The Black Reckoning
Also by John Stephens
The Emerald Atlas
The Fire Chronicle
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by John Stephens
Cover art copyright © 2015 by Jon Foster
Atlas art by Grady McFarrin
Interior illustrations copyright © 2015 by Nicolas Delort
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stephens, John.
The black reckoning / John Stephens. — First edition.
p. cm. — (The books of beginning ; book 3)
Summary: “In the final book of the Books of Beginning trilogy, Kate and Michael must help the magical world prepare for the final war against the Dire Magnus, while Emma must travel to find the final book—the Book of the Dead.” —Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-375-86872-6 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-375-96872-3 (lib. bdg.) —
ISBN 978-0-375-89957-7 (ebook) — ISBN 978-0-385-75578-8 (intl. tr. pbk.)
[1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Space and time—Fiction. 4. Identity—Fiction. 5. Monsters—Fiction. 6. Prophecies—Fiction. 7. Books and reading—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S83218Bl 2015
[Fic]—dc23
2014023538
eBook ISBN 9780375899577
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v4.1
a
For my sisters
CONTENTS
Cover
Also by John Stephens
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE Captive
CHAPTER TWO The Archipelago
CHAPTER THREE The Crushed Leaf
CHAPTER FOUR Chocolate Cake
CHAPTER FIVE The Council
CHAPTER SIX The Bonding
CHAPTER SEVEN The Wizard Pays His Debt
CHAPTER EIGHT The New World
CHAPTER NINE Willy
CHAPTER TEN Big Rog’s Feast
CHAPTER ELEVEN The High City
CHAPTER TWELVE The Nest
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Refugees
CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Ferryman
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Witch’s Secret
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Carriadin
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Thing on the Beach
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Lost Tribe
CHAPTER NINETEEN The Prophecy Revealed
CHAPTER TWENTY The Prison
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Judgment
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Michael’s Army
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Fog and Ice
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Plunge
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Reckoning of the Dire Magnus
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX A Promise Kept, a Promise Made
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Goodbye, Farewell
Acknowledgments
Emma pounded against the giant man’s back. She twisted about to claw at his face and eyes. She kicked and thrashed. It did no good. Rourke had slung her over his shoulder, pinning her in place, and was walking with long, sure strides toward the flaming portal in the center of the clearing.
“Emma!”
“Emma!”
Two voices called to her out of the darkness. Emma craned her neck to try and see into the wall of trees that ringed the clearing. The first voice belonged to Michael, her brother. But the second—she had first heard it a few moments earlier, just before Rourke had dropped the glamour that had disguised him as Gabriel—the second voice belonged to Kate, her sister, whom she had thought was lost forever—
“Kate! I’m here! Kate!”
Emma twisted around to look past Rourke, to see how close they were to the portal, how much time she had….
The portal was a high wooden arch wreathed in fire, and they were close enough that Emma could feel the heat from the blaze. Three more steps, and it would be too late. Just then a figure appeared, stepping forward through the flames. It was a boy; he looked to be Kate’s age, or perhaps a little older. He wore a dark cloak, and his face was hidden by the shadow of the hood. All she could make out was a pair of brilliant green eyes.
Then Emma saw the boy make a gesture with his hand….
CHAPTER ONE
Captive
“Let me out! Let me out!”
Emma’s throat was ragged from shouting; her hands throbbed from pounding her fists against the metal door.
“Let me out!”
She had woken with a jolt several hours earlier—covered in sweat, Kate’s name upon her lips—to find herself alone in a strange room. She didn’t question the fact that it was no longer night, that she was no longer in the clearing. She didn’t even wonder where she now was. None of that mattered. She’d been abducted, she was a prisoner, she had to escape. It was that simple.
“Let me out!”
The first thing she’d done—after trying the door and confirming that it was indeed locked—had been to inspect her cell to see if it offered any obvious means of escape. It hadn’t. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made from large blocks of black stone. The three small windows, too high up for Emma to reach, showed nothing but blue sky. Besides that, there was the bed on which she’d woken—really just a mattress and a few blankets—and some food: a plate of flatbread, bowls of yogurt and yellow-brown hummus, some burned, unidentifiable meat, a clay jug of water. The food and water Emma had hurled out a window in a fit of pride and anger, an act she was now regretting as she was both hungry and very, very thirsty.
“Let—me—out!”
Emma leaned, exhausted, against the door. She felt the urge to sink to the floor, put her face in her hands, and sob. But then she thought of Kate, her older sister, and of hearing Kate’s voice as Rourke had carried her across the clearing. Their sister had returned from the past only to die right in front of them. And Michael, though he was Keeper of the Book of Life, had been unable to bring her back (leading Emma to question what, then, was the point in having something called the Book of Life). But she had heard Kate’s voice! That meant Michael must’ve succeeded! Kate was alive! And knowing Kate was out there somewhere meant there was no way, like zero-point-zero-zero-zero-zero percent chance, that Emma was just going to sit down and cry.
“LET—ME—OUT!”
Her forehead was still pressed against the cold metal of the door, and she was screaming directly into it, feeling the vibrations as she struck the door with her fists.
“LET—ME—”
Emma stopped; she held her breath. The whole time she’d been hitting the door and screaming, she’d been met with total, thundering silence. But now she heard something, footsteps. They were faint and somewhere far below her, but they were growing louder. Emma backed away from the door and looked about for a weapon, cursing herself once again for throwing the clay jug out the window.
The footsteps grew even louder, a heavy, rhythmic thud—thud—thud. Emma decided that when the door opened, she would rush past whoever it was. Wasn’t Michael always saying some
thing about the element of surprise? If only her big toe didn’t hurt so bad. She was pretty sure she’d broken it kicking the stupid door. The footsteps had stopped just outside her room, and there was the metallic rasp of a bolt being slid back. Emma tensed and got ready to spring.
Then the door opened, Rourke ducked inside, and all Emma’s plans of escape vanished. The giant man filled the doorway; a fly couldn’t have squeezed past.
“My, my. Aren’t you making quite the racket.”
He was wearing a long black coat that was lined with fur and had a high fur collar. He had on black boots that came nearly to his knees. He was smiling, showing miles of large white teeth, and his skin was smooth and unscarred, the burns the volcano had left on his face, which Emma had seen when he’d seized her in the clearing, now completely healed.
Emma felt the stone wall pressing against her back. She forced herself to look up and meet Rourke’s gaze.
She said, “Gabriel’s gonna kill you.”
The giant laughed. Really laughed, throwing back his head like people did in movies, the sound booming off the ceiling.
“And a very good morning to you too, young lady.”
“Where am I? How long have I been here?”
With Rourke standing before her, and the possibility of escape now essentially nil, Emma wanted the answers she hadn’t cared about before.
“Oh, just since last night. And as to your location: you’re at the far end of the world, and everything around you is shrouded in enchantments. Your friends could pass by and never know. You will not be rescued.”
“Ha! Your stupid spells aren’t gonna stop Dr. Pym. He’ll just do that”—Emma snapped her fingers—“and this whole place will fall apart.”
Rourke smiled at her, and Emma recognized it as the smile adults give children when they aren’t taking them seriously. Had Rourke’s face been anywhere remotely within reach, Emma would’ve punched it.
“I think, lass, that you’re overestimating your wizard and underestimating my master.”
“What’re you talking about? The stupid Dire Magnus is dead. Dr. Pym told us.”
Another of those annoying smiles. He was really asking for it.
“Was dead, child. But no more. My master is returned. You should know. You saw him yourself.”
“No, I didn’t—”
Emma fell silent. An image had come to her from the night before, that of the green-eyed boy stepping from the flames. And with the memory, a shadow seemed to fall over her. She struggled to throw it off, told herself it was impossible, that boy couldn’t be the Dire Magnus!
Rourke said, “So you remember.”
There was a tone of triumph in the Irishman’s voice. But if he was expecting this small, skinny, exhausted girl to cave right then and there, to cry and crumple and give up, he was deeply mistaken. Before all other things, Emma was a fighter. She had grown up fighting, year after year, orphanage after orphanage, fighting for small things and big things, for a towel without holes, a mattress without fleas, fighting boys who were picking on Michael, fighting girls who were picking on Michael, and she knew a bully when she saw one.
She stuck out her chin and balled her fists as if she might fight him then and there.
“You’re lying. He’s dead.”
“No, child. The Dire Magnus lives. And it is thanks to your brother.”
Despite her fury, Emma sensed that Rourke was telling the truth. But it made no sense. Why would Michael have done that? Then, in a flash, she realized what must’ve happened: that was how Michael had brought Kate back. That was the price he’d paid. And knowing what Michael had taken on himself so that Kate might live, the blame that others would heap upon him for unleashing the Dire Magnus on the world, Emma felt a surge of love for her brother, and it gave her strength. She stood up just a little bit straighter.
“So why isn’t your stupid master here, then? Is he afraid?”
Rourke stared at her, then said, as if having made a decision, “Come with me.”
He turned and strode out the door, leaving it open behind him. Emma stood there defiantly, not wanting to do anything that Rourke suggested. Then she realized that she wasn’t going to accomplish much by staying in her cell, and she hurried after him.
Directly outside her door was a staircase curving downward, and she could hear Rourke’s footsteps below her, moving away. So she was in a tower. She had begun to suspect as much. She started down, and on every floor she passed an iron door similar to her own. She also passed windows at her eye level, and as she corkscrewed around the tower, she saw a sea of jagged, snowcapped mountains stretching away on all sides.
Where was she?
The staircase bottomed out in a hallway made of the same rough black rock as the tower, and Rourke turned to the right without bothering to wait. Emma, sensing an opportunity, turned left, only to find her way blocked by a pair of black-garbed, yelloweyed morum cadi. Whether Rourke had placed them there or not, the creatures appeared to have been waiting for her. They stared at her, their decaying reek filling the hall, and Emma felt a terrible, shameful fear building in her chest.
“Are you coming?” Rourke’s voice echoed down the hallway, mocking. “Or do you need me to hold your hand?”
Cursing herself for being weak, Emma ran after the man, biting her lip to keep from crying. She promised herself that she would be there to cheer and throw flowers when Gabriel finally chopped off Rourke’s stupid, bald head.
He was waiting for her at a doorway to the outside.
“I know what you want,” she said when she had come up to him. “You want me to help you find the last book. Kate’s got the Atlas, Michael’s got the Chronicle or whatever. I know the last one’s mine.”
She wasn’t sure why she’d said this except that she hated having been scared by a single pair of Screechers—she’d seen hundreds before; these had just surprised her—and moreover, she wanted to prove to Rourke that she wasn’t just some kid; she knew things.
Rourke looked down at her, the dome of his head outlined by a perfectly blue sky.
“And do you know what the last book is?”
“Yes.”
Rourke stood there, saying nothing. An icy wind blew into the hall, but Emma stayed as she was, arms at her side. She would have died before admitting she was cold.
“It’s the Book of Death. But I’m not going to help you find it. You can just forget about that.”
“I will try to master my disappointment. But at least call the book by its proper name. Call it the Reckoning. And you’re wrong about another thing: you will be finding it for us. Though not just now. The Dire Magnus has more immediate plans. You asked where he was. Come.”
He headed outside and, again angry at herself for obeying, Emma followed.
They walked along the top of a stone rampart that outlined a large square courtyard extending off one side—presumably the front—of the fortress. Glancing back, Emma saw the fortress rising up black and massive, the tower where she’d been held pointing like a crooked finger at the sky. Below her, the courtyard was filled with thirty or forty Imps and morum cadi; nothing Dr. Pym and Gabriel couldn’t handle.
But even so, Emma could feel her confidence draining away.
The fortress was built atop a rocky spire that rose up in a valley surrounded on all sides by mountains, and from the rampart walls, she could see for miles. Gabriel and the others would first have to find her, then cross all those mountains, and even then, there’d still be no approaching the fortress unseen.
Rourke had stopped where the wall turned, and he motioned her forward. She steeled herself to show no fear.
“Forty years ago,” the giant man said, “Pym and others in the magical world attacked my master. They thought they bested him. Destroyed him. But he has power his enemies do not comprehend. As they will learn soon enough.”
He gestured for her to look to the valley floor, and she placed her hands on the rough stone wall and leaned forward.
She was looking at an army.
“The Dire Magnus,” Rourke said, and his voice trembled with pure, animal excitement, “is going to war.”
CHAPTER TWO
The Archipelago
“Quickly, children! There is little time.”
Kate and Michael hurried with the wizard through the narrow, twisting streets. The day, which had been warm and sunny minutes before, was now blackened by clouds, and a cold wind howled through the alleys, sending small tornadoes of dust spiraling upward.
“Where’re we going?” Michael demanded. He was panting, his feet pounding the cobblestones, the pouch of his bag—the one that the elf princess Wilamena had given him to replace the one he’d lost in the volcano, and that now carried the red-leather-bound Chronicle—slapping against his hip.
“The footbridge we crossed last night,” Dr. Pym said. “My friend is creating a portal.”
“A portal to where?” Kate asked.
“Somewhere safe,” the wizard replied, and then added, in a voice he perhaps thought was too low to be heard, “I hope.”
“But Emma—”
“We’ve spread the word. It is all we can do. Now hurry.”
The town they were running through was a collection of gabled houses and shops nestled against the river Danube, and some miles west of Vienna. A part of the magical world, the town did not appear on any map or atlas; it was hidden away, invisible to all save a select few. Kate reckoned it was the fourteenth or fifteenth (she had lost exact count) such place that she and Michael and the wizard had visited in the three days since Emma had been abducted and they themselves had fled from the elfish forest at the bottom of the world. There’d been the village outside Mexico City where they’d talked to three blind sorcerers who’d known every word the children would utter before they spoke, there’d been the smoke-filled restaurant in Moscow where dwarves in high black boots and long, cassock-style shirts had carried around silver trays laden with steaming pots of coffee, the floating village in the South China Sea where they’d seen glowing, ghostly shapes—water spirits, the wizard had said—drifting wispily over the nighttime surface of the water, the snow-covered village in the Andes where the thin air had squeezed their lungs, the fishing outpost in Nova Scotia—it had rained and smelled like fish—the wizarding school on the sun-hammered African plain where boys and girls younger than Michael, their heads shaved and wearing bright yellow robes, had run around laughing and playing a game that involved throwing balls of blue-green fire back and forth.