The Keep

  Caius shrugged. “There are undoubtedly a number of things you could blame for what happened to your father. You could blame the ice cream man for distracting your mother’s attention. You could blame the weather for encouraging your parents to go outside. You could blame your mother again, for insisting they stay in that deadwood town. You could even blame your father for not going with your mother on that day. Anyway, it makes little difference—I’m still going to have to kill you.”

  “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to do any of this!” Alex said, feeling how fruitless his plea was. Finally, the warden’s true nature was rising to the surface, and, at least to Alex, the man was at last living up to his reputation.

  He realized with a sinking feeling that there had indeed been a warning sign, but he had missed it, brushing it off as pure power instead. It made sense now, the strange scarlet fog he had touched upon when he had delved into Caius’s mind—it was Caius’s madness, overwhelming his brain, smothering it in a red sea of accumulated rage he simply couldn’t see past, always at the back of his thoughts, influencing everything he did.

  “You have put it all in place for me, my boy—you have spurred me on to my purpose, and I have risen to the occasion,” Caius said brightly. “Though it pained me to do it, I smashed my ill-gotten gains, letting the Kingstone essence run free, into the ground, where nobody can get their hands on it. I returned the souls of the departed to Mother Nature’s loving embrace, and never have I felt so exhilarated. I imagine you felt the same when you rid Stillwater of theirs?”

  “I felt sorrow and guilt,” Alex whispered.

  Caius sighed. “I see you take no pride in your work, my boy, but you really should. There is no essence left at Stillwater House thanks to you, and now there is none here either. I just have to destroy whatever is left at Spellshadow Manor and Falleaf House. Once it is all gone, they will have to kill more from their own ranks to replenish the supply, and when their arrogance prevents them, the Great Evil shall arise,” he cackled, the cruel, mad glee glinting in his eyes.

  It was clear the warden wasn’t in the mood for negotiating anymore, and any plea Alex made would be useless. There was murder on the old man’s mind. Right now, Alex needed to get out of Kingstone Keep. His hopes would come to nothing if he died now, in this lonely place.

  It serves me right, Alex thought, for ever trusting a royal.

  Chapter 33

  “If you have any final remarks, I will not deny you them,” Caius said, holding out his free hand as if in benediction. The old man, Alex realized, really believed he was showing mercy. On the floor at his feet, Vincent’s hand twitched almost imperceptibly.

  “I do have one last question,” Alex said, conjuring threads of silvery black beneath his fingertips, fine at first, as he let the black-speckled anti-magic swell and surge all around him. The strands thickened, rippling with wave after wave of bright silver energy. His eyes burned as a spiral of glittering silver sparks began to fall all around him in a bright snowstorm of glinting light.

  “Did you actually think I would die without a fight?” Alex shouted, focusing on the rage running through his every vein, brimming over the edge of his every cell. He roared as he forced it all out of his body in a vast, explosive surge that rushed forward, knocking Caius backward with a ferocious blast.

  It took the warden by surprise for just long enough to give Vincent, who had come back around, the opportunity to lunge upward and force his veined hands onto the sides of Caius’s head. He clamped his thin fingers around Caius’s skull like two vised claws, the necromancer’s mouth moving silently as he spoke incantations, while his palms conjured ghostly white lines that shimmered into Caius’s temples.

  Alex watched, rooted to the spot, as Caius turned a deathly shade of pale, the entirety of his eyes turning white, the gold of his irises and the black of his pupils draining away to nothing. Caius crumpled behind Vincent, his cane clattering to the ground, his body sliding down the broken surface of the door, slamming it shut as his weight fell against it.

  Whatever Vincent had done, it had clearly taken a lot out of him. The veins beneath the surface of his translucent skin pulsed with a darker blue than Alex had ever seen before, the web of it more visible beneath his pale flesh, throbbing thickly in places, like tar. With a weary head, the necromancer managed to turn toward Alex, opening his mouth in a scream.

  “RUN!” Vincent howled. Wispy spirits emerged from within the necromancer’s body, pushing through his translucent skin. Their gaping, skeletal faces reflected the screams of their master, floating ever upward. “Get out of here, Spellbreaker! Don’t look them in the eye!”

  Yanking open the door, Alex dared to glance back over his shoulder, just in time to see the necromancer turn toward his victim once more, with the clear intent of ensuring Caius couldn’t hurt anyone again. It wasn’t the fate Alex would have wished upon the old man, whose mind had clearly been warped by the things he had seen in his long life, but he wasn’t sure there was any choice in the matter now. It no longer looked as if the necromancer were in control of the deed, as the ghoulish phantoms whirled around him, howling banshee-like wails with their cavernous mouths, the sound sending a tremor of pure terror up Alex’s spine.

  Alex hurried toward the nearest window and clambered up onto the ledge, hoping he still had enough focus to keep himself from falling to his death, or into the mouth of a waiting monster. Steeling himself against the nauseating drop that fell away below him, he conjured the necessary anti-magic beneath his palms and forced himself to jump from the ledge. This way, he knew, he’d have less chance of taking some of the keep with him, and getting mixed up in a mass of flesh and stone.

  Alex drew his anti-magic back into himself as he plummeted through the air, folding his body in on itself just in time, everything disappearing in a rush of wind. He emerged again with a heavy thump on the grass beside the gatehouse. It was an ungainly, hard landing, and Alex was convinced he’d broken something as a jolt of pain seared through his nerves.

  He got up quickly, feeling another sudden sting in his ankle, though less painful than the last. Lifting the edge of his pant leg, he saw that the flesh beneath his sock was swollen, and guessed he must have unwittingly rolled his ankle when he fell. Wincing, he turned back toward the window he had jumped from. The flash of something pale and eerie moved in the distant room. Hollow eyes and a gaping mouth appeared in the vacant frame. A scream shivered through the air toward him, pressing him on as he hurried off toward the derelict town he knew rested in the distance, offering the hope of a safe haven.

  I didn’t look them in the eyes, he vowed to himself as he ran. I definitely didn’t look one in the eye.

  He ran and ran, dragging his leg behind him after feeling it buckle a few times, making him wonder if he hadn’t broken something after all. Emerging through the tree-line, he saw the familiar sight of the abandoned buildings up ahead, and proceeded onward, past the tumbledown tavern, past the crumbling shops and ancient houses, past Thunder Road, and up toward the mountains. Lightning cracked at the summit, a shard of bright light hurtling toward the great hunk of rock from the maelstrom of black clouds that swirled around the unseen peaks.

  It didn’t seem particularly welcoming, but he could make out the ancient scaffold of a structure near the peak, and knew it would be the perfect vantage point from which to survey the whole area and keep an eye out for any approaching enemies. On higher ground, he’d have a better chance of survival.

  Trying to ignore the dull throb of his foot, he walked toward the entrance to the steep mountain path. At the start of it, a cracked, peeling signpost stood up from a cluster of rocks, pointing the way. Alex paused to look at it, reading the name written across the damp, warped wood.

  “Tempest Mountain,” it read. “Do not feed the birds.”

  The name seemed familiar to Alex, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint why as he began the long climb upward, toward the skeleton of an outpost. He just hoped it wo
uld prove sheltered enough for him to hide in while he came up with his next plan of action, and prayed that those wispy sprites weren’t going to come after him. Right now, his brain was too frazzled by recent events to even begin to function properly, but he knew he’d have to come up with something soon, unless he wanted to stay trapped in this realm.

  Up in the highest reaches, the wind whipped around Alex in biting blasts of ice-cold air. His lungs burned from the exertion of the climb and the thinning oxygen, and though the view was stunning from where he stood, the wind stung his eyes every time he opened them wide enough to see it. The forest stretched away into the distance, dipping where the keep stood, distinctly medieval and looming in the center of it all. But there were other dips too, giving away the locations of settlements nearby. A river glittered on the horizon, snaking through the forest and out to sea, farther than the eye could make out. Alex wondered if the other settlements were in the same state of dereliction as the town below the mountain—a smattering of ghost towns, echoing with the memory of bygone lives.

  The outpost still lay ahead, never seeming to get any closer, and desperation for its protection pushed him onward. Turning back around, Alex continued to climb, his face numb from the cold, his path reaching ever higher until the rocks he grasped for were covered in thick ice and the ground below his feet was smothered in several inches of snow. Feeling anxious about how slippery everything had become, he paused to catch his breath, holding tight to a dry ridge of stone as he heaved in as much oxygen as he could, drawing deep for the strength to push on.

  A shadow darkened the snow-covered shelf of rock in front of him. Someone was standing behind him. Despair made his heart sink—he had been caught. It took all the strength he had left to turn around, expecting to see Caius standing there behind him, having somehow evaded Vincent and his spirits, or even Vincent himself, possessed by the soul of a wispy devil, intent on killing him.

  To his shock, it was neither.

  Perched on the ledge behind him, head cocked, stood a gigantic bird, though Alex didn’t feel as if the word “bird” did the magnificent creature justice. It stood at around ten feet tall, towering over Alex with a full plumage of beautiful, glistening feathers. They began as a pale silver around its head, flowing seamlessly down through a medley of pale blues, into a darker shade of teal, and then toward the cobalt end of the blue spectrum, which bled into the gargantuan wings, though the tip of each wing was colored a regal gold.

  She was like nothing he had ever seen, except in paintings and illustrations.

  He didn’t know how he knew she was female either; he just thought she looked decidedly female as she dipped her head toward him, making him stagger back into the ice shelf. Above his head, he noticed strands of grass and branches sticking out, nest-like, from the ledge of rock.

  Alex gasped with a mixture of awe and fear as she edged closer to him, and his eyes took in the stunning creature once more, noting the deadly-looking beak that faced him, the actual curve of it seeming to be made from solid silver. As concerned as he was by the potential ferocity of the beast, he was relieved to see that the bird seemed to be more curious about Alex than she was threatened by him. Bright black eyes, shot through with a bolt of electric blue, watched him intently.

  Tempest, he remembered suddenly, confident that was who the mountain was named after—the great warbird upon which Leander had driven fear into the hearts of countless warriors. Although the specimen that stood before him was likely not the same one his ancestor had ridden upon, she seemed no less fearsome than the bird of legend. Curiously, he leveled his gaze at the creature, deliberating whether she would let him ride on her back, or whether that was an accident waiting to happen.

  As if sensing Alex’s thoughts, the huge bird tilted her head and moved even closer to where Alex had ended up, slumped against the rock face. Getting almost too close for comfort, bending her neck toward him, she tapped close to his fingers with her beak. Alex froze, only to marvel as he realized what she was doing. Staying perfectly still, he rested his hand flat on his leg. Gently, she sought out his fingers, nudging his hand until his palm lay the other way up. Bristling her feathers in apparent delight, she made a soft cooing sound in the back of her throat that sounded almost like a purr, and lay the sharpest point of her metallic beak carefully on the soft indent of his palm.

  It made no scratch or cut, she was so gentle in her actions, and though Alex wasn’t sure what it meant, it gave him hope.

  He wondered if, somehow, she could get him to Falleaf House, even if they took a somewhat longer route than the usual portal-to-portal one. He wasn’t at all sure how he was going to navigate to the mystery realm, or if the bird would even let him on her back. But he still had one of Lintz’s beetle beacons in his pocket, shoved in there when Alypia came through from Stillwater, with a sliver of magic remaining within the intricate clockwork. An idea sprang to his mind.

  If he could just latch onto Lintz’s magical signature, he could follow the beetle on a path toward the fourth haven.

  Glancing back toward the magnificent bird, Alex realized he was getting slightly ahead of himself.

  First, how to fly a Thunderbird?

  Epilogue

  After hiding away awhile, seeking out a spot where he might lick the stinging cuts of his wounded pride, Elias drifted sourly from the dank rafters of the turret room. He loathed surprises, and Alex’s little stunt with the mind-trickery had been more surprise than he could stomach. It was good he didn’t have a nervous system, he mused, knowing he’d be in a great deal of pain if he did happen to own something so grotesquely mortal.

  He stretched languidly, glancing down to see the vaporous strands of his shadowy body trying to slip away. Rolling his galactic eyes, Elias struggled to grasp at the tendrils, trying to corral them back toward him. They had a mind of their own, and he knew precisely where they wanted to go. But not yet, he insisted silently, as his wispy form lunged toward a piece of torso that had almost reached the far wall.

  Smugly, he thought about the overconfidence of the Spellbreaker, who was so certain he was in charge of when and how Elias came and went from his life. It never ceased to amuse him, that Alex thought he had any say in the matter. Grinning at the memory of their last encounter, Elias delighted in the delicious irony of Alex’s final action, accidentally stealing a piece of Elias’s soul, thus connecting them for life, whether Alex liked it or not.

  And he’s sure to despise it, Elias thought with utter glee. Though it serves him right for trying to outwit the wittiest of them all. Elias grinned to himself, relishing the idea that the young man thought he’d seen the last of the shadow-man’s silver-tongued, charming, handsome self, not realizing that what he had actually done was make the opposite true.

  It thrilled Elias to plot his surprise revelation, just when the young Spellbreaker least expected it. There was a stubborn desire for delayed gratification too, wanting to make Alex beg for his returned presence, to appeal for his aid with heart-breaking desperation, and perhaps an apology for the way they had parted. That was what Elias wanted. Whether he’d be able to hold onto the sum of his parts until then remained to be seen.

  And it was all going so well, too, he pouted as he moved from the turret room and swept through the hallways, wanting to stretch out whatever counted for limbs within his unique form. It was true, Elias mused. Everything had been running smoothly, secrets coming out left, right, and center, tumbling into Alex’s path, a veritable breadcrumb trail that even the dumbest of idiots could have followed.

  But then that web-faced ghoul obeyed my instruction a little too well, and that prim do-gooder decided to bat her watery blue eyes at our weak-hearted friend, and suddenly I am the bad guy, he huffed, not sure how many more times he could say it was an accident. He was certain “sorry” was supposed to make everything better, but apparently not in this case. Besides, he mused, it was like Alex himself had said—if his father hadn’t run, his father wouldn’t have died. He kn
ew he might be paraphrasing slightly, but he was pretty sure he had the gist of Alex’s sentiments. And yet he was still the one being made to feel bad, when he had been the one who had tried to save the guy. It didn’t sit well with Elias, not one bit. It was too real, too raw, too like a bygone Elias.

  Still, the spirit lines would be an invaluable tool. Oh, yes—when the time came for Alex to force the counter-spell into Virgil’s nasty head, the Spellbreaker would have memories on his side.

  A memory of Alex and the girl in the turret room flashed through Elias’s mind, sickeningly sweet. Perhaps he shouldn’t have spirited away the love of Alex’s life, however nauseated their blossoming relationship made him feel. He had known, even before he’d done it, that it would probably get him into more trouble than it was worth, and yet he hadn’t been able to help himself. Like a naughty schoolboy, he’d gone against his better judgment, snatching her up from the hallway and bundling her out of sight, dumping her at the foot of the mountain, wanting her to be eaten by something particularly nasty. Alas, he sighed, it was not to be, making him wonder what a shadow-man had to do to get a wolf these days, or maybe a nest full of Thunderbird chicks to give her a peck, as a bit of an afternoon snack. If there had been any around, they’d let him down, especially thanks to Caius’s foolish intervention.

  That man was more messed up than any of the royals, in Elias’s mind. Well, apart from Julius, he mused. At least with Alypia and Virgil—he paused to chuckle at the name—you know what you’re getting, but that old coot is a whole bundle of mixed up hurt and nonsense. By rights, they should have locked him up too. But then again, there’s always a crazy uncle in the family, and I suppose royals are no exception, he pondered, deeply pleased with himself and his judgmental musings.