The Keeper Read online

  To Michelle,

  who began this entire journey with a gift

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  UNUS: The Quag

  DUO: The Kingdom of Cataphile

  TRES: A Beastly Meal

  QUATTUOR: Bars of Bones

  QUINQUE: Blood from a Stone

  SEX: The Flight of the King

  SEPTEM: Luc Speaks

  OCTO: The Plight of Grubbs

  NOVEM: The King’s Secret

  DECEM: Nothing from Something

  UNDECIM: Gone

  DUODECIM: Seamus

  TREDECIM: The Cottage of Astrea Prine

  QUATTUORDECIM: A Room with a View

  QUINDECIM: A Question of Doors

  SEDECIM: The Keeper

  SEPTENDECIM: Reunited

  DUODEVIGINTI: Trapped

  UNDEVIGINTI: Looking Back

  VIGINTI: Words

  VIGINTI UNUS: The Sign

  VIGINTI DUO: The Other Elemental

  VIGINTI TRES: The Education of Me

  VIGINTI QUATTUOR: A Sorceress of Sorts

  VIGINTI QUINQUE: A Warning

  VIGINTI SEX: Lessons from Hel

  VIGINTI SEPTEM: For the Ages

  VIGINTI OCTO: Betrayal

  VIGINTI NOVEM: Adieu

  TRIGINTA: A Surprise

  TRIGINTA UNUS: Orco

  TRIGINTA DUO: The First Circle

  TRIGINTA TRES: Captaining the Furinas

  TRIGINTA QUATTUOR: A Pact

  TRIGINTA QUINQUE: Positive Parchment

  TRIGINTA SEX: Hyperbores

  TRIGINTA SEPTEM: The Mighty Finn

  TRIGINTA OCTO: Enemies beside Me

  TRIGINTA NOVEM: An Unexpected Visitor

  QUADRAGINTA: A Second Sorceress

  QUADRAGINTA UNUS: One Good Deed

  QUADRAGINTA DUO: Eris

  QUADRAGINTA TRES: Rubez

  QUADRAGINTA QUATTUOR: Death Becomes Her

  QUADRAGINTA QUINQUE: The Lost Souls

  QUADRAGINTA SEX: Vanished

  QUADRAGINTA SEPTEM: A Trusting Heart

  QUADRAGINTA OCTO: The Last

  QUADRAGINTA NOVEM: The Four Remaining

  QUINQUAGINTA: Taking Flight

  A Wugmort’s Guide to Wormwood and Beyond

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  “The past is but the past of a beginning.”

  — H. G. Wells

  “Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.”

  — A. A. Milne

  “To escape from the Quag means imprisonment forever.”

  — Madame Astrea Prine

  IT SEEMED BOTH fitting and even absurdly poetic that, hitched together like links in a chain, the three of us would die together. But having jumped off a mile-high cliff while being pursued by murderous beasts didn’t leave us much choice in the matter. We had literally leapt for our lives. And now we had to land properly or our final resting place would be down there. Far down there.

  We fell a long way, far longer than I would have liked. I glanced at my best friend, Delph, as we plunged. He was looking at me, not in stark fear but, admittedly, with a bit of anxiety. My canine, Harry Two, on the other hand, was grinning, ready for our adventure to begin.

  The reason we had jumped was around my waist. My chain, Destin, allowed me to fly. But I had never jumped off a mile-high cliff and we were plunging faster than I ever had before.

  I tried my best to manage the landing smoothly, though we thudded into the dirt with ample force. We all just lay there momentarily stunned. But I soon realized that while we were battered and bruised, we were alive.

  I unhooked Harry Two from his harness, which had allowed him to rest suspended against my chest. I watched as Delph slowly rose and stretched his arms and legs tentatively. Then I looked upward, all the way to the spot we had so recently vacated. If we hadn’t, we would assuredly be dead.

  The beasts that had been hunting us now stared down over the precipice. It was a herd of garms and a roughly equal number of amarocs. Even without being able to see them properly from this distance, I knew the scaly garms, with their own blood perpetually dripping down their armored chests, were breathing rage-filled flames at us. I’m sure the amarocs, giant wolflike creatures that apparently lived for no other reason than to kill, looked simply homicidal.

  Yet none of them appeared willing to take the mile-long dive that we just had. It was worth all the coins I would ever have that these creatures could not fly as I could. I looked down and patted the chain around my waist with the letters D-E-S-T-I-N imprinted on some of its links. It had saved my life on numerous occasions already, although I had not possessed it for that long.

  I could hardly believe it. I was in the Quag. Me, Vega Jane. I had lived my entire fifteen sessions in the village of Wormwood. It was all I’d ever known. I had been told that, other than the deadly Quag, it was all there was in existence. But I believed that to be a lie. There was something beyond the Quag, and I meant to find out what.

  I was not doing this for a lark. I strongly suspected that my parents and grandfather were on the other side of the Quag. While my brother, John, still lived in Wormwood, he was not the young innocent lad he used to be. The sinister and murderous Morrigone had seen to that.

  Thus, my mission in life was to get the three of us safely through the Quag as quickly as possible. It might be an extremely ambitious goal, but it was mine nonetheless.

  I breathed more normally and again looked over at Delph.

  “Wotcha, Vega Jane,” he said.

  “Wotcha yourself, Delph,” I replied, failing, despite our near deaths, to keep the smile off my face at having successfully entered the Quag.

  “You reckon those ruddy beasts can get down here?” he said.

  “I reckon I don’t want to wait around to find out, do I?” I shot back.

  I hoisted my tuck over my shoulder and Delph did the same with his. I kept Harry Two’s harness on in case we had to take to the air quickly.

  The map of the Quag that my friend Quentin Herms had left me was very detailed, but there were some troublesome lapses to it, now I could see. For one, it did not mention the cliff that we had just jumped from. And, correspondingly, I was not prepared for the valley we now found ourselves in. And yet I had seen Quentin enter the Quag one light. That’s really what started this whole journey for me. He must have known what lies in here.

  The map gave me general directions but did not provide a precise route to take through this place. I apparently would have to figure that out on my own. I also possessed a book, which I’d nicked from Quentin’s cottage, that explained the sorts of creatures dwelling here.

  Delph said, “The map has us heading generally that way.” He pointed. “Toward that mountain, way in the distance over there.”

  I hesitated and then said haltingly, “I … I don’t want to start that sort of trek at night. We need to find a safe place till first light.”

  He looked at me like I was completely mental. “Safe place? In the bloody Quag? Do ya hear yourself, Vega Jane? The Quag has many things, no doubt, but safe places ain’t one of ’em, I reckon.”

  I looked ahead at the flat, open expanse. There were trees and bushes and long, sweeping fields of grass slowly bending in the breeze that blew off the cliff. It looked peaceful and serene and not dangerous at all. Which told me that there were probably dozens of foul things lurking in wait that could and would kill us, given the slightest of opportunities.

  I looked down at my feet. Which way to step? I glanced at Harry Two, who was gazing up at me curiously, apparently waiting for me to make up my mind.

  It struck me, rather uncomfortably, that
I was to be the leader here. Blimey! Was I up to it? I wasn’t sure that I was.

  Far, far in the distance was a place the map called the Mycanmoor. It was described as a dull, dead sort of place that went on for a very long way, and which, unfortunately, there was no sure path around. The map was remarkably silent as to the exact perils that lay directly in front of us. But the book I’d nicked filled in some of these details.

  I slipped it from the pocket of my cloak and lit a bit of candle stub to read the pages more clearly in the darkness.

  Delph looked nervously over my shoulder. “ ’Tis nae a good idea to be lighting us up that way, Vega Jane.”

  “You know, Delph, you can just call me Vega. It’s not like we’re flooded with folks here named Vega. As far as I can tell, in fact, I’m the only one.”

  He took a long breath and slowly let it out, his eyes big as cup saucers. “O’course, right you are, Vega Jane.”

  I sighed and stared down at the page. I basically had to match up the map with descriptions of the places in the Quag where the creatures described therein dwelled. It would have been much easier had Quentin Herms conveniently placed all this information in one place, but he hadn’t.

  I felt my spirits plummet when I fully realized how ill prepared I was. And here Delph and Harry Two were depending on me to have a plan!

  Harry Two started growling. I looked down at him. His hackles were up, his fangs bared, and I quickly gazed around to see what was causing this reaction in my canine. But there was nothing in the darkness, at least that I could see.

  I looked at Delph. He said, “What’s got into ’im?”

  And then I noticed it. My canine was breathing heavily through his snout. He wasn’t seeing the danger — he was smelling it.

  And in my experience, foul smells usually led to foul beasts.

  I took a whiff of the air, wrinkled up my face and glanced sharply at Delph. “Do you smell that?”

  He took in a chestful of the air and then exhaled it. “No.”

  I thought rapidly. I knew that scent, or at least something close to it.

  And then the clouds in my mind slowly cleared.

  Poison.

  “What is it?” he asked nervously.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I replied, and I wasn’t. But I had smelled that sort of concoction before, back at Stacks, the factory where I was employed as a Finisher.

  I pointed to the left. “Let’s try that way.”

  “Shouldn’t we maybe fly?” said Delph. “Get there faster, won’t we? Let us … let us maybe see what’s coming, before … before it gets us,” he finished breathlessly.

  We would get there faster flying. But something in the back of my head said to leave our feet firmly on the ground. At least for now.

  I was one who tended to follow her instincts. They had served me more right than wrong over my sessions.

  And that’s when I happened to look up, and saw it. Or rather, them.

  A flock of birds was racing in perfect formation across the Noc-lit sky. This surprised me because I did not think that birds flew at night, but perhaps things were different in the Quag. As I watched the birds soar along, something very strange happened. From out of nowhere appeared a cloud of bluish smoke.

  The birds turned sharply to avoid it, but a few could not make the turn in time. And when these birds passed through the smoke and came out the other side, they were no longer flying.

  They were falling.

  Because they were dead.

  I stood there, paralyzed. Then I felt something grip my arm.

  It was Delph.

  “Run, Vega Jane,” he yelled. “Run!”

  As we ran, I looked back once and wished I hadn’t. It was a creature I had never seen for real before, but still, I knew what it was because a drawing of it was in the book.

  I glanced at Delph and knew that he too had looked behind him and seen what I had. Taking to the air would do us no good. Unlike the garms and amarocs, what was back there and coming on fast was something that could fly.

  It looked like our journey through the Quag was about to end before it had even truly begun.

  IT WAS A fiendish inficio behind us.

  An inficio was a large creature with two massive legs, a set of powerful webbed wings and a long scaly torso out of which grew a serpentlike neck capped by a small head, which was fronted by blazing venomous eyes, and a mouth with razor-sharp fangs. If that wasn’t enough to terrify sufficiently, the inficio also expelled a gas that would kill any who breathed it, like those poor birds.

  I had been right in not taking to the air. We would already be dead.

  Delph looked back as we sprinted along.

  “It’s comin’ lower. Comin’ to kill us!” he yelled. “Run!”

  I needed to do something. Anything. Why was my brain so muddled? I had just stood there as the inficio was coming to kill us. It was Delph who had told me to run.

  “Vega Jane!” screamed Delph again.

  Without really thinking, I reached into my cloak pocket, pulled on my glove, and then my fingers closed around the Elemental. In its present state, it looked completely unimposing, only three inches long and made of what looked to be wood. But when I willed it to full size, the Elemental grew into a spear taller than I was, and a brilliant gold. I had been given the Elemental — along with the glove that I was required to wear while holding the Elemental — on a great battlefield from long ago, by a dying female warrior. She told me it would be my friend whenever I needed one. Well, I needed one now. I needed to do something. I refused to simply … die.

  As I looked back, the inficio was closing fast, its clawed feet nearly on the ground. I saw its mighty chest fill with air and then it expelled a breath, which became a great cloud of blue smoke that at its center held death.

  Still running, I turned and prepared to hurl the Elemental, guiding it with my thoughts. When I let it fly, the Elemental zipped past the outer edge of the smoke, and the wake caused by its speed disrupted the cloud of poison, pushing it back toward the creature that had released it. The inficio instantly soared upward. Apparently, though the beast was the source of the deadly fumes, inhaling the smoke could harm it too.

  The Elemental flew back to me. Just as I grasped it, the ground under our feet gave way and we plummeted downward about fifty feet. Whatever we hit was softer than our landing off the cliff. Still, I felt myself gasp and I heard Delph do the same. Harry Two yipped once, but that was all.

  I rolled onto my back and saw the dark sky disappearing behind the cover of large branches and rolls of matted grass. These elements were being hoisted into place by what looked to be a series of pulleys and ropes. But that could hardly keep the inficio at bay. I expected it to burst through this flimsy cover and destroy us.

  But the inficio did not come. Instead, a heavy net fell over us and we became tangled in ropes so thoroughly that I could barely move. I looked to the side and saw that Delph and Harry Two were in the same predicament. As we lay there struggling, I heard something approaching. Delph obviously did too, because he grew quiet. I willed the Elemental to shrink and placed it in my pocket and then took off the glove and placed it in my other pocket.

  I reached out as far as I could and took Delph by the hand.

  In a low tremulous voice, I said, “Be ready for anything, Delph.”

  He nodded.

  Our gazes locked for a long moment. I think we realized that this might be it for us — two simple Wugs from Wormwood attempting to cross the insanely treacherous Quag. It seemed so absurd right now. We never stood a bloody chance.

  “I’m so sorry, D-Delph,” I said, my voice breaking as I finished.

  Surprisingly, he smiled and rubbed my hand gently, which sent shivers up my spine. He said, “ ’Tis all right, Vega Jane. At least, well, at least we’re together, eh?”

  I nodded and felt a smile creep to my face. “Yes,” I said.

  I looked beyond his shoulder and saw lit torches set into ho
lders on the rock walls. This gave the place a shadowy, vaporous illumination. It only added to my sense of fear and foreboding. What would be coming for us now?

  I looked past Delph and stiffened.

  There were dozens of pairs of eyes looking back at me from barely ten feet away. As my vision adjusted to the feeble light, I could see that they were smallish creatures with fierce, grimy faces and strong, toughened bodies. But their backs were bent and their fingers dirty and gnarled, perhaps from heavy toil.

  As they grew even closer I received another shock. They had mats of grass growing on their exposed arms and necks and on their faces.

  I heard Delph quietly mutter, “Ruddy Hel?”

  The column of little creatures transformed into a circle and they surrounded us. I heard one of them call out in a series of grunts. When the net started to lift, I realized that he had been giving the instruction to do so.

  The weight of the ropes lessened and we all three struggled to rise.

  Quick as a flash, the creatures whipped out weapons and held them at the ready: small swords, lances, pickaxes and long, lethal-looking knives. And about a dozen of the creatures held small bows with sharpened arrows tucked onto strings ready to fire.

  We could now see our captors quite clearly. Not only was grass growing on their bodies and faces, but their hair was grass as well.

  Outnumbered as we were, I thought a friendly if direct approach best. I said, “Hello. I’m Vega. And this is Delph and Harry Two. Who are you?”

  They all stared blankly back at me. Their faces were small and wrinkly, but their eyes bulged and were quite painfully red. I could see now that they were dressed in a hodgepodge of dirty clothing: trousers held up by stout rope, old shirts, frayed kerchiefs, stained vests, old coats and peaked hats. Some had on nicked metal breastplates. Others had metal coverings held on with leather straps over their thighs. One bloke sported a cap made of rusty iron.

  We drew back because the little creatures were moving forward, tightening by considerable degrees the circle they had formed around us. They were jabbering and grunting, and a pair of them poked us with their little blades.

  “Oi!” I cried out. “You can keep those ruddy things to yourselves.”