Yellow Brick War (16 page)

The next morning we assembled in the courtyard. Lulu wanted to come with us, but agreed to stay at the Woodman's palace with her monkeys in case any of Glinda's army returned. Ozma was too much of a liability in the Emerald City, and Lulu was only too happy to look after her. We were all trying to make up for our pasts in one way or another, I guess. Except for Ozma, who couldn't remember hers. Suddenly, having your memory wiped seemed more like a blessing than a curse.

So in the end it was just Nox, Gert, Mombi, Glamora, and me who prepared to teleport to Dorothy's palace in the Emerald City.

The last I'd seen it, it had been a scary place. The city had been leveled as if it was hit with a bomb and the palace itself had seemed to be growing like a living thing, like it had been possessed by some kind of demonic force.

It had been the Wizard's doing, and he was gone now. But
knowing Oz, and knowing what I knew now, I thought it was unlikely that things had improved much, even without him. If there was one thing Oz had taught me, it was to prepare for the worst.

So the five of us joined hands, and Mombi began to mumble the familiar words of the teleportation spell that would take us all there.

I was an old hand at flying by now, but it still didn't lose its thrill. I felt the familiar jerk of magic lifting me up into the air, and the sensation of the bottom of my stomach dropping out as we rose into the sky, our hands still linked. Far off on the horizon, I could see the pale stripe of the Deadly Desert; in the opposite direction, the tall peaks of the mountains. For just a moment, in that glorious weightless space, I could pretend that I wasn't going back into battle—just flying over the jewel-bright landscape of Oz with the wind in my hair and the sun on my back. I could see the same joy in Nox's face. Even Mombi, who hated heights, was smiling as we hurtled toward our destination.

Then Nox's expression changed. I turned my head to follow his gaze and gasped out loud.

We were flying into a storm. Out of nowhere, dark clouds gathered into a churning inferno before us, looming directly over the ruined Emerald City.

I'd seen the changes in the city on the ground, and that had been bad enough. But from the air, it was terrifying: the bombed-out buildings, the empty streets scattered with broken gems. From here I could see there were bodies in the ruins,
too—twisted and broken like the buildings around them. I swallowed hard. At the center of it all, the twisted spires of the Emerald Palace stabbed upward into the dark, oily-looking clouds. The palace seemed to radiate a tangible sense of menace. Dark, serpentine vines twined up its twisted towers, and smoke boiled out of some of its broken windows. What had once been orderly gardens looked more like a jungle, thick with thorny plants I didn't recognize. The air was filled with a deep ticking noise, like the world's biggest grandfather clock was somewhere inside the palace. “The Great Clock,” Gert said grimly. “She's already trying to use it.”

“Hold on!” Mombi yelled, her grip tightening on my hand. As we drew closer to the storm, gusts of wind began to buffet us, hard and insistent as fists. One blast was so strong it almost pulled me out of Mombi's grip. On my other side, Gert squeezed harder, too. The witches began to chant.

“Don't let go, Amy!” Gert yelled over the rising wind. She didn't have to tell me twice. I held on for dear life as Gert and Mombi's chanting rose in strength to meet the force of the storm. We were almost on top of the palace now. Suddenly, I could make out a teeming mass of figures in the overgrown and tangled gardens surrounding the palace.

“There's still an army there!” Nox shouted. The ground was rushing toward us at a terrifying speed. The plants in the garden reached up with spiky branches, and a long vine uncoiled from one of the palace's towers and whipped at us furiously.

“Look out!” I screamed, but the vine lashed across Mombi's
arm before she could move, leaving a broad, ugly gash. She yelped in pain and let go of me. I felt my other hand slipping out of Gert's grasp.

“The plants are attacking!” Glamora shrieked. “They're defending the palace!”

“Amy!” Nox yelled frantically on Mombi's other side. The vine wrapped around Gert's legs and yanked her away from me. Glamora cried out as I plummeted toward the waiting thorns. Just as I was about to slam into the ground, a huge gust of air picked me up and sent me spinning gently.
Nox
, I thought, struggling to get my bearings. Nox had saved me.

Gert sent a blast of fire at the vine still tangled around her legs, severing it in midair, and it reared back as she crumpled to the ground. I ran over to her. “I'm fine!” she gasped. “No time! You must hurry!” On the ground, the ticking noise was even louder and more incessant. I felt like it was trying to crawl inside my head, and had to resist the impulse to cover my ears.

“Soldiers!” Nox yelled. I reached for my knife and whirled into a battle crouch. My reflexes were back, and none too soon. These soldiers were different from the ones who'd attacked us back at the Woodman's palace. They were entirely mechanical, whirring and buzzing like a clockwork army. Some of them stood on two legs and looked almost human; others had wheels, or tons of jointed legs like a centipede. Some carried weapons in metal claws, and others had swords and spears embedded in their tin torsos.

Nox flickered in and out of sight, teleporting himself back
and forth between the soldiers as he hacked at them with his knife. A terrifying howl split the air, and I saw a line of three-headed miniature clockwork Totos descending on us from the direction of the palace. Their eyes glowed with an eerie red light that reminded me of Dorothy's shoes. Each head's jaws bristled with dripping, serrated fangs as long as my forearm, and the mechanical dogs' tails were edged with jagged steel plates that they whipped back and forth. I readied myself to fight.

A fireball sailed over my head and landed among the tin soldiers, sending several of them flying. Glamora leapt to my side. “We'll hold them off!” she yelled, sending another spray of flame into the oncoming army. “You and Nox find Dorothy!”

I ducked a stray blow and came up swinging, cutting a soldier in half on my upswing. “How will we get to the palace?”

“Nox can take you into the palace. We can only hold them for so long—you have to move as fast as you can.”

Behind her, Mombi threw fireball after fireball into Dorothy's clockwork army; though each one landed, there were always more soldiers to rush in and fill the gaps she made. Nox was moving so fast behind me he was just a dark blur. Gert's face was pale, but she was hovering over the battlefield, lashing out with a glowing blue whip she'd fashioned out of magic. I couldn't just leave them out here to die.

“No thinking!” Glamora yelled. “Just go!” I knew she was right. This might be our last chance. If I couldn't kill Dorothy now, this was it. The witches couldn't last long out here.

I grabbed Nox's hand. Dorothy's shoes blazed to life on my
feet, and I felt the answering stir of Oz's magic.
Not yet
, I told it. I squeezed my eyes shut.

When I opened them, Nox and I were standing inside Dorothy's banquet hall, although it was ruined almost beyond recognition. What furniture was left was splintered and broken. The windows were shattered, letting more of those sinewy vines creep in, and a mossy-green slime covered the walls. The carpet squelched underfoot. I didn't want to know what it was soaked with. Inside the palace, the ticking was so powerful that the walls shivered with each stroke. It was like standing right next to a speaker at a concert. I could feel the noise like a physical force moving through me.

Nox squeezed my hand, and we raced through the palace, following the sound of the clock. As loud as it was, it was still stronger in some directions than others. But the farther we went, the more the palace twisted and turned. New corridors sprang up in front of us, and when we turned around the hallways we'd just been running down had been replaced by stone walls. I hadn't spent enough time in the Emerald Palace to memorize its layout, but even I could tell this was like a fun-house mirror version of the real thing, all nightmarish hallways and unexpected turns. Sometimes a hallway seemed familiar, and I realized we'd already gone down it.

“The palace is leading us in circles!” Nox said behind me. “We have to figure something else out.”

“Keep running!” I argued, tugging him down another hall. We ran through a doorway into a huge room I didn't recognize,
a wooden door slamming shut behind us. The room was a perfect circle, studded with identical doors every few feet. The ticking of the Great Clock thundered through the chamber. Nox tried every one of the doors in turn, but they were all locked. The Emerald Palace had sent us to a dead end.

“You're right,” I said. “The palace is moving against us.” It was time to use magic. “Don't let go of me,” I told Nox. He nodded and tightened his grip on my hand.

I closed my eyes, sending feelers of magic out through the palace. The more I tuned in to my magical senses, the more I could see and feel. The rats running through the palace cellars. The whirring and clicking of the soldiers as they battled the witches outside. The few remaining living inhabitants of the palace, creeping in terror through the halls and hiding in forgotten rooms. The evil in the palace was so strong it made my skin itch, as though a million ants were crawling all over me. I steeled myself and kept looking.

And then I felt her. A malevolent mass at the heart of the palace, like a fattened spider at the center of its web. I shuddered involuntarily. Nox's fingers tightened through mine. “Where is she?” he panted in my ear. I knew what we had to do.

“This way,” I said. Instead of trying to open one of the doors, I turned and led him directly into the wall. But instead of slamming into solid stone, we hit something firm but yielding. At first it resisted us, as though we were walking into a wall of butter, and then dissolved. There was a rushing noise, and everything went dark and very, very cold. Nox was holding my hand so
tightly I thought I might lose circulation in my fingers—but I was squeezing his back just as hard.

“Amy Gumm,” said a familiar voice. “You found me. I had a feeling you would.”

A red spark lit the darkness and slowly spread outward. Nox and I were standing side by side on the rough stone floor of a cavern so huge its ceiling was lost in darkness. In front of us, a dark pool of water reflected the low red light, and on the far side a familiar figure hunched over an ornate, old-fashioned clock. I'd been expecting something huge, monstrous—but it just looked like an ordinary antique you might see in your grandparents' house, except for the fact that it was made out of solid gold and studded with dozens of pebble-sized emeralds. In the red light, Dorothy's face looked hideous and twisted, like a monster's. The clock shook, and a low boom echoed through the dark chamber.

“I knew it was just a matter of time before we met again, Amy,” Dorothy said. Her voice was raspy and low, like she'd suddenly taken up a pack-a-day habit. She coughed, and the clock boomed again. I realized the sound was the same ticking, but slowed down somehow. Dorothy smiled. “No pun intended,”
she continued. “Time
is
what matters, when you get right down to it. For everything there is a season, right? I learned a few things in the Other Place, Amy. I learned that things don't get any more fun there for girls as special as me. I learned that magic really is the best way to do things. And what better source of magic than the heart of Oz?”

“Lurline's pool,” Nox said. He was still squeezing my hand, but his voice was steady.

“You're smarter than you look,” Dorothy said coquettishly. “Between the Great Clock and Lurline's little puddle”—she gestured to the dark pool—“I have enough magic to keep me going for as long as I want. Which is, of course, forever. I thought the Wizard was on my side. I thought Glinda was my friend. But the only person you can
really
rely on is yourself.”

“You can't do this,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. “Using the Great Clock will let loose all of Oz's magic. And Oz and Kansas are two sides of the same place. You know that. You'll destroy them both.”

“I don't care about
Kansas
,” Dorothy snapped, but for the first time she sounded uncertain, as if she hadn't thought her plan through.

“That much magic will tear you apart,” Nox jumped in. “You can't survive it.”

For a second, Dorothy almost looked to be on the verge of changing her mind. As impossible as it seemed, I thought we might have convinced her to abandon her crazy plan. But then she scowled.

“You've taken away everything I cared about, Amy Gumm,” Dorothy said. “You killed my friends. You ruined my city and made Oz impossible for me to rule. You even killed my
dog
. I'm not going to do
anything
you tell me. And I'm
not
going to let you take away Oz.”

In one sudden motion, she picked up the clock and threw it hard into the pool. “No!” Nox shouted. The clock disappeared noiselessly into the black water without even making a splash. For a second, everything held completely still.

And then the water of the pool began to bubble violently. A black cloud formed over it, whirling faster and faster in the red light of Dorothy's shoes. She raised both arms over her head, and the cloud above us split open. I could see through it—straight through to Dusty Acres, still as abandoned and sad-looking as the day the Wizard had pulled me and Dorothy through to the Other Place. Arcing sparks of red light shot from Dorothy's fingers into the black mass, landing on the ground in Kansas and flaring up into fires that quickly caught in the dead grass. Huge fissures cracked open and spread through the parched earth. I had to do something. I had to stop her, before she destroyed Oz and Kansas both. But how?

The shoes. Dorothy's shoes. They'd had the power to take Dorothy back to Kansas. Maybe they had the power to save it. It was a stretch, but the connection was there, and right now it was the only idea I had. I had to save my mom and I had to save Nox. I couldn't let Dorothy take them away from me. “I love you!” I yelled at Nox, yanking my hand from his grip.

“Amy, stop! What are you doing?” He threw himself at me but I dodged his arms. Maybe I could get the clock back. Maybe the shoes would help me. Maybe I was about to die. There was only one way to find out. I took a deep breath, got a running start, and jumped.

“No!” Dorothy and Nox screamed at the same time as I plunged into darkness and everything went black.