The Familiars #3: Circle of Heroes (22 page)

“That illusion may have fooled the zombies, but your scent is unmistakable,” snarled Lothar. “Nothing compares to the real thing.”

Aldwyn focused on a nearby boulder and telekinetically sent it flying through the air, knocking the wolverines clear off Simeon. They quickly got back on their feet and began circling. The old bloodhound lay there, badly wounded and hardly breathing.

Galleon stepped forward.

“Go,” he said to the animals. “I’ll handle this.”

Aldwyn and the others hesitated.

“A
human
risking his life for an animal?” asked Lothar, his voice dripping with hate. “Be not fooled, my four-legged brothers. It is nothing but cowardice—staying back to fight us rather than forging ahead against even greater odds.”

“You’re wrong,” said Banshee. “You’ve never had a loyal, so you don’t know the meaning of the word.”

The howler monkey walked up to Galleon’s side.

“Continue on, Banshee,” said the wizard. “I’ll be okay.”

“No. We stand together.”

“Human and animal will never stand together,” said Lothar. “Man will always betray us in the end.”

The wolverine leaped forward, baring his claws. Banshee turned invisible while Galleon chanted: “
Trussilium bindus
!”

A silver rope materialized in his hand, and he threw the coiled end around Lothar’s ankle. While Banshee and Galleon grappled with the wolverines, Aldwyn, Skylar, Gilbert, Anura, Navid, and Marati ran on.

The clouds above rumbled again and the image of Paksahara was smiling deviously down at them.

“You’re losing, Loranella,” the hare’s voice called out. “What have you accomplished? Ridding me of my spyballs? I’ll just summon more of them. Fighting off some of my Dead Army? There are thousands more corpses to raise. The glyphstone will fall, and once it does, you’ll never find me again.”

Aldwyn turned back and could see in the distance that the first of the zombie elephants had reached Loranella’s encampment. He made out what looked like small green dots jumping on top of them, and though the view wasn’t clear, he knew that the Daku tree frogs were using their ninja-like abilities to defend the still-glowing glyphstone. And it seemed they were being assisted by the shopkeeper’s assortment of familiars, too.

But Paksahara’s taunts were not entirely unwarranted. Though her undead hordes had not yet toppled the pillar, they were beginning to push back Urbaugh’s and Warden’s assault on the Fortress. The Turnbuckle wizards were being overwhelmed. Not only were they combating the zombies, but now living animals loyal to Paksahara—like the firescale snakes and warthogs—had entered the fray. Warden was doing all he could to help, but without magic, he was just a man.

“We can’t leave the young wizards behind,” said Gilbert.

“If someone doesn’t make it into the Shifting Fortress soon, many more innocent lives will be lost,” said Skylar.

Aldwyn was torn. He agreed with Gilbert but also knew that Skylar was right.

“Besides, if their own familiars can’t help them, neither can we,” said Navid.

“That may not be entirely true,” said Anura. “Go ahead without me. I’ll stay back with them.” She turned to Gilbert. “Maybe you can recite some of your poetry for me, you know, when this is all over.”

Gilbert smiled. “I’d like that.”

The golden toad hopped across the battlefield, and as she approached the young wizards, one of the firescales sent out a blast headed straight for Loranella’s army. But as luck would have it, the flames went off course, hitting a patch of dry grass. In an instant the ground caught fire, melting the zombies and causing the living animals to retreat.

The familiars and the last two of the descendants—Navid and Marati—didn’t have far to go before reaching the Fortress. But Paksahara’s defenses were becoming ever more impenetrable. Several skeletal wolves came charging at them. Navid and Marati were fast to react: Navid taking out two with his venom blasts, Marati another with her astral claws. Gilbert pulled the valor staff from his back and lunged at one of the wolves, but the bamboo spear only grazed its bony target. Then, before Skylar or Aldwyn could do anything, Gilbert was swallowed by the zombie wolf.

“No!” shouted Aldwyn. He was almost too stunned to react.

The skeletal wolf that had swallowed Gilbert had no flesh or fur, only bones, and the tree frog could be seen trapped within the creature’s rib cage. He was shaking the bones as if they were the bars of a prison cell.

“Somebody get me out of here,” screamed Gilbert. “Help!” Skylar reached into her satchel and grabbed a bright yellow storm berry. She flew over the undead wolf and had to dodge its claw as she dropped the berry, causing a dark cloud to appear. A lightning bolt shot out, striking the skeleton’s torso and shattering its bones. Gilbert was freed, falling to the ground.

“Who knew these storm berries would come in so handy?” Skylar asked.

Aldwyn, Skylar, Navid, and Marati were starting to move forward again, but Gilbert was still picking himself up and strapping his staff back over his shoulder. He looked down at a puddle that had formed from the berry’s impromptu storm. The tree frog leaped to his feet and pushed Aldwyn away from the muddy patch on which he was standing. Just as he did, a magical flaming arrow shot down from the tower, striking the spot where Aldwyn had been only a moment before.

“Gilbert, how did you know?” asked Aldwyn.

“I saw it in the puddle,” replied Gilbert.

Another volley of fiery arrows came raining down, narrowly missing the animals but setting the earth around them on fire.

“You need to guide us the rest of the way,” said Skylar.

“How am I supposed to do that?” asked Gilbert.

Skylar dipped her beak back into her satchel and removed another bunch of storm berries. She threw them in a line leading to the Fortress, creating a path of storm clouds that left puddles of rain all the way to the tower. Gilbert glanced down into the first, and Aldwyn too caught a glimpse of the vision that appeared: more flaming arrows striking the ground in a zigzag pattern. Aldwyn looked up to see that same ground before them, yet to be bombarded with fire from above.

Gilbert leaped forward, bounding from side to side, anticipating where the next attack would land. The others followed, and as long as they stepped where Gilbert did, they avoided the rain of fire from above. The same couldn’t be said for the zombies chasing them, who became unwitting targets of the blast. Clearly Paksahara hadn’t been kidding when she said her Dead Army soldiers were disposable.

Amazingly, the familiars reached the outside wall of the Shifting Fortress unharmed. Aldwyn was awed by the tower’s height. From a distance it had looked large, but up close he got his first true sense of just how tall the structure really was. As Loranella had said, there was no door, and they couldn’t reach the window in the casting chamber. Aldwyn could see that the walls were perfectly smooth, save for one cornerstone that was mysteriously absent. At the top of the tower Aldwyn could see what looked like a sculpted stone lion’s head, its mouth agape. Obsidian powder poured out from it, calling Skylar’s attention to it as well.

Despite the mess of shattered bones behind them, more zombies were on their way.

“Now might be a good time to conjure that telegate,” said Aldwyn.

“I’m working on it,” said Skylar.

She reached into her satchel again and removed several different components and objects.

“Seashell, dust mites, herbs, lead weight, open up a telegate!” The blue jay’s chant was urgent.

She let the spell’s ingredients fall to the ground, and at once a gateway materialized on the surface of the wall. As Paksahara’s undead minions continued to march toward them, the five animals jumped through the opening, into the Shifting Fortress.

18

THE SHIFTING FORTRESS

O
nce inside, Skylar, Aldwyn, Gilbert, Navid, and Marati found themselves in a giant square room with a spiral staircase leading upward. Below them, an enormous blue globe was spinning and rotating in the glass floor. As it turned, Aldwyn could have sworn he was able to catch glimpses of other parts of the world, presumably all the different places the Fortress could shift to.

The telegate was closing, but before it shut completely, a dozen ferocious jackal zombies managed to slip through. Then the portal disappeared.

One of the jackals propelled itself toward Marati, but Navid shot out a venom blast that made the zombie’s bones disappear in midair.

“Go ahead,” Navid called to the familiars. “Marati and I will take them.”

“After all we’ve been through, now you decide to reveal yourself for who you truly are?” said Marati.

“What’s that?” asked Navid.

“A friend,” Marati said. “Now let’s see which one of us can send more of these ugly beasts back to their graves.”

Standing back to back, the king cobra and white-tailed mongoose used venom and claw to fight off their attackers, while the Three ran for the stairs.

The sound of Navid and Marati doing battle faded fast as the three familiars reached the second floor of the Shifting Fortress. The huge room had ceiling-high shelves crammed with spell scrolls, more than Aldwyn had ever seen in any one place. Although there were no windows, the library was brightly lit by the multicolored flames of Protho’s Lights. Painted portraits of the previous kings and queens of Vastia hung on the walls, and it appeared to Aldwyn as if they had recently been slashed.

Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert moved swiftly across the chamber to the next flight of stairs, racing to the tower’s third story. Here they found a room cluttered with alchemical tools: vials and beakers swirling with differently colored liquids; worn cabinets that smelled of the thousands of herbs and flowers stored inside; and a large cauldron bubbling with who-knew-what inside. Glass tanks held hideous evidence of Paksahara’s early failed attempts at raising the dead.

The familiars never slowed down, continuing on to the fourth floor, which seemed to be the evil hare’s command center. A map covered an enormous table, with ruby-headed pins charting the Dead Army’s progress across the land. One stone statue marked where the third glyphstone still stood. Shattered pieces of two others represented the stones in Bridgetower and Jabal Tur that had already been destroyed.

The familiars raced up another flight of stairs, reaching yet another windowless room. A long reflecting pool with images of winged eyeballs carved into its walls stood at the center. The still water gave the otherwise dark room an eerie glow. Images rippling on the surface caught Aldwyn’s eye, and he stepped forward to take a closer look. He saw that each image displayed a different snippet from the battlefield outside. Some showed the tree frogs of Daku valiantly fighting a skeletal elephant; others displayed Warden and his Turnbuckle disciples fending off the warthogs who had retreated from the fire caused by Anura’s good luck; worst of all, Aldwyn could see Paksahara’s zombie army closing in on the glyphstone. It would be only a short time before it was toppled.

Aldwyn glanced from one swirling image to the next. There was Orion, cut and bruised, but running swiftly regardless. Galleon and Banshee were faring better. Their combined magic was more than Lothar and his pack of wolverines could handle: all of them had been captured. A glimpse of his uncle Malvern’s face looming. Urbaugh and his fighting force battling on despite casualties … Then Aldwyn did a double take—the picture of Malvern was so vivid. The eyes a ghostly white. The broken sword tip pierced through his rotting ear, glinting in the ever-changing light. The image kept getting bigger, larger than any of the other spyball visions. And why did Aldwyn smell rotting flesh? That’s when he realized that the image of his uncle in the pool was not a vision, but a reflection. Malvern was directly behind him!

With no time to react, Aldwyn felt Malvern’s claws dig into the back of his head, and his face was pushed down. He tried to grab a breath before going under but instead got a lungful of water. Aldwyn thrashed and struggled, but the force of his uncle’s skeletal paw kept him submerged. Underwater, Aldwyn kept his eyes open, and the spyball visions all seemed to overlap, bleeding into one another. He could hear the strange, almost disembodied, voice of Malvern through the water.