Jake turned and faced the sculpture of shadow. Marika slipped the wand into the hand Jake hid behind his back. He lifted his chin and stared as the figure closed the distance.
“Though the master wants you,” it hissed, “that doesn’t mean I can’t make you suffer for your trouble. And what better way to make you suffer than to see one of your friends die?”
The creature pointed an arm. Jake risked a glance and saw Pindor struggling to pull himself out of the black pool. He had got his head out and gasped for air. Then the shadows rose over his friend’s body, flowing up and filling his nose and mouth, leaving only his eyes above the darkness. Pindor twisted in fear. His mouth stretched in a silent scream as he tried to draw air.
Jake shoved around and faced the shadow-cloaked monster. “Let him go!”
Jake drew back the creature’s attention. It wanted to savor his pain. But when it turned its head, Jake spotted the glint buried in the shadows. A chunk of blackness darker than any shadow. The bloodstone clasp.
Jake whipped his arm around and stabbed out with Balam’s dowsing stick. The crimson crystal cut through the shadows and reached the black stone. With a touch, the bloodstone seemed to jump. A tiny scream flowed as a fiery light burst from the wand’s tip. Jake blinked away the glare and saw the chunk of bloodstone had gone dead white, drained of its power.
“No!” the creature moaned, echoing the cry from the stone.
The shadows collapsed like a wash of snowmelt after a sudden thaw. Jake stumbled free as the pool around him turned from tar to thin air. He fell back into Marika, but they kept their footing. Pindor coughed and choked, but he was still alive. Bach’uuk helped him to his feet. Pindor picked up his sword and lunged groggily forward. He pressed the tip of his sword over the heart of the assassin.
With the bloodstone clasp undone, the shadows melted away from the cloaked figure. Blackness flowed down and revealed a pale face and an overly large belly.
“Magister Oswin!” Marika gasped.
He showed no remorse, only disdain and disgust.
“Why?” she begged.
“Why not?” he scoffed, curling a lip.
“But you’ve always served Calypsos.”
A hard laugh escaped him. “No. I’ve always served Kalverum Rex, my true master. Since I was an apprentice, I served him, recognized his brilliance. Someone not frightened to delve into alchemies that others shunned. He found a dark path to godhood, and I was allowed to follow him.”
“Then why didn’t you leave with him when he was banished?” Marika asked, her face pale and sick.
Again that wicked smile bloomed. “While others were allowed to go with him, he forced me to remain behind. To be his eyes and ears. To bide a time when he could again return!”
“So you were his spy!” Pindor said, and poked his sword enough to get the prisoner to wince.
“And his saboteur,” Jake added with a nod toward the murky emerald sphere.
“All these years…” Marika said.
“Such gullible swine.” He spat on the floor. “You know nothing about this land here! Nothing about the forces that close even now around you. With but a word—” He suddenly twitched and gasped. He stared down at his feet.
The shadows had pooled there like a discarded cloak. But they did not lie limp. Around the Magister’s feet, the shadows began to churn like a whirlpool.
“No, Master!” he moaned.
Oswin’s legs began to sink into the inky whirlpool. His eyes got huge and panicked. His face suddenly twisted in pain. A scream burst from his throat. Not pleading this time—pure agony. Oswin attempted to lunge out of the churning pool, but he was caught as surely as Jake had been before. He sprawled on the floor.
They all backed away.
The black tide pulled his body deeper, sucking him away. His fingers clawed at the smooth stone floor, but he could gain no purchase. His face screwed up into a mask of pain and terror.
“No! Not like this!”
Marika took a step toward him. Jake held her back. The fiend might drag her with him.
“My father,” she pleaded. “What happened to him?”
Oswin seemed not to hear her, or simply didn’t care. His fingers left bloody tracks as he was sucked into that black churning maw. He vanished with one final scream of terror.
Marika turned away and pressed her face into Jake’s shoulder. He put an arm around her. The whirlpool continued to churn, but like water flushing down a bathtub drain, it was quickly gone, leaving nothing but the smooth stone floor.
They all took a moment to steady themselves. Pindor poked his sword at the floor, as if testing its solidity. Jake kept his arm around Marika. They moved shakily forward and passed under the crystal heart of the temple. Jake knelt by the emerald sphere. It no longer even wobbled. Deep within the stone, where the other spheres glowed, this crystal was dark—no, not just dark, it was black.
A solid piece of shadow rested at the heart of the stone.
Jake carefully placed a palm on the surface. It was cold, but nothing more. He placed his other palm on it. He could fathom no way to clear out the poisoning darkness within. There was no way of reaching it with Balam’s dowsing stick, not through solid crystal. And Jake’s penlight had no more juice. They could not even try shocking it.
Jake glanced to Marika. She shook her head. They needed a true Magister, not two apprentices.
Pindor stared back toward where Oswin had been sucked away into the void. “He betrayed us all. But I guess it makes a certain strategic sense.”
Marika snapped at Pindor, “Sense? How does any of this make sense?”
Pindor waved an arm around the chamber. “The Skull King needed a Magister. Only a Magister could pass through the barrier that locked the temple and bring down the shield that protected our valley. It was no wonder the Skull King accepted his banishment so easily. He knew he could return to the valley whenever he was ready.”
Jake stood back up. “But that doesn’t mean we have to let him.” He nodded to Bach’uuk. “We came here with a plan—your plan, Pin—to find a place to regroup and seek more allies.”
Marika joined them. “We can’t let him win.”
“We won’t,” Jake promised—though he hoped it was an oath he could keep.
As they set off, a screech blasted outside the temple. It was so loud that it hurt Jake’s ears even inside the temple. He swore it shook the floor under them.
Jake remembered the cries of triumph that had excited the grakyl horde a few moments ago. He suspected that the cause of that excitement had just arrived.