The Black Reckoning

by John Stephens

  He had not pressed them during the previous legs of their journey, the noise of the airplane and the rattling of the truck having rendered conversation impossible, and during their brief breaks, the couple had needed all the rest they could get.

  “Of course,” Richard said, breathing hard. “Tell me, though, how much do you know about the prophecy and the prophet? What did Pym tell you?”

  Gabriel confessed that, in truth, he knew very little about the ancient prophecy that had so ruled his and the children’s lives—only its essence: that the children would find the Books, unite them, and then perish.

  “That’s not surprising,” Richard said. “Most people, if they know about the prophecy at all, don’t know more than that.”

  But the couple explained how, years before, when Dr. Pym had told them who their children were destined to be, they had devoted themselves to learning everything they could about the Books and their history, and this had included the prophecy.

  “We didn’t learn everything, obviously,” Richard said. “We only found out about the predictions of the children’s deaths when Rourke told us a few months ago.”

  “But we still know quite a bit,” Clare said.

  “Right. So more than a thousand years ago, there was a famous seer among one of the nomadic tribes of the Sahara. He made hundreds of predictions, about wars, famines, plagues, disasters both natural and magical. And they weren’t your usual vague, mumbly sorts of prophecies that could be yanked to fit almost any situation. They were specific. Like ‘Everyone in this particular village should get out by this date because there’s going to be a plague of killer bees.’ ”

  “And he was right,” Clare said. “Again and again.”

  “And the last prediction he made,” Richard said, “was about the children and the Books. Then he vanished.”

  “You mean he died?”

  “No, vanished. Along with his whole tribe. Just disappeared out of the desert. There’re plenty of mentions in contemporary accounts. He was famous, after all; people noticed he was gone. Maybe he got tired of people always hunting him down and asking him to predict the future. Or maybe he was in some kind of danger, so he disappeared and took his people with him. No one knows.”

  “Only the tribe didn’t really vanish,” Clare said. “It wasn’t long before reports began popping up, of people seeing the tribe in the South American jungle. In Papua New Guinea. On the Russian steppes. The Faeroe Islands.”

  “And this is one of the places,” Gabriel said, “these mountains?”

  “Yes,” Richard said. “We found an account in the memoirs of a fourteenth-century spice trader who stumbled onto the tribe. That village where we left the plane, that was an old trading post. The trader went east from there, into the mountains, same as we are, and that’s where he found them.”

  “And are you simply hoping this tribe is still here?” Gabriel said, suddenly afraid he had been mistaken in trusting the couple’s judgment.

  “No, no, of course not,” Clare said. “We studied this. We went through all the accounts we could find, plotting out the places they’d been seen, and eventually a pattern emerged. It turned out the tribe was still nomadic. Only instead of migrating hundreds of miles, they migrated thousands, all across the globe. And they went to certain places at certain times. Rotating on a fifty-year cycle. It was very clear once you saw it. We never had a chance to tell Pym because we only discovered all this just before we were captured. But they should be here now.”

  “If our theory is right,” Richard said quietly.

  Which, Gabriel thought, was a rather large if.

  But he did not voice his doubt. Nor did he question how, even if they did find this lost tribe, they expected that to lead to the revelation of the rest of the prophecy. Did they think the prophecy would be written down in the village library? That the prophet’s old tribe would remember it verbatim? He didn’t ask because he already knew the answer. The couple didn’t know. They were here because they had nowhere else to go. And slim as this hope might be, it was their only one.

  —

  “I don’t understand,” Clare said. “This isn’t right.”

  They had followed the path up around the side of the mountain till they reached a cliff and were now staring out at more desolate red-brown peaks in the distance. The path wound down the face of the mountain away from them.

  “In the spice trader’s account,” Clare said, “he followed the eastern road from the village, the same as we did, but he said there was a bridge to another mountain, and he followed it to the village. Where’s the bridge? Where’s the village?”

  Her voice was tight with panic and frustration.

  “Maybe we missed a turn,” Richard said. “Or we’re on the wrong road.”

  “But there are no other eastern roads! It’s just like the boy said, there’s nothing up here!”

  As the couple debated, Gabriel glanced back at the path they had come up.

  “The trader’s account, it is very old?”

  “From the fourteenth century,” Clare said. “But it was incredibly detailed. Even if the bridge had fallen, there should be some evidence—”

  “So it was written before the Separation,” Gabriel went on, “before the magical world pulled away. What was clear then would now be hidden.”

  Without waiting for the couple to respond, he walked back along the path. Sixty yards from the cliff, he found what he was looking for, a watery glimmer in the air. In the dying light, he had walked right past it. He heard Richard and Clare behind him.

  “Focus on the shimmer,” Gabriel said as he stepped into it, feeling the tingle and the world widening around him, and then he was through, and the air still tasted the same, the sun hung at the same place in the sky, everything was the same but also different, for he was now in the magical world.

  He heard Clare gasp, and Richard say, “Whoa.” They were looking, he knew, at the mountain not a hundred yards away, the mountain that had not been there moments before and was connected to the peak on which they stood by a long rope or hemp bridge that hung suspended over a thousand-foot drop.

  “This is the bridge in the trader’s account,” Richard exclaimed. “The village should be just on the other side.” He started forward, but Gabriel put out a hand to hold him back.

  “What’re you doing? We have to hurry! We—”

  “We are not alone,” Gabriel said.

  Four or five large boulders studding the top of the mountain stood between themselves and the bridge, and the couple was silent now, for they could see the shadows disengaging themselves from the boulders and becoming men cloaked in the same hues as the rocks, holding short, curved bows, and with long daggers stuck in their belts.

  “They were here the whole time, weren’t they?” Richard whispered. “In the magic world. Waiting to see if we would come through.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me talk to them,” Clare said. “I’ll tell them we’re not here to hurt them.”

  “I doubt they’re worried about that,” Richard said.

  One man, tall and lean with a thick black beard and skin the color of the rocks, stepped forward. He looked at Gabriel, then held out his hand. Gabriel hesitated, then unslung his sword and passed it over, giving the man his knife and pack as well.

  Jamming Gabriel’s knife in his belt and slipping the pack and sword over his shoulder, the man turned and motioned for them to follow. They fell into a line, Gabriel, Clare, and finally Richard, with the band of men behind, and they made their way to the bridge and then across, the bridge swinging beneath their feet.

  The next peak was narrower than the one they had left, and the tall man led them through a passage in the rock, a short tunnel that Gabriel hadn’t seen from the other side. A minute later they stepped out and the village lay before them, thirty red-brown houses of compacted mud terraced into the concave face of the mountain. Gabriel could see figures moving about and hear the bleating of goats and the dull
clanking of bells.

  As they entered the village, women and children came out to watch them pass, all of them dressed in the same long cloaks as the men, and they stared at Gabriel and the couple with large, dark eyes. Gabriel looked up the narrow path between the mud and stone huts and he saw a figure move aside a rug that hung over the doorway of the last hut and step into the path. It was an old man, stooped and bald, and Gabriel was not surprised when the bearded leader of the band stopped before him.

  The old man looked more like a tortoise than anyone Gabriel had ever seen, with his skin both wrinkled and yet strangely smooth. He was leaning on a crooked cane, and he peered closely at Gabriel and at the couple.

  “Tell him who we are,” Richard said.

  Clare said something, and the old man nodded, murmuring a reply.

  “He says”—Clare’s voice was quiet—“that he’s been expecting us.”

  The old man pulled back the blanket and gestured into the darkness of his house. Richard and Clare exchanged a glance and stepped through. Gabriel moved to follow, but the bearded man barred his way.

  Then the old man stepped into the house, dropping the blanket behind him.

  —

  The old man led Richard and Clare to the back room and gestured to them to sit on the floor, which was covered with overlapping rugs. He sat facing them, on the other side of a small oil stove, which he quickly and deftly lit, and began heating up a pot of water. The old man had a weathered and leathery skull, heavy-lidded dark eyes, and as he manipulated the stove, his fingers stayed locked together, giving his hands the appearance of flippers. He was adding various things to the pot—herbs, roots, powders—and stirring them with a stick from the floor.

  “Ask him,” Richard said, “what he meant when he said he was waiting for us.”

  Clare spoke, then listened to the old man’s response and said to her husband, “He says that we must be the parents of the Keepers. That it was foretold we would come.”

  “Who is he?” Richard asked. “Is he…the prophet?”

  Clare translated, and the old man made a dismissive noise before responding.

  “He says the prophet has been dead for a thousand years. He is merely the one who sits in his place.”

  “Look”—Richard leaned forward—“not to be rude, it’s just that time is kind of an issue. The reason we’re here—”

  But the old man was already speaking. Clare listened, then translated. “He asks if we wish to hear the prophecy concerning the children and the Books. Is that not the reason we have come?”

  Clare responded herself.

  The old man shook his head, and Clare said:

  “He says he doesn’t know the prophecy.”

  “But—” Richard began.

  “He says,” Clare went on, “that we must hear it from the prophet.”

  “But the prophet’s dead!” Richard nearly shouted. “He just said so!”

  The pot on the stove was now bubbling, and the old man went to a small wooden box against the wall, undid the latch, and opened it. He took out an object bound in cloth, carefully unwrapping it to reveal a cloudy, whitish crystal in roughly the shape of a cube.

  He began to speak quickly, and Clare asked several questions, nodding if she understood or frowning if she didn’t.

  “What is that?” Richard asked.

  “He says it is a moment of frozen time.”

  The old man dropped the cube into the boiling pot and began to stir.

  “He says”—Clare was translating as the man spoke—“that if we wish to hear the prophecy, we must hear it from the prophet. We must go back in time.”

  “But only the Atlas can take you through time,” Richard said. “Pym told us—”

  “He says the cube was a piece of that time long ago. We will take it inside ourselves. It will be a part of us. We’ll see and hear as if we were there.”

  Then the old man took two slender glasses and poured in the dark, steaming, oddly thick liquid. He held them out in shaking hands.

  “I’ll do it,” Richard said to his wife. “Only one of us has to.”

  The old man seemed to understand, for he clucked his tongue.

  “He says we both have to,” Clare said. “That is what was foretold, and that is what has been prepared. Both or neither. That we came here seeking the answer, and this is the answer. Will we take it?”

  —

  It was dark now, and the temperature was dropping rapidly. Gabriel stood staring at the hut and the man who guarded the doorway. It seemed to Gabriel that he could feel each second ticking by. He had no idea what was happening on Loris, or to Emma in the world of the dead. But if the couple did not emerge soon, he would force his way in.

  Then Gabriel noticed a strange thing. Villagers—men, women, and children—were moving up the path toward the top of the mountain. They moved in ones and twos, sometimes whole families. They were going into what looked like a temple of some kind that had been carved into the stone at the mountain’s peak, some fifty or so feet above the rest of the village. They were all carrying bundles. Two young boys herded a dozen bleating goats up the path, disappearing as well into the mouth of the temple.

  In less time than Gabriel would have guessed possible, the village was empty and silent. It was just him and the tall guard. Then the blanket over the door moved, and the old man emerged.

  He looked at Gabriel and said, in English, “You must protect them till they return. All depends on that.”

  Then the bearded man took the old man’s arm, and they headed up the path. Gabriel’s pack, knife, and sword had been left on the ground.

  Gabriel immediately stepped into the small house, ducking for the low ceiling. He found the couple in the back room, stretched out on the floor, a pair of empty glasses on the ground beside them. Both were breathing, but their pulses were faint. He sniffed at one of the glasses but couldn’t identify the smell.

  He hurried out to see the old man and his companion entering the temple above.

  “Wait!”

  Gabriel raced up the hill. As he got close, he saw that the temple was just a columned façade that had been carved into the rock, giving way to a shallow cave. He stepped into the darkness. The cave was only ten feet deep. He was alone; there was no sign of the villagers, the goats, the old man.

  They had moved on.

  Gabriel stepped out into the chill night air, and as he did, a distant flickering caught his eye. From the steps of the temple, he could see past the rope bridge and across to the mountain they had climbed that afternoon. A line of torches, far down the mountain, was climbing slowly upward. He could not make out the figures, but on some deep, instinctual level, he knew who they were. And he understood the old man’s parting words.

  Their enemy had found them.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Prophecy Revealed

  Peering over the side of the mountain, Gabriel saw what he was searching for—a small cave, thirty feet down the face—and he went back to the house and carried first the woman, then the man, up to the edge of the cliff. He tied a rope around each in turn and lowered them down. Then he fixed his rope to a large boulder and climbed down himself.

  The cave was just deep enough that Richard and Clare would be invisible from above. The question was, if he himself were killed, would they be able to climb up without a rope? But to leave a rope in place would negate the whole point of their being hidden. He debated the point for a few seconds, then climbed up the cliff and took the rope from the boulder. He would have to make sure he survived.

  Before hiding the children’s parents, Gabriel had first assured himself that the grass bridge was the only way on or off the mountaintop, and indeed, there were only steep cliffs on all sides. The simplest thing would be to cut the bridge. But that would only strand him and the couple while doing nothing about the enemy, who would, sooner or later, find another way across.

  In the end, he sawed through half of the grass cables that held the bridge
in place, then hurried over to the other peak and along the path to take up a position that gave him a vantage point on the trail below. He counted twenty-eight torches, and thought he could see more figures that were not holding torches. Perhaps forty in all.

  Gabriel had found a bow left behind in the village, as well as a dozen arrows, and he now identified two places higher up the path where he could retreat and continue firing. He settled in to wait, and as he did, he found himself remembering how, over the past decade, he had made yearly visits to whatever orphanage had then housed the children. The first time had been five years after the adventure in Cambridge Falls, and the orphanage was a grand old building on the banks of the Charles River in Boston. From across the street, he’d seen Emma, still an infant, being rocked in her sister’s arms. By the second year, Emma had been staggering around with the drunken, fat-legged gait of a toddler. And so it had gone, year after year, orphanage after orphanage. He never stayed long; he was never seen. Over the course of a decade, those ten visits had added up to what? An hour? But however brief, they had given him strength for whatever missions and trials awaited him in the year ahead.

  Richard and Clare had never had that. They had not seen their children once during all their years of captivity, and yet they were still willing to go to any length, to take any risk, to ensure their safety.

  The old man’s admonition to protect the couple had been unnecessary. Gabriel would protect them just as he would have their children.

  He heard a shout from below, and a curse, and he looked and saw, in the midst of the group, a bald head rising above the rest, reflecting the glare of the torches.

  He notched an arrow on his string and got ready.

  —

  Clare opened her eyes and was blinded. As she blinked, letting her eyes adjust, she heard what sounded like the flapping of a tent in the wind. She sensed Richard beside her.

  When she could finally see, she caught her breath. She and Richard were on the rug-covered floor of an open-air tent, encamped beside a small oasis in a sea of endless white dunes. More tents dotted the sand. Cloaked figures moved about.