The End of Time Read online

  The Aerie loomed. Hap saw Welkin and Barkin on a pair of stools outside the gatehouse, playing a game of cards. Barkin waved.

  “What do you think Loden would do, if he were king?” Hap asked.

  Umber didn’t answer. He’d fallen behind. Hap looked back and saw a face drained of color with eyes half-closed. “Lord Umber?”

  “Huh?” Umber said. His voice dropped until he was almost mumbling. “Oh. Loden. He’ll move against me, I’m sure . . . but let’s talk about this some other time.”

  Hap felt a pang in his chest. He had seen that look and heard that tone of voice before. Not again, he thought. Not so soon after the last time. “Lord Umber, are you feeling all right?”

  Umber spread his hands across his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his little fingers. “No . . . not really.”

  At the gatehouse, Welkin and Barkin sensed the trouble. They bolted from their seats and came swiftly down the causeway. Hap grabbed Umber’s arm and tugged. “Come on. Let’s get back to the Aerie. Quickly!”

  CHAPTER

  9

  Hap threw the lever, and the water-driven lift lurched into motion. Umber shuffled along like a sleepwalker, with Welkin on one side and Barkin on the other. Dodd, the third guardsman, had dashed up the stairs to fetch Balfour.

  Hap stepped onto a moving platform, and the guardsmen guided Umber on beside him. The space was crowded, and the four stood shoulder to shoulder. “Steady, Lord Umber,” Barkin said.

  “Just bring me to the terrace and leave me alone,” Umber said dimly.

  The lift would have brought them all the way to the third level, just under the terrace, but as soon as they rose into the grand hall they saw Balfour and Oates waiting for them. “It’s happening again,” Hap cried out.

  “Bring him here,” Balfour said. “I sent Sophie up to get the elatia.”

  “Really, I’m fine,” Umber muttered. He tried to shake free of the guardsmen’s grip, but they led him to the large dining table and lowered him into a seat.

  “Thanks, boys. You can go back to the gatehouse,” Balfour told Welkin and Barkin. They took another mournful look at Umber and went back to ride the lift down.

  Umber tried to stand, but Balfour gestured to Oates, and the big fellow pressed down on Umber’s shoulders, keeping him seated.

  “Curse you, Oates,” Umber said.

  “Someone already has,” Oates reminded him.

  Balfour put a hand on Umber’s forearm. “Stay here, my friend, and drink the tea we give you. Then we’ll see if Fendofel knows what he’s doing.”

  There was a shriek from the stairwell as Lady Truden raced in. “What’s happening?” she cried. Nobody answered immediately, but when she saw Umber slumping at the table, she covered her mouth to muffle a gasp. “No—not again, so close to the last one . . . this will kill him!”

  “Just the encouragement we need right now,” Balfour said under his breath.

  Sophie appeared behind Lady Truden on the stairs, with her arms wrapped around the elatia’s large clay pot. “Excuse me, Lady Tru,” she said, brushing by.

  Lady Truden’s mouth was stretched wide, and her teeth were bared. “Sophie! Is that the plant from the wizard?”

  “Yes, my lady,” Sophie called over her shoulder. She passed the plant to Balfour, who headed for the kitchen.

  Lady Tru stepped in front of Balfour. Her chest was heaving, and her eyes looked ready to spill tears. “Wait! What are you supposed to do with it?”

  “Make a tea from seventeen of its leaves,” Balfour told her.

  “And this will make Lord Umber better?”

  “We hope so.”

  “Give it to me!” she pleaded, and when Balfour did not respond she wrestled the plant from the old man’s arms. “I’ll do it! I’ll make the tea! Were there any other instructions?”

  Balfour huffed and threw his hands in the air. “Boil the leaves until they turn black.”

  “Yes, yes!” she cried, running for the kitchen. “I’ll do it, and Lord Umber will recover!” Hap watched Lady Truden go, thinking back to the night when he’d accidentally spied on her. He remembered her gazing at the small portrait of Lord Umber that she’d secretly asked Sophie to paint, and how she had clutched it to her heart. He wondered if Lord Umber had any idea just how much she adored him.

  A pot clattered in the kitchen, and Lady Tru cursed the water for not boiling fast enough. That brought a chuckle from Balfour. As they waited, Oates lumbered to a sofa and stretched out with his hands clasped behind his head. Sophie retreated to a chair in the corner and gnawed at the fingernails of her only hand. Hap sat on one side of Umber, and Balfour was on the other, reminding Umber of funny things they’d seen together. Umber tried to smile, but his mouth seemed too weak to maintain it.

  The door to the kitchen squealed open, and Lady Truden burst out with a mug trailing steam. She moved as fast as she could without spilling it, and put it on the table in front of Umber. “I made it for you myself, my lord,” she said, squeezing his shoulder and whispering into his ear. She kissed the ear, and then straightened up suddenly, looking from side to side with thinly disguised alarm.

  Yes, we all saw that, Hap thought.

  “Where are the leaves?” Balfour said, looking into the mug.

  “I strained them out, of course,” Lady Tru snapped, her combative nature surfacing again. “Did you want him to choke on them?”

  Balfour scowled at her and slid the mug closer to Umber. “Come on, my friend. Drink it up, and let’s make this the last of your days of sadness.”

  Umber stared down at the tea, and then turned his face away.

  Balfour took Umber’s wrist and slid the mug into his palm. “Umber, I swear, I’ll have Oates pry your mouth open and we’ll pour it down your throat. For your own good, of course.”

  Hap leaned close and whispered. “Lord Umber, we have important things to do, you and I. Drink the tea.”

  Umber raised his chin and looked at Hap. He nodded, took a deep breath, and raised the mug to his lips. Lady Truden closed her eyes and clasped her hands. When Umber lowered the mug again, half the tea was gone. He wrinkled his nose, tilted the mug again, and drank the rest. “Yuck,” he said, sticking out his tongue. He shoved the mug an arm’s length away and leaned back in his chair.

  Hap stared at Umber, searching for the slightest shift in expression. Balfour squinted to sharpen his vision. The sofa squeaked as Oates sat up to watch.

  Umber’s face was impassive. Then one eyebrow flicked up, and he blinked his eyes wide open. His mouth puckered, and the expression that formed was one of surprise. He looked at Balfour, and Hap, and over his shoulder at Lady Tru.

  “What do you know,” he said.

  “What? What?” Tru said, as if she couldn’t breathe.

  “I think I feel . . . better,” Umber said.

  Balfour slapped the table with his palm and cried out. “Just like that? Wonderful!”

  “Better. Yes, better,” Umber said, wiping the corner of his mouth with his cuff. “Although it’s also left me a little . . . a little . . .”

  “Tired?” Balfour guessed.

  Umber’s mouth bent into a crooked, frozen grin. His eyes rolled up, and his body went limp, and he would have bashed his forehead on the table if Hap hadn’t clutched the back of his collar. Lady Truden choked on her own breath and clapped a hand across her mouth.

  “Is he all right?” Hap said, easing Umber’s head down.

  Balfour bent close and snapped his fingers by Umber’s ear. “Maybe this is how it works. Oates, can you carry him upstairs to one of the spare bedrooms?”

  Oates lumbered up the stairs with Umber across his shoulder like a sack of grain, with Balfour leading the way. When they were gone Lady Tru pressed her shaking fists against her forehead.

  Hap wondered if it was wise to speak. “I think he’s going to be better,” he finally ventured.

  Lady Tru’s eyes blinked open again. “Yes,” she said quietly. “
I believe he will.” She straightened her posture and cleared her throat, then folded her hands at her waist in her usual style. Hap watched the emotion drain from her features. “I almost forgot what I was in the middle of,” she said, and her voice had resumed its commanding tone. “Young man, I need your help.”

  “Me?” squeaked Hap.

  “Yes, you. I wanted Umber to come as well, but we should do this right away.” She turned to Sophie. “Run up and get your bow and a quiver of arrows, and meet us down here as soon as you can.”

  The passageway took them past the archives and storage rooms and plunged into the foot of the stony mountain behind the Aerie. Not far ahead was the side corridor that led to the chamber where the sorceress Turiana was kept prisoner.

  “Wait,” Hap said. Lady Truden, who held a jar of glimmer-worms to light her way, peered over her shoulder at him. “We’re not going to see the sorceress, are we?” he asked. That was perhaps the last thing on earth he wanted to do. Turiana had terrified him the only time he’d met her, when Umber brought him to her chamber seeking answers to Hap’s origins. It wasn’t just her ghastly appearance that bothered Hap. It was the way she taunted him, hinting that he was dead, which turned out to be at least partly true. And it was the scary knack she had for picking thoughts out of the minds of her visitors.

  Lady Tru pursed her lips and frowned. “No. I don’t want to visit that chamber any more than I have to. It’s my job to care for that abomination, you know. There’s no point to it, if you ask me. She stays in a trance all the while, and never eats the food I bring.” She moved on, still talking. “I want to show you something in the caverns. You can still see in the dark, I presume?”

  “Um. Yes,” Hap said.

  “Good,” Lady Tru said. “Strange boy,” she added under her breath.

  They walked through the caverns, winding among undulating pillars of rock. Countless more glimmer-worms crawled over the walls and ceiling, filling the space with a rainbow of dim light. The air was damp with the mineral scent of the underworld. They walked by the subterranean pond, where drops from the toothy stone above plunked musically into the water and transparent fish glided near the surface.

  The massive portcullis was ahead: a fanged iron gate with thick, tightly spaced bars that blocked the passage leading deeper under the earth. It held back the terrible creatures that lurked on the other side. They had served the sorceress when she held the city in the grip of terror, before Umber stripped her of her dark powers and locked her away in the Aerie.

  Before Lady Truden reached the portcullis, she ducked behind one of the largest stone pillars and beckoned for Hap and Sophie to join her. Sophie’s jaw tensed. On her damaged arm, where her hand should have been, she had strapped the pronged device that held the bow Umber had designed for her. The bow was already locked in place, and she reached over her shoulder and plucked an arrow from the quiver. Hap watched her, amazed at how her timid nature vanished at moments like these, when she transformed into a fierce defender. “What is it, Lady Truden?” Sophie asked.

  Lady Truden put a finger to her lips. “Wait,” she said. She peered around the edge of the pillar. “Do you smell that?” she said.

  “Ugh,” Sophie replied. Hap smelled it as well—something rotten and foul. His throat knotted.

  “I hear something too,” Sophie whispered. “Hap, do you?”

  Hap turned his head. He heard drops of water spattering stones all around. And something else: a sound from the darkness beyond the gate. It was slow, labored breathing, rasping in and gurgling out, at a deep pitch that suggested enormous lungs. Something big, he thought.

  “I brought you here because of your eyes,” Lady Truden hissed at him. “Why don’t you use them?”

  Hap swallowed—not an easy thing to do with his mouth so dry. He eased his head out from behind the pillar to look.

  It was dark beyond the portcullis. The glimmer-worms that roamed everywhere on the Aerie’s side of the gate did not venture past the iron bars, as if they sensed something wicked and dangerous there. His eyes penetrated the darkness and saw the natural tunnel that plunged deep into the rock and twisted to hide its depths from sight. With the cones of rock stabbing up from the floor and down from the ceiling—stalactites and stalagmites, Umber called them—the tunnel looked eerily like a throat, and those pointed stones like teeth.

  More thick columns, where the tapering stones had touched and merged over the eons, stood before the dark throat. Hap thought the sound came from behind one of them. And then he saw something move at the edge of one column. It was thick and round, and part of something much larger. “I see it,” he whispered.

  “What is it?” Lady Truden hissed back.

  Hap looked at her and shrugged. He stepped sideways, into the open, to find a better angle. There are strong bars between us, he reminded himself, but that didn’t stop his knees from twitching. When he glanced back at Sophie, he saw that she was with him, edging sideways with her bow raised halfway up.

  The part of the thing that he could see was level with his eyes. It moved, subtly and slowly, in time to the breathing. As Hap eased to his left, more of it came into view. It looked like a shoulder. “I think—,” he whispered, but then he cut himself off with a gasp as the creature leaned out, and an enormous head turned to peer back at him.

  Hap saw a small, silvery eye and a wide, brutal mouth with lips pulled back to bare jagged, broken teeth. The cry escaped Hap’s mouth before he could snuff it with his hand. “Oh!”

  The thing grunted and ducked out of sight. Hap grabbed Sophie’s arm and tugged her back into hiding next to Lady Truden. His heart pounded like a fist on a door.

  “Did you see? What was it?” Lady Truden asked with her back pressed tight against the rock.

  “It was a . . . I think it was a . . .” Hap panted. Then their heads all turned at a new sound: scraping, and the thump of heavy feet. Hap peered out again just in time to watch a hulking gray mass rush down the tunnel and disappear.

  “I think it was a troll,” he said, not whispering anymore.

  “As soon as Lord Umber recovers, I will tell him,” Lady Truden said. Her jaw tensed. “There are horrid things deep in those caverns, but none has approached the gate for years. Why now?”

  Umber was still sleeping hours later—peacefully, Balfour reported after checking on him—and eventually the others found their own ways to occupy their time. Sophie worked on her paintings in her studio upstairs, and Oates went to the gatehouse for a game of cards with the guardsmen. Balfour popped into the kitchen to bake something, while Hap wandered down to the archives. He expected a harsh, unpleasant reply when he knocked on the door, and Umber’s archivist did not disappoint him.

  “Go away! Or at least say why you’re bothering me.”

  Hap peeked through the small window in the door. He saw Smudge, wild-haired and dirty-faced as always, sitting at a large oak table with scrolls spread out before him. “It’s me, Smudge. Happenstance. I was wondering if you wanted any help with translations.”

  Smudge’s fierce expression softened a bit. Once he’d learned about Hap’s uncanny understanding of all languages—another gift of the Meddlers—he’d come to value Hap’s ability to decode ancient documents. “Fine,” he grumbled. “Come in.” He didn’t look up from his scroll as Hap approached the table, but he pointed at a dusty leather-bound book. “That’s a Dwergh book that somebody just sent us.”

  Hap picked it up. “Do you mind if I take it to the grand hall to read it?”

  Smudge looked up with his shaggy eyebrows gathered in a scowl. “Don’t spill anything on it.”

  “Also,” Hap ventured, “if you have anything about trolls, or the caverns under the Aerie, I’d like to read those, too.”

  Smudge shook his head and said something distasteful under his breath, but he plunged into the rows of shelves and returned with an armful of volumes. Hap scooped them up and headed to the door, eager to leave, but Smudge cleared his throat and said so
mething to him from behind. “Boy . . . tell me again how Brother Caspar died.”

  With a gulp, Hap turned back. He saw Smudge with his head tilted down and his eyes peering up, tugging at the mess of his beard with both hands. Hap bit his lip. “Didn’t Balfour explain?”

  Smudge nodded. His voice was quiet and ragged. “But Balfour wasn’t there. You were. I want to hear it from you.”

  Hap hugged the ancient books to his chest. “We . . . we went back to the island of Desolas, where your brother was trapped by the curse of the bidmis. A man who was chasing us fired an arrow at Umber, but it struck Caspar instead.”

  Smudge twisted his beard. “Did he suffer greatly?”

  Hap felt a lump form in his throat. They had all agreed that Smudge should never learn what happened next: that they had brought Caspar’s body to be devoured by the soul crabs, so those awful creatures could speak in his voice and reveal the location of the archives that he’d stolen from Lord Umber. They did it because the fate of another world might depend on the retrieval of those secrets. But now they had to live with the terrible notion that they might have committed Caspar’s soul to an even darker fate.

  “No,” Hap said, when he was able to respond. “That was the end of his suffering. I think he was relieved, in a way. To finally escape the bidmis.”

  Smudge smoothed his beard, coughed, and raised himself out of his perpetual hunch. “I see.” Something else was on Smudge’s mind, Hap could see, and so he waited.

  “I suppose I am Umber’s archivist now. For good, I mean. Since Brother Caspar will not come back.”

  Hap inclined his head. “Yes, I suppose you are.”

  Smudge squeezed his eyes nearly shut and scratched inside his ear. “Is it wrong to be glad about that, while I also mourn the loss of my brother?”

  “I suppose not,” Hap said, uncertain of his own reply. “I’ll see you later, all right?”

  CHAPTER

  10

  Hap was nibbling on muffins that Balfour had baked, with Smudge’s volumes pushed safely aside, when Sophie rushed down the stairs. A patch of fresh paint glistened on her smock. “Lord Umber is awake, but I think something’s wrong with him!”