Bedtime Story (34 page)

Grumbling, he went to the fifth name on his list.
C.A. Took. Seaside, Oregon
.

He punched in the numbers and waited. It took two rings for the telephone to be picked up with an uncertain “Hello?”

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m sorry to be calling like this. My name is Tony Markus. I’m an editor at Davis & Keelor in New York City, and I’m trying to track down someone who might be able to help me—”

“You’re calling about my grandfather,” she said. “Lazarus Took.”

“Yes. Yes, I am.” He settled back into his chair, ticking a large checkmark beside her name. “I was hoping to get in touch with someone from the estate.”

“You just did,” she said.

“This is—” He consulted the list. “C.A. Took?”

“You can call me Cat.”

“Well, Cat, I’m calling because, first off, I’m a huge admirer of your grandfather’s work. I read all of his books as a boy. I’m not sure if I’d be as much of a booklover as I am now if it weren’t for his stories.” Tony Markus took great pride in his ability to sling BS. “And I think it’s just terrible that these books have been out of print for so long. It must be, what, more than thirty years?”

“Almost forty,” she said.

“That’s three generations of children who have missed out on these books? I think that’s terrible. Cat, I’d like to talk to you about the possibility of bringing your grandfather’s books back into print. Is that something you would be interested in?”

“That would be lovely,” she said. “I’d just about given up hope of ever seeing them published again.”

Sometimes it was too easy. “Well, I’ve got a few questions. First off, just to be clear: are you the person I should be discussing this with? Is there a board I should be presenting this to, or …”

“Oh, no, it’s just me.”

“So you’ve got signing authority as far as publication contracts and the like are concerned?”

“Yes.”

“And the estate still holds the rights to those books?”

“Yes, it does.”

He’d double-check that.

“And tell me, Cat: did your grandfather write anything else? We’re definitely looking at reissuing the four novels, but if there were some other work, another novel perhaps, that would really round out the relaunch.”

“You know, you’re the second person this week to ask me that.”

“Hmm,” he grunted, silently cursing the Canadian writer. No sense of finesse—the idiot could have given the whole thing away.

“And before that, no one had asked about Lazarus for a very long time.”

“So is there another book? Or some papers I could look at? I’m
planning on being out in Oregon in the next couple of weeks; I could come by.”

The idea of going out to Oregon had occurred to him on the fly, but it made sense. He hoped to have a copy of the book by that time. He’d carry the provisional agreement with him. And even if he didn’t have the book yet, sitting down with her face-to-face would probably serve to lock him into a deal before the Canadian could take the deal to someone else.

“No, unfortunately Lazarus wrote only the four books. You’d be more than welcome to go through his papers here, though, if you’re thinking of coming out this way.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it, Cat.”

Captain Bream snapped to his feet as if he were facing a Berok attack. “What?” he spat.

“This is not the Sunstone,” the magus repeated.

“Then what is it?” the captain asked, snapping out each word clearly and distinctly.

“It’s a compass rose,” the magus said, still studying the disk intently. “For a map. The writing is …” He hesitated. “It looks like instructions to a traveller. To
the
traveller.” He glanced at David. “To you.”

“And what does it say?”

The magus squinted into the wine, trying to read.
“To the Four Directions ride,”
he said.
“With stone and silver key to guide.”

In the silence that followed, the only sound was the popping and crackling of the fire.

“And just what,” the captain said, his voice seething, “in the name of the Queen does
that
mean?”

Neither David nor the magus had an answer ready for the captain.

“It’s a compass rose,” the magus said, as if thinking it through as he was speaking. “So it works with a map.”

“Which map?” the captain asked, clearly having lost all patience. “There are dozens of maps.”

“Dafyd,” the magus said, turning to him. “Was there anything else in the chamber?”

David’s heart stopped. Had he missed something?

“I—I don’t think so,” he stammered, not entirely sure.

“Dammit, think!” the captain barked.

“What about the wall?” the magus continued. “Where the stone was set?”

“It was just a wall.”

There was nothing else there
, Matt said.
Just the stone. And that poem. I would have seen anything else
.

“So no map?” the magus said.

“That was all,” David said, gesturing at the cylinder.

“So this is what it comes to,” the captain said in disgust. “We’re left with a compass rose to a map that’s lost to the river now.”

David rose to his feet. “It wasn’t there,” he said, in his own defence. “If there was a map, I would have brought it out.”

The captain stared at him for a long moment, his face setting in anger.

David
, Matt said,
don’t push him
.

David pulled his eyes away from the captain and sat back down, his face burning.

“So what do we do now?” the captain asked the magus, ignoring David altogether.

The magus was about to reply when David asked, “Did you look inside?”

I came to a sudden stop in the doorway of David’s hospital room—he was sitting up in the bed, the blankets draped over his lap.

“What—?”

As Jacqui turned to me I took a closer look at David. His eyes were still moving rapidly from side to side, his mouth still slack, his hands still twitching.

“The rehab doctor came by,” Jacqui said. “Dr. Jonas. He wanted to go over coping strategies.”

“Coping strategies.” The words had the grim finality of a life sentence: David wasn’t going to get any better. Our future would consist of coping.

“The physiotherapist was very impressed with David’s responsiveness. She had him up yesterday and taking a few steps with a walker, even. And Dr. Jonas says that if they get the seizures under control, he’ll be able to come home.” She sounded genuinely excited by the prospect, as if it marked a great victory.

She turned back toward David. “We’re just about to have lunch, aren’t we, Davy? We’re going to practise eating.” A covered tray sat on the bedside table.

The notion of my son having to practise eating filled me with a sick feeling that began in my lower belly and crept upwards.

“Did the tests show anything?” Still grasping at faint hopes.

“Dr. Rutherford hasn’t been back yet.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until we hear what he has to say before we …” The words died on my lips.

She frowned at me. “It’s just coping skills. We might not need them. And if David is this responsive …” She gave me a long look. “I know it’s not perfect, Chris, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn how to deal with this.”

I nodded. Nobody knew better than me that need to be doing something, anything. “Okay,” I said.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” she said, cooing a little as she lifted the lid off the tray. “Oh, this looks good. We’ve got some cream of wheat, and some pudding, and a nice ripe banana. That sounds like a great lunch. And they sent extra napkins.”

I looked away as Jacqui unfolded a napkin and tucked one edge into the neckline of David’s gown to make a bib.

Hands in my pockets, I watched her feed our eleven-year-old son the same way she had when he was a baby, the same tiny mouthfuls, the same soft food. I clenched my fists until my fingers ached, feeling more helpless by degrees.

How could he do this? How could Lazarus Took take my son as he had, stealing not only his future but the last eight or nine years of his life, all that living, all that growing, reducing him to a second infancy, an infancy that he might never grow out of? What kind of sick joke was this? What power came with crippling a child?

David picked the cylinder up from the ground, shaking it slightly in his hand. Something shifted inside. “Something’s in here,” he said, although it seemed obvious.

To you, maybe
, Matt said.
But they’ve never seen a soup can
.

The magus leaned closer to the canister. “But how do we—?”

“Easily,” the captain said, reaching for the cylinder and for the hilt of his sword in almost the same motion.

“Wait,” David said, pulling the canister close to himself. “I think there’s a better way.”

Anger flashed in the captain’s eyes.

He didn’t like that
, Matt said.

No, he didn’t.

“We don’t want to risk damaging whatever’s inside,” David said quickly, to soothe the captain.

The captain adjusted his sword-belt.

“I think,” David said, as he curled his fingers around the lettered edges of the disk, which looked like the top of the container. “That if I do this …” The stone pressed cold into the palm of his hand as he twisted. “It should …” It took a moment of pressure, but a seal broke with a faint popping noise as the lid started to turn.

“There,” he said, giving the lid several full turns. Gafilair or whoever had designed the cylinder clearly hadn’t wanted to risk damage or rot to whatever was inside.

He had almost finished unscrewing the lid when Captain Bream plucked the container from his hands. David felt himself shrinking, like when Darren Kenneally started in on him.

Captain Bream removed the lid and upended the canister, allowing the contents to fall into his waiting hand: a heavy sack, and a scroll. Dropping the cylinder to the ground, he fumbled eagerly with the knot closing the sack, but as he opened it, his face fell.

“Sand,” he said, shaking his head. “Red sand.” He passed the bag to David.

Reaching in, David rubbed a pinch of the red sand between his thumb and forefinger. It was cold to the touch.

“And for you,” Bream said as he passed the scroll to the magus. As he handed the container back to David, he almost dropped the compass rose.

David was about to say something—

Don’t. This is not a place where they tolerate a boy talking back. Especially to a man with a sword
.

David bit his lip and re-tied the bag of sand.

Setting his book on his lap to form a small table, the magus broke the twine wrapped around the scroll and carefully unrolled it. He glanced at the canister in David’s hands.

“That is quite a remarkable box,” he said appreciatively. “The vellum is more than a thousand years old, but perfectly preserved.” He held one corner of the scroll between his thumb and forefinger, bending it slightly. It did not crease or tear. “Perfectly.”

“Is it the map?” the captain asked.

“It is
a
map,” the magus said. “I can only assume …” His voice stopped. “Ah, yes. I suspect this is the map we are looking for.” He showed David and the captain the round hole that had been cut into the upper right corner of the vellum.