Marika lifted the woven hoop. “I found Magister Zahur’s collection of farspeakers. This one connects to Papa’s. There was no response. Zahur had others, too. I tried them all.” She shook her head. “Everyone’s at the Olympiad.”
Jake understood. Most people must have left their walkie-talkies at home. But he had a more worrisome thought. “Or they might not work at all,” he said. “Like the lights. Bach’uuk mentioned how the shadow man’s cloak sucked the alchemy out of the lights. Maybe it did the same with the farspeaking crystals.”
Marika stared down at the hoop in her hand. She sank back to the bed. One finger reached out to touch the emerald crystal at the heart of the dreamcatcher, perhaps seeking some connection to her father.
“No one truly understands such crystals,” she whispered. “At least not fully.”
Jake joined her, knowing she needed to talk.
She glanced at him and offered a sad, crooked smile, while worry continued to reflect in her eyes. “There are many mysteries about these stones.”
“Like what?”
She stared back down at the entwined green crystal. “On rare occasions, strange voices echo out of farspeaking stones, whispery and ghostly. A word here, half a sentence there. Magisters are taught they’re just ripples bouncing off the valley walls. But my father thinks they might be messages traveling from other valleys like Calypsos—towns that lie far, far away.”
Like telephone wires crossing! Jake thought.
Her words stirred his curiosity. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if such places existed?” Marika said, though without much heart behind her words. “One day I’d love to see them.”
A door banged open in the other room, cutting off the conversation.
Pindor rushed into the infirmary carrying a blanket tied into a sack over one shoulder.
Bach’uuk followed, bringing lighted lamps from upstairs.
Pindor gasped as he joined them. “Sorry it took so long. Bach’uuk wanted to alert his people about the intruder. In case he comes back. We should be safe.”
“Good thinking.” Jake held out his arms for the loaded blanket.
“What do you want me to do now?” Pindor asked, still panting.
Jake pointed to Livia. “Help Mari get that bandage off her shoulder. Find some clean water and soak her skin and wound.”
As Pindor and Marika set to work, Jake untied the blanket and spread it on the floor. Kady’s iPod was a disassembled mess. He fished through the wreckage and picked out the rechargeable battery pack. He hoped it still held a charge, enough voltage. A pair of wires—black and red—hung from one corner of the battery. He stripped the plastic off each wire with his teeth. He wasn’t sure how much of a shock he could get from the battery pack, but Jake had once licked the end of a 9-volt battery and got quite a stinging zap.
Jake touched two wires together and a pair of sparks flashed from their ends. Satisfied, he hauled up the battery pack and crossed to the bed.
Marika held one hand to her throat and kept her other on Livia’s shoulder. Pindor backed out of the way.
The arrow’s wound was bloody and deep, the skin puckered and swollen around it. Spidery red traces skittered from the wound across Livia’s pale skin, down her arm, up her neck. Just the look of it screamed, Poison.
Jake swallowed and worked up his courage. “Mari, move away. Bach’uuk, bring that light closer.”
Taking a deep breath, Jake cradled the battery between his palms and aimed the stripped ends toward the bloody water pooled in her wound.
“Stand back,” he warned, not knowing what would happen.
With a wince, he shoved the wires into the water and touched them together. A spat of electricity popped.
Jake held his breath, but nothing more happened.
He raised the wires out of the wound. As he lifted them, the wires continued to spark and pop. Even after he separated them.
“Jake?” Marika asked, clearly worried.
Suddenly the wires whipped wildly in his fingers. Thin streams of blue fire flowed out the stripped ends and zapped the wounded flesh. Jake backed away, hauling the battery with him. But the streams of electrical fire continued to suck out of the wires and into the gash. He retreated all the way until his back hit the wall. The other three scattered to the sides, fearing the twin frazzles of lightning flowing from the batteries to the woman.
Livia began to quake under the covers. Her head arched back in a silent scream. She was going into a full seizure.
“The blanket!” Jake yelled. “Pull it over her shoulder! Break the connection!”
Marika and Pindor skirted the sides of the bed and grabbed the opposite corners of the blanket. They yanked it up and over Livia’s head, slicing through the electrical fire.
Jake felt the interruption like a kick to the gut. The backlash knocked him into the wall again. The battery pack gave off a loud bang and began to pour out black smoke. Fearing it might be toxic, Jake flung the whole thing out into the other room.
Jake rushed back to the bed. Livia was still covered by the blanket, like someone who had recently died. And maybe she had. Her body lay flat and unmoving under the blanket.
Jake pulled down a corner. Her face was slack, her eyes open.
Marika and Pindor stumbled away in shock. Her eyes were solidly black, like polished bits of obsidian. Had they killed her?
A hand suddenly lunged from beneath the sheets and snatched Jake’s wrist. Fingers clamped, strong enough to grind bone. Livia’s body sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, her nose only inches from Jake’s. Her black eyes stared at him, shining with evil.
“I see you…”
The words were not Livia’s. Jake recognized the voice from when he’d been transported here. It was the voice from an open crypt, hoary and ancient, rising from a place where screams and blood flowed equally.
Before Jake could even struggle to break free, the hand went limp and fell from his wrist. Livia slumped into the bed.
Backing up a step, Jake rubbed his wrist. What had just happened? He remembered the ruby crystal burning through the table. Had the electricity released the evil of the bloodstone shards all at once? If so, now what? Were they gone, consumed and burned up? Or were they more powerful?
From the bed, a hard gurgling cough shook Livia—followed by an impossibly huge gulp of air, as if the huntress were surfacing after a swim to the bottom of the deepest sea. Her eyes wobbled in her head and slowly steadied. They were no longer black, but an icy blue.
“Wh-where am I?” she asked hoarsely.