The Tide of Ages (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 2) Read online

  The Tide of Ages

  The Mira Brand Adventures, Book 2

  Robert J. Crane

  The Tide of Ages

  The Mira Brand Adventures, Book 2

  Robert J. Crane

  Copyright © 2017 Ostiagard Press

  All Rights Reserved.

  1st Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, please email [email protected].

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  1

  Adventurers need to eat.

  I mean, fame and glory and kudos is all well and good; those things do, of course, make up some ninety percent of the reason I ran away in January. But the congratulations of envious men and women do not fill a stomach.

  Hence where we found ourselves.

  The three of us had scoped out a large stretch of desert temple. It was well on its way to ruin, but by some stroke of bad luck the traps still worked. We’d squat-walked our way past mechanisms firing barbs at chest height (head height, for Heidi). We’d taken a frantic run down some fifty meters of corridor whose walls creaked and spilled sand at our feet, as the floor was retracted behind us. Carson had triggered the fall of a ball of spikes from the ceiling, throwing himself to the floor just in time with us as it sailed overhead—though I’d forever be prisoner to that action replay, haunted by just how close it had come to tearing bloody lanes down his back. Fortunately, this time, unlike one of our encounters with Team Cloak, a.k.a. the Order of Apdau, back in April, Carson had come away with even his sweater still intact. And that was good: this one was navy blue; about a million times better than that ugly avocado number he’d been wearing when he first introduced himself outside Piccadilly Circus.

  Now, just a touch short of breath, we had found our way to the final chamber of the latest temple on our travels.

  Carson ogled it. “Geez.” His hand was, as ever, glued to his manbag strap. Er, satchel strap. Get it right, Mira. Though I’d long wanted to prise his fingers from it, I had come to a grudging conclusion these past few weeks: the manbag made sneaking stolen objects through the streets of London incredibly simple. This one would be no exception.

  The chamber walls were angular, rising and widening to an open ceiling, blue sky high above with not a trace of cloud. The walls, made of crude blocks, were also seemingly just inches from collapse: sand spilled through gaps in a soft, but constant, trickle.

  The floor was a labyrinth—sort of. Our path was clear: a forking route jagged throughout the chamber, ninety-degree turn after ninety-degree turn. But the walkway was made up of the same crude blocks, filled with holes—and all around was empty space, leading down into a dark pit.

  Heidi inched to the edge, peering down. Her icy chill hadn’t softened much these past weeks. The smattering of freckles and the hair swept into waves reminiscent of an anime character could have been cute, but the effect was undercut by her eyes, which were hard and penetrating.

  “Spikes,” she muttered, eyeing the sharp forest rearing skyward from the trench. “How inspired.”

  “This whole place is like something from Indiana Jones,” Carson said.

  “No boulder chase, though,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t jinx it,” Heidi retorted, arms crossed.

  I glanced back between them. In the four weeks since fate had thrown us together, not a whole lot had changed. Carson was certainly much braver than he’d first appeared—but he still beheld every place we came to with a sense of wonder.

  Heidi remained unchanged, too. Except for changing her clothes (she no longer borrowed my ratty rock band t-shirt and over-large jeans), this could well be that very first afternoon all over again: she hadn’t softened to Carson one bit.

  At least now that I had come around to him, she didn’t make quite so many biting comments.

  “Do you think places like these inspired filmmakers like Spielberg?” asked Carson.

  Heidi snorted.

  Before she could contradict my assessment of her biting comments, I butted in. “I suppose he could be a Seeker. One who makes movies.”

  “Maybe he’s a spaceman, too,” Heidi said. “Maybe E.T. was a documentary.”

  Carson, fortunately, had learned to ignore Heidi, at least most of the time. His gaze shifted to mine, waiting for the rest of my thought.

  “I think probably Spielberg is just inspired by the real world. Plenty of temples like this one back home,” I replied.

  “Mira,” Heidi said, patience worn thin. “What’s the plan?”

  Plan. Right.

  I turned back to the chamber.

  The angular walkway shifting throughout the chamber floor did not look sturdy. And unlike the walls, which I at least would credit for holding back the desert’s sands—well, except that endless trickle—there was nothing to suggest the blocks would hold up to my weight. And even if they did, I doubted I could take more than a dozen steps without running into a booby-trap.

  Still, we’d come this far. And we needed coup—Seeker currency—to keep us moving forward, as well as to feed us (because no matter how regularly Carson offered, I was never going to let him pay our way through the world entirely on his inheritance). The object in the chamber’s center would see to that.

  Besides, I’d done a whole lot more dangerous things just recently. This would be a cake walk in comparison.

  “You two stay back,” I instructed. “I’ll tackle this.”

  I edged forward. We’d come out at the very edge, where the entire chamber was outlined with roughly cut sandstone, like the border in a picture frame. Short steps away, the walkway began: a square meter, each block, bracketed on either side by the spike pit. Where the trickle of sand from the towering walls had come down for long enough to form heaps, soft flows were dislodged, tumbling into the abyss like coins in penny-pusher arcade machines. A flurry here, a cascade there.

  Given enough time, might the desert empty into this room?

  If I dawdled long enough at the precipice, I might well see that day come.

  The gap between blocks stared up at me. Where the edges were rough, it widened and thinned with no pattern. In places there was an inch and a half clear; just thirty centimeters along, a five-inch span of stone was per
fectly flush.

  I pressed tentatively on the first block of the walkway with a single toe.

  “Is it safe?” Carson asked after some ten seconds of increasing the pressure.

  “Looks like it.” Of course, the only way to really know was—

  I stepped out, entrusting my whole body weight to it.

  The stone seemed to wobble … but it held.

  I loosed a short breath. Of course it had held. What kind of idiot builder would trap the very first stone? It would be at least three or four stones out before any funny business was pulled, to really lull the adventurer into a false sense of securityyyy—!

  As if reading my thoughts, the room was thrown into action. My stone rose, rock grinding on rock beneath me as I wobbled and was lifted, three meters, four—

  Carson reached out for me. Then Heidi was dragging him back, into the relative safety of the tunnel mouth we’d come from.

  The rest of the walkway shifted with me. Some of it rose; other sections remained where they were; but more still fell away entirely, descending into the mass of spikes waiting below.

  Five meters closer to the sky than I had been moments before, the platforms ceased.

  The walkway, just moments ago a clear if twisting path to the central dais, had now become a series of platforms surrounded by holes. The opening ahead led down to a block still in place—but most of the gaps did not.

  “Parkour,” I grumbled. “Why is it always parkour?”

  “They’re keen to give you cardio, keep you in shape,” Heidi said.

  “Not sure that I need help keeping the pounds off,” I said. You needed to eat to put on weight, and we hadn’t been doing much of that lately.

  Carson edged back out to the chamber’s edge. He peered up at me warily. “Are you okay?”

  “You don’t need to raise your voice,” Heidi said sharply. “She can still hear you.” To me: “What’s it looking like from up there?”

  “What was that?” I called down to her. “I can’t hear you!”

  She rolled her eyes, shaking her head over folded arms. Beside her, Carson’s lips twitched in a smirk.

  “I think the route is still pretty straightforward,” I told them, pivoting to survey it again. I mentally hopped from spot to spot. Totally doable.

  “Should I head around the side?” Carson asked. “I can watch where you’re going, give you feedback from the ground. Kind of like sticking your head around the side of a claw machine to watch where it’s going, you know?”

  “Knock yourself out,” I told him. “Just be careful.”

  “Right!” And with his chest puffed out, he took a step to the left—and hesitated. “Um. Which way should I go?”

  Truth be told, it didn’t really matter. With a claw machine, sticking your head around the side gave you a better vantage point than trying to gauge forward distance from the front. Here, I was the claw. I could see the length of every jump perfectly well.

  Still, I nodded and said, “Left is good.” Better to keep him occupied.

  “Right.” And off he went, kicking through mounds of sand.

  “Slowly,” I warned. Not that he needed it. Whereas I might’ve plowed through, Carson kicked a path clear, keeping close to the angled wall at his elbow.

  Heidi, arms folded, pursed her lips. “Today, Brand?” The teen rebel in me wanted to flash her an obscene gesture and take all the time in the world. But she was on-point, here. Better to get this over with and get us out of here ASAP. The smell of sun-baked rock was getting old—and I still didn’t trust one of the walls not to blow out and bury us.

  Of course, I couldn’t help but think that if I were one of this place’s builders, I would totally set up a trap in this room to do that very thing.

  Quashing the thought, I edged to the terminus of my block, sat down, then twisted until I was dangling from my hands … and dropped.

  I landed on stone, knees bent.

  It gave a gentle shudder, but no more.

  “Hold up!” Carson called. “I’m not in position yet!”

  “I can do these few just fine,” I told him.

  He grunted and sped up.

  “You don’t need to go so fast,” I called. “Just take it easy, all right?”

  On the other side, Heidi edged around, kicking clear a path of her own. One hand in a pocket, she trailed the wall with the other, fingers drumming back and forth along it.

  “Watch the clock, Mira,” she said. “It’ll be midnight by the time we get back to London at this rate.”

  “I’m moving,” I said, and turned.

  A two-meter empty stretch awaited. I didn’t dare calculate the size of the drop, in part because I didn’t wish to bring myself right to the edge and look straight down—but the height was irrelevant. A forest of spikes waited for me if I missed.

  The next block had risen. Hand- and footholds were etched into the side, facing me. Slightly too close together, they were just as rough as the rest of the stones used to construct the temple.

  Still, they were my only way forward.

  I backed up the very short distance I could. Braced.

  The first jump was always the worst. Always.

  I took one long step, forcing all my energy into it—and leapt.

  There was no moment of weightlessness, no long stretch of sailing through the air; one moment my feet were touching the platform, and the next I was clawing for handholds, my feet colliding just a fraction of an instant later.

  I didn’t rebound, didn’t miss.

  Usually I might feel tempted to take a moment’s pause, have a breather. I remembered that initial leap in the chamber when I’d acquired Decidian’s Spear, and how I had overshot. As soon as I clambered to safety then, I’d been granted a few seconds to collect myself.

  Here, I just wanted to keep moving.

  I climbed the handholds to the top of my platform. The next was at the same height, to my left, after another gap.

  I leapt—landed—teetered for a paralyzing moment, arms pinwheeling before I relaxed.

  “They really didn’t want to give a whole lot of space on these things, did they?” I breathed.

  “You want to tag me in?” Heidi called.

  “Mira can do it herself,” Carson responded.

  “I’m fine,” I told her.

  “I’m lighter,” she said.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Less weight means less momentum to overshoot with.”

  “Mira didn’t overshoot,” Carson said.

  Heidi responded with only one word: “Yet.”

  I pursed my lips. Suddenly I was determined to prove a point.

  I hurtled over the next gap, where a lower block remained amidst empty spaces leading to spikes on either side. Then, barely before I’d touched ground, I was leaping forward again, scrabbling for handholds—then dragging myself up, to the block’s top, where I paused for half a second to ascertain the way forward and took another jump, then another—

  “Ha!” Carson cried to Heidi. His trek paused as he tracked me with awed eyes. “Go Mira!”

  Pride flooded into the space alongside my determination. I twisted to shoot Carson a wry grin before taking another hurtling leap, landing again on handholds I clawed for.

  Heidi was less impressed. “You know, we don’t even need to be here.”

  Huffing as I dragged myself onto the top of my current block, I called, “And how do you propose we get money, Ms. Luo?”

  In the corner of my vision, visible between two raised platforms as she skirted the room’s edge, she lifted a short shrug. “We could sell the Chalice Gloria.”

  “No!” Carson and I both shouted back at once.

  Heidi shrugged again. “Fine. Have it your way. Keep snatching pretty baubles from decaying haunts, rather than going after the real treasures we have a line on.”

  So there was the explanation for the snippy attitude. This treasure wasn’t real. More to the point, this treasure wa
sn’t the one Heidi had brought up the night after we returned to London with the Chalice Gloria.

  And to be fair, I had to grant that I would be right there with her if it were me. Every day of waiting had been almost unbearable on my road to the Chalice Gloria. For Heidi, to be still waiting four weeks after we decided to make a go of it, to be still creeping through temples like this instead of making our way to the world where her own personal Chalice Gloria was held … it had to be frustrating.

  But we also had to be realistic.

  “Real treasures, real trials—they take money,” I told her. “You said it yourself; we need a spell.” I took the next jump, landing not quite as spryly as I would have liked. Sizing up the next, I took a backward step, coiling myself up like a spring—

  “And I’m pretty sure Lady Angelica isn’t going to open us up a line of credit,” I added.

  I leapt—and landed.

  Heidi’s snort was clear even over the sound of my boots on stone.

  I pivoted toward her. She wasn’t visible now; as I pushed closer to the chamber’s center, and the dais on the central platform, I put more and more raised platforms between us. And unlike Carson, who was pushing forward at the fastest yet safest pace he could manage, Heidi was skulking, slow and methodical.

  Plus she had that whole pixie thing going on for her. Easy to slip into a hiding place when you could still fit into children’s clothes.

  “I know it’s difficult needing to wait—but after this, we’ll be there. We’ll have enough to cover the spell from Lady Angelica, and as soon as it’s brewed, we can go. In the meantime, can’t we just work together?”

  Heidi didn’t answer directly, but what she did say was clear enough:

  “Time, Mira. I’m of a mind to just tackle this chamber myself.”

  I clenched my teeth. My showboating to Carson forgotten, I was flooded again with teenage rebellion, ready to prove her wrong.

  “You want us in and out? Fine. Then stop talking—”

  I took a flying leap—only, like that first moving platform in the chamber with Decidian’s Spear, I went too far. My feet skated over the edge of rough-hewn rock, the short distance compressed into what felt like inches, the tumble not long enough to sprawl into the rock over this next gap—