Kree lifted his arm, and a piece of shadow broke away from the back of the room. A thin figure cloaked from head to toe in black drifted forward. Jake had not known anyone else was here. Even upside down, he couldn’t see a face under the hood.
A soft hissing voice whispered from inside the cloak: high-pitched, clearly a woman. “Asssssk.” An arm reached out, revealing gloved fingers. They held a fat, squirming slug aloft. It was black, with vile green stripes along its sides.
Before Jake could fathom what she intended to do with the slimy thing, her fingers tossed the slug at his face. It hit like a wet slap and stuck to his cheek.
Jake gasped in shock, yanking away, swinging in his shackles. “What are you doing?”
The slug wormed down his face and settled atop his cheekbone. It smelled like the sewer pit in the dungeon cell. Worse, the slime burned his cheek as if it oozed acid.
Kree bent down, tilting his head to face Jake more directly. “Careful, Outlander. It’s best to stay calm. Heka’s pet senses when a beating heart quickens, when skin flushes. It can judge the truth of one’s words and will react poorly if you lie.”
Jake forced his breathing to level off. As he calmed down, the burning cooled. The slug must act like a natural lie detector.
The Egyptian continued. “We’ll start with something simple. Like your name, Outlander.”
Jake saw no reason to lie. “My name is Jake. Jake Ransom.”
“Jake-jake-ransom, a strange name. Definitely not from the lands of Deshret.”
Kree’s next words were thick with sarcasm, casting a light on what he truly thought of Ka-Tor’s rulers. “Our most glorious princess,” he said with a disdainful smirk on his lips, “tells us that you claim to be from Calypsos. Could that be true?”
“Yes,” Jake admitted. His cheek began to burn as the slug sensed even this waffling.
The witch hissed from inside her robe.
“Some of us are,” he quickly clarified. “My sister and I are from much farther away.”
The burning again calmed down.
Kree studied Jake’s face, searching for the truth, then glanced to Heka to confirm it. As he turned back, a crinkle of worry ruined his smooth countenance. Plainly he had not truly believed that any of them were from Calypsos.
Dogo even took a step back. “The Prophecy of Lupi Pini …”
Kree cast a withering glare at the dungeon master. Jake remembered that one of the skyship riders had mentioned something about a prophecy, too, concerning the arrival of strangers from Calypsos who would lead them all out of the scorching desert. From the Egyptian’s hard expression, Jake could see that Kree wasn’t keen to see the prophecy fulfilled. He plainly had his own aspirations, plans that Jake threatened.
“But not all of you are from Calypsos,” Kree said, clearly seeking a loophole to discredit this prediction. “You said you and your sister were from another land? Where might that be?”
Jake answered as truthfully as he could. “From America.”
Kree straightened. A second wrinkle joined the first across his perfect brow, making it look as if that tattooed eye were glaring at Jake. “I’ve heard of no such land.”
Jake remained silent. His father had drilled into him the importance of keeping quiet. He must only give out information as necessary. Of course, at the time, the lesson had been about securing an archaeological dig site: loose lips sink ships. But it applied here, too. With the slug ready to burn him again if he lied, he wasn’t about to speak unless forced.
Heka slipped next to Kree. As she whispered in his ear, the man’s features paled. A hand touched the eye on his forehead, then dropped slackly to his side. He nodded and faced Jake again.
“I may not know of this place you call Ah-Merika, but there is another who will.”
The menace in the Egyptian’s voice made Jake swallow hard, which was difficult to do while hanging by the heels.
Kree turned to Dogo. “Go.” He pointed to the dungeon door. “Make sure we are not disturbed.”
The ogre grunted and lumbered out, plainly glad to obey this particular order. The door clanged shut behind him.
Once alone, Kree knelt beside the witch. He slipped a thin dagger from his wrist sheath. With a trembling hand, he positioned the blade’s point on the center of his tattooed eye. As the dagger pierced his skin, a fat, red drop of blood welled up, covering the tattooed pupil.
Kree thrust his arms to both sides and lifted his face toward the domed roof. “Let him come.”
A long, crooked wand of yellowish bone slid out from Heka’s sleeve. At its tip, a black crystal shone like a hard splinter of shadow. It sucked away the firelight, creating a well of growing darkness around the end of the bone.
Jake’s heart began pounding. He recognized the crystal. A bloodstone. A poisonous dark crystal, forged in the alchemical fires of Kalverum Rex, the very stone the Skull King used to poison and twist flesh and bend wills.
What was it doing here?
Jake twisted in his shackles and spotted two faces pressed in the tiny window of the cell door: Marika and Kady. Their eyes shone with fear, both for him and for what was about to transpire.
As the bloodstone touched the crimson droplet on the Egyptian’s forehead, the tattooed eye burst forth with writhing shadows. The darkness swept over Kree’s head, obscuring all features.
The witch stepped back as Kree rose, his head still hidden within a cowl of shadows. He faced Jake, which set Jake’s heart to thundering. Even the slug on his cheek slithered behind his left ear and hid.
From the mask of darkness, the middle eye opened, aglow with darker flames, as if a black hole burned in the center of the Egyptian’s forehead.
Cruel laughter scratched free of the darkness.
“We meet again.”
It was Kalverum Rex, the Skull King.
“Did you think you could escape me so easily?” The voice boomed with threat. “I am everywhere!”
Jake refused to give in to his terror. He forced his heart out of his throat so he could speak. “But you are not here,” he said. “You can’t be, can you?”
A low, threatening growl followed, confirming what Jake had already suspected.
“You can’t cross the Great Wind,” Jake said. “Only your shadow has seeped through, poisoning what it touches.”
The growl turned to laughter again. “Clever boy. You must be clever enough then to know what I want.”
Jake tried not to answer, but he couldn’t help himself. “The Key of Time. You need it to cross the storm, like my friends and I did.”