Thornghost (22 page)

T
hey tumbled into the dark well, crashing along the branches until they reached the bottom. The ground was cushioned with shed petals that broke their fall enough to leave them bruised but not injured. The trunk of the Rosa Torquata grew along one side, sending reedy branches out along the walls. Its roses were black, and it was nearly smothered by the dark vine that riddled the entire well. Red light seeped out between the dark vine's serrated leaves, illuminating white objects that hung hooked onto the thorns. Bones and skulls.

“The missing Brokeners,” Kepler said through his teeth.

“We have to climb back out.” Niklas gripped the trunk and tried to place his foot somewhere, but all the thorns of the dark vine turned toward him like knives. He backed to the center of the well, struggling to find his balance in
the slippery rose heap. Far above, branches wove tight across the opening, closing them in completely.

“Maybe we can find another way out,” he said.

“I don't think there is one.” Sebastifer's eyes glazed over as he searched through the memories Rafsa had leaked into his head.

“There isn't,” said Kepler. “I read the rose tree was here before they constructed the lighthouse. They built a central column around the stem to protect it. We're inside it. There is nowhere we can go, nothing we can do to . . .” His voice petered out.

Niklas glanced at Kepler. “Do you think it's too late? That the Brokeners are already dead?”

The ferret shook his head firmly. “They'll fight back. Odar has stripes, and you've seen how wary Castine is. No enemy can sneak up on her.”

Not even if the enemy is all around her? If it's someone she trusts with her life? If she's asleep in her bed?
But Niklas didn't say those things out loud. What good would it do?

“Did
you
know?” Secret suddenly asked, studying Kepler's face. “That you were leading us here to betray us?”

“Sometimes.” Kepler stared at his clenched hands. “But when I tried to tell you, my tongue went numb and I couldn't speak. Then I forgot again.”

“Why the causeway?” asked Niklas. “Why not parade us up the road? The skullbeaks wouldn't have touched us.”

“Rafsa didn't think you would believe me. She told me
to take you across the sand.” Kepler swallowed pitifully.

“You had never even seen the sea stairs before.” Secret's voice was quiet.

“No. Rafsa put the route in my head. I told the truth about the prisoner, though.” He bowed his head. “I really thought it was Marcelius. I thought he was a hero.”

His right hand trembled as it came up to touch his chest, but as always, it was brought down again by the other hand. “I've been trying to get rid of it. But I can't. The rune won't let me.” He finally looked up at Secret.

Secret met his gaze for a long moment. Then she lunged at him in one fluid motion, nose crinkled in a terrible sneer.

“Secret! Stop!” Niklas cried out, but Secret paid him no mind. She sank her teeth into Kepler's chest and tore out a patch of fur with one ferocious bite. Blood seeped down her chin when she spat it out.

Kepler hadn't even lifted his arms to defend himself. He looked a little shaken, but he buttoned his vest over the wound as a makeshift bandage once more. “Thank you, lady fair.” He got a small lantern out of his pocket, lit it, and pointed it at Secret. “I knew I could count on you.”

Secret squinted and looked away. “It had to be done.”

The lantern light caught something stirring on the floor between them. A long creeper of dark vine had crawled across the petal heap. It hooked its thorns into the patch of fur and dragged it back under the leaves.

Niklas barely had time to yell “Look out!” before a hundred vines broke through the leaves, scuttling across the floor like spider legs.

The first curled around Secret's ankle. She wrenched around with a thin mewl.

Niklas wanted to help her, but vines caught his leg, too. They all tried to pull free, but the creepers only tightened. The ugly brown thorns came out. Secret growled again as one of them licked across her chin where Kepler's blood was still wet.

Niklas yelled, “Stop!”

All around the well the leaves rustled, and the faintest echo whispered back.

Stop, stop, stop.

The vines pulled back, hung in the air like sniffing snakes. All the thorns twisted so they pointed at Niklas, trembling as if they strained against something.

The dark vine was listening.

But what would he say? Niklas tried and failed to bring out his winning smile. Begging for mock-mercy from his grandmother was a game. This was not. “Please,” he said. “Don't . . .”

One of the vines lashed out. It hit Niklas in the arm and stuck a thorn through his skin, tasting him. The leaves began flapping.

“It's the little liar! The little thief!”

It was the nasty voice from the mountain tunnel. It
rasped like claws against a windowpane, loud enough to shake Niklas's spine. “Still frightened, still scared.”

The vines woke from their strange suspension, whipping around every foot, paw, and arm.

All four of them hung in the web, caught.

A big thorn stabbed Secret's paw. She screamed in panic. Her thrashing made the thorns tear her skin. The terror that flowed through the medallion made Niklas dizzy. Or was that his own fear?

“Secret!” Kepler was trying to catch her attention. Even though the vines held his wrist cruelly, he managed to turn his light in her direction. It bounced off her golden fur as she bucked and fought.

Some of the light fell on the wall behind her.

Niklas gasped. One of the Rosa Torquata's black flowers had turned bright red, just like it did when it tasted someone's blood. But the Rosa hadn't tasted them. The dark vine had. Niklas thought the dark vine was a separate plant, an infestation that squeezed all reason and will out of the Rosa Torquata, turned it into something it was not. A parasite. But maybe it wasn't?

“Kepler,” Niklas cried, still fighting the panic from the medallion. “Point your light at the leaves by the trunk!”

Kepler looked confused, but he did as Niklas said. Under the leaves, the dark vine grew right out of the Rosa Torquata's trunk. It was no parasite, but part of the giant rosebush.

Their enemy was the Rosa Torquata itself.

The most powerful creature in this world.

Niklas's heart pounded.
You can only be brave if you're scared in the first place,
Secret had told him. Well, he was scared now, scared for his life. But he had to try. There had been two voices in the tunnel, and one of them wanted to help. Something had stopped the dark vine from attacking him in the Greenhood's map room, and something had made the dark vine hesitate here in the well.

The old voice, the part of the Rosa Torquata that could not watch someone kill a human boy. He had to get through to it.

Niklas drew a deep breath. If there ever was a time to find the right words, this was it.

“You know what the people of Willodale say about me? ‘That Niklas Summerhill. He's such a rascal and troublemaker, but he sure was brave when his mother died.' Well, they're wrong. I was so terrified, I didn't dare talk to anyone.”

“Silence,” the nasty voice hissed. The vine slithered around his neck. It only had to tighten and he would be all out of both words and breath. But Niklas continued. “Just because someone makes you out to be brave or scared or evil, it doesn't mean it's the whole truth.”

“You are no one,” said the nasty voice. “You are just a boy with a dead key.”

“Maybe,” Niklas said. “What I'm saying is still true. The
dark vine is you, but it's only part of you. You can . . .” The vine constricted, and his last words came out a croak. “You can fight it.”

The vine around his neck dropped away. All the black roses opened wide, watching him through their many lids. In the circle of Kepler's flashlight, the red rose turned pale. Pale like the roses of the Nickwood. Like the true Rosa Torquata.

Niklas stared at the single white bloom, willing the change to spread.
Come on,
he thought.
Fight!
But the Rosa Torquata didn't change and didn't heal and didn't move.

Not until a dark vine snared around the healed rose and pinched it off. It dropped into the fallen petals.

No.
His words weren't enough. The dark part of the Rosa was too strong.

Thorns buried deeper into his legs and arms. Fear flashed through the medallions, racing back and forth between him and Secret like electric heartbeats.
Are we going to die here? Are we going to be skulls and bones tangled in the thorns?

No!

“Don't give up!” He wasn't sure if he was pleading with the Rosa, or Secret, or himself. “Please don't . . .”

The dark vine pulled taut and yanked him off balance. The world turned upside down as it lifted him by the ankle, higher and higher into the air.

Far below he heard Secret roar.

With a dizzying twist, the dark vine whirled him about and sent him flying into the trunk of the Rosa Torquata.

The air left his lungs. Rough bark scratched him as he slid down along the stem. The petals at the bottom broke his fall, but he landed in a crumpled heap, head ringing. His chest throbbed and the bandage leaked blood down the side of his face. He had no idea if he could get up.

The dark vine didn't seem to find it very likely, because for now it ignored him, concentrating its attack on the others. They were still fighting, Secret snarling and writhing, Kepler and Sebastifer using their teeth. Vines coiled around them like tentacles. Thorns buried deep into their fur and stayed there, sucking their blood.

They
were
going to die. Niklas wanted to get up, but his limbs wouldn't listen. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against the trunk of the Rosa Torquata, just for a moment. It felt soft and smooth, almost like a cheek against his own.

Smooth?

Niklas opened his eyes.

His fall had pushed aside a pile of rotting petals, exposing more of the trunk. He was leaning on pale wood where a patch of the bark had been cleared away in a rune-rimmed square.

Another speakwood!

It had to be very old. The wood inside the square was cracked and the runes barely visible. But it was there.
Maybe it was a speakwood they had used before the lighthouse was built? Niklas sat up. Blood from his cheek had left a dark smudge in the middle. It disappeared, absorbing into the Rosa.

Niklas scrambled onto his knees. He had an idea. Somewhere in the wild terror, he felt Secret reflect the feeling back at him.
Hope?

Yes, if he could get it right. He was no Greenhood or chosen guardian, but this was no time to worry about rules. Sometimes you had to choose yourself.

Niklas fumbled his satchel open and brought out his mother's book, riffled through it until he found the runes he needed. Erika's bold ink strokes were easy to read in the red light from the dark vine. Niklas dipped his fingertip in the trickle of blood from his forehead and copied her runes as precisely as he could. A square with an eye inside. A four-pointed star.

Awake. Power.

For a moment the runes rested on the surface of the speakwood, black like oil.
Come on,
Niklas thought again.
Please wake up!

The blood sank into the grain of the wood, but the runes remained visible as soft lines. A flicker of white light appeared along the streaks, faint at first, then stronger and stronger, until both runes pulsed with starlight like a beating heart.

Then a blinding flash of force sent Niklas tumbling
backward into the petal heap. Tremors shook the trunk of the Rosa Torquata, and a deep voice thundered, “Enough!”

The old voice. It sounded angry. No.
Furious.

The walls of rosewood flexed. The branches writhed, the thorns grew longer. The Rosa Torquata struck like a thousand snakes, but not at the four prisoners. It turned its thorns on itself, slicing the withered, black tendrils clean off at the roots. The dark vine fell to the floor around them in a nasty, crackling rattle.

All the roses had turned pale now, and among them twinkling lights ignited, one by one, spreading out until a sky of tiny stars filled the whole shaft.

Sebastifer, Kepler, and Secret watched Niklas with shining eyes. “You did it,” Sebastifer whispered. “You're her son, and you did it!”

“The Rosa did it,” Niklas said. “I helped it wake up, but it healed itself.” He put his palm on the speakwood and said, “Thank you!”

The Rosa didn't answer, not with the nasty voice and not with the old one. Instead it creaked and shifted, braiding branch with branch, making a ladder for them along the trunk.

Another burst of brilliant yellow light flashed through the well, this time from the chamber far above.