They had lost.
Jake reached out his arm and opened his fingers. The gold watch rested in his palm, reflecting the firelight. “Take it,” he said.
Kree came forward. “The Key of Time … at last …”
Fingers clawed the timepiece from Jake’s hand.
“Mine at last …”
Jake let his arm drop, defeated. He did not fight as a guard shoved him toward the other captives. Marika came with him, hunched and withdrawn. But once among the others, she snatched Jake’s hand and drew him more deeply into the group, almost tugging his arm out of its socket in her haste.
Bach’uuk and Pindor joined them.
Marika waved them all down, shielded by the other prisoners.
“Did you get it?” Pindor asked.
Marika opened her hand, revealing Kady’s cell phone. Jake’s eyes widened, surprised. She must have snatched it from the sand as she dropped to her knees. The shock in Jake’s eyes drew a crooked smile from her.
“We’re not giving up that easily,” she said.
She still had hold of his hand and gave it a squeeze before letting go. She wiggled and removed something from a pocket. Between her fingers, she held a piece of green crystal.
“The farspeaker,” Jake said. He remembered he’d dropped it in their dungeon cell, but Marika must have recovered it.
She handed both the phone and the crystal to Jake.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Call for help.”
“We certainly need it,” Pindor added.
Marika kept her attention on Jake. “We’re swimming in water that’s much too deep. We can’t do this alone.”
Despite her bravery a moment ago, he read the fear in the paleness of her face. He didn’t know if he could get any help over the phone; but if nothing else, he could let Marika hear her father’s voice one last time. That alone would be worth the effort.
Kneeling in the sand, Jake flipped over the cell phone, saw that the battery was still in place. Hopefully there was enough charge to make one call.
He snapped the farspeaker crystal against the battery pack, held his breath, and flipped open the phone. Again a glowing picture of Kady’s cheerleading squad appeared. Kady stood at the center, holding her sword aloft, defiant and bold. He flashed to his sister as she stood frozen forever in gray stone. As if caught by that same spell, he couldn’t move, couldn’t take his eyes off the photo.
Then the phone vibrated and a weak voice whispered up at him. “Jacob … Jacob, is that you?”
He snapped back to the moment and raised the phone to his ear, ducking lower. The others all leaned their heads closer, listening in.
“Magister Balam, it’s me.” Marika’s father must have been glued to his farspeaker after the last call had been interrupted. “We’re in trouble. We’ve reached the storm barrier around Ankh Tawy, but creatures of the Skull King have us trapped. We don’t know what to do.”
There followed a long pause. Jake couldn’t blame Marika’s father. It was a lot to digest at once.
“Magister Balam …”
“Yes, Jacob … a moment.”
Jake peered between bodies. The Skull King, wearing Kree’s body, crouched with the grakyl witch. Jake didn’t know if he even had a moment. It looked as if Kalverum Rex was preparing to move through the storm. Straining with his ears, Jake heard Balam talking to someone in the background—then he was back.
“After we spoke last, Magister Zahur has been sifting through the legends of Ankh Tawy. He found one scroll, as old as his tribe. It spoke of the storm, supposedly written by one of the ancient Magisters of that lost city, a fellow named Oolof. The writer had clearly gone mad, but he was firm on one point.”
“What’s that?”
“The storm you speak of … it’s not a storm, but something unnatural.”
That was not news to Jake. He glanced at the bolts of lightning shooting through the howling winds.
“At its heart,” Balam continued, “the barrier is not a storm but a river.”
Jake frowned. “A river?”
“That’s right. A river of time, a torrent of past, present, and future all muddled together, sweeping around and around that cursed land.”
Jake considered the Magister’s words, sensing the strange truth to them. It always came back to time. He remembered Kady using the exact same words. Time is fluid, like a river.
Balam explained more. “Anyone from this period of time—from the present age—who tries to enter that storm will be shredded out of existence. But there is a key—”
Jake closed his eyes, despondent. “The Key of Time. I know. My father’s pocket watch.”
“What? No. According to the ancient text, the key is nothing one can build or construct.”
Jake opened his eyes, surprised. “Then what is it?”
A crackle of static ate away the last of the Magister’s words. The battery was running low, the connection weakening.
“How do we get across?” Jake asked loudly, risking being heard but needing an answer.
“The question is not how, Jacob … but who.”
Jake frowned. He must not have heard that correctly. “Say that again.”
The answer came back stuttering. “Since this is … river of time, only someone outside of time … cross safely.”
A sharp spat of static cut off the rest, then the phone went dead, the last of the battery’s charge gone. Jake closed the phone but held it.
“That didn’t make any sense,” Pindor said. “If your father’s watch isn’t the Key—”
Jake shook his head, realizing the truth. “It’s just a compass. Engineered and imbued with alchemical power to lead us to the lost timestones. But that’s all it does.”
He recalled his journey to this land. When he jumped from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the compass must have drawn him here, pulling him toward the timestones. The magnetite wristbands then drew the others in his wake. But, in the end, it wasn’t the watch that had let them all pass through the barrier unscathed.
Only someone outside of time …
The truth turned Jake cold. They had all followed him. There was only one person here outside of time.
“The Key of Time is not my father’s watch,” he said, staring dumbfounded at the others, knowing it to be true. “It’s me.”
28
A SANDY GRAVE
Being buried alive seemed like a poor escape plan.