They were in the dark for quite a while, but finally Ian could see the shapes of their surroundings. Eventually, there was a small bead of light ahead, and he knew they weren’t far from where they’d started. He breathed a sigh of relief when they reached their backpacks and water canteens.
“How are we going to get the rest of the treasure out?” Theo asked him, holding up her two kneesocks, which she’d cleverly loaded with gold.
“We’re not,” he said, smiling at her ingenuity as he unloaded his hands and his pockets. “We’ve got to get home, and we’ve got enough here to do that. Oh!” He interrupted himself as he pulled the silver box from his trousers. “Theo, look at what I found in the cavern!”
“It’s another box!” she exclaimed. “Just like Laodamia said we’d find!”
Ian nodded. “And I think it might hold the Star.” Flipping the box over, he began turning each of the feet, hoping that this box opened like the others. He found the right ball on the second try and unscrewed it, revealing the key. With shaking fingers he inserted it into the small keyhole at the front of the box and it opened with a pop. But inside all he saw was another scroll and a small bronze sundial.
“What is it?” Theo asked over his shoulder.
“Just another scroll,” he said, disappointed. “And a sundial.”
“A sundial?”
“Yes,” he said, holding it up for her to see.
“How peculiar.”
“Quite,” he said, setting it back into the box with a sigh.
“No sign of the Star?” she asked.
“Not unless the sundial is the Star,” said Ian. He was starting to grow weary of Laodamia and her riddles. He closed the lid, locked it, and returned the ball to the bottom of the box. “Seems we’re all out of missing gemstones with magical powers.”
Theo gave him a sympathetic look but said nothing. Instead, she focused on Jaaved, who was distracted by the treasure he was unloading. Ian saw with a bit of humility that Jaaved’s pile was bigger than his.
“That’s a pretty good haul, Jaaved,” Ian said to him.
“That is good,” Theo agreed, then looked at Ian and a smile spread across her face. As if she’d just realized it, she turned round and showed them a huge knot in the tail of her blouse. She undid the knot and an enormous pile of treasure slipped out onto the ground. Adding to what was in her socks, it was as much as Ian’s and Jaaved’s combined.
“Mais … quel énorme trésor là!” exclaimed Jaaved, pointing to her pile.
Ian gave him a weary look, out of patience for his silly language games. “You can drop the act, Jaaved,” he snapped. “We know you can speak English.”
Jaaved cocked his head at Ian, confusion on his face. “Qu’ avez-vous dit?”
“We know you can understand us, Jaaved,” Theo said, more gently. “It’s all right; we’re not mad.”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Ian, thoroughly irritated that Jaaved had duped them.
“Je ne comprends pas!” said Jaaved, standing up and pointing to them. “Parlez-moi comme vous avez fait dans le tunnel!”
“What’s he so mad about?” Ian asked Theo.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Jaaved, why won’t you speak English? You know we can’t understand French.”
Jaaved glared at her and stomped his foot. Bending low and grumbling to himself, he gathered up his pile of treasure and shoved it into his pockets. “If you won’t speak to me like you did in the tunnel, then you may find your own way back!”
“We are speaking to you like we did in the tunnel!” insisted Theo. And just like that, everyone stopped talking and looked at the last handful of treasure in Jaaved’s palm. There, in his bandaged palm, was the biggest opal Ian had ever seen. The iridescent stone shone blue, orange, yellow, and green, and at the center of the stone was a cluster of red flakes that reflected the light brilliantly. Most startling of all, however, was that the stone was shaped into a five-pointed star.
“The Star of Lixus!” Theo gasped.
“It gives him the power of language!” said Ian, putting the final pieces of Laodamia’s riddle into place. “Jaaved, give me the opal, and when it’s in my hand, say something in your native tongue, not in French but in Arabic!”
Jaaved handed over the stone and said, “Hello, Ian, it’s a lovely day for a camel ride.”
Ian scowled. It hadn’t worked. “No, you’re just speaking English again,” he said, but he noticed a look of shock on Theo’s face. “Ian!” she gasped. “You just spoke Arabic!”
“I did?” he asked.
“Now you’re back to English!” she said.
“I don’t understand you, Theo,” said Jaaved, looking confusedly from Ian to Theo.
“What’s not to understand?” asked Ian.
“You did it again!” Theo exclaimed. “This time you spoke French!”
Ian thought back to how he had responded to Jaaved. It was odd, but there had been just a slight change in the way his brain thought out the words and his lips had formed them. “Jaaved,” he said excitedly, “after I give the Star to Theo, I want you to ask her what her favorite book is.”
“All right,” said Jaaved, and Ian handed the Star to Theo. As Theo held the stone, Jaaved asked his question in French, and Theo responded in French, with a perfect accent.
Ian looked at her, stunned. “That was brilliant!” he said. He took the Star from Theo, gave it back to Jaaved, and asked, “You can understand us, right?”
“Yes, perfectly,” Jaaved answered.
“Brilliant!” Ian repeated. “How do we get back to your boat?”
“We’ve got to cross the valley again, and go back the way you came.”
“How dangerous will it be?”
Jaaved looked grim. “Very. We have only the water in the canteens, and this meat. The journey will take two days on foot. I’ve been to the Jichmach camp. Only a few of my tribesmen survived the fight, and from the tracks I found, I know they are headed back to our lands. The surviving Jichmach have gone deeper into their lands to bring more warriors to help collect their dead and gather up the remaining supplies.”
“I’m so sorry about your family,” Theo said, and patted Jaaved’s arm.
He nodded and pressed his lips together. “My grandfather was badly injured. I had to leave him and seek out help from my tribe. While Raajhi led us to the Jichmach, my aunt was dispatched to the river to care for my grandfather. I wish to go back to him as soon as possible.”
Ian hesitated before asking his next question, and even when he found the courage, his voice would not rise above a whisper. “Did you see any sign of Carl or our schoolmasters and the professor?”
Jaaved’s face fell. “The tent they were in was burned to the ground. I saw two bodies there. And there was no sign in the campsite of Carl or Thatcher but I did not stay long. …” Jaaved paused. “My uncle was among the dead, along with my cousin, Mahir. Once I saw them, I focused only on getting what had not been destroyed in the battle.”
Theo turned her face away from them, and Ian knew she was weeping again. He nodded to Jaaved and tried to clear his throat of the lump that was stuck there. “Right,” he said, picking up one of the backpacks. “We should carry the treasure, of course, and only what is absolutely necessary for the two-day journey, and we should travel at night until we can get clear of the valley. Let’s repack these and get some rest. We’ll set out right after nightfall.”
Shortly after dusk, Jaaved woke Ian and Theo from their fitful sleep. It was cold on the floor of the cave, and Ian had been so anxious and uncomfortable that he’d gotten very little rest.
Wordlessly, he and Jaaved put on the backpacks, and Theo carried their food and canteens. They crept to the mouth of the cave and looked about at the long shadows, listening for the slightest sound. The desert world was silent, so they stepped out of the mouth of the cave and crept along the hillside. Then they heard a noise that stopped them cold.
A howl, long and horr
ible, echoed across the valley and reverberated against the rocks and into the caves. Ian and his companions flattened themselves to the ground, waiting for the beast to show itself.
After several moments Ian carefully lifted his head and looked behind him at Jaaved and Theo. “I knew it was too much to hope that the beast would’ve moved on from us. We’ll need to keep to the shadows as much as possible,” he said.
“Maybe we should wait for daylight to cross the valley,” Theo proposed. “The beast doesn’t seem to like daylight.”
“But the Jichmach do,” said Jaaved. “Our choice is to risk being hunted by the beast or face certain death at the hands of the Jichmach. I expect them back here to claim their dead within the next hour or two, and have no doubt, their hearts will thirst for revenge. Out in that valley, we’re sure to be spotted by the warriors if we wait until daylight.”
Theo shivered. “Jaaved’s right. We should cross the valley tonight.”
Ian got to his feet but crouched low; the other two followed suit. “We’ll have to plan every move,” he said, his eyes scanning the valley in the dimming light. “We’ll need to go from cover to cover. Like when we made it to the caves from the campsite. And we’ll start there,” he said, pointing to a large boulder. “We should sprint for that and hide. Then we’ll pick the next place and so on.”
He looked over his shoulder to get their approval, and both of them nodded. Ian turned back to focus on the boulder. His palms were slick with sweat but he forced his voice to be calm for the sake of his friends. “All right, then, after me, you two,” he said, and sprinted to the boulder. He crashed against it and dropped down low. Jaaved and Theo were right behind him, panting hard. “Good job,” he said when they were all together. “Now let’s look for the next spot.”
Theo pointed to some low bushes. “There, Ian!” she said. “That’s not very far away and we should be able to make it.”
Ian smiled and gave her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. “Follow my lead,” he said before dashing off.
And so they continued like that for most of the night, running in short bursts from cover to cover. Sometimes they hid behind bushes, sometimes rocks, and once they hid behind a termite mound. An hour or two before dawn, they’d made it nearly out of the valley, and Ian was starting to feel much better about their chances. But as he scanned the terrain ahead, looking for the next place of cover, something in the dark moved. He pulled his head back from the opening in their hiding place between two large rocks, his breath catching in his throat.
“What is—” Theo started, but Ian put a hand over her mouth and shook his head.
Moving in close, he whispered, “The beast,” and pointed up over the rock. Theo’s mouth dropped open wide and she gripped his tattered shirt in fear. Jaaved looked alarmed; he knew that Ian had seen something but he didn’t know what. Ian mouthed, The beast, and Jaaved nodded gravely.
Ian then pulled Theo close and pressed them both into the rock, shielding her as best he could. He could feel her trembling and he wondered if she could sense his heart hammering against his chest. A smell that made him want to gag—sulfur mixed with wet dog and rotting meat—came to their nostrils then. Ian shut his eyes and tried to hold his breath as the awful smell grew stronger. Within moments he heard the labored panting of the beast drawing near.
Ian wondered how close the deadly creature was to them. He prayed it would simply pass by their hiding spot. But all hope of that fled when a horrible howl sounded right by them.
Theo put her hands over her ears and leaned hard into Ian’s chest while Jaaved put his face to the rock and covered his head with his arms. But Ian forced himself to keep his eyes open and wait for the beast’s next move, expecting that at any moment it would leap over the rock they hid behind and tear them all to shreds.
As the howl died away, Ian realized that the ground beneath them was vibrating. For a moment he thought it was just his imagination, but he soon realized that along with the vibration came a pounding so great that it began to echo about the valley.
Then, on the other side of the rock where they crouched, there came a loud snort, followed by an enormous shadow that blocked out the moon before dropping just a few meters away. Ian gasped when he realized he was looking at the hackles of the beast as it raced away from them.
He had only a moment to consider how vulnerable a position he was in as the vibrating earth and the thundering sound of galloping horses grew into a terrible crescendo of noise. Then, suddenly, horses began leaping over their boulder, landing with tremendous tremors. Dozens of horses flew overhead only to charge away after the beast. Dust and sand were kicked up, filling Ian’s nose, eyes, and mouth with grit while the thunder of hooves filled his ears, until finally, the last horse had cleared the boulder and was pounding away.
Ian felt a strong tug on his arm and he looked up, dazed, to see Jaaved. “We must go!” he urged. “We must hurry before they look back and see us!”
Realizing that Jaaved was right, Ian scrambled to his feet, pulling Theo up with him. The three made a mad dash across what was left of the valley, their legs pumping as fast as they could, closer and closer to the hilly terrain with plenty of cover just a quarter mile away.
With hearts racing, Ian, Theo, and Jaaved made it to the edge of the rocks, through the narrow opening of the valley, and down the path before dropping to the ground, exhausted. It was only when he’d caught his breath a little that Ian noticed for the first time the unmistakable sound of a horse snorting directly above his head.
HOMEWARD BOUND
Terrified that one of the Jichmach had found them, Ian sprang to his feet. He looked up at the rider, his mouth set firmly, and raised his fists, prepared to go down fighting. But to his astonishment, a smiling sooty man sat bareback on the white stallion before them. “I never thought I’d see the likes of you three again!” the man said happily before jumping down and moving to Ian. Ian realized that the man underneath all that soot was Perry.
“Schoolmaster Goodwyn!” Theo shouted, and barreled into Perry’s chest. Ian had never been so glad to see someone in his life.
Perry hugged Theo fiercely. “My young Miss Fields,” he said softly. “I thought we’d lost you to those barbarians.”
“That’s Najib’s horse!” gasped Ian, recognizing the warrior’s stallion. “Wherever did you find him?”
“Not far from here,” came another voice, and Ian saw that there was another horse on the path, this one ridden by the professor. “We made it out of the valley about six hours ago and bedded down in the bushes over there. When we woke up, we saw the horses on the path. It took us a little while to catch them, but we finally managed it. And that’s when we saw you three making your way over to us.”
“I daresay, we thought for certain that horrible beast was going to gobble you up and I very nearly raced out to try to rescue you when I saw that band of Jichmach coming across the valley,” added Perry.
“They flew right over our heads,” said Theo. “We were almost trampled!”
Perry smiled, the white of his teeth bright against the soot on his face. “I know,” he said, and stroked her hair. “I thought the professor was going to have a heart attack. Thank heavens you weren’t hurt.”
“And what happened to you two?” Ian asked. “The last we saw of you, you were squaring off against Magus the Black.”
“Ghastly man—if you can call him that,” sniffed the professor, spitting into the dirt for emphasis. “He came right for Perry the moment you three dashed out of the tent. I’ve never seen anything so frightening, and that includes the beast.”
Perry nodded. “It was like looking straight into the face of the devil,” he said, and Ian would swear he saw his school-master shiver. “But just before he closed in on me, something crashed into our tent. To be honest with you, I’m not even sure if it was one of the invaders or one of our captors, but someone came barreling into the tent, and he was on fire.”
Ian saw Theo blanch
.
Perry nodded. “Yes, a horrible sight, that. But it saved us in the end. The tent caught fire and that distracted Magus while the professor here dragged me clear before the whole tent went up in smoke. We managed somehow to get to the foothills and then we hid in one of those caves until the battle was over.”
“We hid in a cave too!” said Theo. “And we found treasure!”
“Treasure?” asked the professor, nudging his horse forward.
“Yes! And Jaaved found the true Star of Lixus! Show him, Jaaved.”
Jaaved opened his bandaged palm and the professor gingerly got down off his horse and hurried over. “My word,” he breathed, eyeing the opal closely. “It is as beautiful as the legend said it would be.”
“And it’s as magical as Laodamia told us it would be,” added Ian, proud that they had discovered the lost gem. “Do you remember the line in the prophecy that said, ‘Language now is not unknown’?”
The professor nodded. “Yes, I remember.”
“Well!” said Ian, with as much drama as he could muster. “Jaaved can understand and speak English with it!”
The professor looked amazed and glanced at Jaaved. “Really?” he asked. “Is that true?”
“Yes, Professor,” Jaaved answered with a huge grin. “I can understand everything you’ve said.”
Ian delighted in seeing both the professor and Perry gasp in surprise.
“My word!” said Perry. “He’s even speaking without a noticeable accent!”
“Try talking to him in another language,” Ian suggested to the professor. “I bet he’ll be able to understand that too.”
The professor eyed Ian skeptically. “You think so?” he asked, then turned to Jaaved and said something to him that sounded like a chicken clucking.
Jaaved laughed and said something back, making the identical clucking noises. “That’s remarkable,” said the professor. “Simply remarkable!”