The Keeper

by David Baldacci

  I would have liked to close my eyes or look away, but I knew I couldn’t. I had to remain vigilant. As I looked at my companions, I could see they were doing the exact same thing. Petra and Lackland looked especially subdued and nervous. Well, I would be too if my entire village had been wiped out.

  Their camp was nothing much. There was a strip of tattered oilcloth stretched over some low tree branches, and beds made largely from leaves inside a little wooden lean-to. It made Loons back in Wormwood seem positively luxurious.

  Their food and other important possessions Petra had pointed out were kept in a burlap bag tied to a tree branch. I doubted they were safe up there, but then again, where was safe in this place?

  We sat around a small fire that Lackland built and warmed our bones from the chilly air. When I saw how little they had, I opened my tuck and shared some of our food and water. After we had been fed so well at Astrea’s, it pained me to see how they gobbled the few morsels I offered. Not that long ago, I knew I would have done the very same thing.

  Lackland finished the pieces of bread and hard cheese I had given him and drew closer. “Blimey, how did you do all that … stuff back there?”

  I took my wand out of my pocket. “Sorcery. Magic. I was taught it.”

  I glanced over at Petra. From the corner of my eyes, I had seen her flinch when I drew out my wand. Now she was staring at it, her eyes widened, I think, in fear.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t use it on you, Petra,” I said disarmingly. I tacked a smile on to this to show I was joking. Mostly.

  I had imagined she would look frightened, but she didn’t. She just stared back at me for a sliver with contempt.

  I could feel my temper starting to get the best of me.

  Perhaps sensing this on my features, Delph said quickly, “But Vega Jane was magical to begin with. It’s not like you can just wave a stick around and fight huge blokes like them back there.”

  “Are you magical, Delph?” asked Petra, taking a moment to smooth out her hair and rub a spot of dirt off her arm. She touched his shoulder with her hand and let it stay there for a wee bit too long, at least in my mind. I felt my hand curl to a fist. It was a struggle not to take a swing at her.

  “Not a drop of magic in me,” said Delph with a crooked grin. “I’m just big.”

  “And smart,” I added quickly, because I saw that Petra was about to say something simpering to him, I was sure. “It was Delph that got us out of the maze. He remembered it all when the wendigo was chasing us. And he was the one who distracted the colossals so I could finish them off.”

  Petra looked at Delph with admiration. “That’s right bonny of you, Delph. Big, and smart too. And not half-bad-lookin’ neither.” She again touched him on the arm. When she noted the blackened skin near his wrist, she exclaimed, “What happened to you?”

  He shrugged and said, “Manticore got me. Vega Jane got ridda the pain, but me arm’s a bit the worse for it.”

  “You beat a manticore too?” Petra said, her look full of awe.

  Lackland let out a loud burp and said, “Well, all’s we got is a sword and a bow. Right easier to beat beasts with that stick thing.”

  I was staring at Delph, who was blushing as Petra rubbed his arm. I quickly rose and threw another stick on the fire. When I sat back down, I somehow ended up between Delph and Petra. She had to quickly move her hand out of the way.

  “So who do you nick stuff from?” I asked. “Blokes like you?”

  “Like we said, ain’t no blokes like us left,” replied Lackland. “Leastways not that I know of.”

  “So who, then? Not the beasts in here surely?”

  “No, not the beasts.”

  “Well, if it’s not blokes or beasts, what’s left?” asked Delph.

  “Hyperbores mostly,” said Petra, with another glance at my wand. I finally put it away. “I guess one could call them beasts, but they’re closer to us than the other ruddy things in here.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. Hyperbores. Astrea had told us about them. Blue-skinned and they could fly. And that they could be an enemy or an ally.

  “What are they like?” I asked. “Do they try and attack you when you nick from them?”

  “No,” said Petra. “I think they let us steal from them because they know we have nothing.”

  Lackland scowled at her. “As if anything in this place would ‘let’ someone steal from ’em. We stole it fair and square.”

  I didn’t think anyone could steal something “fair and square.” But I didn’t say this.

  “Well, we’ve never been caught or hurt doing it,” pointed out Petra.

  “ ’Cause we’re good, ain’t we?” said Lackland with a satisfied look.

  “Where do the hyperbores live?” I asked.

  “Oh, they have nests here and there,” said Lackland.

  “Nests?” Delph exclaimed. “What, like birds?”

  “Yep, way up in the trees. Pretty big nests too. Lots of ’em live together. Safer that way, I ’spect.”

  I said, “How do you nick from them, then, if they’re way up there?”

  “Petra can climb something fierce,” said Lackland proudly. “And she drops the things toward the ground, where I catch ’em.”

  “What sorts of things?”

  “Vegetables, meats, spare cloth we make into proper trousers and shirts. And water. They keep it in jugs made from tree bark. Catching them can be a bit difficult. Broke my nose and two fingers so far.”

  “Not a bad price to pay to keep from starving,” pointed out Petra.

  Lackland turned to me. “You can get us out of here, you said?”

  “I didn’t say that,” I shot back. “I said Delph, Harry Two and me are getting out of here.”

  “But what’s beyond here?” asked Lackland.

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully.

  “Then why do you want to go there?” Petra said.

  “ ’Cause it’s no doubt better than this place,” replied Lackland, the scowl returning to his features. “I mean, what place could be worse than here, eh?”

  I said under my breath, “Well, we’ll find out.” In a louder voice I said, “What do you know of where you came from? We’re called Wugs, or Wugmorts. You look just like us. I wonder if you could have been from Wormwood too at some point.”

  Delph looked at me questioningly. I shrugged. I had just thought of this. I didn’t see how Wugs from Wormwood could have ended up this far in the Quag and started another settlement of sorts. But I didn’t know it wasn’t possible either.

  Lackland looked unsure. “I mean we’re just here. Always just been here. Always been Furinas. Least it’s all we’ve known.”

  Petra added spitefully, “Never enough to eat. And always something ready to kill you!”

  Lackland agreed. “Aye, me dad told me all the remaining Furinas finally banded together for safety. Our last settlement was over to the west. About five miles from here. There were only about twenty-odd of us left, when the bloody beasts came that night.” He looked down and threw a twig on the fire. “Blasted things.”

  “And your parents never told you anything about where you came from?” I asked.

  “Well, there’s the parchment, o’course,” said Lackland.

  I said quickly, “What parchment?”

  Petra said sternly, “Now who’s telling stuff?!”

  Lackland said, “Eh, you’re the one said they looked like us. And they saved our skins. So show ’em the parchment. It’s in the bag hanging on that there tree,” he added, pointing.

  “I know where it is, Lack!” Petra rose and scampered up the tree with impressive nimbleness. I snatched a glance at Delph and saw him watching her with similar admiration. And maybe a wee bit more than that. I felt a scowl creep to my mouth. At that instant, Delph glanced over at me, saw my expression and dropped his gaze to the dirt.

  Petra brought the bag back down and carried it over to us. She sat cross-legged next to Delph — of course — and o
pened it. She drew out a bunch of withered pages of bound parchment and passed them across to me.

  I looked through them. The writing was beautiful, but the language was not something I had ever seen.

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  Both Lackland and Petra shook their heads. “We’ve never known,” she said. “Nor did our parents.”

  “So why carry it around?” asked Delph.

  Grinning sheepishly, Lackland said, “When you ain’t got much, hard to part with anything.” He paused, then added, looking at me, “Now, we know things that can help you. And we’ll pull our weight. Tough as anything we both are. You won’t regret this, never one bit.” He looked pleadingly at me.

  Delph glanced at me. I nodded. He turned back to Lackland and Petra and said, “ ’Tis done, then.” He held out his hand and we shook all around.

  I said, “You have to understand that it will be dangerous.”

  “Well,” said Lackland. “What a change that’ll be, eh?”

  We all laughed.

  And it felt good.

  Until I realized that we might well never laugh again.

  IT WAS NIGHT. I had taken the first watch. My wand beside me, I kept my gaze going back and forth. As the time passed I saw someone stir. Delph rose from his bed of leaves and strode over to me, carrying a loaded crossbow that was Petra’s weapon of choice but which Delph had used to devastating effect against the colossals. I passed Destin over to him and watched as he slung the chain around his waist. I also handed him the Adder Stone. I would always hold on to my wand of course.

  “Nothin’?” Delph asked as he took up the vigil.

  I shook my head.

  He plopped himself down and said, “Get some sleep, Vega Jane.”

  “Who’s taking the third watch?”

  “Petra. She and me worked it out.”

  “I’m sure you did.” My harsh tone surprised me and it seemed to startle Delph.

  “You okay?” he said.

  I didn’t look at him. “I’m fine, Delph.”

  “No, I think there’s more to it,” he insisted. I scowled at him until he said, “Sit, Vega Jane, and talk to me.”

  I plunked down next to him. “Okay. Petra and you seem to have become good friends really, really fast.”

  “I feel sorry for her and Lack. They’ve had it rough. Lost everything.”

  “Yes, but she keeps … well, rubbing your arm and looking at you.” I knew this sounded positively stupid, but they were the only words I could think of.

  To his credit, Delph didn’t laugh or make me feel like I was being silly.

  “I saw you staring at me when I was looking at her once,” said Delph. “But there was a point to it, see.”

  “What point?”

  “It was when Lack asked where we were headed.”

  I looked at him curiously. “Right. And you said we were heading out of here, meaning the Quag. And he called you daft.”

  “Right. But see, I looked at Petra when he was saying that, and she didn’t look like she thought it was daft, gettin’ outta here, I mean.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Like she wanted to leave this place.”

  I snorted. “Well, who wouldn’t?”

  “No, ’twas more’n that. It was like she knew it was possible. It was like she knew there was another place to go to, see?”

  This struck me like a hard slap. “You could read all that in her face?”

  “It was pretty obvious, Vega Jane. I may not talk much, but I don’t miss much neither.”

  His words embarrassed me. It seemed I often took Delph for granted when I should consider myself the luckiest Wug there was, to have him with me.

  “Then it seems there’s more to Petra than we thought,” I commented.

  “But I still feel sorry for her,” he said.

  I sighed. Males. They couldn’t see everything, could they?

  “Thanks, Delph. I’m glad we had this talk.”

  “Right you are.”

  I strode over to the others and lay down on my cot of leaves, my tuck as my pillow. Harry Two was next to me. I closed my eyes. However, I quickly found that I could not fall asleep.

  How could Petra know there was a place to go to?

  I opened my eyes, reached in my cloak pocket and pulled out the wrinkled parchment pages. I pointed my wand and muttered, “Illumina.” But mere light was not going to make the strange inkings understandable. In frustration I smacked the parchment with my wand and said, “Make sense.”

  Next moment, I almost dropped the thing. The words on the first page started swirling around and around, like water going down a drain. But the words didn’t disappear. And yet they didn’t re-form into words that I could understand either. Instead, they came together and out of their midst a face materialized on the parchment. It was the aged, wrinkled, heavily bearded countenance of a male I had never seen before. He seemed to look directly at me.

  “Who holds the parchment?” he asked.

  Well, blimey, I thought. With my voice quavering, I said, “I do.”

  “Your name?”

  “Vega Jane.”

  He seemed to consider my response for a few moments. I took the opportunity to glance around. Lackland and Petra continued sleeping. Delph was far away, sitting on the rock, his back to me. Harry Two panted quietly next to me, staring at the face.

  “I do not know you,” said the male.

  “Well, I don’t know you either.”

  “How came you to have the parchment?”

  “Lackland Cyphers and Petra Sonnet. They’re Furinas. They had it. Or you, rather.”

  He nodded, but said nothing.

  “The parchment was all gibberish before. They could never read it.”

  “Then you must possess a wand.”

  “I do.”

  “A sorceress, or a witch if you prefer. From where do you come?”

  “Wormwood. But I was trained up as a sorceress after I left there.”

  “For what purpose would you be trained up?”

  This bloke was too nosy. “Why so many questions, eh?”

  “I have been part of parchment for a very long time with no one with whom to converse. You would be inquisitive too in that position.”

  That seemed reasonable enough. “Well, who are you? And how came you to be in the parchment in the first place?”

  “You would not know me, as I do not know you.”

  “Perhaps I know some of your descendants if you are so very old.”

  “I meant I am not a real, living thing.”

  My eyes widened. “Then what are you?”

  “I am a remnant.”

  “A remnant? What is that?”

  “A collection of memories from an assortment of folks. A record, if you will, of their remembrances.”

  “So you have recorded in you the information from the Furinas?”

  “Not them, no. I do not know how these Furinas came to possess me.”

  “Who else, then?”

  “I go far back. To the ones who created this place.”

  I took a deep breath. This bloke could be of help. In a lot of ways.

  “Okay. But why gibberish on parchment?”

  “That was for protection, in case the parchment fell into the wrong hands.”

  “I see. Smart, considering the Maladons can do magic too.”

  Now the bloke settled his gaze on me and I knew he could see me as well as I could see him. “And how do you know about them?”

  I said, “Astrea Prine. Do you know Astrea?”

  “I can know no one. I am a remnant. But I have heard the name. She is a powerful sorceress. The Keeper of the Quag in fact.”

  I looked around again, but Lackland and Petra still slept and Delph still kept watch. I glanced down at Harry Two and found his gaze remained directly on the image.

  “You say you cannot speak unless someone has a wand. But what if the wand holder was a Maladon?”
r />   “I can tell.”

  “How?”

  “For me, the wand of a Maladon produces only darkness. Yours was, by comparison, a bright, shining light.”

  “We’re traveling across the Quag. Can you help us do so?”

  He shook his head. “It is impossible.”

  I said defiantly, “We reached Astrea’s cottage. We cleared the perfect maze back in the First Circle and defeated both a manticore and a wendigo in the process. And now we’re in the Second Circle, where I have killed two colossals.”

  This seemed to give him pause. “Impressive,” he said at last.

  “So can you help me?”

  “I’m not sure how.”

  “You said you have remembrances from those who created the Quag.”

  “ ’Tis true.”

  “The Second Circle,” I said. “It’s full of beasts that want to do us in. But are there creatures that can aid us?”

  He said immediately, “Hyperbores live here. You’ll want to befriend them.”

  “How?”

  “Hyperbores will respond to the same things that make friends everywhere. Respect and kindness. Now, I am tired. I haven’t spoken this much in, well, never.”

  “But I can call you back, right?”

  “If you desire. Just tap your wand as you did before.”

  “And you have no name?”

  “You may call me Silenus, Vega.”

  And before I could utter a response, he was gone and the gibberish had returned to the paper. I got up and raced over to Delph and told him everything that had just happened.

  His jaw dropped farther and farther as I recounted the story.

  “Silenus, a bloody remnant?” he said when I had finished.

  “Yes. So what do you think?”

  “I think we need to find these hyperbores.” He glanced at where Petra and Lackland lay sleeping. “And maybe they can help us, eh? They know about hyperbores. They nick from ’em.”

  Despite the truth of his words, my spirits sank a bit for an obvious reason.

  Bloody Petra.

  I AWOKE TO A sight that made me close my eyes and groan. Delph had his shirt off and Petra was rubbing his blackened arm with some stuff she had mixed in a small pail and was applying with a wet cloth. They were chatting amiably and she laughed at something he said.