The Curse of Deadman's Forest (14 page)

“I do,” Ian said, remembering the street name from the signpost next to Señora Castillo’s house. He also remembered the address from the brass plate near the door. “Come on,” he said once they’d made it to the sidewalk. “Let’s get farther away from the café before we worry about nabbing a taxicab.”

Hailing a taxi proved quite difficult for the two boys, as no driver seemed willing to stop and pick up two dirt-stained lads who looked very much worse for wear. “That’s the sixth taxi to pass us by!” Carl whined. “At this rate we’ll never get back.”

“Perhaps we can find one that’s already parked and show the driver that we’ve got money to pay him,” Ian suggested.

“I suppose it’s worth a try.” Carl shrugged, and the boys began to walk along the now bustling streets, searching out a parked cab. They’d gone only three blocks when Ian was sure he heard his name being called. He picked his head up and looked about, but through the throng of people, he couldn’t make out a familiar face. “Did you hear that?” Carl asked, looking about too.

“I thought I heard someone call my name,” Ian said.

“Carl! Ian!” they both heard more clearly, and Ian would have sworn it was Theo’s voice.

“Where is she?” he asked as he swiveled his head to and fro.

“There!” Carl said suddenly, pointing across the street to a blond head bobbing up and down through the pedestrian traffic.

“Theo!” Ian shouted, and nearly darted right into traffic in his haste to reach her.

Carl grabbed his arm just in time, which Ian thought ironic, given Carl’s earlier dash into oncoming traffic, and the boys waited impatiently for the cars to clear. By the time they made it across, they could see that the earl was hurrying after Theo, and just behind him was the professor. “How did you find us?” Ian asked after hugging Theo.

She proudly held out the small sundial. “With this, of course,” she sang.

Ian laughed with relief. Theo was a very clever girl and he was quite relieved she’d thought of using the dial to find them. But his good humor was short lived when he took in
the expressions of the earl and the professor. “I say,” said the professor, eyeing the boys reproachfully. “You’ve put us through quite a fright this morning!”

“Sorry, sir,” they mumbled in unison as Ian cast his eyes to the pavement.

“Ian, are you injured?” the earl asked with concern.

Ian touched the top of his swollen ear. “Just a nick,” he assured the earl. “And Carl twisted his ankle a bit.”

“It’s fine, really,” Carl said. “Just a bit stiff is all.”

The earl bent to inspect Ian’s ear, his eyes pinched with a mixture of worry and anger. He then bent to feel Carl’s ankle before standing again. “Very well. You’ll both recover from your injuries.”

“We’re most sorry to have caused you any upset,” Ian added, wanting more than anything to remove that disapproving look from the earl’s face.

Beside him Carl nodded vigorously. “Yes, most sorry,” he agreed. “But we did manage to get Sir Barnaby’s diary back.”

The professor’s bushy white eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Did you really?”

“Well, some of it was lost, I’m afraid,” Ian admitted. “But we were able to retain most of it.” Ian reached into his waistband for the journal. As he pulled it out, he dropped the folded piece of paper the stranger had handed him.

“What’s that?” Theo asked as he bent to pick it up.

Ian took a big breath before he explained. “Carmina gave the diary to Antolin, the taxi driver who switched his motorcar for a lorry when he came to Señora Castillo’s to get the diary. Carl and I managed to stow away in the back
of the lorry, and he drove us to the city, where we discovered that Antolin was working for none other than Frau Van Schuft! But she and he got into an argument and it all went terribly wrong. Antolin ended up tossing the journal out the window and we had to jump out of the lorry to get it before Frau Van Schuft could. Then she cornered me in a doorway and nearly shot me, but a mysterious man who calls himself the Secret Keeper saved me, but more about him later. The thing of it is, the Secret Keeper wrote something down on this paper, which he said would explain a few things.”

“I say, you lads have had quite the morning!” said the professor, looking rather amazed by Ian’s tale. “And I shall want to hear more about this mysterious stranger who helped you, but might I ask, what does your note say?”

“Dunno,” Ian admitted. “I haven’t had a chance to look at it till now.”

The professor held out his hand and Ian obliged by letting him have the paper. The old man carefully unfolded it and gasped yet again when he took note of what was written there.

“What’s it say, Professor?” Carl asked.

The professor looked up at Ian with large eyes, then over at the earl, his expression stunned. “It’s written in ancient Greek,” he explained. “And it says, ‘Young boy Wigby, come this way.’”

C
aphiera the Cold paced back and forth impatiently in front of the hearth she rarely used. Periodically she would scowl at the fire now filling her ice fortress with wretched heat and foul-smelling smoke. Her sister Atroposa stood nearby, fueling the embers with the soft wind that was ever present with the sorceress.

“Must
you fan the flames?” Caphiera spat, irritated, even though she knew full well Atroposa could still the air around her about as easily as Caphiera could warm it.

Atroposa turned her hollow eyes to her sister, her hair whipping round her head with increasing velocity. “Must
you
be so impatient?”

Caphiera snarled at Atroposa and glared hard at her. The effect was disappointing. Atroposa seemed to be the only creature on earth capable of returning Caphiera’s gaze without turning into solid ice. “My fortress is melting!” Caphiera grumbled, returning to her pacing.

Atroposa did not reply; instead, she turned back to peer intently into the embers, searching for the first sign of their father, which came very shortly thereafter. “He is here,” she announced a moment later in her mournful voice, and sure enough, there came a horrific ripping sound and out from the hearth poured soot, smoke, and a sulfuric smell so offensive that Caphiera took a step back.

She recovered herself quickly, however, and forced her blue lips into a smile. “Welcome, Sire,” she said, bowing low.

Her sister also bowed demurely, her ragged clothing sweeping in tatters along the icy floor.

“Daughters,” said the voice, the sound like giant boulders grinding together. “What news have you to share?”

“Magus has gone east, Sire, in search of our beloved sister.”

Smoke billowed from the hearth as the great underworld god considered that. “And have you killed the orphans?” he said at last.

Neither Caphiera nor Atroposa spoke at first, but finally, the sorceress of wind confessed, “We were not successful, Sire. I sent a most terrible cyclone after them, but they managed to evade it in the end.”

The embers in the fireplace exploded in a shower of sparks that sizzled and hissed as they bounced about the ice floor and off the frozen walls. Caphiera winced when one ember hit her beautiful silver coat and burned a hole right through it. She was so irritated that for a moment she did
not notice the sucking noises coming from the other side of the room. The sorceress of ice looked up belatedly to see something she had never witnessed before in all her life.

For the first time since Atroposa had donned clothing of any kind, it fell limply about her, and her long translucent hair hung still and lifeless. More worrisome was that she appeared to be choking. Atroposa’s hands clutched at her neck, and her mouth opened and closed as she gasped for air. Her hollow eyes stared in shock at Caphiera as she sank first to her knees, then to a crumpled heap on the floor, where she began to twitch and convulse.

Caphiera turned to the hearth and addressed her father. “Sire,” she began carefully, “I know my sister has undoubtedly disappointed you, but might I suggest that her skills may yet be useful to our cause?”

Heat erupted all along Caphiera’s skin and she recoiled from the hearth. “You
dare
question
me
?” Demogorgon roared.

“No!” Caphiera gasped, sinking to her knees like her sister while a searing heat crept along every inch of her body. “Of course not, Sire! It’s simply that we might both be of service to you as our cause advances!”

In the next instant both Caphiera and Atroposa were released from the underworld god’s torturous wrath and the pair lay sprawled on the cold floor, Caphiera’s coat and hair smoking and Atroposa gasping for breath. “There is a mission,” said their sire into the silence that followed. “One that I cannot spare your brother for.”

“Anything.” Atroposa coughed, the sound even more hollow than usual. “Send us on any mission you choose, Sire!”

“There are rumors that the Secret Keeper lives.”

“Adrastus?” said Caphiera, attempting to put out a small flame at the hem of her coat. “Surely no mortal could live so many centuries.”

“And yet the rumors continue to reach me that he is alive and well,” Demogorgon insisted. “You two must discover the truth of this talk. And if the Secret Keeper is yet alive, force him to reveal the location of the rest of Laodamia’s treasures. The One cannot fulfill the prophecy without the boxes.”

“As you wish,” said Caphiera, bowing her head low and hoping the visit from her father was at an end.

“We will not fail you again,” promised her sister.

“If you do,” warned Demogorgon, “it will be the last thing you two
ever
do.” And with that there was another horrible ripping sound and the remaining embers in the hearth flared before dying out completely.

Caphiera wasted no time getting up and staggering outside, where she flung off her ruined coat and lay down in the snow. Her skin sizzled against the cold flakes as she worked to bury herself in a nearby snowdrift. It was a long time before she felt well enough to sit up.

When at last she regained her feet, she saw Atroposa standing high on a nearby ledge, her hollow eyes staring into the face of a fierce northern wind, which whipped her
hair and tattered clothing, rejuvenating the sorceress. Of all her siblings, Caphiera had always felt a certain kinship with Atroposa, but Caphiera vowed that should something go wrong along the way of this newest quest, she would make sure Atroposa would be left solely to blame.

I
an stared at the bit of paper and the writing on it as he sat in the cab speeding along to Señora Castillo’s. His memory drifted back to the first time he’d seen those lines and squiggles, on a cavern wall near his home in Dover.

The script was identical to the writing on the wall, and he knew of only one other place where that sentence had been written—Morocco.

“But who was he, do you think?” asked Carl, and Ian realized that his friend was having an intense discussion with the professor and the earl.

The professor sighed heavily. “I’ve no idea, my young Master Lawson, but I’m very curious to find out.”

“I know who he was,” said Ian quietly, and immediately all eyes in the back of the motorcar turned to him.

“Who?” asked Theo.

“General Adrastus of Lixus,” said Ian, absolutely convinced it was the very Phoenician general who had hidden a vast treasure that included the Star of Lixus for Ian to find
in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. A year earlier, before things had gone terribly wrong in Morocco, the professor had first told him the story of the famed general and how he’d hidden his treasure somewhere near the ancient city of Lixus before it was invaded by the Carthaginians. Ian, Theo, and Jaaved had discovered the treasure in a cave at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, and on the wall leading to the trove had been a message identical to the one scribbled on the paper in his hand. “He knew about Laodamia,” Ian told them. “In fact, he claimed to have met her.”

The professor made a derisive sound. “Met Laodamia? Poppycock! The Oracle died a full thousand years before the general was even born.”

But beside him Theo gasped, “The portal! Remember last year—we were in Morocco for nearly ten days, but in Dover only a few hours had passed. I’d wager that if the man’s claims are true, he could have used the portal to go back in time to Phoenicia and meet Laodamia.”

The professor scowled. “That would be a pretty trick indeed, Miss Fields,” he said. “To be able to connect three worlds spanning so many millennia seems quite extraordinary indeed.”

But Ian was convinced they were on the right track. “He also knew about the Star, Professor,” he explained. “He knew that we had recovered it without us having to tell him, and he even knew how it worked. Only someone with firsthand experience would know about its power.”

“He knew about the Star of Lixus?” the earl asked, his eyes intent.

Ian nodded enthusiastically.

“But I thought that General Adrastus was lost at sea when he was chased out of Lixus by the Carthaginians,” Carl said.

Ian, however, was not to be dissuaded from his convictions. “Don’t you remember, Carl, what the man said to us about keeping secrets? Secrets of the past
and
the future. He
had
to be talking about the prophecies! We also know that Adrastus himself hid the Star, which was found
with
Laodamia’s treasure box. How did he get them if not from her? And the writing on the wall back in Dover—Professor, you were the one to date it to an ancient Greek script roughly two thousand years old, correct?”

The professor crossed his arms and sighed deeply. “Yes,” he said, as if giving in grudgingly to Ian’s notion.

“Which would have been during the time that Adrastus ruled over Lixus.” He stared at all the doubtful expressions, wanting very much to convince the group. “All the clues point to one man. It was the general,” Ian repeated. “I simply know it.”

“But how could it be, Ian?” Carl asked him reasonably. “He’d have to be immortal to have lived so long.”

“He could have used the portal a second time,” Ian replied. “Just like we did. I suspect that he discovered the portal sometime during his reign in Lixus. Perhaps he even stumbled into it unwittingly and found himself in Phoenicia, where he visited with Laodamia. He told us over breakfast that the Oracle had bound him by oath, so he must have received the boxes, then gone back through to hide the Star
and one of the treasure boxes, then used the portal again to leave me the second box back in Dover—or the first box, whichever way you look at it.”