Search for the Shadow Key

  “No worries, Archer,” he said. “This here is the crab apple tree my little brother Oliver and I used to climb at our granny’s house back when we were little.”

  “That . . . is cool,” Archer said.

  “Makes me want to climb it right now,” Kaylie said.

  “Maybe later, kiddo,” Nick said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Everyone clear on your mission?” Archer asked.

  “Absolutely,” Nick said. He whistled for his valkaryx. Instantly, the sound of large wings flapping came out of the gray gloom overhead.

  “Kaylie, you feel okay about everything?”

  She blinked at him, her eyes big blue marbles, all too ready to be washed again with tears. “I’m . . . I’m good.” Her sky-blue dune buggy with huge knobby tires appeared around her. She cranked the engine and roared off.

  Archer watched her go. It already felt like a mistake.

  “This is compelling stuff,” Ned Aimsley, TekTime Network anchor, said, leaning forward. “So what you’re saying is that you can essentially give everyone in the world good dreams.”

  “That’s right, Ned,” Rigby said, glancing at Kara and then grinning for the cameras. “Ms. Windchil and I have built upon my Uncle Scoville’s research and have isolated the source of nightmares. We’ve created a proprietary herbal formula that will absolutely rid a person of bad dreams.”

  Ned raised an eyebrow and said, “For a price.”

  “These herbs are rare,” Kara said, “and very expensive. There’s a purification process necessary, as well, and that’s costly.”

  “But we plan to keep the price point low,” Rigby said, “especially for subscription services.”

  “We want everyone to be able to afford Sweet Dreams,” Kara said, flashing teeth.

  “That name should be trademarked,” Ned said, laughing.

  “It already is,” Rigby said.

  “When will your herbal supplement appear in stores?” Ned asked.

  “It won’t,” Rigby said. “It’ll ship directly from our warehouse. You can order online wherever you are, and we guarantee you’ll have it in your hands and be nightmare-free in less than a week.”

  “There you have it, folks,” Ned said, picking up the black-and-silver bottle from the table. “Sweet Dreams are waiting for you, just a phone call away.”

  EIGHTEEN

  SEARCH AND RESCUE

  BY THE TIME THE VALKARYX NAMED ROCKY DROPPED Nick Bushman just outside the trellised city of Bavanda, he was feeling quite good about his efforts. “Heaps of breaches mended, and not even winded,” he muttered to himself. “Now, to find this Lady Kasia.”

  Nick whistled, and Rocky took to the air. Then Nick jogged the winding path to the gated town. From the outside, the place looked like a rain forest interspersed with cottages, towers, and winding stairs. “Stone-cold gorgeous,” he whispered as he drew near.

  “Hail, traveler!” an armed guard called out from a large stone gatehouse.

  “What weapons do you intend to carry into the green city of Bavanda?” a second guard asked.

  “G’day,” Nick said, not certain if a bow was proper, but bowing anyway. “These?” He pointed at his vest.

  “The L-shaped things, yeah,” the guard replied. “I’ve not seen their like.”

  “These are boomerangs,” Nick said, loosening a pair, one in each hand. “Watch.” With a low-to-high fling, he launched the two boomerangs.

  The guards gasped as the boomerangs rotated and soared through the air. Then they startled and stepped fearfully backward. One even expelled a decidedly unmanly scream: the boomerangs had become great and fierce eagles.

  The winged predators swooped down low, just above the guards—eliciting two more very unmanly screams—before transforming back to wooden boomerangs and landing in Nick’s waiting palms.

  “Verily!” cried one of the guards. “You are the new Dreamtreader we’ve heard about!”

  “Sir Nick, is it?” the other guard asked.

  “No, mate, it’s just Nick,” he said. “But yeah, I’m one of the two new Dreamtreaders. How’d you know?”

  “Well, truly your impressive display of power for one,” the guard explained. “But also, we heard of your doings by word of mouth. Bavanda is kind of a center of information, if you take my meaning.”

  “I do indeed,” Nick said. “And information is why I have come. I need to meet the Lady Kasia.”

  “Oh, she’ll be happy to meet with you,” said one of the guards with a snicker.

  “Hehe, yeah,” the other guard said. “Welcome to the city, Dreamtreader. You’ll find the Lady Kasia in the domed garden, taking tea, I should think.”

  Wondering about the guards’ mischievous giggles, Nick entered the city and made for the massive domed garden near the center.

  Kaylie sat in a camouflaged stand within a thick tree canopy less than a hundred yards away from Garnet’s Library. She had an excellent view of the surreal building in a tree. Not that there was much to see. Dream citizens went in and out all afternoon, forcing Kaylie to stare through the will-summoned telescope to search their faces for Rigby or Bezeal. Some climbed up the library’s trunk, but most hitched rides with strange batlike creatures Kaylie had never seen before.

  “This is a waste of time,” she muttered, glancing away from the telescope to check Old Jack. “My dad’s trail is getting cold.”

  “What do you mean?” Razz asked as she gnawed an orb of acorn meat. “Why is the trail cold? Is it snowing where you live?”

  “No, well . . . yes, it is actually, but that’s not what I meant.” Kaylie thought a moment. “It’s a figure of speech,” she told Razz. “It just means the longer we wait, the harder it will be to find my father.”

  “Oh,” Razz said, crunching the last of the acorn.

  “Could you take another loop?” Kaylie asked. “We can’t afford to let Rigby or Bezeal sneak in some hidden entrance.”

  “On it, boss!” Razz said, leaping into the air. “Back in twenty minutes!” With hardly a sound, the flying squirrel vanished through the leaves and branches.

  Kaylie sighed and went back to her lonely duty at the telescope. A few moments went by, and she found herself zooming in on a strange couple standing just down the hill from the library tree. They were dressed in shadowy gray and didn’t seem to be in any hurry to enter the library. Kaylie hadn’t seen them arrive. When the larger crowd thinned out, these two were just kind of there. The expression on their dark faces looked so serious, and they were deeply engaged in conversation.

  A voice came to Kaylie: “Will never guess, will she?”

  She couldn’t tell if it was just in her mind or something audible.

  “No, no, never guess,” a second voice answered. “Master is too clever for her.”

  Kaylie blinked and pressed her face tighter to the telescope eyepiece. It couldn’t be. She was too far away. But the words she heard perfectly matched the lip movements of the two strangers in gray.

  “Shame shame,” said the first voice. “She won’t find him in time.”

  “I wonder if there will be anything left of him.”

  They both laughed, a sound like a pair of rattlesnakes.

  “Who are you talking about?” Kaylie whispered.

  Both figures in gray turned immediately and seemed to stare directly into the telescope. “Your father!” they hissed, just as they vanished.

  Kaylie heard rustling in the limbs below her stand. A shadow passed by her window. A second and third time. Something scratched outside her stand’s wooden walls.

  Kaylie readied her will. All went quiet.

  “You were listening after all,” came a whispery voice behind her.

  “Thought we might as well come visit,” said a second voice.

  Kaylie squeaked, spun, and saw the wispy shapes. They were like human shadows but somehow with volume, and little knobby segments like joints wherever there was a bend in a limb. Worse still, their eyes gleamed pale fire
.

  “Any last words?” Kaylie asked, suddenly wielding a will-summoned flamethrower. She gave the trigger a feathery pull, and it burped a brief fiery plume.

  “Silly fleshling,” one of the shadow men said. “Fire harms us not!”

  “This isn’t just for fire,” Kaylie said. She didn’t even glance down. The flamethrower morphed into a wide-bladed exhaust fan. “I don’t like you. Good-bye.” And she switched on the fan.

  A hurricane-force gust blasted from the fan blades. The shadow beings filled with wind like gray sails until they could no longer keep their footing. A harsh gust launched them against the wall, flattening like melted gum. All the while they shrieked and hissed and screeched.

  “Foolish . . . fuh-fuh-fuh-fleshling!”

  “Never tell you . . . where to find him, eeeee!”

  “Who?” Kaylie demanded, cranking up the fan to an even higher level. “Tell me now!”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “We tell you!”

  Kaylie shut off the fan. The two shadow men peeled off the wall, slithered to the floor, and began to wriggle around, inflating at last to their original form.

  “You play rough, little one,” one shadow being said.

  “Who are you calling little?” Kaylie asked. She furrowed her brow and raised the fan gun threateningly.

  “No, no!”

  “Okay, now listen, Scath,” Kaylie said. “You are Scath, aren’t you?”

  Both shadow beings nodded.

  “Fine,” Kaylie said. “I want to know who took my father away and where he is now.”

  The Scath leered at Kaylie and muttered, “The Lurker.”

  “Took him or has him now?”

  “Both, ssss, both!”

  “Thank you, Scath,” Kaylie said. “See, we can play nice.” She made the fan gun vanish and strode toward the Scath. “If you two are lying to me, I’ll dream up something that’ll trap you forever. And my traps won’t have keys to let you out.”

  The Scath tripped all over themselves trying to get out through the stand’s window. When they were gone, Kaylie left a note for Razz and descended from the tree. She called up her dune buggy and revved the engine while she scanned her Dream realm map. Then she stepped on the gas pedal and raced west toward Archaia.

  Archer had fully expected to find Rigby or Kara or both of them at Number 6 Rue de la Morte. The entire fortress had been refurnished . . . and recently, but there was no one around. In Kurdan’s marketplace, however, Archer found his quarry selling piles of useless junk in the center of the marketplace.

  Bezeal finished with his last customer and scraped the thin gold coins—eighteen gossamers, all told—off the greasy table and into the satchel at his side. When he turned around, he found Archer towering over him.

  “Dreamtreader tall, how come you to my stall? Can I . . . help you at all?” Bezeal’s eyes shrank to the tiniest pinpricks of light.

  Archer had been mentally rehearsing how he would approach Bezeal. The little hooded merchant was very clever and deceitful. If Master Gabriel was correct—and he almost always was—no intelligent person would underestimate Bezeal. Archer knew it would tax his mental will fiercely, but he was beyond caring. He would endure no trickery, no foolishness from Bezeal. Not this time.

  Archer grabbed a fistful of Bezeal’s hooded cloak just below his neck and flung the merchant one-handed into a high-security bank vault. The vault hadn’t been there a second before, but Archer’s will made it happen just in time for Bezeal to crash into it.

  Archer raced inside the vault just as the multilayered titanium steel door slammed shut. He used his will to spin the inner tumblers, and the lock clicked tight. There was total darkness except for Bezeal’s tiny eyes and the angry red smoldering in Archer’s hands.

  “What is this foolish thing you do?” Bezeal squeaked. “We’re trapped just us two. Release me now; I’m warning you.”

  “You lying, scheming scab!” Archer yelled, fire flaring in his fists. “You tricked me into getting the Karakurian Chamber. You knew all along it was the stolen Shadow Key, and you used me to get it.”

  Bezeal’s eyes grew, and a tiny white glimmer of his smile appeared. “Of course I knew it was the key. It was right where I wanted it to be. But I needed you to give it back to me.”

  “You used me,” Archer repeated. “Come to think of it, you used Duncan and Mesmeera too. Because of you, they’re dead.”

  Bezeal’s laugh startled Archer. It was a crackling sound, low, and full of malevolent glee. “As I recall, it was you who killed poor Duncan and Mesmeera.”

  Bezeal’s sudden lack of rhyme unnerved Archer. He took an involuntary step backward but then grew angrier for his own cowardice. “You listen to me, runt,” Archer growled. “I want the Shadow Key back, and I want it now.”

  Archer felt a pulse in his will, a throbbing kind of strength, aching to be exercised. He decided to make a statement. He turned his palms down toward the floor and set loose streams of flame that hit the floor and slithered across to widen at Bezeal’s feet.

  As Archer stepped toward Bezeal, the flame rose a little higher until at last it encircled the merchant and rose up to form a cage of flame.

  Bezeal’s voice was shrill and fearful. “Do not burn your faith—your faithful servant. I have not the key, no matter how much you chant. The key to give you, I—I can’t.”

  “I’m through playing around, Bezeal,” Archer said. “Give me the Shadow Key.”

  With a sound like a scream, all the fire blew out. The vault plunged into total darkness.

  “Ah, the sweet smell . . . of arrogance,” came a voice Archer didn’t recognize. “You have no idea what real fire is.”

  Flaming red eyes appeared and widened, growing to become windows of blood and fire. Archer could not help his reaction to this sudden terror before him. It was a physical thing, the sudden impulse to flee, a frantic instinct to escape.

  Archer’s will took apart the bank vault, wall by wall, sending them flying out into the Dream. Archer ran. He didn’t look back. He ran until he had the presence of mind to summon his surfboard and find an Intrusion wave.

  Then he took all the speed the wave could offer and fled. The towns and regions and minutes passed by, and Archer arrived first at the rendezvous point on Cold Plateau. He was early by an hour, and there was no sign of Kaylie or Nick.

  Archer rubbed his arms, but truly the temperature from the icy environment wasn’t nearly as troubling as the chill from his confrontation with Bezeal. He couldn’t shake that no matter what he tried.

  “How do you like your tea?” Lady Kasia asked, her lips still hovering above her own cup.

  “Bonzer, love,” Nick replied. “Best tea I’ve had in years.”

  “Did you just call me . . . love?” she asked, putting down her teacup with a clink. Her table was covered with a pristine white cloth and fully set with fine porcelain. They sat at the table for tea surrounded by lush trees and hibiscus shrubs with blooms the size of dinner plates. It was a lovely place for a conversation, but Nick couldn’t help feeling out of place for some reason. Lady Kasia drew out a long fan, spread it with a flourish, and began to cool herself. “We’ve only just met.”

  Nick felt the blush bloom in his cheeks. Now, at last, he understood Archer’s warning. “No disrespect meant,” he said. “Just a friendly term, you understand.”

  “Friendly?” Lady Kasia repeated, frowning as if the word tasted sour. “So, tell me, Dreamtreader Nick, what is the occasion for this friendly visit?”

  Nick put down his teacup. “The Dream is in danger,” Nick said.

  “The Shadow Key?” Lady Kasia said with a flutter of eyelashes.

  Nick struggled to keep his jaw from dropping. “Dooley! You know about the Shadow Key?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “I am the eyes and ears of the Forms District, you understand. There are very few goings on that I don’t know about.”

  “Was it Bezeal?” Nick asked.

&nbs
p; “Bezeal alone?” she asked. “Oh, I don’t see how. I have it on good account that there were others involved.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, now,” she said. “You certainly seem eager.”

  “Of course I’m eager,” he said. “Someone cast open the vaults of the Inner Sanctum and let the Scath loose. Until we get that key back, the Dream fabric will decay at a fair rapid rate.”

  Lady Kasia stood, whirled so that her vivid red dress brushed the low ferns and purple flowers. She flounced back to her chair, leaned over the table, and propped her chin upon her fists. “I’ll tell you what,” she said coyly. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to discover that the Lurker’s been a part of this from the beginning.”

  “The Lurker?” Nick replied. “The wacky hermit out in Archaia?” “The very same,” she said. “Of course, I might know a few more teensy, weensy details.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I might,” Lady Kasia said. “But you have to do a little something for me first.”

  Kaylie was brilliant. She could calculate pi to a million digits in her head. She could hack into just about any computer or security system. And she could memorize books whole. But there was one thing she was terrible at: reading maps. And the map of the Dream was rough at best. The place kept changing. Sure, it was always roughly triangular and always divided into three districts, but some of the landmarks moved a little. And a little was enough to get Kaylie discombobulated.

  The newest Dreamtreader had to stop her dune buggy to ask directions three times, but in the end, she found the Lurker’s home in Archaia. Everyone she spoke to about her destination warned her to avoid the Lurker at all costs. Kaylie thanked them, but moved on anyway. She didn’t fear the Lurker like the other citizens of the Dream did. She knew who he was.

  Kaylie marched up the incline, a kind of foothill on the Archaian moors, in the midst of craggy rocks and slowly churning mist. A very wide arched doorway had been built into the top of the incline just below the rooty overhang.

  Kaylie knocked on the door.

  She heard the thunder of her knock echo behind the door, but there came no answer in return. She knocked a second time and a third, but still there was no reply.