The Shaktra

  “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.

  Choking on the dusty air, Ali managed to grab her friends and pull them through the yellow door, the only other door that was open. She did not have a clear goal in mind, but she did recall a series of six tunnels farther up the cave. They had been round-shaped, with three on each side. Because each had sloped slightly downward—when they were hustling to climb out of the cave—they had not stopped to inspect the tunnels. But now Ali thought they might be a perfect place to disappear into. If she remembered correctly, they were not far away.

  Paddy and Farble were too stunned to talk. Ali ordered them to keep moving. The pain in her hand was devastating. She had saved only one flashlight from the cavern, but it was enough to show that Radrine had melted virtually all the flesh off her palm. Through the dripping blood, Ali could actually see her raw muscles and veins. She knew if she did not bandage it soon, or better yet, heal it, she was going to be in serious trouble.

  After a half hour of jogging, Ali heard demented shrieks at their backs.

  Very faintly, she could see a herd of shifting red dots.

  She had saved a flashlight but had lost her fire stones.

  “Missy!” Paddy cried.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Ali said, although she felt very afraid.

  Fortunately, right then, they came to the caves, and Ali chose the second one on the left, for no other reason than it felt right. Into the pitch black, into a place they knew nothing about, they fled.

  CHAPTER

  9

  That same morning, Steve and Cindy arrived in Toule by bus, and headed to the town’s public library. That afternoon they planned to have lunch with Nira and Rose. To thank them for watching Nira, Rose had invited them to Sheri Smith’s house. Of course, when Steve had last spoken to Ali, before she had entered the cave, he had not mentioned any of these facts. There came a time in life, Steve thought, when a man had to act like a man, even if he was still a kid. This, he was confident, was one of those times.

  The time was ten-fi
fteen in the morning. They had three hours to kill before lunch. Because both of them were curious how Toule had been destroyed in the power plant explosion thirteen years earlier, they wanted to spend as much of that time as possible in the local library doing research. But one of the first things they learned when they began to go through the back articles related to the tragedy, was that the word “destroyed” was a slight exaggeration.

  Toule had a population of 4,332. Only 114 had died in the explosion, although another 250 had been injured, many of those badly burned. “Only” seemed a pitiful word to apply to such devastation, but it was a fact that the town had survived the explosion, although most of the main street and over three hundred homes had burned to the ground. For Steve, it was a lot different to scan through the library’s microfilm—which was largely made up of articles taken from the local paper, Toule Talk—than to search the Internet for national stories on the tragedy. For one thing, two local reporters had been there the night the power plant had gone up in flames. Indeed, both had been slightly injured in the blast, and they wrote with a passion that brought the night home in a way that was very personal—and painful.

  Briefly, the facts of the matter were that while the town was in the middle of celebrating the local high school’s victory at the state basketball championship game two weeks earlier, the power plant had blown up. That was it—thirteen years later no one had a clue why it had happened. The rest was statistics, although there was a slight discrepancy in the number dead. Most of the articles they read said 114 had died—a few said 115.

  “Does the number matter?” Cindy asked, sitting across from Steve. Given the size of the town, the library was more than respectable. They had to assume the local citizens were ardent readers, although they pretty much had the place to themselves. The librarian on duty was a Ms. Sarah Treacher, who looked like a kindly old woman until she opened her mouth. She had already snapped at them for mishandling the microfilm—she called it microfiche—yet she continued to be helpful, in a scowling sort of way. Their excuse for being there was far from creative: They were supposedly doing a paper on the big blast for a summer school class. As if they had summer school back in Breakwater.

  “Probably not, but I think we should ask the old witch about it,” Steve said.

  Cindy nodded toward the front desk. “Not so loud, the old witch might hear and turn you into a troll.”

  “Better a troll than a leprechaun,” Steve said.

  “You would rather be Farble than Paddy? Farble is dumb, he stinks.”

  “There is bliss in ignorance, and Farble can eat over twenty pounds at one sitting.”

  “I think Paddy is cute,” Cindy said.

  “All females are attracted to dwarf men. It is a scientific fact.”

  “But Paddy hates dwarves.”

  Steve suddenly chuckled. “You know what I just thought?”

  “What?”

  “How weird this conversation is.”

  Cindy smiled. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Steve gestured to the stacks of microfilm. “Anyway, Ms. Treacher said she was there that night. We should talk to her about the discrepancy in the number. She might be more helpful than all these articles put together.”

  “What would help me is if I knew what we were looking for.”

  “An excellent point. When we were riding here on the bus, I had the brilliant idea that we would pore through all these records and come across early warning signs of an elemental invasion. Well, maybe I wasn’t being that lame, but I thought we might at least find something that related to Ali’s problem.”

  “It isn’t Ali’s problem, it’s all our problem,” Cindy said.

  “Slip of the tongue. Anyway, what we’re looking for in the explosion is anything that cannot be logically explained. And we have that; it’s staring us right in the face. No one has a clue why the plant exploded. But I don’t know what to do with that. To solve a mystery you need at least a few clues.”

  “Nothing struck you as odd? Besides the question over the number of dead?”

  Steve considered. “There is one thing that might be a clue. This plant generated electrical energy by burning gas. Most of the plants in the U.S. do the same. It’s cheaper than using nuclear power. Until solar or wind technology get more sophisticated, it will continue to be the way electrical plants are fueled.”

  “So?” Cindy asked.

  “So this was the only electrical plant in the state that did not import its gas. It got it from right here, pumped it directly out of the ground.”

  “Would that explain why it blew up?”

  “No. I bring it up only because it’s unusual. I mean, in Texas it’s not, but the West Coast doesn’t have many large natural gas reserves.”

  “Where are you going with this?” Cindy asked.

  “Beats me. The underground reserves did not explode. Toule was lucky. If that had happened, they would have had Hiroshima on their hands. Everyone in town would have died.”

  Cindy was thinking. “But say the explosion was intentional, and someone set the plant to blow. Is it possible they were hoping the underground reserves would ignite?”

  “Sure. It would explain why of all the plants in the country, this was the one that blew up. The people behind it might have been after the biggest bang that money could buy.”

  “If there were people behind it,” Cindy said.

  Steve nodded. “That’s our problem. We don’t even know if a crime has been committed. No, I take that back. Our problem is that none of this appears to relate to elves, fairies, dwarves, trolls, and leprechauns. For some reason, I seriously doubt that Lord Vak plotted to blow up this city.”

  “What about the Shaktra?”

  Steve shrugged. “Yeah, what about it? What is it? Who is it?”

  The questions only emphasized how feeble their research efforts were.

  They went over to talk to Ms. Treacher, and to return the microfilm. She snapped it from Steve’s hands. He could only assume she did not like the way he held the metal containers. Her face was not merely old; her wrinkles were arranged like hard lines of opinion. Yet her gray eyes had a twinkle in them, they seemed to shine when she was being particularly nasty. She was a grouch, he thought, but she knew it and thought it was funny. She was probably too old to care one way or the other.

  “Well, did you two figure out why it blew up?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” Steve said. “But we’re confused how many people died in the blast. Some articles say a hundred and fourteen, others, a hundred and fifteen. Did someone die later or what?”

  “A dozen people died later, mostly from burns, but they’re included in the total. What you’re asking about is Lucy Pillar. She was a high school student. She was listed as missing right after the explosion, but the police couldn’t locate her body. However, in the end, they recovered enough remains to make an identification.”

  “Did that happen to anyone else?” Cindy asked.

  “Lots of people were blown to bits. There were body parts everywhere.”

  “Did they have DNA testing back then?” Steve asked.

  “It was primitive. They didn’t try to use it on Lucy. After a few days, they knew for sure it was her.”

  “Did you know her?” Cindy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What was she like?” Cindy asked.

  Ms. Treacher scowled. “Why do you want to know?”

  Cindy shrugged. “I was just curious is all.”

  The question seemed to shake Ms. Treacher. She softened her tone. “Lucy was a lovely girl, before the accident.”

  The way she said “accident,” Steve knew she was not referring to the explosion. He asked if that was the case and the librarian nodded reluctantly.

  “A year before the power plant blew, Lucy was in a car accident. Her boyfriend at the time—Hector Wells, he was on the basketball team—was driving. He was drunk, and he crashed into a tree and was thrown from the car. But Lucy had her seat b
elt on. She got trapped inside, and the car exploded, and she was burned over most of her body.” Ms. Treacher’s voice was sad. “I’ll never forget those days. I was a teacher at the high school then—I saw Lucy every day. She was a cheerleader, happy as a lark. Smart as a whip, too. We had her IQ tested and the psychologist went away shaking his head. She had a photographic memory. She could write, sing, play the flute. Then, just like that, it was all over for her . . . or it should have been. God forgive me, but I used to pray that she had died that night. She should have died, every doctor I spoke to said so. She was left with only twenty percent of her skin. The next year, she was in and out of the hospital constantly, having skin graft operations. If she hadn’t died when the plant exploded, she would have had surgeries for another five years. That’s no life for a young woman. That’s no life for anyone.”

  “Are Lucy’s parents still alive?” Steve asked.

  “Her mother is. Her father died the same night as Lucy, in the explosion.”

  “Where does her mother live?”

  “I don’t know. She moved away some years ago.”

  “How about Hector?” Cindy asked.

  “He was hurt in the blast, but he recovered.” The librarian added, “He’s a local contractor, he lives here in town.”

  “Do you think we could interview him for our paper?” Cindy asked.

  “Doubt he would talk to you.” She did not add, “you two snotassed kids,” but it was there in her voice. At the same time, it was obvious she liked sharing the local gossip. They hardly had to prod her to keep talking. She was probably bored.

  “Do you know Nira Smith?” Steve asked.

  “Everyone in town knows Nira. Poor child, her mind is not right. Why do you ask?”

  “We took care of her yesterday for a few hours.” Steve added, “We’re going to have lunch with her and Rose this afternoon.”

  “Rose?”

  “Her nanny. She takes care of Nira for Ms. Smith,” Cindy said.

  “I don’t know her. I only knew Patricia Hassel. She watched Nira for years.”