Mearsies Heili Bounces Back (17 page)

After a day or so of itchweed in all the bunks, nasty spices
in their food, mud dropped into their boots (at least Id said it was mud, but I
noticed he’d been over at the makeshift stable), and stuff like that, the bad
guys were complaining to their leader worse than anyone complained about them.

Especially when the prisoners started laughing at them.

The head snake, who we started calling King Grumblespit and
Grubsnakegrundge and suchlike because ‘grun’ was at the beginning of his name,
ordered them to go out in groups—and they could use their weapons on anyone not
obeying the rules.

By the third day, most of the market knew something was going
on, and so, though all the grownups were being really really obedient—with the
kind of exaggerated, nasty politeness that school principals are especially
good at when they hate kids—they were waiting to see what would happen.

And none of them turned us in. In fact, if they saw us, they
looked away like hoo, see the pretty cloud?

We helped hustle things along by the fourth day, gathering
in the center and making loud speeches about how rotten King G was. Most
couldn’t understand us, but enough could that the word spread, and there was
soon an enormous crowd.

The whole contingent of bad guys arrived, swords waving
menacingly, and forced the crowd back, so they could surround us and march us
into the main building.

There, the leader faced us (that is, he sat down, then shot
up again, then hastily swiped off the tacks Klutz had planted on his throne,
then sat down again).

He found an interpreter, who said in passable Mearsiean, “Who
are you?”

We all turned to Puddlenose. This was, of course, the
opportunity of a lifetime.

With a straight face, Puddlenose started unloading his name.
The interpreter reddened, then gave it to the King Snake as Puddlenose said the
words, but the fellow figured out there was something fishy, growled a threat,
and so the interpreter translated.

There were snickers and rustles among the listening bad
guys.

The clod cursed, but Puddlenose spread his hands and said, “I
can’t help it! That’s my name!”

“What were you doing out there?”

“Wasn’t it obvious?”

“Answer the question!”

“Okay, okay, don’t snap my nose off. I was yelling insults
about your rule, of course.”

The clod snarled, then turned to the rest of us, and
demanded our names. Of course we delivered the aliases we’d chosen, except that
Id kept changing his mind. “No! It’s Gasbaggio Snackleblat! No, it’s Horsefeed
Funnelbelch! No—”

“Take then out and kill them all,” the head snake roared.

Puddlenose was grinning like a maniac.

Id looked nervously at me—after all, he and Klutz had been
here before.

“I hope you’re ready, CJ,” Klutz muttered.

“I think so,” I said.

Out they marched us—and I waited until the clods were all in
a row, ready to watch the show, then I flicked out the rock I’d made my token,
gabbled my spell, and before the arrow squad had even lined up (and everybody
was watching them) the head clods slowly turned grayish and just ... froze.

“It worked!” I squeaked.

Puddlenose gaped. “There was a doubt?”

Well, everybody went nutso then. Some of the guards chased
us, but we scattered and ran all over, until the guys found themselves isolated
from each other, and surrounded by angry people. Oops.

Somebody who spoke our language came up, and I explained
that the spell would only last a couple days at most—that was the best I could
do.

“It’s enough,” he said, and loped off somewhere to tell
someone.

Well, the result caused us girls to remember that, even if
Puddlenose wasn’t as good at some stuff as we were (like pocalubes, climbing
trees, thinking up funny skits, and so forth) when he had ideas during
traveling, it was an excellent idea to listen.

What happened next was both exciting and frustrating. The
secret turned out to be away in the forest. Now, the bad guys had been sent out
in gangs to search, but they couldn’t find the rest of the country, though they
knew it was there.

After what we did (and someone recognized Puddlenose) we got
invited into the secret: under the ancient redwoods, there was an entire
warren, a city. Maybe even bigger. Like the Junky, only centuries old, with
decorated tunnels and huge caverns with houses inside, and glow globes that
dimmed to look like stars at night, and during the day, somehow got sunlight in
them, which they reflected to look like day. So they had fruit trees growing
straight and tall because there wasn’t any wind, and lots of flowers and grass,
and waterfalls that fed carefully bricked meandering streams.

We only saw a tiny bit, because we couldn’t understand the
people. Puddlenose told us, “They are really big on storytelling. It goes on
all night, with others doing pantomime, kind of, which is how I knew what was
going on. Sounds a bit like songs and chants.”

I looked around the cavern we were invited into. “I’m coming
back some day. But when we can understand.”

The others agreed.

We left the next day, and promised to keep the secret—which
is why I haven’t written down any of the details. I figure, anyone who reads
these probably knows about them, as the cities are more known now, but the
accesses might still be secret.

Nobody’s getting them from me!

We had to cross some mountains. We hired horses, as we still
had plenty of coins left over from our raid. We paid a kid Puddlenose’s age to
take us over—he hired out as a caravan guide, and we were officially a caravan,
even though we didn’t have any wagons or stuff. That was fun. He told stories
about his travels, and added to Puddlenose that kids could get that kind of
job, if you could just find a powerful mage and enough coin to get the
Universal Language Spell.

That got Puddlenose excited, so what with that, and the
bitter cold high up in the mountains, and the fact that we’d been away so long,
we were more than ready to get home.

We only had one incident during that trip. Couldn’t really
call it an adventure, because the word ‘adventure’ suggests to me a lot of
action. This was very late at night, when we were all camped around the fire.
Suddenly the guide sat up, looking around. Dhana was already alert, poised, and
then I heard it: rustles and the crunch of gravel.

We were being surrounded.

What to do? Magic, I thought. What? Too many, and out of
sight, meant I couldn’t try that stone spell trick. No, it had to be something
they saw.

I know! I sat up, whispered the illusions spell, then I
started chanting loudly and waving my arms as an illusion took form just above
the Fire Stick’s flame. I made a ghostly version of Dhana, and made it do one
of her slow, spooky dances, her fingers wavering like smoke.

The noises ceased abruptly. I whispered another illusion
spell as the first began to fade, and then began chanting pocalubes slowly. The
others got the idea, and began chanting back, adding silly words droned in low
voices.

So that freed me to begin a bunch of illusions—I made creepy
monsters with talons, then sent them drifting out toward the darkness ...

The rustles and footsteps hustled away much quicker than
they’d come.

The guide left us at a ridge that led down to dry land that
swiftly turned to desert. It was boiling hot, nothing but glaring blue sky
overhead, but he told us if we hurried, there would be oases along the way. Dhana
nodded—if there was water, she’d find it.

“This has to be the Senyavin,” I yelled. “I just feel it.”

No one argued.

Well, desert is boring and hot, so skip a bunch of days,
until at last,
at last
we saw Mt. Marcus on the horizon, and the
cloudtop and the white castle, hazy and sun touched.

We reached the forest at last.

Tired as we were, we ran harder, wanting to reach the
Junky—see the girls’ faces—get something to drink and eat. I just wanted to
flop on my own bed, in my own room, and look at my drawings on the walls, and
not move.

But then we heard voices—angry kid voices.

“The girls,” Seshe panted, running next to me.

“It’s the clods,” Dhana hissed, and sprinted ahead, spotted
a stream, and vanished. She reappeared in a rainbow of droplets. “This way!”

She veered, and we followed, leaping over mossy logs,
running around old, tangled shrubs, ducking through hollows formed by old
trees, until we reached a clearing I vaguely remembered. It was the one where
we’d first met PJ’s slobs!

Jilo and his pals were on horseback, the girls ranged in a
line. When they saw us, eyes and mouths rounded in surprise.

And the Chwahirs’ eyes and mouths rounded in disbelief. I
looked away from the creepiness of those round black eyes, as Jilo and his gang
took in our dusty selves, with the hats, boots, swords, extra clothes, and all
the rest.

“Where have you been?” Irene demanded, hands on hips.

I glared at Jilo. He had to know where we’d been sent, or
rather, where we were supposed to end up: with Shnit! Now that I knew just what
that meant, I boiled with rage.

“So the summons spell did not function,” he said to
Puddlenose.

Summons? What did he mean by that? Not that I was going to
ask a Chwahir anything—I’d just get lies and nastiness.

“Later,” I said to Irene. “What’s going on here?”

“We told them to get lost, and I think they were about to
ride us down. Or try.”

“And see what they get!” Faline hefted a mud ball.

Jilo whispered to his pals. I whispered spells. As their
hands tightened on the reins, I quickly passed out pies.

“Oh wow,” Puddlenose breathed. “I never thought I’d get to
be in one of your pie fights.”

As the Chwahir started the horses forward, I yelled, “Ready,
zero, launch!”

Pies whizzed and splatted.

Three connected, one hit a horse on the neck, and one sailed
harmlessly to squelch onto a tree, but that was enough to cause the horses to
sidle, rear, and whinny.

Jilo had ducked, but he got hit anyway because four people
threw pies at him. So he was covered with
honey-cottage-cheese-pea-soup-treacle-raison-and-cherry glop.

“You think that will stop us?” he said.

“Then it’s war—war to the pie!” I yelled.

“To the pie?” Jilo asked.

I said, “Sure. Oh, I know you Chwahir like war to the knife,
but we like more imagination. Also, Clair doesn’t like killing.” I didn’t add
that I didn’t either. I did add, “So if you do any, she’ll get angry.”

“And then what?” Jilo asked derisively. “Kill us?”

“No,” Sherry said, her eyes round. “She’ll just turn you
into statues or something, and let future rulers decide what to do.”

“Until then, the birds all get target practice on your solid
stone heads,” Irene put in. “Hey, just like they are now!”

Jilo looked around, up, down, then gave us a peculiar sort
of smile, as cottage cheese plopped from his black clothes to the ground.

He muttered something in Chwahir and left, without another
word. All we heard was the rustle of horse hooves in the grass, the creak of
saddle gear, and then the Chwahir were gone.

“Home,” I yelled—meaning the cloudtop. If the Chwahir were
poking around, they just had to be trying to find the Junky, and I didn’t want
them sneaking after us.

As soon as we got in range, we transferred Upstairs.

We found Clair in the library. As soon as she saw us, her
anxious face turned bright pink and happy. She clasped her hands. “I knew you’d
be back!”

As the girls began talking at once, Clair separated off
Klutz and Id, and thanked them for going to Puddlenose’s rescue. “But next
time, let me know first, and we’ll plan something,” she said. “People have
missed you. A lot! We even had volunteers finish the flower-and-bird
decorations in your big receiving room. Just because they want you back.”

Klutz and Id made faces—they’d talked a little about how
dumb it was to both go off investigating, and leaving the province with no one
in charge.

“What did we miss?” Klutz asked.

Clair filled them in—not that there was much. Except for the
northern border and the constant worry about Kwenz, there really isn’t much in
the way of official government stuff in Wesset North. The Guilds do that. Klutz
and Id make sure no one cheats anyone else, but mostly they plan the best
parties and festivals, and contests, they decide if the Guilds are locked in
some disagreement.

They quickly finished up their talk, then Clair transferred
them home to their Destination room.

Then Clair turned to me, and pointed at my ring. “You didn’t
use that.”

“It would only transfer
me
,” I said.

She nodded. “Of course. I wonder if I should change the
spell, so it brings me to you, because you are more likely to be with the girls
if something happens.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said.

“Tomorrow.” She gave a nod.

Well, we got baths, food, and then it was story time. It
took a while because everyone interrupted everyone else, and Faline kept asking
us to go back to the play outside of Arthla. Irene muttered jealously that she
gets left out whenever something special happens. Diana wanted to look at the
swords and knives (I gave her the one I’d brought, after telling the others
about my idea of starting a fashion with the ugly sash).

But at last it was done, and we all trooped off to bed.

Except I couldn’t sleep, so I went out in my nightgown to
find Clair. It felt so good to be in my own nightie, in the White Palace again!

She was in the library, pulling down book after book.

“Trying to find a way to learn that Language Spell?” I
asked.

She grinned. “I think I’m going to have to seek it
elsewhere. Problem?”