Jake took the crystal, remembering her story. Normally such crystals were suspended within a web of tiny fibers inside a paddlelike frame.
Marika explained. “I broke its holder when I crashed in the desert. Still, I tried to reach my father again, but nothing happened.”
Kady put her hands on her hips. “So like I said, crystals must not work here.”
“Not necessarily. The two halves of the crystals may be too far apart. It might take more power to get them to link up across such a distance. If only we had more power …”
An idea began to form in Jake’s head. He remembered that, back in Calypsos, the battery from his flashlight had accidentally touched a ruby crystal and the crystal ignited into a crimson minisun. Could the same be done here?
He turned to his sister. “Kady, do you still have your cell phone?”
She scowled. “Of course I do.” To prove it, she reached into a hidden pocket of her slacks and pulled it out. “I wasn’t about to let them take it away from me.”
Jake held out his hand. “Does it still have power?”
She flipped it open and showed the glowing home page. Jake forced himself not to roll his eyes at the sight of her cheer squad posing defiantly, swords pointed at the screen.
“Pass me the battery.”
Kady frowned but obeyed. With the skill of a surgeon, she extracted the battery and placed it in Jake’s hand.
Kneeling on the stone floor, he held the green crystal gently between his thumb and forefinger—then touched it with the battery’s positive contacts. He winced, expecting the worst.
But nothing happened.
Maybe someone has to speak into it, get it vibrating.
Jake glanced to Marika and lifted the stone and battery toward her. She understood and leaned in close. He felt her warm breath across his palm as she whispered, her lips almost touching the stone.
“Papa, if you can hear me, answer. …”
Everybody held their breath and waited. Jake tried to feel any vibration in the crystal. But it seemed as dead as before.
Pindor spoke up. “Maybe you have to turn the bat tree on.”
Jake was about to dismiss his friend’s suggestion, then remembered that the fusion of ancient alchemy and modern technology did always take a spark of some sort, whether generated by the spinning crystals in the Astromicon atop the Tower of Enlightenment or the flip of a flashlight’s power button.
Jake stood up again. “Kady, let me have your phone.”
She handed it over. “Be careful with it.”
He replaced the battery, leaving the compartment open, and powered up the phone. Again Kady’s cheer squad pointed their swords at his face, as if also threatening him to be careful. He pressed the green crystal against the exposed battery, picturing the power coursing into the phone.
As the crystal touched the battery, the phone suddenly vibrated and rang in Jake’s hand.
Loud and bright.
They all froze.
Jake tried to pull the crystal off the battery to silence the phone, but it was stuck as tight as a barnacle to a rusty ship. The phone continued to ring—then suddenly cut off as someone answered.
A tiny whisper rose from the phone’s speakers. Somehow the two technologies had merged, fused into a new whole.
“Who is this?” a familiar voice asked.
“Papa!” Marika gasped out.
Jake lifted the phone to his ear. “Magister Balam,” he said, picturing Mari’s father, with his wild mane of gray hair and boundless energy. “Can you hear me?”
A pause, then confusion rang in Balam’s voice. “Jacob? Jacob Ransom. Is that you?”
“Yes, yes! I’m here with Mari! Along with Pindor, Bach’uuk, and my sister.”
A gasp of relief reached across the airwaves. “Is she … are you all safe?”
Jake didn’t know how to answer that without terrifying the man, so he sidestepped the question. “We’re on Pangaea. But we don’t know where. We’re in some desert. Ruled by a Lost Tribe of Egyptians.”
Instead of calming Balam, Jake’s words made the man’s voice tremble with worry. “Another Lost Tribe? How could that be?”
“I don’t know, but they came here many ages ago. A great storm circles the desert, trapping everyone here. Including us now.”
There was a long pause. For a moment, Jake feared that the connection had been lost. Then Balam spoke again. Worry had turned to fear. “This storm you speak of … is it made of sand?”
“That’s right. A huge sandstorm.”
“But that can’t be, Jacob. What you describe matches an ancient legend I heard long ago, of a lost Egyptian city destroyed by a monster.”
“That’s right!” Jake blurted out loudly, too shocked to keep quiet. “The city is Ankh Tawy!”
“Impossible. The place is only legend, told by Magister Zahur’s people.”
Jake remembered the dour, black-robed Magister. Zahur was Egyptian, like Nefertiti’s people. Had some traveler returned to Egypt from Pangaea with the story of the fall of Ankh Tawy?
The waver in Balam’s voice hardened to urgency. “If you speak the truth, you must all get out of there! You are in great danger!”
“Why?”
“Because there is an ending to the story told by Zahur’s people.”
Jake didn’t like the sound of that. “What ending?”
“Everyone in that doomed city … they were all turned to stone.”
Before Jake could ask more, pounding rattled the door behind him. The constant snick-snick of sharpening knives had ended. The ringing phone must have drawn the dungeon master away from his duty. Or had Jake been speaking too loudly?
He quickly pulled the phone away from his ear, shielding it from sight behind his body. He turned to find the scarred face of the dungeon master at the window. Fat lips grimaced, exposing those filed teeth again. The ogre’s sweating face, shining with suspicion, searched all around the cell.
A tiny whisper reached Jake from the phone. “I must speak to Magister Zahur! He knows more about those ancient stories.”
From the door, piggish eyes fixed on Jake.
With no choice, Jake snapped the phone closed. Once powered off, the battery lost its hold on the crystal. The green stone fell into the straw behind him. Jake stuffed the phone into the back pocket of his pants.
And not a moment too soon.
The door swung open, and the dungeon master bowed his hulking form into the tiny cell. His sharpened knife pointed at Jake.
“You be first.”
14
EYE OF FIRE
Barefoot and upside down, Jake swung by his ankles in the center of the dungeon, in plain view of the other cells. He had never felt so vulnerable. His hands were tied behind his back. The shackles dug into his skin. Any wiggling to free himself only cut the iron deeper into his ankles and made blood pound in his head.
The dungeon master stood a yard away near a scarred table covered in blades, hooks, and hammers. Beside the man, a set of iron pokers glowed brightly in the fire pit.
Jake’s body was covered in sweat—both from the heat of the flames and from the fear of what was to come.
A door clanged open. He twisted enough to spot a familiar figure brush his way into the dungeon. Master Kree stalked toward Jake and his torturer. Any semblance of good nature was gone from his dark face. Shadows played over the sharp edges of his nose and cheekbones. The tattooed eye in the center of his forehead appeared to twitch as flames flickered.
“Are you ready, Dogo?”
The hulking dungeon master shrunk under Kree’s triple gaze. “Yes, master.” He waved a meaty arm over the spread of torture tools. “Ask question. I make answer.”
“Good, Dogo.” Kree crossed and stared at Jake’s hanging form. “But first let us see if the outlander is willing to cooperate. We’ll start with the simplest of questions and judge how freely his tongue wags. After that, we’ll let the witch, Heka, judge the truthfulness of his
words.”
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.”
“You will give it to me.” Kree stepped forward, lifting his dagger. But from the way the Egyptian’s arm shook, even this small gesture took great effort from the Skull King as he possessed Kree’s body. Even with the bloodstone, the Skull King’s reach through the storm was weak. Proving this, his next words were softer, sounding farther away. “Give me the Key of Time and I’ll let you and your friends free.”
Now it was Jake’s turn to laugh. Fat chance he’d let them live. If Jake had learned anything from his previous adventure, he knew that Kalverum Rex could never be trusted. Beyond his alchemies, his best weapons were lies, deceit, and betrayal. And if he wanted something in this desert land, Jake was not about to help him get it.
The Skull King must have sensed Jake’s determination.
Dark flames burst more strongly out of that single eye. “If you will not give me the Key, I will take it from you!”
Kree swung away toward the witch, wobbly and poorly controlled, as if a drunken puppet master pulled his strings. The voice of the Skull King grew fainter, echoing out of an ever-deepening well as the connection faded.
“Get the Key … then kill them all!”
15
LOCK AND KEY
Kree suddenly fell to his knees, a puppet whose strings had been cut. The shadows around his head broke away like a flock of crows and vanished. With a groan, the Egyptian lifted a hand to his forehe
ad, as if checking to see if his head were still on his shoulders. Fingers probed the tattooed eye above his brows. It was just a tattoo again.
The Skull King was gone.
Heka made no move to help Kree get up. It took him two tries to get back on his feet. Even then he clutched a hanging chain to hold himself up. He swung around to face Jake. That calculating, wary look from before had changed to pure hatred, as if Jake were to blame for his weakness.
Kree stumbled toward Jake, stopping only long enough to grab a curved blade from Dogo’s table. The weapon looked like a giant version of the paring knife Aunt Matilda used for skinning chickens. From the look on Kree’s face, skinning was a distinct possibility.
He lifted the blade to Jake’s throat. “Where is the Key?”
So the Egyptian must have been conscious while the Skull King took over his body, listening from inside. Fear glowed in Kree’s bloodshot eyes. The experience plainly shook him down to his bones, and he was determined to give his master everything he wanted.
“Hand over the Key!” Kree pressed the knife harder.
“I … I don’t have it.”
As the lie slipped from Jake’s lips, the slug oozed a slime that burned like a hot poker shoved into his ear.
Jake screamed as loudly as he could.
Beyond his cry, he heard Marika call out, “Leave him alone!”
Kree smiled with satisfaction and straightened, taking his knife with him. “It seems the witch’s pet disagrees with you.”
Jake panted as the pain of the burn eventually ebbed.
“Shall we try again?” the Egyptian asked. “Where’s the Key?”
Jake continued to breathe hard, calming his heart. The slug slid from behind his sore ear and squirmed along his jawbone to rest at the edge of his mouth.
“Answer me,” Kree said, “or I’ll pull one of your friends out of the cell and start feeding fingers and toes to the fire.”
Jake finally gasped out, “No! I have the Key.” He struggled with his arms behind his back, fighting the iron cuffs. “Free my hands, and I’ll show you.”