by Kobe Bryant
Rovi’s jaw dropped. No Star Stealer would ever do a thing like that. But his heart was racing faster than before. Pretia was with the Star Stealers, and if she was found there, there was no doubt that Issa and the rest would be blamed.
“The Star Stealers have been disrupting these games,” Janos said. “We’re certain that they are behind the theft of a very important object from the Temple of Arsama. No matter what, there will be repercussions for them. Do you understand?”
Rovi swallowed hard and nodded.
“And anyone found to be helping them or hiding information about them will also be punished. For instance, that person could have a medal stripped away if they are a Junior Epic Athlete. Consider very carefully where your loyalties lie.” Janos looked stern.
Rovi shrugged, pretending to be calm and collected. “With Ecrof and the Dreamers,” he said.
Janos gave him a long look. “Very well,” he said. “Good luck tonight. And let’s hope your teammate turns up.”
Then the visitors turned and left, shutting the door. Rovi stood rooted in place staring at the door. He’d done it. He’d fooled them and protected Pretia.
Today, she would come out of hiding and help House Somni to victory, and after that, what happened to her was up to the royal family. Rovi had done his part. He’d hidden her to help the Dreamers. He was done with adventures—no more tunnels, no more mazes, no more temples, and no more key. All he had left was the final relay—one more chance at gold for the Dreamers.
He jammed his hands into the pockets of his track jacket. One of them hit something cold and hard that he didn’t expect. He felt his stomach drop. He didn’t want to look. He suspected he knew what it was. Slowly he pulled his hand from his pocket. In it was the Key to Phoenis.
As cold dread crept over him, he remembered Fortunus’s embrace before Rovi left Pretia with the Star Stealers. Rovi started to sweat and to shake.
He’d had the key in his pocket the entire time Janos and the guards had been in his room. He had been holding all the evidence they needed to punish him and the Star Stealers.
As these thoughts were flooding his head, there was another knock on the door. His heart stopped.
Maybe he hadn’t fooled them after all. Maybe they knew all along that he knew where Pretia was and they were just testing him.
He jammed the key back in his pocket and opened the door.
It was only Satis.
“Rovi,” he said quickly. “There’s something else I need to tell you. It’s about your friend Issa.”
Rovi stomach flipped. “What is it?”
“He was caught by the guards this morning and brought before the games officials. They didn’t call him by name, but I was there and I recognized him.”
“What was he caught doing?”
“He said he was just stealing food,” Satis began.
Before he could stop himself, Rovi spoke. “Then that’s what he was—” He abruptly shut his mouth.
Satis looked at him quizzically. “How do you know that?”
Rovi’s pulse was racing. He’d made a misstep. “That’s all Star Stealers ever take.”
“They take shoes,” Satis said meaningfully, reminding Rovi that he himself had seen Rovi steal his precious Grana Gleams. “And valuable keys. Anyway,” Satis continued, “the officials claim he wasn’t stealing food, but that he was trying to disrupt the games. They’ve taken him to Hafara.”
Rovi’s hand clenched around the key in his pocket. He held the answer to Issa’s freedom.
“I thought you deserved to know,” Satis said. “Both because you love him and because I don’t want you to get distracted searching the stands for him today.”
Rovi hung his head. “I won’t,” he said.
Satis took Rovi by the shoulders. “I know how hard this must be for you. But remember, you are a Junior Epic Champion and a pride of House Somni and Ecrof. That is what you must focus on. One more race. That’s all.”
“I’ll try,” Rovi said.
“Good,” Satis said. “I’ll see you at the stadium later for the hurdles and then the 4x400. Let’s hope Pretia shows.”
“I have faith in her,” Rovi said.
“Here’s to dreams that never die.”
“Yeah,” Rovi said, “to that.”
When Satis left, Rovi fell back on his bed. His mind was spinning. He had the key. Fortunus had tricked him. It almost hadn’t worked—if Rovi had discovered the key a day ago, he might have returned it or even discarded it. But now that Issa was in Hafara, he knew what he had to do. He had to save his brother. There was time, but barely. The 4x400 wasn’t until evening. He had the entire duration of the hurdles to enact a plan.
The morning passed in a panicked blur. Rovi counted the minutes until it was time to head to the Crescent Stadium for the hurdles, when he could slip away and search for the entrance to Hafara, somewhere beneath the field.
He rode in silence to the stadium, pretending to be immersed in some intense visualization. But his mind was on anything but his race. When he followed his fellow Dreamers to the field to watch the hurdles, he was only dimly aware of the proceedings. He felt Satis’s eyes on him, watching him as if he knew Rovi was planning something. Rovi did everything in his power to look nonchalant. He tried to cheer when he was supposed to and urge on his fellow Dreamers. But he was really looking for a chance to escape.
He watched the first heat, trying to keep track of the Dreamers’ progress. The only thing he could think about was Issa. Issa in Hafara. Issa trapped directly below the stadium, below the stampeding footfalls of careless Dreamers celebrating their victory in a heat. Issa lost in the bowels of Phoenis. Issa imprisoned in a deadly pit formerly used for blood sports.
The third heat concluded. The only athletes to progress were from House Somni. When a swarm of Dreamer athletes raced onto the field congratulating their teammates, Rovi saw his chance. He checked for Satis. The Visualization Trainer seemed focused on the next racers lining up, at least momentarily. As the voice over the megahorn thundered for all non-competing athletes to leave the field, Rovi slipped away into the interior of the Crescent Stadium.
The ground level was mobbed with spectators buying souvenirs and refreshments. Rovi moved stealthily, quickly but not so fast that he’d attract attention. Three times he ran through the interior passage on the ground-level colonnade. There were kiosks and vendors, merchandise booths, snack bars, viewing stations. He pulled open door after door. One led to a machine room. Another to a medic office. One was to a room for stadium personnel. Another was for games officials. Another was a press office.
Rovi began to panic.
One door was storage.
Another was broadcasting.
And then one was locked. Rovi knocked. No answer. He rattled the door handle. It didn’t budge.
Then, checking from side to side, he took the Key to Phoenis out of his pocket. He slipped it into the lock. It turned easily.
The door opened into blackness.
“Hello?” Rovi called, stepping inside the pitch-black room. He waved his arms about, trying to get a sense of his surroundings. “Hello,” he repeated. His voice echoed back at him. He slid the lock into place behind him in case anyone had noticed where he was going.
He took a tentative step forward, then another. Then his foot hit nothing. Rovi stepped back and crouched down. Was he standing next to a drop-off, a cliff, a chute? He lay on his stomach and felt for the edge with his hands. Then he reached down. A few inches below he felt solid ground. And then again, a few inches below that. Stairs!
He had to hurry. He flew down the steps. They went on forever—down and down and down. The stairs twisted and turned as they descended in a never-ending zigzag that disoriented Rovi.
The sounds of the stadium disappeared. Soon the only noise was the echo of his footsteps on
the stone steps.
He had to move carefully because of the many switchbacks. The stairs reminded him of the Infinity Steps back at Ecrof that changed and reversed course of their own accord. Soon he’d lost any sense of which direction he was facing. Was the stadium behind him or in front of him? How far down had he gone? Was he facing north or south? East or west?
When he thought it would be impossible to descend any further without hitting the center of the earth, the stairs stopped.
Although he couldn’t see, he could sense that he had arrived in a large chamber.
“Hello?” Rovi called again.
This time there was no echo. Something was absorbing the sound.
He would have to pick a direction. He had no idea which way Hafara lay. Left? Right? Straight?
Rovi took a deep breath. Straight. He set off cautiously in the dark. Small stones skittered from his feet. He held his breath. Would something reveal itself—some sign that he was approaching the prison?
And then it did—his foot hit something wet, heavy, and loose. Not the solid ground. Not the dirt and dust. But something sandy. Something moving.
Rovi had stepped into the River of Sand.
23
PRETIA
A RIVER
Pretia sat cross-legged on Vera’s swim coat in the back of the alcove. The atmosphere was tense. Issa had left early that morning to scrounge food for the hungry Star Stealers who were down to three stale loaves of bread. He’d been gone for hours. Everyone knew what that meant, but no one dared say it aloud. Hafara.
The remaining Star Stealers paced back and forth, sometimes darting out to the tunnels to check for Issa. He never came. They huddled in a nervous cluster. They were so thin and frail. And something else—they were frightened.
Pretia wanted to turn invisible. She wrapped her arms around her middle to silence her rumbling stomach. She’d eaten a little bread, but it was nothing in comparison to the lavish, overstuffed plates she was used to.
She hated to see the suffering around her. She felt it was her fault somehow. She, or her parents, could do something to help these innocent kids, but they hadn’t even tried. She wondered how much her parents even knew the extent to which the Star Stealers were suffering. Surely, the king and queen wouldn’t stand for such extreme treatment. Sadly, from her last conversation with her parents, she knew that helping the Star Stealers was the furthest thing from their minds. But if they knew, surely they would do something.
She felt helpless. She drew her knees into her chest, then reached into her backpack and pulled out her Grana Book. She closed her eyes and framed her question: How can I help the Star Stealers?
She flipped through the pages as always, until one just felt right. Pretia let the book fall open on her lap. She prepared herself to confront the image. To her surprise, it was the exact same image she’d turned to back at Ponsit, the twisty road through the mountains that had told her to run away to Ecrof.
She’d been so sure of herself months ago, when she’d interpreted the picture as saying her best course was to sneak off to Ecrof and then Phoenis. But now it was providing the answer to a different question.
“I haven’t seen one of those in a long time.” Pretia looked up to see Fortunus standing over her. “May I sit?”
Pretia made room on the swim coat.
“I’d like to look if you don’t mind,” Fortunus said. “Of course, I know not to touch.”
Pretia inclined her Grana Book so he could see the image. “You must have had one, right?”
“Yes,” Fortunus said. “I was born into House Somni. I gave up my Grana Book when I gave up my house affiliation. It seemed silly having a book tell you what to do.”
“I don’t think it’s silly,” Pretia said.
“Sometimes it’s easier not to have to rely entirely on yourself,” Fortunus said. “What do you see in that picture?”
“I’m not sure. Several months ago, this picture guided me to defy my parents and run away. The mountains were my parents.” She pointed to the page. “See? One is bluish and the other purple. I’m the road between them. I’m supposed to move away from them. I thought that meant running away. But I’m not sure running away is the answer this time.”
Fortunus folded his hands, waiting for her to explain.
“I asked the book how I can help the Star Stealers,” Pretia said.
“And?”
She took a deep breath and looked at the image again. “It’s odd. I think it’s telling me the exact same thing as it did before but in a slightly different way. The mountains are still the two houses, my two sides, Dreamer and Realist. So I am the road.” Her finger traced the squiggly road between them.
“And what are you supposed to do as the road?”
Pretia sighed. “The easy answer seems to be that I should unite the houses, because the road touches both mountains. But that feels wrong. That’s simply what my parents have been telling me to do.”
“And what do you think your book is telling you to do?”
Pretia hesitated.
“Let me rephrase that,” Fortunus said. “What is it that you feel you are supposed to do?”
Pretia bent over the page again. “Let’s see. I feel I’m supposed to move but also stay put. I don’t quite understand it. The road signals movement away from the two mountains—the two houses—but it also means bringing them closer together.”
“And what about that fire at the end of the road? What is that?” Fortunus asked.
“When I first saw it, I assumed it meant Junior Epic Victory. But this time I asked about the Star Stealers, so I can’t quite figure it out.” Pretia slammed the book. “It’s so confusing.”
“It will come,” Fortunus said.
“But that’s impossible. How can Junior Epic Victory be the same as helping the Star Stealers?”
“Nothing is impossible,” Fortunus said. “The only thing that stops you is your own fear. The answer is inside you. It always is.”
“You sound like my uncle Janos,” Pretia said.
Fortunus laughed good-naturedly. “I remember him well. In another world he and I would have spent our best years fighting for Epic Glory. But our paths took us in different directions. Now we fight our individual battles for the soul of Epoca.”
Pretia opened her mouth to ask what he meant. But before she could, their conversation was interrupted by footsteps in the tunnel.
“Issa!” one of the Star Stealers at the entry exclaimed. “He’s coming!”
The footsteps approached hard and fast. The glow of a hand lamp drew nearer, bouncing off the tunnel walls. The group near the entry backed away, making room for their friend to enter. But when someone rushed through the doorway, they immediately saw that it wasn’t Issa at all. It was Vera.
Pretia bolted from the swim coat over to her friend. Vera was panting. Her puff of black hair was loose and wild.
The Star Stealers glared at her. “Where’s Issa?” one of them demanded.
“Where’s Rovi?” Vera gasped.
“Rovi?” Pretia said. “He’s not here. Why would he be here?”
“Because,” Vera panted. “Because Issa.”
“Because Issa what?”
Vera gulped air. “Satis was looking for Rovi after the hurdles.”
“Why?” Pretia asked. Her nerves were jangling.
“I’m not sure exactly,” Vera explained. “He didn’t tell me precisely. He just asked me if I’d seen Rovi. And urged me to find him. He said he was worried because Rovi seemed upset that Issa had been arrested.”
“So it’s true,” Fortunus said sadly. “Issa is in Hafara. I knew Rovi would go to save him if it came to that.”
For a moment, Pretia was too stunned to speak. “But that key he stole, he turned it over to you, right?”
“Rovi has t
he key,” Fortunus explained. “It’s useless to us. Hafara is right below the Crescent Stadium. We could never reach it.”
“But tunnels must lead there,” Pretia said. “These are the old paths of the River of Sand, and the River of Sand surrounds the prison.”
“What?” Vera exclaimed. “Rovi is headed for the River of Sand?”
“The tunnels do lead there. But they are patrolled by guards,” Fortunus said. “The Star Stealers can’t risk that. Rovi has the best chance to access Hafara.”
“But it’s surrounded by the River of Sand,” Pretia said. “There’s no way to cross that.”
“We need to stop him,” Vera said.
“Or help him,” Fortunus suggested.
Pretia looked from Vera to Fortunus. Either way, stopping Rovi or helping Rovi meant getting to Rovi first. “We need to find him,” she said. “You said we can get to Hafara from the stadium?”
“Yes, it’s directly below it. But you don’t have time,” Fortunus said. “You’ll have to take the tunnels. The prison is about two miles from here.”
“What about the guards?” Pretia asked.
“They patrol irregularly,” Fortunus said. “But be very careful.”
Vera cleared her throat. “I’ll take care of them. If Rovi could lead the guards on a chase from the Temple of Arsama and lose them, I can do the same.” She paused. “Or better.”
“I admire your spirit, Vera,” Fortunus said.
“And,” Vera added, “I’ll still have enough energy for the 4x400 tonight,” she said. “I’ll still beat your record, Farnaka.”
“So what’s the plan?” Pretia asked.
Vera thought for a moment. “We head toward the prison together. If we meet any guards, just follow my lead.” Vera turned to Fortunus. “We need another hand lamp if you have one. And I need something to tie back my hair. It’s a mess.”
Pretia was shocked. “You’re worried about your hair at a time like this?”
Vera ignored her. “Does anyone have a scarf? Preferably one of those Sandlander ones.”