by Kevin Sands
After collecting our supplies from Phelan, we’d hired a carriage to take us north of the city, into the wheat fields at the foot of Bolcanathair. The driver had been willing enough when he’d believed we were headed to one of the farms, but he’d got progressively more nervous as we’d approached the newly smoking volcano. He’d been relieved to discover a rockfall had blocked the route, and let us out there with our gear.
I cursed. The sun had already begun to set. Though Phelan had delivered the goods on time, we’d been badly delayed getting out of Carlow. We’d had to avoid both Stickmen and Pistoleers, eventually squeezing past the city walls through a drainage grate, and that had put us hours behind. I’d thought our luck had turned when we’d spotted the carriage on the highway, but the rockfall cut off our last chance of making up time. We’d have to go the rest of the way on foot.
Wherever that rest of the way was. We waited until the driver took off, snapping the reins with haste, before Lachlan pulled Galawan from beneath his coat.
The boy’s plan had caught us all by surprise. “Mr. Solomon said if we ever wanted anything from him, we could use Galawan, right? All we’d have to do is give the little guy the message, and Galawan would find him. So we ask the bird! Galawan will lead us right to him.”
We’d all looked at each other. “I’m not sure that’s what Mr. Solomon meant,” I said. “Galawan might just be enchanted to return to his home.”
“Not what he said. He said him, guv. I remember.”
I wasn’t entirely confident this would work. But we’d run out of options. The syzygy was tonight. It felt awfully strange, putting our hopes on a fake bird.
Meriel cut two long pieces of string from a roll and tied them to Galawan’s legs. “Make sure they’re tight,” I said. “If he gets away, we’re lost.”
Meriel secured both strings with triple knots. Then we were ready. Lachlan looked to me.
“It was your idea,” I said.
Lachlan grinned. “Cheers, guv. Righto, Galawan. Go find Mr. Solomon.”
The sparrow chirped but didn’t move from Lachlan’s palm.
“Maybe you have to actually give him a message,” Meriel said.
“Artha’s bulging bum, this is complicated. Um . . . Galawan . . . go tell Mr. Solomon we like cheese.”
Galawan chirped again. This time, the bird hopped this way and that. He cocked his head, tweeting.
“He looks confused,” I said.
“Give him a sec,” Lachlan said.
Galawan looked toward the city, then at the volcano. Then, with one final chirp, he took to the skies.
Lachlan held tight to both strings as the bird flew toward Bolcanathair. Galawan tumbled a bit when the strings went taut. He tweeted in protest, but his little wings kept him in the air, pointed in the direction of the smoking mountain, like a kite blowing in an invisible wind.
“You see? You see?” Lachlan said, gleeful. “I knew he could do it!”
Meriel seemed mildly embarrassed. “Tell Mr. Solomon we like cheese?”
Lachlan looked surprised. “Don’t you?”
* * *
Galawan drove us on.
He kept us pointed unerringly at the volcano. Wheat fields gave way to a growth of woods living on the gentle slope of the mountainside. The brush was thick, untouched by human hands, and if Galawan hadn’t been leading us, no one would have tried to go through it. Walking for what seemed like forever, shoving through the branches, everyone was panting, Gareth especially. Carrying all our cave gear didn’t help.
“What if he’s on the other side of the mountain?” Meriel said.
We stared at each other in horror as we marched. Night had already fallen, and the full moons had risen, blazing so bright, we hardly needed to use our lanterns. If we had to go around, we’d never make it in time.
But, soon enough, Foxtail grabbed my arm and pointed.
She ran ahead and motioned to a branch on one of the shrubs. It had been bent far enough that the soft wood had split. The ends were still fresh with sap.
Someone had crossed our path, and recently.
Foxtail stayed in the lead now, scanning the ground, making adjustments to our route with her tracking. Meriel studied the path behind her, thoughtful. “Are we on a trail?” she said.
“Through all this brush?” Lachlan said.
At first, I agreed with Lachlan; it didn’t look like a trail. But Meriel pointed out the slight dip in the path we followed, a gentle furrow through the earth.
“It’s like it was worn away, long ago,” she said. “People used to walk here, I’m sure of it.”
The longer we followed Foxtail, the more I believed Meriel was right. Foxtail confirmed it when she ripped away a vine that had grown across the rock face, revealing a carved surface underneath.
Moonlight spilled over the rock. Foxtail brushed away the dirt that had built up, tracing an outline in the mottled stone with her finger.
“Head,” Meriel said. “Body . . . wings . . . and tail.”
It was a dragon.
Gareth laid his hand against the figure, awed, like he was touching history itself.
“Look for an entrance,” I said, but Galawan was already ahead of me. He flew low, pulling insistently against Lachlan’s strings, like a dog impatient on his leash. And just twenty yards past the carving, we found what we’d been looking for.
There was no doubt this time. In the rock face was the entrance to a cave. The brush that had once covered it had been burned away. Courtesy, no doubt, of the Lady in Red.
As for the cave itself . . . “It looks like a mouth,” Meriel said.
Above the opening was a row of stalactites. They were nearly even, except for one on each side, which hung down farther, like fangs. Two stalagmites rose from the floor underneath, almost high enough to reach them.
These hadn’t formed naturally. They’d been shaped by human hands, long ago.
Just beyond the entrance, rough steps had been hewn into the rock, leading down into darkness. Etched on the cave’s walls were intricate crisscrossing patterns, looping and curving over each other. They looked almost like Weaver runes, but not quite. These were simpler, more deliberately patterned.
Gareth stared, fascinated, at the remnants of a long-forgotten civilization. “Who did all this?” he wondered to himself.
Lachlan called from behind us. “Um . . . guys?"
We turned to see him staring up into the sky. Then we saw what had made him pause.
The moons were no longer full.
A small crescent had disappeared from Cairdwyn, the farthest of our satellites. It was in shadow—the shadow of Ayreth.
An eclipse.
A double eclipse. Because a tiny sliver of Mithil had vanished, too.
Gareth grabbed my arm. “The m-moons are starting to line up,” he said. “The syzygy . . . it’s beginning.”
“How long do we have?” I asked, chest tightening.
“Half an hour. M-maybe.”
We hurried inside.
CHAPTER 57
We headed down the steps, lanterns shrouded. Lachlan reined in Galawan, tucking him back in his trouser pocket. “Hush now,” he whispered to the bird.
The stairs went a long way down. The air grew progressively warmer and drier, as if we were crossing the boundary of a desert. At the bottom, the passage opened into a massive cavern. We didn’t need our lanterns anymore; there was light here, provided by blazing torches set in two parallel lines, leading from the steps, across the center of the cave, to the other side. Mr. Solomon’s work, no doubt.
The carvings we’d seen beside the stairs continued along the cave walls. But now there was something new to add to their majesty.
All across the cavern, bright metallic veins glittered in the rock. They stretched all around, passing through milky crystals i
n the walls and ceiling.
“Gold,” Gareth whispered. “Veins of gold.”
“It can’t be,” Meriel said. “Someone would have mined it. Wouldn’t they?”
Gareth shook his head. “Whoever built this place, it was sacred to them. Mining the rock would be blasphemy.”
Foxtail snapped her fingers at us. She pointed in the direction of the torches. It took me a moment to see what she was trying to show us.
At first, I’d thought the light led all the way across the cave. But as my eyes adjusted, I saw the torches ended not at the opposite wall, but at a structure in the cavern’s center. From a distance, it looked natural, but the closer we approached, the more I saw how it had been shaped.
It looked like a keep. It was square, about thirty yards a side, with open turrets at each of the four corners. Over every inch of the rock, the same designs we’d seen on the stairs swooped and swirled. Around the border of the entrance, carved into the stone, was a dragon, tail on one side, head on the other, body resting above.
The Dragon Temple.
We’d found it.
The dragon’s eyes seemed to watch us in the torchlight as we approached. We could hear chanting now, too, coming from within.
We snuck toward the entrance. A pile of rotted wood lay close by; from the rusted hinges on the sides, these had once been a pair of giant doors. Peeking through the doorway, I saw rows of stone pews and kneeling stations, carved from the rock floor, leading to a dais at the far end of the temple.
And there was Mr. Solomon.
He stood upon the dais, his back to us, before an altar of basalt. His hands were raised. One was holding something I couldn’t see. In the other, he held a long metal staff. I recognized it: it was the dragon staff from his gallery, undulating silver, with a dragon’s head rearing at the top. The velvet robe that had once hung next to it adorned his body. The tome with the spiraling symbols lay open in front of him.
He held his hands upward, reading from that book, chanting to the figure that loomed overhead: another dragon, this one a massive statue, carved so it looked like it was crawling from the rock.
The dragon’s eyes glinted red in the torches Mr. Solomon had placed to light the temple. They were rubies—massive gemstones, each as big as my chest. The roof of the temple was open to the rock above, the veins of gold tinted orange by the flames.
Mr. Solomon wasn’t alone. The fire starter herself, the Lady in Red, waited beside him, twirling her parasol on her shoulder.
I studied the layout of the temple, mind working. There were nooks and crannies, towers and pews: lots of places to hide. We could use them to our advantage. I told the others what I was thinking: girls go high, boys stay low. And I would be the bait.
Quietly, we moved away from the temple and shed most of our gear. “Good thing we brought all this,” Meriel said sarcastically, still panting from its weight.
It was true we hadn’t needed most of it, but we’d be glad for the wineskins soon enough. We each kept a pair on our belts.
Now we were ready. “Shuna walk with us,” Lachlan said, making the sign of the Fox.
I caught Gareth looking my way. I wondered: Was Shuna still watching? Would she help?
I guess we were about to find out.
CHAPTER 58
I snuck into the temple.
Mr. Solomon still had his back to me. Chanting, he brought the dragon staff down. As he shifted, I finally saw what he held in his other hand when I caught a glint of amber in the firelight.
The Eye.
I cast my mind toward it. Can you hear me?
No response. I wasn’t sure if it was ignoring me, or if it had been silenced by the wards Mr. Solomon had placed on his house—and his body. I couldn’t decide if either of those things was good or bad.
The air crackled with energy, as if it were alive. Mr. Solomon turned to the next page in the tome, then took a step backward. Still chanting in that strange language, he slammed the base of the staff against the rock at the foot of the altar. There was a terrible crack.
And then the earth rumbled.
I stood, frozen. The sound had come from somewhere much deeper. Yet . . . something . . . had changed. For where Mr. Solomon had struck the floor, a ghostly light spread like a spiderweb across the stone.
I stared at that light in fascination—and horror—and remembered what Gareth had told us about the syzygy. The sun and moons make the energy swell close to the surface. Like a magical high tide.
And there it was. The primeval magic. In the Fox and Bear story, Artha, too, had cracked the world.
I couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Hoping everyone else was in place, I left my hiding spot and strode down the aisle, feeling the energy in the air prick my skin. I stopped forty feet from the foot of the dais. Close enough.
With his back turned, Mr. Solomon still hadn’t spotted me. The Lady in Red was similarly oblivious, focused on the light spreading at her feet. I took a deep breath.
Be bold, I heard the Old Man say.
Then I spoke.
“Nice staff.”
Mr. Solomon continued to chant. The Lady in Red watched the floor. I don’t think either of them heard me.
Well, that was embarrassing.
“Um . . . excuse me?”
Mr. Solomon whirled mid-chant. He stared at me, flabbergasted.
“Hello,” I said.
“How . . .” Mr. Solomon tried to find the words. It was satisfying seeing him so off-kilter. “How did you— NO!”
The Lady in Red came toward me, grinning. Mr. Solomon halted her in her tracks.
Shock returned to Mr. Solomon’s face. But, for the briefest moment, before he’d stopped his elemental, his expression had shown me something else.
He’d looked terrified.
What had just happened here?
My mind raced. My job, at the moment, was to keep Mr. Solomon distracted until the girls set our plan in motion. My one worry was that he wouldn’t let me stall. That he’d kill me—or more likely, tell the Lady in Red to set me on fire—before time was up.
The Lady had been more than ready to do so. But Mr. Solomon had stopped her.
Why?
The Old Man returned. Think it through, boy.
He was afraid, I said. But he couldn’t possibly be afraid of me.
Seems unlikely, the Old Man said sardonically.
And he’s not afraid I’d hurt the Lady in Red.
No.
So he must have been scared . . . that she’d kill me.
Interesting, the Old Man said. Why would he care about that?
Why, indeed?
He already thought I was dead, I said.
Yes.
He had no problem killing me before.
No.
So it’s only now he won’t let her kill me. Now . . . and here.
Yes, the Old Man said. Why, boy? Why?
I couldn’t understand why.
The Eye, he said. What did you learn from the Eye?
That confused me. I didn’t learn anything from the Eye. Did I?
Don’t be so literal, boy. What did you see?
Light. I’d seen light everywhere.
No. Wait.
Not everywhere.
Only in bindings. Magic.
And what else?
Oh.
Yes.
I understood.
The room was thrumming with magical energy. I couldn’t see it without the Eye, but I could feel it. It made my hair stand on end, filled my bones.
And living things were full of magic, too.
If he kills me, I said, then where does the magic in me go?
Good question, the Old Man said. Why don’t you ask him?
That was it.
M
r. Solomon couldn’t kill me. If my energy spilled out, it might disrupt the delicate spells he was weaving.
That meant I could push him. I could push him hard.
These thoughts raced through me in an instant. When I focused back on what was happening, Mr. Solomon had already recovered. He scanned the temple: the walls, the turrets, the ramparts. He was trying to see if I’d come alone.
“This is unexpected,” he said.
“For both of us,” I said.
“How did you survive the fire? And how in Artha’s name did you find me?”
I wiggled my fingers. “Magic.”
He didn’t find that funny. Clutching the Eye close to his body, he held the dragon staff high, closed his eyes, and concentrated. I kept my face blank, even though I was scared inside. If he discovered the others, we were finished.
“I sense something,” he said. “A binding; a strong one. In the corner.”
Desperate, I forced myself to remain calm. That corner was where Lachlan was hiding. If Mr. Solomon spotted him . . . if he could find the girls . . .
He concentrated. “What have you hidden away there, Callan? Not a weapon. It is . . .”
His eyes opened in understanding.
“The bird. You used the bird.” He laughed, relieved. “Enchanted to return to me; that’s how you got here. Very clever.”
“I thought so.”
“Well. Now we understand how you are here. A much more important question remains: Why?”
“I’d think that would be obvious,” I said. “I want my money.”
He tilted his head, puzzled. He wasn’t quite sure he believed me.
“I have no more,” he said slowly. “I wasn’t lying when I said I gave you everything.”
“Then you better start working,” I said. “I hope you earn a decent wage.”
He hesitated, eyes scanning the temple again. Was I alone? He had to believe enchantments could be the only threat to him, and he hadn’t detected any more of them around.
He clearly had no idea what I was doing here. It was gratifying to see how much it rattled him. I needed to keep him off his game.
“The contract was fulfilled,” he said. “I will not return the Eye.”