Know your friend, know your enemy.
—PA ABNER
Strong Heart turned to the others. “He wears the Scorpion’s brand. Unless we find a way to free him, we have to consider him the enemy.”
Keech watched as Doyle’s shadowy form walked down a corridor and slipped out of view. “We have to let him take us to Rose. Otherwise, we might wander these corridors till Rose finds us. We don’t want to wage a battle inside a cramped tunnel. No high ground, and he’d likely use the layout of this place against us.”
Sam’s face was a confusion of excitement and dread. “So we’re gonna fall for the trap on purpose?”
“Looks that way,” said Keech.
Leaving the column-filled enclosure Doyle had called the Antechamber, they entered the tunnel the Ranger had taken. The path sloped downward again, leading the troop ever deeper into the Palace of the Thunders. As they descended, the incessant buzzing grew as loud as angry hornets. The air felt sticky and close, pushing in around them with coffin tightness. As the passage leveled out, more strange illumination brightened their way, and a moment later, the tunnel opened up into a colossal new chamber, a sanctuary as large as a hundred barns.
“This must be the main temple,” Duck said with awe.
The Ranger’s silhouette appeared at the tunnel’s mouth. “Come on in,” he murmured.
As they followed Doyle into the great room, Keech gazed around in chilled amazement. This was unlike any temple he’d ever seen in Pa’s history books. The walls were curved, reminding him of the spear-loaded Peril full of bones under Skeleton Peak, and several other corridors led off to unknown places, perhaps to other gathering halls. Across most of the temple’s floor, beams of amber light filled the spiderweb cracks in the stone, puffing otherworldly fumes and smoke, as if the unseen spaces below the fissures were teeming with flames. At the center of the temple stretched a giant crater that could have been the product of a devastating earthquake long ago.
A few yards to the right of this basin, the floor dropped away sharply, yielding to a coal-black abyss, a chasm that would have cut off access to the Palace’s largest tunnel were it not for a narrow granite bridge that reached over the gulf. Straining to get his bearings, Keech suspected that if they were to cross that bridge, the big passageway beyond would lead out to the main wall where Coward and Doyle had slipped through with the Key.
It was then that Keech realized they were standing in the room they had seen while descending the spiral.
“Everyone, look up!” he said. “We’ve made it back to the center. We’re standing under the Chimney as we speak.”
The others gazed up at the shadowy spiral. “So strange!” exclaimed Duck. “It felt like we traveled yards away from this room.”
“Appearances can deceive in the Palace,” said Doyle, leading them farther into the temple. “In the realm of the Prime, space and time can often … slip.”
“Ranger, where are we?” asked Quinn.
Doyle’s face blazed with a disconcerting kind of reverence. “Welcome to the Source, my friends, the origin of the Prime. When the Dead Rift occurred in the First Age of Man, this is the place that first cracked open to reveal the other side. This is the heart of the Palace, where the Reverend brought us in thirty-three.”
“The place where my father led the revolt,” mused Keech.
“Yes,” the Ranger said.
As they continued walking, the bothersome drone infecting the air stepped up in intensity. Sam and Strong Heart clapped their hands over their ears. “What’s making that awful racket?” moaned Sam.
“I’d wager that is,” said Keech, pointing toward the opposite side of the basin, where a black vertical opening yawned in the Palace wall. Beyond that portal was only darkness, and yet Keech sensed constant movement on the other side. Not something that could be seen, but a presence that could be felt.
“It’s like the darkness is alive,” said Duck, scowling at the doorway of gloom.
Keech recalled O’Brien’s frightening words. The Dead Rift happened when people first tampered with magic. Their meddlin’ tore holes in the fabric of the world, opened gaps to the Underworld itself …
Doyle spoke, grinning slightly. “Legend has it the Chamelia came from there. As well as other creatures unseen for millennia. If you’ve heard tall tales about shades and boogermen, chances are good they originated from this place.”
“Whatever we do, let’s not go near that,” Duck admonished them. “We all heard what happened to Lost Tucker when she touched it.”
The Ranger led them a few more steps across the temple. Keech followed with caution, keeping a close eye on Doyle’s hands for any sudden movements. Doyle’s satchel, filled with Eliza’s bones, hung heavy on Keech’s shoulders as he moved.
“My friends, prepare yourselves,” Doyle said, stopping inches from the great concavity in the floor. “We’ve reached him.”
Now, Keech could easily see down into the cracked crater. At the bottom was the sarcophagus he’d seen from high above. Covered with strange, grotesque glyphs, it stood on five thick stone legs.
A bearded man lay on the sarcophagus, wearing only a long robe. Perhaps the fabric had once been white, but the robe was rotted and holey, stained brown by decades of muck. Though the figure’s eyes were closed, the eyelids fluttered, and a distressed moan emanated from his throat. The man’s bare feet twitched. Something protruded from his chest—the bone handle of the Fang of Barachiel. The figure’s skeletal arms spasmed, and one of his hands jerked up to snatch at empty air. Three fingers were missing from the hand.
Keech recalled another passage from Doyle’s journal. He lacked three fingers on his left hand, but despite these blemishes, no one could deny the grandeur of his features …
“It’s him,” Keech said, nearly in a whisper. “It’s the Reverend.”
At the head of the sarcophagus sat a smooth, pitch-black stone, resting inside a small divot shaped out of dark clay. The Char Stone. Gossamer threads of black smoke appeared to waft off the cursed artifact, like fumes from a ghost fire.
“You’re too late!” a frantic voice shouted.
Keech thought the voice had come from the very darkness of the Dead Rift itself. Then he noticed the brim of a hat and two small shoulders, nearly eclipsed by the edge of the sarcophagus. It was Coward, standing near the head of the table.
“The ritual has already resumed!” Coward proclaimed. “Soon the Reverend will rise in his full strength!”