The Drowned Vault Read online

  By N. D. Wilson

  * * *

  Leepike Ridge

  THE BOOKS OF THE 100 CUPBOARDS

  100 Cupboards

  Dandelion Fire

  The Chestnut King

  ASHTOWN BURIALS

  I: The Dragon’s Tooth

  II: The Drowned Vault

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by N. D. Wilson

  Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Jeff Nentrup

  Map art copyright © 2011 by Aaron Becker

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools,

  visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wilson, Nathan D.

  The drowned vault / N.D. Wilson. — 1st ed.

  p. cm. — (Ashtown burials; bk. 2)

  Summary: Cyrus and Antigone must track down Phoenix and the Dragon’s Tooth while facing a threat from the transmortals.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89573-9

  [1. Secret societies—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Apprentices—Fiction. 5. Magic—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W69744Dsm 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011051618

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Lucia, Ameera, and Marisol,

  three parts to my laughter

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One: Dash

  Two: Arachne and …

  Three: The Polygoners

  Four: Three Heads

  Five: Lockdown

  Six: Ordo

  Seven: Bruises

  Eight: Exodus

  Nine: Dung Patch

  Ten: Dixie Mist

  Eleven: The Prophet Daniel

  Twelve: Nova

  Thirteen: Rip

  Fourteen: Yesterhair

  Fifteen: Smooth Stones

  Sixteen: The Throne Room of Radu Bey

  Seventeen: Every Which Way

  Eighteen: In the Bonehouse

  Nineteen: Dracul

  Twenty: To War

  Twenty-one: Cigars

  Twenty-two: Wake

  Gratitude

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  THE MAN IN THE PINK SHIRT stopped outside his house. Four steps forward and he could be out of the pouring Parisian rain, sheltered beneath his stone stoop. Instead, he took one step back. The wet paper grocery bag he carried was disintegrating in his hands. His shirt was plaster-pinking his shoulders. Miniature rivers burbled and swirled around the cobbles beneath his feet.

  The man’s eyes slid up his front door, up the stone wall, up past the gargoyles spewing rainwater, and settled on an attic window built into the roof.

  In front of the glass, a broad spiderweb was bouncing and shivering in the rain. It hadn’t been there when he’d left that morning. The spider had done her job—just like the girl had promised. Someone, something was inside his house.

  Down one floor, a curtain moved.

  For the past year, he’d been afraid of this moment. And now that it had come, he was frozen, weakly staring at the danger.

  The man turned and tried to move casually up his street. Ten feet. Twenty. Then he dropped his grocery bag in the gutter and he ran.

  Behind him, he heard his front door open.

  For the first time in four centuries, Juan Ponce de León thought he might die.

  He ran faster.

  one

  DASH

  THERE IS ONLY ONE BEGINNING. There is only one place and one moment where the world, life, and time itself began. There is only one Story. It began in the dark. It has many middles and many ends. You and I could chase it for lifetimes and only make it longer by our living. It is too sprawling for these pages and too big for this mouth.

  We begin in a middle. We trace a smaller arc.

  This is a story about darkness. About lightness. About blood, and about family. About losing, about finding, about danger and dying, about what happens when the world remembers the oldest of its secret things (and what happens when the world forgets).

  This is a story about Cyrus and Antigone Smith.

  The sun dumped golden heat onto the flat back of Lake Michigan. It baked unwatered grass and persecuted Wisconsin cows. It sent men cursing back indoors and blistered unprotected skin beside a thousand swimming pools. Frogs, young and foolish, exploded while crossing sizzling asphalt streets. But the forests were happy.

  Cyrus Smith was one year and one slice of summer taller than he had been when the Archer Motel had burned and he had first seen Ashtown’s green lawns, its piece of the Great Lake, its airstrip, its mazes, its Burials, and its occasional hot-air-balloon battles. To Cyrus, one year ago was a different reality. One year ago, he hadn’t known anything about the world. Now, well, he knew one or two things. But not enough for Rupert Greeves. Not enough to leave Ashtown on his own. Not even enough to travel with Rupert. He was stuck at Ashtown with hundreds of people who pretended they couldn’t see him, dozens who truly hated him, and a very few he could call friends—and they were mostly staff.

  Cyrus stood two miles from Ashtown, behind a rope laid on the ground, beside an old moss-covered stone marker, beneath a canopy of maple trees. He was sweating in the shade, waiting for someone official to arrive with a stopwatch. He sighed and rolled his head slowly on his shoulders, trying to ignore the heat. He handled it better than some, but this was beyond even his threshold—the last roar of summer. Fruit was ripe. Insects were fat—ready to lay their eggs and die. Soon the leaves would bake and brighten, but for now, hidden in the glowing green canopy, cicadas whirred and whined like distant weed-eaters. All around him, miniature droplets rained gently down from the maples as armies of gorging aphids ate and ate and ate. With his eyes closed, Cyrus could feel the sugary insect honeydew settling onto his face. With both hands, he swept it away in his sweat.

  His bare arms were dark and lean from training. His bare feet curled impatiently in the grass. He’d shaved his head three weeks ago, but his thick hair was quickly shagging back in. In the center of his tight white tank top, a small black monkey was boxing inside a yellow shield. He reached up and felt the cool serpent body of Patricia, his patrik, the first of the strange creatures he had met in this new life. She was his invisible necklace, unseen whenever her tail was tucked firmly into her mouth, as it was now. Hanging from a ring around her body—made just as invisible as the snake—were two keys. Cyrus fingered them—one small and silver, one large and gold. Beside them on the ring was an empty silver sheath. Last year, when William Skelton had tossed the key ring to him, the sheath had held the Dragon’s Tooth.

  When he and Antigone had arrived at Ashtown, they had been heirs to the outlaw William Skelton. They had been Smiths, the last two members of a long and trou
blesome line. They had been swept away, disliked, ignored.

  Now it was worse. Now they were the Smiths who had lost the Dragon’s Tooth. At best, they were failures. At worst, they were traitors. No matter what, they were the reason Phoenix had the tooth—the cause of Ashtown’s fear.

  Cyrus blinked sticky eyelids, lost in uncomfortable memory. He looked up into the maple branches and watched a red-winged blackbird hop along a twig. The bird was always there, always nearby. It chirped at him and he whistled back at her—her, even though he knew the bright splashes of red on the wings meant it was a he. But to him, it was a she. He didn’t know why.

  Stretched out on a bed of moss, Antigone groaned and stretched. The whistle had wakened her.

  “Cy.” Antigone stood slowly and leaned against a tree trunk. Cyrus ignored her; he knew she could not be ignored for long.

  “Yoo-hoo. Cyrus. Rus-Rus!” Antigone’s black hair was as long as it had been in years, actually reaching past her jaw. She tucked it back behind her ears, knuckled her eyes, and crossed her arms. Her skin was almost as dark as Cyrus’s, and in the shade, her eyes glistened blackness. “You don’t have to do this. And you know Rupe isn’t going to like it one bit.”

  Cyrus squinted through the trees. In the distance, down a long, slow hill, he could just see the stone buildings of Ashtown. Beyond them, the glistering lake. A two-mile run to the shore. Two-mile swim to the buoy. Two-mile swim back from the buoy. Two-mile run back up the hill to the starting line. He could do it. Even in the heat. Maybe.

  “Cyrus …”

  Cyrus looked at his sister. She had leaf rubble clinging to her hair. “Rupe can tell me how much he doesn’t like it when he gets back. It’s not like he’s been training us.”

  Antigone sighed and wiped her damp head with a forearm. “I don’t get the hurry. We made Journeyman on time. We can go for more whenever. Or not. Who says you have to make Explorer at all? Rupe says it can take years. We don’t have to rush.”

  Cyrus didn’t answer. He could hear an old engine through the trees behind him. He turned as a rusted-out Jeep emerged between the trunks and stopped, weeds rustling against its bumper. Rupert Greeves was behind the wheel.

  Cyrus held his breath and let his cheeks inflate. Rupert pushed scratched sunglasses up into a scruff of short hair on his head and locked eyes with Cyrus. Then the big black man slid out of his seat and moved slowly toward Cyrus. A lean and freckled passenger hopped out on the other side, but Cyrus didn’t pay him any attention. He was waiting for a sign of Rupert’s mood—a flicker of anger, a twinkle of approval. But the Order of Brendan’s Avengel gave him nothing. The man’s dark face was stone, if stone could have a swollen cheek beneath a small butterfly bandage. He was wearing tall canvas safari boots and worn shorts with bulging pockets. His white linen shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, revealing a tangled nest of scars on his chest, and his sleeves were rolled short, snug around his biceps. A short beard strengthened his already strong jaw.

  Rupert stopped beside Cyrus and stared down toward Ashtown. Then he nudged the rope on the ground with his boot. Cyrus inhaled and waited. He could feel the big man’s heat next to him.

  “Hey, Rupe,” Antigone said. “Welcome back.”

  “Hello, Antigone.” He didn’t sound angry. At least not at her.

  “Any news about Phoenix?” Antigone asked.

  Rupert shook his head. Cyrus clawed at the earth with his toes. The tall freckled kid—more of a man, actually—was stretching on the ground beside the Jeep. He hopped up and moved to the rope beside Cyrus.

  Antigone pushed off her tree trunk and straightened. “Just in case you were wondering, this wasn’t my idea.”

  Rupert waved her quiet. Then he thumped a heavy hand on Cyrus’s back.

  He looked down at Cyrus and raised his eyebrows. “No work on Cartography? Mazecraft? Navigation? Greek?” He sounded more amused than disappointed. Cyrus almost smiled. Rupert continued. “Sleep-fasting? Reliquary? No? Nothing?”

  Cyrus raised his hands, relieved that he wasn’t in real trouble. “Rupe, you know I need someone to help me with that stuff. I hate being inside, and all the books Antigone reads make my head hurt.”

  “How could they make your head hurt?” Antigone asked. “I don’t hit you with them.”

  Cyrus plowed on. “How am I supposed to study stuff on my own? I don’t know how to do that. I’m supposed to have a Keeper. I mean, I do have one, but he’s always gone.”

  Rupert’s eyes sagged, suddenly tired. He raised a scabbed hand and scratched his short beard. “You want a new Keeper?”

  “No!” Antigone jumped, shaking her head at her brother. “No, we don’t! We’re fine with you. We like you.”

  Cyrus shrugged. “I just want to come with you. At least sometimes. To, you know, help fix things. With Phoenix …” He looked up at Rupert. “We’re always stuck here. But when I’m an Explorer, I can go where I want. So I train.”

  Laughter flashed across Rupert’s face. “You train? Is that what this is called?” Rupert sighed and nodded at the man with the freckles. “Cy, Tigs, this is Jeb Boone. His first time back to Ashtown in two years. He’s going to run with you, Cyrus.”

  “Boone?” Cyrus turned. “You’re Diana’s brother?”

  Jeb grinned. He was a lot taller than Cyrus. His hair was even more strawberry than his sister Diana’s, and his bare shoulders—as broad as Rupert’s, though not as powerful—were swarming with an ant colony of freckles. “Yeah, Diana’s my sis, and she’s told me stories. I like what you’re doing, little man, testing at the 1914 levels. It’s gutsy. Hope you don’t mind me joining you.”

  Cyrus was confused. “Aren’t you already an Explorer? How old are you?”

  Jeb glanced at Rupert, and then back at Cyrus, blue eyes sparkling. “I’m nineteen. And yeah, I’ve ranked up. So call this a retest. Curiosity, I guess.”

  Rupert laughed. “He’s doing me a favor. I’ve asked him to pull you out if you drown.”

  “You know, Cyrus.” Jeb cocked his head. “You are only thirteen. There’s not much point in trying for this stuff until your body’s ready.”

  “Don’t bother yourself, Jeb.” Rupert slapped Cyrus’s shoulders. “The boy’s a Smith. He’d walk on glass if you told him not to. He only learns one way—crash and burn, yeah? Now get loose … I don’t have all day to sweat out here.”

  Cyrus watched Jeb bounce and stretch his legs.

  Antigone glared at him. “Stretch, Cy.”

  “It’s hot. I’m ready.”

  Jeb laughed and puffed a drop of sweat off his nose. “I know what you mean.” He nodded at Rupert. “Anytime.”

  Rupert Greeves pulled a stopwatch out of one of his deep pockets.

  Cyrus worked the ball of his left foot into the ground. He bent his knees and leaned forward, coiled, ready to spring. His limbs were long, and they loved to cover ground. Beside him, Jeb bounced in place.

  Next to any thirteen-year-old in Ashtown—or in his old school in his old life—Cyrus would have been confident. But next to a nineteen-year-old named Boone? His nerves were tingling.

  Breathing slowly, he looked down the hill between the trees and tried to focus on the distant water. He didn’t have to beat him. Just beat the clock. It wasn’t a race.

  Cyrus tried to relax. But if I do beat him …

  Just the thought, the mere possibility of triumph, tightened every muscle fiber in his legs. Somehow, Rupert knew.

  “Your own pace, Cyrus Smith. Not his. Run your own pace.”

  Right.

  “Marked in three,” Rupert said. “Two … one … off!”

  Cyrus sprang forward, legs straining, splayed toes grabbing at the ground. His long strides settled quickly into pace. Fast. Really fast for the distance. He tried to even out his breathing and relax his shoulders. He could hold it. He knew he could.

  On his left, Jeb Boone swooped past.

  Cyrus didn’t have to tell his legs what to do. He was already accelerating,
fighting to match the faster pace. Grass and leaves flew up behind Jeb, and Cyrus sputtered and spat in the older boy’s wake.

  Antigone Smith winced. Her brother was nuts, and always had been. He was practically sprinting. He was going to kill himself. Beside her, Rupert Greeves, Avengel to the Ashtown Estate of the Order of Brendan, Keeper to Cyrus and Antigone Smith, sent a burst of laughter rattling through the trees.

  “You know,” Antigone said, “that was really mean.”

  Rupert looked at her, widening his eyes in innocence. “Mean? Antigone, I’m only doing what’s best for him.”

  Antigone crossed her arms. “And you just had to get Diana’s brother?”

  Rupert grinned. “Cyrus wants to be trained? Today, I have arranged for him to run faster than he has ever run.” He turned and watched the two shrinking shapes. “He’ll find a new speed. I’m giving him that. And when he finally collapses in failure, he’ll have found a little more wisdom. I’m giving him that as well.”

  Antigone watched for a moment. “He’s going to die.”

  “He’ll try to,” Rupert said. He turned to the Jeep, knocking his sunglasses down over his eyes. “But Jeb won’t let him. Come on. In this heat, the wise ones drive.”

  Antigone followed him, eyeing his battered cheek. “What happened to your face? You had to have gotten close to Phoenix if you were getting your face smacked.”

  Rupert grunted as he slid back behind the wheel and fired the engine. He only fit because the Jeep had no doors and his left knee was jutting out the side. Antigone grabbed the roll bar and hopped in next to him. The Jeep was ancient. She could see grass through holes in the floor.

  “Come on, Rupe.” She smiled at the big man. “You’ll feel way better if you tell someone. Was it animal, vegetable, or mineral?”