Jake understood. The protective field only reached a certain distance. No wonder the Lost Tribes had remained in this valley.
With a worried sigh, Balam stared at the sun through one of the slits in the roof. “I must meet Magister Zahur and see how Huntress Livia is faring.”
Jake twisted in his seat. He was curious about one crystal that Marika’s father had failed to mention. “The stone that poisoned Huntress Livia. The bloodstone—”
A cloud fell over Balam’s face. “We do not speak of such wickedness. It is forbidden to forge such stones.”
Jake glanced up at the whirling mechanism.
Balam must have read his thoughts. “Such a curse was not born here in the Astromicon. The purity of sunlight did not give birth to that stone. It was cast from a much darker flame.”
With those hard words, Balam strode toward the door. He paused with his hand on the latch and glanced back. “Mari, perhaps any further study for today should be limited to the naming of the stones. We don’t want to tax Jacob too heavily after last night.”
Balam opened the door and ducked out into the bright sunshine.
Marika took a deep breath as the door swung back shut. She had an apologetic look on her face. “Papa does not like even using the word bloodstone.”
“But I don’t understand. It’s at the heart of the Skull King’s power. Shouldn’t you know more about it?”
Marika shifted in her chair and moved the box of crystal shards between them. “Maybe we should know more about these first.”
Despite her hesitation, Jake had seen curiosity spark in Marika’s eyes. It matched his own. He stared at the brightly glowing white crystal in the box. White light contained all the colors of the spectrum, while black was the absence of all light. Jake shivered, remembering how the bloodstone seemed to suck up the moonlight.
Balam’s warning echoed in his head. Bloodstone was not forged in the purity of sunlight, but was cast from a much darker flame.
Jake hunched on his stool. What did it matter about bloodstones anyway? It wasn’t his problem. All he wanted to do was find a way back home. And the only way to do that was to discover as much as he could about the pyramid—which meant learning more about these strange crystals.
And there was only one way to do that.
Jake nodded toward the wooden tray. “Maybe we’d better begin.”
Hours later, Jake rested outside. He sat cross-legged atop the tower on a blanket. Sunlight blazed down. Though it was hot, the brightness helped melt the tension that had been building inside him.
A few steps away, Pindor sat on the edge of the parapet wall. For someone scared of saurians, he seemed fearless of the fall behind him. He rocked back and forth on the edge, while gnawing on what looked like a chicken wing. He had sauce all over his mouth.
“Not many people survive a stingtail bite,” Pindor said, pointing the wing at Jake. “Apollo must be watching over you.”
“I don’t think it was the god Apollo,” Marika said. She knelt on the blanket with Jake and searched through the reed basket that Pindor had hauled up to them. She fished through bread rolls and dried pieces of meat that looked like beef jerky. She found a kwarmabean and sat back with it. “Magister Zahur had more to do with keeping Jake alive than any god of Mount Olympus.”
Pindor shrugged and slid off the wall. “And you think someone put the stingtail in your room?”
Marika looked at Jake. He nodded.
“Who would do that?” Pindor asked. “I heard my father talking with Magister Oswin. Everyone’s saying it was an accident. That one of Zahur’s beasties escaped its cage and ended up in Jake’s room.”
Marika shook her head. “I’m pretty sure I heard someone out in the hall earlier in the night. But I can’t prove it.”
“Why would they want to kill him?” Pindor asked.
Marika peeled her kwarmabean slowly. “Maybe because someone’s scared of him. Of what he knows. Of his sy-enz?”
Pindor didn’t look convinced, but he changed the subject. “So what else does this sy-enz do?” He leaned back and stared at Jake. “Show us some more.”
“Pindor, he’s not a trained rollywort who dances for a handful of nuts.”
Still, Jake saw how Marika tried to hide her own interest. He also noted how her green eyes reflected the light like emeralds.
“I can show you a couple things,” Jake offered.
“You don’t have to,” Marika said, but her expression brightened.
Feeling oddly warm inside, Jake scooted back to his feet. He had left his pack in the Astromicon. “C’mon.”
He led the others back through the hatch and into the dome. His backpack was under the table near his stool. He pulled it out and fished through it. His fingers pulled out a penlight. It was about the size of a small screwdriver. “We call this a flashlight.”
He flicked the switch, pointed it at the wall, and danced a spot of light over the curved bronze surface of the dome.
He glanced over at the other two.
Pindor stood with his arms crossed. “So we have hearthlights, too. They’re all over the place, lighting up Calypsos.”
But Marika’s eyes had narrowed with interest. “May I see it?”
“Sure.” Jake passed it over.
She turned it over in her fingers then tapped the flashlight’s lens. “Is this some shard of flat crystal? Is this what casts such a strong light?”
“No, it’s run on…” Jake had to concentrate to get the English word out of his lips. “…batteries.”
“Bat trees,” Pindor said. “What are those?”
Jake slipped the penlight from Marika and twisted it open. He dumped two AAA batteries out into his palm. “These make power and cause the bulb in the flashlight to glow. Using electricity.” Again he had to force his tongue to form the last word.
He passed one battery to Marika and one to Pindor. Marika examined hers with the intensity of a scientist studying a strange new beetle. Pindor sniffed at his, as if wondering what it tasted like. He ended up pointing the battery at Jake.
“Do something else with it.”
“Pindor…” Marika scolded.
“I just want to see what else it does. Like what do these bat trees do to our crystals?”
Before anyone could stop him, he turned to the box of crystals and stabbed the battery into the piles of shards. Jake tensed. Marika knocked Pindor’s arm away. But nothing happened.