The Shadowhand Covenant (26 page)

It started to glow dark orange. Red dots of light danced beneath the gem's surface, and a moment later, they shot up out of the gem and hovered above my palm. The pinpricks of light swam around and chased one another, going faster and faster until they suddenly stopped and formed a fuzzy picture of the Dowager's face.

“Jaxter?” The Dowager's voice, distorted and wobbly, sounded from the red dot image.

“It's me, Dowager,” I said, staring into the image's eyes. Even this replica of her face had the same dreamy quality to it.

“There you are!” she exclaimed. “I've been worried about you. Listen, things are not going well here. My brother is being as stubborn as a ganchmule. Won't listen to a word of reason. I keep telling him and telling him—”

“Dowager,” I interrupted gently, “I need your help.”

I quickly explained the situation and stressed that the Provincial Guards she sent needed to be stealthy, because if Kolo knew they were coming, he'd kill Ma and Da and blow up the Palatinate.

“How do the guards find the caves?” she asked.

We'd been unconscious when Kolo's men brought us to the safe house. I had no idea how to get there from the outside.

I scanned the surrounding area, my eyes resting on a river to the east that ended with a waterfall. I remembered my walk with Kolo and the sound of rushing water . . .

“There's a waterfall to the east of the Palatinate Palace,” I said. “The entrance to the cave is there. Please, Dowager, hurry.”

The Dowager's head tilted to one side. “You and your friends should get out of there. It's much too dangerous.”

“I can't,” I said. “Not until I know Ma and Da are safe. Besides, we have a plan.”

We didn't really. We hoped that once we had the Sourcefire, we could bargain with Kolo. Maybe stall. But stalling would only last so long.

“I'll be there soon!” the Dowager said. Her face vanished, and I slipped the gem back into one of my pouches. In the distance, the sun continued to vanish. My shoulders slumped. It might take me until sundown to go back down all those stairs again.

Turned out that the way down was much faster. I took five steps, tripped on my robe, and fell down the remaining stairs.

A fall like that would have killed most people. But then, most people hadn't spent a good portion of their lives falling from trees, off rooftops, and over their own two feet like I had. I knew just how to tumble to protect myself from major damage.

A dubious talent, yes, but one I was fiercely proud of.

It's too bad my talent gave out before I reached the bottom. Just as the final steps spun into view, I struck my head against the wall and was knocked out cold.

Somewhere in the distance, a warbling howl pierced the air.

I awoke bruised, nauseated, and seeing little white lights before my eyes. I stood groggily and tried out all my limbs. Everything worked. Ma and Da would be impressed to hear I hadn't broken any bones this time.

The green-blue torches in the hall had turned dark purple, painting the walls with thick shadows. Between the distant howling and the throbbing in my head, I found it hard to concentrate. What was going on? Why was it suddenly dark? What was that sound?

The whats and whys vanished as a new question occurred: how long had I been out? Obviously, it wasn't sundown, or I'd have been in bits and pieces. But I'd lost precious time. I searched my robes for Kolo's pocket watch, then noticed it smashed on the floor. For all I knew, it could be minutes to sundown.

Maybe that's what the howling was: an evacuation notice. But no. Kolo had promised to blow up the palace if he saw the Palatinate trying to leave. That meant the sound was . . .

A warn charm. Someone had triggered an alarm. And I had a pretty good idea who.

I had to leave.

The upside of Maloch and Callie triggering the warn charm meant it would be easier for me to find them. All I had to do was follow the horrible, horrible, earsplitting wailing to its source and try not to go crazy in the process.

Bangers.

I ran down the hall toward the warn charm. The closer I got, the more my skin crawled. Fear coursed through my body. It felt like stickworms burrowing in my brain, urging me to turn back. Oh, zoc. This wasn't an ordinary warn charm. This one was enchanted to cause intense fear meant to send thieves into a blind panic. Inevitably, that fear would drive the thief toward waiting captors.

And it appeared to be working. Distracted, I'd lost track of where I was going. Just ahead, a line of four mages was moving toward me. Beams of light from their spellspheres swept the corridor walls. Trying to stay calm—hard to do when magic is
forcing
you to panic—I disappeared behind the nearest door.

Like everywhere in the palace, the room was very dark,
save for the purple torches. But even still, I could tell this was the largest room I'd seen yet. Easily the size of several city blocks in Vengekeep, the room was so long I couldn't see the far end. And everywhere I looked, I saw cages. Hundreds and hundreds of cages filled with more exotic beasts than I could count.

My mind reeled back months ago to when Callie, Talian, and I discovered the rogue mage Xerrus in his hidden Onyx Fortress. Xerrus had been doing horrible, illegal experiments, using magic to combine different types of animals. But there was no evidence of that cruelty here. The creatures in these cages all seemed perfectly normal: healthy, well-fed, even docile. A marked difference from Xerrus's experiments, which were crammed into cages too small for them and abused terribly.

I watched as a pair of mages moved from cage to cage. The first mage examined the creatures and murmured instructions that the second mage hastily scribbled into a large book.

“This is naff-nut,” the second mage said. “You hear the warn charm. We could be under attack. We're here, doing
our job like always, when we should be out there defending the palace.”

“Relax,” the first mage said. “The Sentinels are investigating. Nalia told us we're not to leave this room. She wants a complete catalog of the menagerie by nightfall.”

As my eyes adjusted to the lighting and I got a better look around, I realized I didn't recognize any of the creatures. No sanguibeasts. No garfluks. But while I didn't recognize them, they seemed familiar.

The hulking pair of black-furred, trihorned animals in the corner looked like nightmanx. The monstrous, spiky-skinned reptiles—two stories high—resembled torranthars. And the gelatinous, childlike creatures that swung on the bars of their cage were the spitting image of skeelapes. Every beast that I could see wore a small gold amulet around its neck.

Nightmanx, torranthars, and skeelapes.

Which was impossible, because none of these things existed.

They were legends. Stories.

Weren't they?

My curiosity got the better of me, and I tiptoed closer for a better look. Just then, I heard an unearthly howl that made my blood run cold.

Looking up, I saw a row of cages hanging from chains in the ceiling. Each was home to a bloodreaver. They still wore the golden amulets I'd seen on the one in the forest. The many-armed creatures batted against the bars lightly. My breath caught in my throat. One of them met my eyes and suddenly went wild, howling and thrashing at its cage. Soon, all were doing the same. The cages smashed into one another as they swung like pendulums.

The menagerie keepers looked up at the bloodreavers. “I hate those things,” the mage with the book said.

His partner shook his head. “You worry too much. Remember, they're under our control.”

He pointed to a medallion that hung around his neck. So I was right. The forge was making control medallions like the ones Xerrus had used to control the balanx in the Onyx Fortress. Had the Palatinate stolen the idea from him? And why?

“Why do we bother with the cages?” the mage with the book asked. “They can disappear and appear at will.”

“They only teleport when they've caught the scent of their prey.”

Pop!
One of the bloodreaver cages filled with smoke as its occupant vanished. A second cloud appeared on the floor near the mages and the bloodreaver stepped out, fangs bared. Seven more
pops
echoed throughout the menagerie as more bloodreavers freed themselves from their cages and reappeared on the floor.

“They smell something,” the mage with the book said. The pair scanned the room until they spotted me half in shadow near the door.

“Don't look at me,” I said, doing my best to look offended. “I took a bath today. Okay, maybe it was a couple days ago.”

As one, the bloodreavers gave a united howl and ran toward me.

“Providing another's alibi kindles a fire that burns for life.”

—Ancient par-Goblin proverb

I
lifted my arm in the air and slammed a handful of smoke pellets onto the stone floor.
Flash!
A thick white mist surrounded me.

I dove for the door, leaving the confused mages and bloodreavers inside. In the dark corridor, the moaning alarm ricocheted off the mordenstone walls so strongly that I could feel it through my boots.

I held my hands over my ears and ran toward the warn charm. I fought off the growing terror inside that urged me
to turn back. Aside from the fear, the noise upset my sense of balance, as it was designed to do. But I had to put as much space between the bloodreavers and me as possible, so I staggered on. Bounding into an intersection, I nearly ran into Maloch and Callie.

“I'm guessing you succeeded. They're playing the Grimjinx anthem!” I had to shout to be heard over the deafening alarm.

But Callie, face flushed, was in no mood to joke. “I thought I'd disarmed all the traps. I must have missed one.”

“Two Sentinels appeared as soon as the alarm sounded,” Maloch said, beaming. “And Callie set them on fire.”

“I did not!” she said. “I was trying to do this spell that Talian taught me. It would have encased them in ice. But that's the problem with speaking magic. I said
cerata
instead of
ceraka
and, well—”

“Oh, relax,” Maloch said. “They put themselves out. Eventually.”

“Is that it?” I asked, pointing to Maloch.

His hands gripped a box about the size of a vessapede egg. The frame of the box was made of shining gold strips with raised magical sigils all along the edges. The walls
of the box were thick, multifaceted crystal. Inside was the Sourcefire. At its core, a ball of dark blue flame churned and burned, surrounded by what looked like wisps of glowing green steam. Orbiting all of this were several tiny dots of red light that spun around the fire, leaving a comet-like trail.

“A mite smaller than I imagined,” I said. “Let's go.”

Maloch and I turned to run, but Callie stood her ground.

“Callie, you're an accomplice,” I said. “You have to come too.”

She shook her head. “I told you. If you don't stop Kolo, I can't let the people here die. Sundown is in one hour. You've got half an hour to stop him. If you don't show up at the palace gates to tell me you've succeeded, I'm going to warn the Palatinate and evacuate.”

There was no arguing, and I couldn't blame her. She understood the risk of evacuating, but it was better than sitting around, waiting to get blown up.

“Let's move, Jaxter,” Maloch said, charging down the hall. Callie threw an arm around my neck in a quick hug, and then I took off after Maloch.

“Do you know where we're going?” I asked.

Maloch nodded. “Callie and I passed the laundry room
on the way here. It's not far.”

He led us down several long halls, through a spoke, and finally back to the corridor where we'd first entered.

“Down here!” he called.

But just as we were nearly back to the laundry room, the floor lurched. The stones ahead parted, as if shoved aside by invisible hands. From the crevasse sprang a new wall made of glowing red bricks that went all the way to the ceiling.

“I think,” I said slowly, “they're onto us.”

“Quick!” Maloch tugged at my arm, and we darted down another hall. It turned right. Then left. Then left again. Then right. It didn't make sense. When we'd first arrived, all the passageways in this area were straight and long. There hadn't been this many turns.

I thought of the wall that had just sprung up out of nowhere, blocking our access to the exit hole. They were altering the corridors. Guiding us to exactly where they wanted us to go . . .

“Maloch—,” I said, trying to warn him. He took a sharp right, and I followed. The howling alarm stopped. A wall of red glowing bricks sprang up behind us, blocking the way back.

The room we were in looked like a garden. Topiaries and flower beds covered the grassy floors, all lit by a thawglobe above. Festerelm trees, with their gnarled trunks that oozed sap, wove a latticework of twisting branches overhead. The scene looked so idyllic I expected to hear birds chirping. Instead, we heard a chorus of unearthly screeches from above.