CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Witch’s Secret

“Listen, please—”

“She’s dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!”

“You don’t have to do this—”

The man inched his chair forward, straining against the ropes, trying as best he could to place his body between the sweating, wild-eyed, knife-wielding figure and his wife, who was tied to a chair beside him. The man’s name was Richard Wibberly. His wife’s name was Clare. On this night, neither had seen their children in more than ten years.

“Killing us does nothing—”

“Nothing?! It does nothing?!” The wild-eyed man lurched forward, pressing the knife against his prisoner’s face. “It makes you dead, is what it does! And hurts them! That is enough!”

The blade flashed, and a long, bloody line appeared on Richard’s cheek.

Clare screamed and unleashed a string of curses and threats.

The couple’s captor pushed Richard roughly to the floor and stepped toward the woman.

Only he never made it, for just then the door burst in and an enormous man, one of the largest men either Richard or his wife had ever seen, stepped into the room. He wore an old cloak, and the handle of a sword jabbed upward from a sheath on his back. He had long black hair and a vicious scar running down the side of his face. Everything about him spoke of purpose, power, and a fearsome violence.

The fury coming off him charged the air all around.

The couple’s captor shrieked and swung the knife, but the intruder knocked it away, lifted the man into the air, and threw him out the window. There was a shattering crash, a half breath of silence, and then the thud of a body striking the ground twenty feet below, followed by the dull tinkling of broken glass.

The enormous man stood there a moment; then his shoulders dropped, his body relaxed, and he gave off the impression of someone who had put down a burden that he had been carrying for a long, long time.

He righted Richard’s chair, took the discarded knife, and cut his bonds.

“Who are you?” Richard asked, rubbing the grooves the cord had dug into his wrists, watching as the man cut his wife’s bonds.

“My name is Gabriel. I am a friend of your children.”

—

It had taken Gabriel less than three hours after leaving Kate and Michael in the giants’ city to find the Secretary, but in some ways it was the culmination of a fifteen-year search.

A decade and a half earlier, after the events in Cambridge Falls, the Countess’s Secretary had disappeared, and Dr. Pym had tasked Gabriel with finding the man. “He knows much. He has been a party to the Dire Magnus’s most secret plans. The enemy will hunt him, to punish him for the witch’s betrayal. We must find him before they do.”

And so, for years, Gabriel had trekked all over the globe, following whatever clues, whispers, or desperate hintings he could uncover, combing through the dredges of the magical and nonmagical worlds, arriving always a day, an hour, a moment too late. He had found traces of the man among the voodoo priests and cutthroats of New Orleans; he just missed him in a remote village in the Andes; once—and only once—he had been face to face with his quarry, having come upon the Secretary on a street in Paris as the man tried to catch a pigeon with his hands, presumably for lunch. A sightseeing group had moved between them, and by the time Gabriel had reached the far side of the street, the Secretary had vanished. After that, Dr. Pym had told him to give up the chase; there were other, more pressing matters: the enemy was on the move; war was at hand.

But in the end, the effort had paid off, for in the course of his search, Gabriel had visited a town nestled in a tiny wedge of the magical world along the coast of the Adriatic, where the Secretary had lived for some months in an abandoned dye factory. And it was the chalky yellow dye, still fresh on the floor of the giant king’s throne room, that had told Gabriel where his quarry was hiding.

Gabriel had not risked appearing in the factory itself, having learned from his past failures that if the Secretary was there, he would have devised wards against any sort of magical intrusion, or at the very least, an alarm to give him time to flee. So Gabriel had used Dr. Pym’s golden key (in its last service before snapping) to appear at the airfield outside of town, where he was remembered by the wrinkled owner (and the town’s sole pilot) from his visit a decade and a half before.

“The factory is still there, still empty for all I know,” the pilot had said. “But be you careful. There been morum cadi and Imps ’round of late. A storm is coming.”

Night had been falling when Gabriel crossed a small footbridge and entered the town. He’d seen only a few people on the streets, and all of those were hurrying home to beat the darkness. Like much of the magical world, the town gave the impression of being trapped in the past and had changed little since Gabriel’s last visit.

But the fear and wariness on the faces of those he passed was new, and Gabriel had kept the hood of his cloak up and stuck to side streets till he’d arrived at the factory. Once there, he’d seen a light flickering in a second-floor window and slipped inside, completing his fifteen-year quest just in time.

—

The woman looked so like her older daughter that Gabriel almost felt he was looking not at the children’s mother, but at Kate herself, seen through the prism of time. There was the same dark blond hair, the same hazel eyes flecked with gold; the contours and angles of her face were exactly like her daughter’s. But as he looked again, he saw the difference: it wasn’t just the lines of fatigue and age at the corners of the woman’s eyes, or the slight hollowness to her cheeks; what set them apart was a certain unflinching directness in the woman’s gaze that Gabriel associated not with Kate, but with Emma.

Their father, obviously, looked most like Michael. They wore the same type of wire-rim spectacles, both had the same chestnut hair and dark eyes (which Emma also shared), but it was yet deeper than that. There was about the man, as there was about Michael, an air of professorial deliberation, a sense that his first reaction to any problem would be to think it through and, if possible, make a list.

The man and woman were both thin and exhausted, but besides the wound on the man’s face, which the woman cleaned and dressed with alcohol and bandages that Gabriel had produced from his cloak, they were essentially unharmed.

A breeze drifted in, bringing cool, fresh air into the stale atmosphere of the factory. The room was a simple concrete box with only the one door and the one window, both now broken.

The Wibberlys had already thanked Gabriel, multiple times.

“For rescuing us, obviously,” Richard said. “But also for what you’ve done for our children. We know who you are. Pym told us years ago, after everything that happened in Cambridge Falls. Back before the children were even born.”

“How long have you been here?”

“A few weeks. We were somewhere else before. I don’t know where. Much colder. Then he got scared and moved us. He rescued us, you know. At least we thought he did. We’d been in that mansion in New York for—”

“Ten years,” his wife said.

“That’s right. Ten years. Ever since Rourke captured us. You know Rourke?”

“Yes.”

“Then five, maybe six weeks ago, he appears, Cavendish, that was his name. Just stepped through a solid wall into our room. At that point, we didn’t know who he was, but honestly, after ten years of being prisoners, we’d have followed a singing mouse if it promised a way out.”

The man was speaking quickly, as if a decade’s worth of talk had built up inside him, like water behind a dam, and now was all coming out.

“He said he could help us find the Reckoning, that he wanted to prove to Pym he had changed his ways; he made us send a message to the children. I don’t know if they got it—”

“They did.”

“Well, it was right after that that he brought us here, and it was clear he’d lied, that we’d just traded one prison for another.” He looked at his wife. “It was my fault. I should never have believed him.”

She took his hand. “It was both our faults. And what choice did we have?”

“He planned to hold you as hostages,” Gabriel said, “on behalf of the Countess. She wanted Michael to use the Chronicle to make her young again.”

“Michael has the Chronicle?” Richard stepped forward, suddenly sharp. “What about the Reckoning? They don’t have that yet, do they?”

“No.”

“Where are the children?” Clare asked. “Will you take us to them?”

Gabriel said, “Can you both walk?”

—

The town was silent, the streets dark and empty, and Gabriel and the couple moved through them as quickly and quietly as they could. But the man and woman were shaky-limbed with exhaustion, and he could only push them so much.

As they made their way, Gabriel told them in a whisper about Michael becoming master of the Chronicle; how Michael had received his father’s message; about Emma’s abduction; how he, Gabriel, and others had raided the Dire Magnus’s fortress and attempted to free her; how Kate had finally spirited them away to the land of the giants; how he and the children had discovered the location of the Reckoning—

“Wait.” Richard stopped them in a narrow alley, along a row of shuttered shop windows. “You know where the Reckoning is? You said you didn’t have it.”

“And we do not, not as yet.”

“So where is it?” Clare asked.

Gabriel wanted nothing more than to get out of this town and back to Loris. He had been uncomfortable every moment he’d been separated from the children, and now that he had discovered the “secret” the Countess had been hiding, there was no more reason to tarry.

But some things would not keep.

“It is in the world of the dead.”

The man and woman both stared at him.

Then Clare’s face became stony. “Where are our children?”

“I sent Michael and Kate to Loris. Robbie McLaur, the king of the dwarves near Cambridge Falls, is there and will watch over them. It is where we are going now.”

He started off, but Clare held his arm, her grip surprisingly strong. “And where’s Emma?”

Gabriel looked down at the woman; she was a good foot shorter than he, and again, despite how much she looked like Kate—her eyes, her hair, the bones of her face—the fierceness in her was entirely Emma’s.

“She is in the world of the dead.”

It was as if he had cut off her legs. Gabriel and her husband reached for her, but she caught herself, holding up a hand in a sign that neither were to touch her.

She said, thickly, “Alone? She went there alone?”

“Only the Keeper of the Reckoning could pass into that world. I could not accompany her.”

The man was shaking his head. “How could Pym allow that?”

“Pym is dead.”

This stopped them both.

“What?” Richard said. “When?”

“When we rescued Emma from the enemy. He sacrificed himself so that the children and I might escape.”

Gabriel knew that the man and woman had been friends with the old wizard—indeed, they had entrusted him with the lives of their children. Recently, however, they had sent the children a message warning them not to allow Pym to bring the three Books together. Why? Did they know that the prophecy foretold that the Books’ coming together—which was Pym’s whole plan for defeating the Dire Magnus—would result in Kate and Michael and Emma’s deaths? Would they now consider Pym an enemy? But Gabriel watched the looks they gave each other and saw no joy or satisfaction; if anything, the opposite.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Richard said finally. “He was a friend of ours. I’ll be honest, if you’d told us this a few months ago, we might’ve had a different reaction. You see, we found out—”

“That if the children bring the Books together, they will die. I just learned of it myself.”

“Then you understand how it made us question everything! Who Pym really was. Did he intend to sacrifice our children for some greater good? We just didn’t know.”

“He did care for them,” Clare said firmly. “However much we talked about it, we always came back to that. We told ourselves that he must know something we didn’t, some way of saving their lives.”

“Only, that wasn’t a chance we were willing to take on faith. That was the point of the message we sent the children. But if Pym is dead…”

Though they had been speaking in hushed tones, their voices were the only sounds in the streets, and Gabriel felt how exposed they were; they had to move.

“You are right,” he whispered. “Pym cared for your children, and he believed there was a way they could use the Books and not be destroyed themselves.”

“But how?” Richard demanded. “What did he tell you exactly?”

“Very little. Just that he had come to believe that the answer was in the prophecy itself, that there was more to it than even he knew. When I learned the Countess guarded a secret, I thought she might have the knowledge we sought. That is why I tracked the Secretary. Finding you was mere chance.”

“So Pym didn’t tell you,” Clare said, “how to find out the rest of the prophecy?”

“No.”

Then Gabriel turned to glance around the corner of the alley, to ensure that the way was still clear, and so he missed the look that passed between the man and woman.

“Come,” he said.

They hurried on through the streets, stopping a few minutes later at the edge of a square, in the center of which was a statue of a man on a horse. Both man and horse had strangely gigantic heads, the man’s topped by an even more gigantic plumed hat. Gabriel peered into the shadows of the shuttered shops and cafés. All was still.

“I don’t hear anything,” Clare said.

“No,” Gabriel said. “That is what worries me.”

He pointed at a small street on the opposite side of the square.

“If something happens, keep running—straight on. You will come to a bridge; cross it and go up the hill. Keep going and you will find an airfield.” He gave them the name of the pilot. “Tell him you are my friends and to take you to San Marco. Once there, he will direct you to a ship that will take you to Loris.”

“But you’re coming too,” the woman said.

“I intend to,” Gabriel said. “But do not wait for me.”

He pulled Granny Peet’s sword from its sheath while also drawing a long knife from a scabbard at his waist.

“Now.”

They had gotten as far as the man on the horse when the first Imp leapt from behind the statue’s pedestal. Gabriel didn’t break stride, but swung his sword with such force that the jagged-edged sword the Imp raised to block the blow was driven downward, clubbing its owner in the face. Then, with a backhand swipe, Gabriel separated the creature’s head from its body. He saw three more Imps rushing out from the side streets.

“Go!” he shouted. “Do not stop!”

The couple ran on; he heard their footsteps disappearing down the alley behind him as the first two Imps drew near. He had fought Imps many times before and knew their ways. They were a magical crossbreed between boars and men, and they had retained much of their bestial heritage. Part of that was an inclination to fight in packs. And Gabriel knew that the two Imps attacking him from the front were a diversion from the one circling behind, and after he used his sword to block the first blow, he immediately ducked and heard the creature’s blade slice through the air above him. In the same motion, Gabriel was spinning, and he felt his sword cut through the creature’s legs. Gabriel didn’t pause—he knew the other two Imps would already be closing—and from his crouch, he exploded upward, his sword parrying the downward blow of the third Imp as he drove his long knife through the creature’s chest, twisted it, then pushed the creature away. Before he could turn, he was knocked sideways by a blow from the first Imp’s mace—a glancing blow, fortunately, as a direct one would have shattered his shoulder. He staggered and caught himself on the pillar supporting the stone rider. The Imp’s next blow was aimed at Gabriel’s head, but he ducked and twisted as the creature’s mace tore a hunk of stone from the pedestal. Gabriel continued his twisting movement, and in his mind, he already saw how his sword would swing upward, entering the Imp’s lower left side and exiting just below the creature’s right arm. But as he spun, his foot slipped on a slick patch on the cobblestones and then he was on his back, the Imp above him, raising his mace to crush him—Then everything stopped. The point of a sword was protruding from the Imp’s chest, and the creature slid forward and crumpled on the stones, revealing the children’s father standing there. Behind him, the Imp Gabriel had stabbed with his knife was trying to rise, an action that was abruptly stopped when the children’s mother brought down a mace on the creature’s head.

The children’s father reached out his hand, and Gabriel took it.

“I will say this.” Gabriel sheathed his sword, wincing as pain blossomed in his shoulder. “You follow directions as well as your children.”

“Listen,” Richard said, “there’s something we need tell you.”

“Not now—”

“The prophecy, we might know how to find out the rest of it. Where to look, I mean.”

Gabriel said nothing for a moment, but merely stared at them.

“So we can’t go with you to Loris,” Clare said. “We want to. You don’t know how much we want to see the children. But if what you say is true, that discovering the rest of the prophecy is the key to saving the children, then we have to—Wait, what’re you doing?!”

Gabriel had taken both their arms and started walking quickly toward the alley.

“There is no time to lose.”

Richard said, “You mean—”

“Yes, I am coming with you.”