Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow

by James Rollins

  Then it suddenly twisted and shot upward, so high and fast that Jake lost sight of it. The muscles of his legs twitched. He came close to stepping out of the doorway’s shadow to keep it in sight. Instead he tensed his entire body and kept his post.

  And lucky he did….

  A moment later, the pterosaur landed on the side of the pyramid, filling half the steps. Grakyl scattered to the sides. One was crushed under a heavy leg. Squirming and screaming, it died.

  Jake forced himself to remain in the doorway. Everything depended on him keeping his place.

  The pterosaur lowered its neck and stretched its wings as if hugging the temple. Though the creature was massive, Jake had a hard time seeing it clearly. Shadows clung to its form, flowing over its body.

  Its long narrow head ended up coming to rest only a couple yards to the left of the doorway. Draped in shadows that looked like a lion’s mane, the head ended in a crocodilian snout rimmed by crooked pointed teeth. Jake had seen enough pteranodon fossils to know this was no ordinary pterosaur. For one, pterosaurs didn’t have teeth.

  But it was the eyes that truly set Jake’s jaw to clench. Two black orbs stared at Jake, like polished black diamonds. They were empty and bottomless tunnels to places were screams always echoed and blood flowed like rivers.

  But even that wasn’t the worst.

  From behind the saurian’s neck, a clot of shadows dropped away and struck the temple stairs. The other grakyl fell back, scrambling over one another to keep out of its way. On the steps, the shape straightened and formed the figure of a man.

  He was massive, at least seven feet tall. He wore a suit of black armor that covered him from head to toe. It was crowned by a helmet bearing a pair of horns, but unlike those on the Viking helmets, these horns were kinked into savage twists and curls, as if grown from the skull of a beast that had been tortured its entire life. The figure stalked up the steps, moving with a deliberate determination toward Jake.

  Jake tried to spy any features, but beneath the helmet lay only shadows. Still, Jake knew who climbed the temple.

  Kalverum Rex.

  The Skull King.

  As the dark shape neared the entrance, Jake realized one error. Kalverum Rex wore no armor. What covered his body were dense shadows. They flowed over his form, shining like black oil on skin. But rather than billowing and wafting about, the shadows wrapped tight to his body, as if the darkness were scared of what lay hidden at its heart and attempted to hide the horror from the world.

  For the Skull King, shadows were his armor.

  Though there were no eyes, Jake knew the fiend stared straight at him. His skin crawled with a burning itch that had nothing to do with the temple’s shield. He wanted to run—and keep running. But Jake didn’t move. More than bravery, terror kept him rooted in place.

  The Skull King climbed to the top step and towered across the threshold. Jake leaned away as an arm stretched toward him. He knew a single touch and he would be dead.

  The hand edged closer, reaching for him, cautiously, as if testing unknown waters. As it crossed into the weakening shield, emerald fire danced over the black fingertips and stripped the shadows away. From out of the darkness appeared fingers covered in gray-green scales and tipped by long yellow claws.

  No man had hands like that—at least no one that was still human.

  A rustle of satisfaction shook through the shadows that covered Kalverum Rex. He knew the shield held no power that could stop him. All that stood between the Skull King and the heart of the temple’s power was a boy from North Hampshire, Connecticut.

  Recognizing this, too, Jake took his first scared step backward.

  Kalverum’s satisfaction melted to dark amusement. With the shield down, nothing could stop him. Jake had nowhere to hide.

  Words flowed out that turned the marrow of Jake’s bones to ice.

  “Come to me…”

  29

  FIRE AND SHADOWS

  Any sane person would run when faced by a tower of shadows. But Jake held his ground. The Skull King took another step toward the threshold. More shadows stripped from his limb, revealing scales and a ridge of thorns.

  Jake feared what else would be revealed, what else the shadows hid. But he couldn’t turn away, trapped between horror and fascination. Still, there were limits to what curiosity could bear. Jake finally flicked his eyes away from the peeling shadows.

  It proved to be a mistake.

  His gaze fell upon the breastplate of bronze armor he’d abandoned at the threshold. At the same time, Kalverum’s left foot bumped against it. The armor rattled with a ringing tone and drew the monster’s attention to the ground.

  Kalverum stopped. He glanced down, then at Jake, then down again. His posture was one of caution and suspicion. Jake held his breath. Then the Skull King did what Jake had dreaded. Kalverum turned to the side and stared over a shoulder to the east, to where the sun was just cresting over the horizon. The first rays of the new day speared outward and aimed for the pyramid.

  The Skull King’s entire body stiffened. “Clever boy…”

  The fiend lunged down and snatched the breastplate.

  “No!” Jake yelled, and tried to grab it, too.

  But Kalverum moved with a speed born of shadows, a flicker of darkness against the new day. He reached the plate first and snatched it away.

  Jake saw all hope yanked out of reach. His heart sank with his failure—but he’d forgotten one thing, something vital and important.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Across the valley, a piercing volley of horns heralded the sunrise. It rang out loudly, echoing and bright. Roman bugles blasted as Ur horns blared. The cacophony sounded like a legion of thousands.

  Pindor!

  His friend had come with the last of the Saddlebacks and the Ur army—and as promised, Pindor let it be known.

  All around the pyramid, the grakyl rose like a flock of crows startled from a cornfield. Even the Skull King turned to the north to assess this new threat.

  It was all the distraction Jake needed.

  He leaped forward and grabbed the bronze piece of armor out of the shadowy grip of the Skull King. Dropping to a knee in the doorway, Jake turned the polished surface of the breastplate, shiny as a mirror, toward the first rays of the new sun. He caught the light, twisted to the side, and angled the reflection down the throat of the tunnel behind him.

  “Now!” Jake yelled.

  Far down the slanted passageway, the reflected sunlight illuminated Bach’uuk. Bach’uuk lifted his shield of armor into the light. It sparked as brightly as a piece of the sun, which in fact it was. He tilted his plate and reflected the brilliance farther down the tunnel—toward Marika.

  Would it work?

  Marika had given Jake this idea, a way to rid the emerald shieldstone of its poisonous shadows and possibly raise the valley’s protective barriers. The plan had started with her statement There must be a way to cast the shadows out of the stone. The answer was obvious. What was the best way to chase away a shadow?

  To shine a light on it.

  Also at the time, Jake had been struggling to think of a way to use electricity to jump-start the stone, to fuse modern science and Pangaean alchemy. With his flashlight’s batteries gone, he had needed a new source of power. And what was world’s largest power source? The answer rose into the sky every day, warming the Earth.

  The sun.

  Even Marika’s father had stated the connection between the crystals and sunlight. They’d been in the Astromicon, watching the dance of crystals across the sunlit slits of the dome. His words had stayed with Jake.

  All alchemy starts with the sun.

  So Jake hung his hopes upon the new day, the rising of the sun. He sought to reflect its brilliance down into the heart of the temple, to cast out the shadows from the stone and use the sun’s energy to fire the crystal back to life. The problem was getting the energy down there.

  The bronze bangles hanging off the Neander
thal Elders’ staffs had reminded Jake.

  Mirrors reflect sunlight.

  All he needed was to bounce the morning’s light from one mirror to the next, from Jake to Bach’uuk to Marika. She could then reflect the sunlight into the heart of the pyramid and bathe the darkened crystal in the sun’s brilliance.

  But would it work?

  All these thoughts flashed through Jake’s mind within the blaring of a single horn. He held the breastplate steady as the grakyl horde rose up to the challenge from Pindor’s army. Down the tunnel, Bach’uuk was bathed in sunlight and reflecting its brightness deeper into the heart of the pyramid.

  But also from the corner of his eye, Jake noted the Skull King swinging around. Kalverum lunged toward him.

  Then time froze. He saw his father sitting under a tree, explaining about Isaac Newton, how the scientist discovered gravity in the falling of an apple. He had told Jake at the time that the greatest gift of the human mind was its ability to ask one question, one word. All of human history traced back to this one question.

  Why?

  His father’s words echoed to Jake now.

  The discovery of truth is what we all seek. And it is the good man who stands behind the truth and defends it with his life.

  So as the Skull King attacked, Jake did not flinch. Bathed in sunlight, he held the breastplate steady. He must trust he was right. Even if it cost him his life.

  Claws reached for his throat. Nails touched his neck and burned his skin, blistering on contact.

  Then the tingling over his body suddenly burst into an emerald blast of blinding force. The explosion blew Jake back into the tunnel as if he’d been shoved in the chest. Kalverum was thrown the other way, down the pyramid’s steps.

  Jake landed hard on his back. The breastplate got knocked from his hands and went banging down the slanted passageway. Jake gasped air back into his shocked lungs and fought to his feet. He scrambled back to the threshold.

  He felt the pressure of the shield as he neared it. Even a yard away, the hairs on Jake’s arms quivered with its energy. He pushed far enough into it to view the lower steps. The Skull King stared up at Jake, his shadowy fists clenched. Hatred pulsed off his evil form.

  Jake sensed a storm building within that shell of darkness, readying to hurl itself against the reborn shield. But thunder rumbled overhead. Both Jake and Kalverum turned to the sky.

  When the rumble of thunder repeated, with it came an arc of energy, an emerald fire across the roof of the valley. The energy seemed to set fire to the volcanic ridges. It pooled across the sky like an aurora borealis.

  The shield! It was re-forming over the valley!

  Against this fiery backdrop, the grakyl horde flew in ragged formations.

  Then the lightning storm truly began, crackling with sharper blasts of thunder. A forked bolt lanced down out of the sky and froze one of the grakyl in midair. Then the emerald lightning snapped back into the sky—taking the grakyl with it. The beast was torn out of the valley and flung high into the air. It tumbled end over end, tossed far beyond the new shield.

  Other bolts fired downward, zapping some of the grakyl with such force that they fell dead to the earth. But most were grabbed and fired out of the valley with such force that they quickly vanished.

  Down the steps, the Skull King recognized the tide of battle had suddenly shifted. He turned his gaze again toward Jake. For the first time, Jake saw his eyes. They were spats of black flame. Jake imagined the fire rising from a core of pure bloodstone.

  It was like staring into the eyes of something ancient and evil, something far older than any Calypsian Magister gone bad. Behind that black gaze hid the nameless beast that forever haunted nightmares and prowled shadows and dark spaces, something that had been lurking at the edges of humankind since the beginning of time.

  Jake felt a scream trapped in his throat.

  Then that dreaded gaze fell away. The Skull King flowed down the steps to his shadowy mount and flew up into the high saddle. Wings rose like great sheets of night. The beast bunched its massive bulk and leaped skyward.

  Jake watched the mount circle into the sky with mighty beats of its wings. Lightning crackled all around mount and rider, stabbing and bursting against the shadows. Unlike the grakyl, the Skull King bore some alchemy that kept him from being immediately flung out of the valley. But from the rapid ascent, Jake guessed such protections would not last long. The beast’s dark form fought for the clear skies and climbed higher.

  With one final burst, the Skull King broke through the shield with an explosion of green fire and flew off.

  It was over.

  Still, Jake felt little relief. He remained cold and trembling—and he knew why.

  Just before the Skull King had turned away, Jake sensed a wordless promise: This was not over between them. In this cusp of a new day, where light and darkness balanced, Jake had made a choice to stand in the sunlight. And from this moment onward, the darkness would be watching him, waiting for him to slip.

  Jake might have quailed and lost all heart right then, even with victory near. But he remembered something vital and important.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Bach’uuk came running out of the heart of the pyramid. Marika came with him. She gripped Jake’s hand, all warmth and sunshine. Jake put his arm around Bach’uuk, too. He needed their solidity to remind him that the world was far more than shadows.

  Together, they listened to cheers rising from the town.

  “You did it,” Marika breathed.

  “We did it,” Jake added, but his lips refused to add what he also knew to be true.

  For now.

  It did not take long for the skies to be cleared of the enemy. In a matter of minutes, only shimmers of emerald fire remained. Then even this blew out, and wide blue skies beckoned.

  “We should get back to town,” Marika finally said. She lifted a hand and tested the shield ahead of them. Whispers of emerald energy danced over her fingertips.

  “Can we get out this way?” Jake asked.

  “I think so. We should be able to pass through to the outside.”

  Marika stepped forward and drew Jake along. Jake felt the tingling sweep over his body—then they were through and stepped out of the shadow and into the fullness of the morning.

  Bach’uuk followed after them.

  Curious, Jake reached back toward the doorway again. The shield pushed against him, crackling with a fierce fire. It had let them out, but it wasn’t going to let them back in.

  Satisfied the heart of the pyramid was safe for the moment, the trio hurried down the stone steps and reached the path that crossed the Sacred Woods. They hadn’t taken more than a couple dozen steps along the trail when they were surrounded.

  He recognized the mix of Norse gear and Roman attire—battered, bloody, and torn.

  “Jake!”

  He turned to see Kady push forward. Of course, she hadn’t gone far. She must have thought Jake had been trapped inside the pyramid this entire time.

  Jake let go of Marika’s hand and ran toward his sister. Kady ran toward him. They crashed against each other. Kady hugged him tight. They were silent for a full breath, allowing themselves simply to be brother and sister, to let the warmth of family melt away the rest of their fears.

  “I thought…I didn’t know…” she said, squeezing the breath out of him.

  “I know,” he gasped out. “Me too.”

  She broke away and stared at him sternly. “Don’t ever do that again!”

  “Do what?”

  She seemed at a loss as to how to answer that. Her fear was nameless. She managed an exasperated “Scare me like that.”

  But Jake knew the words failed to truly hold all she felt. He felt the same way, a swirl of emotions that could not be contained within words. It was relief and terror, chaos and security, happiness and tears. It was both the most painful thing and the most wonderful.

  It was simply family.

  With on
e final squeeze, they let go of one another. Everyone was watching. But Jake kept near her. He reached into his pocket and removed the gold watch.

  “I found this,” he said, reverting to English, though it took concentration.

  Kady’s face crinkled with mild curiosity—then widened and ran through a whole series of emotions, using every muscle in her face. Shock, disbelief, bewilderment.

  “Is that—” She stopped, choking, unable to bring herself even to voice it aloud.

  “Yes.” He turned and showed her the inscription.

  She leaned close and read each word. When she lifted her face, there were tears in her eyes. “When…where did you find it?”

  Jake didn’t think it was a good time to explain about the map of Pangaea and all he’d discovered and learned in the great temple, but he pointed his arm back to the pyramid. “In there.”

  She turned her gaze to the steps leading to the round opening. Her brows arched in bafflement. “But how? What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  At least not yet, he added silently.

  Kady’s eyes went into a thousand-mile stare, trying to fathom the implication of the watch’s discovery here. He imagined his own expression hadn’t been much different.

  Jake remained silent. He had no words that would ease her heart. It would take time to absorb this shock.

  Perhaps sensing Kady’s distress, Heronidus stepped out of the Roman group. He limped on his right leg, and the left side of his face bore a wicked scratch that looked like it had come close to taking out his eye. But before Heronidus could speak, a new blare of horns and bugles sounded from the other side of the city. It was a triumphant noise.

  “Who is that?” Heronidus asked, cocking his head and listening.

  “Pindor,” Marika said with a proud grin. “Leading the Ur forces.”

  Heronidus looked at her in disbelief and turned away. “If you don’t know, just say so.”

  He stalked off, collecting Kady gently under one arm. She leaned her head on his shoulder, needing consolation that Jake could not provide. Still, she took a moment to glance back toward her brother. She gave Jake a rare sad smile.