Rise of the Shadow

by Brian Anderson

  A Tower guard stared into the opening, blocking most of the light. “Be right with you, miss,” he said with a sneer.

  His face vanished. She heard several sickening thumps. She could only imagine what was happening—the guard must have hit Savachia, knocking him to the ground. Was he unconscious now? Was he dead?

  Emma knew she should try to help the boy. He’d helped her, after all. But what could she do alone, against one of those guards?

  Her panicked breathing echoed off the walls close around her. A dark figure reappeared at the entrance to the tunnel, blocking the light. It stepped in after her.

  Alex

  All eight walls of the octagonal room were lined with shelves and cases, each full of cards, pendants, and crystals. In the center was a table draped with a yellowed lace cloth. Large orb lanterns cast flickering shadows over the scene.

  Alex, sitting at the table, was having a hard time taking his gaze away from the wooden box in the center of the table. A skeletal hand attached to the top held it shut.

  The guards who’d found him in the MAGE office had tossed him in the room and told him to sit still, stay quiet, and wait until the mentalist arrived. Alex had read about mentalists while browsing the history books in Uncle Mordo’s library. Sometimes they were called oracles, or fortune-tellers, or prophets. But every time, they ended up being full of bunk.

  In a few cases, like that of Rasputin, they ended up dead. You tended to pay a steep price for hoodwinking.

  The door slid open. A woman entered, dressed in a deep purple robe. A veil covered her entire head, completely obscuring her face.

  “Hey,” said Alex nervously. “Just so you know, I don’t really believe in this stuff.”

  The woman didn’t answer. Didn’t greet him. Didn’t vary her slow, steady steps as she approached the table.

  “No offense,” Alex said a little more loudly, “but it just isn’t my scene, and I don’t need my fortune told, so how about I—”

  Still not answering, the woman sat in a chair across the table from Alex. She opened the carved wooden box and withdrew an envelope, placing it on the table.

  “Name a color,” she said.

  Judging from her voice, Alex thought she was probably not much older than Emma. He had to admit that the veil was a nice, creepy touch. It was seriously unnerving to be talking to someone he could not see, knowing all the time that she could see him perfectly well.

  Still, no matter how good this “mentalist” was at stagecraft, it didn’t mean Alex had to play along.

  “Plaid,” he said with a sneer.

  The girl picked up the envelope and removed a card from inside. She held it up in front of Alex.

  Looking at the shaky but unmistakable scrawl, Alex read: PLAID. There was no hiding his astonishment.

  “Our connection has been established,” said the girl. “I am Princess Tenyo. Cooperate and this will be painless. Mostly.”

  “Right,” said Alex, doing his best to keep the surprise out of his voice. He had no idea how the trick had been done—but it was a trick. He was sure of that. There was no way this girl was reading his mind. “So, what if I’d said red?”

  Tenyo nodded at the card. Alex turned it over. The word red had been written on the other side.

  Alex dropped the card back on the table as if it had stung his fingers.

  “I sense your skepticism,” said Tenyo.

  “It’s not exactly hard to sense that,” Alex muttered.

  “Relax. I also sense your fear.”

  Alex sat straight in his chair. “I’m not afraid of you. Or your tricks.”

  “Fear for someone else,” Tenyo said thoughtfully. “Your…sister.”

  Emma. This girl knew something about Emma! “Where is she? Is she here? Does Agglar have her, too?”

  “I may be able to tell you where she is,” Tenyo said, “if you let me in. We must explore, together. Your past. A time when your parents were still alive.”

  “Good luck with that.” Alex shrugged. “I was two when they died.” He looked down and flicked the card across the table.

  “I see something shiny. Metallic,” said Tenyo.

  Alex crossed his arms, turning sideways to avoid looking at the veil, which shivered slightly with Tenyo’s breath.

  “This is something from where you grew up. A personal item. Something you made.” Tenyo leaned forward slightly over the table.

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Alex rocked the chair back on two legs. Let her say something about Emma, and he’d help her out. But until she did, he wasn’t playing this game.

  Tenyo’s slim fingers reached toward Alex. “What I have said…it does not mean anything to you?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to tell me?” Alex demanded.

  “You are not cooperating,” said Tenyo. A hint of anger trembled in her voice.

  “No kidding. And you are not reading my mind!” Alex let the front legs of his chair slam down hard on the floor.

  The door slid open. Agglar stepped in behind Tenyo. He laid a hand on the back of her chair.

  “He’s blocking me,” said Tenyo.

  “Tenyo is one of the few remaining mentalists in the Conjurian who still have their powers,” said Agglar sternly. “If you cooperate with her, we may find a clue to the Eye’s location. And that will restore magic to our world. It is what your parents wanted. What they died for. Will you do nothing to help their vision come to pass?”

  “I never knew my parents,” Alex snapped. “I don’t have a clue what they did with this Eye thing. If they ever had it.”

  Agglar rapped his cane on the floor. Two guards appeared in the doorway. “If you do not cooperate, Alex, I will employ other methods to make you more…compliant.”

  “Yeah? Like her methods?” Alex lunged forward and grabbed the envelope that had held the card with PLAID written on one side. He ran his finger along the inside and held it up to Agglar; it was smudged with grayish dirt and trembling very slightly. “Carbon paper. She scratched my answer through the envelope, and the carbon paper let her write it directly on the card.” He grabbed the card itself and turned it over to the side that said red. “Ninety percent of people will say red when asked to name a color.”

  The card shook in his hand, but he didn’t look away from Agglar. If the guy was going to toss him in some dark cell, he’d go down showing them he couldn’t be fooled.

  The wrinkles on Agglar’s face sagged. Alex had never seen that expression on his face. Was Agglar about to have some sort of stroke? Or was he just furious?

  But the old man, instead of yelling or collapsing, looked down at Tenyo as if his heart had been broken.

  “How long?” asked Agglar.

  Tenyo’s veil fluttered. “Two years ago, my powers started to fade,” she said faintly. “They were completely gone within a month. I…I thought if I didn’t admit it to anyone, if I kept trying, they might come back. I…”

  “Go,” said Agglar.

  Tenyo stopped talking. Silently, she rose and picked up her wooden box, cradling it in her hands. She walked between the guards and disappeared through the doorway.

  Agglar slowly straightened back up. Alex had almost begun to feel sorry for him, but his hatred quickly flared into new life at Agglar’s next words. “No matter. I have found your sister. I am certain we can jog her memory without magical aid.”

  Alex shot up. His chair went over backward. “Take me to her!”

  “She is on her way to the Tower. You will see her soon enough.” Agglar marched out, jabbing his cane at the guards waiting outside. “Return the boy to his room. And do make sure he doesn’t try to fly away again.”

  The guard behind Emma prodded her up the steps into the Tower of Dedi.

  Emma knew abo
ut towers, castles, fortresses, and citadels. Every fantasy book she’d read had at least one. But none of her books had prepared her to see a stronghold built out of a colossal tree.

  Such a place, she thought, should be teeming with dwarves pushing carts full of gems or perhaps inhabited by dryads in fluttering green robes. Instead the only thing she saw (once she was inside) was more gray-uniformed guards at attention around a tall, wooden box.

  Bit of a letdown, she mused. On the bright side, Alex was in here somewhere.

  She just wished she knew where.

  The guard who’d brought her inside marched with her to the other side of the room and through a doorway. As they passed through the entryway, Emma read the words carved into the wooden door: CONJURIAN DETENTION CENTER. Underneath, in smaller letters, the door read: THE ONE PLACE NO MAGICIAN HAS EVER ESCAPED.

  Without saying a word, the guard took her down a flight of stairs and along a corridor hewn from a root of the enormous tree, through an iron door, and at last into an earthen room. A heavyset man with pale skin and deeply shadowed eyes sat with his feet propped up on a desk that was a tree stump. The nameplate next to his shiny boots read WARDEN PETER J. TURNER.

  He glared at them over the top of the latest issue of Genie magazine. “I specifically told Stanton that we are full,” he growled. He lowered the magazine, eyeing Emma. “Besides, she wouldn’t last two seconds down here. Take her to the holding cells on the forty-third floor.”

  “Master Agglar wants her held here until he can deal with her. Personally,” said the guard holding Emma’s arm.

  “Master Agglar’s coming down here?” said the warden. He slipped the magazine under a stack of papers.

  “Yes. And if he finds us standing around chitchatting…”

  “Right, right.” The warden stood, fumbling for his keys. “Let’s get her locked up.”

  The warden led them through twisting, curving hallways lined with cells, grumbling the entire time. Emma shivered when she noticed eyes staring at her from the small, square opening in each door.

  The warden stopped beside a door, flipped through the ring of keys until he found the right one, and used it to unlock the cell. “In you go, miss.”

  With a shove from the guard, Emma entered the dark compartment. “There’s someone in here!” she called out, her voice quivering with alarm.

  “What?” The warden pulled his baton from his belt and shoved his way past Emma. “That can’t be. It was empty this morning. I don’t see anyone—”

  Emma darted out into the hall, slammed the door shut behind the warden, and turned the key quickly in the lock. She pulled the key ring out and, with a wink, tossed it over her shoulder.

  The guard who had brought her to the Tower caught it deftly in midair.

  “Hey!” yelled the warden. He banged his fists on the cell door. “What’re you playing at? Open this door!”

  “Hush,” said Savachia, pushing his gray hat away from his face and grinning at Emma. “Or we’ll ask if any one of these upstanding prisoners wants to be your roommate.” He flung his hat at the door.

  The warden flinched and shuffled back.

  “Well done, Emma,” said Savachia. “Truthfully, I thought you’d wimp out and I’d have to lock you in the cell with him.”

  “Truthfully,” said Emma, “I didn’t think your plan would work. Must have been tough impersonating someone who is supposed to enforce the law.”

  “Well, it was harder than knocking that guard out.” Savachia jiggled the metal box strapped to his wrist, the one he had called his snowstorm. “This came in handy. And of course it wasn’t too hard to get in here, considering that I did have the city’s most wanted fugitive in my custody.”

  “Thank you.” Emma smiled, then looked away quickly. “Let’s find Alex.”

  “Right,” Savachia agreed. “We don’t have much time. You start down there and I’ll go this way.”

  Emma nodded, and Savachia walked briskly off in one direction, leaving her to go the opposite way.

  Emma sprinted from door to door, calling for her brother. Most of the responses were quite rude, some employing words Emma had never heard before. She kept expecting, kept hoping, that Alex’s face would appear at one of the little square windows, that his eyes would light up to see her.

  But it didn’t happen. Door after door showed her scowling faces, leering faces, hopeless faces, but never Alex’s face.

  What if he wasn’t here? Savachia had promised her that if Alex was a prisoner in the Tower, this was the place they should look. But maybe that was wrong. Maybe Agglar was keeping him locked up somewhere else. There was no way she could search this whole huge tower!

  Although Savachia could probably come up with a plan for that. She smiled just a little. Maybe getting kidnapped had been a stroke of luck after all….

  “Found you!” Savachia yelled from far away down the corridor.

  Emma pivoted so fast she slipped. Regaining her footing, she raced back. One cell door was open. Gasping for breath, she peered in. “Alex?”

  Savachia was inside, kneeling next to a lone figure huddled in the dark.

  “Dad,” he said, softly but insistently. “Dad! It’s me. It’s Savachia.”

  The man seemed to jolt awake. He seized Savachia by the arms. “Savachia! It’s really you! How did you…your mother…is she…”

  “She’s alive. Barely. We don’t have much time. Can you walk?”

  Emma jerked back instinctively. Alive? But before Emma could contemplate if Savachia was lying, the man nodded, tried to rise, and then slumped over.

  “That would be a no,” Savachia muttered. He wrapped his arms around his father’s waist and hoisted the man over his shoulder like a bag of dirty laundry. Struggling under the weight, he got to his feet and staggered past Emma, out into the hallway. “Let’s move,” he told her.

  “But…” Emma stared after him as he headed slowly down the hall, lurching under his father’s weight with each step. “But…Savachia! What about Alex?”

  Without looking back, Savachia said, “He’s not here.”

  “You lied! You told me your parents were dead. You said you’d help me find my brother!”

  “Technically, I…only said…my mom was dead,” Savachia panted. He paused and raised his voice. “And I said I would help you break into the Tower. I never said I would find your brother. I’m sure he’s in here somewhere.” Grimly, he resumed walking, step after difficult step. “Keep looking,” he said, barely glancing back as he tossed the keys to Emma. “Good luck.”

  He’d used her. He’d lied to her. The words he’d spoken back at the theater echoed in her mind: You do whatever you have to do to get by. Your first and only priority is yourself.

  How could she have been so blind? She’d thought that she’d rescue her brother like a heroine in one of her books, and all she’d done was trust a thief and walk into a prison! A guard or another warden would find her soon, and she’d be locked up just like Alex.

  Emma knew that she should run, hide, make a new plan…but all she wanted to do was flop down on the dirt floor and cry.

  But that would mean that Savachia was right. That her first and only priority was herself.

  And that wasn’t true.

  Her first priority had to be her little brother. He didn’t know anything about magic. He wouldn’t be able to figure out this strange world all by himself. She had to find him, help him. She could not give up now.

  Emma pushed herself away from the cell that had contained Savachia’s father. She peered into the next one. “Alex! Are you here?”

  No answer.

  Alex

  It was the same room as before. It had not changed…well, except for the iron bars over the window. And the fact that all the sheets were gone from the wardrobe. And from the bed as well.
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br />   Alex paced from one wall to the other, his hands deep in his pockets. As he thought, his fingers rubbed the surface of his father’s old watch, the hands still frozen at a quarter past three.

  He’d spent the last hour looking for a way out. He had tried loosening the bars on the window but had only a bloodied thumb to show for his efforts. He’d tried picking the lock on the door, but since he didn’t have any lock picks and did not know how, that hadn’t worked any better.

  Never had Alex imagined he would miss his room back at Uncle Mordo’s. But he did. He missed his tools. He missed Bartleby. He also missed the library, and more than anything he missed his dreamy, impractical, stubborn sister.

  He not only missed her; he was worried about her. He knew perfectly well that Emma had always longed for a world like this. She’d spent half her life with her nose in books where magic was real. She’d never be able to keep her head now that she was actually in a place like this. She’d trust anyone. She’d believe anything.

  She needed Alex to keep an eye on her.

  So he had to get out of this room.

  No tools? That wasn’t true, Alex told himself. He still had his best tool: a brain.

  And his brain had a tool that nobody in this world seemed to use: logic.

  Alex paced faster, hoping the increased blood flow to his neurons would spark an idea. All right. He was in, apparently, a different world. That was bizarre…but the idea of multiple realities wasn’t entirely unscientific.

  This world seemed to be run by magic…but Alex didn’t have to believe that, did he? What kind of magic had he actually seen?

  He’d seen fish floating through mist and a kind of wolf-snake hybrid and a talking rabbit and an enormous tree. Pretty weird, but weren’t scientists discovering new species all the time?

  Big deal. Anybody with a cheap book on illusions could learn to do the same.