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دانلود اپلیکیشن «زیبوک»

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دانلود اپلیکیشن «زیبوک»

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CHAPTER 82

THE KEEP

DOWN IN THE KEEP, bathed in golden light, Peter and Molly stood still, listening to the muffled sounds coming from the room above—shouts, boots scraping on stone. After a minute the sounds began to move away. For now, it appeared, they were safe.

“Now what?” said Peter.

“Well,” said Molly, “since we’re here, we might as well have a look around. Perhaps we can figure out where Father went.”

Peter walked over to the bookshelf. He removed a book at random; it was leather-bound and dust-covered, clearly very old. He opened it to a random page and squinted at the writing.

“It’s not in English,” he said.

Molly came over and had a look. She wrinkled her nose.

“Latin,” she said.

“Can you read it?”

“A bit,” she said. “But very slowly. And”—she gestured at the thousands of dusty volumes—“where would I start?”

They walked over to the huge wall map. It displayed the earth—Europe and Africa in the middle, the Americas off to the left, Asia to the right. Looking closer, they saw that it was covered with hundreds of finely drawn red lines. Most of the lines converged in London; from there they radiated out all over the planet, each ending in a tiny gold star with a date next to it. Some of the dates were centuries old.

“Starstuff,” said Peter.

Molly nodded. “This is where they keep track of it. I had no idea there was so much.”

Peter moved close to the map, his eyes roaming back and forth until he found what he was looking for.

“Look,” he said, pointing to a tiny dot in the ocean, far from land, connected to London by not one but two red lines—one meandering, one arrow-straight.

Molly smiled. “Mollusk Island,” she said. She traced the meandering line with her finger. “This is us on the Never Land. What a voyage that was!” She moved her finger to the straight line. “And this is me going home, with Father and the starstuff.” She followed the line back to London, then said, “It only shows the shipments reaching London. It doesn’t show where they go for the Return from here.”

“And you’re sure the Return isn’t here?”

“Yes,” said Molly. “It’s somewhere else.” Her eyes roamed around the room, then fell on the writing desk. On it was a stack of papers. Molly went over, picked them up, and began sifting through them. But her expression quickly changed from eagerness to disappointment when she saw that they were financial documents—invoices, purchase orders, bills of lading, customs forms. She sighed.

“I suppose even Starcatchers have bills to pay,” she muttered. She was about to set the papers back down when she noticed something.

“Wait a minute,” she said.

“What?” said Peter.

“Look at this.” Molly was holding an invoice from a wine merchant listing various bottles of wine and their prices.

Peter looked. “What about it?”

“Here,” said Molly, pointing to the margin. There, in bright blue ink that contrasted with the black used to write the rest of the invoice, was the letter S, drawn in a fanciful cursive, followed by the numbers 1030 and 246.

Peter looked again, and again asked, “What about it?”

“That’s Father’s writing,” said Molly.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. He’s got a specially made pen that he loves, and this is the color of ink he uses. And that’s how he writes the letter S, with that odd curlicue.”

“What does it mean?” said Peter.

Molly frowned. “I’ve no idea. But this invoice is dated only last week. Father must have written this very shortly before he left.” She studied it a moment longer, then tucked it into the pocket of her dress. “Let’s see if we can find anything else that might be helpful,” she said.

Molly and Peter spent the next half hour looking around the Keep, but found nothing else that seemed remotely helpful. Finally, Molly, after having gone through the stack of financial documents for the fifth time without finding anything new, hung her head in discouragement.

“This has been a waste of time,” she said. “No, it’s much worse than that. Mister McGuinn is dead, and we’ve found nothing.”

“You didn’t kill him,” said Peter. “Ombra did.”

“But I led him here,” said Molly. “I thought I could be a hero, saving Mother. I’m a fool.”

“No you’re not,” said Peter.

Yes she is, said Tink, though Peter could tell her heart wasn’t really in it.

“What did she say?” said Molly.

“She said, um, she said it’s been quiet upstairs for a while,” said Peter.

Molly listened for a few seconds, and nodded; there were no more boot steps on the floor above, no shouting.

“I suppose we should try to get out of here,” she said. “We’re never going to find Father if we stay here.”

“How do you suppose we get out?” said Peter.

The way you came in, said Tink. The metal man.

Molly looked at Peter. He pointed to the marble column beneath the slab of floor that had carried them down to the Keep. They went over and studied its smooth, cream-colored surface, but found nothing that suggested a way out. Then Molly spotted something gleaming on the wall nearby.

“Over there,” she said.

Peter followed her eyes and saw it: a small golden star set into the stone. He went to it and again removed the locket from his shirt. As he did, both locket and star began to glow.

“Stand away from the column,” he said. As Molly complied, he touched the locket to the star. The column began to slide silently into the floor, the golden knight descending on its square slab of stone. When it reached the floor of the Keep, it raised its hand. Molly and Peter stepped onto the slab, and Peter touched his locket to the knight’s palm.

Silently, they rose into the lower room of the White Tower, hoping that nobody was waiting for them in the darkness. CHAPTER 83

OMBRA’S PLAN

NEREZZA WAS FRUSTRATED. Slank was furious.

Where were the boy and the girl?

The men had thoroughly searched the bottom floor of the White Tower; then the middle floor, where they had come in. Now they had finished scouring the upper floor. They had checked the windows: all were blocked by close-set iron bars. They had two men guarding the tower’s only door. There was no other way for the boy and the girl to escape. And yet they were nowhere to be found.

Reluctantly, Nerezza and Slank approached Ombra, who stood alone in the center of the upper floor. The rest of the men hung back, watching, grateful that they did not have to deliver the bad news.

“My lord,” said Nerezza. “We can’t find them.”

“They are here,” said Ombra.

“But, my lord, we—”

“They are here.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You will have the men search the tower again.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Nerezza and Slank turned to go back to the men and give the order. Slank was halted by Ombra’s groan.

“Mister Slank,” he said.

Slank turned back.

“You will get a lantern and come with me.”

“Yes, my lord.” Slank took a lantern from one of the men and returned to Ombra, who glided to the front staircase and began descending the spiral steps. He knew better than to ask Ombra what they were doing.

In fact, Ombra was not sure himself. Something was drawing him to the lower floor again, some fragment of a thought that he had extracted from McGuinn, undefined but tantalizing. Ombra had gone to the lower floor several times, drifting through the armor, trying to make sense of the murky jumble of vague images he had captured. Each time he had given up in frustration.

But something was drawing him back. He was certain the children were still in the tower. He didn’t know where they were hiding. But now, as he slithered down the staircase, he had a plan for drawing them out.

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