Lost Kingdom

by Matt Myklusch

  “Uhh… What are we doing at the Sarlacc Pit?” Joey asked as Shazad brought the carpet to a halt at the edge of the rocks.

  “I know it looks bad,” Shazad admitted, ignoring Joey’s Star Wars reference. “I’ve always been scared of this place. Ever since I was little, my parents warned me and Ali never to come here. That’s dry quicksand inside that ring. You go in, you don’t come out.”

  “And we’re here because…?” Leanora asked.

  “We’re going through.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment.

  “Through the quicksand,” Joey said, his tone revealing a clear lack of enthusiasm.

  “We’ll come out in the next location on the map,” Shazad said. “That’s why we have it. The red lines connecting the cities are shortcuts around the world, going through magical places—magic gates that are somehow still open! This one’s been here all this time, right in our backyard, and we never knew it.” He broke into an off-kilter laugh, amused that such an extraordinary find had gone unnoticed by his family for generations. “I guess it makes sense we never figured out what this was. How could we? Who in their right mind would ever go in there?”

  “I was just wondering that myself,” Joey said. “For a guy who doesn’t like risks, this feels like a major risk. All of this is a major risk.”

  Shazad moved the carpet out over the center of the pit. “Desperate times…”

  “Whoa!” Joey grabbed hold of the carpet to keep from falling off. “Can we talk about this?”

  “What’s to talk about? We have to get out of here.”

  “You said it yourself. People go in there and they don’t come back out.”

  “Not here they don’t,” Shazad stressed. “They don’t drown in the sand. They come out somewhere else.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Joey pressed.

  “I’m sure about one thing.” Shazad stood up on the carpet, careful not to tip it over. “I didn’t get the wand. I lost the staff. I am getting that shield.” He gripped the strap of the map tube with one hand and gave a casual salute with the other. “See you on the other side.”

  “Shazad, wait!” Joey shouted as Shazad took a step back and dropped off the carpet. He fell into the pit and vanished under the sand instantly. Joey and Leanora held tight to the carpet, looking over the edge for some sign of him, but there was nothing. The sand at the bottom of the pit appeared completely undisturbed. It was as if Shazad had never been there at all.

  “That was dramatic,” Leanora said, clearly impressed. “I feel like we’re seeing another side of Shazad.”

  “Tell me about it,” Joey agreed. “You think he’s all right?”

  “He better be. We’re up next.” Leanora took a breath and stood up slowly. She had her arms out as if balancing on a surfboard. “If he can do it, so can we. Are you coming?”

  Joey grimaced. “Do I have a choice?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s fate, remember?” Leanora threw Joey a wink.

  He made a noise that was half grunt, half laugh. “Good ol’ fate. I’ll be right behind you. I need to make a call first.”

  “Don’t take too long. We’ve got work to do.” Leanora leaped off the carpet and straightened out with her hands at her sides. It looked like she was doing a pencil dive into a swimming pool. A second later she was gone and Joey was alone.

  Joey got out his phone. It was three thirty a.m. where he was. Checking the world clock, he saw that it was nine thirty p.m. back home and six thirty p.m. in Los Angeles. He would have called his parents, but Shazad had already tucked them in (so to speak), and they would have kept him on the phone forever. He called Janelle instead.

  “Hello?” Joey asked once the phone stopped ringing. “Janelle, can you hear me?” Reception was spotty, but Joey thought he heard her pick up. He grabbed the edge of the carpet and tried to move it around in search of a better signal.

  “Joey! Yes, I can hear you.” Janelle’s voice solidified, and Joey breathed a sigh of relief. “What’s going on? Are you here yet?”

  “Not yet,” Joey said in a tone that suggested there was more to the story. “I’m actually not gonna make it out there today.”

  “Why not?” Janelle lowered her voice, sounding concerned. “Is everything okay? Your last text had me worried.”

  “I’m okay,” Joey said. “I think.”

  “You think? Where are you?”

  “Shazad’s place. Jorako. Nearby anyway.”

  “No way!” Leanora sounded jealous. Joey thought she might feel differently if she could see the quicksand pit beneath him. “I thought you guys couldn’t go there! What’s it like?”

  “It’s… I don’t even know where to begin. It’s amazing, but that’s not why I’m calling. Listen, Janelle, I’m gonna be off the grid for a little while. I need a favor. You have to text my parents as me. I’ll give you the number. Tell them I lost my phone and that you’re letting me use yours to stay in touch.”

  “What do I do when they call my phone because they want to talk to you?”

  “Just say you can’t talk. Stall them.”

  “For how long? When are you getting here?”

  “I don’t know. Soon, I hope. We’re going on a quest.”

  “A quest? What are you—” She broke off, exasperated. “Joey, we’re supposed to be working out here. I need your help!”

  “I think this will help,” Joey told her. “I’ll explain more when I see you, but right now I gotta go. Everyone’s waiting for me. Think you can you handle my mom and dad while I’m gone?”

  Janelle grumbled reluctantly. “I can do that. As long I drop a comic book or movie reference every other text, they won’t suspect a thing.”

  Joey laughed, knowing she was right. “You rock, Janelle.”

  “I know. Just don’t take too long. There’s only so much I can do. Speaking of which, are Shazad and Leanora going to let you bring the mask when you’re done questing?”

  “Well, I’ve got it with me,” Joey said, not quite answering the question.

  “Good. Everyone here wants to know what this big breakthrough I found is. I don’t know what to tell them.”

  “You’ll think of something. You’re a genius.”

  “Just hurry up. We’re saving the planet this week, remember?”

  “That’s the plan,” Joey agreed, but at the moment he was thinking about something better than the mask—Camelot and the Caliburn Shield. “Wish me luck.”

  He hung up and looked down at the Devil’s Teeth. Shazad and Leanora had jumped in like it was nothing, but it felt like a bigger deal to him. Maybe it was because he had to do it alone. Or maybe it was because he’d had too much time to think about it. It occurred to Joey that everything he knew about magic centered on belief. Every magical thing he could do depended on the ability to banish doubt and fear from his mind. It was something he was having trouble with at the moment. He was hung up on the message from the map. Part of it, anyway. “Be not afraid,” Joey whispered into the night. “Courage serves those who have strayed beyond the Devil’s Teeth.” He wondered what would happen if he jumped into the pit with anything less than total confidence. Would the magic gate still be there for him? Assuming it was there to begin with and his friends weren’t suffocating under the sand?

  “Stop it,” Joey told himself. “Don’t think like that.”

  Joey forced himself to stand. He balled up his fists. It was possible that people who had stumbled into the pit by accident and went under while trying to claw their way out ended up drowning in quicksand. But it was equally possible that people who went in willingly and took a leap of faith ended up somewhere entirely different. It was a choice. Redondo had once told Joey “magnificence is a decision.” Right now he had a decision to make. Dive in or bail out? Joey looked around at the barren desert landscape. “Who am I kidding?” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, relaxing his muscles. Relaxing everything. A second later he was falling through the air, thinking only of C
amelot and of seeing his friends again.

  10 Vampire Tourism

  It was like skydiving in a sandstorm. Joey buried his face in the crook of his arm as he fell for hundreds of feet. The pit seemed to have no bottom, but it did have air. Joey could tell because he heard the wind whipping sand around his body like a tornado. He felt it too. A million grains of sand attacked him, stabbing at his skin like tiny little pins. Joey gritted his teeth, hoping it would be over soon. After a few seconds with no end in sight, he realized he couldn’t tell if he was actually falling, or if it just felt that way because of the rushing wind flying up past his body. Keeping his head down, he cracked his eyes open for a peek. As soon as he did that, the falling stopped. Much to Joey’s surprise, he saw that his feet were firmly planted on the ground. The swirling sands around him thinned out, dissipating into twinkly stardust. A gentle breeze carried it off into oblivion, and his journey was complete.

  Moving slowly, Joey lifted his head up from his elbow and took stock of his surroundings. He was standing on a cobblestone street in the middle of an intersection. At first glance, he thought he’d gone back in time a few hundred years, but then he saw a row of streetlights glowing in the night. He spit out a mouthful of sand, finding humor in the fact that unwanted time travel had become a legitimate concern for him, however fleeting. You never could tell what a new piece of magic would do. Fortunately, Joey wasn’t stuck in the past. It was just a sleepy little town—somewhere in Europe, if he had to guess. Looking around, Joey decided that “town” was too generous, and perhaps too busy a word for where he was. “Village” felt more appropriate. The place had an old-world quality, like something out of a folktale. Aging, Tudor-style houses with steeply pitched roofs and dark brown wooden framework tilted over the winding, narrow streets. Every structure appeared to be handcrafted from wood and stone. They were crammed in on top of one another, none of them seemed to have any right angles, and many of them were ready to fall apart. It was quiet as a crypt. The doors were all shut and the curtains were drawn inside every window. Even with the streetlights, the road ahead disappeared into darkness.

  And I thought the Devil’s Teeth looked haunted.

  “Joey, over here,” Shazad said behind him.

  Joey turned around and saw his friends standing under a dim, flickering lamppost where the cobblestones gave way to dirt road. They were looking at the map, aided by the light from a glowing pendant around Leanora’s neck. Joey went to join them.

  “We were beginning to wonder if you were coming,” Leanora said once he got there.

  “I had to psyche myself up for the jump,” Joey admitted. “That was weird. I felt like I was falling forever, but then I looked down and I was already on the street. How long was I standing over there? With my head ducked down like that?”

  Shazad smirked. “A little while.”

  Joey made a face. “Thanks for telling me.” He imagined himself standing out in the street with his head covered up, thinking he was still falling. It was embarrassing, not to mention unsafe. “We’re lucky we did this in the middle of the night. I could have gotten hit by a car—or a runaway mule cart,” he added with a nod toward the village. “Where are we, anyway?”

  “See for yourself.” Leanora slid over to give him a better view of the map. Joey leaned in as she held her glowing stone pendant over their location.

  “Transylvania?” Joey blurted out in disbelief. “Is that even a real country?”

  “Why does everybody say that?” Leanora wondered aloud. “It’s not a country; it’s a region. This is Romania. I’ve been here with my family plenty of times performing. We’ve been all over Europe. You’d be surprised how many people think Transylvania is fictional. It’s a real place. Dracula was made up, not Transylvania.”

  “I thought Dracula was a real guy,” Joey said. “Wasn’t he based on Vlad the Impaler?”

  “Based on,” Leanora stressed. “Maybe. Vlad Ţepeş was a fifteenth-century Wallachian prince. He had a reputation for cruelty, with impalement being his favorite method of execution. He was the second son of Vlad Dracul, and Bram Stoker used the name for Count Dracula. Whether or not he was the inspiration for the character, I couldn’t tell you, but he wasn’t a vampire.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this,” Joey said.

  “I told you, I’ve been here before. Depending who you’re talking to, you have to watch what you say about vampires. Not everyone’s thrilled with their history and culture getting swallowed up by ghost stories, but it’s hard to avoid. For every person who wants to remember Vlad Ţepeş as a national hero, there’s someone else selling guided tours of Bran Castle to people on vacation.”

  “Vampire tourism,” Joey said. “We’re sure that’s all there is to it? ’Cause I didn’t bring any garlic with me.”

  “I think we’ll manage,” Leanora said.

  “I hope so,” Joey said. “We’re sure we didn’t go back in time, either?” he asked, only half kidding. He gestured to a pair of horse-drawn carts and wagons, one loaded up with barrels and the other with hay. “I’ve never been to Romania before, but this looks pretty medieval.”

  “Romania has beautiful cities,” Leanora said sternly. “This is just a rural village. I’m sorry, not every place can be as cosmopolitan as Hoboken.”

  Joey put his hands up. “I’m not judging. I’m just saying, if you don’t like ghost stories, maybe don’t have the Brothers Grimm design your village. And you can make fun of Hoboken if you want, but it’s more sophisticated than you think. It’s practically the sixth borough of New York City.”

  “Can we focus?” asked Shazad. “We’ve got a long road ahead of us. Relatively speaking.”

  “I’m just getting my bearings,” Joey said. “What’s the plan?”

  “I’ll show you. Hold this.” Shazad offered one end of the map to Joey, giving himself a free hand to lay out the route he wanted them to take. Tracing the red lines on the map, Shazad went from Jorako to Transylvania to a place called Celestia, which was somewhere in Brazil, and finally to southern England, which was just as faded and hard to read as it had been back in the library.

  “Not the quickest way to get where we want to go,” Joey said.

  “Are you sure?” Shazad countered. “Don’t forget, a minute ago you were in North Africa, over two thousand miles away.”

  “That’s true,” Joey admitted. “What I mean is it’s not the most direct route. Also, who knows what we’re going to run into on the way? Can’t we skip all that and go straight to England?”

  “We could, but how are we going to get there?” Leanora asked. “We left the flying carpet back in the desert—not that we could have used it out in the open, anyway. You want to find the nearest airport?”

  Joey grimaced. Another good point. They didn’t have any money or passports, either. “So how do we get to Brazil?”

  “Through the woods. Look here.” Shazad zoomed in on their location on the map, finding a castle in the woods that surrounded the village. The red line that connected Transylvania to Celestia started there.

  “The Dead Woods,” Joey said, reading the name off the map. “Gotta love the names of these places.”

  “It’s just a name,” Leanora said. “Probably.”

  “Sure,” Joey replied. “It’s a totally normal, totally innocent name. I like it, actually. It’s got a nice ring to it.” His eyes had now adjusted to the darkness. He could make out a dense forest that bordered the village and a mountain range beyond the trees. “I see the woods. I don’t see the castle. Are we sure we’re in the right place?”

  Shazad hiked his shoulders. “The map says we are.”

  Leanora pointed up at the rocky peaks in the distance. “Those are the Carpathian Mountains up there. This forest must be the Dead Woods.”

  “Ever heard of this place before?” Joey asked.

  “No,” Leanora said. “I’ve heard of Hoia Forest in Romania. It’s supposed to be the most haunted forest in the world, but that
’s here.” She zoomed out on the map and pointed to an area that was hundreds of miles to the west.

  “Is that where Dracula’s castle is?” Joey asked.

  “No, that’s Bran Castle, outside Brașov—here.” She scrolled to another area on the map, several hours to the south. “But that wasn’t even Vlad Ţepeş’s castle really. I told you, it’s just for the tourists.”

  “What are we looking for, then?” Joey asked. “Is there another message?”

  “There is,” Shazad said. “We’re not sure what it means yet. I’m assuming we’ll understand better once we get there.” He scrolled back to the castle in the Dead Woods and centered the map view on two lines written in elaborate cursive:

  100 doors in the dungeon. The Count gave his prisoners a chance…

  A long life of exile and mercy, or a short one impaled on a lance.

  “The Count, huh?” Joey looked at Leanora. “Let’s hope you’re right about the vampires.”

  “Don’t worry. That’s all superstition.”

  Joey nodded, unsure but very much wanting to believe Leanora.

  “We trusted the map enough to follow it into a pit of quicksand,” Shazad reasoned. “That worked out fine. We’re all here. I say we stick with it.”

  “I’m with you,” Leanora said.

  They both looked at Joey as if he might need more convincing. He pffed at that, putting on a brave face. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not backing out. I might have a few questions, but I’m not going anywhere except with you guys.”

  “What are we waiting for, then?” Shazad smiled and rolled up the map. “Let’s go.”

  Joey, Shazad, and Leanora followed the main road out of the village, headed for the dark unknown of the forest. They walked under the streetlights as long as they could, which is to say, not very long at all. Once they reached the edge of town, they were forced to make do with the light from Leanora’s glowing pendant. Fortunately, she was able to intensify its brightness, creating a magical flashlight, which Joey thought was a neat trick. Leanora called the pendant a sunstone. There was an actual ray of sunshine trapped inside it, which charged up during the day and could be rationed out at night. They had to use it sparingly and make sure it lasted until morning. The road split near a farm outside the village. On one side, a dirt path bordered a field where a flock of sheep slept peacefully. On the other, a paved road wound around the corner, most likely leading off to more populated areas. Joey and the others followed the dirt path toward a forest gate. The field had a fence to keep the sheep from wandering into the woods and getting lost. Shazad unlatched the gate and went into the forest. Joey followed him in. He wasn’t worried about getting lost. They had the map.