FORTY-ONE

The entrance to the cave was a jagged gash in the rock wall, dark and forbidding. Like a mouth. A giant, sideways mouth. Thomas shivered. In spite of the heat and sunshine, goosebumps covered his skin from head to toe.

“In there?” Enrique looked as uneasy as Thomas felt.

Squat stepped forward with his palm up. A glowing ball of light appeared above his hand as he crossed into the darkness, illuminating the entrance and casting shadows onto the walls. He looked back with a smile that made him look youthful to a degree Thomas wouldn’t have considered possible just a day earlier. Even his hair and beard looked different, less tangled and greasy, as if he’d snuck off for a quick shower while they weren’t looking.

A question-thought popped into Thomas’s mind. The Book of Sorrows had revealed its true colors slowly. Was something similar happening with the strange magician?

Unable to answer his own question, Thomas followed quietly into an unexpectedly large interior chamber. Instantly, he found his eyes drawn to the cavern walls. In the glow of Squat’s magical light, surprising shapes took shape on the streaked gray stones, partially hidden beneath a thin layer of lichen. He stepped closer. Primitive figures danced behind the living cover, dozens of images and scenes, maybe more. How did cave paintings get up here? And when?

“Do you see this?” whispered Thomas. He lightly brushed at the wall, his voice hushed instinctively, as if he were in a church or library. The light shifted, the ochre and charcoal images blurred into shadow. “It’s amazing.”

“Totally,” said Enrique. “Now come on, before he gets too far ahead.”

Thomas turned. Squat was moving deeper into the cavern. Almost reluctantly, he turned to follow. “Where’s the crystal?”

“Over here, I think,” said Squat. He beckoned them deeper into the shadows. Thomas followed until they stood in front of a narrow stretch of stone that looked like every other part of the cave, with one exception—it was missing the lichen and paintings. Squat stared at the wall for a long moment, his head tilted slightly. He took a half step back and smiled. “Stand back.”

Thomas tried to make out the words of the singsong humming, but to him, they were nothing more than jumbled sounds. He met Enrique’s eyes and lifted his shoulders. Enrique raised his eyebrows and shrugged back.

Still humming, Squat traced a pattern in the air in front of the stone and snapped his fingers. Thomas’s vision became suddenly blurry. He blinked, shook his head, blinked again. It wasn’t his eyes. The wall itself was blurring, fading, beginning to melt away. The section of stone vanished, revealing a narrow alcove that stretched beyond the circle of light.

The magician walked forward, hugging the right-hand wall. “This way. Follow me.”

“Whoa!” said Thomas, squinting into the shadowy corners.

“Okay, I did not see that coming,” said Enrique. Eyes wide, he started toward the back of the hidden recess.

“Careful!” said Squat, pulling Enrique forcefully to the wall. He gestured at the ground. A sharp chasm opened abruptly into an even deeper darkness. Squat knelt and peered into the depths. Suddenly, and without warning, he grabbed Enrique’s hand and jabbed a long fingernail directly into his palm.

Enrique cried out in pain and tried to wriggle away. Squat held firm, pressing down until blood spilled from the wound.

“What are you doing? Let me go!” shouted Enrique.

Thomas felt a surge of adrenaline and started forward, ready to defend his friend.

Even as he struggled, a faint ball of light appeared above Enrique’s bleeding hand. He stopped fighting and stared, eyes wide. Squat tapped him on the forehead, right between the eyes. The light grew brighter, intensifying until it nearly matched the orb glowing in front of the older magician.

“What the—? H-how did you do that?” stammered Enrique.

Squat ran a hand over Enrique’s palm. The wound closed, but the orb remained, casting fresh light on the magician’s face. Perhaps it was a trick of the shadows, but it seemed to Thomas that his smile had an almost soft quality to it. And were the once-jagged teeth straight? They were, and his clothes looked less grungy.

The magician extended a hand toward Thomas, as if asking permission. Thomas let his hand rise with more than a touch of trepidation. He was promptly rewarded with stabbing pain and an answering twinge at the center of his brow, faint and buzzing. He stared at the blood pooling in his palm, resisting the urge to yank his hand away.

A faint glow appeared above the red droplets. Squat tapped Thomas’s forehead, sending vibrations rippling through his mind. With a sudden flash, Thomas understood how to pull light from thought and memory, to shape it even in the darkness. He gathered luminous threads in his mind until the orb glowed and his thoughts thrummed with an inner flame.

“You can call on the light whenever you need it,” Squat said softly. “It will be there for you always, to illuminate your path when the world grows dark.”

Thomas caught a hint of emotion in the eyes and face of the magician. Sadness, perhaps a touch of something deeper. Before Thomas could think or speak, Squat was climbing into the dark hole. Light reflected from the narrow walls, revealing the thinnest of grooves on either side of the channel. After perhaps fifteen feet of descent, Squat reached the floor of a second chamber and looked up.

“Come down. Carefully.”

“After you, amigo,” said Enrique, gesturing toward the hole.

“Brains and beauty first. Got it.”

“Knucklehead.”

Thomas wiggled his eyebrows and started his descent. The orb of light hovered just above his head, illuminating the narrow handholds. He wedged his toes into the nooks and managed to climb down with relative ease. His feet hit the ground in a chamber a fraction the size of the one up above. He turned around and flinched, a fresh jolt of adrenaline pumping through his veins. On the other side of Squat a brightly dressed woman knelt on the floor of the cavern, her eyes staring right at him.

Not a woman. A mural so lifelike it seemed ready to climb from the wall into the chamber. The woman’s hands were open in a gesture of prayer, her body wrapped in a flowing red robe with gilded hems. Moisture bled from the wall below her eyes, creating a trail of tears from her cheeks to the cavern floor. The droplets collected into a pool at her feet.

Thomas stepped closer. The breath caught in his throat. At the bottom of the pool was a shimmering black crystal.

• • •

Thomas felt drawn closer, pulled by a force he was powerless to resist. He moved past Squat and peered into the water. Light caught and gathered at the heart of the crystal. Light that wasn’t a reflection but rather a collection of lights moving in an intricate and dazzling dance, constellations whirling at a microscopic scale.

He reached out, compelled to touch the magnificent crystal. His fingers met water. Icy flames shocked through his system, with the jolt a thousand times more intense than grabbing the metal key. Terrified, he jerked back, tumbling to the cavern floor.

“Are you all right?” Squat’s voice sounded thin, distant.

Thomas lifted his hand, half-expecting to find it burned or frozen. It was neither. He stared again at the dark crystal, the breath rattling through his lungs. Feet dropped to the floor behind him. He looked back, blood thundering through his ears.

“What’s that?” Enrique peered into the water. “Oh. Oh, wow.”

Thomas looked tentatively at Squat. The wizard was staring at the crystal as intently as Thomas had. His face was frozen, his body tense, as if he were forcibly restraining himself. He pulled his eyes away and met Thomas’s questioning stare.

“It can’t be me,” said Squat. There was strain on his face and perhaps a hint of desire. “It has to be one of you.”

“Rock paper scissors?” Enrique made a fist with his right hand and held it over his left. “Best of three?”

“Deal,” said Thomas. “Rock. Paper. Scissors. Shoot.”

Thomas’s rock crushed Enrique’s scissors. They went again. Enrique sliced Thomas’s paper with his scissors. The next round was a draw, paper versus paper. Then again, scissor versus scissor.

“You’re going down, Wildus. Rock. Paper. Scissors. Shoot.” Their hands shot forward. Enrique raised an eyebrow. “Or not.”

Thomas’s paper folded over Enrique’s rock. A nervous shudder ran through him, tensing his chest and belly. He’d won, but it didn’t exactly feel like victory. “I guess it’s me.”

“I guess so,” said Enrique.

“That seems fitting.” Squat put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder, his expression soft, almost gentle. “That pool is enchanted, which means it was almost certainly Jameson Wildus who hid this crystal. Your blood connection is interesting, perhaps even a key to making it through the defenses. Either way, Enrique and I will be here. We’ll help in whatever way we can. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Thomas. The idea that it might have been his ancestor, the very first Wildus, helped ease his mind. He faced the praying woman and peered into the pool of tears. The butterflies multiplied, swarming through his chest and belly. Forcing himself not to think about the imminent shock, he took a breath and stretched out his hand.

His fingers touched water. The shock jolted his arm and shuddered through his body. His nervous system lit up as if he’d grabbed a live wire, sending spasms through every inch of his body. Every instinct screamed for him to pull back. He fought through the fear and pain, reaching deeper into the pulsing water even as tentacles of ice burned inside of his arm, creeping upward, freezing him from the inside out.

His fingers grasped for the crystal and found only liquid. Where is it?

It felt like he should have reached the bottom, but the water was pulling him now, yanking him forward with irresistible force. His shoulder touched and still the pulling grew stronger. As if from a distance, he heard someone screaming for help. In the back of his mind, a second voice answered. That’s me. I’m the one screaming.

Other voices answered, shouting. Hands grabbed him, tried to yank him backward. The momentum continued, pulling his head downward. He sucked in a last gasping breath before his face plunged into the impossible depths. Deeper and deeper he dove, until his lungs screamed and the voices grew faint above him.

The burning in his lungs suddenly stopped. Stillness wrapped itself around him. Panic and fear disappeared. There was no water, no cave, no crystal. He was somewhere else, something else.

A presence filled the space around him, strange and yet somehow familiar. Thomas searched for the source. He felt as much as saw a flash of wild blue eyes and blond hair. Dad? No, someone else. Jameson? The image disappeared, leaving him in a void free of all physical sensation. He was a mind, nothing else. Another mind reached into his own, filtering through his thoughts and feelings. The rawness of his unfiltered emotions left him feeling naked, insecure.

The mind-touch faded, and something exploded inside of his head. He felt himself sucked backward, rushing through space until frozen water filled his mouth and lungs. He grasped for solid ground, felt his fingers on the hard, black edges of the crystal. Fire ripped up his arm, burning a trail from his fingers to his heart. He grabbed even as hands pulled his shoulders, his back, his legs.

Suddenly, he was free, sprawled out on the cavern floor with lungs full of water. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Dark spots clouded his eyes. He heard voices, frantic. Enrique and Squat. Hands thumped his back, pumped on his chest.

A flash of purple lit up the cave. Something pierced his chest, opened a path to his lungs. His body spasmed. Blackness filled everything, devouring his field of vision. Another flash, this one faint, distant. Something shifted, like a dam breaking loose.

Thomas retched, spewing water from his ragged throat and lungs. He gasped for breath, retched again. His body curled into a ball as he coughed and sputtered.

“Thomas! Thomas, can you hear me?” Squat’s voice was intense, insistent.

Enrique sounded panicked. “Thomas, are you okay?”

Thomas tried to answer and coughed instead. His body clenched from head to toe. Droplets of water sprayed from his mouth in a fine mist. He rolled onto his stomach, still wracked with coughs. He pressed his hands against the floor, trying to get his knees under him. Something hard pressed back, the sharp edges stabbing into his palm. He rocked back, managing to sit without falling over.

He lifted his hand. The black crystal shimmered in the soft light.

“You got it!” whispered Enrique, his voice hushed. “I thought you were toast, but you got it.”

Squat looked at Thomas through eyes that were more lucid and powerful than any Thomas had ever seen. The dirt and grime were completely gone from his face, and with them, the last traces of seeming insanity. “What happened? What did you see?”

Thomas did his best to describe the experience, but his words were woefully inadequate. When he finished, Squat put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him up to his feet.

“Very, very interesting. It’s surprising that Jameson was able to make magic of that quality without any kind of formal training. I wonder . . .” Squat’s voice trailed off.

“Wonder what?” asked Thomas. He thumped himself on the chest and coughed more.

Squat shook his head. “Nothing. Just a wild thought. Come on. Let’s move.”

“What was that?” Enrique whipped his head around and stared at the opening into the upper chamber.

“What was what?” asked Thomas.

“I don’t know. I thought I heard something up there. Voices, maybe.”

Squat put a finger to his lips and tilted his head. “Put the crystal away. It’s time to go. Hurry.”

They climbed quickly, Squat first followed by Thomas and then Enrique. The upper cave was empty and quiet, but something felt amiss. A distant thrumming stirred the air, faint but somehow familiar. Even Thomas could sense it.

“We’ve only had a short time together, but you are ready for this. Both of you are.” Squat knelt between Thomas and Enrique, his hands firm on their shoulders, his green eyes almost imploring.

“Ready for what?”

The magician ignored the question and intensified his grip. “No matter what happens next, I want you to promise that Arius will not get the crystal. No matter what. Promise me.”

“I promise,” said Thomas, staring into the intense eyes.

“No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

“Me, too,” said Enrique, his jaw set and his eyes hard. “He’s not getting the crystal.”

Squat held their gaze a moment longer. “Good. Then it’s time. Follow me.”