Oracles of Delphi Keep (42 page)

Ian frowned. “Maybe,” he said.

“It’s this city,” said Perry from under the tree. “No telling what muck is in these streets. I’m sure they don’t have the same standards of sanitation that we have back in England.”

But Ian wasn’t so sure. His brain had finally placed the scent. It was that scent from the cavern where he’d found the box, and from the keep when the beast had attacked them in the east tower. He clearly remembered the distinct sulfuric smell.

He hoped that what he’d caught on the wind was just a combination of smelly odors that reminded him of the beast, because the alternative—having it lurking somewhere nearby—terrified him.

His troubled thoughts were distracted when the professor reappeared from the shop with Jaaved. “We’ll need some of you to help us with the supplies I’ve purchased,” said the professor. “And we should set sail immediately while we still have a bit of daylight left.”

“What about getting word to the earl?” asked Thatcher.

The professor scratched his chin. “Right,” he said. Then, looking down the street, he suddenly brightened. “There,” he said, pointing to a small stone building with a swirling script above the door. “There’s a post office. I shall send a letter immediately. You gentlemen load up and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Thatcher motioned to Carl and Theo. “You two, go with the professor while we pick up the supplies,” he instructed. Carl and Theo waved to Ian and trotted obediently after the old man. Next Ian, Thatcher, Perry, and Jaaved went inside
the supply shop to pick up the four newly purchased back-packs loaded down with camping supplies and equipment.

“Here you go,” said Thatcher, helping Ian on with one of the packs. He pulled the straps tight, then gave Ian a pat on the shoulder as he stood back to appraise his handiwork. Ian found he couldn’t stand up straight and was stooping forward uncomfortably. “Is it too heavy?” the schoolmaster asked.

“No, sir,” Ian said with a grimace, working to appear stronger than he felt. “It’s just that it’s hitting the pocket torch in the back of my trousers.”

“Here,” said Thatcher, turning Ian around to pull up on the pack and fish out his light.

He tucked the small torch into the side compartment of his own backpack. “I’ll hold on to your torch until we make camp,” Thatcher said, then pulled out the folded translation of the prophecy and put that into the compartment, next to the pocket torch. “For safekeeping,” he said.

Ian attempted to smile, but the strain of the pack made it difficult. Thatcher also took Ian’s coat and eyed the top of Ian’s pack skeptically. “I don’t think we’ll add any more weight,” he said. “When Carl comes back, we’ll have him carry all the coats.”

“Can you just be careful of my compass and pocketknife in the pocket?” Ian asked, not wanting them to get tossed out when Carl was carrying the coats. Thatcher smiled and fished around inside Ian’s coat, retrieving the compass and pocketknife. He tucked them into the compartment where he’d placed the light and the prophecy. “There,” he said kindly. “Now all your treasures are together.”

Ian smiled gratefully, though he was afraid it might have looked more like a grimace.

His brow had broken out in a sweat from the strain of the heavy pack, but he wanted to appear capable of carrying his own load, so he kept quiet and watched as Perry and Thatcher both hefted their own packs onto their backs with grunts.

Once outside, Ian’s group joined the professor’s, and Thatcher handed Carl all their coats. “If you would see these safely down to the sloop, Master Lawson?”

Carl took the bundle of coats eagerly. “Of course,” he said.

“Word has been sent,” said the professor. “I’ve informed the earl that we are safe, that circumstances beyond our control have landed us in Morocco, and that in a fortnight we will be booking passage to Spain, where we will need funds to see us back home to England.”

“Very well,” said Thatcher reluctantly. “Let’s be off, then.”

Ian and the others followed Jaaved to the top of the stair-well leading back down to the marina. The Moroccan boy paused while Perry, Thatcher, and Ian—who was huffing and puffing under the weight of his pack—worked to catch up.

“Do you want some help, mate?” asked Carl over the pile of coats he was carrying.

“No thanks,” said Ian, anxious just to get down the stairs so that he could unload the pack. Before Ian had reached the others, Jaaved began down the steps, followed by the professor, Theo, Perry, Thatcher, and Carl, who waited at the top until Ian was close before heading down.

The straps of his pack bit painfully into his shoulders and the weight made his descent slightly hazardous. He could only imagine what would happen if he lost his footing.

By the time he was near the bottom, he could see that the rest of his group had already made it across the dock to the slip where the rickety sailboat waited to be boarded.

But Ian had to pause on the landing before the last steps to catch his wind and give his wobbly legs a rest. He watched as Jaaved hopped aboard the sloop and unloaded his knap-sack. Scuttling around the various ropes and buoys, he went about preparing the boat to leave the dock.
“Par ici!”
Jaaved said, waving on the rest of the group.

Ian forced air into his lungs and saw Carl and Theo jump aboard first, then turn to help the professor, while Perry and Thatcher shrugged out of their backpacks before stepping gingerly onto the boat.

Ian realized he was holding them up, so he pushed off from the railing he’d been leaning against, when his foot caught on something and he almost fell down the last set of stairs. He noticed with a growl of frustration that his right shoelace had come undone. He made his way carefully down the last few steps, then stopped again to retie it, but he hadn’t considered that bending over would throw him off balance, and the heavy backpack pulled him right over onto his side. His cheeks flushed red with embarrassment as he heard Theo and Carl break into hysterics and Thatcher call back, “You all right?”

Ian waved. “Fine, sir!” he said, and struggled under the bulky weight to right himself. Finally, he managed to get to his feet again and squatted carefully to finish tying his
shoelace when a soft breeze carried the slightest hint of that foul odor to his nostrils. Ian lifted his head, sniffing the air in alarm.

Another breeze brought the smell again, but it competed with the briny scent of the sea and a hint of petrol. Ian hurried to lace up his shoe. He couldn’t be certain the scent belonged to the beast, but he knew he didn’t want to wait around to find out. Then he heard Theo’s laughter abruptly stop, and an instant later she let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Ian’s head snapped up and what he saw was both confusing and frightening. Everyone in the boat was yelling, but Theo looked out of her mind with fear and it was several seconds before he realized she and the others were all pointing and yelling
at him
.

He watched in a haze as Thatcher and Perry started climbing over each other in panic, trying to scramble back onto the dock, but the boat tipped precariously. Jaaved had already unwrapped one of the moorings, and his face was frozen in terror while his hands moved wildly to undo the other line. Ian squatted there for a few heartbeats, his mind slow to add things up, and then he heard the thundering of paws behind him.

He whipped his head around to look over his shoulder but the pack obscured his view. Turning his body carefully, he gasped when he saw the beast, its red eyes glowing and its lips pulled away from those deadly fangs in a frightening snarl, pounding down the staircase straight at him. For one horrible second Ian was frozen in place by his own terror as the beast raced at him with death in its eyes.

Theo’s scream,
“Iiiiiiaaaaaaan!”
finally broke the spell and urged him to bolt to his feet. He took two great leaps forward, but the heavy pack prevented him from gaining any speed. Ahead he could see Thatcher half in, half out of the boat as he held on to the pier with his fingertips while Jaaved pushed with an oar to send them out to sea. Perry was tangled in his brother’s legs while everyone else on the boat was screaming for Ian to run faster.

Somehow, Ian did. He gritted his teeth, balled his fists, and dug for every step. He leaned forward and allowed the weight of the backpack to propel him. Still, on his heels he could hear the beast thundering closer, and closer … and closer.

His feet pounded down the dock, his brow slick with sweat and his heart hammering hard. He was almost there.

Just behind him came a growl that was deeper than he remembered and, if possible, more vicious. Ian’s lungs begged for air while his mind screamed in terror. To add to his horror, Jaaved finally won out against Thatcher’s efforts and the boat pushed away from the dock. The air all around was filled with nightmarish noises: Theo was screaming; Carl was pleading with him to run faster; Perry and Thatcher were yelling at Jaaved; and the professor was shouting incoherently at everyone while the beast’s paws thundered ever closer.

He was steps away from the end of the pier when he felt the hot breath of the beast on the backs of his arms. The boat was slipping farther away from the dock and Ian realized he would never make it. In the last split second, he and
Theo locked eyes. He could see everything in them: her love for him, her terror at the beast charging him down, and her horror as she realized that Ian wasn’t going to make it.

It was that look that gave him courage, and just as he felt the beast’s paws hit his backpack, he lunged sideways, straight off the pier into the water.

The heavy weight of his pack immediately pulled him under, and as the contents became wet, he sank like a stone. Ian struggled and kicked with all his might to swim upward while his lungs—already deprived of oxygen—ached to inhale.

He clawed savagely at the water, making it up a bit with the effort of his strokes. The surface didn’t look far away, but as hard as he tried, the pack kept pulling him down. It was hopeless. He’d never reach the surface and the straps were so tight that he couldn’t manage to get out of them. If he stopped swimming to try to wiggle free, he’d descend too deeply to make it back to the surface at all.

His arms flailed and his feet kicked, but his efforts were growing weaker and weaker. He was sinking away from the air he so desperately needed and his vision filled with darkness and little bright stars. And then his mouth opened involuntarily and he inhaled, and the most pain he’d ever felt in his life racked his body as water poured into his lungs. He wretched and coughed and inhaled again, funneling more water into his airway. He shivered and shook in agony and the world around him became murkier and less bright until finally he lost the fight and let the darkness take him.

“I
an!” he heard in the darkness of the tunnel he felt he’d fallen into. “Ian,
please!”
came the cry more clearly. He knew that voice. It was Theo’s. He couldn’t remember why she was pleading with him, and at the moment he couldn’t worry about it, because he was in too much pain. Someone was hammering on his chest, and his mouth was opened and air was blown in. A second later, he convulsed and hacked up huge quantities of water while he coughed and sputtered and wheezed.

“Oh, thank heavens!” said Perry, who it seemed was leaning over him. “He’s back.”

Ian continued to cough while his body shivered from head to toe. “Here,” said Carl. “Wrap up in this, mate.”

Ian opened his eyes to see Carl holding a blanket out to him, but he was coughing too much to reach for it. Gratefully, Theo took the blanket from Carl and placed it around Ian’s shoulders. “What happened?” he sputtered when he was finally able to speak.

“We thought you’d drowned,” Theo said with a small hiccup. He realized she’d been crying.

“That beast almost had you!” exclaimed Carl. “He was right on top of you, and then you popped into the water.”

“You went right under,” added Thatcher, and Ian was surprised to discover that both he and Perry were soaking wet. “We came in after you. It was a miracle that Perry managed to bump into you down in that murky water and haul you up to the surface.”

“That was far too close for comfort,” said the professor, and Ian was touched by the look of deep concern on his face.

Ian coughed again; his cheeks felt hot with the effort. Everyone waited for him to finish before continuing with the story.

“The beast made like it was going to jump in after you when several fishermen on the dock came running after it with their oars and a net. It ran off back up the stairs, but not before it gave us a bloody good scare,” said Carl, his eyes wide and frightened.

“Master Lawson,” said Perry, “please watch your language.”

The professor waved impatiently. “Let the boy be, Perry. We did have a bloody good scare.”

Theo shuddered and looked back to the pier. “It’s okay,” Ian said gently. “There’s no way that creature can track us now that we’re on the boat.” Theo glanced back at Ian, but her worried frown remained.

“Bad
chien!”
said Jaaved from his place at the stern of the boat, and Ian turned to look at him in surprise.

Thatcher asked, “Jaaved, do you speak English?”

Jaaved shook his head.
“Non,”
he said.
“Je comprends seulement un peu de ce que vous dites.”

“He says he understands only a little bit of what we say,” Thatcher translated.

“The locals here speak fluent French and Shamali, but enough British travel through this port that many of the natives can understand a few phrases and words,” added the professor.

“What’s Shamali?” asked Carl.

“A form of Arabic,” explained the professor. “I speak a smattering of it, but my French is better.”

“So how did the beast find us all the way in Morocco?” Perry asked, getting back to their terrible scare. “Did it come through the portal too?”

“Impossible,” said Thatcher. “The stone wall was back in place when we left the cavern, not to mention that Caphiera’s wall of ice would have needed days to melt and it certainly would have blocked that thing from following us through.”