The Keeper by David Baldacci

sliver later, along the outer stone passageway, we could both see the shadows created by a light coming our way. Then Luc appeared in the opening to our chamber holding a flickering candle in one hand. Cere was behind him, looking pale and frightened.
    He said softly, “Tread lightly. There are eyes in the least likely places.”
    The guards that had been stationed outside our chamber were no longer there. I figured that was Luc’s doing. The three of us followed him back down the passageway. I had told Harry Two not to bark or otherwise make undue noise. I could have sworn he nodded his head at me as I finished speaking.
    We flitted down the cold passage. I did have one comforting thought. I had on my cloak. And in my cloak were my glove and the Elemental.
    We reached a spot where three corridors intersected and Luc led us down the one on the far left. We reached a wooden door, which Luc unlocked with a fat bronze key that he unclipped from a blackened iron ring on his wide leather belt. He pushed the door open and ushered us in before closing the portal behind us. The chamber was dark, but it brightened considerably when Luc used his candle to light the torches suspended on the wall.
    I gaped.
    And so did Delph.
    And we did so for good reason.
    The chamber was vast, with high ceilings. And strewn throughout were broad, scarred and stained wooden worktables overflowing with what looked to be intricate tasks in progress. There were old worm-eaten plank shelves, literally bursting with strange objects, and piles of parchment, scrolls and leather-backed tomes. And an old desk packed with drawers and cubbies that were, in turn, bulging with scrolls and parchment. And there was a wooden swivel chair tucked into the kneehole. And on a series of low tables were bottles, scales and other delicate instruments that I had seen and used at Stacks to do my job as a Finisher.
    “He couldn’t have brought all this with him from Wormwood,” I said.
    Luc said, “He did some of the parchment, ink, scrolls and a few of the instruments and tools you see. The rest came later. And the furniture we built according to his design after he showed us how. Thorne taught us a great deal. All he asked in return was our freedom.” Luc finished in a resigned tone.
    As my gaze spanned the place, it came to rest on something suspended from a long metal chain affixed to the ceiling in one far corner. It was a skeleton. And next to the skeleton and attached to the wall was the outer layer of the thing — the skin. And now I believed I knew how Thorne had made it from the cliff down to here.
    “That’s an adar,” mumbled Delph.
    “ Was an adar,” I corrected. “That’s how Thorne managed the cliff. He flew down like we did.”
    “It’s a big ’un,” noted Delph. “Bigger’n I’ve ever seen.”
    I turned to Luc. “This is his … what, workshop?”
    “Well, he calls it a laboratory ,” said Luc. “He spends most of his time in here, working away, talking to himself, sometimes cackling like he’s gone barmy.”
    “I think he has gone barmy.”
    I walked around the chamber and eyed some drawings that had been fastened to the walls. These were maps of Wormwood, down to the smallest details. In the precision of the words and pictures I sensed cunning and genius, but also a sickness of the mind. It gave me chills just to look upon the parchment and to envision the mad Wug bent over his terrible obsession for the destruction of his former home.
    These maps had been drawn for a very clear reason. They were going to be used as the basis of attack. I noted Thorne’s scribbles and margin notes all over the parchment pages. There was an area noted as the landing place. He would probably send out his aero ship at night and make his landings at that spot while Wormwood slept. Then when his army was fully on site he would attack and take them all by surprise.
    There were arrows pointing at Stacks and Steeples and the Council building, with