Search for the Shadow Key

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  “I can’t take credit for everything,” Rigby said with a twirl of his cane.

  “I want them all back,” Archer said. “Give them back to me, Rigby!”

  “I already have,” Rigby said, his eyes flaring red. “When the world’s merge, it’ll all be better.”

  Archer gritted his teeth. He wanted to believe that. But he shook his head. “No,” he said, “even if we save the ones we love, we can’t just let the world burn.”

  “That’s the trouble with you Dreamtreaders,” he said. “You always assume you know how things should be. You’d really let little Kaylie rot, would you? That’s so cruel, even for you, Keaton.”

  “It’s not like that,” Archer shot back. “I love Kaylie, I—”

  “Apparently, not enough to save her.”

  “How can you justify one life while throwing away thousands, maybe millions of others?”

  “And how can you possibly believe that? How do you know the two worlds weren’t meant to become one?”

  “They don’t become one!” Archer shouted, exasperated. “They destroy each other! Do you have any idea what will happen? People won’t know dream from reality. People will die by the millions. There’ll be chaos—”

  “Freedom, you mean,” Rigby said. “Who’s to say, Keaton? I mean really, who’s to say mankind wasn’t meant to live, free to dream?”

  “Dreamtreaders say so,” Archer said, but his words lacked conviction. “Dreamtreaders are the caretakers of it all. We didn’t make the rules. We just follow them.”

  “Follow them blindly,” Rigby muttered.

  “I’m not the blind one here!” Archer shot back. “You call it freedom, but how can you not see that some freedoms can be abused? Some choices should never be made!”

  “So says the Dreamtreader,” Rigby grunted, holding his raven cane and studying the weapon. “Easy to say such things when you have the power. But not anymore, not just you. There’s really only one question left to answer. Do you know it?”

  “Rigby, you’ve got this all wrong,” Archer said. “It’s not about keeping the power or putting anyone down. This is about safety. It’s—”

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Rigby said, tilting his cane. “I’ll tell you, anyway. The only pressing question is: what color should the flame on my cane be? I was thinking green.” Immediately, green fire leaped up Rigby’s blade. “Hmmm. Not sure that’s the right color for a villain. I am the villain, aren’t I, Keaton?”

  “Of course, you’re the villain,” Archer growled, calling up buckets of his will. “You don’t care who gets hurt, who dies, as long as you get your way.”

  “Perhaps, purple,” Rigby muttered as if Archer weren’t even in the room. The green flame winked out, replaced a second later by raging purple fire. “I could just as easily call you the villain; you know that, Keaton? It’s all about creeds and rules with you. No room for love. No room for freedom. That sounds like a villain to me.” He paused, considering his fiery weapon. “Hmmm, no. Why fight it? I think I like being the villain. And . . . I know it’s cliché, but . . . let’s go with red!”

  Again, the crimson electrical charges flickered on the cane, but with a roar, red fire engulfed Rigby’s weapon as he vaulted up to the height of the arched chamber and dropped toward Archer. The red and blue flame met and met again, causing a strange swirl of color to flash around the two combatants. They moved back and forth across the chamber floor, ducking and dodging, leaping the doorway to the Sanctum’s vault and careening around the room.

  After an exhausting exchange of strikes and counters, Archer found himself panting and frustrated. Forty feet away, Rigby crouched.

  “This is rather pointless,” Rigby said. “Don’t you think?”

  “You’ve got to be stopped,” Archer muttered.

  Rigby stood up. When he tossed his raven cane into the air, it vanished in a streak of red flame. “See, now, that’s what I’m trying to explain, Keaton. I cannot be stopped. What’s done is done. The Scath are free and working for me, the Shadow Key is destroyed, Dream Inc. thrives, and the breaches are multiplying far beyond your ability to weave them up.” Rigby shook his head. “You don’t even know the half of it. A Rift is inevitable, Keaton. Get over it.”

  “I’m a Dreamtreader,” Archer said. “I can’t get over it.”

  “Yeah, well, that may be,” Rigby said. “But don’t you think it’s time you put your family first? I mean, just this once? Where’s your father? Where’s Kaylie? And poor Buster back at home . . . all alone.”

  The sound that burst from Archer’s lungs was primal and ferocious and, in some distant part of his consciousness, he was frightened to hear that sound and to know that it came from himself. Terror and rage propelled Archer forward. He crossed the forty yards in a blink, raised his sword . . . and crashed hard into a real brick wall.

  Archer crumbled to the ground. He was already healing from the collision when Rigby made the brick wall vanish. “See there, Keaton,” he said. “It does you no good. You summon a sword; I summon my cane. You charge; I make a wall. You create a tank to blast through the wall, I’ll make a bomber to blow up your tank. Back and forth we’ll go until one of us finally—finally—gets too tired to fight. And by the look of things, that’s going to be you, Keaton. In the end, your family suffers. All these rules you follow, all these codes, and what really matters . . . your family, the people who love you . . . will suffer. You can’t win.”

  “I beg to differ, ya bloomin’ ankle biter.”

  The boomerang hit the back of Rigby’s head and sent him sprawling gracelessly, face-first, to the floor.

  “Seems you’ve underestimated the Dreamtreaders, mate,” Nick Bushman said, striding out of the shadows. “We don’t work alone.”

  Rigby lifted his head from the stone and shook away the cobwebs. He rolled over onto his back just in time to see a swarm of boomerangs streaking his way from all angles. Rigby called up a metallic dome and used it as a shield. The boomerangs clanged and clattered off, but the moment Rigby lifted his shell, a single boomerang took him in the jaw.

  “I’ve got heaps of them,” Nick said. “Now, be good, and tell Archer here what he wants to know, or I’ll be forced to let the boys get busy again.”

  Rigby wiped a trickle of blood from his chin and sneered. He made the shield shell vanish and clambered back to his feet. “You’re new at this, aren’t you?” Rigby asked. “A bit of beginner’s luck, that’s all.”

  Archer leaped to his feet and came at Rigby. The Lucid Walker raised his hands only to find himself handcuffed with heavy, dark metal manacles.

  “You don’t have beginner’s luck, Keaton” Rigby said, smiling. “Whatever kind you had has run out.”

  A strange rope appeared, dangling down from somewhere unseen far overhead. Even with his cuffed wrists, Rigby reached above his head and gave the rope a sharp pull.

  A distant bell tolled. Once. Twice. All the way to six.

  Howls. Howls echoed across the landscape.

  “Hounds!” Archer exclaimed.

  “Sounds like heaps of ’em,” Nick said. “Not far away.”

  “Call them off, Rigby—!” But the words died on Archer’s lips. The handcuffs Archer had summoned lay empty on the floor.

  Rigby was gone.

  TWENTY-ONE

  POWERS

  “I’M TELLING YOU, WE HAVE TO FIND HER!” RIGBY YELLED, pacing the throne room of Number 6 Rue de la Morte. “This can’t wait.”

  “Isn’t it enough that she’s trapped here?” Kara asked. She stood in front of a body-length mirror on the far side of the chamber.

  “You have no idea the kind of power she wields,” Rigby said. “She could tip the balance back the other way.”

  Kara crossed her arms and frowned at her own reflection. “She’s just a little kid, Rigby.”

  “A once-in-a-lifetime brilliant little kid,” Rigby growled. He sank low into the dark chair.

  “Twice,” Kara said. “You mean twic
e-in-a-lifetime, right? Your uncle is that smart.”

  “Right, fine. Yes, twice.”

  “But what’s the urgency?” Kara asked, spinning on her heel. “She’s here in the Dream. She’s contained.”

  “Are you even listening?” Rigby asked, spluttering mad. “She is not contained. In fact, being stuck in the Dream amplifies her power here.”

  Kara abruptly went still. “You haven’t mentioned that before. How . . . could being stuck here amplify her abilities?”

  “Again, like my uncle.” Rigby pounded his fist on the armrest. “He didn’t earn the Lurker nickname for nothing. Since being trapped here, he’s become savagely powerful.”

  “But why?”

  “Brain physiology,” Rigby replied. “When the brain no longer needs to function in the Waking World, it devotes more of its resources to the subconscious. New neural pathways open up. You become beastly strong.”

  “And Kaylie was already strong,” Kara thought out loud.

  “You see what I mean, then,” Rigby said. “Now . . . I’ve led Keaton and his Aussie pal to believe I have her, but if they find her first, it could ruin everything.”

  “What will you do?” Kara asked.

  “What?”

  “If you find Kaylie,” Kara said, “what will you do with her?”

  “I don’t know,” Rigby said. “I’m not even certain the two of us together could hold her here.”

  The throne room fell into dreadful silence. Rigby leaned forward in the black seat and became very still. Kara waited for him to say more, but he sat, motionless as a cemetery. His eyes even had that faraway look like the blank-eyed statues, the monuments to the dead.

  It was Kara’s turn to pace. She paced until she heard her bell toll nine, and a flash of red light near the throne took her attention. “What was that?” she asked.

  Rigby didn’t answer right away. He was staring at his own right hand. Tiny spidery pulses of crimson electricity jittered along his forearm, his wrist, and even to his fingertips.

  “Rigby?”

  He blinked and looked up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What?”

  “What was that?” Kara asked. “I’ve never seen you do that before.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just a little trick I learned from the Masters’ Bindings.”

  Kara crossed her arms again. “I don’t like it,” she said.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Rigby said. “Sorry that it troubles you. I can control it mostly, but . . . sometimes, when I’m deep in thought, it just happens.”

  “What were you thinking about just now?” Kara probed. “You seemed out there . . . like, just gone.”

  “I was thinking there might be another way to neutralize Kaylie.”

  Kara squinted. “What do you mean?”

  Rigby gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Something outside of the Dream might actually be better.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting something. But Number 6 has no doorbell for me to ring. And it shouldn’t wait . . . this news I bring.”

  In the dark archway, two glistening star-point eyes appeared.

  “What’s he doing here?” Kara asked.

  Rigby shrugged. It was not an expected visit. I hope he hasn’t come to collect, he thought. I’m not ready for that yet. “What is it, then?” Rigby demanded. “What’s this news?”

  “The tidings I bear are sure to be a thrill,” Bezeal said, shuffling into the throne room. His eyes were brighter than usual and somehow eager. “It just couldn’t wait for parchment, pen, and quill. For Kaylie, the enemy, lies in the sure grip of Scoville.”

  “What?” Rigby exclaimed. “Are you certain?”

  The merchant’s Cheshire Cat grin appeared. He nodded.

  “Well,” Rigby said, clapping his hands. “Problem solved. Now, there’s nothing Keaton can do. I hold all the cards.”

  Kara walked slowly back to the mirror. She saw the glint in her own eye as she thought, All the cards . . . except one.

  Archer steered his longboard toward a less violent Intrusion wave, one headed east, to get a better look at the Forms District. He called up his will to engage Visis Nocturne. The breaches were raging. He shut off the will-draining vision and gazed out to the horizon. The ice-fire was spreading upward. It reminded Archer of the front windshield of the family car a few years back. A tiny rock had flown up from the road and nicked the glass. For weeks, all that showed from the rock was that tiny little nick. But then, over time, the crack blossomed into meandering streaks until the windshield was so shot through with cracks that it needed to be replaced.

  “This is too much,” Archer muttered, kick-turning onto another Intrusion wave. “It’s like no matter what we do, the Rift is going to happen anyway.” The wave was just forming, but Archer had seen its type before. The Dream matter behind it was surging in from several directions, feeding a more or less innocent-looking wave, but it would rise up, and soon.

  Archer felt the sudden altitude forming beneath his board. It was curling now, and he took every bit of its height and speed, using it to propel himself forward as fast as he could go.

  “Archer!”

  The voice was so urgent, so sudden, that Archer lost his balance. The board got away from him, and he went headfirst into the Intrusion. The violence of the turbulent Dream wave threw Archer end over end, bouncing him roughly from image to image. Snippets of dreams, hundreds and hundreds of dreams, came raging to Archer’s thoughts, drowning his rational thought in a chaotic mishmash of other people’s subconscious.

  Archer found himself tumbling down a long hallway in a colonial country home. Tall windows rose up on either side. Suddenly, at the end of the hall, a young girl appeared, screaming. Her screams echoed into something visible—a bouncing spiderlike thing with hollow red eyes. Thorny limbs took Archer by the shoulders and yanked him into a room where dozens of people were seated.

  They were all dressed in black, and no one so much as turned to look at Archer. They all stared straight ahead. There was something there on a kind of stage or platform or . . .

  The spider thing heaved Archer forward and flew past the people in their seats, racing forward toward an open casket.

  “No!” Archer cried out, but it was no use. His trajectory was fixed, blasting toward the coffin. He fell into it, and all went black . . . until, at last, he broke the surface of the Intrusion surf.

  It used a ton of mental will for Archer to pull himself up out of the muck and into the air, but he managed, clawing above the swelling Intrusions long enough to summon his surfboard.

  “Snot rockets!” he muttered, resting safely on his board once more. He’d been riding Intrusion waves for a long time, but rarely had he wiped out like that.

  His thoughts raced. Who called me?

  “I did.”

  Archer was a little more ready this time. He didn’t lose control. And this time, he recognized the voice. “Where have you been?” he asked. “I could have used your help, like, a hundred times.”

  “It is of no consequence where I have been,” the Windmaiden replied. “Listen to me: there is a new Nightmare Lord.”

  “Rigby,” Archer muttered. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “He must be stopped, and soon,” she said. “Everything depends on it.”

  “How?” Archer asked. “So many things have gone wrong that I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Start with the Scath.”

  “That’s a dead end,” Archer replied. “Rigby’s destroyed the Shadow Key.”

  “No!” the Windmaiden exclaimed. “He tried, but it still exists. I have seen it, down deep in the heart of Xander’s Fortune. It is beyond my reach, lying on a ledge in the midst of electrical chaos.”

  “You can’t get to it,” Archer said. “But you think I could?”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But I was thinking of someone more powerful . . .”

  TWENTY-TWO

  MASTER
AND STUDENT

  “SO NICE OF YOU DROP BY,” THE LURKER SAID, SIPPING from a massive gray goblet. “It’s a shame you won’t be more agreeable. Throwing water balloons full of liquid explosives is no way to make friends.”

  In the corner of the chamber, a cramped dining hall filled with rigid chairs and an octagonal table, was a luminous cube . . . with Kaylie inside. “Rrrr, I don’t want to be your friend!” she growled.

  “Pity,” the Lurker replied. He scratched at the wiry white hair that clumped in, around, and behind his ear. “I have’na got a clue as to why you’d be so obtuse.”

  “You have me trapped in this . . . this.” Kaylie stretched her arms as wide as her elastic prison would let her. It surged with pulses of electrical color wherever she touched it. It was some kind of stretchy cube but made of something that pulsed with its own energy. “I don’t even know what to call this thing, but I hate it.”

  “I hate it too,” the Lurker said, eyes bulging. He smacked his lips and traded his goblet for a massive brownie. He nibbled at its corner and asked, “But what can I do? You went down in my subbasements; you saw things. I can’t set you free from my little oubliette—oh, sorry, that’s French for a secure little prison—” “I know what an oubliette is!”

  “That’s right,” he said. “You would . . . being the precocious little Dreamtreader that you are. But, as I was saying, I don’t think I can see a way t’set you free from the oubliette . . . unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “That’s the trouble with the youth of today,” he said, taking a bigger bite of his brownie. He was a large man, broad of shoulder but strangely proportioned, even awkward. His jaws didn’t seem to meet quite right, but he still managed to carve a hunk from the brownie. He chewed quietly for several seconds and then said, “Always in such a hurry. Fast food. Fast love. Fast living. You need t’learn t’savor life like I do.”

  Kaylie crossed her arms. “What did you mean? You might set me free, if what?”