When she was done, she took a step back and admired her handiwork.
Caleb took short, halting breaths. His nose had not yet begun the process of ignoring the, now permanent, smell. “Was this absolutely necessary?”
“Yes. But you might have trouble making new friends for a while.”
Feeling confident in her new plan, she led them straight to the Oracle’s front door and stopped right in front of the other two Banshees. “Hey Leslie. Hey Melissa. Have you two met Cynthia yet? She’s my new apprentice.”
One of the guards stepped forward and blocked her with a hand. “What are you doing here, Tara?”
“It’s the monthly cleaning.”
Leslie pointed a finger at Caleb. “Who’s that?”
Caleb followed the behavior he’d seen from the other men in the city and kept his stare fixated on his feet. The hooded cloak Tara had given him covered the feline features of his face as long as his head remained lowered.
Tara turned and regarded Caleb as if it was the first time she had taken notice of him. “The regular cleaner is sick, so I grabbed a sewer rat for the job. If you’ll please let me by…”
Leslie stepped sideways and re-blocked Tara from entering the Oracle’s house. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the prisoners have escaped. The High Priestess thinks they might try to harm the Oracle.”
Tara let a surprised expression wash over her face as she looked up and down the street. “Is it just the two of you?”
Leslie shrugged her shoulders. “Banshees are stationed at key points all around the city. They’ll be caught long before they make it here.”
Tara suddenly sounded agitated. “I was one of the five that captured them. They directly threatened the Oracle before we shocked them. You need to go immediately and bring more Banshees here.”
Leslie stood her ground. “The High Priestess personally ordered us to stand guard at the Oracle’s door. Why don’t you go?”
Tara leaned in, their faces coming within inches of each other. “Are you refusing the direct order of a superior?”
Leslie stammered her reply. “No ma’am.”
“Good. We will stand here with Melissa. Let’s pray, for your sake, the enemy doesn’t get here before you return with reinforcements.”
Leslie snapped to attention. “Yes ma’am!”
She ran off without looking back.
Tara watched her disappear around the corner before facing Melissa. “I’m sorry about this.”
Before Melissa could ask what Tara was sorry for, she grabbed Melissa with her left hand and hit her with an electrical charge from the gauntlet. Melissa was unconscious before she hit the ground.
Tara pushed open the front door to the Oracle’s house and dragged the unconscious Banshee inside. Caleb and Dorothy rushed in after her. Tara looked up and down the street to verify nobody had seen what happened before closing the door.
She unlocked the manacles from Caleb’s wrists.
“You don’t have much time. Leslie is a good soldier and I just lit a fire under her. We’ve got, maybe, two minutes before she’s back with more Banshees. You don’t want to be here when that happens.”
He glanced around the room. The house was nothing more than a single great room sparsely populated with furniture, only one door, the one they had come in through, and nobody else in the room but them. It looked lived in, but something looked off about the room. He couldn’t place his finger on it, though. Something was wrong with the room, but he couldn’t figure out what.
A fire burned in the fireplace and steam rose from a bowl of half eaten soup on the table. It looked like somebody had just left. But they had come in the only door, and certainly hadn’t passed anyone going out on their way in. Somebody had recently placed that soup there. And then miraculously disappeared. Whoever was about to sit down for lunch had been interrupted by their entry, but had inexplicably disappeared.
That’s what was missing from the room!
He looked around at the few pieces of furniture. They were all tables and shelves. There were no chairs anywhere. Why were there no chairs?
Tara propped the unconscious Melissa against a wall and hurried over to the fireplace. She waved frantically into the gaping maw of the fireplace. “Go through, the Oracle’s waiting for you on the other side.”
Caleb felt the heat from the fire all the way across the room. Even if he tried to run through it, his fur would ignite in an instant. Maybe their escape had been a ruse this whole time. He knew nothing about the woman who had helped them. This could all be part of some elaborate plan to kill them as escaped prisoners on the run.
They were being given a choice. Stay here and be captured, and most likely killed, or burn to death in the oversized fireplace. Either choice had the same outcome. Death.
Dorothy had been following obediently without complaint since they left the dungeon. She stopped in the middle of the room and pointed at the roaring fire.
“You want us to go in there?”
Tara glanced into the fireplace. “Oops.”
She grabbed a crudely shaped candlestick off the mantel and pushed it into a gap between the stones at the base of the mantel shelf. It fit the gap perfectly. The flames receded and went out. The scraping of stone on stone revealed a door opening in the back of the fireplace.
Tara turned to them with a smile. “Sorry about that. Is this better?”
He grabbed Dorothy to keep her from running into the fireplace. He scanned the eyes of the Banshee, looking for a reason why she would betray her own people. “Why are you helping us?”
“The Oracle told me the truth about OZ.”
“What truth?”
There was a bang on the front door followed by shouting and more banging. The door was old. It wouldn’t stand up much longer to the abuse from outside. Tara tore her gaze from the splintering door and pleaded with him. “The Oracle will explain everything. You have to go now.”
He and Dorothy rushed through the fireplace and into the darkened passageway that led down and away from the house. He took two steps before he realized it was still only he and Dorothy in the passageway. He turned back and poked his head through the opening.
“Aren’t you coming with us?”
“No. I have to slow them down so you can escape.”
“What are you going to do?”
She yanked the candlestick from the hole and the stone door started to slide closed. “Whatever it takes.”
As if by magic, the flames reignited moments before the secret passageway sealed itself off from the rest of the house. With a loud clank, they were plunged into darkness.
His eyes adjusted as best they could, but there was no light in the passageway. He bumped his head several times before remembering that the passage had a low ceiling. He crouched as he made his way carefully down the gently sloping tunnel. In the pitch black tunnel, he didn’t want to step off into empty air and find himself tumbling down a flight of stairs, so he tested the ground in front of him lightly as they moved forward slowly.
Dorothy’s whisper broke the silence. “Caleb?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“You knew me before my memory was wiped, right?”
“Yes.”
“Was I as afraid of the dark then as I am now?”
He groped back into the blackness. “Here. Hold my hand.”
He heard the faint rustle of her Banshee suit before her hand brushed his, and she clamped on tight.
In the dark it was hard to tell, but he had been counting each step silently as they made their way through the tunnel. He guessed they had traveled just under a hundred feet without a single turn or any stairs. Just how long was this tunnel?
His foot probed forward and bumped into something. Had he finally reached some stairs heading upward?
He felt forward with this hand and came up against a wall.
He felt around him on both sides and in front. There were no passageways leading off in another direction. The only direction without a wall was the way they had just come.
They were at a dead end with nowhere to go. They certainly couldn’t go back to where the Banshees would be waiting for them. At least not right away.
They could sit and wait for a while before making their way back up the tunnel. If they waited long enough, maybe the Banshees would leave the empty house and they could get away.
Dorothy was dressed like a Banshee. She could easily sneak past them on her own. And then what?
That wouldn’t work. They had to stay together. But they couldn’t stay here at the end of this tunnel forever. The Directors were still coming and he had to get the weapon before they did. He didn’t have time to wait around in the dark for something to happen.
He had to make something happen. And he had to make it happen soon.
Who would build a secret passageway that didn’t go anywhere? There must be something that opened a door at this end. He just had to find it.
He let go of Dorothy’s hand and she let out a small yelp.
“I’m right here, Dorothy. Help me feel around the walls for something that might open the door. A lever or a push plate or something.”
Together they felt and pushed on the stones that made up the walls, bumping into each other on occasion.
Dorothy’s voice echoed softly in the low tunnel. “I think I found something.”
A clunk sounded in the distance and the sound of rocks grinding against each other was followed by a faint light illuminating the tunnel from the newly created opening.
“Good work Dorothy.”
He grabbed her hand and they slipped through the widening door before the grinding sound even stopped. Who knows how long it would remain open, and he didn’t want it to start closing on them before they made it all the way through.
A few seconds after the doorway stopped grinding, it started closing again. It stayed open long enough for someone to get through and then automatically closed again.
The ceiling was higher in this new room, but Caleb still had to stoop slightly. The light in the room emanated from flashing monitors, the same type the Southern Marshal used to see what the Totos saw. The views on these screens were of the same low angled shots of various places in OZ. Whoever used this room was able to keep an eye on the world outside, just like the Southern Marshal did. He looked around the room and saw plenty of tables and shelves surrounding the wall of monitors, but no chairs.
“Dorothy?”
The voice came from the other side of the room and Caleb crouched in a defensive position, ready for anything.
Ready for anything, except what happened next.
A man in a wheelchair rolled out from behind the monitoring station. That would explain the lack of chairs.
The man’s eyes lit up. “It is you!”
Dorothy and Caleb exchanged a look. She shook her head. He looked back at the man in the wheelchair.
“Her memory has been wiped, she doesn’t remember you.”
The man wheeled forward quickly, forcing them to take a step back before he ran over their toes. “Dorothy. It’s me. William. William Sipes.”
She struggled as she tried to access memories that were either deeply buried or gone. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything.”
He looked up at her, pleading. “You have to remember me!”
Caleb stepped in front of her. “The Southern Marshal gave her the scarecrow treatment. Everything’s been erased. But we don’t have time for that right now. We have to find someone called the Oracle.”
The man in the wheelchair smiled. “You’re looking at him.”
“You’re the Oracle?”
“Don’t be so surprised.”
“But Tara said the Oracle came from outside OZ. You’re in a…”
William gripped the armrests of his chair. “I wasn’t in this when I came into OZ. I came in on the same airship as Dorothy, but when the pirates attacked I fell out and woke up paralyzed from the waist down. Apparently I landed in a bale of hay, which save my life, but left me like this.”
“She also said you knew the secret of OZ.”
William squinted his eyes. “Is that what the Southern Marshal sent you to get?”
“I’m not sure.”
William motioned to the numerous monitors along the wall. “These things are great at showing me what all the Totos see. But it’s only visual. I don’t have sound. I’ve gotten good at reading lips and I know the Southern Marshal sent the two of you on a quest. Is it for the weapon?”
“How do you know she sent us on a quest?”
“She let you out of the Southern Territories. From what I hear, she never does that. Ever. Are you after the weapon?”
“What do you know about the weapon?”
William laughed heartily. “My boy, it’s why OZ exists.”
That was an unexpected answer. “I thought OZ was a prison.”
William rolled back and forth a couple of inches. “OZ is a prison. But that’s its cover.”
“It’s cover?”
“When the people Dorothy’s father and I worked for discovered that history’s most powerful weapon had been hidden somewhere on the island continent to the south, they decided the best way to keep it safe was to make this a place nobody would willingly go and, if they ever ended up here, would never get out. Dorothy’s father designed OZ so that nobody would come looking for the weapon here. The group we worked for, the Directors, destroyed all the records that pointed to the southern continent as the final resting place of this ancient weapon.”
“Did you say the Directors?”
“Yes. You’ve heard of them?”
“According to the Southern Marshal, they are on their way right now to collect the weapon.”
William frowned. “Why would they do that? They initiated the construction of OZ to keep it safe from the world.”
“More like keep it for themselves. The man who raised me said he was sent by the Directors to locate the weapon. When he found out what it could do, he stalled them for as long as he could.”
“What makes you think the Directors are coming for it?”
“Because Nero said they were. And they’re going to be here in a matter of days. If I don’t get to it first, they will have it. No one person should be able to wield that kind of power.”
“Then why are you looking for it?”
“We have a plan to destroy it. Take it off the board completely.”
William rolled back and forth, deep in thought. “Do you know where the weapon is now?”