The Scorpions of Zahir

by Christine Brodien-Jones

  “What you are seeing here are two futures,” he said ominously, giving the others a sad, wise smile. “But of course …,” he added, “only one will happen.”

  Zagora awoke on a bare floor, feeling the damp creep into her bones. Someone was shaking her.

  “Zagora, wake up, we must prepare to go to Zahir.” Razziq gave her another shake and she sat up, hand flying to her neck: the stone was still there. Events from the day before came rushing back—the sandstorm, losing Sophie, seeing the oryx and finding Pitblade Yegen, being chased by the scorpion into the cavern. And, oh yeah, she was a Sentinel.

  Then she remembered her missing father and her heart plummeted.

  Pitblade silently led them out of the dark chamber, into the room of volcanic rock, past the dead embers of the fire. Zagora followed him beneath the series of archways, up through the trapdoor, into the main tower. Here she could see sunlight, warm and welcoming, flooding through the tall windows.

  “The storm is over!” cried Razziq, and they all cheered.

  “Hey, guys, look,” said Duncan, reaching into his backpack and pulling out a package of batteries. “We’ll have light underground!”

  Hmm, thought Zagora. Maybe stuffing that bag with all those extra things hadn’t been so silly after all.

  Pitblade gave them each a bowl of gruel sprinkled with pine nuts. While they ate, he studied a map of Zahir he’d drawn on a strip of goatskin, holding the rough fabric up to his eyes. Zagora could see him planning and calculating with the same furious concentration her father always had. A sob of longing caught in her throat and she brushed away a tear.

  Moments later he joined them, helping himself to a bowl of gruel.

  “Ah yes,” he said, squinting at Zagora. “In this light you look very much like her, I can see that now. The wildness of your hair, those brilliant blue eyes, even your smile, so very much like Maeve.”

  “Maeve Pym?” she echoed. “My mom?” It had never occurred to her that Pitblade Yegen might have known her mother. “You think I look like her?” A fleeting image appeared inside her head: Charlie Pym, young and handsome, and at his side a tall, smiling woman whose blue eyes peered out from under a wide-brimmed hat—two faces in a silver frame. Her heart gave a little tick.

  “As far as my poor eyesight can tell, I’d say you do indeed—and you have your mother’s feisty nature, too,” he added, clearly amused. “I can think of no higher compliment.”

  Zagora felt her face flush. “Did you know my mom very well?” she asked, eager to hear more. “Was she, like, amazing?”

  “She was. And she loved adventure, just like you.”

  “I knew it,” said Zagora. Smiling to herself, she drew her legs to her chest and hugged her knees. How wonderful to hear those words. She glanced at Duncan and he threw her a lopsided smile, radiating something she had only recently begun to experience: brotherly warmth.

  They downed handfuls of pine nuts, the last of their breakfast, and Duncan hurriedly replaced the batteries in his flashlight. Then, throwing their packs over their shoulders, the three children followed Pitblade down through the trapdoor. At the bottom of the steps, he turned right, leading them through a crevice in the wall. They tramped down a narrow stone passageway to an enormous clay pipe covered in spiderwebs.

  “This pipe is an ancient irrigation duct built by the Azimuth,” he explained, “and will take us underground to Zahir. It does not connect in any way with the scorpions’ lair, so you have little to fear.” He looked pointedly at Duncan.

  Without a word they followed him into the enormous pipe, where the air felt damp and sluggish and the heat was suffocating. Duncan waved his flashlight around so they all could see where they were going. The floor was littered with bones, piled layer upon layer, which Zagora tried to avoid stepping on. Once, she saw a large skull shaped like a horse’s head—or it might have been a camel’s. She gritted her teeth, walking faster. It hurt too much to think about Sophie.

  Pitblade’s tough demeanor impressed Zagora. After living with nomads, he told them, he’d become skilled at lighting fires and could make a flaming torch if necessary. That kind of thing could come in handy while fighting scorpions, Zagora was sure. She could see he was courageous, like her father—and maybe a little reckless, too. But of course, recklessness was the way of desert explorers.

  “I know all this must be difficult for you,” he said to her and Duncan as they made their way through the ancient pipe. “We won’t rest until we find your father—he’s my best friend. I’d do anything for him.”

  “I miss him,” said Zagora, feeling weepy. “A lot.”

  “We’ll find him,” said her brother, and she felt the faint stirrings of hope. Maybe we can do this, she told herself.

  “I expect you’ve met my cousin Olivia?” said Pitblade as they hurried along. “Brilliant woman, a world expert on scorpion and snake venom. Breeds scorpions to survive under extreme adverse conditions.”

  Zagora felt a chill of unease: he’d just described her dead scorpion.

  “I hate scorpions,” said Duncan. “Snakes, too. I was attacked by a desert horned viper, you know, but Razz here saved my life.”

  “It wasn’t me,” said Razziq humbly, “it was my falcon who saved you.”

  “You’re very fortunate, Duncan,” said Pitblade. “Horned vipers are deadly.”

  Zagora gave a shudder, remembering the snake, with its weird little horns, winding itself around Duncan’s leg.

  “Olivia’s a controversial figure in Marrakech,” Pitblade continued. “She’s been accused of shady dealings with the underworld, supplying rogue states with snake venom, selling stolen artifacts on the black market, dabbling in the exotic pet trade, and—well, the list goes on. Whether the rumors are true or not, I’ve no idea.”

  “It was Olivia!” Duncan hissed into Zagora’s ear. “Olivia put those snakes in our car!”

  Would Olivia actually do something that extreme? Okay, she was angry at their dad for skipping town and not delivering the Oryx Stone, but was she ruthless enough to put snakes in their car—in short, to risk the lives of an archaeologist and his two kids? And how had she known their route to Zahir that morning? That woman must have lots of people working for her, thought Zagora.

  “Do you think digging up Zahir is a good idea?” Duncan asked Pitblade. “I mean, what if they turn it into a theme park? I can see it now: busloads of tourists, couscous stands, cheesy souvenirs, camel rides for the kiddies.”

  “I don’t think that will happen in Zahir,” Pitblade replied stiffly. “I plan to restore the ancient city—and also import oryxes and set up a farm so they can live in their natural surroundings.”

  Zagora had a sudden fluttery feeling inside her chest as she thought of the oryxes.

  “This way,” said Pitblade, running his fingertips down the sides of a low archway. “I will show you something quite unusual.”

  Curious and impatient, Zagora followed him into a vast cavern. Green mist drifted up, cool and soothing against her skin, and she heard rushing water below. He led them across a limestone bridge so narrow they had to go one at a time. Peering over the side, feeling a bit dizzy, she looked down into a river filled with shadows.

  “This subterranean river has no name,” said Pitblade. “The Azimuth called it the Unknown River, and for centuries it’s been running through underground caverns, providing Zahir with fresh water. It is the source of the water you’ve been drinking in the tower.”

  “ ‘When you drink the water,’ ” murmured Razziq, “ ‘remember the spring.’ ” He grinned at Zagora, his face ghostly in the mist, and she grinned back, thinking how lucky she was to have him for a friend. She wanted to give him a hug, but she felt too shy.

  They descended a flight of moss-covered steps cut into the rock, then entered a cavern rank with bitter smells, its walls black with moisture. As her eyes adjusted to the grainy darkness, Zagora stared at the wet flow-stone walls and a ceiling dappled with yellow and orange fungi. Al
ready she missed the dry open desert.

  “Wow, primeval,” said Duncan, sweeping his light over a small lake covered in algae.

  “This underground lake is said to be bottomless,” Pitblade said dramatically as they skirted the edges of it. Zagora kept her distance from the water: there was no telling what might bubble up from deep inside a creepy green lake with no bottom.

  They approached a vast, sprawling archway, its surface crusted with gray and yellow lichen, and Pitblade’s voice fell to a dry whisper: “We have reached the Unknown Portal, the gateway connecting this cavern to the city of Zahir.”

  Zagora felt her heart leap. Zahir, at last! Following Pitblade Yegen through the portal, she noticed odd geometric patterns beneath the lichen: signs, shapes and abstract symbols. If she looked hard enough, she could see glyphs, each connected to the next, like joined-up writing across the stone. It all looked incredibly esoteric, as her father would say, but there was no time to examine any of it.

  “These are fabulous,” breathed Duncan, directing his light on the glyphs.

  “We’ll bring Dad here to see them,” said Zagora. “He’ll go insane.”

  She watched her brother’s face fall, but he quickly pulled himself together. “We’ll find him,” he said through clenched teeth, his doggedness reminiscent of their father. “We will.”

  They hurried on, catching up with Pitblade and Razziq, who stood at the bottom of a wide stone staircase. Sunlight poured down. Zagora could hardly believe it: at the top of the stairs was Zahir! Seized by a wild euphoria, she raced up, eyes gleaming with hope and excitement, out into the daylight—and into the ancient city.

  The light was so sharp it dazzled her, and she spun around to face the dusty, hollowed-out street lined with low, flat-roofed adobe buildings. On all sides of her rose steep walls of hard-packed sand, and she realized she was deep inside an excavation site. Feeling giddy, she breathed in the hot stone smells of Zahir.

  Pitblade and the boys came charging up the steps, adventuresome and daring, in the swashbuckling spirit of The Three Musketeers. (She’d read the book in Mrs. Bixby’s class.) Razziq stared, awestruck, at the ruins, and Pitblade, wrapped in cloths to protect his eyes, walked with a vigorous step.

  But Duncan was a different story. He folded his arms, a look of extreme disappointment on his face. Zagora’s heart contracted. Her brother had been so tough and determined until then.

  “This is Zahir?” he said. “I thought it was going to be incredible.” He turned to her, his face growing redder by the second. She could clearly see all his inner frustration surfacing. “This is just a bunch of old mud buildings beaten down by the wind. Everything’s been eaten away by the sand! How will we find Dad in this petrified wreck of a city?”

  “What were you expecting?” snapped Zagora, thinking, He’d better not be giving up.

  “I thought Zahir would be inscrutable and cool,” he said, his voice cracking a little, “like the Mayan ruins I saw on that National Geographic special last week. Those were fantastic.”

  “As I explained, only a small part of the city was excavated,” said Pitblade with an air of impatience. “But that was eleven years ago, and ever since then, Zahir has been exposed to the ravages of the desert.”

  “Are we going to the palace now?” asked Zagora, eager to start the search for her father. “Do you know a secret way there, too?”

  “I do,” replied their father’s friend. “It might not be the best way, but it is the way I know. Let’s keep to the shadows so we will not be seen.”

  He hurried on, throwing wary glances to the side, the others close behind as he guided them through a puzzle of deserted alleyways. They stumbled down streets cut deep into the earth that looped and doubled around, until Zagora lost all sense of direction. The excavated site of Zahir was a honeycomb of clay walls, empty courtyards and overhung passages, with buildings one and two stories high, many with roofs caved in, sand flowing out through the windows and doors. Zagora kept an eye open for scorpions or assassins or anything unexpected that might jump out at them.

  “Hey, do you guys feel static in the air?” said Duncan, shielding his eyes.

  Zagora had noticed it, too: the air crackled with light, as if emitting electric energy.

  “It is always this way in Zahir,” said Pitblade.

  “Oh man, I hope we’re not trapped inside some kind of magnetic force field,” said Duncan. “Stuff like that happens, you know, and not just in movies and books.” Zagora could almost see his thoughts spinning off in wild directions. “I mean, what if this place is one big freaky experiment—and we’re the guinea pigs?”

  No one said a word, and as they hurried on, a heavy dread settled inside her chest.

  “Ah, Zahir, a place of strange and frightening beauty, its hidden treasures lost beneath the sands,” murmured Pitblade as they tramped through the ruined city. “The most unforgettable of ruins, and the most mysterious.”

  Zagora’s heart grew heavy as she remembered her dad quoting the same lines from Edgar’s journal.

  “Vultures,” said Razziq, pointing to a clutch of dark birds circling overhead.

  “Maybe vultures attacked your cousin’s falcon,” she whispered, and he gave a mournful nod.

  Winding through twists and turns, Zagora felt as if they were moving deeper into a dark maze from which there was no escape. Her heart grew cold and frightened. Before, using her gift of desert sight, she’d seen the glimmering city of Zahir with its majestic walls, spiraling towers and warriors on white camels—and, beyond, the endless miles of dark red dunes and lush oases.

  But this was the real Zahir: an empty excavation site with hollowed-out streets and ravaged buildings, dust-dry walls and harsh winds—and, deep under the ground, a deadly lair of scorpions. Twenty-first-century Zahir was sadder—and lonelier—than she’d ever dreamed possible.

  At the end of a shadowy passage hung with twisted vines, Pitblade hesitated. Zagora noticed his eyes were watering and he struggled to keep them open. Unfolding his goatskin map, he held it close to his face. “Excellent. Not far to go.”

  They continued on. Walls of packed dirt leaned over the excavated streets, which seemed to grow increasingly narrower, closing in like a high-walled labyrinth. At last she came to a stop behind Pitblade, who was inspecting a tall semicircular gateway edged with glazed tiles in brilliant colors, with flowing Arabic calligraphy across the top.

  She caught her breath as she stepped through the archway, seeing a crumbling marble staircase ahead. High above, at the top of the staircase, rose a massive building of dusty red stone, with magnificent portals and terraces and a great curving roof.

  “The Royal Palace of Xuloc,” announced Pitblade, bowing his head. “Built by holy seers.”

  Gazing at the sculpted towers, the rooftop pavilions and rows of arching windows, Zagora began to feel a faint glimmer of something dark and dangerous.

  “There are more than two hundred rooms in the palace,” Pitblade explained as they climbed the steps to a pillared doorway. “Xuloc imported wood, gold, ivory, onyx and marble from as far as Timbuktu, Calcutta and Venezia, but unfortunately thieves have looted the interior, leaving the scattered ruins of pavilions, galleries, gardens, stables and dungeons.”

  Zagora pricked up her ears at the word dungeons as she hit the last step, and she tried not to think too deeply about what that might mean.

  Painted scrollwork decorated the palace doorway, which swept to a point at the top. Set inside were two monumental doors of carved and studded brass. She watched Pitblade’s tense profile—long, narrow nose, glistening scar and grimy head cloth—as he twisted a scrolled knob, muttering something about “imperial opulence.” The door swung inward with a groan.

  Heart fluttering, she peered into a hallway of colossal proportions, sun pouring in through stone grilles on the windows, throwing a wash of golden light over everything. She stared at the elegantly tiled floor, the columns and archways, the panels carved into complex
shapes. The high curved ceiling was painted with what looked like magical signs and symbols of gold, silver and blue.

  “I don’t know,” said Duncan, stubbornly shaking his head, and she knew what was coming next. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this place.”

  “Perhaps you should stand guard,” suggested Pitblade. “Keep an eye out for anything unusual. It’s possible your father—or his captors—will pass this way.”

  Zagora saw Duncan blanch at the word captors, but he was obviously relieved to be staying outside. “Okay,” he said, retying his head cloth. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll give a shout.”

  Pitblade gave Duncan a look, and Zagora wondered if he took Duncan all that seriously. As usual, it was hard to tell what Pitblade was thinking. She just hoped her brother would be safe waiting outside on his own.

  “Stay with me at all times,” Pitblade instructed her and Razziq. “The palace is vast and the layout is deceptive. Remain quiet and alert, on your guard at all times, and remember: no matter what happens, we must stay together.”

  Zagora nodded, watching Pitblade stride through the door, motioning for them to follow, and she felt a surge of panic mixed with exhilaration. Taking a deep breath, she told herself to stay calm.

  She mouthed See you later to Duncan and crept with the others into the palace, her eyes adjusting quickly to the dim interior. With Pitblade in the lead, they scoured the empty windswept rooms, following stairways that twisted in elegant spirals. They tramped beneath ornate arches and vaulted ceilings, through courtyards and sunken gardens. Every surface she looked at—marble, tile, wood, stone—was covered in a thick layer of sand. Over windows and doorways she glimpsed worn designs, chilling and mystical, too faded to interpret.

  With its odd-shaped rooms and sudden turns, the palace struck Zagora as a perfect hideout for kidnappers. Each time she rounded a corner, she felt her heart rise to her throat—she kept expecting to stumble on her father.

  “Ah yes, the ancient kitchen,” murmured Pitblade. “I know where we are now.”