The Emerald Atlas

by John Stephens

  “Does the … does the Countess know?”

  “Well, she clearly knows something. She’s had the men of Cambridge Falls digging there for the past two years.”

  “Bhuhoduuknoballdis?” Michael asked (he had most of a banana pancake crammed into his mouth).

  “A good question,” Dr. Pym said. “Perhaps I should start farther back.”

  He brushed a shower of golden crumbs off his jacket, reached for a donut, and began.…

  As the children already knew, there were once three great books of magic. The so-called Books of Beginning. Of the Books’ various properties and powers, Dr. Pym did not think it necessary to delve into at present. Suffice it to say, twenty-five hundred years earlier, after the city of Rhakotis was sacked by the armies of Alexander the Great, two of the Books of Beginning did indeed vanish. However, the third was smuggled out of the city by a very clever, very attractive young wizard. (He mentioned the young wizard’s handsomeness several times. It seemed to be a key point in the story.)

  For years, this young wizard remained on the move, secreting the book from one hiding place to another. He knew there were many dark forces who craved the book’s power and who would have used it to foul and destructive ends. Eventually, after perhaps a thousand years, the no-longer-quite-so-young wizard carried the book over the ocean, climbed into these mountains, and made a pact with the dwarf king to hide it.

  Once again, Kate felt a shiver of recognition. This was the vision that had led her through the maze. Was the book giving her clues? Did it want her to find it?

  “Are you going to eat that waffle?” Michael whispered. “Because it’s chocolate chip—”

  Kate pushed the waffle at him.

  The dwarf king had his greatest masons build a vault deep below the city, and there the book was placed. For another ten centuries, all was quiet. Then the earthquake struck, and it not only destroyed the city, it killed much of the population, including all who knew of the book’s existence. So when the dwarves moved south to rebuild their capital, the book was left behind, forgotten under the ruins.

  “Now, how I myself learned of the book’s existence and location is not important—”

  “How did you?” Michael asked. This was the kind of practical detail he couldn’t resist.

  “My boy, I said it is not important.”

  “I bet you found some old manuscript in a library. But it was pushed way in the back with all these other manuscripts, and for years and years nobody gave it a second glance, then you saw it and realized it was the young wizard’s diary and—”

  “No, that was not how it happened.”

  “Oh! I bet the trees told you, didn’t they? The old oak trees. They were probably just small baby trees way back then, but they saw the young wizard carry the book into the mountains and you cast a spell to make them talk—”

  “Don’t be silly; no one can make trees talk. At least not oak trees. They’re terribly dull.”

  “Then I bet—”

  “You were the wizard!” Kate exclaimed.

  “That’s crazy,” Michael said. “He’d have to be thousands—”

  But he stopped himself, for Dr. Pym was smiling at Kate. “My dear, how did you know?”

  Kate thought of telling the truth, that she’d suddenly realized that the ginger-haired man in her vision, the one who’d given the book to the dwarf king for safekeeping, was Dr. Pym—only much much much younger. But if she told him that, Dr. Pym would begin asking questions; he would want to know everything about her visions.

  She shrugged. “Just a lucky guess.”

  Dr. Pym glanced at her but went on.

  He told them how, in the beginning, he had made a practice of returning to the region every few years. But as time passed and the book lay undisturbed, particularly after the earthquake, when he was the only living soul who knew of the book’s location, his visits became less frequent. His last trip was five or six years ago. It was then that he met Gabriel. And he discovered, to his alarm, that stories had grown of an object of great power buried in the mountains. It was as if those who lived here had begun to sense the book’s presence. Dr. Pym knew that sooner or later, these rumors would reach the wrong ears. He began searching for a new hiding place.

  He scoured the globe, rejecting an undersea cavern here, a mountain fortress there. He was in the Amazon, examining a system of caves, when the news reached him of the Countess’s arrival. He returned immediately. By then, the Countess had been at her work for nearly two years. The men of Cambridge Falls, under the whips and blows of their guards, had dug a warren of tunnels beneath the Dead City. While they had not yet discovered the vault, Dr. Pym felt that day could not be far off. The book had to be moved immediately.

  “What about the men?!” Kate cried. “Or the children?! Why not free them first?!”

  “Katherine, your feelings do you credit. But the safety of the book had to take precedence. If it were to fall into the Countess’s hands, many more lives would be in peril.”

  Kate set the scone she’d been eating back on the table. Her hands were trembling with anger. She told herself that given the choice, even if it meant that she and Michael and Emma would be trapped in the past forever, even if it only saved the life of one child and reunited just one family, she would let the Countess have the book.

  The question, Dr. Pym continued, was how to retrieve the book. The Countess’s soldiers had set up a prison camp in the Dead City. Avoiding their sentries would not be easy. But even more daunting was reaching the vault itself. The earthquake, all those years before, had completely sealed off the passage.

  “But I bet there’s a secret way, isn’t there?” Michael said.

  “What a bright lad you are,” Dr. Pym beamed. “A good thing you’re not working for the Countess; our collective goose would be cooked.”

  “Oh, I’d never work for her,” Michael said stoutly, then he glanced at Kate and muttered, “I mean … never again.”

  Dr. Pym explained that when the vault was built, the dwarf king had a sort of back door constructed. It was intended for just such a calamity.

  “Good old dwarves.” Michael grinned. “Always one step ahead.”

  This secret entrance was accessed through a cavern far below the throne room. The walls of the cavern were covered with a rare kind of lichen that glows gold in the dark. Get to that cavern, and you could get to the vault.

  “So how do you get to the cavern?” Kate asked.

  “That, my dear, is precisely the problem. The earthquake jumbled everything about. Tunnels. Passages. Though I managed to infiltrate the Dead City, I could not find the correct entrance. My goodness! Have you tried one of these?” He held up a fat, custard-filled donut from which he had just taken a large bite.

  “You got the last one,” Michael said sullenly; he had been eyeing the donut for several minutes.

  “Oh, my apologies.” Dr. Pym tore it in two and handed over half; a somewhat messy operation, but Michael seemed to appreciate the gesture.

  “So what’d you do?” Kate asked impatiently.

  “Well, realizing I needed a guide, one who knew the tunnels below the Dead City and would recognize the cavern I described, I came to the only place to find such an individual—the dwarfish court. Everyone had enough to eat? Excellent. I think it’s time for tea.”

  Dr. Pym took up the small iron kettle and poured out three cups of steaming amber liquid, cautioning them not to burn their tongues. He remarked that while frustrating in some respects, dwarfish iron did make for a truly first-rate kettle. Then he sat back, stuffed a wad of tobacco in his pipe, lit a match, sucked till it had begun to draw, and exhaled a long stream of almond-scented smoke.

  “Now we have come to the second part of my tale. The story of Hamish.” Dr. Pym took a delicate sip from his teacup. “Until recently, the dwarves in this region were ruled by a queen, a just, wise old lady and a great and dear friend of mine. During my last visit—again, this was about five years ago—s
he assured me that her younger son (she had two) would become king upon her death. Her younger son was everything a future king should be: good and true and all those other dull, necessary qualities. Her other son, the elder, was a thug. A creature of ungoverned passion and very poor hygiene. It was clear to all that he would be a disaster as king. But alas, shortly after my visit the Queen died without leaving a will. Or at least”—Dr. Pym looked significantly at the children—“a will was never found, and so Hamish became king instead of Robbie.”

  “Wait—you mean Captain Robbie?” Kate asked.

  “Ah yes, you’d said you’d met the fine Captain Robbie. He and Hamish are brothers. Though as unalike as night and day, as”—he paused, searching for another comparison, then shrugged—“well, night and day pretty much says it.

  “Now, Hamish had not been king long when the Countess and her morum cadi appeared at court. She flattered him with gifts and promises and begged permission to dig in the Dead City. She did not tell him what she was digging for. In fact, she claimed not to know herself. She said she was following a legend, a rumor. A story about some lost magical artifact. But she promised that when she found this mysterious object, she and Hamish would share it. In the end, he granted permission.”

  “Is he an idiot?” Kate asked.

  “Oh, most certainly,” Dr. Pym said. “But even so, it didn’t take him long to realize he had been duped, that the Countess knew exactly what she was searching for and had absolutely no intention of sharing it. You may well ask, so why didn’t Hamish simply retake the Dead City by force? After all, his forces far outnumbered those of the Countess. For now, I will only tell you that he had reason, good reason, to fear open confrontation. And so, he simply sat on his throne and stewed—quite literally, for the oaf refuses to bathe—and such was the state in which I found him.

  “He was in the midst of one of his endless feasts. I think the buffoon actually believed I had come to congratulate him on his ascension to the throne. ‘What’ve you brought me, Magician?’ Those were his first words. I replied that far from bringing a gift, I required one.

  “ ‘Oh, do you now?’ he snorted. ‘Is it bloomin’ Magicians’ Christmas? Why didn’t anyone remind me, eh?’

  “I said I needed a guide. That I intended to outflank the Countess and spirit away the object of her efforts. I had considered spinning some elaborate yarn to mask my plan, but I felt that Hamish’s suspicions were so raw he would have sensed the ruse immediately. In any case, the effect of my words was instantaneous. Hamish pounced like a tiger—a dirty, foul-smelling, half-literate tiger.

  “ ‘You know what she’s after, then?!’ he shouted.

  “ ‘I do,’ I replied.

  “He demanded I tell him all I knew. I refused. He threatened me. Still, I refused. He became irate. He screamed. He spat. He threw plates. Overturned tables. He punched his minister of culture. It was a tantrum such as I have never seen, and all the while he was shouting that as this object was buried in dwarfish lands, it belonged to the dwarves, that is to say, to him, and no one else.”

  “He does have a point,” Michael murmured.

  “I told Hamish,” Dr. Pym went on, “that the dwarves had merely been the custodians of the object. It did not belong to them.

  “ ‘So you refuse to help me?!’ he screamed. ‘You think I can’t hurt you, Magician?! Is that what you think, you scoundrel?! You great white-haired ninny!’

  “I replied that I knew full well he could hurt me. But even so, I would not tell him what was buried beneath the Dead City. And that”—Dr. Pym spread his hands to encompass the walls of his cell—“was how I ended up here. All this happened four days ago.”

  The children were silent, holding their still-steaming cups of tea, thinking of all Dr. Pym had said.

  Michael asked if Dr. Pym had a key to get into the vault.

  The old wizard smiled. “Of a sort. Yes. But I have talked too long for one night. You are tired and must sleep. Something tells me tomorrow will require all your strength.”

  “But what about Emma?” Kate had listened to everything Dr. Pym had said, about the book’s journey, the vault, Hamish.… She had been patient. But enough was enough. “You said you were looking for her! Where is she? Is she safe? Is she even alive? Can you tell us that?”

  “She was in great danger,” Dr. Pym said quietly. “But she is past that. She is now in Gabriel’s village, being treated by their wisewoman. I assure you, my dear, your sister is quite safe.”

  For a moment, Kate and Michael were both too stunned to speak.

  “Really?” Kate asked.

  “Yes. Would you like to see for yourself?”

  Kate nodded.

  Dr. Pym smiled. “Very well.”

  And suddenly, it was as if Kate’s entire body was filled with sand. Her arms and legs became impossibly heavy. Her eyelids drooped shut. Instinctively, she fought to stay awake. She felt Michael slump against her.

  “But …,” she mumbled, “we …”

  She was asleep before she hit the straw.

  As she slept, she dreamed she was back in the maze, floating down one of the dark corridors. There was a light ahead, coming from a chamber. She moved toward it, out of the tunnel, and the scene that opened before her was worse than any nightmare. Emma lay unmoving on the ground. The lower half of her shirt was black with blood. Kate could see the dark nub of arrow sticking out of her back. Gabriel stood over her, his terrifying machete-like weapon grasped in both hands, its edge gleaming in the light from the lantern. And moving toward him across the floor of the chamber, the most horrible creature Kate had ever imagined.

  Its skin was a translucent, gooey white and dotted with greenish sores. Its arms and legs were hideously long and thin, its back curved from generations of moving through low-ceilinged tunnels. Its claws tapped the floor as it advanced, and Kate saw the milky, sightless eyes and huge, bat-like ears. The salmac-tar made a gurgling hiss deep in its throat and threw itself at Gabriel, its long claws outstretched. Kate tried to scream, but no sound came out. Gabriel stepped forward, swinging his weapon over his head in a shining arc. Man and monster met in the center of the room, and Kate felt her chest tighten in fear, but then the monster’s head was flying away from its body, rebounding against the far wall and rolling over, once, twice, three times, before coming to rest, facedown.

  For a long moment, nothing moved. Even the headless body stood where it was, as if not yet realizing what had happened. Then, slowly, it dropped to its knees, toppled forward, and lay still. Gabriel wiped the blood off his blade, started to turn toward Emma, then stopped, listening.

  Then Kate heard it too. Click-click … click-click …

  The sound was coming from one of the dark doorways. Then another. And another. The clicking rose like the hum of insects, growing louder and thicker. Gabriel sheathed his blade, gathered Emma and the lamp, and ran.

  Kate felt herself moving with him as he flew down the dark corridors. She could hear his breathing, smell his sweat. Behind him the clicking grew louder and louder. Emma never opened her eyes. Gabriel plunged from chamber to chamber, tunnel to tunnel. Looking back, Kate could see ghostly shapes in the darkness, scurrying toward them, climbing the walls, coming faster and faster.

  Suddenly, they were no longer in the maze. They were running across a great empty cavern of natural rock, and Kate could see the white shapes pouring out of the mouth of the tunnel behind them, and Gabriel tripped and nearly fell and they would have been on him in an instant with their teeth and claws, but he caught himself and was splashing across a stream and stumbling down another short tunnel, and then they were outside, out of the tunnel, out of the mountain, and the night was cool against her face and the moon lit the darkness, and though it was a dream, she filled her lungs with gulps of clean, fresh air.

  Gabriel paused and looked back. Though she could not see them, Kate could hear the fury of the creatures inside the mountain. For some reason, they seemed unable to come outside. Gab
riel started down a trail along the ridge. Kate could see, in the valley below, a fluttering collection of fires she knew was Gabriel’s village; Emma was safe.

  Kate woke, smelling Dr. Pym’s tobacco.

  “Good morning,” said the wizard. “You’ve slept nearly nine hours. I believe you both were exhausted.”

  Kate rubbed her eyes. The fire was crackling away. Michael was still passed out on the straw.

  “I had the strangest dream.”

  “Did you now? I can’t wait to hear all about it.” Dr. Pym was smiling at her with the same kindly smile, his face wreathed in smoke. “You know, I’ve been studying you and your brother. You say you don’t know your parents at all?”

  “I have a few memories. But I don’t know their names or anything. Why?”

  Dr. Pym knocked his pipe against the stone floor, emptying the ashes, and replaced it in his pocket. “Oh, we can talk about it later. You’d best wake Michael. They will be here any moment.”

  “Who will?” Kate felt groggy, as if she was still half inside her dream. Had it even been a dream? It’d felt so real. And why was Dr. Pym asking about their parents?

  There was the sound of a bolt being shot back; the door swung open, and Captain Robbie McLaur entered.

  “Right, then, up and at ’em! The King wants to see you lot.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Hamish

  Four dwarf guards, led by Captain Robbie McLaur, guided Dr. Pym and the children along a series of passages and stairways to the throne room of King Hamish.

  “Not that it’s any of my business, Wizard,” Robbie McLaur said as they marched along the torchlit corridor, “but for the sake of these children, I’ll warn you that my brother is not a dwarf to be trifled with.”

  “We appreciate your concern, Captain,” said Dr. Pym. “But I think we can handle ourselves.”

  “Fair enough; it’s your necks. Just don’t like seeing children chopped into bits and pieces when it can be avoided. Old-fashioned, I guess.”