Search for the Shadow Key

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  Unfortunately, he’d learned too late about the dangers. Scoville had gone Lucid Dreaming far too often, fraying his mind. And then, he’d stayed well beyond his session limit of eleven hours. His consciousness, his thinking mind, had been imprisoned within the Dream . . . forever. If not for the machines keeping his body alive in the Waking World, Rigby’s Uncle Scoville would die. And unless Rigby could find a way to release his uncle’s consciousness, his body would remain enslaved to the machines, just an empty shell of the brilliant, vigorous man he had once been.

  The grools rose gently through the lower boughs of the tree and floated toward a deck platform at the library’s main door. Rigby and Bezeal stepped off onto a large branch dotted by cobbled stone.

  Rigby blinked as they entered the library, trying to ward off the disorientation of the sight. From the outside, Central Library seemed a large structure but nowhere near large enough to house what was inside. The vaulted ceiling was more than a hundred feet high, and the cavernous interior sprawled on left and right to distant horizons obscured by towering bookshelves. It was a labyrinth of shelving, some twenty to thirty feet tall, some reaching near to the ceiling. Others were less regular, more like great spirals of shelves, winding in and out of view and sweeping away to points unseen. The sheer number of books seemed beyond count. Hundreds of thousands . . . millions, maybe. Maybe more. It was, in all, a massive panoramic view.

  “Manchester United could play in here,” Rigby muttered, “and still ’ave room for practice fields.”

  “It is the collected wisdom of all the ages, scribed and stored within these pages. Guarded fiercely by the Sages.”

  “Where are they?” Rigby asked Bezeal. “The Sages, I mean.”

  “The Inner Sanctum is where they dwell. Among the deepest secrets they keep so well. Who else might they admit . . . only time will tell.”

  Bezeal led on through the maze of bookshelves. Here a left, there a right. A U-turn, followed by a long diagonal path through piles of scrolls that climbed into the air. The merchant never wavered or hesitated. It seemed to be a complex route he had handled many times before.

  As they walked, Rigby watched with wonder as the many citizens of the Dream busily searched the shelves throughout the library. Some clambered like spiders up an array of eighty-foot ladders. Others who possessed limbs like insects didn’t need the ladders. Still others used the grools to fly to the higher shelves. It was almost as much a sight to behold as the library itself.

  At last, Bezeal’s complicated path led to a strange corner. Every interior line of the library’s floor and ceiling turned and angled down to this one simple arched doorway. And beyond it, was a dizzying, vast spiral stair. Carved with splendid detail and engraved with the runes of some ancient language that Rigby didn’t know, each step had been made of some gray stone, though each in a different shade: charcoal, slate, storm, smoke, silver, wolf, gunmetal, and ash.

  Rigby stood on the verge of the first wide step and gaped down . . . and down . . . and down. Between the endless round-and-round of the stairs, there were slivers of open air, revealing a plummeting drop.

  Rigby swallowed deeply. “I know . . . I know I’m in the Dream,” he said, “but something looks different down there. I ’aven’t a clue why it would be different, but it is. Fear seeps up from it like a deadly vapor. I could die down there, couldn’t I?”

  Bezeal’s white toothy grin appeared. “Many have died upon the Gray Stair,” he said. “Take not a single step without urgent care. And meddle not with the Sages’ work; don’t you dare.”

  As if on cue, two spectral gray figures drifted down and lighted softly upon the first step. They wore hooded cloaks. No, Rigby reflected, they didn’t so much “wear” the cloaks. They were enshrouded by them. Tatters of gray material shifted constantly around the Sages, giving them a ghostly wavering outline. The hem of their cloaks hid their feet, and their hands were drawn up into voluminous hanging sleeves, as if in wait.

  They hung in the air in front of Bezeal and Rigby, but did not look up. In fact, their hoods completely hid their faces. Synchronized perfectly in movement and timing, the two Sages crossed their arms. It seemed clear that they meant to bar the way.

  Bezeal stepped forward and pulled something from one of the many deep pockets of his own cloak. It was a silver metallic cube with some kind of engraved markings.

  Rigby squinted at it. He asked, “Is that the Karakurian Cham—”

  “SHHHHHH!” The Sages looked up abruptly. Each one sliced a hasty finger to its lips like a blade. Except they had no visible lips.

  To Rigby’s dismay, there were no faces at all beneath the Sages’ hoods. It was a pale blank mask filling each hood but bearing no features. Rigby stared, and it seemed to him that their faces might not be solid. It was like staring into some liquid, cloudy with milk or some other pale mix. That and their fierce shushing combined to raise every hair on Rigby’s neck.

  Bezeal cleared his throat. The Sages turned to stare at him and what he held in his palm. The merchant calmly moved three greenish fingers along the metal. There came a tinkling of bells like a music box, light and pretty, and the cube began to unfold into platforms. Tiny silver skeletons appeared and began to dance.

  “Ahhhh,” the Sages said at once. “Descend.”

  The Sages whispered, but Rigby felt each vowel, consonant, and syllable as if being pelted with hailstones. He couldn’t wait to get away from the creepy library keepers.

  Bezeal felt around beneath the box’s skeleton platform. There was a metallic click, and one by one, the skeletons leaped and then fell down through a hole in the platform. The puzzle box reformed into a simple cube.

  “Come,” Bezeal whispered. “And be very, very quiet.”

  Given the Sages’ frightful reaction to his voice and Bezeal’s uncharacteristic lack of rhyme, Rigby decided to honor the old saying, “Silence is golden.”

  From the moment his booted foot hit the first step, Rigby felt a fierce gravity working. Any fall would be deadly, he knew, even if he had the will to fly at the moment. Small gaps in the steps revealed as much. Rigby held on to the smooth granite rail and cautiously placed each and every step. In a few moments of descent, the close wall surrounding the spiral stair came to an end, and the Inner Sanctum was at last revealed.

  Impossible, Rigby thought, gasping. The stairs were in the exact center of a colossal round chamber, hundreds of feet in diameter and a thousand feet deep. And it was all bookshelves, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Here and there, an arched stained-glass window cast colorful light beams across the chamber, revealing the Sages at work. They floated or flew, carrying armfuls of books for re-shelving. Back and forth, up and down, the Sages hovered, moving with incredible precision. It seemed to Rigby like watching an ant farm or maybe a beehive: constant motion, but everything purposeful.

  “Whoa,” Rigby whispered. He had watched a Sage place a book on the shelf, and the moment the volume left the Sage’s hand, it sent a wavelike ripple surging through all the shelves. Each time a book was delivered to its proper place, a new ripple traveled round and round the chamber.

  Rigby was so intently watching the Sages at work that he stumbled. His foot hit nothing but air as he went down. He didn’t even have time to yell. Bezeal was there at his side, grabbing Rigby before he could fall. Rigby fought back to his feet, stood, and found himself surrounded by a dozen Sages.

  “SHHHHH!” they hissed in unison. Their faces—their blank, pale faces—changed. The roiling cloudy mask morphed into a blackeyed skullish shape.

  “I . . . I apologize,” Rigby muttered.

  “SHHHH!”

  “Come quietly, I told you so,” Bezeal whispered. He ushered Rigby away. “No time for gaping at this show. Our destination waits below.”

  Rigby kept his head on a swivel for the rest of the long journey down the Gray Stair, watching the Sages and staring back at the steps so as not to stumble again or make any noise whatsoever.

 
At the bottom of the Gray Stair, a broad floor stretched fifty yards in every direction, its white stone glistening. Rigby noted imperfections in it; spidering cracks lay scattered here and there. They looked like the marks of impact. Rigby glanced up at the height of the curling stair and shuddered.

  “This way,” Bezeal whispered. “No delay. Heed . . . what I say.”

  “You know,” Rigby whispered back, “that whole rhyming triplet thing? It gets kind of old.”

  Bezeal turned, and a frosty white grin appeared in the blackness beneath his hood. He led Rigby to the outskirts of the marble floor and stopped at the sheer blank wall. Bezeal inhaled deeply, leaned forward, and released the breath.

  The wall moved.

  It was as if it weren’t a wall at all but some kind of powder that could be disturbed by a breath. Bezeal stepped forward and, in a whirling cloud of white, disappeared into the wall. Rigby shrugged and followed.

  On the other side, darkness waited. Darkness broken only by a torch at the distant end of a narrow corridor. Rigby followed Bezeal until they stopped just a few yards away from the flickering, spitting torch.

  Rigby wasn’t sure what happened then. Emotions—prickles of nerves and something else—flooded his body. Something drew his gaze down. There, in the floor, sat a door. Not a trapdoor but an honest-to-goodness, full-sized door. It was framed in a kind of faded gray-blue stone, carved with ornate renderings of symbols, markings, and designs, none of which Rigby recognized in the least.

  The door, an extremely dark wood with hints of red, was divided into eight equal panels. These, too, were carved with marvelous detail. So intricate was their design that Rigby felt like he couldn’t look at them for long without his eyes playing tricks. Faces appeared in the wood. Moaning, anguished faces. When Rigby blinked, they were gone.

  Where the door’s knob might have been, there was instead a rack of deer antlers. These were gnarled and twisted and wickedly sharp. “At last,” Rigby said. He took hold of the antlers and pulled. The door didn’t move.

  “Pull and pull with all your might,” Bezeal said, “the door won’t open; it’s locked tight. The Karakurian Chamber requires a key . . . and a price that’s right.”

  “Karakurian Chamber?” Rigby echoed, ignoring the not-so-rhyming end of Bezeal’s speech. “I thought that was the little puzzle box you carry around.”

  “I told the Dreamtreaders that was its name. It was the only way they would play my game. But the real chamber is here . . . all the same.”

  Bezeal held out the silver puzzle box. His green fingers roamed its surface, and again, the silvery skeletons began to dance. Soon, a tall ship with many sails popped up and seemed to move on undulating waves. Bezeal’s fingers worked once more. The metal of the skeletons and the ship began to twist and move as if of its own accord. The familiar images unraveled but began to wind anew into another form. The color changed from pure silver to a weathered bronze. In a flurry of clinking and clicking, the threads of metal wound tighter and tighter until, at last, a solid eight-inch key remained.

  “Perfect,” Rigby whispered. He held his hand out.

  Bezeal’s pinprick eyes glinted back, but he did not hand over the key.

  “What are you waiting for?” Rigby asked. “I need to get inside the Karakurian Chamber. I need to research.”

  Bezeal held on to the key and did not reply.

  Rigby moved a few steps toward Bezeal and towered over him. “You told me of this place, Bezeal. You brought me here. You said this was for me, and I want it. I want it now.”

  “Good, good, your ire climbs, as it should at certain times. But to give the key for free would be a crime.”

  “I’m warning you, Bezeal,” Rigby growled, stepping closer. “Cut the games. Give me the key.”

  “You may use the key for now,” Bezeal said, his voice warbling more than usual and dropping an octave. “I’ll even show you how. But each time requires of you . . . a vow.”

  “Whatever, Bezeal,” Rigby grumbled. “You want a deal? Fine. If it’s within my powers to grant, I’ll do whatever you want.”

  The Cheshire Cat smile returned, and the merchant beckoned for Rigby to kneel. When Rigby did (with a sigh), Bezeal whispered into his ear.

  Rigby’s eyes bulged. “What? Kara?” he blurted. “But . . . I can’t.”

  Bezeal whispered again.

  Rigby shook his head, but he said, “All right. I’ll do it, but I’m certain you’re wrong. About her, that is. If she proves me out, the deal’s off.”

  Bezeal drew back from Rigby and held out his palm. “Take now the Shadow Key. For one hour, delve the chamber, for you are free. So many secrets wait for thee.”

  “One hour?” Rigby scoffed. “But I’ve got six hours left in the Dream.”

  “The vow you’ve made is . . . ah! So small. Next time, the Shadow Key will cost a greater haul . . . and I’ll come to collect, collect it all.”

  Rigby rolled his eyes and took the key from Bezeal’s hand. He stopped smiling a moment. The key was heavier than he’d expected, and the metal was icy cold. But there was more. Taking the key felt somehow like a transaction. In accepting the key, Rigby felt as if he’d just given away a part of himself. He had a fleeting thought of his Uncle Scovy wasting away on that sterile bed and tethered to all those cursed machines.

  Rigby dropped to a knee and jammed the key into the matching keyhole just beneath the antler rack. Nothing happened.

  “Push the key in; force it deep. Twist it left in a long, fluid sweep. Unlock the secrets for you to reap.”

  Rigby did as instructed. The Shadow Key sank deep, all the way to its bow, the intricate handle pinched between Rigby’s fingers. It would go no deeper, so Rigby began the turn to the left. The movement felt strangely exhilarating, like making a perfect kick in soccer or finally solving a difficult math problem. There came a chimelike click, and Rigby heard a ghostly chorus of moans.

  “There something alive in there?” Rigby demanded. “Something behind the door?”

  Bezeal laughed. “Several somethings there might be. Wondrous sights are what you’ll see. Open up, and set them free!”

  “Wait, wait,” Rigby said. “I don’t want to open this door.”

  All eight wooden panels of the door began to tremble. One by one, they popped open on hinges of their own. Rigby jumped back, but not fast enough or far enough to avoid the onslaught.

  Shrieking and seething, the creatures spewed up and out. They were almost transparent, vaguely shaped like men but seemingly boneless in the way that their features and limbs stretched and surged. Several of them found Rigby at once, clinging to him, embracing him. Their long, sinuous limbs each ended in a kind of black patch of barbs, like fingers and toes made of pitch-colored sea urchins.

  Rigby groaned, fell backward, and writhed, crying out for help.

  “That is enough, pesky Scath,” Bezeal commanded. “Off you go now on a different path. Depart now, or face my wrath.”

  The shadowy man figures immediately unraveled from Rigby. With a flurry of angry, red-eyed glints, the creatures fled. They disappeared into thin air, each with a thin popping sound.

  Rigby rose to his hands and knees. Coughing and grimacing at first, he soon began to laugh. “It’s . . . it’s in there,” he gasped. “The book I need. It’s in the Karakurian Chamber! Ha-ha, I knew I’d find it, Uncle. I knew it!”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Bezeal whispered.

  “Those . . . those things,” Rigby said, clambering to his feet. “The pain was nearly unbearable, but they made me see things . . . see inside the Sanctum. I know just where to look now.”

  There came a great creaking, and the dark wooden door wrenched open, revealing a thin stairwell lit in red light.

  “Go now and get the knowledge you seek,” Bezeal said. “The Scath are away, dream havoc to wreak. And there is but one hour for you, so do not be meek.”

  Rigby stood at the top of the stairs, took a deep breath, and began his descent. When h
e was gone from view, Bezeal turned the Shadow Key back to the right and removed it. The heavy door to the Inner Sanctum swung slowly back and shut tight within the floor.

  FOUR

  SNOW FALLS GENTLY

  “DUDE, LOOK OUT!” BUSTER YELLED. HE CARVED A tight, snow-spraying curl right between the old well and two goggleeyed teenagers dragging sleds: Archer and his good friend Amy Pitsitakas. Buster’s move covered them both in fresh powder.

  “Thanks a lot, Buster,” Archer grumbled at his eleven-year-old little brother. “You know, we were trying to stay out of your way by walking back up behind the well.”

  “But you got us good anyway,” Amy said, shaking piles from her knit cap. “Real good, yep.”

  Just then, Kaylie’s plastic sled arrived with a crusty stop. Putting a mittened hand on the well for balance, Archer’s eight-year-old sister clambered to her feet. She held up her iPod and grinned. “I got the whole thing!” she shouted triumphantly, bouncing so that her strawberry blond hair swung around to cover half her face and then back behind her ruddy cheeks. “That was perfect, Buster.”

  “You post it yet?” Buster said, holding up his thumb and pinkie, giving her the hang loose sign.

  Kaylie had taken off her mittens and was tip-tapping on the touch screen. “Done,” she said.

  “Great,” Archer said. “Another embarrassing video of me for the whole world to see.”

  “Rock on!” Buster exulted. That was Buster. Born to surf and snowboard. Little Mr. Extreme Games, Buster was the only one of the kids to avoid the red hair, pale-skin-with-freckles Keaton gene.

  His hair was blond, and he had naturally dark olive skin—an all-the-time perfect tan—something most people did not have in Maryland in December.

  “You two look like Mr. and Mrs. Jack Frost,” Kaylie said, giggling. “Though, technically, you’re covered in snow . . . not frozen water vapor.”