The Dragon King (11 page)

When his feet hit the floor, he found himself between the desk and Mrs. Thresher!

Artie threw the slackened rope, and it quickly lashed the desk’s legs together in an uncomfortable-looking bundle. It wasn’t going anywhere now, but it wouldn’t give up. If anything, the fact that Artie had just lassoed it made it even more desperate. The hind legs drove forward, and the edge of the desk took out Artie’s feet. Now he was lying flat on top of the thing as it made a last, desperate push toward Mrs. Thresher.

Artie peered over the rear end of the desk. His knights had regrouped and were only forty feet away. Kay had pulled Cleomede from the ground and was running hard with it at her side.

Artie looked back at Mrs. Thresher. His eyes wide, he did the unthinkable: he pulled his sword arm back and flung Excalibur end over end toward the door—if he did it just right, Excalibur would land point down in the floor and create a final barrier between the desk and Mrs. Thresher. If he did it wrong, Excalibur would fly right through to Merlin himself, and that would be that.

But it was a perfect throw. Excalibur hit the ground just in front of the door and drove halfway to the hilt. At the last moment the desk plowed into Excalibur and stopped short.

A sound like jingling pocket change came from Mrs. Thresher as the door shook violently on its hinges, egging the desk on just a little farther. It was so close.

“Eat this!” Artie heard Lance say as he loosed a fireballer. It passed through the doorway and disappeared in the void mere feet from Artie. The explosion on the other side couldn’t be seen, but it clearly worked. The door that led directly to Merlin shut immediately, as if recoiling in pain.

Kay entered the room holding another coil of the magical rope, and Artie said, “Sis, hog-tie this thing!”

“Aye, aye!” With Erik’s help, Kay secured the rear legs, and that was it. The desk continued to buck and shudder as if it contained the world’s largest Mexican jumping bean, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

“Nasty piece of work,” Shallot observed.

Dred leaned on his sword. “You can say that again. Good work, Brother.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you guys,” Artie pointed out. “Erik, Shallot—you guys cool? That was a big hit. You want some of the scabbard?”

Erik rubbed his chest. “I’m fine.”

Shallot just spit on the floor.

Kay sheathed Cleomede. “Alrighty, then.”

“Well, sire,” Bedevere said, “should we open this thing up?”

Artie pulled Excalibur from the floor. “Absolutely.”

On one side was a fist-size padlock. Emblazoned on its front was a silver galloping horse.

Artie pointed at the lock. “Kay—that’s the same horse that’s on the key Cassie left for you!”

Kay leaned in. “Holy hand grenades! You’re right.” She slid the key out of her pocket and tried the lock. It was a perfect fit. She turned it and the lock fell open. The desk immediately stopped moving, as if it had been mercifully put to rest.

Erik gaped. “Why do you have that, Kingfisher?”

“Long story.” Kay looked to her brother. “I guess I better read that letter as soon as I have a chance.”

“Uh, yeah, you should.”

Shallot, who apparently didn’t care where the key had come from, wedged the tip of her blade in the hairline crack that ran around the top. She pushed down and in. With a gasp of air, the desk’s lid swung open.

They stared into it. “By the trees . . . ,” Bedevere said breathlessly.

A narrow flight of steps descended before them, as if into the floor itself, disappearing after several feet into an inky blackness.

Artie put one foot into the cavity then paused. “I guess next stop is a mystery staircase into another dimension. Then he walked down and disappeared.

The knights followed, Dred going
last. He did so cautiously—he wasn’t scared, but something about this chest made him uncomfortable.

He swallowed hard and then, one foot after the next, dropped into nothingness.

The world disappeared. Up ahead, Artie could see only the faint outline of his nose. He heard the others calling out behind him, but it was like they were hundreds of feet away. They sounded lost.

Walking carefully, Artie reached to either side to keep his balance as the stairway twisted and turned. After walking for several minutes he felt askew and uneasy. And that was when he realized that his body had turned in such a way that he was walking
on
the wall. “Guys!” he yelled into the blackness. But no answer came—just more muted calls from his companions.

After a short while a weak orange light appeared ahead. There was no choice but to move toward it. Artie reached a corner, turned, and found himself in a cube-shaped room, measuring about forty feet along every edge—a room with a very strange enchantment on it.

The others entered, and when Dred finally arrived, he exclaimed, “Whoa—
we’re on the wall!
”

“Yes,” Bedevere said. “Gravity is playing some funny tricks here. It takes a second to get used to.”

It was doubly disorienting because, while they didn’t feel like they were going to fall over, their hair and anything loose that was strapped to their bodies—swords, backpacks, necklaces, shoelaces—
did
fall to the side, obeying the usual laws of physics.

As the knights moved farther in, their feet raked through a bunch of things on the floor—er, wall. The entire surface was covered with keys hanging from rough metal hooks. Each key appeared completely identical to the others—about eight inches long, a skinny neck with a loop for a handle, and a toothy, crown-shaped blade. All were made of the same dark wood. Artie looked around, and that was when he realized that all six sides of the cube-shaped room were covered with keys!

“By the fens, there must be ten thousand keys in here!” Dred said.

“But only one will work, right?” Lance asked.

“According to Mum,” Dred said.

Artie stared all around. “How do we find the right one?”

While the knights discussed what to do, Erik wandered toward the ceiling, where the keys hung like sleeping bats. He parted some with his hand and frowned. He placed a knee on the ceiling. Then the other. He crawled forward and stood. Then he was standing upside down! His hair hung below him, and his outermost shirt fell around his chest, but he stayed put. “Guys, check this out!”

Everyone gasped. Kay said, “Frigging cool.”

Artie counted his knights. “There’s seven of us. Let’s each take a wall and look for this key. If you see one that’s even
slightly
different from the others, grab it.”

Moving to the other surfaces was surreal, but before long all the knights were in place, their bodies pointed toward the middle of the room. Bedevere and Lance worked their wall together, while the others searched on their own. Artie had taken the floor, moving along on hands and knees, which, on account of the hooks, was neither easy nor comfortable.

Why are there hooks on the floor?
he wondered.

Finally he reached the center. Here was the lone blank spot on the whole surface. It was only six or seven inches across. There was no hook, but in the middle was a square of dark-green glass. Artie leaned over and peered into it but could see nothing on the other side.

He craned his neck. Erik was above him, walking along and tapping each key with Gram’s tip. Directly overhead was the same blank spot, though it appeared to be of a different hue. “Guys—is there a small glass square in the middle of your wall?” Artie asked.

The others checked. Yes, every wall had one.

“What do you think they’re for?” Lance asked as Bedevere tapped their spot with his boot.

Artie stood. “No idea.” He stepped onto his, keeping his feet together. Excalibur tingled. “Try standing on yours.”

Each knight moved into position. Shallot was the last to do so, and as soon as she brought her feet together, the room turned!

Before Artie knew it, what had been the floor was now a wall, then another wall and another, and then the ceiling!

He stepped from his spot and the spinning stopped.

“Whoa!” Kay said, stepping from her spot too. “That was weird.”

“Look!” Shallot shouted, pointing across the chamber.

“Great,” Erik said drily. The doorway that had brought them there was gone.

“We probably just have to spin it back into place,” Lance said.

“What does it matter? We still don’t have this stupid key,” Kay said. “We’re going to have to open a moongate and take all of them, Art. You know that, right?”

Artie shook his head. “It’s here somewhere. We just have to find it.” He tapped one of the keys surrounding the glass with Excalibur. It made a pleasant sound. Curious, he tapped the one next to it. Even though it looked exactly the same, it made a different sound. He tapped each of the others, one after the other. He realized that if he started with the correct one and moved clockwise around the space, they made the notes of a major scale.

“Guys, you hear this?” He repeated the sequence. “Do yours do that too?” Each knight tried and found that theirs, too, produced a major scale. They all looked at one another in wonder.

“Keys can be used for doors—
and
for music. You think that’s something?” Lance asked.

“Could be.”

“Anyone have a good enough ear to know what scale this is?” Erik wondered.

“F major,” Kay said decisively. “I knew those piano lessons would come in handy one day.”

“So what—now we just each play a little ditty?” Erik asked. “How’s that going to help?”

“Dunno,” Kay said. “Wouldn’t know where to start, anyway. I quit piano after a year. I was really good at the scales, but that was it. If there’s one thing I’m bad at, it’s playing actual music. I remember Kynder used to sing us lullabies, but he had the most awful singing voice. Right, Art?”

“Horrible,” Artie confirmed.

“I do remember this, though,” Kay said, playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

“We have that tune in Leagon as well,” Shallot said as Kay hit the keys at her feet randomly.

“Wait, do that again,” Dred said.

Artie peered at his brother. “‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?”

“No. The other one.”

“I was just goofing,” Kay said.

“But I’ve heard that tune before.” Dred nicked a few of the keys at his feet. “Morgaine sang lullabies when I was little, too. One a lot. It went, ‘
Heno, Heno, hen blant bach
. . .’” Dred searched around the notes, fiddling with the melody—just a couple of bars before it repeated—and on the last go-around changed one note. When he was finished, the little glass spot glowed bright and a light shot from it like a laser into the middle of the room.

“Nice!” Kay shouted.

“Let’s all do it,” Artie said. “Dred, show us.”

One at a time, the knights played the tune and activated the spots at their feet. Each patch of glass shot the same light into the middle of the room. Artie went last, and when he was finished his light joined the others.

A blinding flash came from the intersection of lights as the room spun wildly, throwing the knights to their hands and knees.

Finally it stopped. Every key stood at attention, pointing directly at the center of the chamber. And there, rotating maniacally on invisible strings, was something small and black that hadn’t been there before.

Dred thrust out the Peace Sword. “Look!”

“Is that it?” Erik asked.

“Can’t tell,” Artie said. “It’s moving too fast.”

“That has to be it,” Kay said. “But how are we going to reach it? It’s gotta be twenty feet from any of us.”

“You have any of my mum’s rope left?” Dred asked.

“Oh, yeah. One more coil, I think.” Kay rummaged in the infinite backpack and pulled out the last piece of silver rope. She held on to one end, and tossed the other to the middle of the room.

It flew toward the thing like a magnet and wrapped it up. Kay gave the rope a hard yank and the thing came free. The rope swung through the air, and as it passed Dred, he reached up and grabbed it.

“Well, what is it?” Artie asked.

Dred had a huge smile on his face as he held out the object. Sure enough, it was a key. It was nearly like all the others, except that the neck was a double helix, like a strand of DNA.

Artie clapped his hands. “Yes!”

“So that’s it? That’ll open the door inside the King’s Gate?” Kay asked desperately, thinking of the Grail, and of Kynder.

Artie beamed. “Sis, there’s only one way to find out.”

“Dragons!” Merlin yelled. “Dragons, dragons,
dragons! The temerity of that aquatic sprite! ‘Oh, here’s Scarffern, m’lord, use it well,’ I bet she said. ‘The lords and lordesses of the Otherworld will bow and kneel and scrape! They will sniff at your toes and give you flowers and honey and blood!’ Ack! I would drain that Lake into hell itself if I could! Nyneve! Troublesome, tiresome Nyneve!”

Merlin reached into the huge cage standing next to him and snapped his fingers. A huffing sound came from within. “Dragons!” he spit.

Merlin grabbed a bloody hunk of meat from a nearby table and held it out. “
Agorwch
,” he called, and the cage’s door unclicked and swung wide. He tossed in the meat. “
Caewch
,” he ordered. And the steel bars slammed shut.

“Soon, beast. Tomorrow or the day after. I will give you something so fresh to eat that the brain will still be fracturing with electricity.”

From inside the cage came the chompings and gnashings of a ravenous thing. The snapping, crunching, and splintering of bones. The sucking of blood between teeth and gums. The licking of lips and jowls. The gulping of a long throat. The belch of a hastily consumed meal.

“Yes, pet beast. Soon you will see battle. You will slay many dragons! But not the king. No, the king is mine. . . .”

Merlin twirled from the cage and floated into the passageways of his cave. “Scarffern! The little interferer. Its vile echo rings in my ears even now.” As he moved he dragged the butt end of his owl-headed cane along the rock.
Click-clack-a-tat, click-click-tick.
He arrived at the room that hummed with computer mainframes. He held his hand over a scanner and winced as the light traveled up and down his palm, reading the ancient lines of his skin, still there in spite of all the sangrealitic tattoos. The door hissed open, and Merlin went inside.

The room was warm. He glided to a desktop computer with a flat-screen monitor and pounded on a keyboard. Terminal windows opened and closed and opened and closed as streams of code flew from his fingertips. He was an evil master of magic and of programming. The total package. A five-tool player. A wizard and a nerd extraordinaire.

He peered into the computer screen. Peering back was the reflection of his eyes, so red now that there was no difference between the iris and what had been the white. The pupil was no longer black but purple and clouded. His eyes were less like a demon’s than those of a deep-water fish.

“More surprises, pet,” he said, even though the creature was still in its cage in a far-off room. Merlin scratched his left temple manically. His eyes twitched. “So many more surprises. That unwitting boy has no idea that I looked through his eyes and saw that Artie has the key that will lead him to the Grail. Gram’s ragged keeper, we will make a traitor of you yet.”

Merlin lifted his hands from the keyboard dramatically. The screen went completely black before filling with images. Images of children, slumped in couches and overstuffed chairs and beanbags. Boys mostly, but girls too. Their hands limp in their laps, holding game controllers. These were the children of the world who, like Artie Kingfisher before them, loved
Otherworld
the video game. The nerds, the would-be elves and orcs and battle mages, the Dr Pepper heads, as Kay liked to call them.

Soon they would get a surprise.

Merlin tented his fingers and smiled. He turned his attention to a steel pedestal with a bowl mounted on top. It looked like a modern interpretation of a holy water stoup that one would see in the narthex of a church.

The stoup contained liquid sangrealite. Trailing from the backside of the pedestal was a tangle of bright wires, some of which led to the computer, but the bulk of which led to an archway made of stone. This archway was nestled about a dozen feet from the computer and the stoup between a row of twinkling mainframes. Twisting around the stone portal were coils of solid sangrealite. Everything was connected—the computer to the stoup, the stoup to the archway. It was an arrangement that Merlin had been experimenting with and was now ready to use in earnest.

Merlin pounded some more commands into the keyboard, and the images of kids continued to spill across the screen. But then they stopped, and a boy with dark hair and green eyes sitting in a folding chair appeared. He was about twelve and had on beige cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt.

“Hello, child,” Merlin cooed.

The wizard slid to the pedestal and held his hand over the bowl. He wiggled his fingers just above the liquid’s surface.

“You will work this time. I can feel it.”

Then, Merlin went completely still and each of his eyes rolled into his head sideways, parting away from the angular bridge of his nose toward the temples.

He dipped his fingertips into the rippling sangrealite. The wires jumped as power shot through them. The sangrealite twisting around the archway glowed bright, and the space between the rocks went completely black.

The face of the child on the computer screen widened with an expression part terror, part elation.

Merlin’s smile grew even more sinister. The very air filled with power—magical, magnetic, electrical.

And then the child on the screen disappeared.