Oracles of Delphi Keep (51 page)

“I’ll be back,” he said hoarsely before switching on his torch and moving even farther into the cave. When he was
far enough away that he was certain Jaaved and Theo couldn’t hear him, he clicked off his light, letting the darkness of the cave envelop him, and cried bitter tears.

A long while later, when Ian was spent of his emotions, he sat on the floor and looked out at the darkness hopelessly. He wondered how he and Theo were ever going to find their way back to Delphi. And if they did, how would they explain what had happened? Who would believe such a story? How would they explain what had become of Thatcher, Perry, the professor, and Carl?

He sat dumbly and stared at the blackness for a long time, clicking his light on and off, his thoughts bleak and his spirit crushed. Finally, he clicked his pocket torch on one final time, preparing to get back to Theo and Jaaved, when he noticed something peculiar caught in the light’s beam. On the wall opposite him and down to his right, he noticed dark squiggles and lines. Ian got to his feet, moved to the opposite wall, and looked closely at the shapes, tracing them with his finger. “Incredible,” he said, taking one step back so that his light could better illuminate the wall. “I can’t believe it!” he nearly shouted before turning to race back down the path he’d taken. He found Jaaved and Theo sitting back to back, staring listlessly into space, much like he’d just been doing. “Jaaved! Theo!” he called excitedly. “Come quick! I’ve got to show you something!”

They scrambled to their feet and hurried after him. The deeper into the cave they went, the more narrow the opening became. Ian managed to find the exact spot he’d been sitting in when his torch had lit on the writing. “Look,
Theo!” he said as he shone his light onto the wall. “Does it seem familiar to you?”

“It’s just like the writing in the cavern back in Dover!” Theo said, pressing her hand to the wall.

“Exactly! Come on. I’ll bet you there’s something at the end of this cave! Maybe there’s another silver box with a scroll, and maybe we can trade the box for enough money to get us home!”

Jaaved gave each of them a confused look but followed dutifully as Ian and Theo made their way deeper into the cave. Before long Ian was ducking low, and then so was Jaaved, and finally Theo was bent over. “Ian,” she said to him. “This tunnel keeps getting shorter and shorter!”

“Yes, but see that?” Ian said, pointing at the wall to his right. “Someone wrote that, Theo. And I’m sure it’s a marker to keep going.”

The threesome continued on, soon reduced to crawling, and abruptly they came to a sharp fork in the tunnel and the cave headed off into two directions. The one on the right appeared to be easier to travel; there was a dip into what looked like a larger cavern with more headroom. The one on the left became narrower still.

“Which way?” Theo asked as she crawled up next to Ian.

“Well, right seems most likely. I mean, I can’t imagine that anyone would choose to go into such a narrow space when something roomier is at hand.”

Ian moved toward the right and Jaaved yelled out,
“Non!”

Both Ian and Theo turned to look at Jaaved, who was pointing toward the left tunnel.
“Allez à la gauche!”

“He wants us to go to the left,” said Theo.

Ian hesitated only a moment, but two things came back to him: Laodamia’s words from the prophecy about the Seeker guiding them deep in stone, and Theo’s vision of the boy with the diamond mark. He decided to trust Jaaved, and with a shrug he led the way into the narrower tunnel.

The threesome were able to crawl a while longer before the ceiling forced Ian to lay flat on the ground and pull himself along with his arms, which was difficult, as he was trying to hold the torch out in front of him to guide them with some light. “I must be daft,” he said, panting, irritated that he’d listened to the Moroccan. “There’s no way someone would have come this way, Jaaved! We should have gone to the …” Ian’s voice trailed off, because in front of him, the floor sloped drastically downward and a huge cavern opened up.

“Oh, my,” he heard Theo say from behind. “Ian! Look at that!”

Excitedly, he squirmed his way forward and half rolled, half crawled into the cavern. As he stood, he flashed his torch all around and gasped. Everywhere his torch beam touched, it glinted off treasure.

In his amazement, Ian had almost forgotten about Theo and Jaaved until Jaaved’s yelp broke the silence.
“Trésor!”
their guide yelled, and ran to a hill of gold on the floor.

Theo too went to a pile and happily picked up huge fistfuls of gold coins. “Ian! We’re rich!” she squealed. “We can get back to England now!”

Ian sat down heavily on the ground, dumbstruck. They could buy passage back to England, and with this much
treasure, he could ensure that he and Theo would never be separated. He could purchase them a house to live in, even hire a governess to look after them until they became old enough to take care of themselves. All the hopelessness he’d experienced that morning seemed to fade away as he looked at Theo dancing atop a mound of gold.

A smile formed on his lips just as his torch noticeably dimmed. “Bugger!” he muttered, shaking the light as it flickered again. “Theo! Jaaved!” he said, turning to them. “Grab as much of the treasure as you can carry and hurry after me. The light on my torch won’t last much longer, and we’ve got to be out of this tunnel before it dies completely!”

Theo hurriedly bent down and began stuffing her shirt with gold coins. Jaaved stood with a confused look on his face as he watched Theo, until Ian pointed to his torch, which flickered again. Jaaved suddenly seemed to understand. He turned and began grabbing fistfuls of gold and jewels himself.

Ian held his small torch in his mouth while he grabbed as much as he could. Glancing to his left, he was caught completely by surprise. Moving over to one of the rocky ledges, he couldn’t believe what he saw: a silver box identical to the one he’d left at the keep. It had to be another of Laodamia’s. He set the gold in his hands down quickly and grabbed the box, gazing at it in the dimming light of his torch. Making a snap decision, he shoved the box into the waistband of his trousers and gathered up his two handfuls of gold again, tying them in his shirttails, then shoved fistfuls into his pockets. He wanted to carry out as much gold as he could, but as his torch gave yet another flicker, Ian realized they should
really make their way out of the darkness while they still had light. He gazed longingly at all the gold they would be leaving behind and tried not to be bitter. Instead, he focused on getting them safely back out before his torch died for good. “Come on, you two,” he said. “Let’s head back.”

Ian held his torch between his teeth again and crawled along on his forearms, as his fists were full of gold. The skin on his arms became so raw that he winced with each painful reach forward, but he refused to leave behind any coin he’d carried out. Soon they’d made it to where they could crawl along on their hands and knees, and Ian’s heart raced when his light dimmed even more. Squinting in the grayness of the tunnel, he felt a note of relief when they came to the fork. He moved even faster and grunted to Theo and Jaaved, hoping they understood the need to hurry.

Just as they made it to the point of being able to crouch low on two feet again, Ian’s torch went out completely and plunged them all into absolute blackness. He opened his mouth and spit his light to the ground.

“What do we do?” Theo asked from behind him, her voice anxious.

“Put your hand on my back, and have Jaaved do the same. I’ll go slowly, okay?”

“Okay,” said Theo.

“Okay,” said Jaaved.

Ian stopped. “What did he say?” he asked, turning to look back into the blackness behind him, thinking that maybe he had misheard Jaaved.

“I said okay,” Jaaved repeated.

Ian and Theo both gasped in surprise. “Jaaved!” Theo said. “You spoke English!”

“I did?” he said. “When?”

“Just now!” Ian said, then realized that the Moroccan boy must have been lying all this time. “When did you learn to speak English?” he asked carefully.

Jaaved didn’t respond right away, but after a moment he said, “I never learned to speak English. You must be speaking French!”

Ian shook his head in frustration but decided to argue about it later. At the moment they had more pressing issues. “Fine, have it your way,” he said impatiently. “Just follow closely behind Theo.”

They were in the dark for quite a while, but finally Ian could see the shapes of their surroundings. Eventually, there was a small bead of light ahead, and he knew they weren’t far from where they’d started. He breathed a sigh of relief when they reached their backpacks and water canteens.

“How are we going to get the rest of the treasure out?” Theo asked him, holding up her two kneesocks, which she’d cleverly loaded with gold.

“We’re not,” he said, smiling at her ingenuity as he unloaded his hands and his pockets. “We’ve got to get home, and we’ve got enough here to do that. Oh!” He interrupted himself as he pulled the silver box from his trousers. “Theo, look at what I found in the cavern!”

“It’s another box!” she exclaimed. “Just like Laodamia said we’d find!”

Ian nodded. “And I think it might hold the Star.” Flipping
the box over, he began turning each of the feet, hoping that this box opened like the others. He found the right ball on the second try and unscrewed it, revealing the key. With shaking fingers he inserted it into the small keyhole at the front of the box and it opened with a pop. But inside all he saw was another scroll and a small bronze sundial.

“What is it?” Theo asked over his shoulder.

“Just another scroll,” he said, disappointed. “And a sundial.”

“A sundial?”

“Yes,” he said, holding it up for her to see.

“How peculiar.”

“Quite,” he said, setting it back into the box with a sigh.

“No sign of the Star?” she asked.

“Not unless the sundial is the Star,” said Ian. He was starting to grow weary of Laodamia and her riddles. He closed the lid, locked it, and returned the ball to the bottom of the box. “Seems we’re all out of missing gemstones with magical powers.”

Theo gave him a sympathetic look but said nothing. Instead, she focused on Jaaved, who was distracted by the treasure he was unloading. Ian saw with a bit of humility that Jaaved’s pile was bigger than his.

“That’s a pretty good haul, Jaaved,” Ian said to him.

“That
is
good,” Theo agreed, then looked at Ian and a smile spread across her face. As if she’d just realized it, she turned round and showed them a huge knot in the tail of her blouse. She undid the knot and an enormous pile of treasure slipped out onto the ground. Adding to what was in her socks, it was as much as Ian’s and Jaaved’s combined.

“Mais … quel énorme trésor là!”
exclaimed Jaaved, pointing to her pile.

Ian gave him a weary look, out of patience for his silly language games. “You can drop the act, Jaaved,” he snapped. “We know you can speak English.”

Jaaved cocked his head at Ian, confusion on his face.
“Qu’ avez-vous dit?”

“We know you can understand us, Jaaved,” Theo said, more gently. “It’s all right; we’re not mad.”

“Speak for yourself,” muttered Ian, thoroughly irritated that Jaaved had duped them.

“Je ne comprends pas!”
said Jaaved, standing up and pointing to them.
“Parlez-moi comme vous avez fait dans le tunnel!”

“What’s he so mad about?” Ian asked Theo.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Jaaved, why won’t you speak English? You know we can’t understand French.”

Jaaved glared at her and stomped his foot. Bending low and grumbling to himself, he gathered up his pile of treasure and shoved it into his pockets. “If you won’t speak to me like you did in the tunnel, then you may find your own way back!”

“We
are
speaking to you like we did in the tunnel!” insisted Theo. And just like that, everyone stopped talking and looked at the last handful of treasure in Jaaved’s palm. There, in his bandaged palm, was the biggest opal Ian had ever seen. The iridescent stone shone blue, orange, yellow, and green, and at the center of the stone was a cluster of red flakes that reflected the light brilliantly. Most startling of all, however, was that the stone was shaped into a five-pointed star.

“The Star of Lixus!” Theo gasped.

“It gives him the power of language!” said Ian, putting the final pieces of Laodamia’s riddle into place. “Jaaved, give me the opal, and when it’s in my hand, say something in your native tongue, not in French but in Arabic!”

Jaaved handed over the stone and said, “Hello, Ian, it’s a lovely day for a camel ride.”

Ian scowled. It hadn’t worked. “No, you’re just speaking English again,” he said, but he noticed a look of shock on Theo’s face. “Ian!” she gasped. “You just spoke Arabic!”

“I did?” he asked.

“Now you’re back to English!” she said.

“I don’t understand you, Theo,” said Jaaved, looking confusedly from Ian to Theo.

“What’s not to understand?” asked Ian.

“You did it again!” Theo exclaimed. “This time you spoke French!”

Ian thought back to how he had responded to Jaaved. It was odd, but there had been just a slight change in the way his brain thought out the words and his lips had formed them. “Jaaved,” he said excitedly, “after I give the Star to Theo, I want you to ask her what her favorite book is.”

“All right,” said Jaaved, and Ian handed the Star to Theo. As Theo held the stone, Jaaved asked his question in French, and Theo responded in French, with a perfect accent.

Ian looked at her, stunned. “That was brilliant!” he said. He took the Star from Theo, gave it back to Jaaved, and asked, “You can understand us, right?”

“Yes, perfectly,” Jaaved answered.

“Brilliant!” Ian repeated. “How do we get back to your boat?”

“We’ve got to cross the valley again, and go back the way you came.”

“How dangerous will it be?”

Jaaved looked grim. “Very. We have only the water in the canteens, and this meat. The journey will take two days on foot. I’ve been to the Jichmach camp. Only a few of my tribesmen survived the fight, and from the tracks I found, I know they are headed back to our lands. The surviving Jichmach have gone deeper into their lands to bring more warriors to help collect their dead and gather up the remaining supplies.”