by Sharon Hinck
“Um, I can’t really see my watch from here.” Mark jerked against the ropes for emphasis.
“Very funny. When did you get home from work?”
“Well, the meeting with the development team ran late, so it was probably about six. Why?”
“Jake gets off work at eight.”
Mark fell still, but I kept babbling. “They’ll capture him, too. They’ve controlled him before. Maybe they still can. He doesn’t know where you hid the third stone, but they might hurt him. And if they see that he heals . . .” I took shallow gasps between my sentences, tugging again at the ropes. “We’ve got to do something. I remember that when Nancy Drew got tied up, she held her wrists a certain way so she could get free. I tried, but Medea yanked the cords too tight. I can’t get loose.”
A strangled sound came from behind me. “Mark, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he gasped. He was shaking with his effort to stop laughing. “Nancy Drew?”
Like he was contributing any great suggestions. “What about it? Karen and Anne love those books.”
“Nothing . . . it’s just . . .” He coughed and another laugh escaped. “If you’re going to use advice from books, couldn’t you pick Tom Clancy or Ian Fleming? Nancy Drew.” He barked, snorted, and finally wheezed. “Oh, honey, you’re amazing.”
I wanted to laugh with him. His teasing humor usually helped me find a healthy perspective on our problems. But this wasn’t a frozen water pipe or a kid’s bad report card. “Mark, I’m scared,” I said in a small voice.
He sobered quickly. “I know. We’ll be all right.”
We struggled with the ropes for several minutes, but couldn’t get free.
“Do you hear anything?” Mark asked suddenly.
I listened for a long ten seconds. The house sounded still and empty. “Maybe they’ve gone.” I shifted to ease the pressure on my arms.
Mark gave that comment the silence it deserved.
I didn’t want my thoughts to wander back to what Cameron and Medea would do to us. “Just keep talking, okay? If you keep talking, I don’t have to think.”
“What should I talk about?” Mark wrestled against the ropes again, jerking against the pipe as if he could pull it free. But the solid metal dug deep into the concrete floor and didn’t budge.
“Tell me about when you came here.”
“Now? We were going to sit in front of a fireplace with a bowl of popcorn—”
“Mark, it’s the middle of summer. We’re not going to have a fire any time soon. I want to hear about it. Why do you keep avoiding this subject? Please. I’m really scared.”
He didn’t answer right away.
I tried again. “Maybe it will help us figure out what to do about the portal . . . if you explain it to me.”
Mark sighed. “All right. Where should I start? You know about my father, and how my mother was murdered.”
How had it felt to be sixteen and alone in his harsh world? I didn’t want to linger on that topic. “And when the Kahlareans targeted you, the Lyric songkeeper sent you here. What was that like?”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Ravon was only a few years older than me, but he excelled at his first-year guardian training and then spent a year doing advanced training in Rendor. We knew a lot of the same people. He was assigned to protect me, and we became friends.”
I wanted to hurry him along, but he hadn’t indulged this stream of images from his past for a long time. Patience. He was netting memories like fish, selecting the ones he wanted to pull out and show me before releasing them again.
“I was Jake’s age back then. We’d sneak into the guardian tower to watch training matches. We found hidden doors in the Lyric walls and would slip out sometimes to explore. And we sparred every day.” Mark’s voice was warm with affection. “Ravon told me that if he was going to be my bodyguard, the least he could do was train me to watch his back while he was watching mine.”
I was afraid I knew where this story was going. “He sounds like a good friend,” I said quietly.
“One evening after a Council session, we were coming around the curve into the main square. You know, near the Tower?”
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me. But he had already continued.
“Two guys appeared out of nowhere. We never heard them coming. Grey hoods, masks. One of them grabbed me before I could draw my sword. He had a blade to my neck and was dragging me away. Ravon was always quicker than me. He drew his sword in a flash and engaged the other guy. The attacker had only a small silver dagger. I figured the fight would be over in a second. So did Ravon. He was grinning as he swung at the guy. But then the Kahlarean threw the blade. Ravon barely winced when it hit his shoulder. He pulled it free and lunged forward to continue his attack, but he stumbled.
“I still remember his face when he turned to look at me. He was so confused. Neither of us knew anything about venblades back then. It paralyzed him fast. Some of the Lyric guardians showed up, and the assassin holding me let go. I don’t know why he didn’t slit my throat. Both of the Kahlareans disappeared into the twilight, and I ran over to where Ravon had collapsed onto the street and held him.
“‘Sorry,’ he said in a voice so choked I could barely understand him.
“‘Hey, you were great,’ I told him. ‘Did you see his eyes when you headed toward him with your sword? You had him scared.’
“He smiled, but then his whole body stiffened. He wheezed trying to make his lungs work. I saw the panic in his eyes and heard the gurgle in his throat, and I couldn’t do anything to help him. I just held him and watched him die.”
Mark fell silent.
Whose stupid idea had it been to talk about this now? My eyes welled and I blinked back tears. I tried to find Mark’s fingers but couldn’t reach him.
He cleared his throat. “So anyway, that was when I went to talk to the eldest songkeeper of Lyric. I couldn’t let anyone else die because of me. I didn’t know what the prophecy meant, but I hadn’t shown any signs of Restorer gifts.”
He still wrestled with the choices he had made. Even with me, he felt the need to justify himself—to explain the dire events that had driven him to leave his world. The tautness in his voice told me that guilt still haunted him. I longed to reassure him.
Oh, Mark. You were just a boy. You’d watched too many people die. You’ve tortured yourself too long over this.
But I didn’t want to interrupt.
“The songkeeper was kind of an odd guy. He was tall and so thin it looked as if he never ate. He stared into space like he was focusing on something that wasn’t there. I begged him for help but wasn’t even sure he was listening. Then he turned with a look that burned into me. His hair was sticking out all over, and those eyes—I decided coming to him had been a bad idea.
“‘Yes. It’s time.’ He said it as if he’d been waiting for me all along. He grabbed a small bag and headed for the door. When he reached the frame, he had to duck, and he turned back and frowned at me. I was still sitting at his table.
“‘Come.’ That was all he said. And he started walking. I hurried along behind him. I hadn’t been assigned a new bodyguard yet, so I stayed alert for attack as we raced through the streets. He took me out a side door in the city wall, and I didn’t see anyone I knew along the way. If I’d had any clue what he was going to do, I would have insisted on talking to Jorgen or my friends, but everything happened too fast.
“He led me to the grove, and we wove deep into the trees. He still hadn’t explained anything. Then he opened the bag and shook out three stones. Grey, white, and black. Smooth and heavy. They had sliding panels with a mechanism hidden inside, something beyond any transtech gadget I’d ever seen.
“‘Pay attention,’ the songkeeper told me.” Mark gave a short laugh. “He had my attention, all right. I was beginning t
o think he was totally nuts.”
I twisted my head to get a glimpse of Mark. “Did I ever see him when the songkeepers led the gathering?”
“No, he never leads singing. I don’t think he writes songs or teaches Verses, either. I’m not quite sure what he does. You wouldn’t have met him. He’s kind of reclusive.” Mark stopped talking and fidgeted against the ropes.
I shouldn’t have interrupted him. This was the part of the story I had been longing to know. “So what did he do with the stones?”
“He laid them out in a pattern, told me to memorize it, then scrambled them and had me show him I could set them up correctly. We must have drilled that ten times. I still had no idea what they were for. But when they were lined up the right way, I could feel . . . a current in the air. Like the static that builds up when fabric rubs against a light wall.
“When he was sure I wouldn’t forget, he put the stones back in the bag and handed it to me.
“‘I’m sending you through a portal,’ he said. His head darted from side to side, looking every direction and making me nervous. ‘No one knows where it leads, but it is far from all the danger here. You won’t be followed, and Jorgen will tell the Council you’ve been sent to negotiate with the lost clans. Use the stones to return when you are needed.’
“I guess I thought he was leading me to a tunnel that would take me to some land past Hazor. He motioned me forward, and I walked on ahead of him. I was about to ask him how I would know when I was needed, but something grabbed me.
“I stumbled forward and fell to my knees. Pain shot through my head, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the songkeeper had disappeared. I was still in a grove of trees, but they had changed.”
“Where were you?” I couldn’t stop myself from jumping in. There was so much I didn’t understand about the portal, and he had never talked about this before.
Mark leaned his head back against the pipe. “I was right here. This spot. There weren’t any houses here back then. I wandered out of the trees just as a cloud moved away from the sun.” His voice was thick with remembered terror. “It was like an overloaded light cube about to explode. My eyes burned, and I stumbled back under cover of the nearest tree. I was sure if that light touched me I would incinerate. I’d never seen anything like it. The color where the rays hit. The intense shadows. The blue sky beyond the clouds. I couldn’t believe it was real . . .” His voice trailed off again.
I ached for the frightened young man thrown into this strange place without explanation. “What did you do when night fell?”
“Camped here. At first I was afraid to wander far from the portal. That’s why years later when the new development was built, I wanted this house; it was over the site where I arrived. Silly, I guess. With the stones, it shouldn’t have mattered. At least I think they would work from other places. But it was my way of staying connected.”
I remembered now. We had been living in a tiny apartment near Ridge Valley College. Almost overnight he had gotten worked up about buying a place of our own—not throwing money away in rent each month. It didn’t take much to convince me. We’d been saving every penny we could from both our jobs. Jake was a toddler, and I longed for him to have a back yard to play in.
“So what did you do when it sank in that you weren’t in the same world as Lyric anymore?” I thought back to my confusion when I found myself in a rain-soaked street in Shamgar—pulled out of the safety of our attic into a strange world. “And why didn’t you try to go back? And why, why, why didn’t you ever tell me?” Mark shifted again and was about to answer, when we heard a scraping sound at the top of the stairs.
Mark stiffened, and my stomach swooped as if I were in an elevator dropping too fast. What was that lie he wanted me to tell again? “We don’t know how it works. You can’t bring things through,” I muttered to myself.
The door above flew open and crashed against the wall.
Chapter
4
Susan
Cameron stalked down the stairs, soundless as a prowling panther. I looked for seething rage, but his face was bland—almost bored. The only clue to his intent was in his eyes. They glittered black and hard.
Ignoring me, he walked around to Mark and pulled his gun out. “Tell me how it works, or I’ll kill her now.” The barrel of the gun swung in my direction.
I stopped breathing.
“It opens at midday. That’s the only time you can go through.” Mark’s voice stayed calm and level. He was way too good at lying.
I counted chips in the concrete floor.
Cameron crouched down. “You abandoned your people a long time ago.” His words to Mark were low and almost caressing. “No need for heroics now. Besides, we’ve always been on the same side. My job is to protect Lyric.”
Mark didn’t bother arguing. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow. The portal will open at noon.”
I couldn’t see Cameron’s face, but I could hear his oily smile when he spoke. “How much is her life worth to you?”
Mark strained against the ropes, but he didn’t speak. Cameron stood up and walked around to stare down at me. He tucked his gun into his belt, and I prayed he would accidentally shoot himself. Instead, he untied the rope that held me to the pipe. He didn’t loosen the cords around my wrists as he jerked me to my feet.
I groaned as circulation returned to my back and legs. He shoved me toward the stairs, and I didn’t fight him. I just concentrated on not falling.
“Wait,” Mark shouted. “She doesn’t know anything. If you have questions about the portal, ask me.”
“Oh, I will. Later.” Cameron’s lip curled, and he pulled me the rest of the way up the stairs, ignoring Mark’s yells. He slammed the door shut and thrust me into a chair.
A wash of unreality ran through me like the head rush from standing up too fast. Medea sat across from me at my kitchen table. My kitchen—with gingham curtains and daisies on the oven mitts. The scent of chicken still lingered in the air from supper at this table last night, when we had eaten Karen’s favorite meal before she left for her band trip. I stared hard at the wooden napkin holder that Mark had made for me one Christmas. This was my home. This could not be happening.
Medea didn’t say anything.
I was careful not to look in her direction. Cameron rummaged in our kitchen drawers, but the sound didn’t register until he stepped in front of me. He grabbed my chin, and I had an instant to see the boning knife in his hand before he cut a methodical slit along my cheekbone. I was so shocked, it took a full two seconds to feel the stinging pain. My head jerked back, but Cameron tightened his bruising grip, his eyes fixed on the cut.
I stared at him in horror. Blood trickled down my face and I tugged against the ropes, wanting to reach up and wipe it away.
Cameron looked at Medea. “So it is true.” Languidly, she drifted from the chair and came to stand beside him. She reached out and ran one fingertip along the cut, then studied the blood with mild interest.
“Has that happened before?” she asked Cameron.
“I don’t know. As far as I know, all the Restorers died while they still had their powers.”
Medea stretched, all supple spine and sparkling eyes. “Then the Kahlareans won’t be interested in her.”
Cameron sighed. “Fine. You win.”
Anger churned inside me as my wrists chafed against rope. They had invaded our home, were holding us captive, had cut my face, and now were discussing me as if I were a piece of junk mail. I’d had about enough of this. “What kind of idiots are you? You both know that Kieran is the Restorer now.”
Cameron released my chin with a shove and grabbed a cloth to meticulously polish the boning knife. “So you said.”
“But you saw him heal. In the Council, and then when he faced Zarek. And don’t get blood on my good dish towel.” Somehow I had
to grasp a fragment of control from this bizarre and terrifying scene.
“I had no proof you were no longer a Restorer.” He stared at the side of my face and smiled. “Until now. So tell me about the portal.”
I hunched up one shoulder and managed to blot the lower part of my cheek against it. My shirt would probably be hopelessly stained, but I couldn’t stand the feel of blood trailing down my face. “It opens only at noon.” What else had Mark said to tell them? “And you can’t bring anything through. It won’t work.”
I stared at the wood table. Hadn’t I heard that people looked down and to the left when they were lying? Or was that when they were flirting? There had been a television special about it—a whole report about nonverbal communication. I couldn’t remember the details now, but I worked hard to stay still and not give anything away. In the silence that followed, I glanced up at Cameron.
He wasn’t buying it for a second. Mark always told me my face revealed everything. Cameron didn’t bother asking me any more questions. He pulled a chair out for Medea, and she settled into it and gave me a gentle smile.
I squeezed my eyes shut, every muscle in my body tense. “Leave me alone. I know how you poison minds, so it won’t work on me anymore.” I didn’t know that to be true, but it sounded like a good theory. Still, if my hands had been free, I’d have clamped them over my ears.
Medea’s laugh was a twinkling wind chime. “Oh, but once a connection has been made, it is so much easier the next time.” That surprised me enough that my eyes popped open. Her green eyes were close to mine, and my feet pushed against the floor, trying to scoot my chair back. Cameron had moved around behind me. Now he clamped his hands down onto my shoulders.
“You forget.” Her voice was soothing. “I know so much about you—how alone you are. You tried so hard to do the right thing. You only wanted to help.”
