The Tide of Ages (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 2)

by Robert J. Crane

  What I had thought initially was a shore actually was not … quite. It ran to water, but the sea was a long way off, so far I had to squint to make it out. Neither was it comprised of sand; instead we stood upon dark silt. But unlike the wet stuff that we had just been standing on by the Thames, this stuff was bone dry. Cracks had split its surface into a labyrinthine network. No water had touched this stretch of land for a long, long time, not even close to it.

  “‘Time and tide wait for no man,’” Carson said, “but this man would not care to wait here for the tide.”

  We ignored him, Heidi and I, and exchanged a look—because what would you even say to that?

  Far behind us, where the silt gave over to fertile dirt, a layer of thick green sprouted. Trees like palms reared skyward. Rubbery towers like cactuses joined them, shining in the daylight.

  But ahead, and just off to the right—that was what we cared most about.

  “That’s the temple?” Carson asked. “With the first key to this Tide of Ages thing?”

  “That it is,” said Heidi. Her breath hitched, caught in awe for a moment. Then, with only a brief backward look, she ordered, “Come on,” and started for it.

  We followed. If we could have somehow missed the sheer scale of the thing, it made itself known to us very quickly as we came closer.

  Physically, it was not unlike a Mayan pyramid. Very blocky, wide-based and angling inward as the structure rose. But this was much wider even at the top, so it ended up closer to a trapezoid shape. Another difference from Mayan pyramids: there were no stairs leading up the sides.

  Luckily for us, unintended entrances had opened. Part of the nearby wall, made of enormous etched stone blocks a bottle green color, had disintegrated. We’d need to scale the rubble, but it made finding an entrance a piece of cake.

  When we were almost there, Carson suddenly said, “This temple used to be underwater.”

  “Huh?”

  “See those?” He pointed, up near the very top of the structure.

  I squinted.

  A white bar had been deposited around the very highest ring of stone blocks. It sort of smeared in a downward direction—then, at several lower points across the temple’s walls, it reappeared.

  “Tide marks,” Carson said. “At one point the top was exposed … then the top third … half …” He tracked with a finger, ending at the very bottom line of calcified particulates, probably not much higher than Carson stood. “The sea has receded.”

  “Well, that makes life easier.”

  Carson made an uneasy noise.

  “What?”

  “Things being easy. I don’t like it.”

  “You want a challenge?”

  “I don’t mean the fact that the tide has receded here. I’m talking about this.” He gestured around us. “The first key for the Tide of Ages is in there. And we land right on top of it. Just like with the keys for the Chalice Gloria. Doesn’t that seem a little too simple to you?”

  “The key might not be in here,” I said. But that didn’t ease Carson’s expression, so I shrugged and said, “I dunno. We’re just lucky, I guess.”

  “Seems awfully convenient.”

  “And what a shame our that lives are made easier by good luck.” This from Heidi. We’d reached the rubble pile at the temple’s edge now. She was already making her way up the stack of crumbling rock, and had paused only to shoot me and Carson a backward look. “Complaining about life throwing us a bone once in a while. Anyone would think you’d want to spend months or years charting entire worlds and coming up short, like every other explorer to search for these things.” She shook her head, and continued the climb.

  I followed. Lucky for us, the mound of rubble formed an uneven hill toward the hole in the temple wall.

  “That’s exactly it, though,” said Carson. “Explorers spent whole lifetimes searching for these things. The books in Mira’s library are full of accounts. And yet we find this one and land right on its doorstep?”

  I called back, “Again: we don’t know for certain the key is actually in here. Someone could have swiped it, it could have been washed away with the tide, who knows? Don’t jinx it.”

  “I guarantee it is, though. They always are. When have we gone into a temple and found it empty of treasure?”

  “We’ve only been together, what, six weeks?” Heidi called. “Now hurry up and climb. I haven’t got all day.”

  Carson huffed, but the scrabbling noise behind me told me he’d obeyed.

  “I know I’m right on this,” he said. “And I shouldn’t be. I mean, look! This one has a hole in the side. A hole! I bet it’s been open for years. Plenty of time for someone to make their way inside, and pick up whatever relic is hiding in here, pretending to be a DVD case or whatever this one wants to be. But no, it’ll still be here after all—this—time.”

  He made his way up the very last stone blocks and into the temple, finishing as he stepped into the hall we found.

  Heidi appraised him with a raised eyebrow. “You done?”

  “For now,” he muttered.

  “Good. Then let’s go.”

  And she headed away, toward the left from the perspective of where we’d landed outside.

  “I bet that’s the exact right direction, too,” Carson said.

  “To be fair,” I said, “it is the path toward the temple’s core. I doubt a key will have been hidden at the edge.”

  “Hm.”

  We followed down a tunnel of deep sea green. The water once flooding this place had softened the stone, but not smoothed it. Nary a trace of moisture remained, not even the most minuscule puddle underfoot. Truly it had been a long time since this place dried out.

  The gaping wound in the wall, combined with the fierce sun belting down outside sent in enough light to brighten our way long past the hole. But then the path forked, and the darkness deepened.

  I fished in my pocket for my flashlight—

  With a high-pitched pop, the tunnel illuminated.

  We froze.

  The light shifted on the walls. Soft and blue, its gentle sway was reminiscent of a light coming through water.

  Almost like we’d come back to a time when the temple was still submerged.

  And the glow itself came from—

  “Is that a bubble?” asked Carson.

  It certainly looked like it. Almost the size of my head, it floated, surface wobbling in and out, up by the tunnel’s ceiling. A brilliant point of light was encapsulated within it, shining just for us.

  We approached.

  Carson was just tall enough, if he tiptoed, to press his fingers to its edge.

  “It’s wet,” he said, retracting his hand. A trickle of droplets followed, spattering the floor.

  “I guess this is how the interior was lit when it was flooded,” I said.

  “Why’s the light in water now though? And how’d it know to come on?”

  Heidi seemed to think the question was directed at her. “I didn’t make it.”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “I know about as much as you,” she said. “Can we just move please? After sitting on this for the past month, I’m pretty keen to actually get moving and achieve something.” And off she went again, heading up the tunnel and sending another light into being with a second pop!

  I exchanged a look with Carson and lifted my hands: what are you gonna do? Heidi was right. None of us had answers. And this was her Chalice Gloria—so best not to faff around and delay proceedings too much by marveling at the magic behind the lights.

  Before long we came to steps. Hewn in the same stone as the rest of the place, they were almost as tall as me—and the staircase rose a long way.

  “That convenient enough for you?” Heidi asked, shooting Carson a backward look. “They’re massive.” To me: “Give me a hand up, would you?”

  “We’re climbing them?” Carson asked.

  “We could stand here and wait for the tide to carry us up, but I’m n
ot a man, so I’m not going to waste my time waiting on that.” Heidi gave him a pointed sneer and started ascending.

  I gave Carson an apologetic look. “At least when we have to come down again, we have the rappelling gear.”

  “Great,” he said. He paused, and leaned in, whispering. “Did you hear that? She used my quote against me.”

  “I caught that, yeah.”

  I helped Heidi up the first step, with a shove under the foot she had dangling, trying to find a hold, and thanked the Lord she was so light. Then Carson braced for me to use him to push myself up too. Not an easy task; if Carson was famous for anything else besides sweaters, his manbag, those terrible glasses—awful fashion sense in general, really—it was his painful lack of upper body strength.

  At least with me and Heidi pulling him up, his work wasn’t entirely cut out for him. We might’ve needed to abandon him otherwise.

  We made our way up. On step number three another high pop! surprised Carson, and he stumbled as Heidi and I pulled him up. She huffed, leaving me to drag him onto our step by myself.

  As he came over the edge, he huffed, “Why does it need steps if it was underwater?”

  “It probably wasn’t built underwater,” said Heidi. “That would be stupid.”

  “Oh, so sense does sometimes prevail then.”

  “Quit whining,” said Heidi. “Save your breath. We’ve still got a long way to go.”

  At some point, around the time I realized I was drenched in sweat and that our short snippets of instruction—”Come here,” “You’re up,” etc.—had faded to silence, I realized I had also stopped counting blocks.

  Third realization: this climb seemed to be bringing us the entire way to the temple’s lofty heights.

  When finally a high pop! announced the arrival of another light, and that light showed the ceiling flattened out just three oversized steps ahead, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then quickly sucked in a replenishing breath to replace it.

  Heidi and I pulled Carson up the final step between us—then we all slumped back on our butts. Shoulders low, I threw my head back. Eyes closed, I gulped in long breaths.

  “Who needs a gym membership,” Heidi wheezed, “with a workout like that?”

  “I feel like I’ve worked out enough for a year,” said Carson. His hair was plastered to his forehead. No glasses right now; he’d stashed them away partway up our climb to save pushing them up his nose every five seconds, as sweat made them slide down.

  I didn’t say anything. Too wrapped up in catching my breath for that.

  Heidi was the first up. Carson followed, wiping down his face with his sweater and then fishing his glasses from his manbag.

  “Get up,” Heidi instructed.

  “Please,” I griped, but obeyed.

  The new tunnel went only a short distance before terminating at a corner. Tracking our climb, which had also twisted around several corners, I figured we were still making our way around the temple’s perimeter—

  And then we weren’t.

  The fork took us to the entrance of a huge chamber open to sky. At least, partially. Like the hole in the wall down by the base, the skylight was a series of wounds to the ceiling. Bars of light bled through, catching dust floating in the space where water must once have circulated.

  And below the open sky—

  “A maze,” said Carson simply.

  “Nice observation,” said Heidi.

  The ground sloped into it, so from here we were granted a view that was just slightly overhead: enough to see the forks in the path, and a central dark blotch that presumably housed this temple’s prize; but not enough to navigate. Especially not with the crumbled roof blocking our view of a number of pathways.

  “What are those?” Carson asked, pointing.

  From several places throughout the labyrinth, large blocky structures rose high above the rest. Cutting off part of the view behind, a number of pathways fed into and out of them.

  “Structures to make our life more difficult,” said Heidi. “Congratulations, Carson. You asked for it, and here it is. Fortune has stopped smiling and delivered us a knuckle to the teeth in its place.”

  “Difficult how?” Carson seemed to be struggling to ignore the insulting part of Heidi’s remark and get down to the business part of it.

  “To deter spotters, I’d guess,” I answered. Which sucked, because for a moment, I had thought we might let Carson take on his role as navigator once more, shouting instructions from the edge. He could still do that, but those behemoth closed-off areas, combined with the debris from the roof obscuring yet more of the maze, meant his uses were going to be more limited.

  Carson seemed to take that in stride, though, because he said resolutely, “I can still help. Here, let me—” And he marched down the slope to the beginning of the maze, pausing beside the stack of blocks making up the wall. Turning back to us: “A little help?”

  “What are you doing?” Heidi asked.

  “Getting on top of the walls. I can follow you through.”

  We stepped forward to let him use our hands, then shoulders, as a ladder. Not tall enough to make it—but with a couple of jumps, Carson managed to cling to an edge. His feet kicked madly as he pulled himself up—and then he was over, right on top of the wall and looking down at us.

  “There,” he breathed heavily. “Easy.”

  “Hang on,” said Heidi. “If this place was flooded, what was to stop someone from just swimming over the top? Or climbing out, if the water wasn’t that high, and doing the same thing?”

  “Terrible foresight?” I suggested.

  “Overly convenient design?” Carson put in. “Why wouldn’t an ancient race of temple-builders add an easily exploited hole into their security system?”

  Heidi frowned. “That doesn’t make—”

  Carson cut her off. “Is that—” He squinted in the opposite direction.

  “What?” I called up at him.

  What little I could see of his face dropped. “No way.” Turning wide eyes onto us, he started, “Through the other door. It’s—”

  “Mr. Yates!” called a voice I knew only too well. Too familiar to forget, in fact; I knew it the moment I heard it. “So glad to see you!”

  Knew it …And hated it.

  Heidi and I stared at each other. I could see the question rattling in her head, the same as mine—How?

  It was Alain Borrick.

  9

  “How is he—?” Heidi started.

  But Carson was thinking quicker than we were. “Go!” he cried—and at his instruction, Heidi and I broke into a sprint down the maze’s first pathway.

  Borrick’s voice echoed out through the chamber. “If it’s just you, the Asian, and your American friend, I wouldn’t bother, Miss Brand. I have a much more efficient crew at my disposal this time, and much faster, too. Enough to brute force our way through to this little trinket.”

  We hit a fork, and I pivoted back toward Carson. He was still in place, staring in horror at whatever was currently pouring into the maze from the opposite side.

  “Quick!” I called. “Which way?”

  He jerked back toward us. “Oh!” He stumbled forward, eyes tracing—and then slammed into an invisible wall. Thrown backward, he landed hard on his back.

  “Carson!”

  Heidi caught my wrist before I could rush back toward him. “What are you doing? You want to let Borrick get his hands on this one?”

  “But something happened to Carson—”

  “Yeah; the security system, I’d bet.” She shook her head, rolled her eyes. But there was a hint of panic already creeping into them. Precious seconds were wasting.

  “But how—”

  “Oh, who cares about that right now? Come on, this way.”

  She pulled me down the leftward fork.

  I had a half-second glimpse of Carson just staggering back to his feet. I shouted, “We’re going left!” before he vanished out of sight.

  “R-ri
ght,” he slurred back.

  Another fork almost immediately, splintering off to the left and right again.

  “Where now?”

  Heidi moved to pull us down the leftward path—but then Carson’s voice was back, surer, shaking off the fog. “Go right! It takes you toward one of those buildings. Left dead-ends in a spiral by the entrance.”

  “Time’s wasting.” Borrick’s taunting voice echoed over the temple maze, bouncing off the stone walls around me.

  “How is he even here?!” Heidi demanded.

  Just before we hit the next turn, Carson called, “Left!” then, just a second later, “Then two rights!” Already his voice was diminishing as we pushed down pathway after pathway.

  I hoped—prayed—that the building Carson was directing us toward didn’t terminate in a hidden dead-end, and instead would spew us out closer to the maze’s center.

  “Two lefts—no, that’s right, then left,” Carson instructed. “Then straight on—”

  “Haven’t they found a better job for you yet?” Borrick’s voice rang out. There was a gleeful lilt to it. “I’d have thought by now you’d be getting a little more involved in the adventure than acting as a fleshy satnav, hm?”

  “Ignore him, Carson!” I yelled back.

  “How did you even get here anyway?” Carson asked. “Wasn’t one defeat at Mira’s hands enough for you?”

  “Make that three!” I shouted. “Spear, cutlass, and chalice, all back to back.”

  “I’ve learned my lesson—don’t keep company with orcs. My marachti, on the other hand …”

  “Marachti?” I breathed in confusion.

  Heidi, on the other hand, flashed me a wide-eyed look. “No way.”

  “What—?”

  “I’d get that thing ready if I were you,” she said, pointing at Decidian’s Spear at my belt, glamoured as an umbrella. Already she was dragging the Bluetooth speaker from her pocket, shaking loose its illusory cloak so it extended into the cutlass we had successfully made off with (minus Carson—temporarily) from right out of Borrick’s clutches.

  Straight on, we went—right into another three paths.

  “Where now?” I shouted.