Ancient Fire (Danger Boy Series #1)

by Mark London Williams

  Chapter Twelve

  Eli: Tunnel of the Dead

  415 C.E.

  It’s definitely the hat.

  But shooting through the Fifth Dimension like a bodysurfer, without being in a ship like Clyne’s, is hard. It’s like every wave pulls you under, and you feel like you’re gonna upchuck when you arrive.

  I’m woozy when I materialize inside the library grounds at Alexandria. No rhinos this time—just lots of statues. I’m in a tiled courtyard. It’s night, and I can see the full moon through the open roof. Somewhere I hear a scratching sound.

  In the distance, I can also see that a couple of the walls I’d jumped over earlier with Clyne are now on fire. I look at the blaze, look up at the giant statues that surround me, then hunch over to throw up.

  Raising my head a moment later and wiping my mouth, I start to feel better.

  I see the cap on the ground, and I’m about to pick it up, but this time I stop. I just got here. I’m still holding the Thickskin Mr. Howe gave me. I wrap the cap in it, touch it lightly—it seems safe to handle that way. I pick it up and put it back on my head. As long as the Thickskin holds, I’m okay.

  Or at least, I would be okay if I didn’t just see one of the statues start to move in the dark…

  No. It’s not a statue. Did I say no rhinos? I was wrong. I’ve just puked all over the feet of one.

  Even the rhino isn’t sure what to make of it. I hear him snort and snuffle and paw the ground a little. Maybe he’s not sure whether to be insulted or feel sorry for me.

  Either way, I can’t move, so it’s a relief when somebody suddenly tackles me and drags me behind one of the real statues, where the rhino’s going to have a hard time getting at me.

  It’s the girl. She talks to me, but I can’t understand her. I’ve left my lingo-spot back in my own time. I like her voice, though. She sounds like she knows what she’s doing, but she doesn’t seem bossy about it. She just seems…kind of cool.

  She speaks again, and I gesture that I don’t understand. Then she reaches behind her ear. Clyne’s given her a lingo-spot, too. She peels some of hers off, reaches over, and rubs it near the base of my skull.

  “Wizard boy. You’ve come back.” She gives me a kind of smile. Not like she thinks I’m a doofus, but like she finds me faintly amusing, anyway.

  “I’m not a wizard. My name is Eli Sands. How do you do?” I hold out my hand, but she doesn’t shake it. Maybe that’s not the custom here. “Wow, we’re really talking. I mean, I’m talking to you, but you’re part of history!”

  “What do you mean? Whose history?”

  “Everybody’s! You’re living even before George Washington was born…or Shakespeare! You’re really old!”

  “You claim not to be a wizard, yet you claim to know who will be born? And for your information, rude wizard, I have lived only thirteen years.”

  “Look, I’m not claiming to be magic, and I didn’t mean you were old like a grownup…” Maybe I’m getting off on the wrong foot. I search in my pocket for something to give her as a gift. My fingers feel the baseball cards Mr. Howe had given to me. I pull one out. Ken Griffey Jr.

  She looks at it, watching the holographic highlights of Griffey’s career. “Perhaps you’re not a wizard. I certainly don’t need any cheap magic like this.” She flings the card away, and it lands somewhere on the tile floor with a small click. “And my name is Thea, daughter of Hypatia, head librarian of Alexandria and chief lecturer in math and astronomy.”

  “Was that your mom with you at the lighthouse?”

  “‘Mom?’” Her lingo-spot translates. “You mean ‘mother’?” I nod. “They took her. I watched them.”

  “Who?”

  “Tiberius. ‘Brother’ Tiberius. You saw him at the lighthouse, too.”

  “Why does he hate you so much?”

  “He thinks my mother and I are witches.”

  “Are you?”

  She gives me the kind of mixed-up look my dad specializes in, only this one seemed to say she’s mad at me, a little hurt, but still feels sorry for me, all at once.

  “Okay, you’re not a witch, and I’m not a wizard, but I did just come back through the Fifth Dimension. And I’m still a little foggy. And I could use your help.”

  “Fifth Dimension? But there are only four. Anyway, wizard, I might need your help. Your lizard friend might need it, too.”

  “Clyne? Is he all right?”

  “Yes, K’lion” —she pronounces the name in a way that makes sense to her — “is fine. I hope.” She points out toward the grounds. “He is somewhere out there, trying to fix his vessel. But the zoo animals have been loose since this afternoon. The guards have fled —or gone over to Tiberius. And Tiberius himself has almost broken through the walls. Or burned his way through.”

  The smell of smoke is definitely getting stronger.

  “He’s coming here to get you?”

  “Not just me. The scrolls, too. Everything. Everything the library stands for. That’s why I’m taking a few things now and planning to get out.”

  She has a satchel over her shoulder with a few odds and ends in it. She tiptoes back toward one of the walls, and the scratching sound resumes. She’s trying to chip a piece loose with a small pick she’s taken out of the bag.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I will not let them destroy everything,” she says. “This is my favorite tile and I’m taking it with me.”

  “What’s so special about it?” I ask.

  “It’s a picture of my mother when she was my age. My grandfather, Theon, put it up here when he was the head librarian.”

  On the other side of the statues, the rhino suddenly bellows and charges, followed by a “Tchkkk! Tchkkk! K’laaa!” from close by.

  “Who’s there!” Thea yells. But we both know. There’s only one voice like that on Earth.

  I can’t see clearly in the dark, but there’s another crash, and it sounds like the rhino has stampeded right through the pillars and stumbled down the stairs.

  “Poor thing. He’s nearly blind, you know.” Thea rises up, then shrieks as Clyne leaps down from the head of the statue above us.

  “Eli Boy! Klaak! Hello!”

  He turns to Thea. She hardly needs a lingo-spot with him—despite his klaaaks and tikks, Clyne is mostly speaking in her tongue. Their voices are too low for me to get a good translation.

  Thea looks grim. “You heard him. They just broke through the walls. We need to leave.”

  Clyne is a bit frantic. “My ship is going to stay gra-bakked and never get fixed! The school’s going to kill me!”

  “What’s ‘gra-bakked’?” I ask.

  “You don’t have a good word for it,” he explains.

  We can hear shouting in the distance but can’t see anyone yet. In a few moments, Tiberius and his followers will be inside the library.

  “We need to leave,” Thea says slowly, “or it will not be the school that kills you.”

  She slashes at the wall and with a grunt, finally pulls the tile free. She tosses it in her bag and takes off in the dark. She’s familiar enough with the layout of the library grounds, and Clyne, apparently, can see pretty well without light. But I keep bumping into things. I hit my right shin twice.

  We get out of the courtyard, and by the time we’re inside the main building we’re almost running. Smoke trickles in behind us and keeps us moving along.

  There’s a little light now — some of the halls have torches in wall holders, and the ones that are still lit are casting long shadows. It would be fun to play with the weird shapes we’re making if there was any time. But we’re surrounded on both sides by stacked rows of cubbyholes — thousands of them, stretching all the way to the ceiling, holding scroll after scroll after scroll.

  Thea hands me her satchel. “Hold this.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer me directly but keeps moving down the halls, plucking scrolls out of the shelves almost
randomly. She glances at them and shouts out the subject matter, almost angrily, as she gives them to me to stuff into the bag.

  “Planetary motion!” she shouts. “Healing with plants! …A History of Atlantis! ...Maps of the world!”

  She keeps going, taking what she can, practically tossing them to me, as the bag gets heavier and heavier.

  “Jewish history! …Roman history! …Egyptian history! …Secret history!” More scrolls.

  “The Frogs and The Birds,” she yells.

  “Do you study nature?” I ask, panting a little as I try to keep up with her.

  “Those are the names of plays!”

  Clyne has taken a cue from her and jumped up to the top of the shelves, running above us, grabbing scrolls from the top shelves and flinging them down, even carrying one in his mouth like a pirate holding a knife.

  I guess he thinks he’s helping, but there’s hardly any room left in the bag.

  “This is getting pretty heavy,” I tell Thea.

  She turns to face me with more scrolls in her arms. “The Proper Care of Chimaeras and Other Rare Beasts,” she says, sticking another one into the satchel, “and How to Build a Pyramid.”

  She stands, looking right into my eyes. “I have to save what little I can.”

  What can I tell her? I’m about to offer to put one in my back pocket, but then we hear voices. Not ours. They’re coming from behind us.

  “But I suppose I have to save all of us, too. Come on.” She’s running again, but this time there aren’t any more stops to save scrolls.

  “Where are we going?” I ask. “Underneath.”

  Clyne jumps down and follows behind us.

  A few more twists and turns, and the walls of cubbyholes open up into what looks like a kind of ancient apartment, or maybe a fancy Las Vegas hotel room: a couple of low beds, a table with parchment and more scrolls piled on it, bowls of fruit set out everywhere, a couple of chin-high statues, and piles of clothes draped over the carved marble chairs. Large pillows and cushions are scattered everywhere.

  “What’s this?”

  “Our living quarters,” Thea tells me. “There’s an entrance here that goes down to the catacombs.”

  “What’s a catacomb?”

  “Tunnels under the city. We can head away from here, out past the necropolis, past the city gates, and try to get away.”

  “What’s a necropolis?”

  She stares at me a moment. “Do you not go to gymnasium?”

  “I get my exercise.”

  “Gymnasium! A school!” She throws up her hands. “Necropolis is a city of the dead! The tunnel out of Alexandria goes through it.”

  “Yum!”

  That was Clyne. Both Thea and I turn to see him eating an orange from one of the bowls. “Orrranngge! Brkkk! No thing like it at home! Snacked one previous from an outside tree!”

  Thea shakes her head. “He has been eating them all afternoon. He’s never seen them before. Tell me, what world do the two of you come from? I realize this isn’t the only planet in the universe.”

  Clyne answers her. “Not just! Cmmk! This isn’t the only universe in the universe, either!”

  “Mother always said the same thing. I should write that down. But there isn’t time.” Thea goes over to the marble desk and tries to move it with her shoulder. It doesn’t budge. She knocks a couple of half-finished scrolls off the top and picks one up to look at it. “This is Mother’s work. This one is about slow pox.” She throws it down. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  I pick it up and stuff it in the satchel. If it can help Mr. Howe, it can help get my mom back. “It matters to some of us, Thea.”

  “At the moment, moving this desk matters even more. The entrance to the tunnel is underneath.”

  Clyne and I help her push. As we huff and puff, I ask her about slow pox. I don’t want to seem too eager.

  “You don’t want to know. Uhhh…” The desk is starting to budge. “It saps the life out of you—and the spirit. And leaves a wrinkled shell of a body afterward. According to my mother, it jumped from goats and sheep to people. No one believes her.”

  But I might. Or someone else in the future. We’ve moved the desk a couple feet; there’s a large hole in the floor, like a sewer opening with the cover taken away. Which, in a way, I guess it is.

  “If we go through the necropolis, there’ll be fresh bodies in there. From the pox. If it’s any comfort, by the time someone’s dead, they can’t spread the contagion. Still, we will have to make our way past them very carefully in the dark.”

  I don’t say okay to that, but I don’t say no either. The air is getting smokier, and I know we have to get out. We push the desk another foot over when we hear them:

  “DEMON!”

  I think they mean Clyne. There are two of them, from Tiberius’s group, standing at the entrance to the room. One holds a sword. One is enough.

  “Come on!” Thea grabs my arm and pulls me down into the hole. We roll down a muddy slope into pitch blackness. I stand up, relieved not to bump my head. We’re definitely in a tunnel, and I can’t see a thing.

  “We need a torch,” Thea says. We’re also missing a dinosaur. I hear more shouting from above, followed by a brkkk! and an akkk! or two.

  “What about Clyne?”

  “The lizard god’s on his own right now.”

  “But I can’t just—”

  “They already took my mother. Who knows what they did to her. But they will do it to us. And we won’t be able to help anyone. Come on!”

  Then more commotion at the tunnel entrance, and with a loud screeching sound, Clyne catapults himself down in the darkness. We hear him tumble, then in the next moment he jumps past us. “Go! Angry mammals above!”

  Someone who does have a torch pops his head down under the floor and peers after us. I think I can make out a scraggly kind of beard in the shadows. “They’re down here!”

  Tiberius has joined the party.

  Thea and I break into another run. I feel around in my pockets for a match, anything, but all I touch are the other two baseball cards. I take one out… The faint, dim glow from the holographic image — in the dark, I can just make out Barry Bonds — lights up a square inch in front of my face. Better than nothing.

  It smells pretty damp and sour, but I don’t care. I just hope I have enough light to keep us from crashing into a pillar or running off the embankment into the slow, gurgling stream below.

  “Just follow the water!” Thea pants.

  “How…how are you going so fast…?” I can hardly see her ahead of me in the dark.

  “I’m holding on to K’lion’s tail!”

  We open a lead on Tiberius, because his men seem a little scared to come after us in the dark. In case Thea really is a witch. Or I’m a wizard. Or Clyne is whatever they think he is.

  All those thoughts are knocked out of my head when the three of us go crashing down as we all trip over loose…

  …bodies that have been dragged into the catacombs and left there.

  I crash down right next to one as Barry Bonds pops out of my hand and falls next to Thea, who’s landed near me. As my eyes adjust, I can still barely make her out. “Slow pox,” she whispers. “They don’t even have time to bury them anymore.”

  I can see her reaching out in the dark and, like a blind person, touching the faces of the bodies that have been dumped there, trying to figure out what they look like with her fingers.

  Maybe in case one of them is her mother.

  I sit there for a second, trying to watch her in the dark.

  What do you say to someone in that situation?

  I won’t find out. Torches flicker in the distance — some of the mob has gotten over whatever spooked them, and they’re back on our heels.

  And where is…“Clyne? Buddy? Are you out there?”

  “No talk.” It turns out dinosaurs can whisper. “This is a move in Cacklaw. Play dead. Fake out.” I can’t see him, but he must be lying perfe
ctly still, pretending to be a dead human body so that Tiberius won’t notice him in the dark.

  I’m not sure that will work. For one thing, water has begun to steadily drip down on us, and it’s hard not to move.

  “Get away from here, Clyne! Run. We’ll come after you.” I hiss-whisper back, and hope the sound doesn’t carry too far in the tunnel.

  “Can’t go, kk-kk-kk,” Clyne answers. “You and Thea still here. I hide, too.” I hear a loud splash as Clyne dives into the stream.

  “Up ahead!” The torches are getting closer. Thea is still carefully touching the faces of the bodies around her.

  “Don’t move,” I hiss again.

  From the footsteps, I can tell they’re nearly on us. I shut up and roll over, lying still, but I bump the decaying body next to me, and part of it gives way with a squish, like a Jell-O mold collapsing. The whole thing is really gross, but there isn’t much time to be scared. The men are too close.

  “We’ll never find them down here, Tiberius.”

  “We will. Heaven commands us to.”

  “This place, Tiberius, has little to do with heaven.”

  “You are a nervous fool, Praetorius.”

  “Only a fool would not be nervous. It is dark. Our clothes are heavy with water, and these pillars are groaning. And I can smell smoke even down here. You should not have let this grow out of control.”

  “The fire started at the harbor. There was a ship…bringing in more scrolls for that witch-woman’s library. Foreign scrolls. The crowd wanted to put a stop…to strange ideas. The flames are a sign of their righteous passion.”

  “All this death down here…it’s evil.”

  “Listen. Shh.”

  “What?”

  “Hear that? Like a faint echo.”

  I peek and see Tiberius peering in our direction. The water is coming in more heavily. Some gets on my face, and I try not to sputter.

  “Death is natural, Praetorius. But life, spinning out of control—that is evil.” There’s a constant rumble now as water comes in. But that’s not our only problem: Tiberius is staring right where Thea has wedged herself between a couple of bodies.

  “Tiberius? What do you see?”

  “I believe I see a strange twist of fate, Praetorius — or a witch’s trick.”

  He steps toward Thea just as the rumble turns into a low, steady roar, and then it feels like I’m back in the Fifth Dimension, because several things happen at once:

  Tiberius touches Thea, who stops pretending to be dead long enough to scream.

  Tiberius screams back, “Sorceress! I have you!”

  As he grabs for her, I reach out and yank his ankle. I guess he thinks Thea is bringing the dead to life, because his scream changes from rage to terror…

  …just as water sprays down on his torch, snuffing it out and surrounding all of us with total darkness…

  …just as whatever was controlling the flow of water into the harbor gives way, and half the Mediterranean comes roaring into the catacombs and sweeps us up. I reach out for Thea, for someone or something to hold on to, but grab only water, which fills my ears, my eyes, my nose…

  …and then I go black. And this time, there are no colors to wake up to.