The Call - Michael Grant [45]
“What is that?”
“Ah. That,” Jarrah said. “We don’t quite know. I mean, we understand the symbols. They’re pairs. Light and dark, speed and slowness, health and disease, and so on. We think they may be—”
“Sh!” It was Karri. “I hear something!”
There came a sound like nothing Mack had ever heard before. It came from deep within the rock. Like something grinding its way through the limestone. Like a monster chewing rock.
“It’s a pity this wall ends here,” Jarrah said. “Or we might know what’s happening.”
“Why does it end there?”
“One of two reasons,” Jarrah said. “Either it’s just that the rock face shattered at this point…”
“Or?”
Jarrah shrugged. “Or, maybe history is coming to a sudden end.”
Twenty-five
The chewing, grinding sound was getting slowly louder. “It’s Risky,” Mack said.
Stefan nodded. “Huh.”
“Risky,” Mack explained to Jarrah and her mother. “The Princess. She works for her mother. I guess it’s a really weird family business.”
“Risky…Wait! I know who that is!” Karri cried. She raced to the wall, began frantically searching it, then cried out, “There! Yes. You see this symbol, this head with too many teeth and wavy lines? It’s woven all through the story, often intertwined with the female death’s-head symbol.
“Ereskigal,” Karri said excitedly. “Ereskigal was the Babylonian queen of the underworld. But she’s known by many names. To the Greeks, Persephone. To the Norse, Hel.” She grabbed Mack by his shoulders. “Are you telling me she has a mother?”
“That’s what…um…what I hear.”
Karri pushed him away. “The death’s-head symbol. The mother of evil,” she whispered. “I didn’t understand…I didn’t realize…” Eyes brimming with tears, she held her arms out for her daughter. “Oh, Jarrah. The death’s-head! It’s the Mother of Evil, the Breeder of Monsters. The…the…Pale Queen.”
“We knew it was some great evil, Mum,” Jarrah said. She was trying to sound reassuring, but Mack could tell she was shaken up.
“The old ones say she was bound for all time in the underworld, in the vast World Below. Forever!” Karri said.
“Or three thousand years, whichever came first,” Mack said. “All of which is very informative, but what are we going to do about whatever is digging its way through to us?”
“I was hoping you knew,” Jarrah said.
“Me?” Mack laughed, but not in a funny way. “How would I know? I only remembered that one thing I heard from Grimluk. Like some kind of magic spell or whatever, but you heard the elves: it only works once every twenty-four hours.”
“It was Vargran, wasn’t it?” Jarrah asked. She pointed at the wall. “That is all written in Vargran.”
“We believe it’s some kind of sacred language,” Karri said. “A very ancient tongue…”
“Yeah. It’s magic or whatever,” Mack said. “So what can we use?”
“We can read it; we can’t really pronounce it!”
“Give me something, anything,” Mack snapped. His claustrophobia had been temporarily displaced by the fear of the princess-monster who somehow was digging through solid rock to get at him.
“I know the words for all the numbers,” Karri said frantically.
“Is there a math test, Mum?” Jarrah cried. “If not, maybe something else would be better than numbers.”
“I think I know how to say moon: (sniff) asha. And sky: urza. And sun: edras. And we have the verb to be: e, e-tet, e-til, e-ma. And…and…and…”
“Wait,” Mack said. “You can say sun?”
“Yes.”
“And you can say to be?”
“There are four tenses: present, past, future, and ‘or else.’”
“‘Or else?’”
“It implies an order that must be followed or else.”
“Hope my parents never learn it,” Mack said. His mind was going a mile a minute. Possibly faster. “Say it. Say, ‘Be sun. Or else.”
“E-ma edras?” Karri said.
“Yes. Like that,” Mack said thoughtfully.
The chewing sound was a jackhammer noise now. A crack appeared in the polished wall. Small rocks became dislodged.
“Whatever it is, it’s coming straight through the wall,” Jarrah said.
“I’ll try to protect you,” Stefan said to Mack.
“Thanks,” Mack said.