THE AROMA OF burning wood penetrated the night air. When we ran around the Hanging Gardens and reached the door to the cavernous room, Kranag was gone. A massive black shape flapped its wings nearby, from the base of the Archimedes screw. Zoo-kulululu! Cack! Cack! Cack!
“Careful!” Aly warned.
We watched in astonishment as the bird used its beak to turn the crank. Water began spilling from the broken mechanism into a wooden bucket. When it was full, the bird grabbed the bucket’s handle and flew off in the direction of the cottage.
Marco shook his head, hard. “Am I hallucinating?”
People said he can become an animal himself . . . That was what Daria had said. “It’s him,” I said. “Kranag.”
“That bird is Kranag?” Aly whispered.
I nodded. “He’s trying to save his home.”
“The flames will roast him,” Cass said.
I felt the pang of guilt. Setting fires went against everything I had ever been taught. I reminded myself that Kranag had wanted to kill us.
Sometimes you had to make choices.
I watched Cass drop to his knees and start scribbling in the sand. “Okay, Kranag can do some amazing stuff. He knew where all the traps are in that room. To the inch! Did you see how he was walking? Wherever he went—no gas, no arrows, nothing.”
“He probably set them up himself,” Aly said. “Of course he knows where they are. He doesn’t need to see them.”
“The point is, we can’t see them,” I said. “We can’t see anything.”
“Let’s go back a step,” Aly said. “Daria says he’s guarding the Hanging Gardens. But we know different. He’s guarding the Loculus. Jack feels it. I can feel it, too—I felt it more the closer we got to the back of the chamber. Marco, you say it might be underground, but I don’t believe that.”
“Where do think it is?” I asked.
“In plain sight, but invisible,” Aly said, a smile inching across her face. “Think about that. The first Loculus gave us the power of flight. I think this one has a whole other power.”
Her words hung in the air. I could feel their meaning seep into our brains. I saw a projectile of vizzeet spit hurtle by and hit the far wall and I almost didn’t care.
If what Aly was saying was true, this Loculus could help us unbelievably. “So if we find it and make contact with it,” I said, “it may give us its power. . . .”
Aly nodded. “In the words of the Immortal One, bingo.”
“Aly, you are the bomb.” Cass dropped to his knees and started drawing in the dirt. “Okay, this is how the room is laid out.”
We all looked at him in astonishment. “How do you know this?” Marco asked.
“Don’t you?” he asked.
“No!” we answered in unison.
“I watched Kranag’s walking pattern, that’s all,” Cass said. “The areas inside the dotted lines—those are the places he wouldn’t go. So we need to avoid them. As for that star, he definitely walked a circle around that area. As if there were something inside it. I bet it marks the place with the Loculus.”
Marco shook his head in awe. “Brother Cass, you scare me.”
Aly put an arm around Cass’s shoulder. “Remind me not to worry again when you complain about losing your powers.”
“But this was easy,” Cass said.
“To you it’s all easy,” Aly said. “Because you are good. That’s why we need you. You never lost a thing. Well, confidence, maybe.”
I gave Cass the torch. “You ready to be our leader?”
Cass blinked, then nodded. “Okay. Right. Follow me.”
He took the torch, casting a wary eye up toward the vizzeet. Stepping over the door jamb, he reached out with his free hand and waved it into the cage area. “The metal bars are still there. Follow me. Walk in my footsteps, exactly. Don’t vary left or right. Marco, narrow your shoulders.”
“Narrow my shoulders?” Marco said.
“Yeah, you know, hunch up,” Cass said. “Don’t take up so much space.”
The song of the Heptakiklos twanged into my ears. It was so close. I fought the desire to run to it across the room that taunted us with emptiness.
Aly and Marco fell in behind Cass. I brought up the rear. We walked quietly, our sandals shuffling against the hard-packed dirt. The torch flames made our shadows dance on the walls.
“EEEEEEEEE . . . ”
Outside, a vizzeet had leaped down from a ledge, landing in front of the open door. Cass swung my torch toward it, trying to scare it away.
I grabbed the torch. Marco and I lunged forward, shouting. “Yaaaaahhh!”
The vizzeet jumped back, but I felt the ground shaking below my feet. A spike broke through the soil, thrusting upward, inches from my foot. I screamed, jumping back.
Marco caught me. He held me off the ground, his arms around my chest.
“Thanks . . .” I said. “But you’re choking me . . .”
He didn’t answer. His face was rigid. I looked down. There hadn’t been only one spike. There had been four. Three of them stood alone, victimless. But one of them had pierced Marco’s foot.
“Hhhhh . . . ” The only sound Marco could manage was a shocked gasp. His grip loosened and I slid downward. I positioned my feet to avoid the blades.
“He’s hurt!” Aly cried out, moving toward Marco.
“Stay put, Aly!” Cass commanded.
The floor was a bloody mess. I set down the torch, quickly ripped a section from my tunic, and wiped the blood away. Marco’s foot was intact. “It came up between your toes,” I said.
“Lucky . . . me,” Marco said with a clenched jaw. “The edges . . . are sharp.”
The spike had four serrated ridges. It had sliced clear through his sandal. Although it hadn’t impaled his foot, it had come up between his big toe and second toe and cut them pretty badly. I unfastened the buckle. Gently I pulled Marco’s toes apart, away from the blade edges, and lifted his foot out of the sandal. Then I ripped the sandal off the spike and tried to clean it as best I could. “Good as new, sort of,” I said, setting the blood-soaked sandal down and picking up the torch.
“Thanks . . .” Marco grunted, slipping his foot back in. “I may wait a few months before I try the marathon. Let’s go.”
Cass and Aly were staring at him, slack-jawed. Cass pointed off to the right. “I—I think we go this way now . . .”
“I promise not to vary an inch from the path,” Marco said.
“I promise not to move my torch away, too,” I added.
Cass went slower. Much slower. Our footsteps echoed, bouncing off the back wall as if there were another set of people there. I could hear my breaths echoing, in rhythm with the strange music.
EEEEEE! Another vizzeet screech was followed by a metallic clang.
I nearly jumped but kept my cool. The creature had tried to jump in but hit the bars of the invisible cage. It was scrambling away on all fours, chattering hysterically.
Cass soon slowed to a stop, not far from the rear wall. “We’re here,” he announced.
“Where?” Aly said.
“The spot where I drew the star.” Cass was trembling. He was moving his ankle along a curved form, tracing a rounded shape. “Okay, this is invisible, but it’s some kind of platform. I can feel it. It’s raised.”
I reached forward, about knee high. I felt a cool, tiled surface that sloped inward toward the top, like a sculpture of a volcano. I slid my hand upward until I reached a rim about three feet high. Slowly I ran my hand to the right and left. “It’s a circle,” I said. “Some kind of pit.”
As I grabbed the rim with both hands, I felt my knees weaken. My entire body shook with the vibrations of the strange music. Concentrate.
I reached downward into the invisible pit. The blackness below me turned a muddy gray. I could see floating faces. A beautiful woman with sandy hair, smiling.
Queen Qalani. She was dressed in a fine gown gathered at the waist with a sash. On her head was a ring of bejeweled gold. Her laughter was like the running of water over stones.
But her image instantly pixelated into a confetti of colors, which spread and dulled into a whitish silver that flowed from my outstretched palm downward.
It became a sphere of glowing, pulsing white.
I smiled. I began to laugh. My body felt weightless but I was still on the ground. The song and I were one now. It was the blood flowing through my veins, the snapping of electricity in my brain. For a moment I wasn’t aware of any other sound at all.
Until a piercing cry broke the spell.
“Jack!” came Aly’s voice. “Jack, where are you?”