Keystone (Gatewalkers) (29 page)

Maelyn forced her eyes open, her mouth pressed tightly closed. She gave a sharp nod. She pried her long, slender fingers from their hold, a little of the stone crumbling from her grip. She took another step, moving a few inches further along.
 

Charlie saw a flash of movement behind them, at the window.

Charlie's heart jumped to her throat, thinking the guards had already discovered Maelyn's disappearance. But it wasn't a blue skinned terradi that appeared at the arrow slit.

Maddie looked down at the rocky cliff dropping away below them, and closed her eyes. But she felt her way out onto the wall, finding grips with her bare toes, her skirts ripped off at the knees. She worked her way across the wall, faster than the cautious Maelyn.

"Decided to join us, then?” Gwynne said.
 

Maddie didn’t answer, her eyes fastened on Maelyn ahead of her. She caught up in a matter of moments, climbing along the wall almost recklessly. She reached out, as if to help Maelyn find a more secure handhold. Her hand anchored in Maelyn's hair and yanked.

Maelyn screamed, her eyes flying wide as the force of it pulled her head back. One of her hands came free of the stone, and it scrabbled for a fresh purchase.

Maddie kept pulling, her features twisted into an ugly mask of hatred.

"Let go!" Gwynne cried. Nimble as a monkey, he started to maneuver around Maelyn to get to Maddie, but Maddie began yanking back and forth on Maelyn's hair, deliberately trying to wrench her grip of the wall free.

"Hang on!" Before she could think about the drop, Charlie jumped from Gwynne's shoulder to Maelyn's head and bit down hard on Maddie’s hand. Her sharp squirrel teeth sliced into Maddie’s flesh with very little resistance.

Sour, black blood poured into Charlie's mouth as Maddie shrieked. Her mouth burned as if the blood were acid, and the sore gums around her loosened tooth felt like they were going to melt. Charlie gagged, choking on it, and released her jaws. Maddie flailed, flinging Charlie into Maelyn's hair. Charlie desperately clung to Maelyn's hair, spitting and hacking.

Maddie's face rippled. Her hand darted for Maelyn's hair again, and Charlie in it.

Gwynne's foot slammed down on Maddie's face. She shrieked, her own handhold knocked loose. His foot slammed down again, this time on her shoulder, then hand.

Maddie latched onto his ankle. She yanked.

Gwynne didn't have time to reclaim his secure holds. He fell squarely atop Maddie. With a shriek, Maddie grabbed onto Maelyn’s shoulder, finally jarring loose Maelyn’s precarious grip. With a high-pitched chorus of yells and screams, all three fell away from the wall, plummeting down the castle wall.

Maddie disappeared in a cloud of green mist, leaving the rest of them alone in freefall above the valley far below.

***

Abruptly, darkness closed around them, cool and dank. Charlie's bony squirrel body hit a stone floor.

A stone floor? Charlie rolled to her feet, body aching. She wasn’t splattered on the cliff rocks. She wasn’t dreaming.

She heard a faint whimper in the dark.

“We’re safe, princess,” Gwynne said. “We’re alive.”

Alive, but how? “What
was
that?”

“A gate,” Maelyn whispered.
 

“A
gate
?” Gwynne squeaked. “A
real
mage’s gate?”

"I... I cannot be sure," Maelyn said, her voice shaking, “but I believe it must have been me. Gating is the only magic I have ever accomplished.”

“You picked a great time to do it,” Charlie said. If Maelyn could open a gate, they could get out of here.

But.

They couldn’t leave without Rhys. She didn’t want to give the princess the idea of gating out until they found him. If they could find him.

No, they
had
to find him. "Marco," Charlie said, making her way toward Gwynne's voice.
 

"What's that?" Gwynne said.

"You're supposed to say 'polo,'" Charlie said. "It's a children's game. They use it to find each other."

A heavy foot came down on Charlie's tail. "EEK! Watch it!"

"Polo," Gwynne said sheepishly, scooping Charlie up and depositing her on his shoulder.
 

"Polo," Maelyn echoed and Gwynne turned toward her.

After a few more rounds of “Marco!” “Polo!” Gwynne tracked her down in the dark.

“Where are we?” Charlie said.

“Inside the castle,” Gwynne replied, subdued and thoughtful.

“Inside
this
castle is hardly safe,” Maelyn said.

“Better than the outside,” Gwynne retorted.

“I would agree with that,” Charlie said. She still shook. But they were alive. And first chance she got, she had to clean out her mouth. She could still feel the burn of Maddie’s blood, the sticky sourness clinging to her teeth. Whatever Maddie was, it wasn’t even remotely human.

Her heart suddenly jumped to her throat. “Gwynne! Where’s the Keystone piece?” He’d had it in his hand, but then in that whole altercation…. He hadn’t dropped it, had he?

Gwynne didn’t answer right away. “I… it’s safe,” he said vaguely.

“Safe
where
?” That bit of crystal or whatever it was, was her key home!

“Hey, I feel magic nearby,” Gwynne said, dodging her question. "Near enough, but it's weird. Like it's fading in and out."

“Gwynne,” Charlie said, trying to pack as much warning into her voice as a squirrel could. “I
need
that Keystone piece.”

“It’s safe,” he insisted. “No one can get to it without me.”

That wasn’t reassuring.

In the pitch darkness, Charlie's entire world was reduced to Gwynne's shoulder. By the faint echo of their breath, they were in a small space, but Gwynne continued to feel his way forward without encountering an enclosing wall. A hall then?
 

The air felt eerily dead. Heavy and completely still. It felt as if her lungs couldn’t draw it in because there wasn’t even the slightest flow of air to bring it into her nostrils.

"Watch out for stairs there," Gwynne said, half a moment before Maelyn let out a muffled, "Umph," as she stubbed her toe.
 

Charlie felt Gwynne's arms moving, searching along walls on either side of them.
 

"Wait," he said. He leaned against the wall, giving a small grunt of effort. Charlie heard a faint click, and felt a small brush of cooler air pass over her hands. The breeze slid over her face, and she sucked it in, suddenly grateful for even that small touch of air.

Gwynne pushed harder, and part of the wall gave way with a louder click. A small seam of light appeared, outlining the door in the wall. Gwynne shoved it the rest of the way open, revealing a room lit with dozens of torches.

By its layout, with two large fireplaces inset with ovens, the room had once been the castle's kitchen. It no longer served that purpose.

Piles of skulls sat in individual pyramids, decorated with broken weapons and bits of colored cloth. Each pile evidently belonged to a different individual. Some piles were neatly stacked, others were slaphazardly dumped. Some were cleaned and polished, while others had gobbets of decaying meat clinging to them.

Head obsession. This would be where the terradi lived then.

“Hello? Can someone, perhaps, help me?”

Charlie jumped straight in the air at the unexpected sound of an impossible voice. “Jack?!” she shrieked, elated and shocked. She scampered down from Gwynne’s shoulder and into the grisly trophy room. “Where are you?”

“Marco,” Gwynne chimed in.
 

“Here.” Jack’s faint voice trailed off.

“I don’t see any – ” Gwynne began.

Maelyn’s startled scream sliced through the trophy room. Gwynne spun and slapped a hand over her mouth. Only then did he notice the headless body grasping her ankle. Gwynne shrieked and leapt away, scrambling up a nearby support pillar.
 

White-faced and paralyzed, Maelyn stared at the bloodless hand.

Charlie recognized that hand and unfortunately the skinny, naked, headless body it was attached to. “Jack?” she said incredulously.

“Here,” he said again, his voice stronger. Coming from a different corner of the room.

A shiver of morbid disgust ran down Charlie’s spine. “You have
got
to be kidding me. Hang in there, princess. I know this corpse.”

Gwynne refused to come down.

Charlie left them there and set about searching for Jack’s head. It was a good thing squirrels couldn’t throw up.

She found him nestled at the top of a particularly tall pile, the freshest of the lot, as his skin hadn’t decayed at all. When she found him, his eyes were closed, but as she tried to figure out the best way to get to him - preferably without having to climb a heap of rotting skulls - his eyes opened opened. Stubble darkened his chin, and purple rings shadowed his eyes.

Jack smiled wanly, squinting down at her. “Apparently I am harder to kill than even
I
expected.”

“No kidding,” Charlie said. “Hey, Gwynne,” she called back. “I could use a hand here. You’re taller than me.”

“I do apologize for that,” Jack said, chagrined. “I only meant to protect you, not transform you.”

“Can you fix it?” She would have preferred the peace of mind of knowing that she could be changed back to human
permanently
.

Gwynne approached warily, eyes glued to the talking head.

“Unfortunately I really don’t know what went wrong,” Jack said. His eyes slowly drifted closed again.

“Jack?” Charlie called. He didn’t respond. “Guess he’s dead again. Gwynne, I know it’s gross, but can you pick him up and carry him to his body?”

“You have the weirdest friends,” Gwynne muttered. With a twisted grimace of absolute disgust, he sank his fingers into Jack’s blond hair and lifted up the head.

Maelyn had planted her back to a support pillar, eyes closed and taking shallow breaths.

“You ok, princess?” Charlie asked. Maelyn nodded curtly.
 

Charlie directed Gwynne to put the two pieces back together. Gwynne pulled Jack’s cold, dead fingers from Maelyn’s ankle, shuddering at the feel of the squishy gray flesh. He set Jack’s severed neck against the stump on his shoulders.

“Now what?” Gwynne said. Blood and other liquids seeped between the severed pieces.

“Who knows,” Charlie said.

Jack’s eyes flew open. His hands fluttered at his sides, color returning to them. “Ah. That seems to have done it.” He gingerly prodded his neck. A dark, bloody line still marked where the two pieces met. “Thank you for… ah… reuniting me.” His dirty fingers rubbed against his nose, shoving up glasses that were no longer there. “I suppose I must have re-grown a new body, but when they parted me from it again, I did not grow another. I think it likely has to do with proximity.” He carefully sat up, hands bracing his neck.

“Where are your glasses?” Charlie said. “Are they here?”

“I’ve a spare pair in my bag,” Jack said. “Which… seems to be missing.”

“Would you care to find him some clothing?” Maelyn said faintly.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mordred's Lullaby

With a cautious foray into the nearby rooms, Charlie and Gwynne managed to find clothes for Jack, though they looked and smelled like they belonged to an orc. The pants were nearly long enough, but bagged badly at the waist, and the tunic threatened to fall from his bony shoulders. Maelyn stepped in to the rescue and tied artful knots in the fabric, making them almost a decent fit, if still smelly.

Charlie looked down at her skinny wrist and the gray fur covering it. The contract was written on the skin beneath. They’d found the princess and a piece of the Keystone. That might even be enough to send Charlie home. But.

Find me.

She couldn’t leave.

“Jack,” Charlie said. “We’re gonna need a second set of clothes. I’m going to find Rhys.”

“Rhys? Where is he?” Jack said.

“
Who
is he?” Gwynne said.

“We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him,” Charlie said. She hesitated. “Vampires came to get him this morning. I don’t know where they took him, but I can use the contract to track him down.”

“He’s fang faced by now,” Gwynne said flatly.

Jack looked grim. “If the contract remains, then he’s still alive. Blood taint can be cleansed within twenty four hours. We will find him.”

***

The second tunic they’d found kept slipping down over one shoulder, and it felt like it was made of hair, but it was better than nothing. She didn’t want to think about the trousers.

While Gwynne scouted the vicinity, Jack had tried to change Charlie back into a human without his books. Nothing worked until she finally gave him her full name.
That
worked like magic, popping her back into her natural form.

Gwynne popped back into the terradi village, formerly the castle kitchen. Now that Charlie was her normal height, Gwynne wasn’t even as tall as her shoulder and looked all the skinnier and grubbier for it.

Expression blank, Gwynne looked around the chamber. “Where’s Charlie? And who’s
she
?”

“I’m Charlie,” she said.

“Charlie’s a
girl
?” Gwynne said indignantly, looking betrayed.

“All my life,” Charlie said.

“Any luck?” Jack interrupted anxiously.

Gwynne shook his head. “No sign of your bag, or anything. No one’s down here at all.”

Charlie took a deep breath. “Right then. My turn.” She looked down at the contract around her wrist. Part of it had faded to a weathered gray, and the rest of it didn’t look as dark. It looked like a tattoo decades old instead of fresh ink. She hoped it would still work.

Her lips started to form Rhys’ real name, but she hesitated.
 
“Hang on,” she said instead, and went out into the other room, which seemed to be mainly a storage area, heaped high with boxes and bags.

Charlie bent her head and lifted her wrist close to her mouth. “William,” she breathed, barely loud enough to be audible. She felt a faint tingling around her wrist.
 

The contract unwound, and a slim needle of black slithered onto the back of her hand, indicating the direction.