The Lost City of Faar (23 page)

“Are you lost again?” he said without looking at us.

“No,” I said with authority. “Just passing through.”

“Do you believe me now?” he asked.

“Uh . . . about what?”

“About the Batu. They are liars and barbarians. I hope you found that so-called friend of yours and told them I said so.”

Loor was right. There was definitely bad blood between the Rokador and the Batu. I hoped she had luck in diffusing it.

“Yeah,” I lied. “Thanks for the advice.”

The man didn't say another word. I motioned to Spader and we continued on through the tunnel that led to the waterfall. Once we had gotten away from the roar of the water, Spader said, “I understood.”

“What do you mean?”

“The guy back there. When he first started talking it sounded like: ‘Shshaa shashaaa shashaaa' or something. But then all of a sudden he started making sense. I understood what he said about the Rokador and the Batu. What happened?”

I had to smile. “What happened is that you're becoming a Traveler.”

Next stop, Cloral.

SECOND EARTH

The telephone rang
, making both Mark and Courtney jump. When they were reading Bobby's journals they both became so immersed in the adventure that there own world seemed to slip away. But a jangling telephone is a surefire way to bring anyone back to the here and now.

Unfortunately for Courtney, they were reading the journal in Mark's bedroom. Though Mark did his best to excavate all of his crusty sweat socks and half-eaten cheddar cheese (extra sharp) sandwiches, the room was still in need of professional fumigation. The good news was that Courtney's gag reflex stopped when she got used to the putrid smell. The bad news was that she was afraid there were noxious gases eating away at her brain. Her goal was to read quick and get out fast.

They had been displaced from Courtney's basement because Courtney's father was actually going to attempt to make something in his workshop. That was always cause for worry in the Chetwynde house. Nothing good ever happened when Mr. Chetwynde decided to swing a hammer. Things usually got broken. When the telephone rang, Courtney's first
thought was: “Dad hurt himself! He's headed for the emergency room.” She had absolutely no faith in her father's handyman abilities.

Mark had to answer the phone because nobody else was home.

“Hello?”

“What's the deal, Dimond?” snarled a familiar voice.

The call wasn't about Courtney's father, it was Andy Mitchell. He was actually calling Mark's house. Mark wondered how Mitchell got his telephone number. Not that it was tough to get, but he couldn't picture Mitchell figuring out how to do something as complex as using a telephone book.

“Hey!” answered Mark with false friendliness. “How's it going?”

Mark was trapped. He didn't want to say anything that would make Courtney suspicious about what was going on with Mitchell. He knew she wouldn't continue reading the journal without Mark, so she had nothing to do but listen to his conversation. Mark fought his rising panic and pressed the phone closer to his ear so Courtney couldn't hear the other end of the conversation.

“You tell
me,”
answered Mitchell. Mark could hear him snort and spit. “We have a deal, remember?”

“Uhhh, of course I do,” answered Mark, trying to sound all innocent.

“So what's the problem?” asked Mitchell.

“No problem, everything's cool.” He looked to Courtney and held up a finger as if to say: “I'll be off in a second.”

Courtney shrugged. No biggie.

“So when am I gonna see the other journals?”

“Uhhh, let's see. How about . . . tomorrow?”

“How about in an hour?”

Mark's stomach twisted. “Okay, that's good too. Tell you what,
I'm kinda doing my homework now. But I should be done in an hour. Why don't you call me back then?”

Mitchell hung up abruptly. Mark didn't know what to do. If he just put the phone down, Courtney would wonder what happened. So he pretended to still be on the call.

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Sounds good. Okay, talk to you later. Bye.”

Mark hung up the phone and hoped that Courtney only cared about getting back to reading the journal.

She didn't.

“Who was that?” she asked. Of course she did.

Mark hated lying. He wasn't good at it. He now had to get very good, very fast.

“Friend of mine,” he answered, trying to sound casual. “He needs some help with homework. A-Algebra.”

The instant Mark said that, he wished he hadn't. Up to that point he'd been cool, but when he made the full-on lie, when he said “algebra,” he stuttered. Courtney caught it, too. He saw it in her eyes. Was she going to bust him on it? Courtney stared at him for a moment, then shrugged.

“Whatever,” she said. “Can we get back to the journal?”

“Sure, yeah, of course.”

Mark sat back down on the bed. He felt horrible. He hated lying to her, but was too embarrassed to tell her the truth. He was being blackmailed and had no idea how he was going to get out of it. If Courtney found out now, he was certain she'd lose all faith in him. It was a horrible position to be in. But for now at least, he could forget his own problem and lose himself in Bobby's problems.

“What do you think of this Faar place?” Courtney asked.

“If it's real, then destroying it would be the perfect, evil thing for Saint Dane to do. From what Spader said it's a legend that everybody on Cloral knows. It's part of their culture. If Saint Dane
finds it and destroys it, it would be like pulling the rug out from under an entire territory. If the place is already a mess because of the food shortage, then the whole territory could crumble.”

“Which is what Saint Dane wants,” added Courtney.

“Exactly.”

“Let's read,” said Mark.

“Yeah, you've got an algebra lesson to get to.”

This stung Mark, but he couldn't let it show. It was time to focus on Bobby.

W
e found the gate easily enough by following the signals sent from my ring. I opened the trapdoor and let Spader go down first into the crevice that led to the flume, then followed right behind.

When I was halfway down, I heard something off to my right. Remember, we were climbing down using footholds that were dug into the rock walls. It was like descending through a black cave. The crevice was only wide enough for one person, but it stretched off to either side for I don't know how far. It was too dark to tell. So when I heard something move off to my right, I froze. It wasn't a loud sound, it was more like a small pebble had been knocked into the crevice. Though it was a small sound, something had caused it. Something was out there in the darkness.

I cautiously looked to where I'd heard the sound, and was faced with two yellow eyes staring right back at me. Yikes! They were small, but that didn't matter. We were near a flume and that could mean only one thing: quigs. I had no idea what kind of beastie was behind those nasty eyes, but it wasn't going to be some harmless teddy bear.

My fear was that the slightest movement would push it into attack mode. My brain locked. I didn't know what to do.

Luckily Spader did. I felt him shoot up from below and reach out toward the yellow eyes. Before I could warn him, the yellow eyes were gone! I heard a loud
crack
, and that was it.

“W-What just happened?” I asked shakily.

“I got it, mate,” answered Spader.

We both hurried down the rest of the way until we reached the cavern. There, lying at the foot of the rock wall, was the quig. It was the nastiest looking
snake
I had ever seen. It was about four feet long with a hooded head. All along its back were smaller versions of the sharp spines that the bear quigs had on Denduron. But most important, it was dead. Spader had snapped it like a whip.

“I'm used to those wogglies,” he said casually. “They end up on the habitats every so often. All you gotta do is crack 'em good.” He took a closer look at the fiendish thingy and frowned. “Never saw a sea snake looking like that before though.”

And he never would either. Except here on Zadaa. The gruesome truth was that the quigs on Zadaa were snakes. I'd bet they were poisonous, too. I hated snakes more than anything. More than cannibal bears or wild dogs or even monster sharks. Snakes did something to me. Maybe because they were so quiet and sneaky. As I stared down at that creepy reptile, I hoped that Loor would do a really good job in keeping the Batu and the Rokador apart, because I did
not
want to come back to Zadaa.

Spader and I then changed back into our Cloral clothes and hit the flume. He went by himself this time. I showed him how to call out the name of the territory he was headed for, and just before the sparkling lights took him away, I warned
him that the drop into Cloral was going to be wet.

Believe it or not, I was beginning to enjoy my trips through the flume because while I was flying I felt completely safe. Nothing to do but kick back and enjoy the ride. When I got to the end of this trip, I even spun around and tried to imitate Uncle Press's headfirst swan dive into the pool. But I timed it wrong and ended up landing on my back with a huge splash. It hurt, too. Hello, Cloral. So much for a cool entrance.

Spader was already standing on the edge of the pool.

“I'll lead from here,” he said.

We were on his turf again, or should I say, in his water. He was back in charge. That was okay with me so long as we both agreed on the plan.

“What about the sharks?” I asked.

Spader grabbed his air globe and water sled.

“No worries there,” he said. “Stay close to the bottom. Those beasties don't attack down. The only time you get into a natty-do is if you're on their level.”

“Yeah? What if they come down to our level?”

Spader reached behind his back and pulled out his large, silver knife.

“Let 'em,” he said with confidence.

“Whoa, did you bring that knife to Zadaa?”

“Didn't think I'd go someplace strange without my trusty, did you?”

“You gotta understand something, Spader,” I said nervously. “Maybe I didn't explain this and if I didn't, it's my fault. But you can't bring things from one territory to the next. It's like . . . like . . . an infection. Believe me, I made that mistake and it was a disaster.”

“It's just a knife, Pendragon,” he said dismissively. “Couldn't do no harm.”

With that he popped on his air globe and dove into the water. This was bad. Spader said he would learn from me, but the first thing I tried to tell him, he blew off. This was going to be tough.

But there was nothing I could do about it now, so I popped on my air globe and followed him under. I didn't want him to get too far ahead of me. After all, he had the knife. We both skimmed the bottom, traveling side by side with our water sleds. I kept glancing around, looking in the distance for the shadowy killers. And it wasn't just quigs that worried me. When we left for Zadaa there were four raiders after us. I had a brief hope that maybe the quigs ate the raiders, but that would have been hoping for too much. When we broke out into open water from under the rock overhang, I felt even more vulnerable. I kept glancing around, checking our backs. At one point I thought I saw a shadow moving several yards off to our right. I was about to tell Spader, when the shadow suddenly twisted and shot away. There was definitely something there all right. But if it was a quig, or a raider, it had decided to leave us alone.

Once we had traveled a few minutes I began to relax. As Spader said, the sharks only hung around that reef. I stopped worrying about getting eaten and began to worry about what we might find back on Grallion. When we left, we had just jammed up the raiders' battle cruiser and signaled to the aquaneers that the big guns wouldn't fire. The question now was, what had happened after that? Had the aquaneers boarded the cruiser? Had the raiders boarded Grallion? Had there been a battle between the good guys and the bad guys? Most important, was Uncle Press okay?