by Brandon Mull
These two messages are what you came to learn. Do not bother with the eagles. If the ear of the displacer does not suffice, the cause is already lost.
I have a final prophetic suggestion for you, Jason. This last message will only become relevant if you succeed and thwart Maldor. Lyrian will face many future dangers. You and Rachel came here from the Beyond. At the appointed time, for the good of Lyrian, one of you must return home, and one must stay. If you both stay, or if you both go, Lyrian will eventually fall.
That concludes the information I have to share. Never return here, Jason. There are no additional messages for you. Come again and you will die. To exit, press the round red jewel near the top of my throne.
Should Maldor fall, if your daughter ever has need of me, you may inform her that a prophecy awaits. Now speak to the ear and rejoin your friends.
From ages ago I bid you a fond farewell and wish you a bright future.
Your humble servant,
Darian
Jason could hardly see through his tears. He felt relieved to know how he had contributed, but he also felt torn about Drake, who he had personally involved and who had died as a consequence. Would others he had involved die as well? Had others died already? He felt relieved to have information to share with his friends, even though he didn’t understand how it would help. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about staying forever in Lyrian. If he was going to have a daughter here, he had to be the one to stay, right? Or was the daughter just one of the many possible futures?
After getting his emotions under control, Jason looked around the lifeless room, half surprised to find himself still alone. He had not felt lonely while reading. He had almost felt as if Darian were here with him. Technically, he was, Jason realized, gazing across the room at the casket.
Jason dug into his pack. He pulled out a little case bundled in rags. Pulling apart the rags, he opened the case and withdrew an ear wrapped in linen. Jason unwrapped the ear and held it to his lips.
“Ferrin,” he said loudly, spreading the scroll in front of him so he could use it as a reference, “if you are asleep, wake up. If you’re busy, stop to listen. Ferrin, I have the prophecy. It came straight from Darian, just like the oracle promised. We’ll send the eagles as well, but you should bring it straight to Galloran. Please be true. Please don’t betray us. Most of us died to get here. Corinne, Aram, and I are the only ones left. Farfalee might have lost her seed. We had to kill Groddic, who turned out to be the Wanderer.
“I’m rambling. Let me give you the message. I’m not totally sure what it means, but the mountain that Felrook is on was once called Mount Allowat. Darian thought that would be important. Also, he had a message for Rachel. Orruck already taught her what she needs to know. I guess it has to do with one of the Edomic commands he shared with her. It was something he invented to harm Zokar. That’s all I was told. I hope it makes sense to you guys. I’ll repeat the message again in a few minutes. I hope the battle is going well.”
There was no way for Jason to confirm whether Ferrin had heard, but he intended to repeat and repeat and repeat to be sure. The ear felt warm and was not bleeding, so he knew the connection remained intact and Ferrin was alive. According to Darian, all their hopes now rested with the displacer.
CHAPTER 27
SECRETS FROM THE PAST
By the time Jason and Aram reached the waterfall, the crescent moon peeked down into the chasm, rendering their seaweed temporarily unnecessary. The silver ribbon of water plummeted from a ledge half the height of the gorge, churning in a misty basin at the bottom.
“The water is dropping a long distance,” Aram said, gazing upward. “The volume may not look impressive, but it is hitting with enough force to pin a man to the riverbed and keep him there until long after he drowns.”
“I’ll watch for barrels of air,” Jason said.
Aram smirked. “I would approach from the side. If you end up pressed to the ground, claw your way under the falls.” He tied a length of seaweed around Jason’s wrist.
“I guess I should leave my sword,” Jason said. He handed it to Aram. “I’ll bring the shield.”
“I’ll stand guard until you return,” Aram promised.
Jason was wet and shivering from hiking up the river. He stared at the falls, psyching himself up for the swim. He considered those who had lost their lives to get him here. Heg and the other drinlings. Drake. Jasher, temporarily. Farfalee, maybe forever. Nia. He had to push away the memories. If he dwelled on them now, he would be unable to go forward. “The secret behind those falls had better be useful,” he muttered.
“Amen,” Aram agreed.
Jason plunged into the cold pool. He approached the falls from the right, staying close to the wall of the cliff. The closer he came to the base of the waterfall, the more he felt currents tugging at him.
After waving at Aram, Jason held his breath and dove down, grateful for the radiance of the seaweed around his wrist, although at first all he saw was a shimmering screen of illuminated bubbles. The force of the falling water helped him sink quickly. He kicked and stroked hard, trying to get behind the falls. The turbulence actually helped him, drawing him downward and inward.
Sure enough, at the bottom of the basin, below and behind the falls, he found a large gap in the wall. Swimming inside, he passed along a short tunnel before surfacing in a placid pool inside a cavern. Jason breaststroked to where he could walk, then waded out of the water, shivering in the cool air.
Before him Jason saw a bronze door, incongruous against the natural stone of the cavern wall. He stared at it with relief. At least something was hidden behind the waterfall. People had died to get him here. Many other people were counting on him.
He wondered what Rachel was doing at the moment. Had Galloran raised his army? Were they on the move against Felrook? Living on the run, Jason and his companions hadn’t had the opportunity to get much news. Rachel could be anywhere. He hoped her team was having an easier time than his group had endured. Maybe whatever the door concealed would keep her from suffering too much. After crossing to it, Jason found the door unlocked, and entered.
“Hello?” he called, feeling like an intruder. The word echoed down a long corridor. Beyond the doorway the walls were stone blocks, the floor slate tiles. “Anybody here?”
Leaving the door ajar, Jason crept forward. Eventually the hall turned. Ahead he could see a quivering red radiance. “Hello?”
Again the only answer was his voice returning from the emptiness. At the end of the corridor, Jason reached a circular room with a domed ceiling. Four bronze torches lit the space, held in sconces a few feet out of reach, the flames red as blood. He could not see or smell any smoke. The deep redness of the flames seemed unnatural.
Perfectly round holes of three distinct sizes riddled the wall opposite the entrance to the room. A tiny, neat picture was painted above each hole. Three bronze bins in front of the perforated wall contained spherical white stones, each decorated with a small picture. The stones in one bin were the size of marbles, the next held spheres the size of golf balls, and the last contained stones more comparable to baseballs. The stone spheres seemed to match the three sizes of holes in the wall.
Apart from the holes, engravings textured the wall: runes and glyphs and symbols that Jason had no chance of comprehending. To his surprise, among the foreign shapes and squiggles, he found one concise message in English, the familiar letters etched neatly.
Do not proceed uninvited. Leave behind all weapons. Deliver a single ball to a single hole. Choose wrong and perish.
Jason scrutinized the rest of the wall to make sure he had missed no other legible messages. After finding nothing recognizable, he returned to the section of the wall peppered with holes. There appeared to be equal quantities of small, medium, and large perforations—hundreds in total.
He began studying the little paintings above the holes. The details were so minute that the brush must have been no larger than a whisker. The i
mages seemed totally random: Animals, plants, buildings, symbols, articles of clothing, tools, faces, food, flags, and a variety of other objects were depicted.
How could he know which ball to put in which hole? It had to be a complex lock, like the door at the Repository of Learning. Did the little paintings on the balls match the images on the holes? Could it be that straightforward?
Jason scooped out two handfuls of medium-sized balls and began sifting through them, looking for an image that matched an image on the wall. The little icons on the balls seemed just as diverse as the images on the wall, but he was having trouble finding anything that matched.
He decided to focus on one ball. He chose one decorated with the tusked head of a golden elephant. He liked the image because it was so distinct. Walking along the wall with the ball, he looked for a matching image above a hole. His eyes darted from hole to hole, glancing at everything but with emphasis on the medium ones. His eyes stopped on an image above one of the large holes.
He did not pause because the image was an elephant.
He halted because the image was the face of his father.
Unable to make sense of what he was seeing, Jason stared in stunned befuddlement. He drew close, squinting. The picture was not quite as perfect as a photograph, but it seemed as unmistakable. The resemblance was uncanny, like a really good caricature. But how could that picture be here? His father had never been to Lyrian. And this place was supposed to be really old.
Could there have been a man in Lyrian who looked like his father? Could the artist have imagined a face that happened to look a lot like his father? Could it just be a coincidence?
Darian was supposed to be a seer. The oracle had made it sound like Jason was destined to come here. This couldn’t be coincidence. The face was too spot on. This hole mattered.
Unsure exactly what he was looking for, Jason went to the bin of large balls and started sorting through them one by one. Would he find his father’s face again? Perhaps it would be an image somehow connected with his father. Like what? His car? His dental office? A toothbrush?
After going through all the large balls, Jason had found no obvious candidate. He supposed a smaller ball could be placed in a large hole, so he moved down to the medium spheres. He stopped sorting through them when he found his mother’s face.
The image gave him chills. It was just as accurate as the picture of his father. This was no coincidence.
Jason looked around. Was he really still in Lyrian? This almost felt like an elaborate practical joke. He half expected friends to jump out and yell, “Surprise!” But no friends appeared. There were no hidden cameras either. Just torches and a gloomy old room. Gazing at the image of his mother, Jason thought about all that had happened to bring him to this place. It was no joke. No accident. He was supposed to be here.
Confident that he had found the correct match, Jason placed the medium ball into the hole under his father’s picture, then backed away. He could hear the ball rolling, followed by some clicks, and suddenly the floor of the room began to gradually descend.
Jason considered retreating to the hallway, but he opted instead to stay put. As the floor sank deeper, a passageway was revealed. When the floor rumbled to a halt, he could see down a long corridor lined with red torches. Apparently, he had made a decent choice.
The long corridor ended at a large square room with multiple circular tunnels in three of the walls. Four sconces held four more burning torches. Mystifying engravings decorated the fourth wall. Among them Jason found a brief message in English.
Proceed along the passage of your choice.
All the round tunnels were the same size—small enough that he would have to crawl. To reach some of the tunnels he would have to climb using the openings to lower tunnels. Tiny paintings wreathed the mouth of each tunnel.
Jason started studying the images, wondering if he would encounter another familiar face. To the side of one of the higher tunnels on the opposite wall from the entrance, Jason found a familiar logo—the profile of a white batter silhouetted against a blue and red background, a white ball coming his way. It was the logo for Major League Baseball!
That had to be for him, right? Baseball didn’t exist in Lyrian, and Jason loved both watching and playing the sport.
Just to be sure, he investigated the pictures around all the other tunnels. None of them resonated like the baseball logo. That had to be it.
Jason climbed back up to the baseball tunnel and started crawling down it. He had not gone far when a heavy gate clanged into place behind him, sealing off his retreat. Without his seaweed Jason would have been left in darkness.
The round tunnel curved, climbed, descended, and turned. His elbows and knees throbbed, still tender from crawling too rapidly in some of the tighter sections of the Scalding Caverns, but his only choice was to press onward.
At length, without ever forking, the tunnel emptied into the largest room yet. Against the walls eight brazen dragon heads were spaced around the room, each bigger than a pickup truck. In the center of the room three bronze bins held stone balls. Holes of three sizes pocked the floor around the bins. Elsewhere on the floor were engraved messages. Jason skimmed the spidery runes until he located the message in English.
Drop one ball down one hole.
“I could have probably figured that out on my own,” Jason said to nobody, his voice echoing gently.
Again pictures adorned the balls, and the holes in the floor had accompanying images as well. It took some time, but Jason eventually found a small ball with a tiny portrait of his sister, and a large hole beside the smiling face of his brother.
After dropping the ball down the hole, Jason heard it rolling, then rattling, followed by multiple noisy crunches. Hinges squealing, one of the dragon heads yawned open, revealing another corridor.
Jason trotted down the corridor until it delivered him to a vast hall. Torches hung high against the walls, leaving the middle of the chamber heavily shadowed. Containers of every description crowded the entire length of the floor, some resting on tables or platforms, others unsupported. The collection included trunks, chests, crates, baskets, coffers, cabinets, caskets, coffins, sarcophagi, barrels, kegs, strongboxes, jewelry boxes, and covered vessels. Exemplifying unlimited styles and sizes, the diverse containers were fashioned out of combinations of iron, bronze, copper, tin, stone, wood, ceramics, gold, silver, crystal, jade, ivory, enamel, and wicker. Wide varieties of craftsmanship were represented, from the ornate and the elaborate to the plain and even the shoddy.
At the far end of the room, illuminated by extra torches, rose a dais surmounted by a majestic throne. Plinths supported identical female statues at either side of the dais, and a broad altar rested upon a lower platform at the front.
This had to be the destination! He had made it! He could hardly believe his eyes.
“Hello?” Jason called, interrupting the silence of the cluttered hall. “Darian? Anybody?”
Lonely echoes formed the only response.
Weaving among the numberless containers, Jason made his way across the long chamber. As he neared the dais, he realized that what he had mistaken for an altar was actually a crystal-and-gold casket with a body inside. The casket rested atop a granite slab with abundant writing on the side. Among many unrecognizable glyphs Jason found the words “Darian the Seer.”
Jason jogged to the casket. Inside rested an old man, small, shriveled, a few wisps of white hair on his spotted head. He wore scarlet robes embroidered with golden designs. Matching slippers covered his bony feet. His eyelids were closed and sunken. His lips were sewn shut. There was a yellowish cast to his wrinkled skin. He had clearly been embalmed.
Shivering, Jason gazed at the cadaver. This was an eerie place to encounter a dead body on display. How long had it been here? People had warned him that Darian should be dead. Still, he could hardly believe that this long, hard road had led him to a corpse. Why had the oracle sent him here?
Just in case
, Jason tapped on the glass. “Hello? Are you kidding me? Hello?”
The cadaver did not stir.
Jason looked around in disgust. A gaping, blackened fire pit was set into the stone dais between the throne and the casket. From his slightly elevated position, he surveyed the enormous hall. The disorderly profusion of strange containers made the room look like a flea market or some overgrown garage sale.
He was meant to be here. The oracle had insisted. The faces of his family proved it. He had reached the end of the path. He had found Darian the Seer. Well, sort of. The old guy was fairly well preserved, but no more alive than a mounted deer head.
What was the point? Had his friends suffered and died for nothing? Had Galloran marched off to fight a hopeless battle?
Jason scrutinized the body. The face looked peaceful. Jason studied the faint white eyebrows, the curve of the slightly hooked nose, the little knob of the chin.
Backing away from the casket, Jason looked around the room high and low. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted, “Hello? Anyone? I need some help!”
His plea went unanswered.
There had to be more to this. He roamed the dais and found engravings on the back of the large throne. He hunted eagerly for an English message among the nonsense and found it toward the bottom.
Open a single container. You will either find a prophecy, or you will die. Do not disturb more than one.
A flood of relief temporarily overwhelmed Jason. The seer had died, but he had left prophecies behind. Maybe this wasn’t a dead end after all.
Returning to stand beside the casket, Jason stared out at the sea of containers. Which would the old seer have expected him to pick? Jason scowled. Would there be an obvious clue? A familiar face? What if he selected the wrong one?