Ember Gods

Chapter 7

Jacob whipped out the key, his hands shaking, while Jaegar and Matt beat off the Dusts and tried to keep the Molgs away. He stared at the door. There wasn't a keyhole.

He panicked. "There's no hole! There's no hole for the key!"

"Put it closer to the door!" Jaegar yelled, wrestling three Dusts who had knives for hands. "It'll come."

Jacob held the key near the door and shouted with excitement when a lock appeared. He shoved the key into it and yelled, "Kenji's house!" then popped the door open, grabbed Matt, Jaegar, and Aldo, and pushed them through. He kicked several Dusts away, shoved a Molg—it fell backward—and jumped into Kenji's front room. Another ear-splitting roar. He slammed the door shut, holding it tightly. It vibrated for a moment, then stopped.

Jacob slid to the floor, panting from the exertion. His ears rang, and he hurt all over.

The group of Makalos in front of them had frozen in shock. Ebony's mouth hung open, Brojan had a bunch of books in his lap, Kenji held a towel, and Akeno was mid-step, heading toward the back room.

Aldo broke the silence—apparently he recognized the Makalos. "Pearl!" he yelled, rushing to Ebony, grabbing her shoulders, petting her head. Then he saw Kenji and ran to him. "Apples and flies!"

He turned to face the room, an excited expression on his face. "Stars and moon?" He ran to a window, looking out. He paused, then hurried back to Kenji. "Stars and moon!"

"I think he recognizes us!" Ebony burst into tears. "Oh, he must recognize us. He's not gone."

"You might be right," Kenji said, watching Aldo. The man picked up a chair and looked at the underside of it, repeating his question. "But he doesn't seem to have all his faculties with him yet."

Aldo grinned, put the chair down, then stood on top of it. "Numbers were planting babies. Oh, what a way."

Matt and Jacob exchanged glances. Maybe Aldo recognized the adults, but he was still crazy.

Then Kenji turned to the boys, his face red. "What were you thinking, trying to get to him on your own? I heard that roar. A Bald Henry was part of the army!"

"And they're bleeding!" Ebony said, rushing forward. She grabbed Jaegar's arm. "This is going to take some time to fix. All right, you four, to the table." She led them to seats, then pulled out a pair of tweezers from a drawer near the sink and began plucking debris out of their arms.

Kenji paced in front of them. "Bald Henries are extremely dangerous. If you hadn't gotten out of the cabin when you did, you wouldn't have made it. The next thing it would've targeted is flesh. They follow a pattern. Glass, metal, rock, wood, flesh."

Jacob winced as Ebony pulled a particularly large piece of glass from his wrist. "We only saw Dusts and Molgs."

Kenji sighed and sat down, rubbing his face. "Of course you didn't see one. They're invisible. No one even knows what they look like."

"Where did they get their name?" Matt asked.

"The legend says that several hundred years ago, a person traveled through a link to your world and encountered a king named Henry, who was particularly atrocious and bad-tempered. There isn't a specification anywhere as to whether or not he was bald, but everyone started referring to Bald Henries that way, and the name stuck."

"Why haven't they destroyed everything in sight?"

"They're usually peaceful creatures. They avoid other animals, stay in the same location. And their roar only has a range of perhaps five yards. The Lorkon brought them and used them a few times during the last war. We learned a lot."

Aldo had left his seat and was tracing the silver lines in the wall. He grinned at the group, and Jacob wondered if the old man had lost another tooth. There seemed to be a larger gap on top.

"What are we to do with you, Aldo?" Ebony asked. She'd mixed together Kaede sap to heal everyone's cuts, and was wrapping Jacob's arms.

Aldo beamed at her. "You're not here with that old bag. The disconcerting books hate Friday."

She looked at him thoughtfully, then wrapped Matt's arms. "We could have him stay in the tree until we find a permanent residence for him."

Kenji nodded. "That'll be perfect. He seemed fine alone in his cabin."

Brojan stood and excused himself, leaving the house.

Jacob had almost forgotten the patriarch was there, he'd been so quiet. And—Jacob noticed with surprise—Akeno had slipped out of the room too. He waited for Ebony to finish up with Aldo's wounds, then keyed the elderly man to the tree.

When he returned, Ebony looked up from where she was working on Jaegar's arms. "I wonder what Brojan thinks of the Molgs being part of the armies. This means they're out of their caves." She finished with Jaegar's bandages. "It's too dangerous to have them wandering around."

Jacob definitely understood why—they ate humans, for crying out loud. His mind returned to the experience in Aldo's cabin. "Why didn't the key get destroyed when all the other metal objects did?"

"Magic." Ebony peeked under one of his bandages. "Just as I suspected—the wounds weren't deep or serious enough to require sleep to heal." She pulled off his bandages and threw them in a box in the corner of the room.

"Are we still having the meeting tonight?"

Ebony hesitated, looking at Kenji. "Yes, we were," she said, then looked at Kenji. "We weren't sure if we'd need to put it off, though. Having Aldo get attacked complicated things."

"Not too much to put it off, though, right?" Matt asked.

Jacob loved that his brother had adopted his stance.

"No, we're good to go," Kenji said. "Jacob, you'll have to bring the Fat Lady, though."

He jumped to his feet. "On it."

"I'll send a Minya to tell her you're on the way," Kenji said.