The Tomb of Shadows

by Peter Lerangis

  “Silence, dwarfling, or you return to the chariot!” Skilaki shouted.

  I swallowed. Facing Skilaki was not easy. Her eyes seemed to float in their sockets, as if they might fall out at any second. I tried to control my trembling as I spoke. “We’re seeking the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus,” I said. “We just want to walk in, find something we need, and leave.”

  “And what is it you need, child?” Skilaki asked.

  Cass and Aly looked at me in panic.

  Did she know about the powers of the Loculi? I had no idea. I couldn’t tip our hand. If she knew what we were really after, and why, it could make our job harder.

  “A . . . stone ball,” I said. “Nothing of much importance. But we humans prize its beauty. We understand it was given to Artemisia many years ago. Maybe you can help us.”

  Skilaki looked at me blankly for a long second, then stomped her feet angrily. I turned away, not wanting to see any more peelings. “Do not talk to me of silly rocks! The queen. Requires. A soul. For entry.”

  “I have a feeling you don’t mean sole, like a shoe,” Cass said. “Or a fish. Because those we could do—”

  Skilaki narrowed her eyes, releasing a few eyelashes to the ground. “You try my patience!”

  Cass backed away. “Just checking.”

  “Okay, you take a soul from us, just say,” Aly said. “What happens to that person after the soul is gone?”

  “The soul enters a glorious state,” Skilaki said. “Floating free of physical constraints. Absorbing knowledge and wisdom. Eventually, perhaps, finding a home in another body. The original body is freed also—freed of emotions and thought, able to function at the level of pure action, as would the most industrious of insects.”

  “So you’re asking us for a volunteer to become a zombie?” I said.

  “I do not know this word. I am merely a gatekeeper for Artemisia,” Skilaki said. “Does this request cause a problem?”

  “Of course it does!” Aly shot back.

  “Then fare thee well,” Skilaki said, turning her back to us.

  As she ascended the steps, the entire Mausoleum structure vibrated. The ground shook again, and the walls began to fade.

  “Oh, great, it’s all going to disappear,” Cass said.

  I broke away from Dad and ran after her. “Wait!” I shouted.

  “Jack, get back here!” Dad called out.

  I could hear him running after me. I raced past Skilaki and turned, blocking her way to the door. “I want to see Artemisia,” I said. “Tell her I’m . . . I’m a descendant of Massarym.”

  Skilaki nearly lost her balance. “You dare ask for—” She cut herself off, leaning forward. “Massarym, you say? Actually, there is a resemblance.”

  “Tell your queen we will consider giving her a soul, but only if she gives us the stone ball and safe passage back,” I demanded.

  From the baring of what were left of her teeth, I knew that yes was not in the ballpark. Skilaki took a step back and began raising her hand. “You have no power to bargain.”

  I could feel my feet leaving the ground. I turned, trying to wrap my arm around a column to keep from being flung into the air.

  “Keep away from him!” Dad grabbed her arm. He tried to pull her back but only came up with handfuls of shredded skin and toga. I was lurching upward as if my body were being pulled by a curtain cord.

  “Stop!” a voice called out. “I volunteer!”

  Skilaki turned. Dad froze. I felt my legs jamming back onto the ground.

  Far behind us, Professor Bhegad stood up from his wheelchair. With a strength I didn’t know he had, he held his head high. “I will do it. I give my soul to the Lady Artemisia freely.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A GAME MOST DANGEROUS

  WE RUSHED TO Professor Bhegad so quickly he fell back into his wheelchair. “You can’t do this, Professor,” I said.

  Professor Bhegad shook his head defiantly. “My children,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “look at me. I don’t have long to live. You cannot conceive the pain I have been through. Once I’m gone, I’m useless to you. Please . . . let my death help in the quest for the Loculi.”

  Dad looked at the old man in bewilderment. “You’re willing to die for them?”

  Professor Bhegad nodded. “I am willing to do what’s right.”

  “We can’t let you,” Aly said.

  “You wouldn’t like the life of a zombie, Professor,” Cass said.

  “Skilaki,” I said. “Please. Let us have a minute or so.”

  She rolled her eyes, and one of them slipped out of the socket. As it fell toward the ground, she caught it in her right hand and popped it back in. “I have all the time in the world,” she said. “Literally.”

  “I did not see her do that,” Cass said.

  I raced down the stairs, gesturing for the others to follow. Torquin stepped behind Professor Bhegad’s chair and fastened a seat belt around him. He bent his knees, gripped the handrests, and lifted the chair chest high. As Torquin walked carefully down the stairs, Bhegad placed his hand on the big guy’s. “I will miss you, old friend,” he said.

  Torquin coughed. His face was extra red. As he set the old man down, he wouldn’t look at us.

  What would Professor Bhegad’s death do to him?

  What would it do to us?

  I glanced at Bhegad. Behind his watery, bloodshot eyes was a strength as solid as the marble columns above us.

  “Jack . . . ?” Aly’s voice brought me back to the present.

  “Here’s the plan,” I said. “We let her take him. But we act superfast. We get Artemisia to give us the Loculus before they actually do anything to him.”

  “This is crazy, Jack,” Cass said. “What if they zombify him first?”

  “Remember Charles Newton’s message—‘Where the lame walk, the sick rise, the dead live forever,’” I recited. “Doesn’t that mean the Loculus can restore life? We bring Bhegad back with us and use the powers on him.”

  Dad blanched. “Jack, this is playing with life and death.”

  “’Tis a game most dangerous for mortals,” Canavar warned.

  “I have everything to offer and nothing to lose,” Professor Bhegad spoke up. “If I die here, the quest ends. I will have lived for nothing. If my sacrifice brings forth a Loculus, at least my life will have had some worth. Please. Let us take the chance.”

  He looked at each us deliberately, deeply. No one said a word. Torquin let out an uncharacteristic squeak that sounded like a gulp or a sneeze. He stared fiercely at the distance, blinking.

  Bhegad took Torquin’s hand. “My trusty helpmeet, despite our myriad differences, I believe I will miss you most of all. Shall we?”

  The big guy nodded, his features dark and hollow behind the bristling beard. Silently he gripped the wheelchair and started up the stairs again.

  “Dear lady,” Bhegad called upward as strongly as his voice allowed, “I will give you my soul on two conditions. That you allow my friends to accompany me there. And that you promise them safe return.”

  “Entry is possible for all,” Skilaki said. “Returning is not, unless . . .”

  “Unless what?” Cass said.

  The ex-sibyl’s arm whipped forward, grabbing Cass by the chin. With a sharp twist of her wrist, she forced him to turn around and she gazed at the back of his head.

  Her jaw dropped to the ground. Literally.

  After picking it up and reattaching it, she said, “I have heard of the mark, yet this is the first time I have seen it. You, my boy, shall be allowed free passage.”

  “Because of the lambda?” Cass said.

  “Skilaki, all three of us have it,” I announced.

  “Then by your marking shall you return,” Skilaki said. “But no one else.”

  Dad stepped forward, gripping my arm. “You’re crazy if you think I’ll let you go in there alone. I’m his father!”

  Professor Bhegad reached out and took Dad’s hand. “He has to,
Martin. You know this. You want your son to live. Choose my death, not his.”

  Dad opened his mouth to reply, then clamped it shut. Time seemed to stop for a long moment, as we all stared at him. Even Skilaki.

  I felt his fingers waver. And then, slowly he loosened his grip. His eyes were desperate, filling with tears.

  “Jack will come back,” Torquin said softly. “Good training. Good genes.”

  Dad didn’t say a word. Instead he wrapped me in a tight hug and told me he loved me.

  I felt Aly’s arm around one shoulder, Cass’s around the other. As Dad let go, Skilaki turned to climb the steps to the black archway. “Delighted this ordeal is over. Now come. Leave your bags,” she added, pointing at the backpack in which I’d hidden the Loculi.

  “But . . . my bag has stuff I need,” I protested. I was not keen on entering one of the Seven Wonders without any magical help at all.

  Skilaki shook her head. “You need nothing inside. You bring nothing. And leave the rolling chair here. You will not need it, either.”

  Cass, Aly, and I shed our backpacks. I handed mine to my father as Torquin helped Professor Bhegad up from the wheelchair. I took his arm. It seemed bony and fragile inside his tweed coat. “‘Once more into the breach,’” the old man murmured.

  As we stepped toward the portal, a blast of white light hit me in the face. For a brief moment, before I closed my eyes, I could see Bhegad’s face lit up like a screen.

  He was smiling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THAT’S GNIZAMA

  “WHOA, WHO TURNED on the black-and-white filter?” Cass asked in a low voice.

  I turned, forcing my eyes open. I was too dumbstruck to answer. We were only three steps into the Mausoleum, but there was no Mausoleum. No marble ceiling, no grand tiled floor, no fancy walls.

  I spun around. Our door—the one we’d come through with Skilaki—was gone. We were outdoors, in a dry, rubble-strewn field that stretched into a dense fog in all directions. It wasn’t nighttime anymore, but twilight, and everything seemed drained of color, like a charcoal landscape.

  “I was expecting a palace,” Aly said. “Not the anti-Narnia.”

  Skilaki was walking ahead of us, on a path of gray soil flecked with patches of gray grass. I was supporting Professor Bhegad, who leaned on my arm as he took tentative steps forward. “Courage,” he said.

  “Skilaki, how far are we going?” I called out.

  “As far as necessary,” she replied.

  Professor Bhegad loosened his hold. He was walking on his own. “Fascinating. It’s some kind of underworld.”

  “Easy, Professor!” Aly cried, as she and Cass rushed to help.

  “No, no, it’s all right.” He gave us a baffled look. “My chest feels significantly better.”

  “Really?” Cass said. “That’s gnizama.”

  Aly glared at him. “No, it’s not, Cass. It’s weird. It’s disturbing. This place gives me the creeps.”

  “Just trying to be”—Cass gulped as he looked around—“positive.”

  I felt my feet touching the ground, but all our footsteps were muffled, nearly silent. On either side of us were distant groves of leafless trees. Their gnarled black branches reached upward into a dull, dirty-white sky. I blinked my eyes, hoping to see it all clearer, but nothing changed.

  Skilaki was slowing now. She stopped at a place where another path veered off toward the woods to our left. I couldn’t help noticing there was no castle in sight, no trace of a building.

  “Where’s Artemisia?” I demanded.

  “Impatience,” Skilaki replied, “is meaningless in Bo’gloo.”

  “Is Bo’gloo another name for Hades?” Cass said. “Tartarus?”

  “Hades and Tartarus, always Hades and Tartarus!” Skilaki shook her head, and I ducked to avoid a flying skin flake the size of a bookmark. “This obsession with mainland Greece! They are . . . related. But Bo’gloo has its own dreadful merits, as you will see.”

  “I haven’t noticed any yet,” Aly muttered.

  Skilaki was studying Professor Bhegad. A strange smile twisted her withered lips. “You are called Radamanthus,” she said. “You know, don’t you, that Radamanthus was one of the three judges of souls who entered Hades?”

  “Of course.” Bhegad’s eyes brightened. When he spoke, his voice sounded disturbingly eager. “Shall I meet my namesake today?”

  Skilaki laughed. “Of course not! Radamanthus has no sway in Bo’gloo. Only Queen Artemisia.”

  “Wait,” Cass said, “I thought she wasn’t technically a queen— ”

  “She is queen here!” Skilaki shot back. “But let me explain all as I show you our home.”

  “You told us you would take Professor Bhegad to Artemisia,” Aly said. “People are waiting for us. We don’t have time to sightsee Bo’gloo.”

  “Time,” Skilaki said, “will not be an issue.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was perfectly still, stuck at 3:17 A.M. I tapped it a couple of times. “It stopped.”

  Aly and Cass were staring at their watches, too.

  “It is not the only thing that has stopped,” Skilaki said. “I believe you were in great pain, Professor. And now?”

  “Nothing,” Professor Bhegad said. “This is remarkable.”

  Skilaki’s papery lips drew upward like a tiny curtain, her smile revealing exactly four brownish-gray teeth. “Time, you see, is greatly overrated.”

  We continued to follow the old lady down the right-hand path, which veered off into a maze of twisted black trees. Ahead of us was a rushing sound, like the static from a car radio.

  As I squinted into the distance, my foot wedged under a branch and I felt myself hurtling headlong into a tree. I put my arm out for protection—and I came face-to-face with a tiny, grinning skull.

  I jumped away, screaming.

  Skilaki slowly turned, her laugh a rhythmic sss-sss-sss. “Oh, dear boy, no need to be frightened,” she said. “These are merely here to outline the path.”

  “You use skulls as markers?” I said.

  “Paint works pretty well,” Cass volunteered.

  “Where would be the style in that?” Skilaki replied with a sigh. “But if you’re offended . . .”

  She snapped her fingers and the skull disappeared.

  Aly grabbed my arm. “I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place.”

  As we followed Skilaki along the unmarked path, the distant noise grew louder, like a giant vacuum cleaner pressed into my ears. Soon I had to cover them with my hands.

  “My dear sibyl, this noise is unbearable!” Professor Bhegad shouted.

  Skilaki stopped at a clearing. She crouched, picking up a clot of soil flecked with pine needles, pebbles, and who knew what else. As she held it toward me, kneading it with her hands, it became rubbery and smooth, shrinking to the size of a vitamin pill. “Insert it into your ear,” she said. “You’ll be much happier.”

  “It’s dirt!” Cass shouted.

  “Give it to me!” Aly grabbed the little pellet and popped it into her ear. She dropped to her knees and dug out another clot of dirt. Quickly she repeated what Skilaki had done, massaging it with her fingers until the grains of soil and tiny twigs smoothed out. Then she inserted that one, too. “Whoa. It works. It feels like Styrofoam.”

  Cass, Professor Bhegad, and I wasted no time plugging our ears.

  “Our natural materials,” Skilaki explained, “are multipurpose.”

  I couldn’t believe it. The static noise was nearly gone, but Skilaki’s voice was loud and clear. All of our voices were clear. Even our footsteps. Only the frequency of the river’s sound seemed to be blocked.

  Skilaki gestured into the clearing. “Proceed,” she said.

  As we cautiously stepped forward, the clouds thinned. I could make out the shape of what seemed to be an enormous river stretching into the thick grayness to our right and left. The opposite bank could have been a football field away or a mile—in this str
ange landscape, it was impossible to tell.

  A silent current raged not two feet beneath us. It seemed weightless, a flow of silver streamers in midair, reflecting light and nearly transparent. It splashed against the steep banks and broke into a spray of droplets. I could feel them on my arms, tiny pokes with no sign of wetness at all.

  I removed my plug—but only for about a nanosecond. The static noise was unbearable. “That’s what’s making the sound,” I said. “The river water.”

  “I don’t think that’s water, Jack,” Aly said, her voice unmuffled and clear.

  I stepped closer and knelt by the edge of the bank. The river bottom was alive with movement. But not fish or seaweed. Bright images churned upward, bursting through the sand and mud—people, panoramas, views of villages and mountains in intricate, black-and-white detail. Some seemed harmless and dull, but others were impossible to look at. A gutted home, a screaming face, the twisted grille of a truck.

  Aly let out a gasp. Or maybe it was me. I turned away, unable to watch any more.

  “This is where you proceed on your own until we meet on the other side, which may be awhile,” Skilaki announced. “I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure, but I barely remember what pleasure feels like.”

  Cass’s face was taut, his eyes wide. “You expect us to swim across that?”

  “Unless you can walk on the top,” Skilaki said.

  “What is it?” Aly asked.

  “The River Nostalgikos,” Skilaki replied. “The Greeks have one like it, too, of course.”

  “I mean, what’s the stuff at the bottom?” Aly said.

  “Memories,” Skilaki said. “The river feeds on them. Our guests arrive with sadness and broken dreams. Their thoughts eat at them for an entire lifetime. They may have an image of themselves they cannot live up to. Or hold a grudge. Or pine for a love that can never be. Nostalgikos makes you face your worst memories and realize how fleeting they are. And if you do face them, it takes those memories away, cleanses them completely.”

  “So . . . they stay at the bottom?” Cass said softly. “Like old Facebook posts?”

  “Ah, but only if you give yourself to the river,” Skilaki said. “Fight it, and the bad memories will consume you, like all diseases. I have seen it happen. So tragic. So useless.”