The Celestial Globe: The Kronos Chronicles: Book II Read Online Free PDF Page B

had come here.
    Tomik ran up to the men and women trying desperately to put out the fire. He spotted Tomas Stakan, blackened with soot, pitching snow as quickly as he could. “Father!”
    “Tomik, what are you doing here? Who’s in the shop?”
    “No one,” Tomik said hesitantly. “But Attie’s guarding it.”
    “
What?
What were you
thinking
? Go home, now!”
    “No.” Tomik grabbed a bucket.
    “I don’t have time to argue with you. Look at that.” His father stabbed a finger at the Sign of the Compass. “Our friends could be inside that house. We have to put out the fire!”
    “Then let me help!” Tomik scooped up a bucket of wet snow and stepped toward the crackling wall of flame.
    This time, his father didn’t stop him.
    The men and women of Okno heaved snow and wet earth into the fire, but they knew they were fighting a losing battle. The fire had already consumed the ground floor by the time the first help had arrived, making it impossible for anyone to enter the building. Now even the roof was ablaze.
    Tomik couldn’t allow himself to think. He moved mechanically, passing buckets, filling some, emptying others. He knew his father was next to him, but they didn’t speak.
    Then there was a sickening crack, like the sound of a spine breaking, as the beams of the house split.
    “It’s caving! Back! Get back!”
    Somebody shoved Tomik, pushing him yards away from the fire.
    There was a crunching sound of falling timber as the Sign of the Compass began to collapse, the fire rushing down to hollow out the inside of the house.
    Tomik felt an arm around him, but couldn’t look away from the flames, even though they hurt his eyes.
    “Tomik,” his father said.
    Tomik turned. A tear traced over Tomas Stakan’s sooty cheek. “I’m sorry,” his father said, and tried to hug him.
    “Stop it!” Tomik struggled.
    “Son, no one could have survived that. If they were inside the house—”
    “They weren’t! Petra was
not
inside that house!” But Tomik knew that wasn’t true. His Glowstone had shown that Petra had come here, and his inventions always worked.
    Tomik broke away from his father and began to run. He didn’t pay attention to where he was going. He stopped only when he realized that he could no longer hear the crackling fire. Now a different sound filled his ears. A bird was singing.
    Tomik had reached the edge of the forest. He blinked up at the trees and saw a sparrow in the bare branches. Suddenly angry—angry at the bird for thinking it had the right to sing, angry at himself, and at Petra, too—Tomik snatched the Glowstone from his pocket and drew it back to knock the sparrow right off its branch.
    Something stayed his hand.
    The crystal was an even brighter blue than before. Tomik stared disbelievingly.
    He had designed the smooth crystal to shine a deeper blue as it got closer to its target, which was the twin Glowstone in Petra’s pocket. The crystal could pick up traces of where Petra had been,which is why it had flickered as soon as Tomik left his shop in search of her. But it would react most strongly to wherever Petra had been
recently
.
    Which meant that Petra was
not
in the Sign of the Compass when it collapsed.
    Tomik laughed with relief. “Petra!” he called, and plunged into the woods. He followed the Glowstone with a light heart, as if he and Petra were small again, and playing a really complicated game of hide-and-seek. A serious voice spoke up inside, reminding him that he would still have to tell Petra that her home was in ashes. But he ignored that voice, growing happier with each darker shade of blue.
    The smile on his lips faded when he smelled something rotten.
    He inched forward. The stone burned more brightly. The stench grew worse.
    At first he thought he was looking at animal carcasses. Yet the four headless corpses on the ground seemed eerily human, though their skin was scaly, and black blood poured from their necks.
    With dread, Tomik realized that the