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

  Carson gasped, “Mira!”

  Then I was over, tilting forward as I fell—toward a pit full of spikes.

  2

  I snagged the red-and-yellow-canopied umbrella from my belt. Affixed with a metal loop, I pulled it hard and fast, snapping the ring—

  I thrust it overhead, hoping I wasn’t too late—

  It transformed, shaking loose from its glamour, extending to full-length—

  The ends slammed rock—and I hung from one hand, fall terminated.

  My legs swayed beneath me.

  Carson, just in view, breathed a long, rattling sigh. “Geez, Mira. I thought you were done for.”

  “What happened?” Heidi called from out of sight.

  “I almost fell,” I said. “No biggie.”

  “Are you okay?” To her credit, for all the snippiness she’d been showing, there was none of it in Heidi’s voice now.

  “Fine,” I said.

  It was a half-lie. Decidian’s Spear had landed hard, either end on the platforms ahead of and behind me. The sheer force was jarring and painful. Any harder, and I was pretty certain my arm would’ve popped out of its socket. My spine hurt too, as though it had been snapped like a whip, breathing unwanted room into the spaces between my vertebrae. I’d probably be four inches taller when I climbed back up.

  But despite the pain, quick reactions had saved me. I had to be thankful for that.

  I gripped the spear with both hands, and shimmied along to the blocky platform I’d been moving to. My feet on handholds, hands on the block’s edge, I dragged myself up, careful to avoid the spear’s tip. Only when I was safely on did I collect the spear, letting it reduce to an umbrella again.

  I cursed myself for losing yet another metal ring. Those things cost money we didn’t have, and that meant the spear wasn’t reclaiming its place on my belt anytime soon. Instead, I stuffed it in a pocket.

  Heidi had found her way back into view now. She was visible only as a sliver between platforms.

  “You’re still with us, then?” she called.

  “Unlucky for you, yeah.”

  If I’d said as much to Carson, he’d have come back with a heartfelt retort. But Heidi, the ice queen, responded, “Want to reconsider tagging me in instead?”

  “Not in a million years.”

  “Thought not.” Her eyes flicked away. “You’re almost there. Try not to send yourself face-first into the pit before you’ve got our treasure, hm?”

  “Gotcha.”

  On the opposite side, Carson said, “Do you need me to guide you?”

  I didn’t. But my arrogance had been brought into line again, and so I allowed Carson to guide the last few jumps to the central platform.

  It was much larger than the others, maybe three meters in each direction. Still rough, its surface and edges uneven and unpolished, pillars were erected upon it, like an altar. Script crisscrossed them. It reminded me of cuneiform: all hard lines and triangular jags, like someone had scratched them in with an arrowhead.

  Who the language belonged to, I neither knew nor cared. Ditto what it said. Right now there were more important things.

  I slipped through the gap between pillars, to the dais in the platform’s center.

  Red cloth trailed its edge and snaked around my feet. Embroidered with gold edging, it looked like a very upmarket scarf—and was a welcome splash of color in a place that otherwise looked like it had been designed by someone with red-green color blindness.

  Resting atop the plinth was our latest “bauble,” as Heidi had put it: a squarish plate of obduridium. The metal was dark, not unlike onyx, but mottled with light spots, as if it had vitiligo. Not the most attractive thing in the world to be eating breakfast from, its one saving grace, at least in my book, was that obduridium did not occur on Earth—meaning it would sell for a pretty penny indeed.

  I stepped forward to take it—

  My foot caught on the red fabric trailing me, and pulled.

  At the same moment, Heidi cried, “Oh—!”

  The air was suddenly alive with the noise of rock moving, grinding. A quaking vibration rocked my core—

  I looked up in panic as—

  Each wall of the chamber split, right down the middle. The blocks shunted aside, jostling like people in a crowd, with no pattern, no practiced choreography—

  And from between them poured forth a great cascading fountain of sand.

  3

  I had just moments to shout, “BRACE—!” before the assault hit. Like a waterfall crashing down onto rock and spraying in all directions in an uncontrollable rebound, the outpouring of sand became almost fluid. Careening over itself, a wave surged at me from each wall.

  I tensed, willing my boots to become magnetic, for the rock underfoot to do the same.

  Then it was over me.

  It was like being forced under the tide. One second my head was clear; the next I was battered by a tumult. Only this was not water: these were billions of tiny grains, gritty and tan, showering me from all sides as it poured through the pillars around the dais. They surrounded my face, dragging along it like gravel. My eyes snapped shut before anything could get in, and clamped tight.

  My mouth, though, wasn’t quite so lucky. It filled with sand, covering my tongue with coarse grains, finding itself into the spaces between my teeth. I coughed back, a blast of air to stop it pouring down my throat—but it was pressing into my nostrils too, filling my ears as I was forced sideways, the south-bearing wave pushing my legs in one direction and another wave shoving my torso from the opposite side, like one tectonic plate sliding under the other.

  I needed to get out; needed to get air.

  Forcing down the panicked animal instinct in me, I found my footing. I was still on the platform; it was still under me.

  Praying that I hadn’t been buried under enough of it that I’d never get out, I forced myself up. I reached skyward against the surge, battering my arm, trying to crush me down, down—

  It broke the surface.

  I kicked myself up after it. Like swimming, almost: one kick, then another, letting sand fill the spaces my feet left, using it to push higher, higher—

  I broke free.

  “—CLOSE TO THE WALL, CARSON!”

  “BUT MIRA IS—”

  Their shouts were lost to the noise. Though the stone grinding had ceased, the roar of the desert emptying into this chamber was deafening.

  I coughed, sand spraying out around me. With my free hand, I swiped at my mouth, fingers unplugging my nose, then scratching away the fine grains coating my eyes like a panda.

  It was almost up to my chin now, and still rising.

  I kicked higher, opened my eyes.

  How high the walls had split, I couldn’t be sure. The cleft was clear at the very tops, blue sky bleeding into the valleys. But the cascading fall of sand was so wide that I couldn’t see if the split drew all the way to the chamber’s “ground level.”

  Nor could I tell what had triggered it. My trip on the red fabric was suspect—but Heidi had loosed a short cry at the same moment. An echo of her trailing the walls with her fingers came back to my mind’s eye. Could she have tripped something there?

  At some point, I would try to answer it. For now, though, I needed to do three things. One, ascertain that my companions were safe. Two, guarantee my safety. And three, reconvene and get us out of here before we were crushed under half the desert.

  I swam higher, surveying. The pillars somehow held firm around me. A sliver of red fabric had been lifted by the sand pouring in, and peeked out just shy of my elbow. And a little farther on, just one edge visible, dark metal mottled by pale flecks—

  The obduridium plate!

  I freed another hand to grab for it, and gripped it tightly. Pouring in, the sand slammed the platforms. They held against it, piling with miniature dunes. But most of the rest poured into the spaces between, descending to the pit of spikes.

  I tried to swallow the lump that had fo
rmed in my throat. If Carson or Heidi had been standing in the wrong place when the walls split apart, they would have been forced into the hole in an instant. Impaled on spikes.

  I put the image out of my head. Kicking to free my chin again, I turned in an awkward circle. I couldn’t see Heidi or Carson. But I’d heard them, just moments ago; they must still be safe.

  As if on cue, Carson cried, “MIRA!”

  “I’m here!” I called back. My voice was shaky. I fought to keep a steely note in it. “I have the plate!”

  “Are you safe?”

  “Yes! What about you two?”

  “We’re in the corners by where we came in,” Heidi called.

  “Can you see each other?”

  “Just about!”

  I fought to orient myself. The roar came from every side, dampening Heidi and Carson’s shouts. I couldn’t figure out which way they might be—and in the tumultuous assault, plus the now unrecognizable nature of this chamber, I couldn’t tell which direction we had come in from.

  “Can you get back into the corridor?” I called.

  “No!” Heidi called back. “The wall split right above the entryway.”

  Of course it had. This was Temple Building 101: in the chamber housing your most prized treasures, traps should always destroy or impede exit. Just like when we’d laid our hands on Feruiduin’s Cutlass, now in Heidi’s possession, and the walkways leading out to it had all shattered. Only this time, we didn’t have a ladder to ride to a London exit.

  I thought as quickly as my addled brain would allow.

  “Okay,” I said, forcing that resolute note back into it. “I’m going to come meet you!”

  Heidi: “How?”

  “The pit! It’s almost full! If I wait long enough, I should be able to just run across the top!”

  “And then what?”

  “One step at a time, Luo!”

  I fought higher again. Now the pit had almost filled, the sand was piling higher even faster on the central platform. With barely any empty space to fill, almost the entire tumbling cascade from all four directions rebounded toward the chamber’s center. Toward me. A wide dune, constructed from all four sides, pillars shrinking as it grew taller, and I had to fight faster to stay on top …

  I thrust through the gaps between pillars. Bracing myself with one hand, the other using the obduridium plate as a kind of paddle, I squinted for the telltale hint of color that would give away Heidi and Carson.

  Not in either corner opposite me.

  I pivoted, twisting for the next corner—

  My heart skipped.

  Nothing. But there should be! I’d checked two; this was the third. Had one of them fallen?

  Then I edged around again, and saw a flash of navy blue. Carson! He’d gone left when we came in, which was now right from the perspective of the central platform. Meaning that Heidi was in that third corner, where I thought I’d seen nothing; Heidi, who was small enough to vanish all too readily.

  “I see you!” I cried.

  Carson called, “Are you okay?”

  At the same time, Heidi yelled, “Just get over here!”

  Phew. Still there.

  The pit was filled to the brim now. The sand rose inches every second. Waves of it rolled against the raised platforms, impressing into the crude handholds. Unless some ancient, all-powerful being came by to empty this chamber like you would unplug a bath, I didn’t think anyone was going to be using those handholds again.

  The hardest part was forcing myself out. The central platform was perfectly in line with the four splits in the walls, so I was faced head-on with a surge of rebounding sand rising to bury me again. Grit flew in a constant shower, hot and sharp, peppering my face. I squinted against it, teeth gritted behind lips pursed as tight as they would go, so no more grains could get in.

  Every second I waited was a second closer we came to drowning in it.

  I thrust out, making for the corner with the streak of blue that was Carson.

  The battle was immediate. Inside the altar, the pillars had redirected much of the flow. It had also buffeted from all directions, a net zero. Here, I was directly fighting it, like swimming up current in a powerful river—and it pushed back like rapids every inch, rising and rising. I lifted my arms overhead, dragging myself along, using the plate as a kind of shovel against the rising sands—

  Gradually, I came out of it, making headway against the sandy tide. As I slipped into the space between adjacent falls, the resistance lessened. The accumulation started to slow as most of the sand piled into the chamber’s center, blotting out the platform I’d been standing on less than two minutes ago.

  Finally, I came to the corner and burst out of the worst of the flow, paddling without a boat across the sea of sand.

  Carson was braced there. Leaned back as far as he would go, he kept lifting his feet to push himself higher as the desert floor reclaimed the border underfoot. Exactly how far down that was now, I didn’t know. I hoped not so far that the entryway was totally obscured, otherwise we’d need to make some lucky jumps to get back to London.

  “Mira!” he called when he saw me. Relief touched his eyes, but did not come close to even quarter-filling them.

  “I’m here.” I pulled myself to the edge. Carson reached out for me, and helped drag me to the wall.

  “I don’t know what happened,” he said.

  “Someone triggered a trap,” I said.

  His eyes widened. “I didn’t touch—”

  I shook my head, cutting him off. “It was me or Heidi. You still okay over there?” I shouted to her.

  “I’m having the time of my life,” she called back. “You figured out how we’re going to get out of here yet?”

  I bit my lip. I had one idea … but I wasn’t sure if it would work. This was the kind of thing I’d never really had a mind to test.

  “Take this,” I told Carson, passing him the obduridium plate. He took it automatically, slotting it into his satchel. Then my hand was in my pocket, pulling out—

  “How is Decidian’s Spear going to help us?” Carson asked, eyeing the umbrella.

  “I don’t know that it is. But we’ve got to try.” Extending an arm to him, I said, “Clamp onto my wrist and follow me.” Then I called to Heidi, “Head for the entryway, okay? And be careful.”

  Heidi responded with something suitably sarcastic, I was sure, though I couldn’t hear what it was over the roar of sand rushing in, giving the temple a dark, yellowed haze.

  We drew closer to the wall’s midpoint. The onslaught from above became stronger, trying to force us back. Rebounding grit sprayed us, and I squinted against it. Carson was at least shielded by his glasses, though I dreaded to think of the state of his lenses once we got out of here. Still, scratched lenses versus crushing suffocation … he’d get off lightly.

  Once we were as close as I could get us, I let go of Carson. Then, unfurling the umbrella, I opened it—

  “You’re going to shield us with that thing?”

  “We don’t really have any other options.”

  “But it’s …” Carson’s mouth hung. He looked to me with bugged eyes. “It’s just a bit of fabric!”

  “Actually, it’s glamour, an illusion. But I’m hoping that Decidian’s Spear’s glamour is at least somewhat solid … aha!”

  I inched forward, holding it out like a red and yellow shield …

  Sand buffeted against the surface like a genuine rainstorm, hard motes peppering the illusory fabric, the assault against the canopy growing fiercer and fiercer.

  And yet it never split. Never tore. This little umbrella simply forced back the full might of the descending flow of sand, so that after just two steps—I had carved out a safe space beneath it.

  Carson’s eyes bulged, somewhere between amazed and terrified. “No way.”

  “Quick,” I instructed. “I don’t know if this will hold up for long.”

  Carson ducked under the umbrella with me. Here, the roar
was louder still as the umbrella was buffeted, and Carson’s eyes bulged—terror at the thought that the glamour would fail and we would both be buried in an instant. And I was right there with him. Which was why it was important that we—

  “Move!” I bellowed.

  We pushed forward, keeping as close together as we could manage. I angled the umbrella against the flow, at first tilting forward as we moved into it like we were encapsulated in a bubble, then gradually bringing it directly overhead.

  When we’d travelled half a dozen steps into the flow, and the point we’d entered from had vanished in a veil of cascading sand, Carson gripped my elbow.

  “The corridor’s still here!”

  “I see it.”

  It had been partway buried; Carson would need to stoop to step inside, and make his way down the stone corridor. But the size was adequate for me to pass through without bending, and more than enough for Heidi to do so. Although, with the roof not too far above either of our heads, I suspected Heidi would be treated to a rare instance of feeling like a giant.

  Once we were fully alongside the entryway, I told Carson, “Go through. I’ll catch up once I’ve got Heidi.”

  He didn’t need telling twice. Already bowing his head and ducking in, he began a frantic if slightly awkward march down the dune that had started to plug the corridor’s mouth.

  I pushed forward, through the sand flowing all around me, until—

  I popped out of the other side to be greeted by a baffled look from Heidi, who was braced in an ever-rising corner.

  “Nice of you to be snappy about saving me,” she called.

  “You want to talk about being snappy, get moving yourself. We haven’t got all day.”

  Heidi moved. Her feet, small as the rest of her, had been partially buried, and she dragged them out, kicking up great plumes of dust alongside her. Her usual grace and finesse were gone, and she was almost as ungainly as Carson.

  When she reached me, I waved her under the umbrella.