“I’m not going back there,” Karmo said, standing, eyes boring into Shane.
“I agree,” Shane said. “In fact, all day long I’ve been hoping I could convince you to leave with me. You’ve actually saved me a lot of trouble by running away.”
Karmo raised one eyebrow. “Do I know you?”
“Probably,” he said. “My name’s Shane.”
Now both Karmo’s eyebrows kissed his hairline. “Shane as in Shane the Reptile King? Devourer Shane?”
“It’s just Shane these days.”
“Halt!” came a cry from above them. “Stay where you are!”
Karmo cursed. “We made too much noise.”
“Can you outrun them?” Shane asked.
“Yes,” Karmo said. “But we’re on an island. They’d catch me before I could get a boat on the water.”
“Okay,” Shane said, and he felt the calm that always overtook him when he had a plan. “Hit me again.”
“What?”
“Trust me,” Shane said.
“Trust you, or hit you?” Karmo asked.
Shane grinned. “Little bit of both.”
“I heard you were weird,” Karmo said. But he shrugged, wound up, and punched Shane in the cheek.
It wasn’t as strong a blow as before; Karmo was holding back. But Shane let the momentum of the punch send him backward, and he landed hard on the ground just as a pair of guards appeared, crashing through the trees.
“Fine, I give up!” Shane shouted. “I’ll go back! You win, Karmo.”
“What’s going on here?” one of the guards asked. But he was asking Karmo, and his tone wasn’t hostile or accusatory.
“I … caught this one sneaking away in the night,” Karmo said, catching onto Shane’s plan just in time.
“A deserter, huh?” the guard said.
“And look who it is,” the other guard added. “I knew we shouldn’t have given him a second chance.”
“A traitor and a coward,” the first guard said. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
Karmo swallowed. “Believe it,” he said solemnly. “King Shane is a no-good snake.”
“Well, this is a familiar and not unwelcome sight,” Maddox said. The moonlight glinted off his bald head. “Though you surely must be tired of this view of my boots by now, your majesty.”
“It’s the smell of your boots that I could do without,” Shane said. He’d been dragged back to the campsite and again forced to his knees before the self-proclaimed general. Karmo had come back, too, seemingly content to follow Shane’s lead, but he couldn’t be sure the boy wouldn’t simply slip away again first chance he got.
“What are you up to?” Maddox demanded. “Spying on us? Who were you going to run to?”
Shane said nothing.
“Are you working with the Greencloaks?”
Shane gritted his teeth. He felt his face twitch at the accusation, but he remained silent.
“A few days in a cell should soften you up.” Maddox turned to the guards. “Throw him in the Reptile House.”
Once or twice in his time at the camp, Shane had caught a whiff of something unpleasant on the breeze. Now he knew where it had been coming from.
The Reptile House was one of the few true structures in the camp, built of wood and stone. Shane had pegged it as a dry storage space for foodstuffs, but the truth was much stranger.
Snakes. The structure was full of snakes. And lizards, and a tortoise, and even some toads, which Shane knew were not reptiles at all but amphibians.
The animals were kept behind glass, which was a luxury in this part of the world. The building was obviously meant to be a place where animals could be kept on display, like Stetriol’s castle garden with its barred cages. But Shane knew those cells had held exotic birds and mammals from all across Stetriol. Who would want to keep so many smelly, scaly reptiles on display?
Shane had no way of measuring the time that passed. There were no windows. Neither was there anywhere comfortable to sit, but after hours of pacing the stone floor, his legs ached. He was locked behind a large glass panel as if on display, but no one came by, not to see him or taunt him or bring him food.
And snakes, he’d found, were poor company.
As the day dragged on, Shane felt weak and fuzzy. He stretched his aching muscles, but it was the lack of water that was getting to him more than anything else. He felt a buzzing in the air, felt his skin begin to tingle. And just when he thought he might be losing his mind, Karmo entered the Reptile House.
“I convinced them to let me talk to you first,” he explained, slipping a bowl of water through a slot in the cell door. “Maddox figured you’d have it out for me, since I’m the one who dragged you back, and he thought you might let something slip in anger.”
Shane drank deeply from the bowl, smacking his lips. “Maddox doesn’t think highly enough of me.”
“I’m coming around, though,” Karmo said. “Why’d you throw yourself to the wolves to help me?”
“I suspect you’re meant for greater things, Karmo. I don’t think you’re buying into whatever Maddox is selling. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
Karmo sighed. “You’re not wrong.”
“So how’d you end up here?”
“Chasing the worst kind of trouble: good intentions.”
Shane smiled. “I might know a thing or two about that.”
“You know Zerif too, right? He’s the one who dragged me into this mess.”
The smile fell away from Shane’s face.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Karmo said. “The guy’s real good at selling you on his plan, but then when things go south he’s nowhere around. I was a Conqueror all of three minutes before I got thrown into a dungeon in Eura. And that’s where I spent the whole war.”
“Zerif had you hunting talismans?”
Karmo nodded. “Me and a group of kids that he called his ‘special project.’ He said it wasn’t enough to conquer people through force; he wanted to conquer ‘hearts and minds’ too. So he bonded us to animals that people would recognize from old stories. We were supposed to be heroes. But the other kids he chose were anything but.”
“You know what they say,” Shane replied. “Fish of like scale swim together.”
“That’s the truth,” said Karmo. “Zerif chose some real lowlifes. Devin was a bully. Ana was a thief. And Tahlia, the girl from Stetriol? She was downright vicious. We were all afraid of her.”
“I knew her,” Shane said, remembering the slight, blond girl whose spirit animal was the legendary water-holding frog of Stetriol. “She spent more time sharpening her knives than talking to people.”
What Shane didn’t say was that he’d seen the girl die many months ago with his own eyes, consumed by flames on a dock in Northern Eura. Though he’d won a talisman from the Greencloaks in that battle, the losses had been incredible … and painful. Faced with such devastation, Shane had decided that day that he would activate their secret asset in the next battle. Let the Greencloaks hurt one another for a change.
“That’s her,” Karmo said. “And there I was, just wanting to help my village. Do you know where Rain Dancers come from?”
Shane shook his head.
“Neither does anybody else. But there’s an old legend that says they’re chosen by the hammerkop — a weird-looking bird that supposedly has the ability to call down lightning.” Karmo let out a loud breath. “My tribe has never had a Rain Dancer. That means we get less respect in Nilo than the insects and grubs. I thought having a hammerkop following me around would put us on the map.”
“And instead you got locked up, disappearing when your people needed you most.”
“Right. And by the time I made it back home, the Bile had worn off and my spirit animal was gone. All I had to show for it was a messed up tattoo that almost looked like a hammerkop. That didn’t sit well with anybody. They exiled me.” He considered his bandaged forearm for a moment. “I ended up here because I didn’t have any
where else to go. But combat training is mandatory, and Maddox put me on his elite crew when he realized how good I am in a fight.
“It would be one thing if they wanted me to guard this place and keep everybody safe. But they have me attacking ships, threatening innocent people, stealing from them. And they call me a hero for it.” His eyes grew hard. “Finally getting called a hero, and it’s for all the wrong reasons.”
Shane sighed. “I try not to get too hung up on labels.”
“Yeah, right,” Karmo said. “But what are you doing here? I can only guess you didn’t have many options.”
“I’m here because something bad is coming. Something that’s going to make Kovo and Gerathon look as scary as a couple of puppies.” He cracked his knuckles. “I thought I might try to get in its way.”
“You see a problem coming and you run toward it?” Karmo scoffed. “They were right about you. You’re crazy.”
Shane fixed him with a serious look. “There’s no running away from this, Karmo. There’s no place on Erdas people will be safe if what I fear comes to pass.”
“Still doesn’t explain why you’d come here.”
“I needed an army,” Shane answered. “I heard Maddox had put one together, and I figured I’d take it.”
Karmo laughed. “You’ve got nerve all right. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed: Maddox’s militia is a bad joke.”
“It’s not a total loss if you come with me.”
Karmo looked skeptical.
“I’ve been recruiting,” Shane said. “I have allies — a team of people with special talents.” He smirked. “I think you’d fit right in.”
“It’s got to be better than here,” Karmo replied. “But we have to leave now, and this time, we have to be quiet about it. I can get the key off the guard if you’re ready to run.”
“I’m ready. I only wish I could see the look on Maddox’s face when he realizes we’re gone.”
“Yeah.” Karmo chuckled, turning to go. “His boss is going to be pretty upset with him.”
“Wait,” Shane said. “His boss? Isn’t Maddox in charge here?”
“Maddox? You think that guy could put anything like this together? No way. He’s just doing whatever she tells him to do. The Reptile Queen.”
A chill ran down Shane’s spine. “The Reptile Queen?”
“That’s what she calls herself.”
Shane felt a weight in the pit of his stomach, as if he’d swallowed a rock, heavy and sharp. It was the feeling he got whenever he realized something bad was happening — and that it was his fault.
“I can’t leave,” he said.
Karmo gave him a look.
“I can’t sneak away in the night while someone calling herself by that name is planning to lead these people into a war they can’t possibly win.” Shane returned Karmo’s look with a determined glare of his own. “She’s got to be stopped.”
Karmo rapped his knuckles on the glass of Shane’s cage. “By you and what army? Looks pretty lonely in there.”
“My allies aren’t far. Most of them are camped out at a nearby island. If you can reach them and bring them back here, we can storm this place and put a stop to this insanity. Talk to Alix — he’ll know what to do.”
Karmo shook his head.
“If you leave now,” Shane said, “you can be back with help by nightfall tomorrow.”
“There’s just one problem with that plan,” Karmo said heavily.
“What?”
“They’ve decided you’re too dangerous to live. You’re going to be executed in the morning.”
Shane dreamed he summoned a leopard.
Together they were fierce.
And fearless.
And he knew he had been forgiven for all he’d done wrong.
They came for him shortly after the sun rose.
“Put this on,” one of the guards barked, and he tossed Shane a cloak.
A green cloak.
“You must be joking,” Shane said.
The guards pointed their swords in a way that suggested they were not joking, and Shane reluctantly draped the green cloak over his shoulders.
The things I do for other people, he thought.
Karmo had tried to convince him to sneak away in the night. They could always come back with reinforcements, he’d argued. But Shane couldn’t stand the thought of leaving these people. What if they’d already launched an attack on Stetriol by the time Shane could return?
How could he do nothing while someone calling herself the Reptile Queen led two hundred people to their doom?
Maddox was standing outside the Reptile House with a small company of armed guards, and he greeted Shane with a wide, broken smile.
“I see you got my gift,” he said, rubbing the end of Shane’s cloak between his fingers. “I’m glad. I didn’t want you to catch a chill on your way to the gallows.”
Shane glared. “I’m not sure the color suits me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Maddox countered. “It brings out your eyes … and your treachery.”
“Lie to these people all you want, Maddox.” Shane gestured with his bound arms to the guards, who were probably the best the militia had to offer besides the raiders, but who looked undisciplined and poorly equipped. “But we both know I’m no Greencloak and I have nothing to do with their occupation of Stetriol.”
Maddox sighed, draping a beefy arm around Shane’s neck and leading him away from the Reptile House. The guards followed, but a pace or two back, and Maddox lowered his voice so that only Shane could hear.
“We both knew it would come to this, Shane. Our queen’s claim to the throne of Stetriol is … a bit of a stretch, frankly. For that to go over well, it really does help if the royal line is dead. And you’re the last of your family, aren’t you?”
Shane pulled away from Maddox’s grip angrily, but Maddox only laughed and continued walking. A poke in the back with a sword convinced Shane to keep pace.
“And now, of course, it’s not just a matter of installing her upon a vacant throne,” Maddox continued. “We have to go through the Greencloaks to get to that throne. With the enemy ahead of us, we can’t risk having a snake bite us in the rear.” Maddox leveled his gaze at Shane. “The snake is you, if it wasn’t clear.”
“And you’re the rear end,” Shane said. “Got it.”
Maddox ignored the insult.
The camp was almost deserted at this early hour. Those men and women who were up and about snuck furtive glances as Shane was marched past them, then they quickly returned to their chores. Shane knew he wasn’t popular here, but he didn’t see any triumph in the eyes of those around him.
He craned his head around as they passed the white tent, hoping to spot Viktor. But the tent’s flap was closed, and the healer was nowhere to be seen.
The gate was open and unguarded. They exited the campsite and made their way down the sloping path that led down to the coast. Before emerging from the forested area that separated beach from mountaintop, however, they executed a sharp turn, straying from the obvious path. They were circling the island now, even as they continued to descend.
Finally the trees fell away, and Shane saw their destination. It was a hidden cove, a crescent-shaped beach bordered by trees on one side and mountainous cliffs on the other. The cliffs rose from the water, one on the left and one on the right, nearly meeting at the middle so that only a small channel of seawater connected this secluded bay with the larger ocean.
There was a small wooden structure on the beach, like a hut built on stilts, and a long pier leading out over the water. A lookout tower high up on the cliffs would afford a view of the ocean for miles around, and probably also a view of the watchtower at the top of the mountain. This site could therefore be in constant communication with the caldera campground. It was the perfect setup for launching pirate attacks on ships that passed too close to the island, except for one odd detail.
A net had been strung across the channel,
so that water could come and go with the tide, but no boat could pass from the bay to the ocean. Shane puzzled over its purpose. Was Maddox trying to keep someone out … or keep something in?
Karmo and the rest of the raiders stood upon the beach. It was too far to see whether they watched him with pity or satisfaction, interest or resignation.
But there was no missing the crazed excitement in the bearing of the girl who stood upon the pier. She wore a white mask, featureless except for eye slits, and a velvet purple shawl draped around the shoulders of her long white dress. Her arms were wrapped in golden bracelets in the shape of snakes, and on her head she wore a crown of gold and opals. Shane had once worn that crown, and his father before him, and his father’s father, and Feliandor himself, who had cursed them all.
The Reptile Queen held out her arms, bidding them forward, and Maddox shoved Shane in the shoulder to get him moving again.
“King Shane,” she said affectionately as he approached. “How good of you to support my claim to Stetriol’s throne by dying gruesomely here today.”
“No one has to die today,” Shane said, keeping his voice level.
“As opposed to the last time I saw you?” the girl asked, her voice muffled somewhat by the mask. “A lot of people died that day on the docks. I didn’t, of course … no thanks to you.”
“I never would have left you behind,” Shane said. “If I’d known you were alive … that you were okay …”
“Okay?” the girl shrilled, her veneer of politeness shattering. “Okay?! Do I look okay to you?” She tore her mask away and hurled it to the ground, revealing her face, which was waxy and pink with scars from fire.
Shane didn’t flinch, and he didn’t gawk. He held her eyes with his own.
“Tahlia,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you sorry for leaving me to die?” she asked him. “Or sorry that you have to look at the ugly consequences?”
“I’m sorry for all of it,” Shane answered. “I’m sorry we went to war in the first place. Sorry you got dragged into it.”
She shoved him, and with his hands still bound he stumbled, but didn’t fall.
“Backward,” she said. “You’ve got it all backward. Declaring war was the last thing you got right. And I’m ready to run with the ball you dropped.”
The Book of Shane Page 13
