Jane and the Raven King (10 page)

A
t the bottom of the stairs, everyone disappeared. Even the steps were gone. Jane was alone in the darkness. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that it was an empty stone hallway with shelves of dark shapes on the walls. The light was grainy, sawdust gray.

She heard footsteps behind her. Back there the hall split into three identical paths.
So I’m not alone,
Jane thought.
Maybe we were all transported away from each other to make it harder.
She opened her mouth to call out—then shut it again. What if the footsteps weren’t from one of the other children? Gaius warned that it would be dangerous. What if there were other things down here—like the fish or whatever it was in the swamp? Better to walk away from the footsteps, not toward them. So she did.

The hall turned to the right and then forked. The footsteps faded behind her. She heard the mumbled echo of voices—boys talking—and then silence again. She went left. After a long walk, she came to another two-way intersection. This time she went right.
This is a maze,
Jane thought.
We’re supposed to wander around in a dark maze until three of us randomly find keys…? What kind of silly test is this? What if I’m farther from the keys than someone else? What if the keys are on one of these shelves?
She crept closer to the wall. The shapes on the shelves were too dark to see.
This is what
old tombs look like,
Jane thought.
Catacombs—that’s what they were called: the places where people were buried in old cities a long, long time ago. Is this a cemetery?
The thought made her shiver.
So what if it is? They’re just bones.

This is not
just a tunnel, she told herself.
This isn’t even topside Earth. No telling what’s down here.
She leaned closer to the wall and closed her eyes as she extended her right hand.
Stop,
a part of her said.
I’ll touch a chattering skull. It will bite off my fingers and
…nothing. Her hand slipped straight through the dark shapes.
There’s nothing there,
Jane realized.
It’s some kind of optical illusion. The shelf is a hole.

Footsteps. Jane pulled her arm back and spun, the German boy, Gerhard, approached.

“Is this the correct direction, do you think?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I am going to go that way, okay?”

“Okay,” Jane said, and he continued down the right side of an intersection ahead. “Wait!”

He paused. “Yes?”

“Have you seen Manali?”

“No, sorry,” he said. “But I heard a girl screaming. In the wall. I don’t know if it was her. Okay?”

He left, and Jane steadied herself on the shelf.
Someone was screaming inside the wall,
she thought.
Maybe the shelf isn’t the right way to go after all. Maybe the keys aren’t in there.
She waved one hand through the dark lumps on the shelf. The hole there was
narrow and skinny, like a vent, maybe eighteen inches high. That should be big enough for me to squeeze in, Jane thought. But someone in there had been screaming. What if it was Manali? Jane had to help her.

Why?
another part of Jane asked.
You barely know Manali, and anyway, it probably wasn’t her. Keep checking the hall-maze; that’s what Gerhard was doing.
But that could go on forever, until Gaius finally announced that someone else found a key and passed the third test.

So what?

Jane swallowed.
Let someone else win. I already passed the first test; no one can say I didn’t try—because I did. They’ll never know that I didn’t want to go any farther. Why not wait here until it’s over? I’m not the right one anyway. I’m too awkward and dumb to save anyone…aren’t I?

“Jane?” Jane turned. Manali was smiling at her. “There you are! Gerhard said you were back here. I can’t believe how we got separated at the start. Are you all right? You look a bit pale. Do you need to sit down?”

“No, I’m fine,” Jane said.

“Great! Then how about it? Which way should we go?”

“I don’t know.”

“I say, left is right—of course, if we do that enough, we’ll just go in a circle, won’t we? Jane? Seriously, you look bad.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to walk around down here,” Jane said.

“Sorry, I don’t follow you…”

“Look.” Jane stuck her hand through the shelf.

“Wow, brilliant!” Manali said. “How’d you know to do that?”

“I didn’t. It was an accident.”

Manali waved her fingers through the shelf. “Do you think we can climb through there, yeah?”

“I think so, but—wait.”

Manali stopped. “What’s wrong?”

“Gerhard said he heard a girl screaming inside the wall.”

Manali pulled her hands back. “Where—here?”

“No, back there somewhere.”

“So what do you think we should do?” Manali asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re shaken up, yeah?”

“I guess so,” Jane said. “I was wondering if maybe I should stop and let someone else do this.”

“What?”

“I can’t save anyone, Manali. I promise, I’m just an ordinary girl.”

“We all are,” Manali said. “Especially Thomas. All of us except you—Gaius said so.”

“I’m serious. I don’t want to do this.”

“Why—because you’re afraid you won’t pass the tests or because you’re afraid you
will?
”

“Both, I guess.”

“Come on.” Manali took her hand. “We’ll crawl into the wall, and it’ll be fine. Probably tons easier than walking on water, yeah?”

“A girl was screaming in—”

“—inside the wall, I know,” Manali said. “If you keep arguing with me, there’s going to be a girl screaming out here.”

They both smiled, and Jane let Manali coax her to the shelf. Jane eased forward on her elbows and put a hand out in front; it vanished inside the back of the shelf.
She’s right,
Jane thought.
This is the way I’m supposed to go. There’s no reason to be scared.
She pulled her head closer, and more of her arm went in.
No reason to be scared. No reason. To be…

T
he room had the metal-salt smell of blood. It reminded Jane of the way her mouth tasted when she had a bloody nose. Manali helped Jane crawl out of the reverse side of the shelf. The room was squarish, with painted walls and a red-blue-green mosaic floor. The quiet, old pictures reminded her of a chapel. A little bearded man with goat’s legs was slumped against the wall near a golden door.
What is that called?
Jane wondered.
A centaur? No, that’s a half-man, half-horse.
Somehow Jane wasn’t surprised to see him. But what had happened to him?

She walked across pictures of bobbins in armor and trees and the dazzling sun—all made from tiny, colored tiles—and the goat-man raised his hand to keep her away.

“Stop,” he said. “Don’t hurt me anymore.”

“We aren’t going to hurt you,” Jane said, and she noticed a round hole—like a well—near the opposite wall. “Are you okay?” “No,” the goat-man said.

“I asked him my riddle.
She
answered it, the little Egyptian girl. But he didn’t. I’ve asked it so many times—each time Gaius needs to find another savior—and they all answer it. But he laughed at me. And he hurt me. He shouldn’t have been able to do that. Someone must be helping him.”

“Who hurt you?” Jane asked, but she already knew.

“The boy in the red coat.”

Manali said, “Thomas.”

“He came here before us?” Jane asked.

“Yes,” the goat-man said. “He was just here.”

“You said you asked him a riddle?”

“It’s my job,” he said. “I am the keeper of the second test.”

“What’s the riddle?”

“What do you leave behind as you make more?”

Manali shrugged. “That’s easy,” she said. “Footprints, right?”

The goat-man nodded. “It was harder five hundred years ago, when I invented it. The Egyptian girl answered it.”

“Two kids came through here already?” Jane asked.

“Yes. But only one left.”

Jane pointed to the hole in the floor. “What’s that?”

“Go see for yourself.”

As they went to the hole, Jane noticed the wall paintings. The colors were faded, like clothes that had been washed too many times, but there seemed to be a story. A girl met with a blind bobbin in a human city of airplanes and bombs. Next the girl walked over red water and then crept through a tunnel before standing in fire.

In the fifth frame, the bobbin—
Gaius,
Jane thought—gave the girl armor, and in the sixth frame, she fought a black shape that had been erased. The final, seventh picture was completely gone, as if it had been scrubbed off.
I wonder why.

At the bottom of the hole—ten feet down—the African girl that
had passed the first test lay dead on a giant pile of gold keys. Jane knew she was dead by the stillness—a strange stillness, as if she were a rock or a mound of dirt—and by the blood in her hair.

“Oh no!” Manali said. “We have to tell Gaius. She needs a doctor!”

There were ladder rungs on the side of the well—like those found in a sewer—and Jane climbed down. She pressed on the girl’s neck the way people did on television when they were checking for a pulse. She didn’t feel anything.

“I think she’s dead,” Jane said. The keys clinked when she sat back. “I’ll call him. Gai—”

“No, Jane. You find the key,” Manali said. “Whoever calls him is disqualified, yeah? Let me do it.”

“Look at all of these keys,” Jane said. “How am I supposed to know which one is right?”

“Try,” Manali said, and before Jane could argue, she called, “
Gaius Saebius!
”

Manali was gone.

A moment later, the African girl’s body had vanished too.
Thomas did that,
Jane thought.
He killed that girl. Why?
It didn’t seem real. She examined the keys. There were thousands of them. She closed her eyes and concentrated, but nothing happened. They all looked the same.

This is pointless,
Jane thought. She grabbed a key and climbed out.

“Tell Gaius to be careful,” the goat-man said.

Jane paused at the golden door.
This isn’t the right key,
she thought.
It can’t be. I just picked it randomly.
“Careful of what?”

“If Castle Alsod is destroyed, the Raven King will win.”

How could that happen?
Jane thought.
No one can find the Castle.
But she said, “I’ll tell him. After I try all these keys…”

The key fit. The lock clicked, and the door opened.

J
ane stepped into blackness—the kind of dark she only saw when she wore an eye mask late at night—and the door closed behind her. It was quiet.
Maybe all of those keys unlock the door,
she thought,
and the door is designed to open only three times. Or maybe I found the right key because I was meant to find it. No, that’s silly.

Gradually the blackness became gray in places as her eyes adjusted.
Somewhere in here is the third test.
The trial by fire, Gaius had called it. She stepped forward, reaching blindly. Another step and her shoe slipped off the edge of a drop—she lost her balance and fell backward, with one leg dangling over the edge. It didn’t touch bottom. There was some kind of cliff in front of her.

Two girls are dead now because of Gaius and his stupid tests,
she thought. It was strange to think about that. Jane had never known anyone who died before.
Except my grandmother,
she thought.
He killed her, just like he killed the bobbins. Just like he wants to kill everyone else. For no reason.

She scooted back and stood again, searching for walls. There were none. She could see now that she was crouching on a semicircle of rock at the edge of a cave with a low ceiling and a long drop into blackness. Out there—ahead of her—was another rock platform
just like this one, maybe forty feet away.
What am I supposed to do?
she thought.
Jump?

Behind her, the door opened in a burst of light, and someone stepped in. The door banged shut again.

“H-hello…?” a boy said in the darkness.

“Gerhard?”

“Ah!” the German boy said, relieved. “Jane, are you here? I cannot see anything.”

“Wait for your eyes to get used to the dark.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m right in front of you, but don’t move. There’s a drop all around us.”

“A drop?”

“We’re on a platform at the wall of a cave.”

Gerhard was breathing fast. “I think I see it now,” he said. “What are we meant to do?”

“I don’t know—maybe get to that platform somehow.” She pointed across the chasm to the other one.

“How?”

“I have no idea.”

Gerhard felt along the wall, and Jane said, “Be careful!” as he inched closer to the edge.

“Walk on water,” Gerhard said. “The needle in the haystack—you left the key in the lock, so that was no problem for me—but this does not look like a fire trial.”

“A trial by fire,” Jane said.

“Yes.”

“I know—maybe Gaius wasn’t being literal. Maybe he just meant that the third test would be hard.”

“This is impossible. No one can jump that far. And even if we can get over there, I can’t see what’s on the other side of that platform. It is too dark. We might be stuck out there, you know.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to jump,” Jane said, and noticed the ceiling. Sure, it was uneven rock, but it wasn’t far away—if she stretched, she could almost touch it—and there were handholds. Grooved, round handholds made out of rubber went in a straight line to the platform.

“Oh, no,” Gerhard said.

“We’re supposed to climb.”
Hand over hand,
Jane thought.
I’ve never been good at that. My arms aren’t strong enough, and this is way too far. He’s right—it’s impossible.

Gerhard jumped to grab the first handhold. “Climb out there? This is a joke, do you think?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Gerhard pulled himself up and dropped back to the platform. He laughed uneasily. “If I fall…”

“You’re right,” Jane said. “Let’s look for another way.”

“No. It’s just—if I fall, tell them I made it to the third test.”