Crystal Doors #1 (31 page)

Lungs aching, he swam back up and gulped a deep breath. “Yup, it’s stuck on something. Hold on, let me get it unhooked.” Puffing his cheeks, Vic blew out his breath before taking another lungful of air. He dove under again, swimming down directly this time. Now that he knew where he was going, he found the snag and began to push aside rocks, disentangling the thing.

The object shifted abruptly, pulling on the snarled ropes attached to the floating wood and jerking Tiaret forward into deeper water. Vic saw his friend’s legs kick and thrash as she realized she could no longer touch the bottom. Her head went under and she began churning with furious movements of her arms, as well. As Vic pushed himself upward, dodging the agitated motions of Tiaret’s legs, he saw Gwen submerge herself and breast-stroke toward the girl. The cousins reached her at the same time, and together pulled their struggling friend back to the surface.

Coughing and choking, Tiaret let them tow her back into shallower water, then she waved them away. “Thank you for your assistance. Now, let us complete our task.” She grasped another piece of the tangled wreckage as if nothing important had happened.

Knowing that this abruptness was Tiaret’s way of covering her embarrassment, Vic flashed his cousin an eyebrow shrug, dove again, and started back to work on the snagged object. As soon as he nudged it loose, he realized what it was: the scalloped canopy that had sheltered the two merlon generals riding and goading the battle kraken during its terrible attack against Elantya.

Both merlon commanders had been killed when Sage Polup’s magical cannon blasted the kraken. Vic resurfaced as the two girls strained together to pull the wreckage free. He dragged the shell canopy into shallow water where they could see it better.

“I bet this’ll make a nice monument or addition to a museum,” Vic said.

“The Elantyans will indeed build a memorial to this battle,” Tiaret answered in her gruff voice. “However, this chapter in the Great Epic is unfinished. The war continues.”

Bestselling and award-winning authors Rebecca Moesta
(Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights)
and Kevin J. Anderson (coauthor of the Dune prequel series) collaborate on their first young adult trilogy.

F
ourteen-year-old cousins Gwen and Vic have lived together ever since the mysterious deaths of Gwen’s parents and disappearance of Vic’s mother — until Vic’s scientist father accidentally transports them through a magical crystal door to the island of Elantya. Cobblestone streets and silver towers mark the picturesque island, a trading hub and center of knowledge, which functions on a combination of advanced physics and sorcery. Vic and Gwen are soon caught in a tempest of ancient magic, vicious creatures, and fierce battles — all connected to a territorial feud with the sea-dwelling merlons, an age-old conflict between the bright and dark sages… and the cousins’ own mysterious roots.

This first novel in the Crystal Doors trilogy is sure to captivate fans of Garth Nix and Diana Wynne Jones.

“Exciting piot.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Readers will be eager to continue this tale.”
—
KLIATT