Rivers of Fire (Atherton, Book 2)

by Patrick Carman

  Edgar was a very quick child, as we have come to know, and he dodged the oncoming flames without difficulty. Vincent snapped the whip toward Sir Emerik and caught him with a stabbing pain in the ear. Trying to set Edgar on fire qualified as a violent act, and Vincent acted in kind.

  "Who are you?" Dr. Kincaid asked once more.

  "It's Sir Emerik," said Edgar. "He serves Lord Phineus."

  This seemed to baffle Dr. Kincaid even further. "But what's he doing down here? He shouldn't be here."

  There was a little anger in his voice, as if he felt Mead's Hollow was a sacred place for only a few and that he alone could invite people into it. It struck him that Sir Emerik was not the kind of person he would invite.

  "Children!" cried Sir Emerik, touching the new wound on his ear inflicted by the whip. "Children will be my undoing!"

  He was raving, but something about what he'd said made Edgar jump. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean Samuel and that girl, and now you! Why must you all torment me?"

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  This was a shocking piece of news for Edgar. Could Samuel and Isabel be trapped in Mead's Hollow?

  "You mean there's more?" said Dr. Kincaid, bewildered by the idea of so many people wandering around in such a forbidden place.

  Even as he was losing control of his own mind, Sir Emerik had the capacity to dream up evil schemes. He stared at the group before him and heard the distant scuffling of the Crat.

  "I will tell you where to find the boy and the girl, but you will let me pass. I must get free of this place, and of him!" Sir Emerik pointed to Edgar is if he were a monster, and wished with everything in his black heart that the Crat would tear the boy apart.

  "You've been bitten, haven't you?" said Dr. Kincaid. "You should know it won't end well. A few hours, a day at most, and you'll be finished."

  "Shut up, old man!" cried Sir Emerik. "I've never felt better in my life. And you should be more polite when talking to the lord of all Atherton. There are many who fear me."

  Dr. Kincaid didn't have the slightest idea what Sir Emerik was talking about.

  "He's of no use to us," Vincent assessed. Dr. Kincaid nodded and stepped back, giving Vincent authority to do as he pleased.

  "You must let me go first, then I'll yell back to you," said Sir Emerik, starting along the wall with the blue line. Vincent cracked the whip, then took Sir Emerik by his filthy robe and held him out toward the open of Mead's Hollow.

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  A "Speak," said Vincent. "Or I'll throw you into the dark and you'll be dinner for the Crat. Tell us where the children are!"

  Eeeeeeeeeek!

  Sir Emerik heard the Crat coming nearer, and his blood went cold. He couldn't get the words out fast enough. "That way, you'll find a door. The door to the source of water. The four of them are locked inside."

  "What do you mean, the four of them?" asked Dr. Kincaid.

  "Just let me go! Please let me go!" Sir Emerik was crying out with such agony that Vincent simply couldn't take it any longer. He hauled Sir Emerik along the wall, toward a far-off exit, and thrust him to the ground.

  "Do not try to follow us," he commanded. "You won't like it if I see you again."

  There were two torches now, and Edgar threw one toward Sir Emerik. It sparked on the ground and was picked up, and then Sir Emerik was gone, racing for the door that led out of Mead's Hollow.

  The group of three moved on, cracking the whip as they went and occasionally connecting with a Crat coming too close to Vincent's watchful eye. Soon they were at the door, a door Dr. Kincaid knew well.

  "What did he mean by four?" said Dr. Kincaid. "I thought there were only two -- Samuel and Isabel."

  "I think I know who will be the third," said Edgar. "But I have no idea who might be the last."

  ***

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  It was true Samuel and Isabel were trapped in a room with Lord Phineus, but as it turned out, there was something very special hidden in that room besides water.

  The room itself was not like anything Samuel or Isabel had seen before. There was light, even though the room was far underground beneath the Highlands and there were no torches. What they saw was a different kind of light, creeping out from somewhere beneath a series of nine perfectly circular pools of water in the room. The pools were scattered randomly across a large, open area that was black and cold. It was haunting to behold--an unnatural path of round, watery light on the floor--and it made Isabel shiver. She leaned out over the first pool and thought it looked bottomless.

  "What's happened to this place?" asked Isabel. No one answered her.

  There were chunks of wood and stone and frayed lengths of rope lying along the edge of the pools, as if once there had been some water-releasing system in place. Atherton's collapse had destroyed whatever it had been, and Isabel had a lingering sense that the water was trapped here, in the nine pools, never again to flow freely. The children's eyes moved curiously around the room, momentarily forgetting that they were not alone.

  Lord Phineus was locked inside the vast room with them, and it had produced a chilling effect on the master of the fallen Highlands. He had moved off alone into a dark corner near one of the pools, intent on nursing his wounded mind. Lord Phineus knew there was someone else in the room, someone the children didn't know anything about, but Lord Phineus was not prepared for the attack from behind, the ropes that tied his hands, the firm push to the ground.

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  [Image: The pools of water.]

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  "Who's there?" asked Samuel, gazing into the dark corner of the vast room of circular pools and paths.

  "It's a trick," said Isabel. "Lord Phineus is fooling with us."

  She was searching around for something she could use as a weapon and struck upon a long splinter of wood from one of the pulleys. Out of the darkness came the shadow of a man, tall and lanky.

  "Get back, Lord Phineus! Get back, I tell you!" cried Isabel.

  She very nearly began stabbing the stick toward the approaching figure when Samuel spoke.

  "Wait," he said hesitantly, as if he might be seeing a ghost. "That's not Lord Phineus. It's someone else."

  "Someone else indeed," came a familiar and friendly voice from the past. Into plain view strode Sir William, Samuel's long-lost father.

  "Samuel!" he cried. There was a year's worth of emotion in his voice. "Samuel!" he cried again, running around the rims of the pools and watching his boy do the same until they met.

  Sir William knelt down and Samuel rushed into his arms. The two embraced, and it looked to Isabel as if Sir William would never let his son out of his arms again.

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  *** CHAPTER 14 THE YELLOW LINE

  There was an all-too-brief moment of happy catching up between the father and the son, in which Sir William was overjoyed to learn that Samuel's mother was alive. Sir William looked unexpectedly well, for he had been drinking all he wanted from the source of all water. And there had been plenty of food, delivered in reasonably large quantity by Lord Phineus himself. He would bring supplies and the two would make adjustments to the flow of water together, adjustments that required two men to achieve.

  Lord Phineus brought their happy reunion to a stop by shouting from where he sat at the edge of the third pool. As Samuel turned toward the awful voice it appeared to him as if Lord Phineus had been tied up and was struggling to free himself. A great many beams, frayed ropes, and metal gears were

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  piled up around him. His boots were in the water, and his robe dangled heavy and wet over the edge.

  "Is he trapped?" asked Samuel, looking to his father for an explanation.

  "Untie me, you fool!" screamed Lord Phineus, his black boots splashing water as if he were a three-year-old having a tantrum. "We can't stay in here!"

  "He's not as strong as he once was," said Samuel's father. "It wasn't as hard to gain control over him as I thought it might be."

  "Was he bitten by one of those creat
ures?"

  Sir William nodded. "I believe he's going mad before our eyes."

  "Release me!" cried Lord Phineus again. He seemed to lose some of his vigor and hung his head, his chest heaving in and out.

  Isabel had been listening carefully to everything going on around her, but she had remained aloof, standing with her back against the door.

  "Who is this pretty girl you've dragged down here with you?" asked Sir William. His voice was gentle as he reached out toward her. He could see that she was afraid of him.

  "I'm Isabel, and he didn't drag me along." Isabel wanted not to trust this man before her, but with his kind blue eyes and shaggy beard he looked more like he belonged in the grove than in the halls of power in the Highlands. "I came looking for the source of water so I could release it again," she continued. "The grove is drying up."

  She hadn't yet taken Sir William's hand when it was held

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  out to her, and seeing she was a spirited sort of girl, he pointed his hand instead at the first pool of water.

  "It looks to me as if you could use some water yourself. You'll find none better."

  Samuel went straight to the pool and began lapping up water into his mouth and came up with a huge aaahhhhhhh! But Isabel was afraid Sir William might push her in.

  "Samuel said you disappeared over a year ago," she began. "That you'd fallen from the Highlands. He and his mother thought you were dead. They felt lost without you for so long. What have you been doing down here all this time?"

  "That's a fair question," answered Sir William. He ran his fingers through a beard flecked with grey that made him look older than he was.

  "I was brought here against my will." He looked at Lord Phineus, who had grown disturbingly quiet. "He made things very clear. Either I come here and turn the water off or on as he commanded, or Samuel and his mother would accidentally have a tragic fall over the edge of the Highlands."

  Sir William looked at Samuel. "If I'd tried to escape, you and your mother would have been killed. I had no choice but to remain here and do his bidding."

  Then Lord Phineus must have been as evil as she'd always imagined, Isabel thought. Satisfied with Sir William's explanation, she started toward the pool of glowing water to drink her fill. Sir William smiled and touched her on the arm. "Everything will be all right. I'll make sure nothing happens to either of you."

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  It was the first time since leaving home that Isabel felt a keen sense of being protected. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed the care of her parents, and it made her wonder what Edgar's life as an orphan had been like.

  Soon the reunion turned to darker matters. They were trapped behind a locked door, Atherton was violently collapsing in on itself, and Cleaners were on the loose. But though the news was harrowing and hard to imagine for Sir William, he never stopped encouraging Samuel and Isabel, and they felt mysteriously safe in a world gone crazy.

  At length Sir William glanced across the pools of water at Lord Phineus and found that he should have been paying more attention to his captive. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the meager light in the room, he could see that his captive had been quietly working on the ropes and was very nearly free of them.

  "Stay here!"

  Samuel and Isabel nodded their agreement and watched as Sir William rushed between the pools to Lord Phineus. As if suddenly a lunatic, Lord Phineus began shouting but not forming words, struggling to free himself from the ropes that ensnared him. In the tussle, Sir William slipped and crashed into the water of the third pool as Lord Phineus kicked frantically with his black boots. One of the boots caught Samuel's father across the face and he went under.

  "No!" cried Samuel. He began running toward the scene with Isabel close behind. "Leave him alone!"

  But Samuel needn't have worried. Sir William had kept in very good condition as the keeper of the water. Lord Phineus

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  was no match in his altered state of mind, and when Sir William exploded out of the water the tide quickly turned in the fight. Sir William turned Lord Phineus over and slammed his face into the stone floor. He tied his hands to a beam once more and sat him up.

  "Stay put. I won't be so friendly next time."

  "Cut me loose!" cried Lord Phineus. "I must leave this place!"

  In the midst of all the hysteria, something happened that even Sir William could not have imagined.

  The heavy locked door leading into the room began to move.

  Isabel was the first to notice the door opening, which also made her the first to see Edgar barge into the room. She was speechless for a long moment--everyone was--but finally, it was Isabel who said something.

  "Can it really be you?"

  "I could ask you the same question," said Edgar. This was how he'd always talked to her, and it didn't cross his mind to change his ways now. But for Isabel, this was one time she could not allow herself to pretend as if she didn't have feelings for the boy standing at the door. She ran to Edgar and embraced him. To Edgar's great surprise, he hugged her back.

  "I believe I'll be all right now," she said, gathering herself as she stepped back and looked at Edgar. "We're going to get out of here."

  Everyone went about the quick business of hearing how in the world they'd all arrived in the same place. "I told you he

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  didn't fall!" said Edgar on hearing the news that Sir William was Samuel's father.

  Dr. Kincaid and Vincent, shaking their heads in disbelief, had moved off toward Lord Phineus. They seemed to have a great deal of curiosity about him. The two of them were standing over Lord Phineus, trying to talk to him, but it seemed as if Lord Phineus would not listen. He was kicking at the water and yelling at them to leave him alone. Whatever Dr. Kincaid and Vincent were saying, it could not be heard by the others from across the long room.

  As Edgar watched this puzzling scene he began to sense that something was moving. It was the water in the pools. The light was shimmering and shaking on the walls and the ceiling, and suddenly, Sir William was alarmed.

  "Move toward the door!" he screamed. The smile had vanished from his face as Atherton came alive again. The water in the pools began to slosh back and forth lazily at first and then began bouncing unnaturally.

  "The water's too high!" said Sir William, pushing the children back against the wall and staring into the pools.

  "What do you mean?" Vincent shouted from across the room.

  "The water was always somewhere far below, deep in the nine holes, but it's finally come to the very top. We're about to be flooded!"

  Vincent gave his whip and the one lit torch they had among them to Dr. Kincaid, then he rapidly untied Lord Phineus and hauled him up on his feet. The captive struggled mightily at

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  first, but Vincent knew well how to contain a man half his strength. He held his arms back in such a way that the slightest fight from Lord Phineus produced sharp pain from his knuckles to his shoulders.

  When the nine pools began overflowing, the three men were nowhere near the door. In the blink of an eye the room became like a storm on an ocean, water flowing out of the glowing holes faster than anyone could have imagined possible.

  "Take the children out!" cried Vincent. "Get them past the door, into Mead's Hollow!"

  Sir William guided Samuel, Isabel, and Edgar toward the exit. They were propelled off their feet by the rush of water, and the three of them tumbled into Mead's Hollow where the storm had room to run shallow and wide.

  They were soaking wet when Vincent came out into the dark with Lord Phineus. He had managed to keep the flame alive through the torrent of water by holding it high above his head. Throwing Lord Phineus against the wall, he gazed back at the door in search of his companion.

  Atherton shook mercilessly, falling farther as waves of water reached as high as the middle of the doorway. Everyone had reached the other side of the door when they realized that Dr. Kincaid was not among them.

&
nbsp; When Atherton began to settle into a low hum, the water flowed through the door more slowly, and finally, Dr. Kincaid came tumbling out into Mead's Hollow, coughing and wheezing. Sir William pulled Dr. Kincaid out of the line of rushing water and slapped him on the back hard and fast.

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  "Stop that!" cried Dr. Kincaid, spitting and belching up water. "I'm fine. I only need a moment to recover."

  There was a brief silence as everyone listened to the gurgling and grinding of Atherton coming to a halt.

  "We almost lost you in there," said Vincent, still holding Lord Phineus so that his face was against the wall. "You must be more careful."

  "Tell that to Atherton!" howled Dr. Kincaid. Seeing all eyes on him, he was a little bothered by the attention he'd drawn to himself. He rose to his feet.

  "Turn him around. He must look at me!"

  Lord Phineus did not comply easily. He did not want to look at Dr. Kincaid. When he finally did there was a moment of terror on his face, then recognition.

  "Mead's Head!" he cried out. "How can it be you have Mead's Head?"

  But Dr. Kincaid was in no mood to answer the questions of a lunatic. He looked Lord Phineus square in the eye and commanded him to move.

  "To the yellow line!"

  Edgar, along with everyone else, had no idea why Dr. Kincaid wanted to follow the yellow line or why he suddenly thought Lord Phineus would listen to him. So it came as a surprise when Lord Phineus seemed to noticeably deflate. He began mumbling about Mead's Head, yellow lines, and ladders. And then, to everyone's amazement, he obeyed the command.

  "I'm going to need light," he said. There was a terrible, quiet anger in his voice. "If you expect me to go out there."