The Last Stand of Daronwy (9 page)

Jeremy and Mira jogged away toward the two lines of people linked arm in arm on the other side of the playground.

“Thanks!”

Mira's smile flashed as her eyebrows rose and she cocked her head. “What was that about?”

“I caught them swimming in the pond in Twin Hills yesterday.”

“Were they, like, naked or something?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Naked!” She doubled over, laughing.

Chapter Nine

Jeremy and Daniel stood at the edge of Faker, frowning into overgrown shadows with sword and staff ready. Their makeshift grappling hooks—old nylon rope tied around a sturdy branch—were wrapped across their chests like the pictures of mountaineers in the encyclopedias. They looked the parts of their doppelgangers, one standing in mail, the other in robes, both staring down a green glowing hallway of stone.

“What do you think is in there?” Eaglewing whispered to his brother.

“One of the Stones, if we're right.”

“It can't be this easy.”

“There are traps. Follow me.”

Running into the ghoulish darkness, Eaglewing trusted the wizard's magical sight. On Faker, they jumped the trip cords and skirted the makeshift pongee traps. Around a bend in the trail, they came to a high line, nearly chest high. Daniel and Jeremy ducked beneath it.

“Let's play we flew over that,” Daniel said without breaking stride, “and darts flew from the walls.”

“Poisonous darts. They're shooting everywhere; I'm deflecting them with my sword.” Jeremy twirled his stick to either side of his body. “Let's pretend there's a huge crack in the floor and it's a hundred feet and we have to swing across it, but there are goblins on the other side.” Jeremy threw his homemade grappling hook through a tree and swung across the black water of Dry Creek, swinging his stick to fend off goblins on the far shore. He threw the rope back to Daniel. “Lightningbolt!”

Daniel swung across, then pulled the rope down from its catch in the vines above the narrow creek. “Come on!” Jeremy said, starting to run even as he secured the rope.

They ran deeper into darkness, following the trace of power in the Stone. Drums beat, bells tolled. Shouts of warning echoed from other hallways, passages so old that the great-grandchildren of those who forgot them were themselves forgotten. They rushed down stairs chiseled out of the rock, beneath columns and broken arches that might topple with the slightest shove. The choking stench of rot stole their breath. Eaglewing coughed. “What is that smell?”

Lightningbolt dared a small orb, and they found the ground littered with bones. Sound came from above: bells tolling, feet hurrying.

“Let's play that we found our way into their trash pit, and we're running through it because they're coming down.”

“Arrows hit around us, but we keep running deeper and deeper into the passageways. Come on.” Daniel took the lead, running breakneck through the trackless tangle of Helter Skelter.

Squeezing through a small passage of rocks, they found themselves in a large chamber. An ambush of goblins lunged at them from both sides. The brothers fought through them, then became lost in the center of the giant room, fighting back-to-back.

“Which way?” screamed Eaglewing over the din of the crowding creatures.

“I don't know yet. I'm casting too many spells to feel the Stone's energy!”

“We can't hold them off forever!”

“Take my sword and buy me some time.”

“On the count of three, duck. One… two… three!”

Lightningbolt dropped to the ground as Eaglewing unsheathed Lightningbolt's sword. He spun in place with both swords whirling, sending a half-dozen goblin knights clattering across the stones. More goblins pressed forward, taking their place.

“Liiiiiightningboooolt!”

“Up. Go up, then follow me.”

“Wait!” Eaglewing blocked a high cut at his head. “Now!”

They jumped into the air, unfurled their wings, and pumped them. Eaglewing turned in midair to follow his brother toward the far side of the cavern. Dark crystal knives whistled through the air; one sliced Eaglewing's leg. He tried to keep up as Lightningbolt raced ahead. Below, the goblin army surged like the tide, following them. Mucus-colored light sneezed in fitful flickers from a dark crevice to their right, far over the heads of the goblin horde. Lightningbolt veered away from that light, whizzing past crumbling columns and stalactites.

“That's a cavern wall! What are you doing?”

Lightningbolt didn't answer. He dove straight into the wall, turning at the last second to move through a nearly-invisible crevasse. Too constrained to beat their wings, they fell through it and crashed onto a sloping cavern floor littered with broken scree. They half slid, half tumbled down it. Covered in dust and blood, rubbing his elbows and knees, Eaglewing looked at his brother. “What was that?”

“There's a spell on it, something ancient. You can't see it until someone shows it to you. To me, it looked like a piece of the wall. I just flew into it on faith while maintaining my shields.”

“You're crazy.” Eaglewing smiled, shaking his head. He got to his feet and started sliding down the slope toward his brother. “Does that mean they can't follow us?”

“No. If they saw us, they can follow us.”

“I was afraid you'd say that.”

The cavern opened into a small chamber littered with giant misplaced blocks that had fallen from the ceiling. In the center of the room was an immense black hole. Around the edge of the hole a crumbling stair had been hewn directly from the rock. “The stair of the Edenkiri.”

“We have found them.” Eaglewing stared at the marvel. “Everyone's heard the legend, but to actually see it… ”

“We're not taking it.”

Eaglewing snapped his head to his brother. “What?”

“Look!” He hurled a crimson orb at the narrow squeeze of rocks. “It's a flaming serpent! They have a hundred feet like a centipede and they ripple with color, but no magic works on them.”

“Let's fight it!”

“No, it's too fast,” Daniel said. “Let's pretend I shot a ball of energy at it.” The orb shattered, magic rippling harmlessly against the shimmering body of the flaming serpent. “Before you even draw your sword, it's right here in front of us, and the goblins are pouring through the gap behind it.”

Eaglewing barely had time to raise the sword when a claw caught his shoulder, cutting through the leather and chain mail as though they were cotton. Lightningbolt grabbed his brother's arm and fell backward into the bottomless blackness. In a blink, they dropped into a spacious darkness with no sides that they could see. The stair continued, winding its way into nothingness, with no physical support except itself and whatever magic had created it. The air grew colder, staler.

“I've never fallen this far in my life!”

The scales of the flaming serpent flashed far above them, looping around the stair like an orange ray of light. “Faster!”

Pulling wings tight against their backs, they fell headfirst. The chasm narrowed and the stair shifted back and forth from wall to wall on thread-like bridges of rock. Lightningbolt brightened the light, but there was only stair, rock walls, and empty darkness.

“Whoa!” Lightningbolt spread his wings, slowing his fall. Eaglewing followed suit. Both of them crashed hard on their stomachs.

“Nice… landing,” Eaglewing coughed, massaging his ribs. The floor was completely smooth, as if this had once been a subterranean river. The stair came down at the edge what might have once been the river's bank, just visible in the gloom.

Lightningbolt shook his head to clear it. “This way.” He ran toward the foot of the stair, then along the riverbank, beating his wings for speed. Eaglewing could finally begin to feel the power of the Stone. It was down here. They moved along the riverbank for a long time before they saw the first skeletons.

“Is that an Edenkiri?”

“Was, I think”

“Did you know they were so big?”

Lightningbolt shook his head.

The Edenkiri still wore a heavy metal cap on its broad skull. The bones of its four slender arms stretched along the cavern wall and its legs jutted out before it. Standing, it would be almost seven feet tall. “Come on, that serpent is still back there.” They sped toward a tangible, light-consuming blackness.

The river ended in a sudden precipice, smoothed by centuries of water. Beyond the now-dusty waterfall lay a dark city of crumbling spires and flat-roofed buildings hewn from the basalt of the planet's heart. The buildings stretched as far as they could see in the light from Lightningbolt's staff.

“Des'an'dar.” Eaglewing stared at it.

“Yeah.” A dancing orange light played across the cavern walls. “The serpent! Fly, fly!”

They dove into the space, gliding over the dark roofs. The fire serpent howled behind them; a mournful, tortured shriek. It flashed from side to side of the precipice, hunting for a way down. Lightningbolt led his brother over the extinct river that cut the city in half, following the pulsing rhythm of the Stone's ancient power. Des'an'dar ended in a cliff that cut to a flat plain of polished stone. It was not long before another chasm yawned before them.

“Down? Again?”

“That's where it is. Follow me.”

They dropped into the pit. Lightningbolt brightened his staff to a white-hot shine, but even that could not illuminate the walls of the crevasse. Blackness enveloped them. With only gravity for a guide, they let themselves fall.

“Something's up there! See the flicker?”

“Slow down!”

They landed on a massive plain of glittering crystal. Pieces of light and dark crystal were cut and mortared side by side across the entire expanse. Pillars the size of small castles rose at the very edges of their visibility. Other pillars lay across the floor in broken, tower-sized chunks.

Eaglewing's head spun from the conflicting crystals. The light ones gave him energy that the dark ones stole just as fast. “What is this?”

“It will neutralize our power. Come on, it's this way.”

“Have you ever seen so much crystal?”

Lightningbolt shook his head. “Only in drawings.”

They crossed the plain, walking toward a dull red light that shimmered in the distance. The air warmed. Thousands of skeletons littered the ground, still clutching broken weapons and wearing cobwebbed armor, as if some last ditch-battle had been fought here in the depths of the world and no one had lived to tell about it. There were hundreds on hundreds of Edenkiri, and many more other things—goblins, ogres, blackened horned skulls the size of the brothers' chests. At the edge of the plain, they came to two tall iron doors. The left door hung by one hinge only; the bottom was blown away, cut and charred. Jumbles of bones were piled on either side.

Inside, the same crystal floor had been split in a catastrophic upheaval to reveal a river of magma that glowered an angry crimson from deep below, lighting the room and scorching the air. Sulfur choked their lungs. Here, gray statues took the place of skeletons. Tall, slender, four-armed Edenkiri warriors wielded staff-like weapons with circular disks where spear points should have been. They fought horned creatures just as tall as themselves with limbs the girth of tree trunks. Both wore robes and mail that flapped in a wind that had died thousands of years before. Swords and axes crossed with the staffs. Several horned beasts lay on the floor with other Edenkiri. One of the beasts was missing a horn, frozen in mid-roar, revealing its long fangs.

In the center of the room, near the rift, stood one Edenkiri, his beard forever lifted in the hot, sulfurous wind, his four hands held overhead, palms touching the only item in the entire room that was not gray rock. In his hands, a vibrant blue orb radiated. It appeared to have no edge, as though it were made of water. Eaglewing thought that if he touched it, he might fall in.

Silence hung on the oppressive fumes. Raw power frazzled the edges of Eaglewing's mind like a grinder set against his thoughts. “That's it,” he whispered.

“These are not statues.”

“Yeah, I gathered that,” said Eaglewing. “We need to get out of here.”

“What do we do?”

Eaglewing gestured at the orb. “We came to get the Stone, right?”

“Right.” Lightningbolt glanced from the Stone to the statues. “How are we going to get out?”

“Do you still have the jump cloth?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then, what's wrong? Let's go.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

With each step among the statues, the same unease wormed through Eaglewing's chest. Warmth radiated from these figures. They were alive once, and likely still were, caught in an unusual limbo, cursed to be frozen in this last dire battle for thousands of years. Lightningbolt stepped onto a chunk of fallen rock next to the Edenkiri and reached out his shaking hands toward the blue orb. Eaglewing held the jump cloth, concentrating on the spell in case he should have to say it. The blue Stone pulsed. It still had no edge, even this close. Lightningbolt stared at it, then at the statues. “I think they're watching me. Are you ready?”

“I have the spell ready,” Eaglewing said through clenched teeth. His fingers clutched both his sword and the jump cloth in white-knuckled grips.

Lightningbolt took a deep breath. His fingers wrapped around an edge that was simply not there. An older, wilder magic surged up his arms; he could not feel what the Stone was made from, only the immense power it contained. Lightningbolt half threw, half dropped it into his satchel, glad to be free from its prickling electricity. Before Lightningbolt could speak the words of the jump spell, the Edenkiri turned its head and stared at him. A blue-skinned palm slammed into his chest, sending the wizard hurtling through the air to crash into the far wall. Screeches and shouts resounded and the battle resumed exactly where it had stopped, for a moment anyway. Then, sensing the shift in the balance of power, both the Edenkiri and the demons turned to stare at the adepts. Tension mounted on the foul air. The blue-skinned Edenkiri shuffled backwards. The black demons narrowed their red eyes and turned their horned heads slightly to their leader, a giant of a man with horns, who looked from Edenkiri to the adepts and back. Eaglewing recognized him from ancient frescos: Rathian, the fallen adept.