Jake studied the splash of brightness. What had seemed warmly familiar a moment before now took on a cold and mysterious cast. His fingers still clutched at the cord around his neck. At least for Jake and Kady, the White Road had led them here.
But could it somehow lead them back?
“Every night, Papa searches the skies, seeking answers about the world and the passing of time.”
“And for a way home?”
Marika nodded. Her voice grew quieter. “He spends so much time up here. Especially the last few years.”
Marika guided Jake’s attention from the stars back down to the tower roof. Its edges were lined by a shoulder-high stone wall, but in the center of the open roof rested a giant bronze dome. Jake had spotted it from the ground. It was the size of a two-car garage.
The bronze had been beaten to a polished mirror. Starlight was reflected across its surface, only interrupted by small slits around its top, like the hour markings on a clock.
“The Astromicon,” Marika said. “It is here my father works, mapping the movement of the sun, moon, and stars. He predicted the great eclipse that occurred yesterday.”
Curiosity and desire drew Jake toward a hatchway in the dome. He had to see inside.
As he stepped closer, something dark swept over the reflection of the stars. Marika saw it, too, and gasped in fear.
Jake’s mind snapped back to the monstrous winged grakyl. Had it somehow found them?
He pulled Marika toward the stairwell door. Both stared up as a large shape circled the tower top and tilted on a wing. Illuminated by the moonlight, it was clearly not a grakyl. It was too big—and darkly feathered. Its wings folded and the creature dove downward and landed heavily with a braking rush of its wings. It perched on the raised parapet wall that lined the tower.
Marika stopped retreating. “It’s one of Calypsos’s scouts.”
The creature’s head lowered and revealed a man seated on its back, strapped into a saddle. With a skill born of experience, the scout ripped away the bindings and scooped up a passenger from behind. He then slid out of the saddle and landed on the tower roof.
The scout took two wobbling steps toward them, but exhaustion drove him to his knees. He sprawled his passenger out across the stone floor.
“Get help…” the scout eked out hoarsely.
Marika turned to the stairwell door. Shouts echoed up to them. Someone had spotted the arrival and help was already on its way. Marika turned to Jake. “Stay here.”
She took off like a frightened rabbit and headed down the stairs.
Jake stayed, in case he could help.
The winged creature remained perched on the wall, its beak agape and panting, clearly as worn as its rider. The massive bird looked powerful enough to nab a cow out of a field.
The scout moved closer to the figure sprawled across the stones. Jake did the same and saw the passenger was a woman. She was dressed like the Viking elder who took Kady, with green leggings and a tunic, and boots that rose to her knees. From her blond hair, she had to be one of Astrid Ulfsdottir’s people. Jake remembered the talk of the missing huntresses.
It seemed one had been found.
“Come here, boy,” the scout ordered, his voice iron and uncompromising. “Stay with her.”
Jake hurried forward and dropped down, kneeling on the edge of the woman’s cloak. The scout stood and stepped over to his mount. He reached a hand to settle it, then crossed to where a bucket rested under a hand pump. His head was crowned by feathers, the same color as his mount. From the hard planes of his tan face, he appeared to be Native American.
The man offered the bucket of water to his giant bird, then reached out an arm to soothe it.
Jake returned his attention to the woman. Her eyes were open, but Jake suspected she saw nothing. Her chest rose and fell, but she gave no other movement. No blinking, no twitch of muscles. Even when Jake reached a hand to hers and squeezed, thinking to let her know someone was there with her, she gave no response.
A feathered shaft protruded from her shoulder. The tunic around it had darkened with her blood. He reached toward the shaft, and—
“Do not touch that!” A shout burst out and froze Jake in place.
It had come from the stairwell. Jake turned as Magister Zahur swept toward him like a black raven, cape billowing out behind him. In the starlight, his red tattoos blazed on his forehead.
Zahur dropped to the stone floor and waved Jake away as if he were a bothersome gnat. Just then Marika returned with her father. Magister Balam joined his colleague on the woman’s other side. Zahur had already begun an examination. He touched the woman’s throat and lips, then leaned to stare deeply into her eyes.
The scout joined them. “I found her with two of her sisters just beyond the Bony Pinnacle. They had been carrying her on a litter. The two were barely on their feet themselves. My scoutmaster took the two to Bornholm but ordered me to bring the huntress here. To see if there is any hope.”
“It’s Huntress Livia,” Magister Balam said in dour tones.
Marika joined Jake. Worry etched her face. “That’s Elder Ulfsdottir’s bloodsister. She and my mother were once very close. She used to read me stories.”
“We have to get her to my rooms down below,” Zahur said, his words rising like steam from a fury deep inside him. “All my healing salves are down there. But first the head of the arrow remains buried in her flesh. We must get it out. Now.”
Balam turned to Jake and Marika. “Help us.”
The Magisters rolled the woman on her side. Jake cradled her head, while Mari straddled her hips to help hold her steady.
Zahur gripped the feathered shaft. “I must push the head of the arrow the rest of the way through her shoulder—then we can snap off the arrowhead.” Zahur stared at Jake. “No one touch it!”
Balam braced the woman’s other side as Zahur clenched his fingers. “Now!” he gasped out, and shoved against the shaft.
From the woman’s back, the point of the arrow burst out. For just a moment, Jake thought it looked like the fanged head of a serpent, ready to strike, but then he blinked and saw it was only an arrowhead, like a glassy shard of obsidian as black as the darkest shadow.
“Hurry now!” Zahur warned.
Balam slipped a short stick from his pocket. It looked like its tip was on fire, but Jake saw its point was actually a fine shard of crystal.
Reaching out, Balam touched his crystal to the arrowhead. A scream pierced the night and sailed toward the sky. The woman’s body wracked in their grip, but the scream had not come from her throat. Jake was sure of it because he was still cradling the huntress’s head. The cry had come from the arrowhead.
As Balam leaned back, Jake saw the point was no longer black but a pure translucent crystal. Balam quickly reached forward with a fistful of leather and broke the head from the shaft.
Zahur allowed the woman to be rolled back. She had gone limp again. Her eyes were closed, but her breathing was more steady.
“Will she live?” the scout asked.
“It’s too soon to say,” Balam answered. “The bloodstone has poisoned her. And there may be tiny shards still inside, pieces that splintered off the arrowhead.”
They were interrupted by the huffing arrival of the English Magister. He dragged his heavy frame through the door. “I heard…what can I do?”
“Calm yourself, Oswin.” Balam crossed and showed the rotund Magister the arrowhead wrapped in leather. “We have it out.”
Oswin’s face blanched, but he still reached for the arrowhead. “We must examine it before whatever alchemy completely fades.”
Zahur closed in on them like a storm. “Are you mad? It must be destroyed.”
“But it could answer questions about what the bloodstone…”
Further words dropped to an urgent whisper among the Magisters. Jake could not make out what they were saying. Instead, as he held the woman, he noted her lips were moving. Very slightly. He leaned close
r, bringing his ear to her lips. With each fading breath, Jake heard two words repeated over and over.
“He comes…he comes…he comes…”
Suddenly her eyes fluttered open. Her gaze locked onto Jake’s. A hand clutched his wrist. “Help me….”
Before Jake could respond, she collapsed back into herself, eyes closing, lips going silent, lost again to the world.
Not noticing what had happened, Zahur broke away and stepped back to the woman’s side. “Enough.” He pointed to the scout. “Help me carry her below! I must do my best with my salves to save her life.”
Jake stood up. “But she—”
Zahur elbowed him aside. The scout and the three Magisters used the woman’s own cloak like a stretcher to lift her away.
Marika’s father called, “Mari, take Jacob and show him to his bed. I think we’ve all had enough excitement for one night.”
Marika nodded. Stepping aside, Jake waited for the group to head downstairs. He crossed over to the parapet and stared out across Calypsos. He could make out the spiral of the main street as it wound away from the castle and out toward the main gate. So peaceful and quiet. Yet Jake only had to turn and see the fresh blood on the stones to know that such tranquility was an illusion.
He comes…he comes…he comes…
Jake also pictured the bright blue of the huntress’s eyes. In that brief flash, her eyes reminded Jake of his mother’s—always laughing and bright and so full of love. Eyes he would never see again.
Help me…
Jake shivered. He had not been able to save his mother, but he made a silent vow now to do what he could for the woman here. But how? He knew nothing of this world. As he despaired, his gaze settled upon one last sight, one last hope.
Lit silver by moonlight, a stone dragon hovered over the neighboring dark woods. It stared out toward the ridges of the valley, like a watchdog vigilant against intruders.
Jake sensed answers hidden there.
But could he unlock them in time?
11
THE ALCHEMIST’S APPRENTICE
Jake woke with his blankets knotted around his body. It took him a frantic moment to remember where he was. He’d been dreaming of his parents. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. His heart still pounded like a racehorse’s after a sprint around the track. The dream remained vivid—and still terrified him.
He had been down in the rock quarry at home, rooting around for fossils, when his mother and father started calling down to him. The panic in their voices had him scrambling for a way up out of the rock pit, but its walls had grown to twice their normal height with no path out. And all the while, his parents yelled for him to hurry, but he couldn’t see them. As he searched for a way up out of the quarry, a speck in the sky caught his attention. Jake knew it was the source of his parents’ fear. As he stared, it grew larger and larger, revealing a winged creature, as black as the deepest pit, with a serpentine neck and spear-like head. It plunged toward him, and still its wingspan spread wider and wider, blocking the sun. Its shadow swept over Jake and swallowed up the quarry. The temperature instantly dropped to a wintry cold.
Then a voice called down to him, as if the winged creature bore a rider on its back, hidden out of sight.
“Come to me…”
The words—the same he’d heard when falling through the darkness to this strange land—had shocked him straight out of the nightmare.
Jake sat a moment longer, waiting for his heart to slow. His entire body was damp with sweat, as if he’d had a fever that suddenly broke. He could still hear that voice, scratching like something trying to claw itself out of a grave. Finally he kicked away the sheets and quilted blanket and crossed to the window in his boxer shorts.
He pulled open the shutters and morning sunlight flooded into the room. One of the tiny saurian birds swept past his window, what the people here called dartwings. It cawed out a piercing note and was gone.
Jake took deep breaths, steadying himself.
Far below, the town of Calypsos was already bustling. Wagons rolled, people crowded the streets, and lumbering beasts stalked the wider avenues. Jake felt a pull to get outside and explore this new world.
He turned from the window and crossed to where he’d climbed out of his clothes and dropped them to the floor last night. After the long day, the strange introduction to Calypsos, and the excitement atop the tower, he’d barely made it to his bed.
His room was little bigger than a stone closet, but it was cozy. It held a bed and bedside table with a lamp, a chair, and a wooden wardrobe carved with Mayan glyphs.
As he stepped across the room, Jake noticed two things immediately. His clothes, which he’d left on the floor, were now neatly folded on the chair. They looked freshly laundered. He picked up his safari jacket. It still felt warm, as if it had just come out of a clothes dryer.
But that was crazy, wasn’t it?
Second, he noted that the wardrobe door was cracked open. He nudged it wider and saw that someone had returned his pack. He tugged open the zipper and checked inside. All his stuff seemed to be there, but he searched the pack to be sure. Near the bottom, his finger poked into something strange.
What is this?
His finger probed an inner pocket. During all the tussling of the past day, it must have torn open. Inside, he discovered a silver metal button about the size of a dime. Jake flipped it around. With a fingernail, he teased out a tiny antenna.
“A bug of some sort…” he said aloud, shocked.
His brow crinkled. The Bledsworth corporation had given him the pack, along with his new clothes. Apparently they’d also given him something extra.
Anger boiled through him at the violation. He crossed the room and whipped the device out the window. As it flashed across the sky, a dartwing dove down, snatched it out of the air like it was a real bug, and flew off.
Jake shook his head.
Why would the corporation—the same ones who had financed his parent’s dig—plant a bug on him?
He frowned as he quickly dressed. He had no answer, and any investigation would have to wait. Right now he had a more pressing concern.
Jake searched around his room. The bedroom door was closed, but clearly someone had been in his room while he’d slept.
His fingers suddenly clenched with worry. Last night, he’d taken one extra precaution. Jake hurried across the room and slid on his knees to the edge of the bed. He reached under the frame and found his parents’ journals. He’d hidden them there for safekeeping.
He gathered the books, suddenly feeling like unseen eyes were spying on him, ears listening to him. He tucked the journals back into his jacket and patted them in place, feeling more secure again. He also shrugged his pack over one shoulder.
Once ready, he crossed to the door and opened it. His room was on the second level of the Balams’ home. The stairs to the common room were just down a short hall. He heard voices mumbling, too low to make out. He crossed to the top of the stairs when he heard one voice say a bit loudly, “Just go wake him, Mari!”
“No, Papa said to let him sleep.”
Jake spied below and spotted Marika sitting at the table with an open book in front of her. One finger rested on a page. A boy in a Roman toga and sandals stalked around the table. It was Pindor. Jake remembered that the boy had been assigned by Elder Tiberius to act as his guard. Apparently Pindor had already reported for duty.
Marika must have sensed Jake’s presence. She glanced up at him. Jake straightened, blushing a bit, embarrassed to be caught eavesdropping. He lifted a hand, acknowledging her, and headed down the stairs.
Marika stood. “There’s some porridge,” she said, and pointed to a covered bowl. “It’s still warm.”
Pindor rolled his eyes. “We don’t have time—”
Marika silenced him with a glare. “Just because you ate three bowls already.”
“I was hungry!” He rubbed his stomach. “I got sent to bed without any dinner last night.” This l
ast earned another frown at Jake, as if it were his fault.
Marika sighed and faced Jake. Her eyes were shadowed and tired. It looked like she’d gotten little sleep. “Papa asked that we speak with him before we leave.”
Jake glanced at the closed study door.
“No,” Marika said. “He’s up in the Astromicon. With Magister Oswin. The two have been up there all night.”
“Studying that arrowhead?” Jake asked.
“I think so.”
Pindor drew closer. “Did you actually see the bloodstone?”
Jake crinkled his brow. “The what?”
“The arrowhead that struck down Huntress Livia and poisoned her.”
Jake remembered the deadly shard of crystal, how its blackness looked like a solid splinter of shadow. Coldness crept over him at the memory of it.
“We both saw the arrowhead,” Marika said. She caught Jake’s eye. “Father doused it quickly, quenching its power.”
“I wish I could have seen it,” Pindor said.
“No,” Marika and Jake both said at the same time, causing Pindor to step back.
“Don’t ever wish that,” Marika finished. She waved again to the table, changing the subject. “Jacob, would you like something to eat? The porridge has twistberries this morning. It’s very good.”
He shook his head. Remembering last night’s bloodshed killed his appetite. “No, thanks…and you can just call me Jake,” he added.
This concession drew a small smile from her before she turned and headed toward the stairs. “Then we’ll say good-bye to my father and be on our way.”
“To where?” Jake asked.
“Papa thought you’d like to visit your sister. To know she is safe and settled. Like you.”
Jake slowly nodded. Though he was far from settled, he didn’t say anything. He also felt a twinge of guilt. He’d barely considered how Kady might be faring. She was probably hiding under her bed.
Back up on the tower rooftop, the sunlight blazed off the bronze dome of the Astromicon. Jake squinted against the glare and hurried after Marika as she headed to the hatch.
Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow Page 10