Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves (34 page)

“Only that which I deserve,” Jim whispered to himself. It didn’t make any sense. What was the challenge? He walked back over to the amulet, weighing the medallion in his eyes for a long moment before reaching up for it as he had before. But when his fingers touched the warm metal, a buzzing whirred to life in Jim’s mind. Invisible bonds seemed to hold him in place and he felt as though to touch the amulet would come at the cost of some great and terrible consequence.

“It’s harder once you read the door, isn’t it, James?” a voice echoed in the vault, surprise snatching the breath from Jim’s lungs. With a start he leapt from where he stood and hid behind a pile of treasure chests near the middle of the room.

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What do you really deserve to take from here?” the voice said again, but this time, Jim didn’t miss it. There was something familiar about that voice…more than familiar, in fact. He had known that voice from the time he was a small boy.

“Phineus?” Jim said, poking his head around the corner of the chests. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head just to be certain. But, sure as the hair on Jim’s head, standing there in the same familiar, out-of-date jacket and knickers, glasses perched on the tip of his nose beneath enormous bushy gray brows, was Phineus, the Morgan family’s old tutor. The old man stood there, slightly bent, staring at Jim as though nothing had ever happened since the last time they were together.

“Phineus!” Jim cried, rushing from his hiding place and running toward the old tutor to throw his arms around him. Jim never thought he would actually be thrilled to see the crotchety old teacher, but his heart was doing backflips.

The moment Jim reached the place where Phineus stood, however, the old tutor was no longer there, and Jim wrapped his arms around nothing, nearly plunging face first into a pile of emeralds and rubies.

Jim looked back. Phineus stood behind him now, on the other side of the room from whence Jim had just run. Jim paled, suddenly grasping the horrible truth. “Phineus, are you…dead? Are you…a ghost?”

“Not exactly,” Phineus said gruffly, adjusting his glasses as he walked over to stand beside the Amulet of Portunes. “I’m more of a memory, if you will. In your head. But here, in this place, in this vault, I can move and walk and talk and think, all on my own. Had you paid attention to the basics, young master, eventually we would have gotten around to magic in your studies.”

“You knew about magic?” Jim asked.

“I knew a great many things, James.” The Memory Phineus leaned over and eyeballed the medallion intently, scrutinizing it as though highly dubious of its worth. “A great deal of trouble over this little trinket, wouldn’t you say?”

“More than you know,” Jim said. He wanted to take a step toward Phineus, to reach out and try to touch him again, but Jim was more than a little hesitant to stand too close to the memory, or ghost, or whatever it was.

“Actually I do know, James. Or should I say, Jim,” Phineus replied, glancing from the amulet to Jim’s pale and wide-eyed face. “You see, I’m your memory, therefore I have access to all your other thoughts, so when I ask my question, I’ll know if you tell me the truth.”

“A question?” Jim asked.

“Yes, of course, the third challenge is a simple question,” Phineus said. “Or perhaps not so simple. Why do you deserve this Amulet? Why do you deserve even one doubloon in this entire vault? These, the fruits of your father’s labors.”

“Why do I deserve to take it?” Jim was a slight bit confused. “Because I passed the challenges. I made it through the hall of keys and the water-filled room of bronze trees. I didn’t get crushed and I didn’t get drowned, and now I get to take the amulet. That’s how it works, right?”

“Yes, that’s
how
you would be able to come by it, Jim,” Phineus said. “But you still haven’t answered the question.
Why
do you deserve to have it?”

“I don’t understand. I’m here. I made it past the challenges. Doesn’t that mean I deserve the prize?”

“Many have stood where you now stand, I believe,” Phineus said. “Many who chased after innumerable prizes or treasures, but their misguided hopes were all the same. So few have been able to leave with that which they sought.” Phineus motioned over to the corners of the room. There, hidden from view by the piles of treasure, out of sight to anyone focused only on what gleamed in the torchlight, several more skeletons sat in motionless doom, their white, cobweb-laced jaws hanging open from their skulls, forever frozen in maws of agony.

Jim sucked in a startled gasp. “Phineus, who were they?”

“Those who did not deserve that which they tried to take,” whispered Phineus. “Now, why do you deserve this amulet, Jim? It is a talisman of vast power and opportunity. Why you, who so many times before forsook opportunity for quick and wicked pleasures?” Phineus’s eyes were suddenly accusing, burning bright in the firelight and staring hard into Jim’s face. “You, Jim Morgan, seek an amulet with the power to unlock deep secrets, but you have had the keys to great knowledge and privilege your whole life, and you have tossed them aside like rubbish!”

“Forsook opportunities?” Jim shook his head, but inside he knew the Memory Phineus was right. “I…I just didn’t see then. But I’ve learned so much now, I’ve changed!”

“After everything was already lost!” Phineus yelled angrily. “You never listened! You made my life a living nightmare and almost drove one of the greatest minds in England to insanity! And for what? A good laugh?”

“An’ what about me?” the deep Highland voice of Hudson boomed in the Vault. Jim’s father’s faithful valet, still holding the cane that was a sword in his hand, the one he had used to save Jim’s life before he had died, stepped out from behind a mound of treasure. “For my whole life, I served an ’onarable man: your father. I braved dangers you could no’ even imagine, only to die defendin’ a spoilt brat who looked at me as nothin’ more than a common man, meant to bend my knees ’fore any person born to a noble family. Oh, I heard those thoughts in your
head, Jim Morgan.” Hudson glared into Jim’s face. “I heard ’em and I know what you thought of me, boy!”

“Hudson,” Jim was nearly in tears now. “I’m…I’m a commoner now. I live with commoners! I don’t think those things any more. You have to believe me, I’m sorry!”

“But sorries don’t take back the things we’ve done, do they, Jim?” a final voice said, louder and stronger than all the rest.

Jim’s heart sank into his stomach, and all the feeling left his fingers and his toes as a chill ran up his spine. This was the voice he had longed to hear again ever since that terrible night so many months ago. But now that it was ringing in his ears, he wished he could block it out. It was the voice of his father.

“And what was that you said to me the last time you saw me?”

Jim looked up. His father wore the last set of clothes in which Jim ever saw him, his head was bare, and his hair was pulled back from his face, revealing angry eyes. “What was it you said, Jim?” the memory of his father demanded, and Jim cast his eyes down to his feet.

“I said I wasn’t sorry,” Jim said, his throat tight and thick, invisible smoke seeming to sting his nose and eyes. “But I was…but I am,” he stammered, yet he could not find the strength to look his Memory Father in the eyes.

“Sorry doesn’t change a thing, does it, Jim?” his father snarled.

“You don’t deserve this treasure you seek!” Hudson growled.

“You don’t deserve this treasure!” said Phineus.

Jim risked a single glance to his Memory Father, and he could tell by the look on his father’s face what his words would be.

“You don’t deserve this treasure, Jim,” his father said. “You deserve not even this one medallion. You have no idea the trials and adventures I undertook to uncover such a great treasure as the one I intended for you, Jim. Nor do you know the pains I went through to keep the secret hidden for so many years.

“For so long, you were my greatest hope. This treasure was to make it possible for you to do anything your heart desired. You have no idea what your potential was, what great deeds you were meant to
accomplish. But you are not the boy I thought you would grow to be. You are my greatest disappointment, Jim.” Jim almost fell over. Those words struck him like a blow to his very heart. “You don’t deserve the treasure,” his father said again. “You deserve to be punished.”

“You deserve to waste away like my time!” Phineus railed.

“You deserve to be left behind!” Hudson shouted.

The memory people closed in around Jim, their eyes full of anger, their lips overflowing with all the horrible fates that Jim deserved. Jim tried to close his eyes and cover his ears, but there was no escaping his memories and their accusations. He fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face, searching for an answer, but he knew it was too late for that. He would go mad like the other poor souls who tried to rob this place, and he would end up just another skeleton in the corner.

Jim suddenly realized that he’d failed, but not just himself. No, what hurt the most was that he had failed everyone else. Cornelius would be waiting outside, but Jim would never arrive. Lacey would be hoping against hope that Jim would come with the amulet and trade it for her life, but her hopes would be dashed. And the Ratts, locked up on the pirate sloop, would be dreaming of reuniting with the rest of their clan, but they never would.

As Jim counted these mounting losses, almost lost amongst the cruel voices of the memory people berating him, a soft sound rustled in the back of his mind. It was quiet at first, almost too quiet to understand, though steadily it grew stronger until Jim knew what the sound was, a chorus of new voices, whispering over the accusations of his father and the rest. New memory faces suddenly appeared behind Jim’s closed eyes, Cornelius was there, and Lacey and the Ratts, but unlike the memories that now surrounded Jim, these accused Jim of nothing. Instead, they cheered him on.

“You can do it, mate,” George’s voice said. “You’re part of our clan. You’re our friend, forever.”

“I saw you, Jim Morgan,” Cornelius said. “I saw you be brave and tackle the terrors of the vault. I saw your courage, young man.”

Finally, Lacey’s voice spoke to Jim. “You taught me to read, Jim Morgan. You bought me a present and you stood up for me in front the Dragons. You’re my friend, Jim Morgan. And I am yours.”

At last Jim remembered why he came here in the first place.

“Wait!” Jim cried, finally facing the memory people surrounding him. “You’re right! I don’t deserve the Amulet of Portunes. And I know for a fact I don’t deserve my father’s treasure. They’re not mine, and I don’t deserve them one bit!” Jim said fiercely.

“Well then,” Memory Phineus said with a haughty laugh. “You should be locked up for trying to take a treasure you don’t deserve!”

“But that’s where you’re wrong!” Jim rose to his feet, his jaw set and some fire burning behind his eyes. “Because that’s not the treasure I came here for.”

“If you didn’t come for the gold or the amulet,” Jim’s Memory Father said, measuring him thoughtfully, “how do we know what treasure you truly seek?”

“Because of what Phineus said,” Jim replied, wiping the tears from his face. “Because of what you said. You’re my memories, you know what’s inside me…in my heart. And where my heart is, there will my treasure be also. Father, your treasure was out there, on the ocean, but mine is my friends. They’re in trouble right now, and they need my help. I didn’t come here for the amulet, I came here for them.”

The memory people stared at Jim in disbelief. From nowhere, for there were no windows in the vault room, a cold wind blew, nearly snuffing out the torches on the wall, whipping at Jim’s coat and hair. The wind smelled of ocean salt and roared like the crashing of waves against the beach. One at a time, the memory people surrounding Jim vanished like smoke off a match, their vapors blowing away in the wind. No sooner than they had disappeared then all the treasure in the room vanished like clouds on the back of a gale behind them, the mounds of jewels, the armor, the chests of doubloons, all of it fading into nothing, leaving only the Amulet hanging on the wall.

Jim’s Father was the last to go. He stood there, hands behind his back, much as he had on the beach outside Morgan Manor so long ago.
But there was a new look on his face now. “Well done,” Jim’s father said. “Well done indeed, my son.” And as the memory version of Jim’s father evaporated before him, Jim thought he saw the faintest trace of a smile cross his lips.

“Wait! Father, don’t go!” Jim cried out. He tried to grasp the wispy remnants of the memory before they faded, but they were like tendrils of fog in his hands. “Don’t leave me!” Jim shouted again, but this time only his echo replied.

THIRTY–THREE

ven as Jim took the amulet down from the hook on the wall of the now empty vault, the faint smile on his Memory Father’s face burned in his mind. Had he even seen it at all? Had it truly been there? Did it even matter, since it wasn’t his real father, but only a walking, talking memory used by the vault to test him? Those questions whipped around in Jim’s thoughts as he opened the white door at the far side of the room, and felt the cold night air bite the tip of his nose.