Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow

by James Rollins

  Or maybe it wasn’t.

  Before they could talk further, the door swung open and Marika’s father stumbled into the room, wheezing, out of breath. He must have run all the way there.

  Jake stood up, fear for his sister drawing him to his feet.

  Balam waved Jake back down. “She…she’s fine,” he gasped out. “I got Bornholm all stirred up like a nest of ants, but there’s been no trouble there.” Balam reached the table and leaned an arm on it. “See, it was probably all an accident, like I said.”

  Jake felt a surge of relief that Kady was safe, but it failed to completely wash away the suspicion in his heart. Magister Oswin’s earlier words stayed with him.

  And words are like bullets…

  Jake clutched the scorpion’s barb. He stared over to Marika and read the same doubt in her eyes. No matter what anyone said, Jake knew the attack had been no accident.

  But who wanted him dead?

  15

  THE CRYSTAL HEART OF KUKULKAN

  The next morning, Jake sat in the Astromicon, starting his apprenticeship. He felt 1,000 percent better.

  Balam gave him a wooden tray that was sectioned into little boxes. The boxes held shards of crystals across a rainbow of colors. There had to be more than a hundred different shades.

  “Each colored crystal serves a unique purpose,” Balam explained, standing next to Jake. “Some we know what they do, like this one.”

  He plucked a crystal from the tray and held it up into a shaft of sunlight that beamed through one of the twelve holes in the dome. The crystal was the color of dark red wine.

  Balam turned to Marika, who sat on a stool next to Jake. He raised an eyebrow toward her. “And what’s the name of this crystal?”

  She scrunched up her brow in thought. “Ironshine?”

  “Very good,” he said with a proud flash of a smile. “This stone, when wet, draws iron to its heart.”

  Balam licked the crystal and placed it near a small metal nail. The nail leaped off the table and stuck to the shard.

  Jake leaned in closer, fascinated. The crystal had somehow become magnetized.

  Balam smiled at his reaction, pleased with his demonstration, then tapped the crystal with a silver hammer. The iron nail clattered back to the tabletop.

  “Other crystals remain a mystery, and it is such mysteries that I spend my days studying.” Balam placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Most of the time, alchemy is one part wisdom and nine parts chance. And more often than not, dangerous.” Balam touched the silver badge on Jake’s jacket. “These are the four cornerstones of alchemy. And you must learn them well.”

  Jake stared down at embedded crystals on his badge. The ruby, the emerald, the sapphire formed a triangle around the diamond. Balam tapped each one.

  “From these stones all others rise.” Balam waved a hand over the box. “‘From the four flows all the power of Kukulkan.’”

  As Jake studied the badge, something began to trickle through his brain, something he’d learned long ago. But what was it? Something to do with the three colored stones that formed the triangle: red, green, blue…

  Then he suddenly remembered. It was like a starburst going off in his head. Something his father had shown him when they were out camping. Jake twisted in his chair and bent down to his backpack on the floor. He searched through its content and found what he was seeking buried near the bottom of the pack.

  His franticness had drawn Balam’s interest.

  Jake pulled free a chunk of quartz cut into a triangular prism. “Red, green, blue,” he said. “They’re the three primary colors of light!”

  His father had explained how televisions and computers used red, blue, and green phosphors to produce the millions of colors on the screen. Jake’s father had also shown him something else.

  Before anyone could respond, Jake lifted the quartz prism into the shaft of sunlight. As the sun’s ray shot through it, the light shattered into a small rainbow that splashed against the wall.

  “This is advanced alchemy,” Balam explained. “Few understand how hidden in the heart of sunlight are all the colors of the world. In fact, all alchemy starts with the sun.” He pointed to the open slits across the roof of the dome, then turned his focus back to Jake. “Where did you learn this?”

  “From my parents,” he answered. “They taught me how if you mix different colored lights together, you can make a new color.” Jake pointed to the rainbow on the wall, to where the red and green bands of light blended together to form a yellow streak. “Red light and green light make yellow. While red and blue blend into purple. And the more you mix, the more colors you can make.”

  Jake lowered his prism and the rainbow vanished.

  Balam still stared at the wall, as if the rainbow still shone there. He slowly shook his head. “Such knowledge is reserved for journeymen of the third degree,” he said. “Not for first-year apprentices. Such knowledge lies at the heart of how we forge new crystals, how we make the new colored stones.”

  He nodded to the box of multicolored crystals.

  “Wait,” Jake said. “Are you saying you made all these crystals? How?”

  Balam reached over Jake. “Let me show you.” He removed an emerald green shard and a sliver of ruby from the box. He crossed to the center of the room and lifted the two stones into a tiny bronze basket that hung by a chain from the clockwork mechanism that filled the dome overhead. Balam pulled another chain that sent the basket up into the mechanism.

  Jake quickly lost track of it as it spun and whirled through the complicated mechanical maze. Fluid flowed through glass tubes, and sunlight refracted through the device from the twelve slits in the roof.

  Jake remembered Balam’s words: All alchemy starts with the sun.

  Did solar energy fuel it all somehow?

  As Jake struggled to figure it out, he grew dizzy looking up into the heart of the twirling machinery.

  Finally the basket completed its cycle. Balam reached up and showed Jake that only one crystal remained in the pan. It shone a bright rich yellow, like a piece of the sun.

  “Red and green make yellow,” Jake mumbled. He stared up in amazement at the whirring, creaking, bubbling mechanism. Somehow the two stones had become one.

  How did that happen?

  Balam declared, “Over the centuries, alchemists have forged crystals of every hue, colors from every splinter of sunlight.”

  A question still bugged Jake. It had been nagging at him since he first saw the crystal chandelier in the main hall of the castle keep.

  “But what makes the crystals glow?” he asked. “What powers them?”

  Balam smiled more warmly. “Such a curious mind, Jacob. No wonder you have grown so quickly in knowledge.” Balam turned to his daughter. “But perhaps Mari could enlighten you on your question.”

  Jake glanced over to the girl.

  Marika glanced shyly toward her toes. “All power rises from the crystal heart of Kukulkan.”

  Balam nodded. “Jacob, have you ever tossed a stone into the center of a pond and watched the ripples cast outward toward the shore in all directions?”

  Jake nodded. Of course he had.

  “It is the same with the crystal heart in the center of the great temple. Its heartbeat is like a stone dropped into a still pond. It casts out ripples over the valley that ignite our hearthlights and set fire to all our stones. It allows the tribes to speak with one tongue and washes up against the ridges that surround our valley, where it protects us.”

  Jake pictured the energy flowing outward from the temple, powering the crystals and protecting the valley.

  Marika spoke, “But beyond the valley, the ripples fade quickly. More than a league from the valley, one tribe cannot understand another, and the green crystals lose their ability to farspeak. It is why we need dartwings to send messages out into the deep jungle, and why hunters or scouts travel with members of their own tribe.”

  Jake understood. The protective field only re
ached a certain distance. No wonder the Lost Tribes had remained in this valley.

  With a worried sigh, Balam stared at the sun through one of the slits in the roof. “I must meet Magister Zahur and see how Huntress Livia is faring.”

  Jake twisted in his seat. He was curious about one crystal that Marika’s father had failed to mention. “The stone that poisoned Huntress Livia. The bloodstone—”

  A cloud fell over Balam’s face. “We do not speak of such wickedness. It is forbidden to forge such stones.”

  Jake glanced up at the whirling mechanism.

  Balam must have read his thoughts. “Such a curse was not born here in the Astromicon. The purity of sunlight did not give birth to that stone. It was cast from a much darker flame.”

  With those hard words, Balam strode toward the door. He paused with his hand on the latch and glanced back. “Mari, perhaps any further study for today should be limited to the naming of the stones. We don’t want to tax Jacob too heavily after last night.”

  Balam opened the door and ducked out into the bright sunshine.

  Marika took a deep breath as the door swung back shut. She had an apologetic look on her face. “Papa does not like even using the word bloodstone.”

  “But I don’t understand. It’s at the heart of the Skull King’s power. Shouldn’t you know more about it?”

  Marika shifted in her chair and moved the box of crystal shards between them. “Maybe we should know more about these first.”

  Despite her hesitation, Jake had seen curiosity spark in Marika’s eyes. It matched his own. He stared at the brightly glowing white crystal in the box. White light contained all the colors of the spectrum, while black was the absence of all light. Jake shivered, remembering how the bloodstone seemed to suck up the moonlight.

  Balam’s warning echoed in his head. Bloodstone was not forged in the purity of sunlight, but was cast from a much darker flame.

  Jake hunched on his stool. What did it matter about bloodstones anyway? It wasn’t his problem. All he wanted to do was find a way back home. And the only way to do that was to discover as much as he could about the pyramid—which meant learning more about these strange crystals.

  And there was only one way to do that.

  Jake nodded toward the wooden tray. “Maybe we’d better begin.”

  Hours later, Jake rested outside. He sat cross-legged atop the tower on a blanket. Sunlight blazed down. Though it was hot, the brightness helped melt the tension that had been building inside him.

  A few steps away, Pindor sat on the edge of the parapet wall. For someone scared of saurians, he seemed fearless of the fall behind him. He rocked back and forth on the edge, while gnawing on what looked like a chicken wing. He had sauce all over his mouth.

  “Not many people survive a stingtail bite,” Pindor said, pointing the wing at Jake. “Apollo must be watching over you.”

  “I don’t think it was the god Apollo,” Marika said. She knelt on the blanket with Jake and searched through the reed basket that Pindor had hauled up to them. She fished through bread rolls and dried pieces of meat that looked like beef jerky. She found a kwarmabean and sat back with it. “Magister Zahur had more to do with keeping Jake alive than any god of Mount Olympus.”

  Pindor shrugged and slid off the wall. “And you think someone put the stingtail in your room?”

  Marika looked at Jake. He nodded.

  “Who would do that?” Pindor asked. “I heard my father talking with Magister Oswin. Everyone’s saying it was an accident. That one of Zahur’s beasties escaped its cage and ended up in Jake’s room.”

  Marika shook her head. “I’m pretty sure I heard someone out in the hall earlier in the night. But I can’t prove it.”

  “Why would they want to kill him?” Pindor asked.

  Marika peeled her kwarmabean slowly. “Maybe because someone’s scared of him. Of what he knows. Of his sy-enz?”

  Pindor didn’t look convinced, but he changed the subject. “So what else does this sy-enz do?” He leaned back and stared at Jake. “Show us some more.”

  “Pindor, he’s not a trained rollywort who dances for a handful of nuts.”

  Still, Jake saw how Marika tried to hide her own interest. He also noted how her green eyes reflected the light like emeralds.

  “I can show you a couple things,” Jake offered.

  “You don’t have to,” Marika said, but her expression brightened.

  Feeling oddly warm inside, Jake scooted back to his feet. He had left his pack in the Astromicon. “C’mon.”

  He led the others back through the hatch and into the dome. His backpack was under the table near his stool. He pulled it out and fished through it. His fingers pulled out a penlight. It was about the size of a small screwdriver. “We call this a flashlight.”

  He flicked the switch, pointed it at the wall, and danced a spot of light over the curved bronze surface of the dome.

  He glanced over at the other two.

  Pindor stood with his arms crossed. “So we have hearthlights, too. They’re all over the place, lighting up Calypsos.”

  But Marika’s eyes had narrowed with interest. “May I see it?”

  “Sure.” Jake passed it over.

  She turned it over in her fingers then tapped the flashlight’s lens. “Is this some shard of flat crystal? Is this what casts such a strong light?”

  “No, it’s run on…” Jake had to concentrate to get the English word out of his lips. “…batteries.”

  “Bat trees,” Pindor said. “What are those?”

  Jake slipped the penlight from Marika and twisted it open. He dumped two AAA batteries out into his palm. “These make power and cause the bulb in the flashlight to glow. Using electricity.” Again he had to force his tongue to form the last word.

  He passed one battery to Marika and one to Pindor. Marika examined hers with the intensity of a scientist studying a strange new beetle. Pindor sniffed at his, as if wondering what it tasted like. He ended up pointing the battery at Jake.

  “Do something else with it.”

  “Pindor…” Marika scolded.

  “I just want to see what else it does. Like what do these bat trees do to our crystals?”

  Before anyone could stop him, he turned to the box of crystals and stabbed the battery into the piles of shards. Jake tensed. Marika knocked Pindor’s arm away. But nothing happened.

  Still, it gave Jake an idea. Maybe Pindor was on to something. Could his science and their alchemy be used together somehow? What if they were combined?

  “Red and green make yellow,” he mumbled, remembering the demonstration by Marika’s father.

  Jake took the battery from Pindor and bent down to pick up a sliver of blue crystal that had fallen to the floor.

  Taking a step away, he tipped up on his toes and placed the battery and the blue crystal in the bronze basket.

  “Jake,” Marika said. “We’re not supposed to touch that.”

  Jake glanced over to her. Her words of warning had sounded unsure.

  Pindor was less reluctant. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Jake kept his gaze on Marika. If she said no, he would obey her. But her curiosity only seemed to grow. She was like her father in that regard.

  “‘Alchemy is…nine parts chance,’” Jake said, quoting him.

  Marika took a deep breath and crossed to the door. Jake feared she was leaving, but she only closed the door they’d left open. She turned to Jake and nodded.

  With a smile, he reached and pulled the chain. The basket rose into the air.

  Jake took a step back. Sunlight flashed and sparked as it refracted through the hundreds of crystals embedded in the gearwork overhead. At first nothing seemed to happen—then the mechanism began to turn a little faster. It scattered sunlight into rainbows on the walls.

  “Jake…” Marika warned.

  And it began to spin even faster. Steam escaped tiny valves and began to whistle. Gears spun into blurs.

&nb
sp; “We have to stop it!” Marika yelled.

  “How?” Jake asked.

  They all ducked down as the mechanism churned into a whirling mass of glass and bronze. It heaved and groaned and rumbled and sighed. There was no stopping it.

  As the mechanism sped faster, the entire room began to shake. Tools and crystals rattled on the table. A stack of books toppled over. And still it spun even more furiously.

  Jake backed to the table. What have I done?

  “Jake!” Marika cried out. She lifted up the second battery, still in her hand. Sparks shot out one end, snapped through the air, and were sucked into the churning mechanism.

  Jake hurried to her side and grabbed the battery. It shocked him, stinging like a snapped rubber band. He tossed it to the tabletop, where it rolled and knocked into a chunk of red crystal the size of a goose egg. Sparks shot from the battery and struck the gem.

  It immediately ignited, blazing like a crimson sun.

  Before Jake could move, the red crystal melted straight through the tabletop. It wasn’t just as bright as the sun—it was as hot!

  The crystal dropped through the bottom of the table and hit the stone floor. Jake sighed with relief—until the granite began to bubble at the edges of the crystal. It was trying to burn through the stone floor!

  Jake pictured the crystal burning from one floor to the next. When would it stop? Would it stop?

  Marika stood frozen in shock.

  Jake rushed over and grabbed one of the silver hammers. If he could strike the crystal, turn it off like Marika’s father had done before…

  He turned Marika. She nodded, immediately understanding his plan.

  Together they dashed over and dropped to their knees. Jake shielded his face—against both the brightness and the heat. Through his squinted eyes, he saw the stone. It had shrunk to the size of a robin’s egg. It now floated in a pool of molten rock.