The Lightning Key Read Online Free PDF Page B

already.”
    The sky was turning blacker by the moment, and fat raindrops began to fall. Silverpoint walked backward through the orchard, exactly as he had done when he took his leave the previous autumn. Miles was determined to watch his departure this time, but when the lightning struck he was blinded once more, and by the time his eyes cleared nothing remained but another blasted apple tree and a whiff of metal on the morning air.
    â€œCome on, Miles,” said Little softly. They entered the living room to an eerie silence. The blind explorer was crouched at the door that led into thehallway, a hand cupped behind his leathery ear. He turned as they approached. “Mighty quiet sleeper for a full-sized Bengal,” he whispered loudly.
    Miles’s stomach knotted. Suppose the tiger had died? He crept to the door and peered over Baltinglass’s shoulder. The front door stood wide open and a chilly breeze blew in, slowly erasing the tiger-shaped hole in the layer of white dust that sprinkled the tiles. Of the tiger himself there was not a whisker to be seen.
    â€œHe’s gone!” said Miles in a whisper.
    â€œGone?” barked Baltinglass. “You sure he’s not just lurking? Magnificent lurker, the Bengal tiger. Had one in my tent in Rangoon once, and I never saw the brute till I’d brushed my teeth and read three chapters of Moby Dick .”
    Miles shook his head. He could feel the tiger’s absence like the empty shape on the floor. “He’s gone,” he repeated.
    â€œWell,” said Baltinglass, straightening up with a symphony of creaks and pops from his old joints, “must have heard me mention the twelve-bore. That buys us a little more time, eh? No sense in running out the door half-cocked.”
    â€œIf they get too far ahead we may never catch them,” said Little.
    â€œDon’t you worry about that, Little. There’ll be many a wrong step ahead of that pair, and I know every rock, river and rabbit hole in their way—things that can’t be marked on any map. With my experience, your charm and the boy’s wits we’ll be more than a match for a psychopath and a charlatan.” He stumped off toward the larder, swinging his cane in front of him. “Sort those maps out, boy,” he called over his shoulder. “You’re looking for one entitled ‘Unwise Routes Through the Starkbone Desert.’ They didn’t take that one.”
    Baltinglass heaved open a trapdoor in the floor of his larder and disappeared, lampless, into the gloom. A racket of rattling pots and clinking jars rose from under the floor, mixed with a muffled commentary in the old man’s voice. “Flints, splints, pisspot and poles. Where’s the blasted quinine? Mosquito net. That’ll need some stitchin’—a buffalo could get through those holes. Parachutes—think we’ll need parachutes, Master Miles?”
    â€œUnlikely,” called Miles. He gathered up the scattered maps and books from the floor and began to sort through them on the table. There were maps and charts of every place he’d ever heard of, and many that he had not. Some were obviously very old, stained with oil and coffee and tattered with use. Some wereunmistakably the work of Baltinglass of Araby himself, and were scrawled with names and comments in his own handwriting. The map he had been looking for, “Unwise Routes Through the Starkbone Desert,” was one of these, and Miles spread it out and weighed down the corners with jars of Baltinglass’s Famous Homemade Apple and Thyme Jelly from the stack on the sideboard. The sounds of rummaging continued unabated from the cellar.
    â€œWhere’s Tangerine?” asked Little, as Miles examined the scrawled notes and doodled camels that littered the desert map. He reached into his pocket and carefully removed the knotted pillowcase. He could feel tears start at the back of his eyes, and he was