Air Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  Marcus met Kyja’s eyes, then looked quickly away. “I don’t want to be in the same room with her.”

  Chapter 12

  Who’s at the Door?

  Marcus lay on a bed in a dark room down the hall from where Kyja had been taken. Guards were posted outside, and two wizards—a man with spotted hands and a woman with extremely large ears—stood inside the room to either side of the door. Both held long staffs covered in complex runes.

  After six months of waiting to come to Farworld—of wanting so much to see Kyja, Master Therapass, and even Riph Raph—how could everything have gone so wrong so quickly now that he was here?

  He tried to convince himself everything would work out all right—that the future wasn’t set in stone, no matter what the guide had told him. But how could he take that chance? He couldn’t even imagine what Kyja must be thinking. The look she’d given him when he said that he didn’t want to be in the same room with her was worse than any physical pain he’d felt. And the most terrible part was that he couldn’t tell her why.

  Someone knocked on the door, and the two wizards tensed. Marcus looked up quickly as the door opened. It was only Master Therapass. The old wizard crossed the room and took a seat by Marcus’s bed.

  “How’s Kyja doing?” Marcus asked.

  Master Therapass pinched his lower lip, his eyes thoughtful. “Hurt. Confused. Are you angry at her for bringing you here?”

  “No!” Marcus said, his voice too loud. The woman with the big ears glanced in his direction. “No,” he repeated softly. “I’m not mad at her at all.”

  Master Therapass sat quietly, waiting.

  “I just think it might be better if we spent some time apart.” He couldn’t say any more than that.

  The wizard nodded thoughtfully. “The last two hundred days apart haven’t been enough?”

  Marcus squirmed.

  Master Therapass pulled a green trill stone from one of his sleeves. The game piece rolled out of his hand, up his arm, and around the back of his neck.

  Marcus admired the wizard’s easy use of magic. He’d worked on his magic for over a year, but he still couldn’t pull off anything that smooth. “I think Kyja might have saved my life,” Marcus said at last. “Maybe it’s better not to talk about it. I don’t think I can stand any more of that green stuff.”

  The truth was, getting a mouthful of goblin goop was only a small part of his worry. How could he tell Master Therapass—or anyone, for that matter—that the reason he was afraid to be alone with Kyja was because he was terrified he might kill her? He definitely couldn’t tell that to Kyja. Just the idea made him so ashamed, he wanted to bury himself under the nearest mountain and never come out.

  Kyja had saved him from what he was pretty sure was something even worse than death—having never been born at all. And by doing so, she had come one step closer to being killed, if the man in the Will Be and the woman in the Never Was were telling the truth. Marcus had no idea when it would happen or what—if anything—he could do to stop it.

  He could tell Master Therapass wanted to dig deeper, but the wizard only nodded. The trill stone rolled out from behind his neck again, but this time it was red. “You said the boys’ school was going to take you from the monastery?”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said. “They were coming this afternoon. I mean yesterday afternoon, I guess. I’m not even sure what day it is. Terrible Teagarden himself was on his way.”

  The trill stone jumped off the wizard’s shoulder as though making a break for it, and he snatched it out of the air. “That’s not possible. The monks would never have let you leave the monastery without contacting me first.”

  “It is, though,” Marcus insisted. “Father Shaun said so himself.”

  The wizard’s eyes narrowed. “There is no Father Shaun at the monastery.”

  Of course there was. Marcus had met him within days of arriving. But then he thought back to what the boy in the Was had been singing. Not a monk. Not a monk. The boy had also said Father Shaun was the one who took Marcus’s things. He opened his mouth to tell Master Therapass, before remembering what had happened every other time he tried to talk about the pit or the mirror. Maybe there was a way to approach the topic without mentioning the pit.

  “Do you think he could be a fake? Someone from the Dark Circle? And that was why he was trying to make me leave the monastery?”

  “I think we’re missing something,” Master Therapass said, steepling his fingers in front of his face. “I must consider this. Try to get some rest. We will speak more in the morning.” The wizard stood up. He seemed much older than he had six months before. He patted Marcus on the shoulder. “And think about talking to Kyja.”

  Marcus nodded. He knew he had to give Kyja some kind of explanation. The easiest thing would be to make up a story. But Kyja knew him so well it would be hard to hide the truth from her. And the idea of lying to his best friend made him almost as sick as the thought of telling her the truth.

  He closed his eyes and tried to put the pieces together. If Father Shaun wasn’t really a monk, who was he? The Dark Circle wanted Marcus to leave the monastery. But if that’s what they were trying to accomplish, why hide his things?

  Unless the reason for lying to him about the boys’ school wasn’t to get him to leave the grounds at all. What if the whole point was to force him to—

  “Marcus,” a voice called softly.

  Marcus opened his eyes and rolled over. He looked at the two wizards standing on either side of the door. Had one of them called him?

  “Marcus,” the voice called again. “Out here.” The voice was coming from the hallway.

  “Kyja?” Marcus whispered back. What was she doing outside his door? She was supposed to be locked in her room.

  “Hurry up,” she called.

  Marcus sat up and rubbed his face. What did she want? The man and woman watching over him must have heard Kyja calling him, but they didn’t so much as blink an eye. He cleared his throat and looked at the wizards. “I, um, I think Kyja wants to talk to me. Do you mind if I open the door for just a second?”

  Neither of the wizards said a thing. They didn’t move or look in his direction. There was something strange about this whole situation.

  “Are you coming or not?” Kyja called. “I don’t have all day.”

  “Okay . . .” Marcus eased himself out of the bed. He balanced his weight on his good leg—which wasn’t feeling all that good—and, using the wall for support, hopped to the door. He kept waiting for his guards to stop him, but they both looked straight ahead as though they hadn’t noticed a thing. They might as well have been statues for as still as they were standing. Were they giving him their permission without actually saying so?

  “Stop messing around,” Kyja hissed. “This is important.”

  “Fine!” Marcus grabbed the door and pulled it open, feeling a little cranky. “What do you want?”

  Kyja balled her fists and slammed them against her thighs. “Did you hear what he said to me back there?”

  Riph Raph flipped his tail. “For the third time, yes.”

  “What did he mean, he didn’t want to be in the same room with me?”

  “Maybe the green stuff gave him dragon breath, and he was embarrassed to have you smell it?”

  Kyja paused for a moment before realizing the skyte was teasing. She ground her teeth. “You think this is funny? I should send you to stay with him so the two of you can be rude to each other.”

  Riph Raph clung to the bed’s headboard with his right claw and scratched himself with his left. “If you’re going to be this way all night, staying with him might not be such a bad idea. At least I could get some sleep.”

  “Ohhh,” Kyja growled. “It’s just . . . I don’t understand. Why is he mad at me? What did I do?” She knew the wizards standing at her door were listening, but she didn’t care. She thought she and Marcus were friends, maybe even more than that. All their time being apart, she’d assumed he’d missed
her as much as she’d missed him. Now she wondered if that was true. Maybe he was glad to be away from her. Maybe he didn’t want to come back at all.

  “You could try asking him,” Riph Raph said, searching the room for any tasty bugs.

  Kyja thought about that. She did want to talk to Marcus. Tell him what she’d discovered about the air elementals. Find out what was happening on Earth, and what he’d been doing when she pulled him to Farworld.

  But what if he didn’t want to talk to her? What if—

  “Kyja,” a voice called from outside her room. “Are you in there?”

  She looked toward the door. “Marcus?”

  “Come out here, quickly. We need to talk.” It was definitely Marcus. But what was he doing out of his room?

  She looked at Riph Raph. The skyte flapped his ears. “He found some mints to cure his dragon breath?”

  He was no help. She got out of bed, wondering if the wizards at the door would try to stop her. Neither of them even looked at her as she approached.

  “Hurry up!” Marcus called. He sounded urgent. Was he in trouble?

  “I’m sorry. I have to leave,” Kyja said, determined to get past the guards whether they tried to stop her or not. But they didn’t move as she turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped into the hallway.

  Marcus was standing just down the hall. Before she could say a word, he looked at her and said, “What do you want?”

  Chapter 13

  No Time like the Present

  What do you mean, ‘What do I want’?” Kyja looked at Marcus with a confused expression.

  “You called me,” Marcus said. “What do you want?”

  Kyja blinked. “I didn’t call you. You called me.”

  Marcus shook his head. Was she playing some kind of game? “No, I didn’t. I was just sitting on my bed, thinking about . . . well, it doesn’t matter what I was thinking about, when you told me to come out into the hall. You said it was important. So what do you want?”

  “I did nothing of the kind,” Kyja said. “If you changed your mind and don’t want to talk to me, just say so.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to talk to you,” Marcus said. “I mean I did—before. But not just now. You said you wanted to talk to me.”

  Kyja opened her mouth to argue, when Riph Raph flew out of her room. “I could listen to the two of you go on like this all night. In fact, it feels like I already have. But I think we may have bigger things to worry about.”

  Kyja whirled on the skyte. “What things?”

  Riph Raph flapped his wings until he was right above the nearest of the guards stationed in the hallway. The guard didn’t move as the skyte landed on his plumed helm and pecked at the metal visor. Twelve guards were posted in the hall, and all stood perfectly still.

  Clinging to the doorjamb to stay standing, Marcus moved to study the man nearest him—a short guard with a bushy mustache and a crooked nose. “Hello?”

  The man didn’t blink. He didn’t twitch. He wasn’t even breathing, as far as Marcus could tell.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Kyja asked, waving her hand in front of the eyes of the guard Riph Raph had landed on.

  “It’s like they’re frozen or something.” Marcus looked back at the wizards inside his room. They were frozen too.

  “Listen,” Kyja said.

  Marcus stood and listened. The only thing he could hear was the sound of his own breathing. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Kyja said. “It’s never this quiet in the tower.”

  “It’s night. Everyone’s probably asleep.”

  “Turnip Head’s been gone too long,” Riph Raph said.

  Marcus frowned. “What did you call me?”

  “Forget him,” Kyja said. “There’s always someone up doing something. People cooking, guards patrolling, dogs barking. It’s never this quiet.”

  Marcus glanced up at a chandelier and gaped. “Look,” he said, pointing to the flames.

  Kyja looked up and stared as well. “They aren’t flickering. It’s like the fire is . . .”

  “Frozen,” Marcus finished, and an odd feeling tightened his stomach. What was it the woman in the Never Was said? Something about time being frozen. But this couldn’t have anything to do with that. “We need to tell Master Therapass,” he said. “This could have something to do with whatever was going on in his study.”

  Riph Raph squawked. “That might be the most intelligent thing I’ve ever heard him say. Not that he’s ever said anything really intelligent to compare it to.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes. “Quiet, birdbrain.” He limped toward Kyja, leaning against the wall. “You’ll need to help me walk.” On Farworld, his leg and arm weren’t quite as weak as they were on Earth. Somehow his health was tied to the health of Farworld. But even at the best of times, he couldn’t walk here without some kind of assistance. And tonight, he felt especially weak.

  “You can use your staff,” Kyja said.

  Marcus shook his head. “I can’t. I left it in . . .” But there it was, leaning against the wall. It couldn’t be here. The last time he’d seen it, it was with his wheelchair in Elder Ephraim’s room. He grabbed the stick and ran his hands over the polished surface. “This is impossible,” he muttered. But there was no question that this was his staff.

  “Something really weird is going on here,” he said, moving slowly down the corridor.

  Kyja walked by his side. “Usually the halls are drafty at night. But I don’t feel any breeze.”

  Marcus nodded. It was like everything but the three of them had somehow just stopped in time. He glanced at Kyja. “About what I said before. I didn’t . . . I mean, I wasn’t . . .” He wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

  “Are you mad at me?” Kyja asked softly.

  “No,” he said. “I just . . .” What could he say? He couldn’t tell her the truth.

  “Tell her you had dragon breath,” Riph Raph whispered.

  “What?” Had he actually thought he’d missed the annoying skyte and his sarcastic comments? “Why did you leave me on Earth for so long?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “I didn’t want to,” Kyja said. “Master Therapass said it was too dangerous to bring you back. He was trying to find a way to protect you from the realm of shadows.”

  Master Therapass had explained that when Marcus or Kyja jumped from their own worlds to the other’s, they weren’t completely in the world they jumped to. Part of them remained trapped in a gray area between Earth and Farworld, called the realm of shadows, which was why they couldn’t stay in the other world for more than a few days without getting sick. The wizard believed that one of Marcus’s parents was actually a creature of shadows, making it especially dangerous for him to jump.

  “But you did pull me over,” he said.

  Kyja brushed back a lock of hair. “I kind of disobeyed Master Therapass,” she said with a smile. Marcus had missed that smile.

  They passed two more guards and a girl carrying a pot of hot soup, frozen in mid-step. The steam rising from the soup was locked in a motionless cloud just above the pot. Marcus passed his hand through the cloud and felt moisture on his fingers. But except for the spot where he’d put his hand, none of the steam blew away.

  “When I looked for you in the aptura discerna, I saw your wheelchair and your things,” Kyja said. “But when I couldn’t find you, I panicked.” She looked over at him, the question of where he’d been clear in her eyes.

  Marcus leaned heavily on his staff. Based on how much his arm and leg ached, Farworld had to be in pretty bad shape. “I’m not sure where I was or what happened to me,” he said. Kyja had saved his life. He owed her as much of the truth as he could tell her without revealing what he’d seen in the Will Be.

  “There was this mirror, except it wasn’t really a mirror. And when I touched it . . .” He waited for something to stop him from speaking, hoping he wouldn’t have to go on. But it didn’t.


  Kyja watched him expectantly.

  “When I touched it, I got pulled somewhere else.”

  Kyja gasped. “Into the realm of shadows?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcus said. “But I don’t think so. There were no shadow creatures. Only a little boy who showed me a bunch of weird stuff.” Why was it that whatever had stopped him from telling Master Therapass about the mirror and the things he saw was letting him tell Kyja?

  They rounded a corner and reached the wizard’s study. Marcus had been secretly afraid that whatever had frozen the guards had frozen Master Therapass as well. He was relieved to see the wizard studying a large book.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said, limping through the door. “Everyone’s frozen and . . .” His words died away as the wizard continued to stare down at his book.

  “He’s frozen too,” Kyja whispered.

  Everything in the room was frozen as well. The cookie tin with wings hung in midair. The fire in the fireplace didn’t crackle or move, although it still felt hot. Marcus limped across the room as quickly as he could and touched the old man’s shoulder. He felt normal. Warm. Human. He definitely hadn’t been turned into a statue, and Marcus didn’t think he was dead.

  “What’s this?” Kyja knelt and reached toward a thin silvery line on the floor that started just inside the wizard’s door and led out into the hallway.

  “Careful,” Marcus said, unsure why he was warning her. “Don’t touch it.”

  Kyja pulled back her hand. “What’s wrong? It’s just some kind of paint, I think.”

  “I’m not sure,” Marcus said. He knelt beside Kyja and studied the silvery line. It didn’t look like paint to him. It looked more like . . . he couldn’t think of exactly what. Every time he tried to remember, he kept seeing the flower gardens outside the monastery. “Was this here when we came in? I didn’t notice it.”