The Call (6 page)

A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…

“W
hat know you of the conjurer's tongue?” the man in mismatched armor asked Grimluk.

“Is it missing?” Grimluk asked.

The man in the mismatched armor—so-called because he wore a helmet that was obviously too large for his rather small head and a chain mail shirt so small it was tied together in the back with pieces of
yarn—stared at him as if he were mad. Crazy mad, not angry mad.

“The tongue, fool. The language. Vargran, the tongue of power.”

Something about the phrase
the tongue of power
struck Grimluk as funny. He grinned, revealing his five intact teeth.

This proved to be a mistake. The man in the mismatched armor socked Grimluk in the mouth, hard, with an armored fist.

“Not so toothy now, are you?”

“Hey!” Grimluk found the detached tooth heading down his throat. He stopped it by gagging and then spit it out into his hand. “You had no right to punch me!”

“You stupid bumpkin,” the man snarled. “Do you think this is some mummer's game?”

Grimluk wasn't sure. He didn't know what a mummer's game might be, and millennia would pass slowly by before Google would be created to answer questions such as this.

“Do you not know that all the world stands as if on the edge of a cliff eleven feet tall? And that all we know and hold dearest is in danger?”

“I know of the Pale Queen.”

“You know nothing.”

“I have seen her daughter. The Princess. Or so she called herself.”

The man in the mismatched armor took a step back. “Do you say that you have seen Princess Ereskigal?” He got a shrewd look on his face, or at least as much of his face as was visible beneath the brim of his helmet. “Tell me of her appearance.”

“Very beautiful. With hair the color of a flame. And she ate the head of a terrifying beast like a grasshopper standing on its hind legs.”

“Ereskigal!” the man said, and Grimluk saw that his hands shook. “This is dire news. Follow me. Come! You must go before the
gerandon
!”

“What's a
gerandon
?”

“In the Vargran tongue its meaning is ‘conclave.' Bumpkin! Do you know nothing?” He set off at a quick walk from the gate of the castle down a winding pathway overshadowed by high stone walls. With each step Grimluk was watched by alert archers who were ready to rain arrows down on him—
into
him, actually—if he made one false move.

The
gerandon
held court in the castle's keep.
Grimluk had never been anywhere so grand. It was at least eleven times more magnificent than the baron's castle. For one thing, there were no farm animals in the room at all. For another thing, the walls were staggeringly tall. They seemed to go up and up forever before culminating in an arched roof that rested on massive buttresses.

At the farthest end of the room was an impressive throne of timber and leather, covered with animal pelts. It was currently unoccupied. It seemed that the king, the usual occupant of the throne, had discovered a pressing need to visit another country. He had discovered this pressing need approximately four seconds after hearing that the Pale Queen was on her way.

In the center of the room was a long, rectangular table. Placed around this table were high-backed chairs, and in the chairs sat a motley assortment of six men and one woman. Grimluk would have guessed even without being told that the men were wizards. All had long beards, varying from wispy and dark to full and gray to patchy and red. The woman did not have a beard, just a slight mustache.

She had to be a witch, Grimluk realized nervously.
There weren't many career paths that could put a woman into a position of power in those days. She was either a witch or a queen, and she didn't look like a queen.

It was she who spoke.

“What interrupts our deliberations?”

The man in mismatched armor jerked a thumb at Grimluk. “This bumpkin—”

“I'm a fleer and a former horse leader, not a bumpkin,” Grimluk interrupted.

“This fleer, then, claims to have seen Princess Ereskigal.”

Seven sets of eyes, totaling eleven eyes in all (since the woman had but one eye, and one of the men had none), stared at him.

Grimluk gave a brief account of his encounter with the stunning redhead in the forest.

“This is bad, Drupe,” one of the men said to the woman.

“How far distant?” the witch Drupe asked Grimluk.

“Two days' walk,” Grimluk said.

“Slow and ambling walk?” one of the wizards asked.

“Quick and anxious walking,” Grimluk said.

“Once again,” the eldest of the wizards said, “I renew my call for the creation of a standardized set of measurements.”

“Noted,” Drupe said wearily. She took a deep breath and stood up from her chair. She adjusted the patch over her missing eye and stretched a little, like someone who has been sitting too long. “The enemy approaches. Our forces are not ready. We have only eleven of the twelve. Once again we must withdraw, run away from the Dread Foe.”

“Ahem,” the man in the mismatched armor said.

“Yes?”

“This one here, the bumpkin, says he has the
enlightened puissance
. And he is of age.”

Grimluk had been trying his best to sidle back toward the door. He winced as the witch Drupe turned her blazing eye on him.

“Does he indeed?”

“I…um…You know, when I said I had the…the…the engorged parlance, I didn't exactly know…” He ran out of words at that point. This was not the way he thought it would be. It was normal to exaggerate on
a job application, but this had turned suddenly very serious.

The witch came to him. Only then did Grimluk notice that one of her legs was as thick as a tree trunk, gray and leathery, ending in stubby yellow nails.

He couldn't tear his gaze away from the leg.

“It's an elephant leg,” Drupe said. She shrugged. “It was a spell gone wrong. I'm working on it.”

Grimluk swallowed hard.

“I will give you the simplest of Vargran spells, bumpkin.”

“Okay.”

“Speak the words as I say them. But as you speak, bumpkin, banish fear from your mind.” She waved one hand before his face as though she was pulling away a curtain. “Banish fear and feel instead the blood of your ancestors back through all the generations. Reach back to forgotten time. Summon to you the powers of unyielding earth, drowning water, exhilarating air, and searing, flesh-consuming fire!”

Grimluk didn't want to do any of those things, but it was as if the witch's words were worms eating their way into his very soul. As though her words were within
him and no longer without. As though his blood truly did flow with all the strength of his ancestors, all the powers of the world itself.

“Gather to yourself the fearsome wolf and the great eagle, the poison snake and the bludgeoning boar, and speak,
speak
!”

Her face was right in his, her breath on him, her heat warming his body.

Then she opened her hand. And in her palm lay a butterfly. It had been crushed, its wings broken.

“Speak these words, bumpkin:
Halk-ma erdetrad (sniff) gool! Halk-ma! Halk-ma!
”

So Grimluk said the words. He shouted them with all the conviction he could muster.

The butterfly stirred! Its wings moved feebly.

And slowly, slowly, it rose into the air.

Alive!

And then it fell to the floor. Dead again.

“Good enough,” Drupe said. She grinned at the amazed wizards. “Good enough.”

T
he giant bug arm oozed green-black blood from the stump. It wasn't heavy. It felt like something made out of brittle plastic, the way plastic gets if you leave it out in the sun for a long time.

“It's all yours,” Mack said. He handed the arm to Stefan, who hefted it like it might be some kind of weapon.

“My name is Rose Everlast,” the Asian woman said. “I'm with the accounting firm of Hwang, Lee,
Chun, and Everlast.”

“You're an accountant?” Mack said incredulously. “You don't look like an accountant.”

“What do I look like?” Rose asked.

“Hot. Way hot. No offense,” Stefan interjected. He was fifteen, after all.

Rose did not seem offended. She opened a leather case on her lap. “We don't have a lot of time.” She pulled out two small blue notebooks and handed one to Mack and the other to Stefan.

Mack read the embossed cover. He flipped it open to a picture of him. “This is a passport.”

“Yes,” Rose said. “It is. You'll notice we've given you a different name. You are now Mack Standerfield. And you,” she said to Stefan, “are Stefan Standerfield, age twenty-one.”

“Excellent,” Stefan said, breaking into a grin. “I can drive!”

“Minors aren't allowed to travel unaccompanied,” Rose explained. “Stefan will be your adult older brother.”

“Um, whoa. Hold up,” Mack said.

Rose ignored him other than to purse her perfect
red lips disapprovingly. “You have a flight to catch. We are running late.”

“Hey. I'm not flying anywhere!” Mack said. “I'm going home to kick the golem out of my bedroom and call the FBI or whatever and tell them what's happening.”

Rose shrugged. “Then your family will die.”

“Stop that, okay?” Mack said.

Rose handed him a credit card. The name on it was Mack Standerfield. “Don't lose this,” she said. “Or this.” She handed each of them an iPhone.

“Is your number on here?” Stefan asked with a leer.

“I'm a little old for you,” Rose said witheringly.

Stefan grinned. “I don't mind.”

Rose turned pointedly away from Stefan and gave Mack all her attention. “I've already provided a phone to your golem so he can text you if need be.”

“He can text?”

“Of course he can text. He's a golem,” Rose said, “not an adult. Now: money. You have a limited budget. You can spend all of it, but once you do, it's gone. If you waste it, you'll have nothing. And remember, you
have a long, long way to go.”

Mack considered pointing out again that he had no intention of going anywhere. But it was starting to dawn on him that he probably was going. The thing about his mom and dad being killed, that had a realness to it. Nine Iron was an old goof, maybe, but his snakes had been real enough, and that slow-moving blade was sharp enough, too.

And then there were the big giant bug things.

He snapped out of his reveries when he heard the kind of words that tend to snap people out of reveries.

“Did you just say ‘one million dollars'?”

“It's not as much as it sounds. You will be paying for air travel, rooms, and food, and all of that is expensive. You may also need to pay bribes. You may find the need to hire assassins. There will almost certainly be medical expenses.”

“Medical expenses?” Mack gulped.

Rose closed her leather case, set it aside, and leaned toward him. She smelled of something citrus and yet seductive.

“I haven't been told what all this is about,” Rose said. “Not all the details. I only know that the funds
come from a Swiss bank account that was first opened in the year 1259.”

“That's a long time ago.”

“The gold that was used to open the account was in a small strongbox that survives to this day. That strongbox is from an era long, long before even the year 1259. We're talking golden crowns from Ur, rubies from ancient Egypt, diamonds from the empire of Ashoka the Great. Wealth from the four corners of the earth.”

“Wow!”

“At one time the contents of that strongbox were worth almost a billion dollars.” Rose sighed and sat back. “Unfortunately, the bank used some of that money to invest in shopping malls and hedge funds. So now, all that's left is one million, seven thousand, eight dollars.”

“What happened to the seven thousand eight dollars?” Mack asked suspiciously.

Rose smiled and made a sweeping gesture with her manicured hands that encompassed all that was Rose Everlast. “This look doesn't come cheap,” she said.

“Totally worth it,” Stefan said.

Mack fingered the credit card. “Why me?”

Rose shrugged.

“Do you know an old dead-looking guy named Grimluk?”

Rose shook her head.

“You ever hear of the Nafia?”

“The Mafia?”

Mack shook his head. “Never mind.” He glanced at Stefan. “You don't have to do this, dude.”

“You're under my wing, man,” Stefan said. “That is, like, sacred. Besides—a million bucks?”

Rose drew an oblong folder from the outer zip pocket of the case. “Your tickets.”

Mack took them. “Where are we going?”

“I can only tell you the first stop. There you are to find a person, a child like yourself. I don't know who the person is. And I don't know how you are to find this person. My instruction was simply that you go.”

“Just go someplace and find some person?” Mack said skeptically. “You realize that makes no sense?”

“Yes. I do. But to be honest, no part of this makes sense to me. But it seems to make sense to those who control this account.”

“Well, that's just great,” Mack said. “Sorry. I didn't mean to be sarcastic.”

“You have to get this person to join you. Together you'll find the next member of the group. And so on.”

This both disturbed and reassured Mack. Disturbed because he didn't like meeting new people. Reassured because hopefully this person would be able to explain to him what was going on.

“So where is this kid?” Mack asked.

“Australia.”

Mack stared at Rose. He thought of a couple of things to say, none of them polite.

“Sweet,” Stefan said, grinning. “I heard kangaroos can box.” He interlaced his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “I am going to kick me some kangaroo butt.”