Covenkeepers

by Denise Gwen

  Busily working the control panel, Bettina paid no attention to the roar.

  “Uh, Bettina,” Maddie said worriedly. “I think we’ve got company.”

  “Almost there,” Bettina muttered, her gaze fixed on the control panel.

  Maddie watched with fascination as Bettina’s fingers flew across the instrument panel. At first, nothing happened, then a whirring sound emanated from deep inside the block interior. The light panel bubbled with lights and sounds as internal switches and mechanisms ticked and clicked. After another moment, the entire mass of the carbonite block transformed from slate black, to a chalky gray, then to a dusky red. The block glowed as if lit on fire from within.

  “It’s getting hot!” Bettina cried.

  Maddie rested her hand against the carbon outline of her father’s face. He’d been trapped in the carbonite block in a moment when his mouth had been wide open in an agonizing rictus cry of pain. A wave of sorrow washed over her. Her poor father, trapped in this hideous prison, his face constricted in an expression of misery, of pain. He looked as if he’d suffered untold torments. She kept her hand in place as the carbonite warmed under her fingers. It transformed from a dusky red to a flaming red, then orange. At last it grew so hot Maddie was obliged to withdraw her hand. She stepped back just as a geyser-blast of steam erupted from the block. The steam sweltered around the girls’ feet, bathing them in a molten glow.

  “Don’t cook him!” Maddie cried.

  “I’m not!” Bettina shouted. “At least, I don’t think I am!”

  That roar again. The short hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Dang, that thing, whatever it was, was getting closer. A fluttering of apprehension knotted her stomach.

  I recognize that sound, that roar. But what is it?

  Still quite a ways down the passageway, the thing ripped a cage door off its hinges. The cage door clanged against the stone walls and then crashed to the floor. Then she heard the firm strides of some creature lumbering with a heavy-footed gait. The rumbling grew louder.

  Whatever it is, it’s getting closer.

  Roils of steam erupted from the carbonite freeze. The girls stepped back as clouds of vaporous smoke billowed out, suffocating them in thick streams of hot vapor. Clutching each other’s hands, the girls stared, mesmerized, as the steaming vapors of mist swallowed up the carbonite block, enshrouding it in a sepulcher of mist.

  Just then, the steel door to the passageway screeched open with a sickening, scraping sound, as steel screeched against the marble floor. The creature bellowed with a roar that reverberated throughout the dungeon. But the girls couldn’t look; they couldn’t bear to tear their gaze away from the clouds of smoke billowing out before them.

  Another roar. This one shot through Maddie’s body, tingling her bones with fear. With a sudden, sick certainty, she realized what the thing was.

  The vaporous clouds shifted and settled, then dissipated into a foggy mist. And there, curled up on the marble floor and shivering with sickness, lay the crumpled form of their father.

  “Papa!” Maddie cried.

  Curled up into the fetal position, his body shaking uncontrollably, his thick, glossy black hair, matted and wet, clung stickily to his scalp. His skin looked pasty white and nearly translucent. He looked close to death. They were too late.

  Maddie forgot her fear. “Papa!” She ran forward and placed her hands on his shoulders. How much time had passed since she’d touched him last? It felt a century. Tears filled her eyes as she beheld the vision of her father, near death, panting for breath on the cold marble floor.

  ****

  Papa’s raven black hair clung to his scalp, his skin looked pasty white and clammy, but he’d made it out of the carbonite freeze, and that meant only one thing: he was alive and would survive.

  “Papa’s alive! He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive!” Maddie cried, wrapping her arms around his neck. Bettina fell to her knees beside them and wept.

  “Papa,” Bettina sobbed, “we thought we’d never get you back.”

  His arms trembled as he swept both daughters into his embrace. “What kept me going, all that time,” he whispered brokenly, “was the thought of my two girls.”

  Malamar trotted forward and licked the wetness off him with his rough, sandpapery tongue. Roby clicked and hooted.

  “My dear girls,” Papa said brokenly. “My dear, dear girls.”

  An ominous roar. No mistaking it this time, no pretending; something awful and ugly was heading their way. They lifted their heads and gazed toward the entrance to the passageway nearest them, a scant fifty yards away. A gargantuan troll loomed in the doorway. It leered at them with a hideous smile; globules of sweat and snot dribbled off its misshapen nose. It swung a massive club against the stone wall and shards of stone sheared off and crashed to the floor. The troll roared.

  They all jumped.

  “Let’s get moving!” Maddie yelled.

  Papa struggled to his feet, but his legs buckled out from beneath him. “Dear me, I’m as weak as a newborn kitten.”

  “That’s telling it like it is,” Malamar noted dryly.

  “Maddie,” Bettina said, “let’s take one arm each.”

  Bettina and Maddie stood on opposite sides of their father, drew their arms across his back, joined their arms together and formed a yoke. They half-staggered, half-dragged him toward the opposite corridor as the troll lumbered into the dungeon, swinging his club. Despite Papa’s dead weight, the girls dodged expertly between the cauldrons. They darted nimbly and had nearly made it to the passageway opposite before the troll realized he’d lost his prey. He screamed in frustration and flung his club like a tomahawk. Maddie and Papa ducked just in time, but the club struck Bettina in the back and she fell to the floor, crying in agony.

  “No!” Maddie cried, releasing Papa and going to Bettina’s side.

  “Go on without me!” Bettina gasped.

  “Nonsense!” Papa spluttered. “I’d sooner die.”

  “That may be easy to arrange,” Malamar said, casting a worried glance at the troll as it lumbered toward them.

  “Come on!” Maddie grabbed Bettina’s arm and pulled her to her feet. Papa swept Bettina up into his arms.

  “Come along, Maddie,” Papa said, staggering toward the passageway opposite.

  The troll screamed out one last time in consternation as they outran him. They peeled down the passageway, deep into the recesses of the castle, until at last they no longer heard his cries.

  “I would say,” Malamar puffed, “by this time everyone in the castle must know we’re here.” He cast one last apprehensive glance back up the hallway from which they’d flown, as the last cries of the troll reverberated throughout the dungeon.

  “Malamar,” Maddie gasped. “What was your first clue?”

  ****

  Bettina writhed in pain, and Papa had to work hard to keep her from falling out of his arms. “My child,” he murmured. “You’re in great pain.”

  “I’m all right,” she said, then winced.

  “Your back hurts?” Papa asked.

  “Yes,” she said, biting her lip.

  Papa turned to Maddie. “We need to find a place where she can rest, and where I can administer to her a soothing poultice.”

  “There’s an abandoned cell further down this corridor,” Maddie said. “We may be able to hide in there.”

  “Very good,” Papa said. “Lead the way, my dear.”

  Again, Maddie felt struck by a peculiar dissonance. She’d always fought against the attitude of everyone in her family, that, because she was the youngest, she needed to listen to everything her elders told her. And now, yet again, someone whom she’d always looked up to and considered an authority on all matters—her dear father—now looked to her for guidance. Would the wonders of this strange night ever end?

  Maddie recollected herself, led them to the abandoned cell and sighed with relief; it looked surprisingly dry and free of malodorous odors. Papa laid Bettina
down onto a cot and she cried out with relief. Then Papa collapsed onto a bale of sweet-smelling hay and groaned with pain.

  Maddie gazed closely at her father. He continued to shiver, but his tremors appeared to be diminishing. His skin didn’t look quite so clammy anymore; a hint of color returned to his cheeks.

  Yes, Papa will be fine. But what of Bettina?

  Bettina wept. “Dear Goddess, my back hurts!”

  “Oh, my poor darling,” Papa said, reviving. “Let me see to your injury.”

  Maddie watched with concern as beads of perspiration formed at Bettina’s brow; the strain of the night, and the troll’s awful club to her back, appeared to be taking its toll upon her. As Maddie stood there, a wave of fatigue washed through her and she settled down onto the cot beside her sister. To her surprise, the cot had been made up into a bed. The sheets smelled of soap. She looked around the small room in amazement, really noticing it for the first time. It looked amazingly clean and nice; who’d last used this room?

  Papa came to Bettina’s side. “Be still, little one,” he crooned, stroking her cheek, “and I’ll put a healing charm on your poor back.”

  Bettina lay on the cot, weeping silently.

  Malamar hopped onto Maddie’s lap and purred. His low-rumbling purr proved to be the final homey touch to this strange, tiny cell, and a little of the night’s tension slipped from her shoulders. For the moment, at least, they were safe.

  But only for the moment.

  Bettina lifted her head, looking fretful. “What do you think? Do they know we’re in this cell?”

  Maddie looked up at the ceiling, scanning the corners, but saw nothing to alarm her. One good thing about Ezekiel—not that there was much to say that was good about him—was that since he was an old-fashioned, by-the-book-of-spells kind of warlock, he did not abide by newfangled inventions. She didn’t see any security cameras or other tracking devices that might reveal their whereabouts to the entire castle.

  “What about the door, though?” Bettina asked, rolling over onto her stomach. Papa leaned over her, his eyes closed, his expansive hands spread wide over her back, as he murmured an incantation under his breath.

  A soothing hum, one Maddie recognized from her babyhood, when Papa used to sing lullabies at night to lull her to sleep. Her eyelids grew heavy, then she started.

  Where is Ezekiel? Where are Mama, Nana, and poor Victoria?

  “We really need to find the others,” Maddie said, even as she laid her head down upon the pillow.

  Papa continued his soothing incantation. It sounded so peaceful, so lovely, and the cot felt so soft, so inviting. Her eyelids drooped. “We need to save Victoria . . . we need to find Mama and Nana . . . oh, I’m so tired.”

  “My poor girls,” Papa said under his breath. “My girls are exhausted.”

  Maddie forced her eyelids open. Bettina, seemingly free of pain, had curled up into a ball, she snoozed softly.

  “Papa, is it safe? We haven’t secured the entrance to this cell.”

  A glint of steel shone in his green eyes. “I shall make it safe. Let me use your wand, sweetheart.” Maddie passed it over to him and watched with admiration as he pointed the wand at the stone-walled doorsill. “Liquifateum.”

  A silvery thread of oily looking liquid slithered from the wand tip. It drifted along the air, as weightless as a spider’s web, until it alighted on the stone foundation of the doorway. From there, the liquid eased around the entire perimeter of the doorway, then slid across the marble floor, before joining the first thread at the corner of the stone foundation. Then, like a bubble-blowing game that Maddie remembered from childhood, the silvery line filled in with a gelatinous fluid membrane, forming an opaque, oily protective bubble over the entire doorway. Papa had just installed a gelatinous barrier to the cell. Now, nobody could get in.

  “Papa, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that incantation, nor make it look as easy as you do.”

  “No worries, pet,” Papa murmured. “You’ll learn, in the fullness of time.”

  Maddie watched in wonder as the membrane grew so opaque as to turn white, then shimmered into a translucent sheen, before finally turning oily and turgid. The gel barrier, as sturdy as a stone wall, stood at least two inches thick.

  “Just like blowing bubbles,” Maddie chuckled.

  “Yes,” Papa said proudly, “but this one won’t burst open in a breeze.”

  They fell silent a moment, watching as the membrane shifted and congealed. It’d remain in place for hours.

  Papa handed the wand back to Maddie. “There. That’ll hold’em. And it’ll give us a bit of a rest in the bargain.”

  “You want to sleep on the cot, Papa?”

  His eyes grew soft. “No, my darling. You sleep. I shall keep watch.”

  Maddie considered protesting, but the bed pulled her back down, so soft and inviting. She dropped her head back down to the pillow and fell instantly asleep.

  ****

  Maddie’s dreams—strange and discomforting, vivid and terrifying. She dreamt of being in the drainage culvert, only this time she was escaping from the castle, and yet in her dream, the toxic black cloud from the house in Batesville was chasing her. She ran, fear in her throat, as the toxic black cloud bore down upon her. Only this time, Mama did not appear at the critical moment to rescue her from the abyss; this time the black cloud appeared ready to consume her. The malevolent thing drew closer and closer, gaining on her, despite the fact she was running as hard and as fast as she could.

  The harder she ran, the more slowly she moved, her feet stuck deep in molasses, until finally the black cloud caught up to her, enveloping her in a toxic wave of virulent fumes and deadly gas.

  She cried out even as her throat constricted with suffocating fumes.

  Then the dream shifted. Now she was running down the same drainage pipe, fleeing from the castle, only this time she saw the fresh morning light of dawn at the end of it. This knowledge gave her focus, an impetus to move forward. Then the images shifted, and chittering mice and poisonous spiders chased her. The mice’s razor-sharp teeth glinted with an evil malice in the sun’s morning rays of light; the spiders scuttled along the drainage pipe, chasing after her, their black beady eyes full of hatred, their pincers pinching.

  She ran and she ran, but the drainage pipe, doused in a slippery oil, made it difficult, if not impossible to gain any traction. She kept falling down and hurting herself, scraping her knees, bumping her head on the concrete wall. She’d scramble to her feet, then skid as she ran, and the mice and spiders gained on her. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out; her mouth filled up with bubbles. She could not speak, she could not scream. At last, she drew near to the opening of the drainage pipe. She stood at its lip, with the scum and flotsam below her, washing away to the river. She curved her toes over the lip. She jumped and—

  She bolted upright in her cot, gasping for breath. “The spiders!”

  Papa gazed somberly at her, his green eyes warm and full.

  “Oh,” she said, still panting. She looked around her. It took her a moment to regain her bearings. At first, for one eerie moment, she imagined she was still trapped in the drainage tunnel, then her bearings whirled and dizzied around her and for one strange moment she wondered why she hadn’t awoken in her own comfortable little bed in the abandoned house in Batesville.

  But as her awareness slowly returned to her, she realized, with a dull thud in her heart, where she’d physically awoken: stuck in a cell in Salem Castle.

  She blinked, fighting back the tears. “For a minute there, I forgot.”

  “I watched you,” Papa murmured. “A bad dream, sweetheart?”

  “Yes, Papa. So awful.”

  “I sensed it.”

  She gazed over at Bettina, who slept soundly. She breathed softly through her pretty, rosebud lips. She looked so angelic, so at peace.

  “In another few minutes,” Papa said gently, “we’ll need to awaken your sister, e
ven if she’s still tired. We’ve got a lot of work to do before we can say we’re safe again.”

  “I wish we were back in Batesville.”

  Papa flashed a bemused smile. “Is it really that nice there? Somehow I can’t envision a house in the Midwest as being terribly interesting.”

  “It’s a really nice little village and we liked the house.” She considered a moment. “There were a few wee problems.”

  Papa’s eyes deepened with warmth. “Then perhaps you’ll need to show me this house when we get out of here.”

  Maddie smiled through her tears. Papa always spoke in such hopeful terms, no matter the circumstances. As she recalled, less than a week ago, Papa said the family needed to leave the castle; he said that two days before Ezekiel iced him up into the carbonite freeze.

  She blinked back the sudden tears rising in her eyes.

  Papa cleared his throat. “Before we can leave, however, there are a few small matters that we must attend to.”

  His voice sounded gentle, yet she sensed something—did Papa sound tense?—underlying the soothing words.

  Maddie gazed hard at Papa, then looked at Malamar.

  Okay, now that’s strange. What’s wrong with Malamar?

  As Maddie put her mind to it, she noticed suddenly how strange Malamar looked to her; correction, he looked even stranger than usual. As a matter of fact, he looked downright petrified. Pressed up into a corner, his tail rigid, the fur on his back standing up on end, he looked as if he’d just seen his nine lives flashing before his eyes.

  “Hey, Malamar,” she crooned gently. “What’s the matter?”

  “Don’t move too fast,” Papa said, “but I want you to look at the doorway.”

  Uh-oh.

  A prickling sensation darted across the back of her neck; her short hairs stood on end, a sure sign of trouble. With a certain, hard knowledge, she knew she wouldn’t like what was waiting for her when she turned her head. Something awful, no doubt, would greet her when she focused her gaze on the cell entrance. And the only thing that prevented it from entering the cell was Papa’s cleverly-drawn protective gel bubble.