Quest for the Secret Keeper

by Victoria Laurie

  Ian found himself at a loss—he couldn’t lie to Océanne. It was Carl who saved him from the uncomfortable moment when he said, “We only heard from the earl that Monsieur Lafitte was detained, Océanne. We have no idea where he is.”

  Madame Lafitte’s hand fluttered nervously around the pearls at her throat, but she forced a smile when Océanne looked up at her. “I’m sure he’s quite well,” she said to her daughter. “But we must focus on finding the earl at the moment, so that he can tell us more about where your father is.”

  Theo stepped out into the street. Ian went to stand by her and took her hand, still incredibly relieved to find her both alive and well. “I’m terribly worried about the earl, Ian,” she whispered so that the others wouldn’t hear.

  Ian knew what that likely meant and the destruction all around him added to his own fears. “Can you sense him, Theo?”

  Theo nodded and closed her eyes. “I can. I know that he still lives, but there is also a desperate feeling to his energy. I believe he’s in a great deal of pain.”

  The knot of anxiety in Ian’s stomach tightened. “He’s injured?”

  Theo nodded. “Yes. I’m certain of it. He needs help immediately.”

  “We’ve got to go to him,” Ian said, pulling the sundial from his pocket.

  No sooner had he freed the small relic than a hand tightened about his wrist and a sharp voice said, “No!”

  Startled to his toes, Ian looked up to see Adria gripping his arm and staring at him fiercely. “You will draw the sorceresses to you!” she hissed. “And they must not discover this place, Ian.” For emphasis, Adria’s eyes swiveled to the green door.

  Ian wrenched his arm from her grasp and glared hard at her. At the moment, the door was the least of his worries. “The earl is injured and needs our help, ma’am. I will use whatever means necessary to locate him as quickly as possible.”

  Adria eyed the sundial moodily. She seemed on the verge of doing something drastic, so Ian closed his hand around the object and held it tightly to his chest. If she planned on taking it, she’d have to fight him to do it. Ian knew it was their only hope of finding the earl in time to help or even save him.

  “We can take it away from here before we ask it to find the earl,” Carl suggested, obviously overhearing their conversation. “With any luck, we’ll be able to draw the sorceresses far away from this place.”

  Adria glared at Carl, clearly not at all pleased with his suggestion. “And then Caphiera and Atroposa will hunt you two down.”

  But Ian was resolute. He would never find the earl in all this wreckage if he didn’t use the sundial—of that he was certain—and Theo’s conviction that the earl was injured only fueled his determination to find the earl quickly. “We’ll be careful,” he assured Adria.

  Adria turned away from him dismissively, her anger palpable, and she strode into the shop without a backward glance. Ian sighed, suddenly feeling very tired.

  Placing his hands on Theo’s shoulders, he said, “Carl and I will work our way west before we use the dial. The sorceresses are on the east side of the city, so with any luck, we’ll be able to use the dial to find the earl’s location before they find us.”

  Theo looked worried. “I should come along,” she said to him. “Perhaps I can use my own abilities to help you locate the earl without the sundial.”

  But Ian shook his head. “The shop is guarded by a powerful magic, Theo. You’ll be safest here with Adria to help guard you, and we’ll need someone to look after Océanne and Madame Lafitte.”

  Theo continued to look worriedly at Ian, but she didn’t argue. “Very well,” she said with a sigh. “But please, hurry back, would you?”

  He smiled and ruffled her hair. “We’ll do our best,” he assured her.

  Ian then motioned to Carl, who took up the lantern Adria had loaned them. “Leave that,” Ian told him. “We have your pocket torch.” Carl had brought out his torch as the hour grew late on their way back to Theo.

  But Carl shook his head. “We can save the batteries if we bring this.”

  Ian considered that to be a very smart suggestion. “All right,” he said, and they waved to Theo, Océanne, and Madame Lafitte before setting off.

  Their journey was difficult, as both of them were exhausted and also very hungry. They’d had almost nothing to eat in the past twenty-four hours, and Ian found his grumbling stomach to be quite a distraction. But then they passed an overturned bread cart and he and Carl snatched up several rolls after quickly leaving a few francs for the absent vendor.

  Finally, the young men arrived in a neighborhood where only two buildings had been struck and felt it far enough away from the green door to use the sundial. The streets by then were deserted, but here at least the lamplights were lit.

  Ian moved underneath one and pulled out the sundial but hesitated. “What’re you waiting for?” Carl finally asked as Ian simply stared at the dial’s face.

  “I’m worried about using it,” he admitted.

  “We have no choice, mate,” Carl told him. “It’s got to be done.”

  Ian inhaled and exhaled slowly. He then eyed the streets up and down and attempted to use his own powers of awareness to sense the sorceresses. He was surprised to discover that he felt them—but very distantly. He looked in the direction from which he thought their energy radiated. It was coming from the same area where the Lafittes’ flat was. With some hope, Ian crossed his fingers that they were still there waiting outside the flat, because that was a good distance away from where he and Carl were now standing. He could only hope that the earl was not to be found in the same direction. Ian then had another idea and closed his eyes again, wondering if he might use his own powers of location to find the earl, and thus not need to open the sundial’s magic. But when he attempted it, he could feel only a tiny thread of energy, with no distinct location. All his anxiety about the condition of the earl returned, and he made up his mind not to waste another moment on indecision. “Sundial,” he said, “please point the way to Hastings Arbuthnot, the Earl of Kent.”

  In a flash the dull, tarnished surface of the dial vanished and a burnished, shiny surface replaced it. One faint shadow formed at the twelve o’clock position. “He’s north of here,” Ian said, looking in the direction the dial was pointing.

  “Let’s be off, then,” Carl told him. “We’ll have to hurry if we’re going to avoid the sorceresses.”

  Ian and Carl began running down the street, leaping over fallen debris, frustrated when they were slowed by large piles of bricks that had spilled into the road, blocking their way forward.

  On one of their treks over a mound of rubble, Ian sliced his knee open on a shard of glass, but he could hardly stop and tend to it.

  After a bit, they reached a section of road that was impassable. The air raid had destroyed two buildings across from each other, which had littered the street with a mountain of debris, completely obscuring the road ahead.

  “We’ll have to go around,” he told Carl, motioning with his finger to the left, down a street that ran perpendicular.

  Carl appeared uncertain. “There’s a load of debris down there, Ian,” he said, coming to stand next to him. The street Ian had suggested was also filled with rubble.

  “It’d be harder to climb that,” Ian countered, pointing to the huge mound of rubble in front of them. “We have no choice but to try and get around the block as best we can.”

  That section of the city appeared deserted; no one was about to give them directions for an alternate path and that made the area all the more disquieting.

  Tripping all along the way, Ian reached out with his senses to feel the sorceresses and realized they were much closer now. Somehow they’d moved even more swiftly than he’d counted on.

  “They’re coming,” he told Carl as the pair continued to struggle through the rubble.

  “You can sense them?”

  “Yes. Adria showed me how back at Océanne’s flat.”

 
“How far away are they?”

  Ian shrugged. “Perhaps a kilometer or two.” He had no real idea how he knew their proximity, but when he said that, he felt it was correct.

  “We’ve got to find the earl quickly or turn off the sundial.”

  Ian stopped abruptly and stared in shock at Carl. “You know I can’t, Carl,” he said. “I have no way to turn it off other than to find the earl.”

  Carl had stopped too. “Then what did Adria say to get it to stop pointing to Océanne and her mother?”

  Ian shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Blimey!” Carl growled before collecting himself again. “We’ve got to find the earl immediately!”

  Ian and Carl took up their dash through the debris again and rounded the corner. Here the roadway was clear, but again it was deserted. Panting for air, Carl said, “What’s the sundial say now?”

  Ian took it out of his pocket while Carl held the lantern near it, and he was quite surprised to discover that the earl appeared to be behind them. The dial was now pointing to the six o’clock position. At once, Ian and Carl turned to look over their shoulders at the massively damaged block where the German bombs had caused so much devastation. Not a single building still stood, and some were unrecognizable. Carl gasped. “Ian! Do you think the earl’s somewhere in there?”

  Ian stared at the ruins, dread creeping into his heart. If the earl had been in one of those buildings, how could he have possibly survived?

  Another inspection of the dial, however, indicated that the shadow was still pointing to the rubble. “Come on!” he cried, and dashed down the street.

  The friends had made it nearly halfway down when the dial’s shadow suddenly shifted to the three o’clock position. Ian paused and looked about. To his left was a building, which had once been a series of flats; he could tell because much of the face of the building had been destroyed, exposing the inside floors like a dollhouse. “My lord!” Ian shouted as he leapt over a broken chair.

  Carl hurried to his side and they scrambled up and over the debris to the first floor. “My lord Hastings Arbuthnot! Can you hear us?”

  Something sounded nearby and Ian stopped in his tracks to listen. He had no idea if he’d just heard the earl responding to his calls or his imagination was playing tricks on him, so he turned to Carl and asked, “Did you hear that?”

  Carl shook his head. “Lord Arbuthnot!” he called. “It’s Carl Lawson! Are you here, my lord?”

  Again Ian detected a slight noise coming from the same direction, as the sundial’s shadow now pointed to the two o’clock position. “This way!” Ian cried, and hurried into the structure. He made his way past broken furniture, crumbling walls, and bits of glass.

  The young men entered a hallway within one of the flats and continued down its length to a door leading to the inside corridor. Ian turned the handle and pushed, but the door was jammed against something in the hallway beyond. “Carl!” he said. “Bring your lantern over the dial again!”

  Carl brought the lantern close and Ian inspected the surface. It was pointing directly to the area beyond the door, the shadow much thicker now and pulsing. Ian turned to the crack he’d managed to create when he’d attempted to open the door, and called out to the earl again.

  This time he clearly heard a voice; weak and shaking, it said, “I’m here, lad.”

  Ian’s heart began to race. “He’s on the other side!” he said, pushing at the door with all his might.

  Carl joined him and they threw their shoulders against the wood again and again, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  “We’ll have to try one of the other flats!” Carl said, panting and rubbing his shoulder.

  Ian nodded, but before he turned away, he put his face to the crack again and said, “My lord, we’re just going round to another flat. We’ll be along in a moment.”

  Ian motioned for Carl to hold the lantern up toward the top of the doorframe, and he could see that a beam from the floor above had dropped down and was blocking all the doors into the hallway.

  “What if we made our way upstairs to the second story and went down the inside stairwell?” Carl suggested.

  Ian felt supremely anxious. He could sense the sorceresses coming ever closer, and he knew that if he didn’t find the earl’s exact location quickly, the dial would continue to act as a beacon, drawing Caphiera and Atroposa directly to them.

  Getting up to the second floor would be tricky and time consuming, and he briefly wondered if there were any other options, but his mind was so filled with worry that he found it hard to think. “Yes, yes!” he said at last. “Let’s hurry, Carl!”

  The pair dashed back the way they’d come to inspect the face of the building. Carl pointed his torch up the side of the structure, inspecting the broken facade for footholds, and found a section where the rebar was exposed, creating a makeshift ladder of sorts.

  Ian hurried over to it. Slinging his arm through the handle on the lantern, he slowly began to climb up and had to twist awkwardly toward the top to grab hold of the floor of the second story, but he made purchase at last and scrambled to his feet. He could see that he’d entered the master bedroom of the owner, and had to push aside the door to the wardrobe, blown clean off its hinges, making room for Carl, who was also scrambling up the rebar.

  Carl crested the landing with a grunt, nearly toppling over amid the wreckage, and Ian had to lurch forward to catch his friend, but the momentum carried them both sideways and into the door of the wardrobe. It clanged Carl on the head and he winced, hissing sharply through his teeth.

  “You all right?” Ian asked him.

  Carl shoved the door aside. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s find the earl.” The pair wasted no more time, making their way through the flat to the door leading to the outside corridor. When they opened it, they both gasped.

  The floor of the hallway had a terrible crack leading down the entire length and it sagged in the middle as if the entire building had been squeezed. The resulting pressure had forced the floor to fold in by several inches.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” Carl whispered, looking skeptically at the floor.

  Ian gulped. “No. But what choice do we have? The sorceresses are on their way to us, and we can’t turn off the dial’s magic until we reach the earl. I don’t believe there’s any other way to get to him.”

  Ian eased one foot out of the flat and onto the hallway floor. As gingerly as he could, he slowly put more and more of his weight on that foot, testing the strength of the floor.

  It held.

  Fortunately, the flat they’d chosen to climb up to was very close to the inside stairwell—just two doors down, in fact.

  Inch by inch Ian moved along the side, holding his breath for most of the way. Behind him, Carl pointed his torch in Ian’s direction to add light to the shadows the lantern created. Ian was most grateful that Carl had remembered to bring that torch.

  Finally, he made the landing for the stairwell and turned back to face Carl. “Throw me your torch!” he called.

  Carl tossed it to him and Ian pointed it for Carl while his friend made his way—much more quickly—across the sloping floor.

  When he reached Ian, they both breathed a sigh of relief and hurried down the stairs.

  “My lord!” Ian called. “Are you here?”

  “Ian!” a faint voice cried. “I’m in here!”

  Ian quickened his pace, scrambling through the debris cluttered hallway, tripping in his haste to get to the earl. Carl barely prevented Ian from crashing to the floor and somehow they both managed to find their way to the earl.

  When Carl’s beam focused on their patriarch, it was all Ian could do not to cry out at the sight. The earl was in a terrible state, pinned to the floor by a large section of wall, which covered his legs and much of his torso, leaving the earl barely able to gasp for air.

  The poor man’s face was pale and bloody. His nose looked broken, one eye was swollen, and his lips were blue. He also seeme
d to be in no small amount of pain. Ian didn’t hesitate to move to one side of the wall while motioning to Carl to grab the other side. “We’ve got to lift this off him!”

  Carl gripped his side securely and gave a nod to Ian. The pair heaved with all their might and the wall moved, but just barely. “Carl!” Ian said, his voice strained. “I’ll hold it up while you pull the earl free!”

  Carl hesitated. “I’ve got it!” Ian assured him, feeling his knees start to wobble and his arms shake. “Hurry!”

  Carl let go of his end and Ian groaned anew with the effort to keep the wall up high enough for Carl to ease the earl out.

  He watched with gritted teeth while Carl bent low and took the earl by the shoulders, but as he was pulling him out, the earl gave a sudden shout of pain, and Carl stopped.

  “Pull me free, Carl! Just do it!” gasped the earl.

  Carl lifted the earl again, his face set with determination, and he heaved backward. The earl cried out again and Ian lost his grip. The wall crashed down with a thud as Ian fell backward, knocking his head against a brick.

  Ian lay there for a moment, trying to collect his thoughts, and was soon squinting in the dim light, seeing Carl hovering over the earl.

  “He’s free,” Carl said. “But he’s blacked out.”

  Ian got unsteadily to his feet. Leaning against the wall for support, he went over to see for himself. With tremendous relief he saw the color had returned to the earl’s lips and face now that he was able to take full breaths. “We must get him to hospital immediately!”

  “How, Ian?” Carl said desperately.

  Ian looked up and down the hallway, searching for an idea. Nothing came to mind, so he made a decision, which he didn’t like, but it was the only obvious choice left to them. “I’ll have to bring back help,” he said. “Will you wait here with the earl?”

  Carl didn’t look at all happy with that idea, but he finally shrugged. “I suppose it’s the only way,” he said. “Yes, I’ll wait here. But see if you can find us some water, Ian. If the earl wakes up, I’ll need to try and get him to drink something.”