The Call (10 page)

A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…

T
hey surrounded the castle like a sea: the creatures of the Pale Queen. Grimluk had seen some ugly in his life, but this was more ugly in one place, all together, than he could ever have imagined.

The Skirrit were the most numerous. They advanced in well-ordered columns, armed with wickedly curved blades like scythes. They swung these upward since
that was how their insect arms worked best. They were quick and accurate and deadly.

“Be ready, brothers and sisters,” Grimluk commanded the other eleven. Although he had been the last to arrive, Grimluk had demonstrated a quick grasp of the basics of Vargran. And he had managed on more than one occasion to combine his power with that of others.

The Magnifica had not yet combined all their powers. Drupe had warned them that such an event might destroy them all as well as the Pale Queen. Some believed it would destroy the entire world, such would be the power needed to stop the Pale Queen.

The Tong Elves moved as clans, independent bands incapable of organization, each led with a branch of some particular tree. There were Pine Tong Elves and Birch Tong Elves and Oak Tong Elves. For weapons, the elves preferred bats and sticks, sometimes enhanced with chips of sharpened stone driven into the ends.

Near Deads, of course, were even less organized than elves and tended to wander around more or less at random looking for some living thing to eat. Sometimes they would free themselves for a moment or two from
the spells that controlled them, and then they were perfectly capable of eating a Skirrit or a Bowand.

The terror of the Near Deads was that it was very difficult to actually kill them. They were human, not really different from Grimluk, except for being dead and possessed of a powerful hunger for human flesh. But the Pale Queen's spells had been layered upon them in such a way that even a headless Near Dead would keep moving forward, grabbing what it could and attempting, rather stupidly, to eat without benefit of head or mouth.

“Remember that we are not tasked to fight Skirrit or Bowands or even Gudridan,” Miladew said for all to hear. “We must go toward the Dread One herself.”

“It will mean going through all of these,” Bruise said, sweeping his hand wide to indicate the sea of monsters.

“Yes,” a fellow named Chunhee said with relish. “Through them!”

Chunhee was the most bloodthirsty of the Magnifica. He had come the farthest, from a land of dragons and eating sticks.

Drupe joined them. She touched Grimluk's
shoulder lightly to let him know she was behind him. “Keep your eyes open, my brave twelve of twelves. You will know the Dread Foe's location by the light she will reveal when she is ready to strike.”

It seemed as if the world was poised then, as though the great disk of the planet had come loose and was tipped on the edge of a cliff. Grimluk's breathing came hard. He wished with all his heart that he could be with Gelidberry and the baby. Even the cows would be comforting now.

Then, suddenly, it was as if a second sun was rising. A red light, bloodred, bubbled up like ooze, like thickened mare's blood, from the direction that would one day be called south.

“There!” Drupe cried, and pointed.

Every one of the enemy felt it instantly. It was as if they had been struck by lightning. They did not advance, they leaped! They did not march, they raced! A single spasm launched every Bowand, every Skirrit, every Tong Elf, every Dredge and Gudridan and Near Dead and Blood Bat forward like arrows from a bow.

The walls of the castle shook from the sheer impact.

Bowands fired their poisoned darts from their slimy, sinewed arms.

Bruise held up his hands and cried, “
Marf ag chell!
”

The falling darts changed in midair. When they fell, they were crumbs of bread.

“Nice,” Grimluk said to Bruise.

Unfortunately Bruise's Vargran was not powerful enough to protect many beyond the Magnifica. On both sides of them the Bowand darts found their targets. The poison darts sank deep into neck and shoulder and chest. And the venom worked its terrible magic, causing strong men to flee from terrors unseen. Some leaped from the battlements in panic.

“To the gate!” Grimluk cried.

The twelve raced down from the battlements, down the narrow stone stairways, which shook beneath their feet. Awestruck soldiers parted to let them pass.

The gate was built of massive tree trunks. It was as powerful as any physical thing could be. Nevertheless, it would stand for only a few more minutes before the onslaught.

Pikemen and archers, trained for just this moment,
formed a semicircle around the Magnificent Twelve. Ten strong men had been given the job of swinging the gate open. Drupe and two other great witches would be there to help them close it again. But they all knew that it would be a near thing and the enemy would pour through even as the twelve rushed out.

All stood at the ready.

Miladew smiled a shaky smile and nodded at Grimluk. “Lead us, Grimluk.”

Grimluk closed his eyes and formed a picture of Gelidberry and the baby. It suddenly occurred to him that he had a good name for the baby.

“Victory,” Grimluk said.

“Victory or death!” Bruise shouted.

“Yeah,” Grimluk said less enthusiastically. “Or death.”

Then, in a clear if nervous voice, he cried, “Throw open the gate!”

The gate wasn't so much thrown open as hauled.

Vargran spells flew. The enemy surged. And Grimluk led the Magnificent Twelve straight into the teeth of foes as numerous as the stars.

L
ooming ahead, larger and larger, was the rock. Ayers Rock. Uluru.

It sat there like the world's biggest blood blister. All around, in every direction, the land was flat. But there, for no good reason, was this massive, incredible brown-red rock.

If by “rock,” you mean “mountain.” Or at least, “squashed, flat-topped mountain.”

“They say it just dropped out of the sky,” Jarrah
explained, shouting to be heard.

“Who says?”

“The people it belongs to. The people who lived here long before Europeans showed up. Mum's people. My people, too, partly.”

Karri looked up from her laptop to say, “It's an inselberg. It's what's left after a much bigger mountain has eroded. It's the hard core of an ancient mountain. The real mystery is not how the rock got here, but how the people did.”

“Why is that a mystery?” Mack asked.

“The Indigenous peoples have been here for at least forty thousand years. You may have noticed Australia's an island. So how did they get here thousands of years before anyone had learned to sail? And once they got here, why did they seem to forget how to use the sea? Why did they come to live in the most desolate place on earth?”

Mack pondered this while he stared at the rock. They were moving again, getting closer. Jarrah was driving at a somewhat more reasonable speed, and they were now circumnavigating the rock.

“It seems…,” Mack started to say. Then he
couldn't think of quite what it seemed.

“It seems familiar,” Jarrah said.

“Yeah,” Mack agreed, surprised.

“Like it's something you remember but you've never seen it before. Like maybe it was in some dream you had and forgot. But even that's not quite it. More like this place is deep down inside your head. Like it's down in your DNA.”

“Yeah. That's exactly it,” Mack said, frowning.

Jarrah winked at him. “Most people—people who aren't complete nongs, anyway—feel that way.”

They stopped when they reached a small camp. There were three dusty tents and half a dozen vehicles. The camp was at a respectful distance from the thousand-foot-high wall of Uluru.

It was hot out, but nothing Mack hadn't experienced before. Uluru was rushing toward a setting sun, and the rock surface glowed redder than before. Up close it wasn't as smooth as Mack had expected. In places it looked as if the rock had been sandblasted, like some giant had set out to etch the surface and stopped before revealing any sort of pattern.

“Is this where we're going?” Mack asked.

“No, this is just our base camp. We're going up there.” Jarrah pointed toward the top of the rock. “The Indigenous people dislike folks climbing on it. It hurts them. Like watching someone tread on the flag, I suppose. Tourists do it anyway, but this is a sacred place.”

“Like skateboarding in a church,” Stefan said, tilting his head back.

Mack noticed Jarrah's eyebrows go up, admiring Stefan's metaphor. Mack suspected it wasn't a metaphor at all, but something Stefan had actually done.

“But we have permission,” Jarrah's mother said, “because we're not skateboarding in church, we're learning about the church, discovering it.”

“We have to climb up there?” Mack said dubiously.

“It's not so bad,” Jarrah said.

It was so bad, despite a rope handrail that had been set up in places. They climbed inside a deep crease in the rock face, and in places the cleft was so narrow that Mack had to beware of scraping his shoulders.

By the time they reached the top, Mack was exhausted and his thighs ached and his knees were
wobbly. He liked to think he was in decent shape, but he was in decent shape for gym class. Not in decent shape for running from Skirrit, flying clear across the planet, falling from several miles up into the ocean, and then climbing a thousand-foot wall.

Still, the view from the top was stunning. The sun was split by the horizon and sent out crazy streamers of brilliant red and yellow across a boundless sky.

“Nice, eh?” Jarrah asked. “Come on, then, better to reach the shaft while we still have light.”

Uluru was about three miles long, a sloping table-top, pitted and sliced, but overall it looked fairly flat. The shaft was not far away, easily spotted because it was topped by a frame with a winch and a motor.

Mack stepped cautiously to the edge of the shaft. It went straight down, a nearly round hole with no light coming from inside.

Mack could feel his inner fear sensor begin to ring urgently. Already his breathing was constricted, his throat closing up, his heart pounding in some not-quite-rhythmic way.

“When we get down, we'll turn on the lights,” Karri said.

“Get down?” Mack asked in a shrill voice. “Wait a minute. You think we're going down there? Down there? Down a black hole in a massive rock where I'll be totally surrounded by billions of pounds of rock and it will be all around me like I'm buried alive?”

“We have a sort of basket on a winch. You climb in, hold on to the grip, and down you go. Nothing to it, really,” Jarrah said.

“Ah-ha-ha no. No, no, no, no,” Mack said. “No. No, nonononono.”

Karri and Jarrah both stared at him, puzzled.

“You're not claustrophobic, are you?” Karri asked.

“I'm not?” Mack shrilled. “Yes. Yes, of course I am. I have, like, a really strong dislike for the idea of being buried alive under some giant mystical rock in Australia!”

Jarrah shrugged. “I thought you'd want to see what Mum found.”

“Me? No. Pictures will be fine. Or even just a description,” Mack said. “Because there is no way, no, no, no, no way. No. Way.

“No.

“No way.

“My point is: no.”

“Well then, this whole trip is a bit of a waste then,” Jarrah said, clearly disappointed. “I mean, I could have shown you pictures back in Sydney.”

“Yes. Well. No one mentioned we were going to drop down a shaft into the bowels of the earth,” Mack pointed out.

“Fair enough,” Jarrah admitted. “I don't suppose you could—”

“No. Whatever you're going to say, the answer is no,” Mack said.

“How about—”

“No.”

“But if we—”

“No.”

“What are those?” Stefan asked.

“What are what?” Mack asked. But even as he asked, he saw what Stefan meant. Which did not mean he could answer the question.

Because what he saw, he had never seen before.

They were outlined against the setting sun, perhaps two dozen of them in all. They seemed small, maybe no taller than Mack himself. You might almost
think they were children, but their shape was wrong.

And the way they moved was wrong.

Karri pulled a flashlight from one of her many pockets. She aimed the beam. It illuminated a triangular face dominated by the oversized eyes of a night creature. The nose was a slit. The ears were pointed—Vulcan ears, but swept forward at the points.

The mouth grinned in a sort of tight V shape. The V grin was lined with teeth that stuck out beyond the lips. Not like buck teeth, but curved, like overgrown fingernails—like talons, but talons that were teeth.

There would be time later (Mack hoped) to figure out just how to describe those teeth.

The flashlight beam shook as Karri played it down the creature's body to highlight a strangely quaint little outfit: red leather shorts held up with green suspenders over a sort of spangled vest.

They had overly long arms that dragged their long, delicate fingers on the ground as they walked.

The legs were bare, and that was unfortunate because they looked a great deal like goat legs, with curly tan-colored hair similar to that which spilled from under the creatures' jaunty green caps.

“Who are you? And what are you doing here?” Karri asked.

“You don't speak; we speak.”

They had surprisingly deep voices, for child-sized freaks of nature.

“Get off this rock,” Karri said bravely. “You're not allowed up here.”

Mack guessed that “you're not allowed” wasn't going to quite do it.

Sure enough.

“Shut your vile, filthy, fruit-chewing mouth, you low, slow, soggy bag of water; you sweat-oozing, cheese-scented wad of pulp mounted on toothpicks; you barely animated mistake of nature.” One of them delivered this peroration (a word Mack had gotten wrong in a spelling bee). The creature stabbed the air with his long, thin fingers and almost spit as he spoke.

“I am here by right,” Karri said. “Now shove off.”

“Yeah, shove off,” Jarrah echoed her mother.

Mack was impressed by their courage. The creatures were not.

“We are elves of the Gum Tree Tong,” the
spokesman said, with pride and arrogance that really should have been matched to someone bigger. “We will have what we came for, you pus-filled, slobber-stained blood balloon!”

And with that, all of the elves of the Gum Tree Tong—whatever that was—rushed forward.