“No sign of the Rider?” Jesse asked. “The one whose camp we found?”
“He died fighting,” Silas said grimly. “Used a knife to kill two of them before they brought him down. One of the giants speaks Amarian and told us this as they took us down, as a warning not to try to get away.”
Jesse was about to ask where the giants on guard duty slept when he noticed Silas was staring fixedly at the archway.
“Shh!” Jesse commanded Owen. He knew that expression. Silas heard something.“They’re coming,” Silas said, as calmly and confidently as if he were talking about the weather.
Jesse trusted him, even though he didn’t hear anything at all. With things like this, Silas was never wrong. A quick glance around the room told him that there was no other way out. And there’s no place to hide, unless there’s another trap door somewhere.
“Come on,” Jesse hissed, bolting for the doorway. “Maybe we can outrun them.”
The good thing about giant footsteps, especially in a flooded tunnel, is that you can hear them from a long way off, a detached part of Jesse’s brain realized as he ran.
And, as soon as they stop, they’ll be able to hear us.
Jesse sloshed through the watery halls as quickly as he could, but Owen was already out of sight. We can’t outrun them—at least, I can’t.
Suddenly, Jesse felt himself being jerked backward into an arched opening in the wall. The only thing that kept him from crying out was the fact that the hand wasn’t a giant’s. In fact, it was rather small.
He whirled around to face Owen, who was staring into the darkness of the main passageway. He had either blown out the oil lamp or dropped it in the watery tunnels. Only the dim light of the glowing stone allowed him to see at all. “We hide here and hope they don’t find us,” he explained.
It took a few seconds for Jesse’s eyes to adjust, before he looked around. Owen had dragged them into a short tunnel.
His heart started pounding harder. The tunnel was filled with figures wrapped in cloth, a chalky gray against the black stone. The bodies—he assumed they were bodies, for none of them moved—were lying in shallow outcroppings in the wall. A strip of glowing stone outlined each outcropping.
“Owen,” Jesse began, feeling his throat tighten up.
“Dead end,” Owen said, peering out the jagged entrance. The footsteps and voices were still coming. “And we’re going to be the dead ones.”
“I think someone already stole that position from us,” Jesse managed.
“What are you…?” Owen’s voice trailed off as he turned around. “Oh.”
That was all. Jesse expected him to get excited, to start talking about how skeletons were much more interesting than historical ruins. But he just stood there, looking at the remains of previous visitors to the tunnels.
That was fine with Jesse. After all, these bodies had once been living, breathing people just like them. Maybe they had met some kind of terrible death in these very tunnels. There was no way to know for sure.
He froze. The voices were right outside the tunnel now. From their tone, it sounded like they were angry about something.
But instead of reaching in a huge fist and pulling Jesse and Owen out of the tomb, the voices and footsteps began to fade, along with the orange torchlight.
Jesse didn’t dare look out the opening at the giants. He didn’t even move until well after the tunnel became silent again. “Should we go back to the prison?” he asked Owen.
But Owen was already getting a closer look at the bones. Apparently any momentary reverence he felt in the presence of the dead was gone. “I guess these folks won’t betray us to the giants, eh?”
Jesse backed up, giving one last look to the main tunnel before he joined Owen to examine the bodies. They were of normal height—not Westlunders then. Each compartment held one body. Jesse did a quick count, pacing along the length of the hallway. There were fifteen compartments lining the shallow tunnel. Eleven were occupied.
One body had a brass compass at his side. Another was draped in a fancy red coat with a silk handkerchief poking out of the pocket. One had even been left with a fine, sturdy leather bag, the design of a falcon burned into it.
It must be some strange Westlund tradition of burying the dead. Briefly, Jesse wondered which one was the Guard Rider who had camped in the ruins, but he decided not to try to find out.
“It’s a burial crypt,” Jesse said. “Instead of putting them in the ground, they laid them out here, with their possessions.”
“Why didn’t any of these dead people possess weapons?” Owen demanded, rummaging through the bones in one compartment. He glanced up at Jesse. “And don’t tell me I’m being disrespectful to the dead. We can use all the help we can get down here.”
I guess he’s right. Still, stealing from a dead body seemed like a terrible thing.
“Just our luck,” Owen muttered, disgusted. “This girl had a scabbard, but no sword.”
“Girl?” Jesse asked, joining Owen at one of the compartments.
There lay a small skeleton draped in a torn dress of deep, rich blue with an empty scabbard at her side. An intricate silver necklace was around her neck, molded into the shape of a butterfly. It reminded Jesse of the token he carried for Barnaby. I forgot to give it to him.
“She wasn’t much taller than me,” Owen said, a little sadly.
Jesse nodded. “I guess we’ll never know what she was doing in the swamps.”
“She die here,” a loud voice said.
Startled, Jesse jerked around, but saw no one. Are the bones talking? Immediately, Jesse knew the thought was ridiculous.
“She one of the Vanished,” the voice continued. Now Jesse could tell the voice came from beyond the entryway. “Before I Watcher, when more die.”
“Shh!” Owen ordered the voice from the darkness. “You’ll bring them down here.”
A pause. “Yes. I have to bring them.” The voice switched to the strange, guttural language of the giants.
Jesse glanced around. There was nowhere to go. Within seconds, they heard heavy steps and loud voices approach from the other direction.
“We’re trapped,” Owen hissed. He climbed into one of the compartments.
“Owen, you can’t hide behind a body,” Jesse said, pulling him back. He had decided to face the intruders. After all, they didn’t kill Silas, Rae, Parvel or Barnaby. Maybe they won’t kill us either.
But what about the girl with the silver necklace and these ten others? another part of him pointed out.
“They come to get you,” the voice explained.
Sure enough, the splashing footsteps became louder, and two giants stepped into the crypt. They didn’t look like Jesse had pictured them. They didn’t have to crawl into the room, although the first stooped slightly, his head nearly grazing the rock ceiling. Jesse’s head only reached the giants’ waists, and the effect was much like being a young child in the presence of large, strong adults.
The giants discussed something with each other for a minute, gesturing to Jesse and Owen. Neither of the voices matched the first one they had heard from the crypt.
One put a large hand on Jesse’s shoulders, leaning down to look at him, then stopped, staring. He pointed to Jesse’s neck with a thick finger.
It was the token, Barnaby’s token, that lay against Jesse’s torn, stained shirt. One of the giants snatched at it, breaking the cord in one swift motion. He held it up to his eye. Jesse knew that if the token seemed small to him, it was tiny to the giant.
“Bird,” he said, stroking its back with one finger. Then he looked down at Jesse, squinting, and spoke again.
He and the other giant spoke with each other hurriedly. Jesse heard one word repeated often: castor. He hoped that didn’t mean “torture” or “death” in the giants’ language.
One of the giants
leaned down to face Jesse, a strange look on his face. It wasn’t the wide, dull grin that Jesse had always pictured on a giant. It was crafty and greedy, and very intelligent. He gave the token back to Jesse.
“What are you going to do with us?” Jesse demanded, more for Owen than anything else.
He was surprised when the voice from the passageway spoke again, carefully pronouncing each word. “You are third son. Many years, we wait for you.”
Chapter 12
The owner of the mysterious voice was another giant, one nearly a head shorter than the other two. He had reddish-brown hair and strong features that reminded Jesse of someone he had seen before. A peacock feather stuck out of his cloth cap. It’s the only feather that would be large enough for a hat like that, Jesse realized.
“You two come with me,” he said, “to my home.”
He turned to the other giants and translated what he had said into the Westlund language. At first, they didn’t seem to agree, growling something at the translator that Jesse assumed was an insult. They pointed down the hallway, and Jesse knew they wanted to take them to the prison with the others.
To be honest, Jesse would have almost preferred that. He had been without his squad members for too long. They could come up with a plan to escape. But, for some reason, I’m no longer an average prisoner.
After a heated argument with the other two giants, the translator smiled triumphantly. “Come,” he said. “Not stay in prison with others. Stay with me.” He began to walk in the opposite direction, away from the prison, gesturing for them to follow him.
For a moment, Jesse considered running back to the wine cellar staircase. We’d never make it. Now that we’ve been found, we can’t run.
“The third son?” Jesse said to Owen as they slogged through the water after the translator. “What does that mean?”
“Maybe you’re related to the Westlunders somehow,” Owen said. “Barnaby told us that in the old days, some Westlunders left their tribe in the mountains and married average people.”
Jesse just stared at him. “Owen, look at me. Do I look like I have even one drop of giant blood in my body?”
Owen studied him critically, then nodded. “I guess you’re right.”
The translator stopped before one of the archways set in the wall. “My home,” he said, letting them go in before him. There was no door, not even a curtain. Apparently, the Westlunders don’t care much for privacy.
Inside, the translator’s home looked much like any house belonging to an Amarian, except a measurement or two larger. There was a brick oven in the corner with a chimney to release smoke above the ground. That explains the smoke I saw coming from the grate in the city streets, Jesse thought.
Interestingly, the translator had a writing desk in the corner of the room, next to a large bookshelf. Jesse walked over to it, glancing at the titles. All were written in a strange, thick lettering that mimicked the sound of the giant’s language.
A table, a bench and one large stuffed chair made up the rest of the furnishings. There was a door leading into another room, where Jesse assumed the translator slept.
“Castor, son of Mardon,” the translator said, pointing to himself. “Welcome to Below-Lidia.”
“Clever name,” Jesse said dryly.
“Hello, Clever,” Castor said seriously, reaching out to shake Jesse’s hand.
“No,” Jesse said quickly, realizing his mistake. “That’s not my name. I was talking about the name of the….” He shook his head. “Never mind. I’m Jesse.”
“Owen,” Owen said.
“Who taught you how to speak Amarian?” Jesse said, making sure to talk slowly.
“Man named Gideon,” Castor said.
“One of our skeleton friends in the crypt?” Owen asked. “Did you kill him?”
Every time one of them spoke, Castor would stare down at them with serious brown eyes, listening with every fiber of his being. He must have understood the word “kill,” because as soon as Owen said it, he shook his head furiously, knocking it into the chandelier.
“No,” he said, rubbing his head. “He alive. In Westlund.”
Westlund. Hadn’t the Westlund settlements in the mountains been abandoned? Jesse exchanged glances with Owen, who shrugged.
“Where is Westlund?” Jesse asked.
Castor shrugged and pointed up and toward the far wall. “East,” Owen supplied immediately.
“How can you possibly know that?” Jesse demanded. He wasn’t even sure which direction was up anymore.
“I’m sure,” was all Owen said.
Castor pointed toward the wall again. “East?” he asked.
Jesse nodded. “South. West. North,” he said, pointing in the other directions.
“West,” Castor said, laughing to himself like that was a good joke. He hurried over to a paper on the wall and scratched out the words, muttering them to himself. Jesse didn’t even want to guess how he would spell them.
“So Westlund—the giants’ main settlement, I’d guess—is in the east,” Owen said. “Probably past the swamps altogether and in the Wastelands. No wonder we never found it!” He paused. “If it’s in the east, why is it called Westlund?”
“Their word for the direction west isn’t the same as ours,” Jesse reminded him.
Castor had finished his task and turned his attention back to his guests.
“So, this man Gideon,” Jesse said. “Did he go to Westlund willingly?”
“Yes, Gideon go to Westlund,” Castor repeated. “He is a….” He struggled for the word. “He make this.” He pointed to the glass around the lamp on his desk.
Since Castor seemed to have run out of things to talk about, Jesse decided to get a closer look at the bookshelf. All of the books were crammed onto the top four shelves. Only the lower two were within Jesse’s reach.
Castor noticed Jesse staring at the bottom shelves. “Water,” he said miserably. He picked up a book from the top of a stack on a writing desk and showed them the damage the rising water had done to it, presumably before he had emptied the shelves.
“So, our friend can read and write,” Jesse said to himself. For some reason—probably the broken Amarian—he assumed the Westlunders were uneducated.
“Yes, I read,” Castor said, excited to hear words he recognized. He tapped the open book in the center of the desk. “I write a book of….” He paused, thinking. A look of frustration came to his face.
Suddenly, he slammed the book shut, clearly frustrated. “Words! I no have your words for say what I have here.” He pointed to his head.
Jesse tried to imagine how hard it would be to communicate with such a limited vocabulary. Once, in Da’armos, he had been among people who did not speak his language, but then he had traveled with Samar, an able interpreter who spoke both Amarian and Da’armon fluently. We take the ability to talk to others for granted, he realized.
Jesse walked over to the desk and flipped pages of the book. There were lines and lines, in fairly small print for someone so large with long, complicated-looking sentences. While Castor was forced to talk like a small child in Amarian, he was probably a scholar in the language of Westlund.
Within the pages, Jesse found a diagram of a very familiar city. “This is Lidia, isn’t it?”
Castor nodded. “Lidia,” he repeated. “Book of Lidia and Westlund.” He looked pleadingly at Jesse. “Word please?”
“Boring?” Owen suggested.
Jesse hit his arm. “You’ll confuse him,” he muttered. He glanced back at Castor’s book. There were maps, but it was more than a book of geography. The Westlund letters were slightly different than those in the Amarian alphabet, but Jesse recognized some of the words: Amarias, Terenid, and in a list on one page, Jardos, Hyram, and Vincent. There was a neat block paragraph about each of them.
“History?” Jesse g
uessed, trying to supply Castor’s missing word. “Things that happened a long time ago?”
Something about Jesse’s definition seemed to stick, and Castor nodded. “Book of history. History of Watchers, most.”
That led to a new question. “What do the Watchers do?”
Castor just stared at him. “We watch.”
“Very helpful, thank you,” Owen said sarcastically.
“You’re welcome,” Castor said, almost automatically. Gideon may have left out some grammar lessons, but he had clearly taught Castor his Amarian manners.
There was a loose page in the book. Its thin, spidery script contrasted with the thick, strangely formed letters of the pages around it. And it was in Amarian.
“It’s the inscription from the entranceway,” Jesse said, taking it out of the book. “Only with the missing pieces filled in.”
Three give their all
For Lidia,s call.
Son of Amarias,
Lidias son,
Son of Westlund
Join as one.
Their sacrif ice
Of greatest price
Reveals the key
To Lidia,s wealth
And destiny.
Beneath the inscription were longer lines in the same handwriting.
These are the words of Parros deGuardi, unfortunate explorer from District Two, now among the Vanished, along with my company. This, as far as I could gather, is what the lines of the damaged Lidian inscription ought to read, although I have no way of knowing for certain. I speak limited Westlundish, but I have attempted to communicate these lines and their probable interpretation to the Watchers, the giants who live under the city and search it every night to f ind any passing travelers.
“So that’s what they are,” Jesse muttered. It made sense. All of the rumors of people disappearing in the swamp….
“I can’t believe that no matter where you are, you can find something written down,” Owen said, flopping onto Castor’s lone chair.
Secret of the Giants' Staircase Page 10
