The Celestial Globe: The Kronos Chronicles: Book II (29 page)

P
ETRA
’
S TROUSER POCKETS
were starting to feel full. In her right pocket was Tomik’s Glowstone, and in the left, a broken piece of steel and a wad of paper. She pulled out the title page and unfolded it, smoothing it over the desk in her bedroom. Astrophil stepped onto the paper.

“Kit thinks it’s an ordinary title page,” said Petra. “But this
is
special. I just don’t know why. You’re the expert on books, Astro. I want to know your opinion.”

“Hmm.” The spider crawled over the sheet, considering the artwork. Below the title was a map of the world, and below this were the words “Printed and sold in London by R. Field at the Sign of the White Greyhound, 1598.”

Finally, Astrophil said, “There is indeed something out of place.”

“What is it?”

He walked to the very bottom of the page. “This.” He pointed one shiny leg at a letter followed by a number: N6.

“N6?” said Petra. “It can’t be a page number.”

“Correct. A title page is never numbered, and if it were, it would not make any sense to use
N
or
6
or both.”

Petra asked hopefully, “Do you have any idea what N6 means?”

“None whatsoever.”

W
HEN
P
ETRA
opened the library door, Dee was dressed for the outdoors. He held out a cloak.

She whirled it onto her shoulders, glad to escape the library. Lately, her lessons with Dee had been tedious. Sometimes he would make Petra guess which hand he would lift in the air. He could spend a whole hour listening to Petra drone, “Left. Left. Right. Left. This is boring. Can we stop? Oh,
fine
! Right. Right . . .”

Petra tied the cloak. “Where are we going?”

“Sutton Hoo.”

Astrophil murmured,
I wonder what we shall find there. Almost everything Ariel said has so far proven to be important. Surely Sutton Hoo will be no exception.

When they entered the courtyard, Madinia and Margaret were waiting. There was a sack slung over Madinia’s arm, and Margaret carried a large wooden box drilled with holes. It was squeaking.

“What’s in there?” asked Petra.

“Mice.” Margaret passed the box to her father, who tucked it under one arm.

“Mice?” said Petra. “For what?”

“You’ll see,” said Dee. “Madinia, would you please open the Rift?”

Madinia set the bag down and slapped her hands together as if brushing off dirt. “I
love
doing this.”

“How do you open a Rift, exactly?” asked Petra. “Could we go anywhere? Like to Spain?”

“No, I’ve never been to Spain, and wouldn’t want to, either. It’s dirty and hot. I can only open a Rift to a place where I’ve actually been before. But I’ve visited lots of places.” Madinia was preening,
flattered by Petra’s curiosity. “Though I’d never seen Bohemia before I met you. Dad had to give me tons of instructions for how to open that Rift. You’re lucky, though, that you and Dad have got that mental-link thing, otherwise you’d be four-Gray-Men-times-helpless-you-equals-dead.

“Now watch and be amazed.” Madinia took a deep breath and thrust her fingers in front of her as if jamming them into a crack. With a twist of her shoulders, Madinia wrenched her hands apart. A line of light split the air, then vanished.

“After you,” said Dee to Petra.

She examined the space in front of them. She still saw the flagstones, and the arched gate leading to the street. “Nothing looks any different.”

“It is,” Margaret assured.

Petra,
Astrophil said anxiously,
why don’t you let one of them go first?

But she was already stepping forward.

One second, her foot was on stone. The next, it was on tall grass. One second, Petra heard the clattering of horses in the street. The next, birds were singing.

She was standing on a hilly field. She spun around. Petra was alone.

Astro, where are they?
Had they tricked her? Was she stranded here in Sutton Hoo?

Do not panic,
said Astrophil, though he sounded a little panicky.

Petra was about to lunge at the spot in the air she thought she had come from, when Dee and his daughters appeared.

Dee observed Petra, and his eyes were (yes, there was no mistaking it) mischievous. “Did you think we had abandoned you?”

“No,” she lied.

Madinia opened her sack and pulled out a clean horse blanket,
which she shook out over the ground. She sat down, and Margaret joined her, unpacking bread, cheese, cold meat, and green apples.

Her stomach growling, Petra stepped toward the blanket.

Dee blocked her. “Not you.”

“But I’m hungry!”

“I am unsympathetic.”

“Here.” Margaret tossed an apple to Petra.

“Have fun!” Madinia leaned back against the gentle rise of a hill.

“Come, Petra,” said Dee.

“You’ll like it,” said Margaret. “We’d go with you, but we’ve been here dozens of times.”

“It’s Dad’s hobby,” Madinia added.

“But it’s just a field!”

“Is it?” Dee quietly asked.

Petra might have chucked her apple at him, but then decided that would be a waste of a good apple. She bit into it, looking around.
I don’t see anything interesting,
she told Astrophil.
Only hills
.

The spider peeked through strands of her blowing hair.
True . . . but are they not rather small?

Petra chewed thoughtfully.
You’re right, Astro.
The swells of grass were also spread around them in a regular pattern, as if they had been made deliberately. “Is there something . . . hidden underground?”

“Buried,” said Dee.

Petra swallowed. Then she looked at the white flesh of her apple and remembered the orange-colored seed she had found by Thorn’s body. She bit again, crunching through to the core. She spat the fruit into her hand.

The seeds were brown.

“Can’t you
try
to eat your food properly?” said Madinia.

Petra put the fruit back in her mouth and ate it. She walked to the top of a mound. Dee strode at her side, carrying the box of mice.

“What’s buried here?” she asked.

“What do you think?”

And Petra could sense it, beneath her feet. “Metal. Gold. A lot of it.”

“Yes, and many other things as well.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

Dee paused. “When I asked Ariel for information about you, I got more than I bargained for. I knew—or as good as knew—that you were a chimera. But I was surprised by how much Ariel had to say. There is a great deal even I don’t understand. What do the heavens pressed into a ball have to do with you? Or a king of the air-swimmers? Or black teeth?”

Petra fought back a superior grin, remembering the inky blocks. She knew something he didn’t.

“But Sutton Hoo . . .” continued Dee. “This is a place I know well. For years I have come here in fair weather to unearth its secret treasures, at the queen’s command. Last autumn, I had hired diggers to excavate another one of the mounds, and they uncovered what seemed to be a doorway. But then the order came from the queen to travel without delay to Bohemia as an ambassador to Prince Rodolfo’s court. I haven’t been back to Sutton Hoo since.”

Dee led the way to a mound not far in the distance, one that had been stripped of grass. Petra readily followed, drawn by the desire to understand one more piece of Ariel’s puzzle.

They walked to the other side of the excavated mound, where piles of sandy dirt were heaped up by a square door about three feet wide and tall. It was fastened with an ancient iron lock, but it was corroded and green. Dee swept aside his cloak to reveal a
leather satchel at his waist. He pulled out a hammer, and swung it at the lock. It broke easily.

“Stand back,” he ordered, and heaved at the door, which opened with a splintery moan.

“Now for the mice,” Dee said, and lifted the crate’s lid to reveal many wire cages, with one mouse in each. He took a length of twine from his satchel and attached it to a cage. The mouse pressed its paws against the bars.

“What are you doing?” Petra asked.

He didn’t answer, but lowered the cage into the open doorway. Petra watched it descend until it disappeared in the shadows.

He is testing the air
, Astrophil explained.
Whatever is below, it has been there for hundreds of years. Sometimes dangerous gases build up in sealed sites like these. We will need to wait until the foul air has flowed out, and fresh air has filtered in.

After a few minutes, Dee raised the cage. The mouse was dead. He untied the string and attached it to the next cage. He lowered it, and Petra could hear the mouse squeaking below.

She said, “This is cruel.”

“It is necessary.”

After four more dead mice, Dee lifted a live one out of the cavern. Then he unpacked a stout rope from the satchel, knotted it around the base of a tree several feet away, and tossed it through the doorway. There was the sound of the rope hitting bottom.

“Wait until you see a light below,” said Dee. “Then follow after me.” He grasped the rope, and began to climb down.

When she saw the flickering of candle flame, Petra asked Astrophil,
What if Ariel is evil? Dee said she could be dangerous. We’ve been so focused on trying to understand what her words
meant
that we didn’t think that she might be trying to trap us.

But there is the light. Dee seems to be just fine.

Yes. Pity about that.

“Petra?” Dee’s voice echoed. “You will want to see this.”

And she did. Whatever Ariel was, whatever she meant, Petra had to know what was below. She grabbed the rope.

As she lowered herself, she watched the square of sunshine above her shrink. She glanced at the bottom, where Dee’s face was distorted by shadows.

When her feet touched wood, Dee drew another candle out of his satchel, lit it with his own flaming wick, and passed it to Petra. Tomik’s Glowstone would have worked far better, but she didn’t want to reveal it to Dee, so she raised her candle high.

They were surrounded by gold. As Petra looked more closely, she saw curved wooden beams arching above them, and treasure heaped on either side. There were shields decorated with winking garnets, and pins shaped like eagles. She saw scabbards with golden, twisting dragons. There was a great deal of weaponry, but most of it was iron, and had rusted.

Petra looked at the walls and noticed poles sticking out among the gold. She stepped forward to examine one. “Are these . . . oars? Are we in some kind of boat?”

“Yes,” said Dee. “The ancient kings of England were buried in ships. Tread carefully, Petra. The wood is hundreds of years old, and fragile. One false move could bring the ship’s roof down on us.”

But Petra had not walked very far before she gave a strangled cry.

She was face-to-face with a skull.

A ghost!
cried Astrophil.

The Gray Men!
Petra saw their bony faces. She felt the burning tongue.

Petra tripped and fell. Her candle went out, and she heard something metallic spilling across the floor. She spun around in terror. Dee’s candlelit face loomed before her. “I said to be
careful
.”
He grabbed her elbow and hauled her to her feet. “Do you
want
to be buried alive by rotten timber?”

“I saw—”

“This?” Dee swung his candle, illuminating a skeleton. It stood before them, arms crossed, wearing a golden helmet. Its jaw had fallen off, and lay by the bones of its feet. “It’s a skeleton, nothing more. Learn to control your fear, Petra, or it will control you.”

But Petra couldn’t look away from the jawbone. She saw then that it rested on a pile of coins mixed with scraps of disintegrated cloth. More coins were scattered into the shadows. She realized that she had tripped over the remains of a purse. Her heart still hammering, she bent to pick up a handful of gold coins.

Dee brought his candle close to her palm.

Each coin is unique,
Astrophil observed.
Each one bears a different mark, and language.

“They come from many countries,” said Dee. “From hundreds of years ago. Some of the kingdoms that forged these coins no longer exist.”

Petra stirred the coins with her finger, and then froze.

In the center of her palm was a disk stamped with a fierce bird. Its wings were flung wide, and it was hatched with lines. She touched the bird. “An air-swimmer?” she muttered. “Is an air-swimmer . . . a bird? Maybe, for Ariel, flying is like swimming through air.”

“King of the air-swimmers.” Dee nodded. “Changed into gold. Tell me, Petra: what is the history of this coin?”

Her finger still resting on the image of the bird, Petra closed her eyes. Only a few seconds had passed before they flung open in shock.