Suddenly, he stopped and gazed at me, his green-blue eyes shining in the torchlight. “I’m sorry. I got you in this mess. I had to believe.”
I swallowed hard. “That I’m the Oracle.”
“Yes.”
“I-I don’t …” I couldn’t put my conflict about being the Oracle into words.
“We’ll know in time,” Leandro said to reassure me.
“We don’t have time!” Charlie shot back.
Leandro cast him a crooked smile. “Merely one of our problems.”
“Not your fault, Leandro,” Apollo whispered. “This all happened because of me.”
We looked at him. He stared ahead with big, sad eyes.
“Zeus turned against me after you left,” Apollo continued. “My family turned against me, never believing I was the king my father wanted me to be. My people lost faith in me. The only ones loyal to me now are the korax. I reunited them with their families and improved their living conditions. Funny, the only ones I could help as king were dumb beasts.” He sputtered a sad laugh.
“King Poseidon was a friend, but I’d barely begun secret talks with him when Artemis kidnapped me. She turned against me … I don’t know why. She’ll probably turn Poseidon against me too. The Oracle … that’s a myth. No one is coming to save us.” He fingered his filthy purple vest, the royal sun insignia of his land stitched on it. The king’s ring, given to him by his dying father, shone bright gold. He pushed his sleeves up and clasped his hands behind his head, revealing the royal tattoo on the inside of his wrist: a yellow sun with a fancy “A” in the middle. He may be a king but he was branded like all Nostos slaves in a prison of his own destiny’s making. We were all in the same jail now.
Anger filled my every limb. Anger at trusting Ash and Lore—or Borin. Anger at the queen for imprisoning us and taking my orb. Anger at coming here in the first place. Anger at my friend Apollo, who’d given up hope when we needed it most. As quick as it came, my anger fled, leaving a depressed knot in my chest.
“What happened to you, Apollo?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
“After you left, Joshua, Zeus punished Apollo for releasing the Lost Realm slaves,” Leandro explained for him. “He shut down the Lightning Road to Earth from every land except the Arrow Realm, which became the main hub of inbound mortal slaves and outbound Child Collectors. I’ve tried to reason with Artemis to band with Apollo and lead the revolution Nostos needs to free itself from slavery. At first, she was receptive, but now … she’s changed.” He narrowed his eyes. “I suspected she’s been lured to dark forces so I followed her into the woods seeking answers. Now I know she watched me too.”
“Did you find any answers?” Charlie said, with a lilt of hope.
“Yes,” Leandro said. “That she forces herself to go into the forest she dreads to overcome her terror.”
“Terror of what?”
“The woods.”
“She’s a hunter and afraid of the woods?” I laughed.
But Leandro didn’t laugh. He frowned at me. “She’s had this fear of the trees trapping her and strangling her to a slow death since she was a child. Her mother made her sleep in the forest alone at the foot of the Black Heart Tree to drum the weakness out of her but it drove her anxiety on. Artemis still forces herself to go there and sleep sometimes to spite her mother, now long dead. I thought Artemis was cured when she returned one morning with a new bracelet she’d made from the branches of the very trees that terrified her.”
“So was she cured?” I said.
“I don’t know. She still wears her sunglasses. They make her feel safe and invisible from the trees. Or so she told me as younglings.” He inhaled sharply and flung his cloak behind him at the memory. “Perhaps she dreads taking the glasses off. I don’t know. I do know this: it seems as if the old Artemis is gone, replaced by another …” He tapped his lips with a knuckle in deep thought.
“What does that have to do with us?” Charlie said. “Let’s break out of here. We’ve got Apollo like we planned. We can go home.” He backed up and rammed into the cell bars. They shook but didn’t budge.
“They’re sunk two feet deep into the stone,” Leandro said with a deep sigh. “I know. I was the head guard here.”
“Call on some of your animal friends to help us then.” Charlie rubbed his smashed shoulder.
“We’re too far below ground to reach them if they’d even come. Most are loyal to Artemis.”
“Joshua, you’ve got powers here. I mean, mon Dieu, they think you’re this Oracle. That must mean something.” He twisted his fingers around the bars and lowered his head to them. “I’ll never see my brother again … even if I do get home.”
“Stop,” I said. “You will.”
But our adventure had grown more complicated.
“Joshua has no powers,” Apollo said with watery eyes. “Artemis took his lightning orb.”
“You’re a king! Don’t you have people to call on for help? Could you get them a message somehow?” I said, eager for him to be the take-charge Apollo he was when I knew him as Sam.
He shook his head.
“It was your father’s dying wish to help your people, don’t you remember?”
“I can’t help anyone. I’m powerless.”
“You don’t need powers to do the right thing. All you need is to believe in yourself.” How true those words rang for me as I said them but Apollo didn’t respond. I tried once more. “Don’t let your father’s death be for nothing.”
“Oui,” said Charlie. “At least he apologized to you in the end for how he treated you.”
Apollo refused to look at either of us and so I continued to search every crevice of our cell for a spot to tunnel out. Hopelessness filled me but I shook it off, not wanting to believe we were powerless to save ourselves. There must be a way out! Loose stone to pull apart. A hole to make bigger. Something! The heavy stones wouldn’t budge.
We were fortified worm food.
Chapter Eight
Apollo talked on as Charlie and I searched for a way out of our rock prison. “My father named me his successor with his dying breaths, but the rightful heir, my cousin, contested it. He said I killed my father. My own father!” I glanced at him in my search. He gazed at the ceiling, nostrils pinched. “My cousin called me weak for wanting to end mortal slavery. He convinced the rest of my family. They all said Leandro was a deserter and not to be trusted as my father’s witness to name me as heir. No one stood with me for what was right.” He paused and in a quieter voice said, “I failed in my promise to you, Joshua.”
“Your cousin sounds like a bully,” I said. Charlie agreed. I’d had my share of them at all the different schools we’d moved to over the years. The new kid with only a grandfather for family was great for getting picked on. “There’s got to be others on your side. I just know it. Don’t give up, okay?” I said. “We all need to get home where we belong.”
Charlie nodded, swatting at a sluggish moth buzzing about his head.
Apollo huddled on the floor, knees to his chest. “Nostos is too corrupt for change. I’m just one person. One person can’t change a whole world.”
“Yes, they can.” Leandro strode to Apollo and pulled him up to face him. “The Oracle can.” But he stared at me when he said it.
“He’ll die trying,” Apollo whispered.
Leandro shook Apollo. “Are you going to let Joshua die?”
Tears welled in Apollo’s eyes. “It’s not up to me. I used to have faith there was an Oracle.”
Leandro let Apollo sink back down to the floor. “We need to have faith in something to go on in this doomed world. It’s why I sent Ash to bring Joshua here. And Lore. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out.”
“Obviously. They betrayed us,” Charlie said.
“Only Lore. Ash is a friend, and why wouldn’t she trust my hound? She trusts me.”
“Funny,” I said. “Like I thought you betrayed me once.”
“Yes
, well, we are alike, you and I, young Joshua,” Leandro said. “We must pass over what is evident and search deeper—trust our instincts to know the truth.”
He held my gaze. Old feelings for him as a leader and a hero surged through me.
“Do you have faith in me?” Leandro asked as if reading my thoughts.
With all my feelings bubbling inside me, I could only nod.
Then a silky voice murmured from the stone walls. “Faith is alive.”
We all looked around. “Wha—”
Leandro held up a hand to silence us. “Who said that?”
“A mastermind. And a master of minds,” the voice said with a giggle. I pointed to where the voice came from in the wall. Leandro nodded and we sneaked over there.
“It’s a crazy prisoner Artemis locked up,” Apollo said.
“Perhaps he has information to help,” Leandro said.
I nodded and pushed on a two-foot block of stone where the voice came from. Nothing. I tried another stone. Put all my weight behind it. Charlie and Leandro helped. The voice giggled again. We braced our feet and shoved our shoulders into the wall. Charlie grunted, his face straining red. The rock moved an inch. We both gasped in excitement. It must’ve been used to get through before. We pushed harder. The jagged rock slid forward and fell on the other side.
A man’s face bulged through the opening. I jumped back and fell on my butt. His eyes widened, and his giggle spilled into a musical laugh bouncing around our cell.
Leandro reached through the hole and caught the neck of the giggler. “What’s so funny?”
The man’s eyes bulged bigger. “Nothing, m’lord,” his voice croaked. “You need faith to get out of this dread. Faith is alive. Not dead!”
Leandro let go and the man’s face popped into our cell. His pale, smooth face beamed with large, bright blue eyes, red cheeks, and a chunky nose. Tufts of white hair stuck out from his head. He looked like an old man trapped in a kid’s face.
Charlie jerked back. “Mon Dieu! Santa’s crazy cousin.”
“Faith renders us invincible,” Crazy chanted. “No matter the enemies yet to be faced. If doubt enters, our faithful hearts will be erased.”
“You’re talking nonsense, whoever you are,” Leandro said, flinging his cloak behind him.
“No, no. A silly sot they put here to rot … but the truth will be got. Found in the lyric cast to spin my trick.” The old man’s words and eyes mesmerized me, chaining me in place. His face became a head and an arm with a hand stretched toward us as this strange person squeezed farther through the opening. We all leaned back. The tip of the man’s blackened fingernail curled up and pointed at me.
“Are you ready to lead?” His puffy white eyebrows rumpled up but his lips didn’t move. His voice echoed inside me.
Maybe, I wanted to say, but my words escaped me. The walls pressed closer and the voices of my friends tumbled together and grew faint.
“You will be tested, faithful one.” His voice pierced my head. I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes to push the dizziness away. “Take the knife of Leandro. ‘Tis hidden in his boot. Plunge it through his heart like a poisonous root. What he seeks stands before him, but he cannot see through the gloom. Die he will soon. End his suffering under tonight’s moon.”
“No! He’s my friend.” Waves of tiredness beat against me.
“What’s he doing to you, Joshua?” Charlie said, pulling me closer. “You leave him alone, you crazy old man.”
He didn’t. His voice crooned on in my head, making me so sleepy. “A desolate wind crosses our land of sea and stone. You must cross it alone. All will forsake you. Kill them now to end their pitiful life so abhorred. Only the heart of a true warrior can command ancient powers to be restored.”
“I won’t!”
“Fail to face your destiny and die. Lose faith and die. Are you ready to die?”
“No!” I stumbled.
“Neither am I. Which is why you must.”
The cool stone charged up to slap me. Hands pulled me up but couldn’t stop the black that rushed in.
Chapter Nine
Blurred faces hovered over me. Cold rattled inside me from the stone floor. I breathed deeply, inhaling a bitter smoke and muck stench. The day’s events spun inside me all over again. Hands stood me up as my vision cleared. I shook off Charlie and Leandro’s grip. The strange face was gone, but humming floated from the hole in the wall.
“What did you do to him with your spells old man?” Leandro strode to the hole, reaching an arm through to grasp our neighbor’s neck again without luck.
“All is well within his well,” the voice sang. “The past is leaves in his book yet to be read. A faithful heart will read them all and not get dead.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Fine, fine, fine.” The voice giggled. “Your mind is not mine, mine, mine!”
“We’re not fine,” Charlie muttered.
The humming continued.
“I know what he is,” Leandro said, giving up his quest to choke the crazy man. “A rare breed that hides away. He carries the ancient magic of Hypnos. He hypnotizes folk and forces them to do what he wishes.”
“According to his riddles I’ve been forced to listen to, Artemis found him scavenging for roots in the Perimeter Lands,” Apollo said from the floor. I’d forgotten he huddled there. “She threatened to flush out his secret cave community there and use them as slaves—and bait—if he didn’t do as she ordered. He’s the leader of hundreds of cave dwellers in the Perimeter Lands. They’re harmless folks unless provoked. Then you risk being hypnotized and waking up tossed in a bog. Artemis uses him to command her soldiers.”
“What did he command you to do?” Leandro asked me with eyes of concern. I opened my mouth but couldn’t tell him. He put his hands on my shoulders. Their warmth soaked into me, chasing some of the cold away. I wanted to lean into all of his warmness but was frozen with confusion over what happened.
I swigged water from Ash’s canteen. My friends waited for an answer. “Nothing,” I mumbled.
“And you came here for nothing,” Apollo said. “There’s no use fighting. It’s hopeless.”
“Stop saying that.” But he just stood there with a sad look on his face. “We didn’t come here for nothing.”
“Oui,” Charlie butted in. “We came here for you, King-man.”
“I’d listen to your friends, King,” Leandro said, crossing his arms. “It all started in the Lost Realm with one boy, one king, and one hope to change our world.”
Something stirred inside me with his words—something bigger than me.
The floor shook. Marching feet hammered our way.
“Here comes the queen’s army,” sang our neighbor. “Ruled by the mean and smarmy.”
Leandro bent down to his boot. “Don’t do it,” I said. “They’ll kill you.”
He let his hand fall and straightened. “How did you know?”
“The Hypnos guy told me.”
He frowned but there was no more time to talk. Soldiers ripped open the cell and grabbed me and Charlie.
“No!” Apollo came to life and hooked my shirt with his fist. “Take me instead.”
“We intend to soon, prisoner, queen’s orders, but not yet.” A soldier pushed him into the wall and held a knife to Leandro, who struggled to get to us. “You’ll be later, traitor. The queen has other plans for you.” Then Charlie and I were hauled down the corridor.
“Leandro!” I twisted around, reaching for him while digging my heels into the floor. A soldier thrust a hissing vape in his face and locked the cell.
“I’ll find you,” he called out. Leandro’s face creased with fear, and he clutched the bars next to Apollo, his pale face frozen in a grimace.
We turned the bend and my friends were gone.
They took our neighbor too, who turned out to be a short, fat man in a frayed gray robe. He waved lumpy arms at us, his giggles filling the air like bubbles. “The beasts soon
feast!” His high-pitched voice cut into my ears.
“Feast on this.” Charlie kicked at Hypnos as we turned another corner, but the old man jumped to the side and Charlie kicked the soldier instead, receiving a hard whomp to the head for it. With each step, I grew farther and farther from Leandro and Apollo. We’d met up again only to be separated, and Charlie and I were now on our own. No weapons. No orb. No one to watch over us.
The guards’ swords clattered on the walls as we climbed the steps out of the dungeon. The torches crackled from the wind racing through the stairway, and the soldier’s vapes hissed back. Out of the corner of my eye, a vape’s snake tongue waved near my head. I leaned back, but the soldier’s calloused hands choked my wrist, pulling me tight to him as we mounted the stairs. Rough rock scraped my side, ripping across my skin.
“Time to hit the showers, you ignorant Barbaros,” my guard grumbled and pushed me along. “You’re stinking up the castle!”
Charlie and I soon found ourselves separated, shoved down different corridors. Fear that I’d never see him again zipped through me. His eyes reflected the same thought as he turned the corner. I was pitched headfirst into a cell where I waited until a servant arrived to spray me with water from a thick hose while another cranked a rusty wheel on a wall to pump it in. I sucked in water by surprise, but the cold liquid tasted good and soothed my dry throat. The soldier on guard laughed at me as I was led into another room with a giant rusty fan. A servant pumped a pedal attached to it, and it blew me dry within minutes.
After what seemed like the longest hour of my life, Charlie and I were thrown back together in a corridor. Shivering, we cast grateful glances at one another as we trod in front of our guards. The scent of roasting meat and fresh baked bread clung to the air, stirring my stomach juices like crazy. The clanging of pots mixed with voices. Wood smoke wafted by as we passed a kitchen. The servants stopped their duties, hands in midair, to stare as we were forced along the hall.
“Hurry Reekers, the queen awaits in her personal throne room.” My guard gave me a good shake.
Joshua and the Arrow Realm Page 4
