Zeb stared at the piano in disbelief. The voice was real, and it was definitely coming from inside the piano. So, what if it really did belong to a creature somewhere beyond his world—did that mean magic was real? The thought was so completely absurd that Zeb almost lost his balance. He tried to think rationally, as the Tank would do. Perhaps this piano was some elaborate mechanical prop from a past performance that had been programmed to speak nonsense after someone played it. But the voice had called Zeb by name.…
“There’s got to be an explanation for all this,” Zeb said in a trembling whisper.
“Magic,” the voice replied. “And once you accept that it exists, we can get down to business. And getaway planes…”
Zeb chewed his nails. It was muscles, not magic, that got you out of scrapes. Wasn’t it?
“I could slink off, I suppose,” the voice said. “Find someone else to shower with riches and—”
“Don’t go,” Zeb blurted. And then he found himself saying: “If, by some miracle, magic exists, how can you change my life when you’re in one world and I’m in another?” He paused. “What if you’re just like everyone else I’ve ever met: full of promises you can’t keep?”
“Oh, I’m not like anyone else,” the voice replied. “I will keep my promise to you—if you keep a promise for me in return.”
Zeb frowned. “But how can a voice keep a promise? It doesn’t make sense.”
A silence followed and Zeb inched closer to the piano. Had he blown it by asking too many questions? Had the creature sloped off to pester someone else? Then Zeb’s skin tightened. The air inside the theater was changing. It had felt stale before, but now it felt alive, charged. The moonlight throbbed, and then, into the silence, there was a rush of wind that seemed to come from the piano itself.
It tore through the stalls, whipping up clouds of dust from the seats before spiraling round the chandelier. Zeb gasped as the light rocked back and forth, gathering momentum as it swung. And then a gust wrenched it from the ceiling and sent it hurtling down toward Zeb. He dived sideways and covered his eyes as the chandelier smashed onto the stage with a deafening crash.
Zeb opened one eye to see thousands of glass droplets strewn like shattered ice across the stage. Then the voice spoke again.
“I will keep my promise, Zebedee. I will conjure you a new life if you bring me the droplets still hanging from the chandelier. The ones that are glowing.”
His ears still ringing from the crash, Zeb glanced at the chandelier. It was turned on its side and most of the glass had shattered, but Zeb could see a cluster of droplets dangling down that were perfectly intact. They were small—no bigger than marbles—and they were shining with the blinding blue that belongs to kingfishers and jungle frogs. Zeb’s eyes widened. Whatever this creature was, it was powerful. It wasn’t even in Zeb’s world yet, and somehow it had torn down a chandelier.
“Time is running out,” the voice crooned. “You cannot make a noise that loud without somebody coming to investigate. That meddling woman might come back. And she’ll come with more than her purse.” The creature hissed. “She’ll come with the full force of the law on her side, and when the police see the mess you’ve made of that chandelier, they might even lock you up. After all, nobody wants a vandal in their neighborhood.”
“But Fox said she was coming back to take me out for food. She—” Zeb stopped, realizing he’d been quietly believing in the social worker all along. What was wrong with him tonight? Why was he suddenly believing in unlikely things left, right, and center?
The voice cut into his thoughts. “You know as well as I do, Zebedee, that the social worker has gone to the police. And if you turn away from me now, you’ll be back where you were: alone and unhappy and utterly without hope.” There was a pause. “Bring me the droplets, boy.”
Zeb looked from the chandelier to the piano. It was one thing admitting that the voice was probably right about Fox, but it was quite another to go believing in magic. “If—if you still have enough magic to summon a wind and pull down a chandelier, why can’t you summon the droplets?”
“Because those droplets are filled with a different magic from mine,” the creature snapped. “They are immortalized phoenix tears, shed a long time ago, and phoenix magic has a will of its own, which, right now, is sitting stubbornly out of my grasp. I can sense this magic, though, even without seeing it, and when it is brought to me, I will use it to help you. I will build you an almighty home filled with pianos.” The voice paused. “But perhaps you don’t want my help. Perhaps you’ve got your life all figured out and it’s time I left you alone.”
Zeb knew he was running out of time and options. With no money or connections, he could only run for so long, and who knew what punishment might lie in store for him if he was accused of vandalizing the theater when he was eventually caught? He thought again of the creature’s offer: a getaway plane, riches, and a home. For the first time in his life, there was a chance for him to escape—properly escape—and now that it had been dangled in front of him, he couldn’t pass it by, no matter how unlikely it all seemed.
“Well?” came the voice again.
Zeb imagined his palace in the Himalayas. He’d never thought about living in a grand home before, but now one was forming in his mind. He could see his bedroom: a glorious four-poster bed and a piano pushed up to a window overlooking snow-capped mountains. There was a heated rooftop swimming pool, too. And a landing pad for his getaway plane. He wasn’t sure how he’d go about flying this getaway plane, but perhaps when you had magic on your side, how wasn’t so much of an issue. Maybe the voice inside the piano could demand pilots as well as planes and no one would bat an eyelid. The palace grew and grew in Zeb’s mind until the possibilities of it all outweighed the doubt and he found himself daring to believe in magic.
He tiptoed over the glass until he came to four glowing droplets. Up close, they shone so brightly that he blinked. Reaching out a hand, he yanked them from the chandelier. He was so keen to claim his reward, he didn’t notice a fifth droplet that had broken away from the others and was tucked beyond the stage curtain—beyond the creature’s radar, too.
“Yes,” the voice breathed as Zeb made his way back toward the piano. “I can feel the phoenix magic stirring now.”
The droplets tingled in Zeb’s palm, and a thrill rushed through him as he thought of what lay ahead. Would the getaway plane appear in Crook’s End the moment he handed the droplets over? Perhaps he’d arrive at his rooftop swimming pool for a quick dip before bed.
The creature’s voice, rich with desire, gave one last order as Zeb drew close: “Drop the phoenix tears into the piano, Zebedee.”
Zeb held the droplets above the strings and, for a moment, he wavered. Why, just as he was about to secure himself a brilliant future, had the image of Fox drifted into his mind? He cast her away and hardened his heart to any shred of possibility that she might have kept her promise and come back to help him. That just wasn’t the way people worked. He let the first three droplets clatter down into the piano, but he held on tight to the last one, just in case he needed some bargaining power during the exchange of riches.
For a few seconds nothing happened, and Zeb wondered whether perhaps he’d gone mad and simply imagined the voice altogether. Then an arm burst out from under the strings and hammers. A thin arm, covered in black feathers. Zeb recoiled as five clawed fingers reached out toward him and gripped him by the shoulder. He tried to yank himself free, but the fingers were strong and only held tighter.
Then, in one swift pull, they dragged him down into the piano.
Chapter 4
Zeb kicked and screamed. He was tumbling down and down into darkness. Where were the strings and hammers inside the piano? Where was the bottom of the instrument? He shrieked as clawed fingers scrabbled at his hand, then the last droplet was gone and Zeb’s body brushed past something cool and hard, like stone. He landed with a thump on a heap of soil, and as his eyes adjusted to the glo
om, his whole body filled with dread.
Somehow, he had fallen through a crevice of rock into a very large cave. A mass of tangled roots covered the roof, and tucked into their folds were hundreds of skulls that shone with an eerie green light. Jagged rocks lined the cave, several shadowy tunnels led off from it, and at the far end, there was a throne carved from stone and wrapped in spiderwebs.
In front of Zeb, dusting herself free of soil, was the creature. She had a black-feathered body, talons instead of feet, and a mangy pair of wings sprouting from her back. Over her face she wore the pointed skull of a long-dead bird and Zeb could see two yellow eyes shining with menace behind this skull. They blinked, and Zeb scrambled backward. Then the creature laughed darkly, and as she raised the glass droplets in her hand, Zeb noticed her wings begin to change. They grew bigger and stronger as more and more feathers appeared, until they were no longer the tattered, limp things they had been. They rose up either side of the creature, huge and black, like a cape of oil.
“Almost five hundred years I have waited for this moment!” the creature cried. “I have crawled through darkness day after day, night after night to find enough phoenix magic to restore my strength and begin my reign. And tonight, I have succeeded!” The creature cackled and her laugh echoed down the tunnels. “I, Morg, am a harpy filled with magic once more!”
Zeb was now so frightened he thought he might be sick. Magic was real; that much was clear. But what he hadn’t expected was for it to be so utterly terrifying. Even the shadows seemed to shrink with fear every time the harpy moved, and Zeb noticed the crevice he had fallen through had now closed up completely.
Morg slipped the droplets into a pouch around her neck, then turned her attention to Zeb. “Welcome to Hollowbone, my underground lair, a land so full of darkness it barely belongs to any world at all.”
The cave was so quiet, Zeb felt sure the harpy would hear his heart thumping into the silence, but he willed his words on, despite his fear. “You—you said you’d summon anything I wanted. So I’d like to climb inside my getaway plane, collect my riches, and get out of here. Please.” He looked around him. “Maybe you could park the plane in that tunnel over there—with a pilot inside it, because I can feel an Outburst coming and I’m not sure I can sob and steer at the same time.”
Morg flexed her wings. “There is just one small thing I still need you to do, Zebedee. One last item I need you to bring me for my powers to be fully restored.”
A shower of black sparks fell from the harpy’s wings, singeing holes in the stone floor as if it had been made of paper. Zeb flinched. If this was the harpy before she came into her full strength, he didn’t dare imagine what she might be like at the height of her powers. Zeb forced himself to his feet nevertheless. He needed to show Morg he meant business, even though he was so scared he could barely breathe. “You—you look like you’ve got plenty of magic to be getting on with things yourself, and I—I kept my side of the bargain. So, I’d like to get going in my plane now.”
Morg picked up a stone and Zeb watched in horror as she crushed it into a handful of dust. “Your time will come, Zebedee. But until it does, I need you to listen and obey.”
Zeb tried his best to steer the harpy back to their bargain. “But you said—”
Morg growled and Zeb watched, wide-eyed, as the rocks lining the mouths of the tunnels sharpened into spikes. She took a step closer to Zeb and the air chilled.
“Have you ever wanted something, Zebedee? Wanted it so badly you would do almost anything to get it? And I’m not talking about getaway planes or rooftop swimming pools.…”
Zeb was too petrified to speak or look up, but he could feel the harpy’s eyes boring into him.
“What about power?” Morg continued. She stalked over to her throne, then sat upon it with her wings tucked up behind her. “You could build a home in the most remote part of your world, but there would still be a chance—however slim—that someone would find you and drag you back to your old life. And then all this would’ve been for nothing.”
Zeb was silent for a moment. He was aware that he was treading a fine line between having a conversation and being crushed into a handful of dust. And yet when he raised his head, he found the harpy glaring at him so intently he felt compelled to reply. “What—what are you suggesting?”
The harpy cocked her skull mask to one side. “That we build a new world. A world where we are in charge.”
Half an hour ago, Zeb would have scoffed at the idea, but now that he had been yanked from Brooklyn, dragged down into an underground lair, and was face-to-face with a magical creature, it didn’t seem so far-fetched. More than this, though, Zeb was in the grip of Morg’s magic now, and the possibility of a safe new world had grown legs of its own, filling Zeb’s mind until he could barely remember the city or the house he’d been running from.
He shifted under the harpy’s gaze. “You’re sure this is possible?”
“Anything is possible,” Morg spat, “if you have enough magic. The only reason I didn’t mention it to you earlier was because building a new world comes with”—she paused—“a catch. And you seemed to be taking such a long time to decide on what to do with yourself; I thought it best not to fluster you further.”
“Would the catch still mean I get a plane and riches and a palace in this new world?”
Morg nodded.
“And we wouldn’t have to live next to each other or anything?” Zeb grimaced at the thought. “You could be in charge of one half of the world and I could rule the other?”
“Correct. There will be more than enough magic for both of us to live the lives we want.”
Zeb weighed all this up, then he took a deep breath. “What exactly do you want me to do? And what’s the catch?
The harpy leaned forward on her throne, and in a singsong voice she began to tell Zeb a story. “Before I came along, a phoenix ruled the world from Everdark, a hidden land just like Hollowbone here. It’s halfway between the Faraway—where you’re from—and the Unmapped Kingdoms, magical lands where sunlight, rain, and snow are conjured.”
Zeb pulled himself onto a rock and tried his best to follow.
“It was the phoenix’s job to watch over these four kindgoms and ensure the Unmappers who lived there shared their magic with the Faraway, so that your continents might be filled with light and life. Phoenixes are weak, though. Every five hundred years the reigning one would die and a new phoenix would rise from its ashes to watch over the Unmapped Kingdoms. But then I came along…” The harpy smirked. “I rose from the ashes of the last phoenix nearly five thousand years ago. And do you think watching over other people and sharing magic with humans is something I do?”
“Er, no,” Zeb replied hastily. “Smashing chandeliers and hauling people into pianos is more your style.”
“You’re catching on.” Morg steepled her clawed fingers. “Without a new phoenix rising every five hundred years, the Unmapped magic is beginning to run out. The kingdoms’ dragons may be scattering moondust to keep what is left of it going, but every day a little more fades. Only the birth of a new phoenix can restore the magic I have destroyed so far. So, now is my time to act.”
Zeb inched a little further inside his hoodie. He was still coming to terms with the harpy and now there was talk of dragons, too.…
“Three times over the last five thousand years I have tried to steal the Unmapped magic. And three times I have failed. But this time, I will seize it all and then I will have the power of the elements on my side.” Morg’s wings shimmered. “I will command the sun to scorch, the rain to unleash mighty storms, and the snow to cast the fiercest blizzards, until every Unmapper is destroyed. Until the Kingdoms of Rumblestar, Jungledrop, Crackledawn, and Silvercrag are no more. Then I will use this Unmapped magic—the most powerful magic of all—to build us both a new world.”
Zeb was starting to feel alarmed. “But if you get rid of these Unmapped Kingdoms, doesn’t that mean the Faraway, where I’m from, goe
s too?”
“And there you have the catch,” Morg replied. “The Faraway will vanish, and all the people with it.” She paused. “But your world hasn’t exactly been kind to you, has it, Zebedee?”
Zeb looked down. There were eight billion people on planet Earth and not one had shown him they cared. That social worker called Fox might have claimed to, but who was to say she would actually have come back? And as for the Unmapped Kingdoms: He’d only heard about them for the first time just now. So, it should have been easy for Zeb to wash his hands of the lot of them.
“You’re quite sure the only way to build a new world is to wipe out the Unmapped Kingdoms and the Faraway?” he said.
“Of course I’m sure,” the harpy snapped. “I wouldn’t be wasting my time with you if there was another way.”
Zeb was trying extremely hard to focus on power and riches instead of world annihilation, but it was proving harder than expected. “Does wiping everyone out seem a little bit”—he searched for the right word—“drastic to you?”
“I knew you’d be too weak for this,” Morg hissed.
The harpy stood up, and as she raised her wings, a flurry of black sparks danced around her. Zeb didn’t know much about magic, but he could clearly sense that a whole lot of trouble was about to come his way.
“Wait!” he cried. “I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t help you. I was just—just—thinking things through.”
Sparks poured from Morg’s wings, hissing as they hit the ground. “You’re either in or you’re out, Zebedee.” She took a stride closer and her dark magic crackled. “Which is it?”
Zeb knew deep down that even though he was unsure about erasing humankind, he was trapped in Hollowbone with the harpy, and unless he went along with her plan, he was as good as dead. He tried to focus on the end result: Once the new world had been conjured and he and Morg had gone their separate ways, no one, least of all Derek Dunce, would meddle in his life ever again. Zeb would finally be in charge of his own destiny, like the Tank himself, only smaller and with less facial hair.
Zeb Bolt and the Ember Scroll Page 3