Skykeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  The world went black and they slammed down onto a hard, flat surface.

  Suddenly, it got very quiet. And very dark.

  Sasha lay still for a moment, pinned beneath his solidity and reassured by his steady heartbeat. “You okay?”

  “I was just about to ask you the same.”

  “Then I guess that means we’re both fine. You have another glow stick?” They’d both lost theirs.

  “Yeah.” He rolled off her, fumbled for a moment, and was rewarded by a wan light that started pale yellow and brightened to orange. As it did, he cursed foully under his breath, because the light showed a dense pile of rubble and the smooth walls of the tunnel they’d been in moments before . . . except the orientation was wrong, and there was no tzomplanti. “We’re on the other fucking side of the cave-in.”

  “Magic,” Sasha said simply. She pulled herself to her feet and dusted herself off, finding sore spots but no major injuries. “Maybe this is where we’re supposed to be,” she said, turning toward him. “Maybe this is the way to the—” She broke off, horrified. “Behind you!”

  But it was too late. The demi-nahwal swept its arm in a wide gesture, and an unseen force yanked Michael off his feet, slammed him into the wall, and held him suspended there, several feet off the ground. Michael cursed and cast top-level shield magic, slamming his spell against that of the demi-nahwal. The clash of power saved Michael from being crushed against the wall, but he couldn’t break free. The cords on the side of his neck stood out with the effort of holding magic against magic. “Get moving,” he grated at Sasha. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  He wasn’t telling her to run away, though. Snapping to action, she closed on the demi-nahwal. The creature was wholly focused on Michael. Its lips were pulled back in a feral snarl that revealed sharply pointed teeth; its eyes gleamed with the same madness she’d seen in her vision. Palming her knife, partly for blood sacrifice, partly for defense, Sasha pricked her palm and called on the magic, the music. They came quickly in a thunder of drums, a complicated beat that folded back on itself and then raced ahead, making her think of running feet. “Ambrose,” she said softly. “It’s me. Sasha.”

  The creature didn’t respond except to increase the pressure on Michael, who groaned and rolled his eyes in her direction, rasping, “Losing air here, babe.”

  “Don’t call me babe.” Steeling herself, Sasha touched the nahwal’s arm, shuddering at the slippery texture of the shiny skin that was tightly stretched over wooden muscles and sinews. The drumbeats came faster, sounding like a monsoon hitting the roof of a canvas tent.

  Magic, she thought, joy blooming as the ch’ul sang through her, sweeping her up. She rode the energy flow as it pulled her out of herself and into the man who’d been the only father she’d ever known, for better or worse.

  Joy fled in an instant as madness surrounded her.

  Anger. Rage. Insanity. The unsteady emotions spun around her in a chaos of rimshots and timpani slams, catching her up and sucking her into a forming vortex of drumbeats. She screamed and fought, flailing with insubstantial arms, trying to battle an enemy of sound. Instinctively she grabbed onto the magic and tried to control the drums, tried to slow their beat, to shape the music, control the ch’ul. But she couldn’t do it—maybe because he was too far gone in the madness, maybe because she wasn’t doing it right. She fought the noise-tide, struggling, screaming, but made no headway. Instead, she felt her grip on herself start to falter. Instinctively knowing she’d truly be lost if she gave up that connection, she focused on her own body, trying to find the feeling of the demi-nahwal’s hand beneath her arm.

  “Ambrose!” she shouted, still lost somewhere within his energy. “It’s me, Sasha! Your princess.” The din was incredible; she couldn’t even hear herself. Still, she tried again. “Ambrose? Where are you? Help me, damn it. You’re going to kill me!”

  Her only answer was a vicious whip of mad joy, a chortle of glee that sounded all around her.

  Panicking, she sought her own body, her own song, but she couldn’t hear it over all the rocketing drums. “Help!” she screamed. “Help me!”

  Suddenly a silver gleam cracked through the whirl and wrapped around her. She screamed and struggled, but it yanked her through the drums and madness. She was still screaming when she slammed back into her own body and found herself in Michael’s arms. His eyes gleamed with silver magic and rage. Cursing, he pulled her away from the demi-nahwal, then backhanded the creature, driving it to its knees. Putting himself between them, he jerked the machete from its scabbard.

  “Michael!” Sasha caught his arm, and held on when he tried to wrench it away. “Michael, stop!”

  He didn’t hear her, just bulled through her restraining grasp and lunged for the demi-nahwal.

  “No!” Heart pounding in her throat, Sasha flung herself into the path of the sharp-edged machete. She screamed as the blade descended in a sweeping arc.

  It froze less than an inch from her neck.

  She hadn’t realized she had closed her eyes until she was forced to open them in order to look at Michael. He was rigor-locked above her, the cords standing out on his neck and arms, muscles quivering with tension. He stared down at her, eyes dark and wild, but his own. “I almost killed you.”

  “You wouldn’t have,” she said with quiet assurance, though the fear knotted in her stomach wasn’t so certain.

  His expression went hard around the edges. “You’re wrong about that.”

  He was trying to frighten her, she knew. And he was succeeding, not just because of the blade, but because of the silver magic, which was too powerful to be Nightkeeper, too clean to be Xibalban. What is it? she wanted to ask him. What are you?

  Not sure she was ready for the answers to those questions, she eased away and focused on Ambrose—or rather, the thing that was somehow the embodiment of Ambrose’s ghost.

  When she saw a familiar tic come from the otherwise motionless demi-nahwal, Ambrose’s habitual chin twitch, she said, “I think he’s coming out of it.” She was slow to turn her back on Michael, and her warrior’s talent chimed a warning when she did, but she ignored it to hunker down near the demi-nahwal. She touched Ambrose’s scarred wrist, found the thunder of drums within him. “Ambrose? If you can hear me, I want you to come toward the sound of my voice. Don’t think about the drums; don’t listen to them. Come toward my voice.” She’d seen a similar tactic work for Pim once or twice, though without the part about the drums. If that chaotic beat was his ch’ul . . . she shuddered at the thought of being locked inside a pattern like that. “That’s it,” she said when the tics intensified. “Toward my voice. You can do it.”

  The creature reeled and let out a keening noise as it seemed to collapse in on itself. Then it straightened and looked at her, and the madness was, if not gone, then significantly reduced. “Sasha?”

  The voice wasn’t Ambrose’s—it was too high, gone otherworldly around the edges. But the tone was right, and the timbre. “I’m here,” she said, speaking quickly because she didn’t know how long he would be able to hold on to reality. “Where is the library scroll?”

  “You’re here,” Ambrose said as though she hadn’t spoken. “I’d almost given up hope.” He looked past her and up, to Michael—first his face, then his forearm. A long, slow breath escaped from the demi-nahwal’s body. “You found them. I had hoped you’d come for my body, and see the message I left.”

  “Starscript,” Michael explained at her sidelong look. “Lucius found it. That was what led him to Skywatch.”

  The knowledge that he’d tried to contact her helped somehow.

  “Ambrose,” she said firmly, “Where is the library scroll?”

  “It’s down there,” he said, gesturing down the hallway. “In the tomb. The coffin will open during the solstice, and you’ll find the scroll inside. It’ll tell you what you need to know to summon the Prophet. He’ll tell you everything you need to know.” His voice dropped. “You’ve left it a
lmost too late. The spell must be performed by the triad anniversary. After that, the barrier will be too unstable to form the conduit.”

  “Which gives us one chance and once chance only.” Michael shook his head. “We should’ve been here earlier.”

  “Time happens in time,” Ambrose said cryptically, then reached out toward Sasha. She nearly jerked away, but he didn’t touch her, just caressed the air above her marks, pausing over the jaguar and the ju. “Your mother had a vision that we were all going to die. She couldn’t talk Scarred-Jaguar out of attacking the intersection, couldn’t go against him publicly. But you were the daughter of the sky, the daughter of the prophecy. She knew you had to live. She trusted me, her favorite brother.” His voice had started to weaken, the tone fluctuating. “She told the others you were stillborn, only you weren’t. You were perfect . . . but I wasn’t. The scorpion spell took my magic, but the river broke something inside me. I wasn’t right after that. I wasn’t good for you, wasn’t good to you. I tried. Pim tried. Neither of us was good enough. I tried to find the others, tried to find you a winikin, but they’d hidden too well after the massacre, and I got so confused sometimes. Then other times it all seemed like a dream. The compound was gone. Everyone I knew, everything I understood.” His voice broke to a whisper. “Gone. Nothing there. Just sand. So I did my best to teach you myself. But I couldn’t. You wouldn’t believe.”

  Sasha’s voice cracked. “How could I know you were telling the truth, when everything else was so screwed up?”

  “Impossible, I know.” His immobile face somehow reflected grief. “But then the barrier woke up. I felt it, even if I couldn’t use it anymore. I went crazy—well, crazier. It scared Pim. I think it broke her. She gave up on me at long last. After she . . . did what she did, I came here to see if I could reconnect with the barrier. When I did, I hid the scroll inside the coffin, where it would be safe. But they found me here—the redhead and the woman. When they started asking me about the library, I knew what I had to do.”

  Chill fingers closed around her heart. “You killed yourself.” Iago hadn’t killed Pim or Ambrose, after all. Pim truly had committed suicide, out of despair for the life she’d wanted, the one she’d talked herself into believing Ambrose would give her someday. And Ambrose . . . he’d killed himself rather than reveal the library’s location. He’d been loyal to the end . . . with nobody to honor him for the sacrifice.

  “The gods came for me.” His face lit for a second, and she heard a trill of perfectly pure melody. “They wanted to take me to the sky, but I couldn’t go. I stayed here.” He reached out to her again. “I stayed for you, waiting for you to find your way, find the magic. Then you’d come. I knew you’d come.” His voice had gone increasingly singsong as he lost his tenuous grip on reality.

  Sasha knew the signs, knew they didn’t have much time before he slipped away again. “Ambrose, listen to me,” she said urgently. “We’re taking your body back with us. You’ll have a full funeral at Skywatch.”

  “Skywatch?”

  “The training compound,” Michael put in. At Sasha’s frown, he clarified: “Leah named it. Thought it’d be good for morale.”

  “The canyon,” Ambrose said beatifically, his voice going ragged.

  “Yes,” Sasha agreed.“So you can let go now.You don’t have to stay here. You can let the gods bring you up to the sky. You’ve . . .” She trailed off, feeling something shift inside her. “You’ve done your job. We’ll take it from here. And Ambrose . . . thank you. For everything.”

  His expression cleared for a moment, as though his conscious self were fighting for another moment with her. “How many of you are there?”

  “Enough,” she said, because what other answer was there?

  “Thank the gods.” He paused and reached for her, and this time she caught his hand in hers. “I’m sorry I was such a bad father.”

  Her heart cracked. “And I’m sorry I didn’t believe. I’m sorry I stayed away so long. And I’m sorry . . .” She faltered. “I’m sorry you died alone.” Lifting his dry, desiccated hand, she held it to her cheek, against the wetness of tears she hadn’t entirely been aware of shedding. “Go with the gods, Ambrose.”

  “You, too, Princess.” He exhaled and started to collapse then, losing form and shape, and drawing inward on himself. The outline of his body shimmered to vapor, then went transparent. At the last moment, his eyes locked on Michael’s, and widened fractionally in a look that might’ve been surprise, might’ve been something else. “Mic—”

  The word cut off as he disappeared in a flash of blinding white light that smelled of ozone and the sky.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Michael growled, “Again with the ‘mick’ thing. What is that about?” But something in his eyes suggested that he already knew.

  “Maybe it has something to do with the silver magic you’re channeling.” She turned on him. “Start talking. What are you doing? Why haven’t you told anybody there’s another type of magic Nightkeepers can tap?”

  He stared at her, mouth working.

  “Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”

  “Sasha—” he began before breaking off, sounding desperate. Eyes wide, he said “What the hell?”

  The rubble-filled tunnel shimmered, flickering in and out in a red-gold starburst . . . and then the debris disappeared, leaving the tunnel clear. Startled yells greeted them from the other side, where the other Nightkeepers were uplinked for big magic. Sasha gaped at them.

  Strike broke from the circle and crossed to her, caught her by the arms. “Are you okay?” He looked from her to Michael and back. “What the hell happened?” Then he looked at the tunnel beyond them. “What’s down there?”

  Sasha opened her mouth to explain, but then log-jammed, stopped, and looked at Michael, who said, “I think we should all probably take a look together.” His eyes were his own again. There was no sign of the strange magic.

  Then he turned and headed down the tunnel in the direction Ambrose had indicated, the orange glow of his light stick dipping slightly as he walked. Sasha hurried to catch up, so they were walking side by side as they came to a corner, turned it, and saw the first real carvings they’d seen in the subterranean tunnel, a row of screaming human skulls, their eye sockets seeming to follow as Sasha moved past them.

  Only the first few carvings were of human skulls, though. After that, they started morphing, becoming something else entirely. The farther inward the Nightkeepers went, the less the skulls looked human, the more they started to look like sharp-eared cats and dogs, and a wide-skulled bird of prey that looked familiar to Sasha, though she couldn’t quite place it.

  “Egyptian,” Michael said under his breath, then raised his voice: “Rabbit, any of this looking familiar?”

  So far, they’d been unable to identify the tomb Rabbit had seen during his impromptu vision quest, and Strike had understandably put a potential wild-goose chase to Egypt pretty low on the priority list. But Ambrose had said something about a sarcophagus. What if the tomb Rabbit had seen wasn’t in Egypt after all? The ancestors of the modern Nightkeepers had fled Akhenaton’s religious cleansing in 1300-something B.C. and wound up in Central America, so it wouldn’t be impossible for some of the Egyptian techniques to have transferred. Only a handful of Nightkeepers had survived the First Massacre, and they had quickly assimilated into the indigenous population, eventually boostrapping the Olmec into the culture that had become the Mayan Empire. Which meant—

  “If this shit is what I think it is,” Strike murmured from behind Sasha, “we’re walking in our first ancestors’ footsteps. Literally.”

  She shivered as icy fingers walked down her spine as a staggering suspicion formed.

  The tunnel ended at an open doorway. Lifting her glow stick, Sasha stepped through into a vaulted chamber that was roughly rectangular, its construction not nearly as regular as the architecture of the Mayan-era Nightkeepers. Which played if they assumed it’d b
een built by one of the first few generations of magi after the transoceanic voyage. The space seemed to have been carved out of the limestone base itself, hewn from the stone using cruder implements than the ones used to make the later pyramids at Chichén Itzá and elsewhere.

  The walls were painted rather than carved, and even though Sasha had halfway expected the hieroglyphs, it took her a moment to make the transition. Her brain was used to the Mayan glyphs, the anamorphic figures and humans drawn and carved with flattened foreheads and conical skulls, heavy brow ridges and protruding noses. These painted figures didn’t wear feathers and jade, weren’t offering blood to the gods. No, the paintings were done in a different, though related style, one of angular figures posed stiff limbed, their catlike eyes marked at their edges with curlicues and lines, making each eye into a glyph itself: that of the sun god. Other gods were painted elsewhere around the room: the falcon-headed Horus, Bast the cat, Nekhbet the vulture, Hathor the cow, Anubis the jackal.

  They were the gods of the Egyptian pharaohs prior to Akhenaton. And they were the gods of the single adult mage who’d survived Akhenaton’s religious purge and had led the Nightkeeper children and their familial slaves to safety.

  In the center of the room rose a huge waist-high box of carved and painted stone. The lid bore a life-size representation of a man laid out flat on his back with his arms crossed over his chest. Instead of the traditional staff and flail found on an Egyptian coffin, though, the figure held a ritual knife in one hand, an oval object in the other. A chill washed over Sasha when she recognized the latter as a highly stylized cacao seedpod, which had symbolized life and wealth in the Nightkeepers’ new world.

  Magic hummed in the air, latent and waiting, identifying the chamber as a place of enormous power, just as the hieroglyphs marked it as incredibly ancient, incredibly important. “Is it . . .” She trailed off, afraid to put it into words.