Air Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  Marcus clenched his eyes and buried his face in the pillow. “Put me back in the pit. Let me die.”

  Kyja closed her eyes and reached out again. She could sense Marcus now, feel the direction he was in. But it was so far away she wasn’t sure she could reach him without losing her grip on where she was. If only she could get him to come to her.

  “Marcus!” she shouted. “It’s me, Kyja.”

  No! No. Take me back. The words exploded inside her head so forcefully they seemed to rock her backward. I changed my mind. He sounded like he was sitting on the bed next to her, screaming into her ear.

  What would make Marcus scream like that?

  A tidal wave of dark emotions rushed over her. Fear. Terror. Self-loathing. She felt her stomach heave, and it was all she could do to keep from pulling away. What was happening to Marcus? Where was he?

  “Come to me!” she cried, holding out her hands.

  The woman rolled Marcus over, her fingers neither warm nor cold. “You choose not to return to the Is, the Was, or the Will Be?”

  “Yes,” Marcus groaned. “Leave me in the pit.” He couldn’t take any chance of hurting Kyja.

  “Time can only be frozen for so long,” the woman said, her voice showing no hint of emotion. “You cannot stay in the pit. But there is another way.”

  “Will it keep me from the future?” Marcus asked. The frozen moisture on his cheeks began to melt, and salty tears dripped to his lips.

  “Yes,” the veiled woman said.

  “How?” Marcus asked. “Whatever it is, I accept it.”

  “The Never Was.” The woman pointed to a swirling darkness Marcus hadn’t noticed. It looked as if the floor of the room itself was being sucked into a vast whirlpool. The longer he looked at it, the more the darkness pulled at him. He thought he could see worlds spinning in it. Worlds that had never been, choices not made, chances untaken. Mistakes erased.

  “The Void of Unbecoming,” the woman whispered. She held out her thin fingers.

  Marcus reached up and dropped the coin into her palm.

  Let me die.

  The words rang in Kyja’s ears.

  What was happening to Marcus? The feelings, so strong only a moment before, had dissolved into almost complete nothingness.

  She stretched her mind, desperately searching, reaching. She had no doubt that Marcus was in terrible danger. But she didn’t know how to help him.

  “Marcus!” she screamed again and again. “Where are you?”

  The only thing she felt was black despair. In all the time she’d known Marcus, he’d never given up; she didn’t think it was in him. They had both faced the possibility of death several times. But what she felt now was even worse than that. It was as if Marcus stood on the edge of a cliff to nowhere—a precipice that went on and on and on forever.

  Whatever it is, I accept it. His tone was one of failure. Of complete and total surrender.

  “I won’t let you give up!” she cried. Tears flooded her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her brain seemed on fire. She couldn’t find the golden rope, but that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t let Marcus die. Releasing her hold on Farworld, she dove over the cliff into the darkness, wrapped her arms around something only she could feel, and pulled with all her might.

  As the coin slipped through Marcus’s fingers, a million images raced through his mind—everything he’d ever done, seen, or felt. Like bits of wood pulled into a whirlpool, the memories swirled into dark emptiness.

  The woman’s fingers reached out to accept his payment.

  Marcus felt himself swirl into the void along with his past, and a sense of relief came with it. He was falling, disappearing. But at least he wouldn’t ever—

  Something more powerful than he ever could have imagined reached into the darkness and snatched him out.

  For the first time, the blue eyes behind the veil showed an emotion: shock.

  Marcus felt a tug at his stomach. He seemed to turn inside out. Then he was lying on a cool, stone floor. He looked up to find Kyja staring down at him—face pale with fear and desperation. In that moment, he saw her face as he’d seen it inside the glass coffin.

  Marcus screamed.

  Interlude

  Pain

  Deep beneath the bowels of the Dark Circle’s fortress, the pain never stopped. It only changed in texture, flavor, color, intensity. Bonesplinter’s mind lasted much longer than he thought was possible, registering each new atrocity inflicted upon him with a sense of horror and wonder, always hoping that this would be the pain that killed him at last. Day by day, hour by unending hour, what little sanity remained was leeched away by the continual torment heaped upon him. Until it all ran together, so that he could no longer tell one pain from another and his brain shut off completely.

  It wasn’t that the pain stopped; his mind just quit recognizing it as such. Then, just as he had decided the torture would never end, it did.

  “Wake up.”

  It—no longer he, for he no longer remembered who he was—opened its eyes and stared down from a black stone pedestal. It was in a smoke-filled room so large the ceiling and far walls disappeared in the blackness. Standing below, dozens of black-cloaked wizards watched with mingled awe and terror.

  “How do you feel?” asked a papery voice.

  Something flashed in the darkest recesses of its brain—some vague and hazy memory. Had it once been like the creatures below? Frail and weak? Anger poured through it, as steady as the blood pulsing in its body. The creature spread its great red wings wide and screamed in fury. It lunged out at the figures below, and they fell back before its wrath. Thick links of hardened steel caught at its neck, jerking it backward. It strained against the chain, screaming, tearing, gouging the platform on which it stood.

  “Yessss.” Another cloaked figure stepped out of the smoke. “You are so lovely.” The figure held out a wrinkled hand and the Summoner lashed out, fangs gnashing. At the same moment, a force stronger than any chains jerked the Summoner around, slamming its jaws closed and flattening it to the pedestal. It tried to raise its head but couldn’t move. The wizard was human, like the others, but something was different. Power flowed through this one greater than all the others combined—as though he drew magic directly from a limitless source. The Summoner stopped struggling, recognizing its master.

  A dark chuckle floated from inside the black cowl and the master stooped to lay a limp shape on the ground.

  The Summoner sniffed at the shape. A thick snarl emerged from the back of its long throat, past the row of its double fangs. It was the corpse of a two-headed dog. A stench rose from the body, and the Summoner felt a tug in its gut. Dark power flowed through its veins, heating them until it thought its blood would boil.

  Power more terrible than anything it could imagine coiled like a snake beneath its scales. It spoke in a language only it understood, making the dead dog jerk. For a second—less than a second—a tiny voice inside the Summoner cried out in disgust and revulsion. But the voice was stamped out immediately. A single spark of terror crushed by an ocean of rage, and an unquenchable desire for violence.

  The Summoner spoke again, its tongue pronouncing garbled syllables no human mouth could produce. The dog lurched to its feet, dragging itself forward until it stood directly in front of the Summoner, waiting to be commanded.

  The Summoner unfurled its massive wings, stretched its fang-filled jaws, and howled. Below, the army of Thrathkin S’Bae raised their two-pronged staffs in salute.

  The master nodded his approval and, with a gesture, sent the undead dog stumbling out of the room. He turned to address the multitude, raised his arms, and shouted. “The boy is here!”

  The crowd roared, and the Summoner roared with them, its claws digging into the stone. Its red eyes blazed, and the smoke began to swirl.

  “He and the girl do not know it yet, but they have stepped directly into our trap.” The master pointed a gnarled gray finger, his gold ring flashing. “To the east are
floods. To the west is drought. To the north, ice.”

  The dark wizards slammed their staffs on the ground. Blue fire jetted into the air, sparking off the walls and turning the smoke into a thundercloud of dark magic.

  The master lowered his arms, and the room grew quiet. “Terra ne Staric will soon be destroyed. Its people are weak from thirst. They are afraid. They will crumble before my army of golems.” He pointed across the room at the wizards. “You will hound the children night and day, forcing them deeper and deeper into my web.”

  “Yes!” the wizards cried.

  He turned to the Summoner. “And you, my pretty. You will fly north with a force of my most powerful servants to wait for them where they must end up. When they arrive . . .” He laughed his papery laugh again. “You will kill them and raise them up to serve me.”

  The master nodded silently to himself, and in a voice only he and the Summoner could hear whispered, “Then Farworld will be mine. And perhaps more, much more.”

  Part 2

  Air Keep

  Chapter 11

  Return

  For a moment Kyja didn’t know where she was. Her head spun, and her limbs seemed loose and wobbly. She felt as if she’d been flung far into space then yanked back, like one of those toys Earth kids played with—the ones that spun up and down on the end of a string. Bo-bos or no-nos or something.

  Someone screamed, and she jerked, nearly falling off the bed.

  “Good to see you too,” Riph Raph said to the boy trembling on the floor.

  “Marcus!” Kyja dove off the bed, wrapping her arms around him. “I thought you were . . .” She couldn’t say it.

  Marcus jerked in her arms. His teeth chattered.

  “You’re freezing.” Kyja tore a blanket from her bed and moved to wrap it around him, but Marcus pulled away from her. “What’s wrong?” A terrible thought occurred to her. What if Master Therapass was right? What if she had done this to him? “Was it the shadow realm?” she whispered, terrified to hear the answer.

  Marcus shook his head, and Kyja dropped to the edge of the bed, her legs weak with relief.

  A tall, long-haired man holding a slim, silvery stick stepped into the room. He took in Marcus and Kyja then rubbed his pointy chin. “You do know how to make an entrance.”

  “S-s-sc-Screech,” Marcus said, his body shaking uncontrollably.

  “He’s freezing,” Kyja said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

  “Let’s get him to Therapass,” said Graehl, the tall man who, until six months earlier, had been transformed into a trulloch named Screech. He placed the stick into his robe pocket and scooped Marcus into his arms. Kyja handed him the blanket.

  “How did he get here?” Graehl asked, taking the tower steps two at a time.

  “I brought him.” Kyja said it defiantly. She didn’t know what was wrong with Marcus, but if it hadn’t been caused by her pulling him from Earth, then she’d done the right thing. Clearly something terrible had happened to him wherever he’d been.

  “Maybe we should take him to the kitchen,” Riph Raph said. “You know, get him some nice, warm food. No need to wake the wizard twice in one night.”

  Graehl arched a questioning eyebrow.

  “I was trying to borrow his aptura discerna,” Kyja explained quickly. “I wanted to check on Marcus. I had a feeling something was wrong. And I was right.”

  For the third time that night, they passed the guard Riph Raph had dive-bombed. He gave them all a wary look as they passed. At least he didn’t try to stop them.

  Marcus groaned, and Graehl pulled the blanket more tightly around him. “Master Therapass gave you permission to bring him here?” he asked Kyja.

  Kyja ducked her head stubbornly and didn’t respond. If the wizard was mad, so be it. She’d do it again if given the chance.

  “I think his exact words,” Riph Raph chirped, “were ‘wait before doing anything.’”

  “Ahh.” Graehl nodded.

  At least Master Therapass hadn’t gone to sleep again. As soon as they entered his study, the wizard looked up from his books and jumped to his feet. His gaze went from Marcus, shivering in Graehl’s arms, to Kyja—who tried to meet his dark eyes but failed miserably.

  The wizard clapped his hands, and a pile of blankets and rugs flapped across the room, forming a bed on the nearest table. “Stand back,” he ordered Kyja as Graehl set Marcus gently on the makeshift bed.

  Kyja moved back far enough to be out of the way, but close enough to see what was happening. She wanted to explain, but now wasn’t the time.

  The wizard placed a hand on Marcus’s forehead. “Ice cold.” He pointed at the shelves on one side of the room, speaking words Kyja didn’t understand. Beakers started pouring liquids into a wooden bowl, while boxes sprinkled powders and other ingredients into it. The teapot Kyja had successfully avoided earlier that night hopped across the table, and the bowl emptied its contents inside.

  By the time the teapot had returned to the wizard, thick, green smoke steamed from its spout. The smoke smelled like rotten fruit. “This may taste rather nasty,” the wizard said. “Unless you’ve developed a taste for gooey goblin slime, as I have, in which case, it will be a pleasant treat.”

  Master Therapass poured a small amount of the hot liquid into Marcus’s mouth. Based on the face Marcus made as the liquid touched his lips, Kyja didn’t think he considered it a pleasant treat. He coughed and choked a little, but stopped shivering almost immediately.

  Master Therapass looked up at Kyja, his old face stern. “Didn’t I warn you that bringing him through the realm of shadows could have disastrous results?”

  “Not the . . . realm of shadows,” Marcus said. He looked a little better. His cheeks had some color, and he appeared to be breathing easier.

  Master Therapass rubbed a hand across his face. “Eh?”

  “It wasn’t the shadows.” Marcus sat up a little, resting on one elbow. “I didn’t feel them at all. I was—”

  Marcus’s words were cut off abruptly as Master Therapass poured more liquid into Marcus’s mouth. The wizard had moved so quickly that Kyja hadn’t even seen him pick up the teapot.

  “Enough.” Marcus coughed, pushing the pot away from his mouth. “That tastes disgusting.”

  Master Therapass gave a puzzled glance at the pot and set it on the table again. “You were saying?”

  Marcus wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and hacked. “I said, I don’t think it was the realm of shadows. When Kyja pulled me over, I was—”

  Somehow the wizard had the teapot back in his hands with the spout placed firmly between Marcus’s lips.

  “Gah!” Marcus spat a mouthful of green goop on the floor and knocked the teapot away with his good hand.

  “I’m pretty sure he does not have a taste for gooey goblin slime,” Riph Raph said with a chuckle.

  Master Therapass frowned briefly at the skyte before gazing slowly around the room. “This is very odd.” He snapped his fingers, and the teapot blinked out of existence. “Tell me one more time exactly where you were and what you were doing when Kyja pulled you over.”

  Marcus coughed again, pounding his chest, then put a hand protectively over his mouth. “I was at the monastery when I found out that the boys’ school was coming to take me away.”

  “I knew it,” Kyja couldn’t help saying. So much for Master Therapass making sure Marcus didn’t leave the monastery.

  “Go on,” the wizard said, his thick gray eyebrows bunched low over his eyes.

  “I went back to my room, and some of my things were missing,” Marcus said, still covering his mouth as if he expected the wizard to try to force more goblin slime down his throat. “I found my things inside Elder Ephraim’s quarters. When I went in, I saw a—”

  Kyja was watching everything closely this time. She was sure no one had moved. But as soon as Marcus said, “I saw a,” the flying cookie tin was on the table next to him, and the molasses cookie Kyja had used to glue
its top closed was shoved into his mouth.

  Riph Raph snorted as Marcus pulled the sticky brown substance, trying to pry it from his teeth. Even Kyja couldn’t help smiling a little. Something very strange was going on.

  Marcus was furious. He yanked the cookie out of his mouth, brown crumbs clinging to his lips and chin. “If you don’t want me to tell you what happened, just say so!”

  Master Therapass’s eyes darted around the room, and his lip pulled up in a snarl. “This is not my doing. Something—or someone—clearly does not want you to tell us where you have been.” He pointed to the door. “Graehl, check the hall.”

  The tall man hurried to the door and looked outside in both directions. “Nothing,” he said, blocking the doorway with his broad shoulders.

  The wizard turned to Kyja. “Tell me what you saw when you pulled him over.”

  Kyja gulped. “I didn’t exactly see anything. I felt something, though.” She tried hard to remember. “It was almost as if—”

  The room went dark, and her mouth was suddenly full. Something pulled tight across her eyes. She tugged at it with both hands and pulled off Master Therapass’s hat—which was what had been shoved over her head.

  Dozens of moist, round objects filled her mouth until her cheeks bulged. “Yuck!” she grimaced, spitting them into her hands. “Blueberries. I hate blueberries.”

  Now it was Marcus’s turn to hide a smile.

  “It could have been worse,” Riph Raph said. “It could have been beetles. I’m not fond of berries, but I hate to see good insects go to waste.”

  Kyja wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her robe. “This isn’t funny.”

  “No, it isn’t,” the wizard agreed. “I have dozens of protections placed in this room to warn me of outside magic. But it’s clear some sort of conjuring is at work here.”

  Graehl pulled a glittering dagger from his belt. “The Dark Circle?”

  “I think not,” the wizard said. “But until I know what has breached my security, I want the two of them watched over day and night.” He pointed a finger to the door. “There is a windowless room across the hall. Place both of them inside with a dozen guards outside the door. And I want two wizards in the room with them at all times.”