by D K Drake
“Oh, wow.” Taliya worked her way to the middle of the room and slowly approached a round, waist-high column decorated with dragon scales and topped with a dome glass lid covered with dust. “This has to be it.”
“It has to be what?”
Without looking at Javan, she handed him the lantern and brushed the dust on the glass away. A thick black book with gold lettering entitled Portal Codes sat on display under the glass. A slight gasp revealed her excitement, and she attempted to lift the lid. It didn’t move. “It’s stuck. I can’t believe it’s stuck. I need that book!”
“Whoa. Chill. Let me try.” Javan returned the lantern to Taliya, stretched his arms and rounded his shoulders. “This is a man’s job.”
“Please. I may be short, but I’m not a weakling. You won’t be able to get the lid off, either.”
It was glass. How heavy could it be? “Watch me.” He put his hands on the bottom edge of the dome lid and lifted. With the exception of dust, nothing moved. “I think it’s cemented on. Nobody is getting this book out of here.”
“Watch me.” Taliya slammed the lantern onto the glass. The glass cracked, so she hit it again. More cracks appeared, and the light began blinking on and off.
“What are you doing?” Javan grabbed her arm before she could strike the glass a third time.
“I’m getting my book.”
“You’re stealing the book. I don’t think it was meant to leave this place.”
“Times have changed since it was sealed in here. I am one of the last people in the Protector Bloodline, and this book contains knowledge I need to learn so I can carry on my heritage. Now let me go.”
A muffled horn blasted through the dry air.
“That would be the Iria,” Taliya said. “The captain is signaling us that they are about to leave. We better hurry if we want to be on that boat when it cruises out of here.”
Javan didn’t want to be an accomplice in the theft of a book, but since no one had been here for hundreds of years and since Taliya’s heritage gave her rights to the book, he supposed taking the book wouldn’t actually be stealing. “Fine.” He let her go, took the lantern and smashed the glass himself. It shattered into thousands of pieces and killed the light in the process.
“Thank you!” She gave Javan a quick hug and picked up the book.
“Don’t thank me yet. We still have to navigate our way out of here in the dark, crawl back through the rubble, and make it to the boat before it leaves.”
“Then stop talking and start walking.” She latched onto Javan’s hand and held onto it as she began pulling them back in the direction they had just come from.
He wished they had another lantern and more time. He wanted to find Varjiek’s story on these shelves. He also wanted to learn more about how Protectors went about finding dragon eggs, taking them through the portal and caring for newly hatched dragons. On the plus side, he kind of liked holding Taliya’s hand.
As he closed the door to the Protector’s Den and helped Taliya move the empty shelf back on top of it, he realized he wouldn’t ever have a chance to return to this place. But all hope was not lost. He had access to the knowledge he desired, and she was crawling through the rat-infested rubble with him at this very moment.
Chapter 30
No More Daylight
Micah studied the opening of the building he had watched Javan and Taliya enter. With one well-placed shove, he could send the precariously balanced bricks collapsing on one another and trap the two of them inside.
The boat horn had already sounded once, indicating the captain was ready to leave. Could Micah convince him to leave without Taliya and the Collector on board?
Probably not. The girl could lead them to the humminglo fields, and everyone wanted to see Javan ride his dragon. He should let them live. Besides, he wanted to find out why they went into the building in the first place.
The horn blasted again. If they didn’t get to that boat, the captain might leave them all behind. Where were those two? Were they stuck? Was he going to have to rescue them? He really didn’t want to go in there, so he was relieved to hear their voices.
“We’re almost there,” Taliya said. “That light up ahead has to be the doorway.”
“We would be able to move faster if you would let me carry that book for you,” Javan replied.
“For the last time, I am not giving up my book.”
A book? Micah scratched his head and hid around the corner. They jeopardized their lives for a book? What book could possibly be that important? And how did Taliya know that book survived the book-burning fires of 3711?
Javan and Taliya emerged from the rubble a few minutes later. He peeked around the corner and noticed the big black book in Taliya’s hands. That’s all he had time to notice, because they began sprinting back to the boat without bothering to brush off the dust and debris they had collected from their exploration.
Micah ran a different route and beat the pair to the boat. He made it to the top deck in time to watch them run down the dock, but he didn’t see either one of them carrying a book.
How could that be? Why would they go to all the trouble to locate the book only to leave it behind? It made no sense. They had to have snuck it on board.
A final horn sounded before the boat rumbled to life. As it took off in the light of the setting sun, he made his way down to the main deck. There were only so many places on this boat to hide something, and Micah was determined to find that book.
◊◊◊
Despite Micah’s determination, he had no luck finding the book. He had waited for everyone except the patrol on the night watch to go to sleep before beginning his search, but it yielded no results. Perhaps Taliya had left the book in Tulkar after all.
Micah managed to get a few hours of restless sleep, but not knowing what the book contained or where it was hidden bothered him too much to allow him to sleep peacefully. He thus decided to burn off his frustration by running laps around the outer walkway of the main deck.
He had been running for a solid hour when the captain stopped him at the bow of the boat. “Hold up, Micah.” Cyr handed him a cup of water and pointed to the river ahead of them. “You’re going to want to see this.”
Micah took a few deep breaths and swallowed half the water in the cup. “What am I looking for?”
“The sunrise.”
Micah rolled his eyes and gave the cup back to Cyr. “I’ve seen plenty of sunrises. I’d rather keep running.”
“Wait.” Cyr put the cup back in Micah’s hands. “Watch.”
A ray of light to their right poked through the sky. The dense trees along the riverbank that stood twice as high as the boat kept the light from dancing on the water.
As the sun slowly rose higher and turned the sky beautiful shades of red, orange, purple and pink, the landscape around them escaped from the shadows and stunned Micah with its bright green beauty.
Branches of trees draped over the edges of the river and made Micah feel like the trees were bowing to him as they floated along. “You were right. The sunrise was worth watching.”
“That not the only reason I wanted you to see it.”
“Oh?”
“Take a closer look at the landscape to the north. Notice how the trees grow taller and thicker?”
Micah finished his water and inspected the land ahead. Sure enough, the towering trees created an impenetrable-looking wall on either side of the river. And instead of the branches dangling over the sides of the river, they reached over the river, intertwined with branches from the opposite side and effectively created a ceiling above the water. “Yeah. So?”
“So that’s the entrance to the Dark Zone.” Cyr coughed and wiped his brow with his forearm. His skin seemed one shade paler than usual, and he was sweating more than Micah. “Once we go under that canopy, we won’t see the sun again for days.”
“Ah.” Micah returned the empty cup to Cyr and took a step sideways. He didn’t want to catch whatev
er sickness the captain was suffering from. “I think I’ll walk a few laps to cool down while I can still enjoy the sunlight.”
“Good idea.” The captain returned to his wheel, and Micah walked away as fast as he could. He hated being sick and hoped he hadn’t lingered around the captain too long.
A lap later, new worries flooded his mind when the boat floated under the canopy of the Dark Zone that Saturday morning. It immediately felt darker than midnight, and the swarm of bats that swooped down and quickly dispersed into the darkness around them made Micah think that they were warning the other animals about the human intruders.
He needed his sword. He would feel safer if he had his sword in his hands.
◊◊◊
According to the pocket time piece Javan had won from Kai in a stun ball throwing contest, noon on Sunday was sixteen minutes away. At least he thought he was reading the square clock correctly by the lantern light above his bunk.
It didn’t have an hour, minute, or second hand. What tracked the time was a mini rumble rock that ticked from corner to corner. The distance from corner to corner represented one hour, and every time it made a full revolution, it chimed. It chimed once at 4:00 am, twice at 8:00 am, three times at Noon and so forth until chiming six times at midnight.
If he was reading the clock correctly, it meant that Varjiek was eating, the sun was shining somewhere above them, and they had been immersed in darkness for nearly twenty-nine hours. During that time, he had lost all sorts of physical fitness contests to one member of the crew or another. Whether it was push-ups, pull-ups, or sit-ups, he just wasn’t quite strong enough to outperform his insanely fit competition.
Micah hadn’t participated in any of the games, which was a good thing. He probably would have won, and that would have just given him bragging rights and made him even more obnoxious than usual.
Losing contest after contest was damaging Javan’s pride, though, so he suggested the stun ball contest late the previous night. He offered to give one to the person who could throw it with better accuracy than him, but no one even came close. Kai thus gave Javan his time piece as a prize for his superior throwing skills.
Today hadn’t been as fun. Energy levels had dropped, and everyone wanted to simply laze around. All Javan had done since waking up was watch time tick away.
Needing to do something, he went in search of Taliya. Which wasn’t challenging. He figured she would be in the empty cargo room reading her book she had him sneak on board under his shirt, and that is precisely where he found her.
“It’s hot and musty in here,” Javan said. “How can you sit here and read?”
“It’s the only private place on the boat.” She looked up at him and frowned. “At least it was.”
He ignored her veiled attempt to tell him to leave and sat against the metal wall beside her. “Is your book any good?”
“It’s complicated. Lots of patterns to memorize.”
Javan remembered watching his mother activate the earth portal and how she almost killed them by entering the code wrong. Good times. “Tell me something. Why bother memorizing those patterns when you may never have a chance to use them?”
“I saw my father activate the portal once, and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since.”
“Wait. That portal is in Zandador, and I thought no one from Keckrick has been allowed in Zandador for almost five hundred years. Surely you’re not older than that.”
“No, not even close.” She chuckled and shook her head. “But I never said I was born in Keckrick.”
Javan waited for more details. When none came, he asked another question. “So are you from Zandador?”
“I lived there for the first seven years of my life.”
“Why did you move to Keckrick?”
“To keep Kisa safe.”
“And where did you get a dragon?”
“My father.”
Javan closed his eyes and took a deep breath to keep from banging his head against the wall. Her short answers were driving him crazy. “You know,” he said, turning to face her, “I have nothing else to do today. I am just going to keep asking questions until I get answers. The sooner you tell me your full story, the sooner I’ll leave you alone to memorize your patterns.”
“Fine.” She closed her book and put it on the floor. “What do you want to know?”
“What happened when you were seven that brought you and Kisa to Keckrick?”
“A good friend of my father’s needed help getting her newborn baby through the portal to keep him out of the king’s clutches.”
“Interesting.” Javan’s heart began to race. This story had a familiar ring to it. “What was the friend’s name?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.” His heart pounded as he waited to hear his mother’s name.
“Sorry. I don’t remember. I do remember holding the baby while my father activated the portal and the other two men with us stood guard.”
“Do you remember anything special about the baby or the names of those men?” Surely she was talking about Kenton and Ravier.
“No. No names come to mind. And it was night, so I didn’t get a good look at the baby, either.”
“Ah. Okay.” He had hoped she had noticed the baby’s unusually green eyes. “What happened next?”
“My father took the baby and went through the portal with one of the men and his Noon Stalker, but the baby wasn’t the only thing he took with him.”
“What else did he take?”
“Two dragon eggs: one Dusk and one Dawn. The dusk egg never hatched, but he returned with an adorable little Dawn Stalker five days later.”
“Kisa.”
“Yup.”
“That’s why Kisa’s story wasn’t in the Protector’s Den.”
“Exactly. Tulkar had already been destroyed. Plus my father wanted to keep Kisa’s existence a secret. So he sent me and her to live in Keckrick with my great-grandparents, and they taught me how to protect her.”
“How long ago was that?” Javan wanted her to say fifteen years. Then he wouldn’t need names of the people involved to verify that he was the baby in that story.
“Ummm…I guess it’s been a little over fifteen years now.”
“You won’t believe this, but I was there that night you watched your father go through the portal.”
“Yeah. I know. You were the baby I held.”
Javan’s eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
“The baby’s name is the one name I remembered.” She smiled, but the smile only lasted for an instant. It vanished by the sudden rocking of the boat and a mad scramble of people outside the door.
Javan opened the door to discover half the crew trying to squeeze into the crank room. “What’s going on?”
Kai pointed to the water. “Whirlpool. If we don’t speed the boat up, we’re going to be sucked into it, and it will break this boat apart in a matter of seconds.”
Chapter 31
Whirlpool
Micah took another bite of his sandwich. Now that everyone had darted upstairs, he could finally eat lunch in peace. He wasn’t sure what the big emergency was that drew them away, but he sure was glad to see them go. Let them deal with the darkness. He didn’t want to emerge from this room until he could see the sun again.
“You’re eating?” Taliya sprinted the short distance from the ladder to the table, took the sandwich out of his hands, and threw it across the room. “How could you be eating when everyone’s help is needed in the crank room?”
So much for peacefulness. “I don’t see you helping.”
“That’s because I’m a tiny little thing who would just get in the way trying to turn the crank. You, on the other hand, are strong enough to do some good.”
“There are plenty of strong guys on this boat.” He left his sandwich on the floor, lay on his bottom bunk and covered his eyes with his arm. “What’s the big emergency, anyway?”
Taliya moved his arm.
“We’re approaching the center of the Dark Zone where the Clesi, Yarmu, and Derez Rivers meet. The different currents form a wide whirlpool at their collision point. If we don’t pick up enough speed to skirt around the whirlpool and catch the current of the Clesi River, we’re going to get sucked into the vortex and be torn to shreds.”
Micah gulped. “Maybe I should get upstairs to the crank room and see if they need my help.”
“Maybe.” Taliya pulled him off the bed. “Go!”
The day was as dark as night on the deck above the sleeping quarters, but light poured out of the open door to the crank room. Micah pushed his way inside and tried to make sense of the confusion.
Two waist-high columns jutted out of the floor in the center of the room. A steel wheel with a pole long enough for five men to hold was attached to the outer side of each column.
A bulky man with a long beard on a bench on the left side of the room barked orders to the ten men cranking the wheels. Fortunately he had a deep voice, or no one would have been able to hear him over the deafening noise of the rumble rocks below them. “Right side, maintain. Left side, switch!”
The exhausted men on the left let go of the crank, and four fresh men stepped up and took over the wheel. “You!” The leader pointed at Micah. “Join them.”
Micah nodded and slid to the end of the row. He caught the pole on the second rotation and began turning the wheel with his new teammates.
“Good work, men. Keep it up. We’re going fast enough, but something’s wrong. We should be turning, but we’re not.”
Cyr. He had been sick yesterday. Perhaps he had become too weak to turn the captain’s wheel with enough force.
“Fill my spot,” Micah said. “I think I know what the problem is.”
Despite a chorus of protests, Micah abandoned the crank, ran along the dark walkway, and burst into the wheelhouse. Sure enough, the captain was crumpled on the floor behind the boat’s wooden steering wheel in a state of delirium. “Micah,” he whispered. “Thank goodness. Turn the wheel to the left. Now.”
