Chapter 43
Bound,thirsty, and famished, my head encased in darkness, I’m transferred off the dinghy and taken for a long, miserable boat ride, then thrown into a cold, damp space. I see images behind my hood—black blood oozing from exposed veins. Flaming spider webs. A popped cork. Symbols that etch themselves into cobalt ice. Gridlines and threads of diamond-white wire arching over a dark void.
Then I see Lila, floating in a column of shimmering green water, pale hair billowing. She drifts closer, holding me in her gaze, eyes large and inky dark. She slants her head as if she wants to speak and gestures for me to come closer.
I’ve lost her two sons. One she doesn’t even remember.
I can’t turn away, but I can’t face her either.
* * *
Footsteps echo on a stone floor.“Well, look what we have here,” says a voice I recognize as the visions continue to bombard me. Lightning forks across a darkened sky. I’m still not sure if I’m awake or hallucinating.
“I’ve always known you were out there, sweetheart,” Randy Lambert croons in his warm baritone. “Your mother and aunt always believed they were better than me. Smarter than me, because of their sterling pedigree, their Outsider educations. But who’s winning now?”
I grunt behind the gag. Randy continues. “I’ve discarded so many failed prospects but out of sentiment, kept Wade around much longer than I should have. He did have his uses. Knew his way around bog-holes—and your Outsider communications. I ought to thank you for ridding me of that nuisance at last.”
His footsteps echo as he circles me. I’m not in a small, enclosed cell, I realize, but a large, cavernous space. “You don’t want to end up like your poor aunt, do you? So much for the high and mighty Bouchards.”
Fabric crinkles. Randy kneels and speaks next to my ear. “You have a choice. Despite what your family and those fools on the Council wanted you to believe, our future as a people hinges on my plan. The Outsiders are destroying this planet. You know it. Tyler knew it. Your father dedicated his life’s work to studying the forthcoming death of this planet. Unlike you and your stubborn mother, both of them understood their plans were failing. That other means were required.”
The shock of his words soak in. Other means were required. What exactly had he promised Tyler and my father?
His voice drops to a silken whisper. “They finally understood that I was right. That all of their efforts were futile—that the Outsiders are unwilling to do what it takes to save this planet we all call home.”
My mind reels over the implications. Were Tyler and my father complicit in getting me here? Maybe Randy convinced them his purpose was pure. New anger blooms hot within my core, but I force myself to remain calm.
“Join forces with me, Rosalie, and our combined power will be immense. Unstoppable. Together we can heal this broken planet.
“Or—” I hear him resume pacing around me. “You can continue to thwart me and watch our planet die a slow and painful death. There is no Planet B, Rosalie. Not for the Outsiders, nor for the descendants of Atlantis.”
His words turn my blood to ice. Randy believes himself an environmental crusader, willing to destroy anything for his twisted cause. There is nothing more dangerous than a narcissist convinced of their own righteousness.
“Do you think you’ve been a challenge?” he continues. “Finding you was the hardest part. Your mother kept you out of sight behind her castle walls, kept you from accessing your power. But your pal Tyler knew. Your father knew. And no amount of her little games could keep me from the truth. That you are meant to be here. With me.”
Wherever we are, all the power he’s sucked out of the island hums around us. I gulp down the nausea and rage that builds inside of me and stifle the urge to draw upon it and strike him dead. Again.
“Since you set foot on Salttain,” he continues, deep voice melodic and deceptively soothing, “I’ve been testing you. Judging your capabilities. And I have to admit, I’m impressed. You’ve surpassed my expectations. But, I warn you, if you choose the wrong path, I will crack you like a walnut and discard the shell. I will find a better vessel.”
My spine goes rigid. I struggle to hide my trembling.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, sweetheart,” he continues. “We can forge an alliance based on mutual trust. Just because I lured you here through others you trusted, doesn’t mean my cause is unworthy. As I’ve pointed out before, brutal means are often required to achieve a noble purpose. The Outsiders cannot save this planet they have poisoned. It is up to us.”
My mind reels. He told Tyler and my father exactly what they wanted to hear. He misled them. Manipulated them. Hatred erodes the edges of my fear, but I lie still.
“I’ll remove your gag if you promise not to cry out,” Randy says. “We’re not on Salttain, as you may have surmised. No one will hear, regardless—but even if they did, they’re afraid to defy me. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
I nod vigorously. When the hood is ripped from my head, I blink against the shift from darkness. Randy’s frame is silhouetted against watery blue-gold light. The perimeter of the massive space is lost to shadow. Ghostly glyphs shimmer over the stone floor. I gasp once he removes the gag. “Where are we?”
“The archipelago has many small islands. Liam had his little chunk of rock. And I have mine. Welcome to Etchmick, my personal staging site and headquarters.”
Images whir past, superimposed over my normal sight. Voices whisper and rise to a crescendo. Indistinct figures twist and writhe in the shadows.
“What do you need from me?” I rasp, working hard to project an air of repentance—a sacrificial offering laid at the shrine of a god.
“Haven’t you surmised by now? Haven’t you noticed a theme here? You, your father, and Tyler all knew very well that the Outsiders are on track to doom this planet. And even if they change course, it’s probably too late to make the necessary changes. Yet you Diaspora fools persist with your science and your useless conversations with your secret friends. I offer something more.”
“I don’t understand,” I murmur, though I think I do. Somehow, Randy knows about our Climate Warriors group on Subreddit. What was that he’d said about Wade understanding Outsider communications?
“Don’t you? Do you think I’ve been living as a monk, cloistered here on this tiny outpost? I’ve been planning a long, long time, Rosalie. I even thought, for awhile, I’d let you all assist the efforts of the Outsiders to right things. But as I feared, they’re all a bunch of useless know-nothings.”
The wheels turn in my mind. All this time he’s been tracking us. Planting ideas, monitoring our plans. Biding his time. Then it dawns on me. Someone in that Subreddit group is a spy. It had to be Wade.
And I’d been feeding him information. Letting him know my every move.
Randy continues. “Shame on me for assuming you know how our people access power. I suppose no one has bothered to tell you.” His blue-green eyes glow with poisonous brilliance. “Power lives in the Earth’s crust—a geological nervous system. In the same way the Outsiders mine for iron ore or copper, the People of the Hand extract what lies below the surface. This vast storehouse of power is the only true means by which the injuries caused by Outsiders can be healed.”
Randy Lambert is an insecure monster with an ego as big as the solar system. The best way to disarm him is to cajole him—let him think he’s playing me like a cello. I force a note of wonderment into my voice. “What will you do with all that power?”
“You’re familiar with the legend of the Lost Continent of Atlantis? It’s a favorite old wives’ tale among Outsiders. To them, it’s only a story. A myth. But it’s the homeland of our people.”
“So, I’ve heard,” I say carefully, “but that doesn’t explain my part in your plans.”
Randy smiles. “If you’d been taught properly, you’d know that the five major families of the People have been at odds for eons. We built all of Earth’s great civilizations. We were the stuff of myths, the source of all human legends and folklore. We were known as the Great Ones. Until the day we destroyed our own home. And because of one screw-up—a failed experiment by a demented ancestor who tried to control the tides by adjusting the moon’s orbit, and instead unleashed a catastrophe—the Lamberts have been punished and silenced for millennia by your family: the Bouchards. As a result, our entire race has sunk into obscurity and servitude, our formidable powers harnessed like oxen.”
“Were you there?”
Randy laughs heartily. “Of course not! I’m not immortal and we’re not gods, just miners of the miraculous. This shadow existence, living like beggars on the scraps the Outsiders feed us, is beneath our heritage. We need to retake what is ours before they destroy it. But I can’t do that alone.”
His voice rises, reverberating through the cavernous space, ringing painfully in my ears. “Atlantis—or Doggerland, as it is truly named—must be raised from its watery grave.”
Images explode in my mind, blinding me. A massive land mass lifts from the sea. At the center of my inner storm, meaning seeps through.
Randy treads around me. “For that glorious event to occur,” he says, his voice a whisper, “many sacrifices must be made.”
A cataclysmic image flashes before my eyes: Cities falling into the sea. A landmass exploding in a rain of fire, its surface collapsing into a crater that sinks beneath the sea. But it’s not Doggerland.
It’s Salttain.
The images go dark. Randy continues to speak. “At certain junctures, individuals must be called upon to sacrifice for the good of the whole. The other four ruling families of Doggerland banded together to create five mighty Pinions to hold our ancient power in check and, thus, trap our great nation beneath the sea. Salttain Island is the location of the first Pinion. To begin the restoration, this island must be obliterated.”
Darkness overtakes me. Liam said I’d know what to do with his last whispered words when the right moment came. Is this it?
“I’m willing to give my life to the cause,” Randy says. “Are you?”
Glyphs I recognize from all over the island flicker and surge as if lit from within, but their meaning is lost to me. Lila’s voice whispers, Not yet.
“If I need to destroy that island and everyone on it to raise our homeland,” Randy says, “so it must be. It will trigger a chain of events that will destroy the other pinions. Atlantis will rise again!”
My palms pulse, the symbols on them throbbing, and at once I understand. The words Liam uttered are the names of the glyphs that have been carved all over the island—names that control access to the trove of power buried in the earth’s bedrock. They are potent wards put in place eons ago to defend one of the great Pinions.
The words are deadly. They protect the seal. But they can also release it.
Nizedha. Yunakti. Invati. Vimukti. Dyati. Hanti.
They are the words that sank Atlantis. Uttered by the right person, the words are a doomsday sledgehammer.
And that person, I realize with sudden clarity, is me.
Randy wants me to intone these words to eradicate Salttain Island and release the First Pinion.
I want to use them to stop him.
I search through clear memories and others that are obscured by a misty haze. When they altered my memories, did Mother and Aunt Millie hide the answer deep in my subconscious? Liam was wrong. These words are building blocks. There’s more than one way to use them.
Sweat pours from my forehead and stings my eyes. The skin of my bound wrists burns from chafing. The wrong combination will kill us all. And give Randy exactly what he wants.
In the dimness, Randy’s eyes gleam brilliant turquoise. I try to think past my hate and find the right combination of words to take him out. In the right hands, these words are weapons.
Weapons Randy doesn’t have access to.
But I do. The lethal words are my family’s heritage, passed on by Liam’s family, our chosen stewards. Randy, descendant of our enemy, must be prohibited from speaking them.
To do so, he needs me.
In the shadows, I see her. Lila, chained to the rocky wall of the cave. The words can be used for many things, she tells me. It’s the combination that matters.
Two runes form in my mind’s eye. I speak the ancient words. Nizedha, Yunakti under my breath.
“You’re quite the prodigy,” Randy says. “But you’ll never figure it out on your own. You have no choice but to join me.”
Nizedha, Yunakti, I repeat, over and over, until I see the pattern in my mind as a series of intersecting lines. The lines overlap in transparent layers, then align in a six-point star, the hexagon at its center a dark, empty hole as the deadly third word resounds in my mind.
Hanti.
I cling to my rage through the slimy coating of Randy’s persuasion. The incantation will be a surgical strike that takes him down and, possibly, me with him. I’ll save the island.
Maybe that’s why Aunt Millie left those keys all over the island. She was trying to tell me something. Maybe I am the key.
I focus on the linear star that hovers before me and take aim. If this is to be my last act as a conscious being, it will be worth it.
Nizedha, Yunakti, Invati…
If I’m wrong, Randy will be one step closer to unlocking the first of five ancient pinions that hold the old power under wraps.
For Charles Bailey. For Evan. For Liam. For Lila.
For Tyler. For Wade.
For myself.
Vimukti. Dyati… HANTI
The explosion rips out of me with concussive force.
A torrent of water crashes into the cave, sweeping away everything in its path. I’ve lost sight of Randy as I tumble. Something swims toward me. A white seal with luminous, obsidian eyes. It clamps what’s left of my tattered gown between its jaws and tows me like a barge away from the wreckage of what was once Etchmick Island, obliterated by only a few words.