The Rivers of Zadaa

  Would be her own.

  Saint Dane thrust the sword forward. Loor tried to dodge it, but wasn’t fast enough. I watched in horror as Saint Dane ran his sword through her chest. I froze. My brain wouldn’t accept what I was seeing. Saint Dane drove the sword through Loor. My Loor. The Traveler from Zadaa. I saw the blade come out her back, slick with blood. He drove the weapon so deep that his hands were pressed against her chest. He looked her square in the eye and said with a brutal anger that I felt to the depths of my soul, “Now die!”

  He pulled the sword out just as quickly. Loor fell to the ground. For all I knew, she was already dead. Saint Dane turned to me, holding up the bloody sword. I saw the fury in his white eyes. I was next.

  “You think you have won?” he seethed. “You think you have outwitted me? We haven’t even begun.”

  I think I was in shock. Thirty seconds before, Loor and I were talking about her visiting Second Earth. Now she lay dead at my feet. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. It all felt so impossible. But it wasn’t. Loor was dead, and if I didn’t snap out it, I knew I would be next.

  Saint Dane was out of his mind with anger. When I think back on that moment, I realize that our victories on the other territories had pushed him to the limit. Losing Zadaa had sent him over the edge. To win this territory, he had taken off the gloves. He used less trickery. He appeared as himself. He wanted to beat us straight up. He proclaimed this to be a demonstration of his strength. I think the person he was really trying to prove something to was himself. He had failed. He was ready to declare victory in the battle for Halla, but he underestimated the Travelers. He underestimated me. Most importantly, he underestimated the character of the people of Zadaa. He called them weak, and some were, but in the end we never would have saved Zadaa without the courage and wisdom of the people themselves. Saint Dane was losing. After his failure on Zadaa, he knew it. He was like a wild cat that was backed into a corner. In other words, he was dangerous.

  He stalked me with the bloody sword. I got to my feet and turned sideways, taking a defensive stance that reduced my target area. Loor’s lessons were well learned. As Saint Dane stalked closer, his body transformed. He changed from his normal image into that of the Ghee warrior who had beaten me so badly. My knees went weak. History was repeating itself. The moment I dreaded was here. I was going to have to fight this guy again. Saint Dane knew how to get into my head. I had nightmares about that fight. This time there was no chance of a last-minute rescue. One of us wasn’t getting out of that cavern.

  I wished I had decided to wear my Ghee armor. I didn’t even have a weapon. Saint Dane didn’t care. This wasn’t about sportsmanship. It was about revenge…and death.

  This is what I trained for.

  “I will give you this much credit,” Saint Dane seethed. “You are stronger than Press said. But that means nothing to me now. If killing you is meant to be, I am more than happy to be the executioner.”

  He lunged at me. I ducked and rolled toward Loor’s body. I had to stay focused. I couldn’t think about her. I needed her weapon. While jumping back to my feet, I grabbed her wooden stave. I was now armed. I spun to face Saint Dane, who held the sword high once more.

  “You have been practicing,” he said. “No matter. You are still a weak boy. I should have killed you on Denduron.”

  He came at me with the sword. This time his movements were shorter, quicker. He slashed the weapon back and forth. I deflected the blows with Loor’s stave. He wanted me dead. I wanted me alive. If I was going to beat him, I was going to have to use his anger against him. But I had to be smart. The last time I tried that, it backfired and I landed in the hospital. This time I would end up dead.

  I ducked away from his attack and spun toward the other side of the cavern.

  “It’s over,” I said. “You can’t outwit me. This proves it.”

  “Ahhh!” he ran at me and chopped down with the sword like a lumberjack. I ducked away, but couldn’t counterstrike. He was too good. He may have been making bad attacks, but he kept recovering in time to block my counters.

  “Go back to whatever cave you call home,” I taunted. “You have no chance of controlling Halla. We’re too strong. The people of the territories are too strong. You’re in way over your head.”

  “Rahhhh!” he bellowed, and unleashed another attack. I blocked two of his shots, spun, and cracked him on the back of his head, knocking him off balance. My confidence grew. I had to force myself not to think of this as revenge. I had to stay in control. I couldn’t think about how he nearly beat me to death. I couldn’t think about Loor. I had to be the warrior she taught me to be.

  “Your bravery is impressive, but foolish,” Saint Dane said as he circled back for more. “You are not invincible. You will meet the same fate as Press, and Kasha…and Loor.”

  I attacked. I faked a shot to his gut, then spun and drilled the other side of my stave for his head. He was ready for me. He didn’t go for the fake and knocked my second shot aside. He followed by lashing at me with the sword. I moved quickly enough so that I wasn’t sliced, but the blade smacked me in the back, stinging. I had committed the number one mistake. He had goaded me into making the first move. It nearly cost me my life. I wouldn’t do it again.

  “You’re running out of territories, Saint Dane,” I said. “Your campaign is running out of steam. We are all over you. We know your tricks. We know how you think. And…we’re the good guys.”

  Saint Dane thrust his sword at me. I knocked it away, spun the stave, and hit him square on the side of his head. I heard him bellow in pain. I didn’t stop. I hit him again, straight in the gut. He doubled over and dropped the sword. I wanted more. All the anger, all the frustration, all the hatred for this guy poured out of me through Loor’s stave. It was payback time. I had no sympathy. I pummeled him. I hit him in the head, the knees, the gut. I gave him every bit the beating he had given me, and more. I had won, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted to kill him. Yes, I’ll say it. At that moment I wanted to kill him.

  I had lost control. I was in a frenzy, beating him mercilessly. It was exactly what he wanted. When I was in control of my emotions, I was in command of the fight. As soon as I let my emotions take over, Saint Dane turned it around. He took the beating, backing into the far wall of the cavern. He looked as if he were ready to pass out, but he wasn’t. He surprised me by ducking down, reaching into his Ghee armor and pulling out a short, three-bladed knife. It was a weapon from Eelong, the three claws of a tang beast. He lashed out with the knife, catching my forearm. I screamed, and lost control of the stave. He lashed at me again and I dropped it. It clattered to the cavern floor, out of my reach. I was about to be skewered.

  Without thinking, I threw myself backward. Saint Dane slashed with the knife again, catching and slicing the front of my tunic. I did a full backward somersault. Saint Dane got his feet back under him and charged. This was it. He was coming in for the kill. He let out a roar of bloodlust. I finished the somersault and landed on my back. I saw Saint Dane charging with the tang knife held high, ready to plunge down at me. I didn’t move. There was no way I could get out of the way fast enough. He was coming in full throttle and I was on my back. I had only one chance left.

  Without taking my eyes off him or moving my body, I reached out and grabbed the sword that had fallen to the ground. The sword that had killed Loor. Saint Dane’s eyes were locked on mine. They were on fire. He had a single-minded purpose—kill Bobby Pendragon. I felt the handle of the sword…Saint Dane lunged at me…I brought the point of the sword up and…Saint Dane impaled himself square on the blade. His eyes stayed locked on mine. I saw his look change from rage to shock. The unthinkable had happened.

  I had killed Saint Dane.

  His body transformed from that of the Ghee warrior back to his normal self. But the agony and shock were still there. The blood-red veins on his bald head seemed to glow. His white eyes grew dim. It was over. It was all over.

  Or so I thou
ght.

  Saint Dane hung there for a moment, then his body turned to black smoke before my eyes. The dark cloud floated away from me and moved quickly to the mouth of the flume. There it grew and transformed back into solid form. Saint Dane stood there, looking totally fine. He wasn’t hurt. Not even a little. Making things worse, he was strangely calm. Gone was the anger. He even had a small smile on his face. I lay on the ground, still holding the bloody sword. My brain had frozen. I couldn’t move.

  “I see you are capable of rage,” he said cockily. “I will remember that.”

  “How could you…?” was all I could gasp.

  “Didn’t Press tell you how futile it would be to try and kill me?” he said with a smirk. He kept his eyes on me and shouted into the flume, “Quillan!”

  The flume came to life. He was getting away. I didn’t have the strength, or the will to try and stop him. Truth was, I didn’t know how.

  “This has been such an amusing diversion,” Saint Dane said. He was back to his old, confident self. “In spite of what you may think, Pendragon, this isn’t over. I can lick my wounds and move on.” He glanced down at Loor’s body and added, “The question is, can you?”

  The light from the flume enveloped the demon Traveler. He took a step back and was gone. As the light disappeared, I could hear his laugh fading away.

  I dropped the sword. My mind was reeling. What had just happened? One minute Saint Dane was dead, the next he wasn’t. One moment he was desperately trying to kill me, the next he was back to his old self, as if his attack had all been a planned stunt. Maybe it was. Maybe this was one more way of throwing me off balance. If that was the case, he’d done a pretty good job. I had discovered that under the right conditions, I was capable of taking a life. Or maybe I was only capable of taking Saint Dane’s life. But his life couldn’t be taken. My head hurt.

  That’s when I remembered Loor. I rolled over onto my knees and crawled to her.

  “Loor!” I shouted. “Loor!”

  The Ghee warrior lay still. The front of her black armor was slick with blood. Lots of blood. I lifted her head. There was no sign of life. I wouldn’t accept that. I couldn’t. I felt her neck for a pulse. There was none. I lifted her eyelid. She stared ahead, looking at nothing. It was impossible, but true.

  Loor was dead.

  I was brought back to the moments when life abandoned Osa. And Kasha. And my uncle Press. I had been there for all of them, and I was there for Loor. I cried. No, I sobbed. Not Loor. Never Loor. It wasn’t right. I put my hand on the wound that Saint Dane’s sword had made. The wound that had spilled her blood. It was warm.

  “No,” I whispered. “This can’t be happening. I will not accept this.”

  So many memories of Loor came rushing at me. I remembered when I first met her on Denduron, and she wouldn’t accept me as a Traveler. I had memories of nearly drowning her in the river when I thought I was rescuing her from an enemy that turned out to be Alder, of her holding her mother as she died, of standing by me on Cloral at Uncle Press’s funeral, of meeting you guys on Second Earth, of jumping into Lifelight with me and battling the fantasy monsters in the Barbican, of standing with me in the rain here on Zadaa, hoping for a kiss.

  I pressed my hand into her chest as if I could close the wound. Trying to bring her life back. Praying that she could be saved. This was her moment of victory. She had saved her home territory. I didn’t accept that she could die at the moment of her greatest triumph. It wasn’t right. I didn’t believe for a second that this was the way it was meant to be. I wouldn’t let myself believe. The tears ran down my cheeks, my eyes stung, but I wouldn’t take my hand off Loor to wipe them away. I was determined to make this nightmare go away, but it wasn’t going anywhere. This was real. Loor was gone and I was alone.

  It was at that very moment, the instant when I believed that all hope was gone…

  That I felt a heartbeat. It was weak, but it was there. Her heart was beating. I quickly took my hand away from her chest and felt her neck again. There was a pulse. I must have missed it before. She was alive! But for how much longer? I didn’t know what to do. I had to get her to a doctor, but there was no way I could carry her up through the crack in the rock using the footholds dug into the stone. No way. I had to get help. My mind went into hyperdrive. Saangi. I had to get Saangi. But first I had to cover the wound so it wouldn’t bleed anymore.

  I quickly took off my Rokador tunic and with the sword, I cut the sleeve off to make it into a bandage. I cut the other sleeve off and wadded it up into a pad. My idea was to put the pad on the wound, then tie it down with the other sleeve to stop the bleeding. That’s how you stopped bleeding. Direct pressure. The makeshift bandages were ready. I went back to Loor and untied the front of her armor chest piece to get at the wound. I pulled the two leather pieces apart and saw…

  There was no wound. Huh? I checked around the area, but there was no wound to be found. How could that be? I saw Saint Dane impale her. I saw the sword come out of her back. I reached over and grabbed the sword—it still had her blood on it. There was still blood all over her armor. It was real. That had to have come from somewhere. What had happened?

  “Pendragon?” Loor said weakly.

  She was awake!

  “Don’t sit up,” I warned. “You’re hurt. Saint Dane—”

  “I know,” she said. “Saint Dane came at me with the sword. I did not move in time. He…he killed me.” Loor’s hand went to her chest. She felt the area where there should have been a wound. She looked at me with wide, confused eyes. I was just as confused as she was. Loor moved to sit up.

  “Let me help,” I said, and went to give her a hand.

  “No, I am all right,” she said. “Pendragon, what happened?”

  “What do you remember?” I asked.

  Loor sat up on the edge of the flume. She was shaken, but otherwise totally okay. “I remember him coming at me out of the flume. I remember the sword. I remember his white eyes looking right at me. He said ‘Now—’”

  “Die,” I finished the sentence. “He said, ‘Now die.’”

  Loor continued, “I remember. I felt like I was falling. But it was not a frightening thing. I felt safe. There were people around me. I knew they were friends, but I did not recognize anyone. They were unfocused shadows. I said I was ready to go with them. A woman said that it might be my time, or not. We would know soon. They were all very happy to see me, and I was happy to see them as well. I liked being with them. I was happy. But I do not know who they were. Then somebody said, ‘This is not the way it was meant to be, Loor.’ It was a man. I knew who he was, but I didn’t. The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t see him. The next thing I knew I was here, looking up at you.”

  “I guess it wasn’t time” was all I could add.

  Loor nodded thoughtfully. “Pendragon,” she said, “something has been bothering me.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” I said.

  Loor ignored my sarcasm and continued. “There have been other times where things did not make sense to me. Did you not think it was odd how you recovered so quickly from your wounds after the fight with Saint Dane?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “But I figured I was a quick healer. I’ve always been a quick healer.”

  “But you were nearly killed,” she said. “Your recovery was nothing short of impossible. And what of Alder? That arrow should have killed him, yet he was up and fighting with us so soon afterward. Did you not think that was unusual?”

  “I had a few other things to worry about at the time,” I said.

  “And here,” she said. “I should be dead. I was dead. Yet I am not. How can that be?”

  Good question. I wished I had an equally good answer.

  “Could it be because we’re Travelers?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” she answered. “None of us knows our own true history. We were not born of our parents’ blood. There is much we have yet to learn.”

  “Then why did Osa die? And
Kasha? And Uncle Press? They were Travelers.”

  Loor gave this some deep, troubled thought. She said softly, “Maybe it was because you did not know you could heal them.”

  Those words stunned me. I let them sink in for a minute, then rejected the idea. I jumped to my feet and paced.

  “No way,” I said. “That’s impossible. This isn’t about me. I can’t bring back the dead.”

  “Perhaps not,” Loor said. “Or perhaps with Travelers, it is different.”

  “So you’re saying I could have saved Uncle Press? And the others?”

  “No, but only because you did not know. You told me that Uncle Press said to you that killing Saint Dane was futile, because he would only come back in another form. Saint Dane is a Traveler. We are Travelers. We may be more alike than you think.”

  The idea was incredible. I would have thought it was ridiculous, if not for what had happened to Loor. She was dead. I know she was. There was no heartbeat. She had a mortal wound. Yet there she sat, as good as new, and the wound was magically gone. I wasn’t ready to accept the fact that I had incredible healing powers, but it would have been stupid to ignore the fact that there may be more to being a Traveler than we first thought.

  I was about to suggest we get her back home, when the flume sprang back to life.

  “You gotta be kidding me!” I said.

  I helped Loor to her feet, and we backed far away from the tunnel. Neither of us wanted to be sitting ducks again. It was too late to climb out of the cavern. Whoever was coming, we had to face them. Though just to be safe, I quickly picked up the sword that Saint Dane had left behind.

  The flume did its normal pyrotechnics with light and music. I squinted through the bright display to get a glimpse of who would be coming back at us. This time there were no shadows emerging from the tunnel, primed to kill. The light disappeared and the music stopped. Nobody was there.