The Shaktra (12 page)

While they were resting, the ground lurched slightly. An earthquake? Or was the mountain, which had once been a volcano, becoming active again? It was a sobering thought. If Pete’s Peak blew, the entire area would be buried in ash. Breakwater would be completely destroyed, along with Toule.

Ali wondered if the minor earthquake had anything to do with the elementals.

After another hour of hard hiking, the walls of the cave transformed into a small cavern, and they reached their first major goal, the seven doors. They were similar to the previous three, made of metal. But there was one significant change: Each door was a different color. Starting on the left, there was a red door, followed by an orange one, a yellow one, a green one, a blue one, a violet one, and on the far right there was a white door.

As before, it was the fifth door, the blue one, that intrigued her the most.

She did not know why. She was here to open the fourth door, the green one.

And to lock the first door, the red one. She noticed that—like the third door, the yellow one—the red door lay slightly ajar. She knew about both doors. The yellow one led to the top of the mountain, the red one, to hell.

She tried the other doors. They were all locked.

She even tried knocking on the green door. No one answered.

Paddy and Farble stared at her with big wondering eyes.

She gestured. “Sit and rest. I need to be alone for a few minutes,” she said.

Setting her flashlight on the floor of the cavern, Ali moved in front of the red door, closed it, took out the Yanti, held it between her hands, and quietly repeated three times, “Alosha . . . Alosha . . . Alosha.”

The Yanti warmed, she felt an expansion of her field. The red door in front of her, the walls of the cavern, and even the other doors—she suddenly felt connected to them. The last time that had happened, on top of the mountain, she had known that everything in her immediate environment was under her command. This time, she ordered the red door to lock and stay locked.

But it did not obey her. It remained unlocked.

She repeated the process. The feeling of expansion returned.

The door remained unlocked.

Ali moved in front of the green door. Holding the Yanti in her right hand, she put her left palm on the center of the door. Once more she repeated her secret name three times, and the sense of heat and expansion grew even greater. Loudly, and mentally, she ordered the door to open. Her confidence was high, she felt as if her fairy power was at maximum strength. . . .

The green door remained locked.

Ali switched the Yanti into her left hand, repeated the process.

Nothing happened. She did not know what she was doing.

Ali sat down beside her flashlight to think. Paddy called over.

“Does Missy want to go home now?” he asked.

“Oh brother,” she muttered.

She closed her eyes, to think, but might have dozed for a moment. No surprise, she had skipped the entire night’s rest. A few
sleepy minutes seemed to go by, and she feared she might doze again.

Then a sound caught her attention.

It appeared to come from far off; a disturbing noise of whirling air and beating wings. It was coming from the other side of the red door!

Ali was on her feet in a second. She called to the others, who might have been sleeping. “Dark fairies are coming!”

Paddy and Farble jumped up, ready to do battle. Ali gestured for them to remain silent, motioned them away from the red door. Taking out the fire stones, she crept near the first door and opened it ever so slightly. For a moment there was only pitch black, but then a red glow began to grow in the depths and she saw a concentrated cloud, filled with batlike shadows, buzzing and hissing like a plague of locusts, moving swiftly toward her.

Ali felt no moral imperative to let the dark fairies take the first shot. Surrounding herself with a force field that was capable of repelling any of the elements, even empty space, she opened wide the red door and raised the fire stones close to her chest and let loose with a blast that more than rivaled the shots she had aimed at the boulders. The laser beam exploded down the length of the cave like a mass fired from an atomic cannon. She hit the swarm dead center, and there came a hideous screech of pain, followed by a dozen return blasts. But the dark fairies had nowhere near her juice. Their red beams bounced harmlessly off her field. Letting loose another dozen shots, she was not sure how many she was killing but, from the cries, she knew it must be a lot.

It was almost too easy, yet the destruction of her enemies brought her no pleasure. Her empathetic nature had no off switch. Evil was opposed to good, but pain was pain—their
screams echoed in her heart as much as her head. She kept shooting but wished they would quit coming.

Didn’t they know who she was?

Then a cruel voice spoke at her back; it hissed like a reptile.

A creature that knew her perhaps better than she knew herself.

“Time to stop, Geea,” Radrine said.

The queen of the dark fairies was a cross between a human, a lizard, and a bat. Coated with black scales, she had claws instead of fingers, and a long dark tongue that slithered in a nauseating motion as she stared at Ali. Her wings were rotting leather hides. The pulsating light of her eyes—buried deep in an eggshaped skull—glowed a wicked red. Yet Ali saw that the queen had not fully recovered from the injury Ali had given her at their last encounter. Scarred veins and purple blood pulsed beneath her clear skull. Her brains were visible, and they were a horror—a dish of maggots steadily crawling on a lump of meat. However, like before, Radrine wore no ornaments, no gold or silver crown, only her deadly intelligence.

Yet she carried weapons, two exceptionally large, red fire stones, which she had pointed at Farble and Paddy. Radrine’s tactic was now obvious. She had sent her minions to attack from the other side of the red door merely to distract her and, like a fool, Ali had fallen for the simple trick.

Ali regretted the pounding she had given to the entrance. It had probably alerted Radrine. The evil queen must have flown out the far end of the cave, near the top of the mountain, under the cover of the clouds, or perhaps
in
them, and circled around to catch her unaware. Not that any of it mattered now.

Radrine stood close behind the leprechaun and the troll.

Ali could not get off a shot, not without hitting one of them.

Radrine smiled again. “Put down your fire stones. Or should I say
my
stones? You stole them, you know, although I must admit
that I am flattered you have taken such good care of them.” The queen nodded. “On the ground, please.”

Ali ignored her. Her force field—shimmering a faint blue in the cavern gloom—surrounded her still, but did not extend to Farble and Paddy. Slowly, raising her right palm—the fire stones were in her left—she mentally stretched it out. But Radrine was not so easily fooled; she came up at Farble’s neck.

“I think not!” Radrine snapped.

Ali drew her field back, but did not drop it. Behind her, on the other side of the red door, she heard a gang of dark fairies gathering, hissing like a bowl of snakes. It was not a pleasant feeling, to be assailed on both sides. But she refused to show Radrine any fear.

“You have a reason for being here?” Ali asked.

Radrine grinned. “I have come to congratulate you. Everyone is still talking about how you defeated Lord Vak on the mountaintop. Sent his army packing, I understand.”

“There was no fight. We merely talked.”

Radrine nodded. “Still, Lord Vak is not easy to talk to. And you took the Yanti from him. I see it there, hanging from your delicate neck. How lovely. May I have a look at it, please?”

“Really, Radrine, you have grown so tiresome. I would just as soon hang it on the neck of a dragon than hand it over to you.”

Radrine lost her smile. “But I do think you will hand it over to me, yes, I honestly do. And I think you will tell me about the mystical code you placed on it.” She added, “If you don’t, I will kill your two friends.”

“Kill them. They are no friends of mine. I hardly know them.” Ali added, “But when you are through killing them, I will kill you.”

Paddy was anxious. “Missy, you said you were our friend. You said you would protect us and that you—”

“Stop,” Ali snapped.

“But Missy, I don’t want to—”

“Paddy! Shut up!”

The leprechaun stopped, lowered his head, as if preparing to die. Farble stood frozen, his eyes fixed on her face. He would not speak, not at a time like this, but Ali felt him pleading for her to save them.

“They trust you, Geea,” Radrine taunted.

Ali took a step toward them, while behind her the dark fairies hissed with joy. “I’m not going to give you the Yanti,” she said. “That will never happen, in this world or the next. But if you leave now, I’ll let you and your servants live. That is my offer. Take it or die.”

Radrine touched the back of Farble’s neck with her fire stones; the troll flinched. “You lie, Geea. You forget how well I know you. How long I watched you rule Karolee from your beautiful palace at Uleestar. So wise, but so sensitive. The latter made you weak, I think. You are too sensitive to stand here and watch this troll and leprechaun be tortured to death. Yes, tortured. What a gruesome word. But you see, I would hate for them to leave this world and not hate you. And they will hate you, because as I peel off their skin, they will know that you could stop their agony, just by handing over a piece of jewelry.”

“What will you do when they’re dead?” Ali asked. “You’ll have no one to stand behind.”

Radrine smiled once more. “Oh, I don’t think it will come to that.”

The evil queen let her fire stones grow brighter, and a tiny line of red light poured out of them onto the top of Farble’s back. There was dark smoke; Ali heard hair burning, smelled charred flesh. The troll shook and howled in pain. Without thinking, he dashed toward Ali, but immediately ran into her force field,
which knocked him flat. He tried to sit, to escape the agony, but Radrine crouched behind him—still using him as a shield—and returned to burning off his skin.

Radrine was right; Ali could not stand it.

But she was nowhere near ready to surrender.

Raising her right palm, Ali momentarily dropped the field from around her body and rammed it into the floor. The volcanic sand exploded in a black wave, and the swell surged toward the others like a breaker thrown off by a deep space meteor crashing into a primordial sea.

The wave hit them hard, buried them in a gravel blanket, but Radrine’s reflexes were equal to Ali’s. Just before the sand hit, the evil queen fired two shots. The first one was a gem, or a curse, depending on whose side you were on. Because the bulk of her energy was bent toward the floor, Ali’s body was exposed. Still, her field took something out of the blast. The shot hit her hand, burning her badly, but it did not take off the hand, or any fingers.

“Move!” she shouted to Farble and Paddy.

It was advice
she
had to follow. Radrine’s second shot—which was clearly off balance—hit the ceiling above Ali. But because it was not filtered through Ali’s field, it packed far more punch. The red beam tore a chunk out of the ceiling. Suddenly rocks were falling as the wave of sand hit the far side of the cavern and rebounded. Ali’s fire stones were knocked out of her hand as she dove to the left.

The chamber was a bubble of dusty confusion. The flashlights got buried with everything else, and in the almost pitch dark, Ali wiped at her eyes and saw Paddy crawling toward the right wall, while Farble tried to limp back down the cave. In the middle was Radrine, her back to the far wall, apparently stunned.

Fortunately, one of the boulders the evil queen’s blast had brought down had wedged itself against the red door, closing it fast. For the moment at least, Radrine was on her own. Ali went to grab her.

Radrine stood up suddenly, reached for her stones. Ali raised her palm, ready to deflect whatever was coming. But her right hand was in agony, and strangely, partially numb, and no power flowed through it. She was stunned. Were her hands that important when it came to using her abilities? All along, she supposed, almost unconsciously, she had been using them when she had performed magic. Radrine’s first shot had probably been highly calculated. Ali was right-handed. Mentally, she tried switching her energy to her left palm but she felt she had no control. And all the while Radrine took aim with her stones . . .

Ali leapt to the right, toward the red door, just as Radrine let loose a blast. The red beam missed, barely. Ali felt the cloth on her left sleeve catch fire. There was no time to worry about it. Flowing through a graceful roll, Ali grabbed one of the rocks Radrine had broken from the ceiling and stood and threw it at the evil queen. There was still so much dust, Ali was not sure if Radrine saw it coming. Certainly, she did not try to move out of the way as it hurled toward her chest.

The rock hit her dead center, threw her back, forced her to drop her fire stones. The back of Radrine’s flimsy skull hit the far wall, and she slumped down as Ali strode forward. But the queen was resilient, and not stupid. She knew she was facing a foe she could not beat, not without help. Staggering up, she managed to unwind her black wings, and glare in Ali’s direction.

“This is only the beginning,” she swore.

Ali paused, feeling her own weakness. “The next time I see you, I will kill you,” she promised.

“Destroy her if you can!” Radrine shouted to her hissing minions,
who clambered against the boulder that jammed shut the red door. Then the evil queen batted her hideous wings and flew away, swooping low over a panicked Farble, back down the cave, toward the entrance Ali had so unwisely blown open.

There was no time to celebrate. The boulder would not hold the door, and with her wounded hand, Ali doubted she could erect a force field strong enough to protect her friends from the swarm of dark fairies. Farble was wounded—he was moaning—and Paddy looked like he was in shock. She had to get them out of the cavern. They needed time to regroup.