Venom and Song (28 page)
Tommy winced, but spiders did not come streaming out. Kat muttered, “No treasure.”
He joined her to look down at the chest's contents: piles of heavy-looking chains and hook-shaped shackles. In spite of the discomfort he felt at the discovery, Tommy couldn't help but pick up one of the chains. Or . . . at least he tried to pick one up. He handed the book back to Kat and put his arc stone on the ground so that he could use both hands. “
Uhhnnnh
, this is really heavy,” he said, holding it up. “I feel kinda bad for the prisoners who had to wear these.”
“Hold it up a little higher.”
“Okay, but like I said, it's heavy.”
He lifted the chain so that one of the shackles dangled in front of Kat's face. She held up the arc stone to get a better look. “There's writing . . . numbers: 6025 . . . and a strange little three-dot thingy.”
“Three-dot thingy?”
“Yeah, it's like a triangle with a dot at every angle but no lines to join them. Seems like a punctuation mark maybe.”
“Great,” said Tommy. “Can I put this thing down now?”
“Yeah, yeah, put it down.”
He let it drop back into the chest. It hit with a series of dull metallic thuds. He closed the chest and took up his arc stone once more. “Seen enough of this hall?” he asked.
Kat nodded. “Let's go back.”
They had passed several cells when Kat spotted something. “Wait, what's that?” She held up her light. There were some peculiar white posts sticking up toward the back of the cell, but it was hard to see due to a hunk of the cell wall that had fallen in.
“Looks weird,” said Tommy. “You want to go see what it is?”
“No, I did the chest. Your turn.”
“Great,” said Tommy. He had to open the cell door for this one. It moaned a protest but opened enough for Tommy to get inside. Sword ready, he entered the cell and moved carefully around the rough, fallen stones. The white posts caught the light of the arc stone and reflected back brightly. The posts were bowed slightly, and Tommy squinted at them. He recognized the shape, but the concept didn't fully materialize in his imagination.
He took another few steps and stepped around the largest hunk of stone wall. Then he froze.
“What is it?” Kat asked. “Tommy, what's wrong?”
He didn't answer.
Bones. A full skeleton. The posts were actually ribs of a massive, barrel-chested, humanoid figure. And then there was the skull. Much larger than an Elf's, especially the eye sockets, black and empty, and the jutting jaw filled with jagged teeth and fang incisors.
Gwar
.
Unnerved by the discovery, Tommy backed away. He backed hard into the cell door, sending a shooting pain down the middle of his back and slamming the door shut with a thunderous clang. An image filled Tommy's mind so ferociously that he cried out. He saw himself, shackled and chained, thrown into the cell, and the door slammed shut . . . forever.
“Let me out!” he yelled, pushing hard on the cell door and becoming all the more frantic when it wouldn't budge.
“Hold on,” Kat said. “It opens the other way.”
But Tommy didn't listen. In a frightened rage, he began to slash at the cell door.
“Tommy, stop it! I can't open the door with you swinging that sword around!”
At last, Tommy lowered the sword and backed away from the door. Kat kicked open the cell door, grabbed Tommy's wrist, and yanked him out of the cell. “Tommy! Tommy, what's wrong?”
“I'm sorry, Kat. I don't know what happened. I just kind of lost it in there. I thought . . . I thought I was trapped in there, trapped forever.”
“What did you see in there?” she asked. “What was it?”
“A dead Gwar . . . or at least that's what I think it was. I've never seen a skeleton like that. It was old and kind of twisted up. But the skull is what really freaked me out. Wait . . . how did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“You told me to stop slashing the door,” said Tommy. “In my head.”
“No, I didn't,” said Kat. “I was yelling at you.”
“You were loud all right,” said Tommy. “But it wasn't out loud. I'm telling you, I heard your voice in my mind.”
Kat was silent for several moments. “I can hear your thoughts,” she said. “But . . . I've never even tried . . . hold on.” She stared at Tommy and concentrated. She saw his thoughts floating before her, and focusing all her efforts she placed one of her thoughts. “Well, what was I thinking about?”
“Um,” Tommy looked at her strangely. “You want ice cream?”
Kat laughed aloud. “Oh my gosh! It works! I put my thoughts in your head!”
“Okay, see,” said Tommy. “But, you know, that's kind of weird.”
“Grimwarden told us the gifts would get stronger,” said Kat. “I wonder what yours will do.”
Tommy did not reply, but looked up and down the hallway.
So many cells
. “I don't like this place, Kat,” he said. “It's different from before. Before I was just scared. Now I feel heavy inside. Almost sick.”
“What about the other hallways?”
“Let's just go,” he replied. “I think we know what this place is.”
Other than the constant whistle of the wind, the flight home was silent. But with her newfound ability, Kat was able to communicate with Tommy by projecting her thoughts and then receiving Tommy's.
“Why would this bird take us to a prison?”
thought Kat.
And what's that prison doing out in the middle of all that tall grass or grain, or whatever it was? And why us?
Tommy answered inside his mind.
“I think I might know that last bit,”
thought Kat.
“Remember when the bird cut us both?”
Yeah, it still stings. Why?
“Well, I got a closer look at the parchment the bird seemed to be writing on with our blood.”
Okay, what was it writing
? asked Tommy.
“It wasn't writing. It was matching samples. ”
“Huh?” Tommy exclaimed out loud.
“That parchment was very, very old. When I looked there were two fresh bloodstainsâours and two old, dried-up bloodstains. Remember when the bird was staring so hard at the parchment? I think he was comparing our blood to the Old Ones.”
Like a test?
“I guess, maybe to see if we are really Elves.”
Or to see if we're really Elven lords,
Tommy added.
“I wonder what the bird would have done if we weren't.”
Remember the Gwar? I don't think it would have been pretty
.
A few hours before dawn, the scarlet raptor landed lightly on its scroll-filled roost. The creature allowed Tommy and Kat to clamber down. They left the bird's chamber and returned to the main gathering room in Whitehall. A fire still burned in the huge fireplace near the stairwell, but no one else seemed to be awake.
“Should we wake someone up?” asked Kat.
“Nah, especially not Grimwarden,” said Tommy. “He'd probably knock us into next week.”
“Best not to surprise the fiercest warrior in Elven history.”
“I'm not going to be able to sleep,” Tommy said.
“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” asked Kat.
“You ought to know,” said Tommy.
The two plopped down on a bench and set the book on a long board.
“Where should we start?” asked Kat, opening up the book.
“I don't know,” said Tommy. “Prophecies sound cool. Never liked history much.”
“Me, either,” said Kat. “Mr. Wallace would be angry if he heard me say that.” She felt a pang as soon as the words left her lips.
Tommy turned a few pages past the title page. He found the strange series of dates like in the book Mrs. Goldarrow had given him. He was about to flip past it when something stood out from the page.
“Why'd you stop?” asked Kat.
“Something's different,” he said. “I don't remember this Age of Chains, do you?”
She shook her head. “I might not be remembering it right, but I thought I remembered there being an awfully big gap between some of the dates.”
“Like something was missing,” muttered Tommy. “It's got to be this.”
“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Turn there.”
Tommy found the page and they started to read.
“Wait a minute,” said Kat. “What are we doing?”
“What do youâoh, right, touch the ink.”
Tommy put his finger down on the opening line of the page. Nothing happened. He touched various places on the page. Still nothing.
“Let me try,” said Kat. But her touch elicited the same response. “It must not be written with the same ink as the books we saw.”
“Or maybe . . . it was written before that ink was invented?”
“Looks like we'll have to read the old-fashioned way.”
Eyes greedily devouring the words, Tommy and Kat soon found that the story being related in this chapter tasted foul . . . tasted of misery and . . . treason.
After reading for a long time, Tommy slowly closed the book. He fought back tears and refused to look at Kat. Something about the shared experience . . . he knew if he looked at her and saw her crying, he'd lose it, too.
“The Gwar,” whispered Kat. “They weren't prisoners of the Elves. They were slaves.”
JUST BEFORE breakfast, Tommy and Kat gathered all the young lords together for a meeting. It meant giving away the location of the special balcony high up on Whitehall's main tower to the other teens, but it could not be helped. They needed a place where they could talk discreetly.
A pile of ridiculously large muffins waited on a platter on a shelf near the inner wall. Jimmy, Johnny, and Jett eyed them greedily.
“Don't make me smack your hand like Mumthers,” said Tommy. “Those are for after we talk.” But as good as the muffins looked, he couldn't think of eating with his stomach so twisted in knots.
“What's all this about?” asked Jett.