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  Two lanterns of ghostfire had been lit and hung on either side of the window opening, lighting his way, and Timothy began to gradually decrease his speed as he prepared to land.

  “Almost there, kid,” he heard Edgar say, the words sucked away by the wind.

  The window grew larger and more defined as he approached. This was the tricky part, not to allow the spinning rotor blades to come in contact with the sides of the opening. Total concentration, he thought, slowing his forward progress all the more, now practically hovering before the open window. He felt the weight of the box that contained the Oracle of Vijaya at his side, but could not muster any sense of accomplishment this early morn. It had been tainted by the foreboding conversation of Lord Romulus and Mistress Belladonna.

  “Timothy, be careful!” Sheridan cried out in his metallic voice, snapping the boy’s wandering mind back to the here and now.

  He was drifting to the right, his spinning blades dangerously close to the window frame. Timothy’s heart raced as he tugged the controls, focusing again just in time to bring the gyrocraft to a graceful landing inside the workshop.

  That was too close, he thought, angry that he had let his mind wander at such a crucial moment. He was tired and anxious, but he knew that his lapse could have gotten him hurt, not to mention his friends. It troubled him deeply and helped him make up his mind as to what he ought to do next.

  “Caw! Caw!” Edgar cried as he flew around the gyro. “Had us worried there for a bit,” the bird said as he looked for a place to land.

  Silently Timothy unhooked himself from his seat restraints and climbed from the vehicle.

  “Glad to have you back, Timothy,” Sheridan said, his metal feet clumping closer. The mechanical man released a whistling cloud from the valve on the side of his head. “I’ve been holding my steam until your safe return, I must say.”

  Timothy didn’t respond, checking inside the netting at his side to make sure that the oracle’s case was in one piece. It appeared fine, and he removed the ornate box carefully.

  Ivar emerged from the shadows, ghostlike, his skin a luminous white. “Timothy,” he said, his dark gaze seemingly reading the boy’s troubled demeanor. “Is all well?”

  It was a unique trait the Asura warrior had, to be able to read his mood—to know when something was wrong.

  Timothy shook his head, moving past them all to make his way from the room. “I’m not sure,” he said, pushing open the door and stepping out into the hall. “But once I am, you’ll be the first to know.”

  * * *

  Timothy rapped on the door to Lord Nicodemus’s study before entering. Normally the enchanted door would have announced the arrival of a guest, but Tim was, as always, invisible to the magic.

  “Come in, Timothy,” Nicodemus called out.

  It is not an easy job I have been elected to perform, my boy, Nicodemus had said to him when they studied the designs of the Strychnos tower. The fate of so much weighs heavily upon my shoulders, but now you have come, and I see that there is much that we will accomplish together to provide for the safety of the world.

  Timothy had felt important that night, as if he suddenly had a purpose and was no longer an aberration to be pitied. The Grandmaster of the Order of Alhazred had recognized him—Timothy Cade—as being important. But now, stepping into the room, he wondered about the validity of those feelings.

  Nicodemus rose from his chair before the hearth of dancing ghostfire. There was no warmth from the supernatural flames, but they danced and shifted color within a magical field of containment. In addition to being a source of light, he’d heard that many used the mesmerizing movements of the supernatural flame as a means to relax. Nicodemus’s familiar, Alastor, had been curled up on his master’s lap and now jumped to the floor without a sound.

  “Thank the stars that you’ve returned safely,” the Grandmaster said, a concern in his voice that Timothy had not noticed before.

  The hairless cat padded across the ornately woven rug to rub against the side of the boy’s leg.

  “It appears Alastor is pleased that you’ve come home safely as well.”

  Home. Timothy had never thought of SkyHaven as his home before, had never really considered it a possibility. He’d always imagined it as a brief stopping point, before being allowed to return to his father’s house. He wasn’t sure if he really cared for the idea of living here permanently.

  Yet there was a warmth in the Grandmaster that Timothy had never seen before, and suddenly the suspicions he had carried back with him from the Strychnos citadel seemed foolish. Leander trusted Lord Nicodemus, and Timothy’s father had as well. The man was the Grandmaster of their order. There had to be a logical explanation for the insinuations and concerns of the other guild masters. There had to be. Both Nicodemus and Leander had told him about the pettiness and the infighting between the guilds. He could not allow himself to be taken in by idle gossip.

  Timothy was about to begin his report, his step-by-step review of what he had done this evening, when the Grandmaster cut directly to the chase.

  “By the looks of the box you have beneath your arm, I gather that your mission was at least partially successful?” Nicodemus asked, a wry smile upon his aged features.

  “Very successful, Lord Nicodemus,” Timothy responded, feeling a brief moment of pride.

  “You entered their domicile unimpaired, walked the halls unnoticed, and relieved them of a priceless supernatural artifact?”

  Timothy nodded.

  The Grandmaster played with the ends of his mustache. “And as you skulked about their tower did your ears happen upon anything of interest?” he asked. “Dire plots that would perhaps incriminate the Order of Strychnos in the attempts to take your life?”

  “Nothing about me,” he said, glancing away as he chose not to reveal the conversation he had heard. Nicodemus was so pleased that Timothy did not want to give the old mage the impression that he had doubts. He looked up quickly. “Lord Romulus was there, though. With some of his Legion Nocturne. He was having a meeting with Mistress Belladonna.”

  The pale, slender old man knitted his white brows. “Was he indeed? That is interesting. But not terribly unexpected. I imagine they’re all trying to figure out what to do about you.” Lord Nicodemus’s gaze ticked toward the ornate box in Timothy’s hands. “And you returned with a prize. The oracle?”

  “Yes, sir,” Timothy said quickly, presenting the box to the Grandmaster. “Proving that you were right about the theft.”

  “So it does,” Nicodemus replied, as he accepted the ornate, golden case that held the clairvoyant, disembodied head. “You’ve done remarkably well on your maiden mission, my boy,” he said, turning toward a circular table across the room that looked as though it had been hand carved from a single piece of veined, milky white stone. The mage crossed the room and carefully set his prize down upon it.

  Alastor hopped up onto the stone table, rubbing the skin of its hairless neck affectionately upon the box as Nicodemus prepared to open it.

  Timothy let out a long breath, as though he had been holding it for a very, very long time. “I have to say, I was a little shocked when I saw what the oracle was,” he said, caught up in the Grandmaster’s excitement. “A talking head, I couldn’t believe it.”

  Nicodemus pulled his hands away from the box’s latch and turned to stare at the boy, ice in his eyes. “Did you speak with the oracle?”

  Alastor continued to rub his furless body against the outside of the oracle’s case.

  A tremor of nervousness went through Timothy. “Well, yes. Or, actually, it spoke to me. When I found it, the box was open—and it spoke.”

  The Grandmaster narrowed his eyes as he digested this information. “How could it be? When you touched the box, the aura of negation that surrounds you should have disrupted—”

  “It spoke to me before I touched it. And when I realized I was . . . affecting it, I stepped away,” he replied. “Have I done something wrong?”
/>
  The Grandmaster was about to answer when the box containing the Oracle of Vijaya sprang open, the locking mechanism triggered by the attentions of the Grandmaster’s familiar.

  “Alastor!” Nicodemus snapped, startling the cat, which leaped down from the table to hide in a shadowy corner of the room.

  The oracle’s eyes fluttered open, and a smile blossomed across its withered face as it saw Timothy from across the room.

  “Hello there, Timothy Cade,” the oracle said cheerily as it began to look about its new surroundings. “I see you’ve succeeded in bringing me back to—”

  The head stopped abruptly when its gaze fixed upon Nicodemus, who loomed above the box. The oracle’s eyelids became hooded and started to flutter, its mouth twitching, just as it had done before, in the Strychnos citadel. It was seeing the future.

  The Grandmaster reached down to close the case just as the oracle’s eyes grew wide.

  “What have you done, Nicodemus?” it cried, sheer horror in its voice. “What have you done?”

  The old mage slammed the box shut, double-checking its latch. His movements were jittery, anxious, and Timothy felt his stomach churn and a chill go through him as he wondered what exactly it was that the oracle had seen.

  “The Oracle of Vijaya has been in the possession of an opposing guild for far too long,” Lord Nicodemus said dismissively, but it was several moments before he looked Timothy in the eye. “It must be examined thoroughly before it can be allowed to divine for the Order of Alhazred again.”

  Timothy slowly nodded, his misgivings over what he had heard at the tower again heightened. “Who knows what the Strychnine might have done to it?”

  “Exactly, Timothy,” Nicodemus said, pushing the golden case of the oracle to the far side of the table. Alastor had emerged from the shadows and now mewled at his master’s feet.

  “Well, you must be tired,” Nicodemus stated softly, stroking the head of his animal. “I suggest you return to your quarters for a well-deserved rest.”

  “I am very tired,” Timothy lied, yawning. Fear and doubt were like a fire racing through his veins. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt less tired. It would have been impossible to sleep even if he had wanted to.

  “Very good then,” Nicodemus said, escorting the boy to the door. “We’ll talk further in the morn, and discuss your next endeavor.” The Grandmaster smiled, pushing open the study door. “Good night, Timothy. You’ve served the Order of Alhazred greatly this night, and I’m sure your father would have been quite proud.”

  As Timothy walked the dimly lit corridors of SkyHaven he became convinced that his father would not have been proud of him at all. In fact he was sure the man would have been quite disappointed.

  His friends were waiting for him back in his workshop, so Timothy did not go straight back to his quarters as Nicodemus had suggested. Instead he began to descend through the floating island fortress to the only room in SkyHaven where he felt even remotely comfortable.

  As he made his way through the lonely hallways, he began to feel as though he was being watched. The boy was certain that it was all just nerves brought on by his newly aroused suspicions about his benefactor, but he could not help but search every shadowy nook and cranny that he passed for a pair of spying eyes.

  He descended the winding staircase that would take him to the room that Nicodemus had made his workshop, passing long, open windows that looked out onto the ocean that surrounded the floating estate. The storm had passed. If only the same could be said about the tumult in his life at the moment.

  Timothy pushed open the wooden door to his workshop and stalked inside.

  “So?” Edgar greeted. “Was the old bird impressed or what? Bet he’s going to name a street after you.”

  Timothy didn’t reply. He was lost inside his head.

  “Is something wrong, Tim?” Sheridan asked with concern. “Your rather cryptic words to Ivar before you left have certainly left all of us speculating.”

  Timothy did not feel safe in SkyHaven anymore. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he was letting his imagination get the better of him, that he should get a good night’s sleep before doing anything rash, the ominous words of the guild masters kept intruding. He had been ready to dismiss them, but when he saw the oracle’s expression as it looked upon Nicodemus, he knew with absolute certainty that something was amiss.

  He felt Sheridan’s metal hand fall gently upon his shoulder. “Timothy?”

  The boy sighed. “Tonight I heard some things about Grandmaster Nicodemus—bad things—and I think they may be true.” A kind of relief washed over him now that he had voiced his fears, and yet speaking them aloud also gave them a new weight.

  Ivar emerged from the shadows, arms crossed and eyes narrowed sagely. There was a strength and firmness in his manner, and Timothy took a deep breath and tried to draw on that, to learn from the Asura’s example.

  Edgar fluttered down to perch atop Sheridan’s head, careful not to scald himself on the escaping steam. “Do you know what you’re saying, kid? This is Nicodemus you’re talking about.”

  “I know what I heard—and saw, Edgar,” Timothy told his familiar. “I need to speak with Leander right away—he’ll know what to do.”

  The rook was strangely silent, studying him with quick cocks of his pointy head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Very,” he answered.

  “Then so am I,” Edgar responded. “Fill me in and I’ll fly to Leander’s house and—”

  “No,” Timothy interrupted. He glanced over at Ivar, who nodded slowly in understanding. “I don’t think it’s safe for us here anymore,” the boy explained. “I . . . I’m afraid for you, my friends, even more than I am for myself. We should all go. Right now. Before Nicodemus decides he didn’t believe the answers I gave him about tonight.”

  Timothy went to his flying machine, flipping the hatch open to check the engine and the fuel level. “We’ll use the gyro,” he said. “Dawn is just arriving. Maybe it will be a while before anyone notices that we’re gone.”

  “You expect that contraption to carry all of us?” Sheridan asked as he shuffled across the stone floor toward his creator.

  Timothy nodded, inspecting the inside of the gyrocraft. “Edgar can fly on his own, and if we’re careful, there should be just about enough room behind my seat for you and Ivar to squeeze—”

  Sheridan shook his head from side to side, gears clicking, servos whining. “No, Timothy,” he said, a soft hiss of steam leaking from one of his valves.

  “What do you mean, no?” the boy asked. “We have to leave.”

  “I’m too heavy, and you know it. Pile me into your sky craft and it will crash into the surf within yards of your departure. You must go without me.”

  The mechanical man’s words triggered a flurry of ideas. Sheridan was right; the gyrocraft would not support the weight of all of them, but with some adjustments, he thought he might be able to increase the craft’s power.

  “I have an idea,” Timothy said, going to his workstation.

  “You always do, my friend. But there is no time, Master Timothy,” Sheridan said. “If your suspicions are true, you need to reach Leander as soon as possible.”

  “But I can’t—,” the boy began, horrified.

  “You must,” Sheridan said with a curt nod of his head. “Come back for me later.”

  “And so we have a plan,” Ivar noted quietly.

  Edgar fluttered his wings, still perched on Sheridan’s metal head. “Not a plan that I like, mind you, but I don’t think we have much of a choice.”

  The flesh of Ivar’s body undulated with symbols of stark black, indicating his deep concern. “I will stay, and Sheridan will go,” he said with finality.

  Sheridan walked over to the warrior, reaching out to touch his arm. “Thank you, my friend, but I would still be too heavy for the flight. No, it is decided.”

  Timothy knew that Sheridan was right, but it
pained him greatly. “I will come back for you,” he promised. “I’ll find a way.”

  “I know you will,” Sheridan responded. “Now go on your way, so that you can return for me all the faster.”

  Without another word Timothy leaned into the gyrocraft and flicked a switch to activate its engine. The machinery whirred to life, the blades atop the craft and the small wing propellers slowly beginning to spin. Ivar went to the vast window, unlatched the wooden shutters and threw them wide.

  From the corner of his eye Timothy detected movement on the ledge outside the window. Something had been out there, watching them, listening to their conversation. He didn’t think himself quite so foolish about his paranoid feelings anymore. Ivar leaned out the window. He had seen it as well.

  “It is the Grandmaster’s familiar,” he said over his shoulder as he pulled his knife from the scabbard at his side. “Depart quickly. I will deal with the creature before it can inform its master of our plans.”

  The Asura sprang up onto the window ledge, but Edgar launched himself into the air. “Caw! Caw!” the bird cried out, black wings flapping. “Get into the flying machine with the boy. I’m better designed for heights. I’ll take care of the snooping cat and catch up with you as soon as I’m done.”

  Timothy watched as the rook darted out the window into the waning darkness. “Ivar, come on!”

  The Asura nimbly leaped down from his perch on the sill and cautiously approached the gyro.

  “Get in the back,” Timothy told him.

  Ivar stared at the machine with wary eyes.

  The boy reached out and grabbed the warrior roughly by the shoulder, giving him a shake. The Asura glared at him, but there was no time for subtlety. “Please, Ivar, you need to get in right now—we can’t afford to waste any more time.”

  The Asura grumbled something beneath his breath in the guttural tongue of his people and slid his bulky frame into the space behind the pilot seat of the flying machine. Timothy climbed in and gripped the gyro’s controls.

  Checking the instruments to be certain that everything was functioning properly, he spared one final glance at Sheridan. He could not help but think that the mechanical man seemed sad, even afraid, though his features were incapable of revealing much emotion. “I’ll see you soon!” Timothy yelled over the whine of the gyro’s engine.