He knew what was coming: a club cracking into his skull or a piece of metal slicing into skin, muscle, guts.
No!
He pushed off the door and started to turn. Hands grabbed him. They seized his arms, his shirt; one gripped his hair. They pulled, trying to get him into the center of the room, where all of them could pounce from every angle. He kicked the door, kicked it again, making it rattle and thump.
The boys roughly turned him around and hoisted him up, and he saw Theseus was on his hands and knees, shouting angry commands.
“Ton arpakste! Ton kratiste! Thelo to proto htypima! ”
Theseus rubbed his head and ear where David had clobbered him. As he rose, he picked up the club he had dropped. He squared himself in front of David, a wicked smile on his face.
David thrashed, kicked, pulled. A boy twisted his left arm— the broken one—and David screamed in pain. His knees gave out, and blackness flooded his vision, but he didn’t pass out.
Theseus stared at the arm. He pointed the club at it and said, “Labi ayto ekso! ”
The boy holding it pulled it straight. The kid on the other side tugged on his right arm, forcing him to form the letter T with his body.
“No!” David said. “Please, no . . .”
But Theseus just glared at David as he hefted the club up over his head with both hands.
CHAPTER
two
“David!”
Xander’s scream left his mouth and was swept away by the pandemonium of the town square: men fighting, soldiers barking out commands, corralled slaves shrieking for no apparent reason. He strained against his chains to get a glimpse of the place he’d last seen David, running between two vendors’ stalls.
He yelled his brother’s name again.
Ahhhgg . . .
He knew he shouldn’t be calling for him. He wanted David to run, to get home, even if he, Xander, couldn’t. But he couldn’t help himself. He was so worried, his stomach was cramping. It had been five minutes, and the guards chasing David had not returned. What would they do to him if they caught him? He didn’t want to think about it.
Heaven knew this awful society had no regard for human life, especially the lives of kids. The chain gang of perhaps fifty children, to which he was tethered, was proof of that. Taksidian had said they would be put aboard a ship, where they would work until reaching Greece. Then they would be sent into battle ahead of the soldiers to confuse their enemy and force them to use their arrows. It was evil, pure and simple.
He pulled against the chains and yelled again: “Dav—”
The sting of a whip flared in his shoulder before the crack! reached his ears. He hissed in a breath, dropped his shoulder, and fell to his knees. He craned around to see the man who’d been following the chain gang pull the whip back for another strike.
“Stop!” Xander yelled. He lowered his head, and the whip slapped against his back. His T-shirt did nothing to temper its bite, and he yelled out. Gritting his teeth, he rose and tried to turn to his attacker. The chains binding his wrists stopped him. Xander felt tears in his eyes and blinked them away, then lifted his hand to wipe at them, but the chains prevented even that.
The whip-man spat out some words and gestured for Xander to face forward.
Xander turned. Rage tightened every muscle in his body. He wanted to rip away the chains, lash the man behind him with them, and run to find David.
Another man near them barked out a word. Chains rattled at the head of the line of bound children, then the boy in front of Xander began shuffling his feet. The chains drew taut and yanked at Xander. He stumbled forward, turning to look for his brother.
Run, David, he thought. Hide.
They were taking them to the ship. It was going to leave— without David! Yes! It was better that he stayed here, as horrible as Atlantis was. Once they set sail, there would be no escaping, except into the ocean depths or the arrows of Atlantis’s enemies. Here they knew there was at least one portal home, the one through which they’d followed Phemus from their house in Pinedale, California, to ancient Atlantis. Here David at least had a chance.
A familiar voice sprang up on Xander’s left. Taksidian—still standing in the square next to that human weapon, Phemus— was calling to the man leading the chain gang, waving to get his attention. He spoke in the native Atlantian tongue, and the chain gang stopped.
Taksidian sauntered over to Xander. “Can’t leave without your brother,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll return shortly.”
Xander focused on keeping hold of his anger, as though it were a dog trying to break its leash. But he couldn’t: He lunged for Taksidian, snapping to a stop at the end of his short chains. “Wait all you want,” he said through clenched teeth. “David got away. He’s gone. Live with it.”
Taksidian smiled. He brushed strands of kinky black hair off his face and rolled his head on his neck, as though the boredom of sending the King boys to their death, had made his muscles stiff. He leveled his cold green eyes at Xander. “You still don’t get it, do you?” he said. “I won, I always do. You, your family—you were just a speed bump on the highway to my destiny.”
He took a deep breath of the foul air that filled the square, as though it were as fresh as a sea breeze. “You were just a little annoyance that life threw at me to make things . . . interesting. I was getting lazy. Not hard to do with that house.” He held up his hand, pretending to lift something heavy. “Like having the power of God in my hand.”
Xander stretched toward him. He said, “I’ll tell you what you have in your hand, and it’s not the power of God!” He spat, and a glob of sudsy spit landed in Taksidian’s palm.
The man flinched. He blinked, then calmly reached out and wiped his hand on Xander’s hair.
Xander jerked away, but, chained, there was nothing he could do. He growled and shook, frustrated and helpless. He snapped his face back toward Taksidian, who had stepped back and was frowning at his palm.
“You don’t even know,” Xander said. “Whatever you’re doing—using our house to go back in time and tinker with history—it’s not making something wonderful, for you or anyone else. We’ve seen it: the future. It’s all destroyed. Everything!”
“You see?” Taksidian said, wiping his hand on his black overcoat. “I win.”
CHAPTER
three
“Don’t,” David said. “Please!”
But Theseus—who must have known what David meant, even if he couldn’t understand the words—only squinted at his target: David’s left arm. The club rose higher as the boy sucked in a breath to give the swing all he had.
David tugged at his arm, but the other boy held his wrist like it was the last piece of bread in a hungry world.
He closed his eyes.
The sound was deafening—a crashing boom!—and for a moment David thought his brain was screaming. Then he realized the noise was the door behind him bursting open. He looked and saw Theseus still holding the club over his head and staring wide-eyed over David’s shoulder. The other boys released their hold on him. He pulled his arms close to his body and instinctively crouched. He turned and saw a soldier standing in the doorway. The door itself rocked on one hinge. Then it broke free and crashed to the floor.
The soldier strode in, followed by two more.
They heard me! David thought. They heard my kicks against the door!
The lead soldier said something sharp and harsh.
Two kids behind Theseus dropped their weapons and ran for the other door, away from the soldiers. The one who had held David’s left arm jumped at the soldier, his fists flying. The soldier slammed his own fist into the boy’s forehead, and the kid stumbled backward and went down, whimpering. He rolled over, got his feet under him, and ran out the door.
The boy on David’s right backed away into the dark shadows of the room. A soldier ran to him and grabbed his arm, hard enough to make him squeal. The soldier pulled him to another boy on the floor—the kid David had clobbered. The sold
ier hooked a hand in that boy’s armpit and hoisted him up.
That left Theseus: he was backing toward the far door, the club wavering over his head.
The lead soldier stepped around David. He held his hand out to Theseus, apparently for the club, and spoke. “To moy doste se, agori! ”
Theseus shouted back and made like he was going to swing. The soldier drew closer.
The last soldier, standing in the doorway behind David, watched intently. His hand was on the hilt of a sword, sheathed on a belt.
David slowly lowered his hands to the floor and began crawling away. Xander’s belt dangled from his neck to the floor, like a rottweiler’s collar on a Chihuahua. He had used it as a sling until his arm had slipped out sometime between being grabbed by Phemus and his escape from the chain gang.
He headed for the stacks of wood on the other side of the open area from where the soldier held the two boys. He moved out of the light coming through the doors and felt a twinge of hope. He reached the first stack and started around it. A hand clamped down on the back of his neck.
“Ow . . . ow . . .” he said, as the hand squeezed tighter. Reaching back to hold the muscular wrist at the back of his head, David got to his feet. The soldier turned him and marched him toward the rear entrance.
Theseus was still backing toward the other exit, the lead soldier matching his movements step for step. Then the kid threw the club and shot out the door. The soldier ducked and took off after him.
David jabbed his elbow into the ribs of the man holding him. It was like striking a brick wall. He kicked the man’s legs. The guy continued moving him toward the door. Lashing back, David got his hand on the hilt of the sword. The soldier gripped his wrist, twisted it painfully until David let go, then yanked his arm over his head.
Squeezed by the neck, arm craned up high, David stumbled into the alley.
CHAPTER
four
Xander glared at Taksidian. “You win?” he said. “How does the destruction of the world mean you win?”
Taksidian shrugged. “What do I care? By the time all that happens, I’ll have had my fun.”
Xander shook his head. If Taksidian thought he made sense, Xander wasn’t getting it. “But,” he said, “the whole world?”
Taksidian’s eyes narrowed. He appeared as perplexed by Xander’s logic as Xander was by his. “Why not?” he said. “What do I care about other people? Nobody cares about anyone else, not really.” He shrugged. “You’re simply too young to have learned that yet.”
“No,” Xander said. “People don’t think that way.”
“Then they should,” Taksidian said. “If you did, you wouldn’t be here, chained, whipped, heading for a battle you won’t survive. Besides, tinkering with time—making incredible, big things happen—is fun.”
“Fun?”
“Like a Rubik’s cube.” He moved his hands as if twisting the puzzle this way and that. “You know, one of those cubes with the little, different-colored squares . . .”
“I know what a Rubik’s cube is,” Xander said. “But how can you say causing the end of the world is like that?”
“Think about it. It’s challenging, tinkering with history: a little change in the year 1912, another in 1482. Suddenly everything’s falling into place, and I get to cause something that affects billions of people. If that’s not rewarding, I don’t know what is.”
“So . . . what?” Xander said. “You destroy the world because you can? How can you be so . . . so . . .” He wasn’t finding the right word. Heartless, cruel, evil . . . none of them seemed strong enough to describe Taksidian.
The man waved a hand at him, as if Xander were talking gibberish. He looked away, toward two men in the center of the square who were pounding on each other with their fists. “I don’t care about any of that, whether mankind skips into the future happy and healthy . . .” He glanced at Xander. “Or doesn’t. What you saw in the future is merely a byproduct of my work, not my work itself.”
“A byproduct? Like an accident?”
“One I don’t feel compelled to prevent, especially if it means giving up what I have.”
“What you have?” What Xander meant was, Nothing one person had could possibly be worth all of life on the planet.
But Taksidian misunderstood, obviously thinking Xander wanted to know what he had, for the man raised his eyebrows and said, “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
Xander didn’t answer. He remembered what he’d said to David just last night: What if he’s like . . . I don’t know, a demon?
Taksidian laughed. “You mean you start a fight and don’t even find out who your enemy is?”
“We didn’t start anything,” Xander said. “And what more do we need to know, besides you want our house and you’ll do anything to get it?”
“Well,” Taksidian said, “I make it a point to know who my enemies are.”
Xander knew it was true. The man had been stalking the King family since they’d moved to Pinedale. And the truth was, they had wanted to find out more about him. But between defending themselves from his attacks, looking for Mom, and trying to figure out how the portals worked, when did they have time? They had met the man only last Sunday—five days ago!
“If you had learned about me,” Taksidian continued, “you might have saved yourself the trouble of trying to beat me. I’m a powerful man, Xander. I own corporations that employ tens of thousands of people . . . all of it thanks to that house.”
“What are you talking about?” Xander said. “What corporations?”
“If a war needs it, I supply it.” He smiled at Xander’s puzzled expression. “Armed conflict requires weapons, consultants, transportation, food, oil . . . so many things. My companies provide them all. And I make a hundred times more money from wars than I do from peace.”
“War,” Xander said. He recalled a map he’d seen in Taksidian’s house. It had plotted wars all over the world—and all through history. And it dawned on him: “You’re using the house to cause wars. You’re . . . you’re . . . setting up wars in the past that somehow lead to wars now, in the present time!”
Taksidian nodded. “You’d be surprised how a war in the eighteenth century can lead to hostilities in the twenty-first. Humankind is a warring species. It doesn’t need my help . . . much. Just a nudge here, an assassination there.”
Xander closed his eyes. He couldn’t begin to imagine the deaths, the grief and sorrow this one man had caused. Why? he thought, and didn’t realize he had spoken the question out loud until Taksidian answered.
“Because it makes me a . . . king,” Taksidian said.
Xander looked to see the man smiling.
“A real king,” Taksidian said. “Not in name.” He said name as though it were a dirty word, and scanned Xander as though he were equally dirty.
“You’re no king,” Xander said.
“A king takes what he wants,” Taksidian said. “Like I’m taking your house, as easily as . . .” He reached out, and Xander flinched. Taksidian grabbed the tassel hanging from Xander’s belt loop and ripped it off.
Xander’s chest tightened. It was one of the items he’d taken from the antechamber. The present—his present, the time in which he belonged—wanted the items back. It pulled at them, leading whoever had them—or followed them—to the portal home. Without the tassel, they might not be able to find their way back. Then he remembered: He had another antechamber item in his pocket, a rock.
A lot of good it’ll do, he thought. The shackles around his wrists felt as heavy as bowling balls.
Taksidian dangled the tassel in front of Xander’s face. He said, “As easily as I took this.” He pushed it into his coat pocket. “So you see, I am a king, even of the house you think is yours.” He lifted his face to the sun, closing his eyes and brushing the hair off his face. “It’s a grand life, Xander: servants, limousines, breakfast in Paris, dinner in Tokyo.”
“If you’re so rich and powerful,” Xander said, “wh
at are you doing hanging around Pinedale? Your life doesn’t seem all that glam to me.”
Taksidian shook his head. “I go there only when I need to use the house—to make sure my business is not only good, but great.”
“More war, more business, more money,” Xander said, disgusted. He’d seen enough movies to know how it went: The rich always wanted more money, the powerful more power. There was no such thing as enough.
“And of course, despite the people I control,” Taksidian said, “it’s a task only I can do. Good thing I enjoy it. Except when people like your family get in my way, start meddling in my work. I can’t allow that. Where I come from, we served our king, who had everything. Nothing for us, only for him. Then I stumbled through a portal . . . into the house. I saw right away that in the twentieth century, I could have everything the ancient world of my birth denied me. Everything. Before, I killed for the king. Now, I kill for myself.”
Xander felt dizzy. He said, “It’s . . . not right.”
Taksidian laughed again, but this time it was loud and booming. Such laughter in this horrible place must have been rare: faces turned to gawk.
“Sweet, innocent Xander,” Taksidian said. “Too bad you won’t live long enough to learn how naïve you are.” He looked beyond Xander and smiled. “You . . . or your brother.”
Xander spun, and his heart sank as he saw David come stumbling into the square. He held his head at an odd angle, and his face showed that he was in pain. The soldier behind him had one hand on David’s neck and the other on his wrist, raising it high into the air.
CHAPTER
five
SOMEWHERE ON THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT,
C. 29300 B C
Keal stood in a dark cave and cursed himself for being so stupid. He never should have gone through the portal after David and Xander. As foolish as it had been for the boys to follow Phemus, it was doubly foolish for him to plunge in without knowing what awaited him on the other side.