklah said. “I guess folks go crazy once they’ve been stuck here long enough. Some of them even make it to the pit before the harbingers catch up. But eventually they do. Then they drag the prisoner back down before they . . .” He looked at his feet and swallowed. “Guess they want everyone to see what happens when you try to run.”
Kyja thought through such an escape. You could stay ahead in the tunnel, but once you reached the spiral staircase, the harbingers could fly straight up to get you. You’d lose any lead. The thought of running blindly up all those stairs and waiting for bone-white claws to grab you made her go cold all over. “And there are no other exits?”
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