“No, I think they got here,” Pindor said. He was down on his knees, recovering the lamp Livia had knocked over. He pulled a hand from beneath her bed. In his fingers he held a slender stick of wood that looked like a wand. Its crystal tip reflected the lamplight. Jake recognized the wand. Marika’s father had used it to touch the bloodstone arrowhead and banish its evil.
“Papa’s dowsing wand!” Marika said.
So her father had been here.
Marika snatched the wand from Pindor and clutched it to her chest. She turned in a full circle, as if expecting to find her father suddenly standing there. She looked a breath away from full panic.
Jake tried to calm her. “Just because his stick is here, it doesn’t really tell us what happened. They could have gone anywhere.” He kept himself from adding, “We’ve seen no bodies.”
“Then who set up this trap? Who locked us in here?” Marika asked.
“Maybe Zahur,” Pindor said. “Those were his sharp-tailed beasties. And he did call your father. Maybe it was to lure him here, while everyone was at the Olympiad.”
Marika shook her head, trying not to believe, but she didn’t shake her head too vigorously or scold Pindor for such doubts. Like Jake, she was probably brimming with suspicions. Her fingers still clung to her father’s wand.
From the room outside, a heavy creak of hinges rasped, like bone scraping on bone. Everyone froze. Someone was coming.
“Stay here,” Jake hissed.
He crossed to the door and peered out into the dark room. In the weak light Jake spotted a small side door swinging slowly open. It was a furtive motion, possibly someone checking to see if they were dead.
Jake slid out into the common room.
A shadowy shape pushed through a narrow door, like the one in Balam’s common room. What if it was one of the Magisters? Even so, Jake still wouldn’t know what to do. Who could he trust?
The door opened wider as the intruder stepped into the room. His small form revealed his identity.
“Bach’uuk,” Jake whispered.
The Ur boy froze in place. He looked ready to bolt away. Jake could only imagine the boy’s fear at hearing his name whispered out of the dark. Jake flicked on his penlight but kept it pointed at the floor.
Bach’uuk straightened but remained wary.
Marika appeared behind Jake. “Bach’uuk!”
Pindor stood at her shoulder. “Apollo be praised! A way out of this trap!”
Jake still kept his penlight ready. Who’s to say Bach’uuk can be trusted?
Marika held no such misgivings. She hurried over and crushed Bach’uuk in a hug. “What are you doing here?”
Free of her embrace, he shuffled his feet. “I saw someone…a stranger fly up out of the cellars. I come to see if Magister Zahur had any trouble.”
“He had trouble all right,” Pindor mumbled.
Marika started to explain, but Jake cut her off. “What did this stranger look like?”
“He was made of shadows.”
“What do you mean?” Marika asked.
Bach’uuk shuddered from head to foot. “The stranger had no form. Shadows rode his shoulders and flowed behind him like a cloak. Where he passed, the hearthlights died, eaten by his shadows.”
Jake glanced back to the darkened room. No wonder the crystals refused to glow.
“I saw only a single gleam.” Bach’uuk touched his throat, as if indicating a clasp on a coat. “It shone only because it was blacker than the shadows that covered him.”
Jake recognized the description. “Bloodstone.”
“He ran into the castle where shadows swallowed him up.” Bach’uuk shook his head, indicating he didn’t know where the stranger had gone after that.
“Did you see my father? Or Magister Oswin?” Marika asked. The worry in her voice rang like a bell.
Bach’uuk frowned. “Not after this morning.”
Marika looked stricken.
“What are we going to do?” Pindor asked. “Who are we going to tell? The Magisters are all gone. Everyone else is off at the Olympiad.”
A weak moan whispered out of Livia’s throat. It sounded as if it came from far away, as if she were already fading into the distance, crossing where they could not follow.
“We can’t just leave Livia,” Marika said. “We have to try to save her. Maybe she saw something.”
Jake knew that was not likely, but he also read the fear for her father in the lines around Marika’s eyes. Jake studied Livia. She would not last another hour. If even that. They had to try something.
He nodded, more to himself than to the others. “We’ll try to destroy the bloodstone in her.”
He expected some complaint, but Pindor surprised him. “What do you want us to do?”
Jake thought quickly. Pindor had longer legs and could run faster than Jake. “Bach’uuk, can you lead Pin up through your back stairs? All the way to the Astromicon? We don’t want anyone to see either of you.”
Bach’uuk nodded.
“Pin, I want you to bundle up that mess the Magisters made of Kady’s iPod.”
“You mean her farspeakers?”
“Exactly. Bring everything back down here.”
Pindor nodded, swung away, and headed out with Bach’uuk.
Jake turned and joined Marika. They sat on the edge of the bed. It would be a hard wait. He stared down and found Marika’s hand in his.
“He’ll be all right,” Jake said softly.
Jake did not mean Pindor.
She stared off to nowhere, lost in fear and grief. “He’s all I have left.”
Jake squeezed her fingers, knowing the pain she was feeling all too well. To lose a mother or father—it was a heartache that never went away.
20
I SEE YOU…
What is taking them so long?
Jake paced the length of the sickroom. After more than fifteen minutes of sitting on the bed, Marika had suddenly stood up and asked to borrow the bedside lamp. Jake was happy to get up, too. The tension had been building like a swollen dam inside him. So he paced in the dark, with only the coarse breathing of the huntress for company. He heard Marika rustling around in a neighboring room and thought maybe he’d heard her talking to herself in there, too.
After five long minutes, she returned with the lamp. Her face looked pale. She carried something in her other hand—one of the farspeakers. The green crystal rested in its frame, suspended by a web of tiny fibers. Jake realized for the first time that it looked sort of like a Native American dreamcatcher. Dreamcatchers were made out of a hoop of willow branch and woven with sinew and decorated with stones and feathers. Traditionally it was hung above a child’s bed to trap bad dreams.