Alex’s heart raced. “Do you think Quill is going to attack? Like, now?”
Simber focused intently on the things no one else could see. After a minute, his eyes widened.
“What is it?” Alex asked.
“Therrre’s a steady strrream of dust rrrising frrrom left to rrright on the nearrr side of the island,” Simber said slowly. “The kind of dust a line of vehicles would make if they werrre headed frrrom the Quillitarrry yarrrd towarrrd Arrrtimé.” He looked down at Alex. “I think they’rrre on theirrr way.”
“Alex,” Samheed said. “We have to do something.”
Alex nodded. “I know. I’m thinking.” He looked all around the ship, seeing Florence leaning forward and listening. He ran to her side. “They’re going to need our help. The ship is at full speed—I think I should go ahead with Simber. What do you think?”
“Absolutely,” Florence said. “Take a few others with you—as many as Simber can hold.”
Alex nodded. “Okay. That feels right.” He turned back to the group at the bow and considered his options.
“Samheed, Lani, and Henry, I want you guys to come with me.”
They nodded.
“Everybody else,” Alex said, “hand over whatever spell components you have left. Once you reach the lagoon, Florence will assess the situation and give you instructions, and, Ms. Octavia? I need you to stay on board and guard the ship.”
“Of course,” the octogator said.
The components were gathered into a miserable little heap on the deck. Lani sorted them and handed them out, leaving a few for Ms. Octavia in case the Quillitary decided to attack the ship. Alex arranged his components in his pockets the way he liked them, wishing for ten times the number, then signaled to Simber that he was ready.
Simber dipped a wing. Alex grabbed hold of it and vaulted onto Simber’s back. He scooted forward so Lani, Samheed, and Henry could hop on behind him.
As soon as Henry was settled, Simber called out, “Hold on tightly!” And they were off, soaring at Simber’s top speed. He updated them as they flew with whatever details he could make out. The closer they drew to Artimé, the more alarmed Simber’s voice became, for he could see clearly now that Artimé was indeed under a severe attack.
“The Quillitarrry is sprrread acrrross the entirrre southerrrn shorrre of the island,” Simber said. “They’rrre attacking frrrom vehicles and on foot!”
Alex could hardly see—the wind was making his eyes water furiously. He wiped them and tried again. They were closing in now, and Alex could make out the figures on the lawn, fighting from behind their glass shields. Quillitary soldiers waving their rusty metal weapons were everywhere, running and plowing into glass shields with their vehicles, causing all sorts of problems, but Alex could tell Artimé was holding its own by the number of frozen Quillitary soldiers on the grounds. Every now and then he saw a body flying backward and sticking to a tree or the side of a vehicle with scatterclips.
Alex turned to address Samheed, Lani, and Henry. “Let’s make our first pass from the air. Get ready to pepper them with whatever spells we have, and keep your aim measured and tight—we don’t want to waste anything. Sound good so far?”
The three agreed that it did.
“Great. Who has a large stash of components in their room and can get access to them fast?”
“I do,” Samheed said.
“Okay, perfect. So we’ll make that first pass, then when we get near the mansion, we’ll drop Sam off and keep fighting with our remaining spells until Sam comes back with components. Clear?”
“Clear,” the three called out.
“Simber?” Alex prompted.
“Got it,” said the cat.
The next minutes dragged by, Alex clutching Simber’s neck and leaning forward, as if that would propel them even faster. He hated the Quillitary’s presence on his land. It made him furious to see his people having to risk their lives without him right by their sides. “Hurry up, Sim,” he muttered, not intending for Simber to hear him, but realizing too late that of course he did—he always did.
Instead of getting angry, Simber risked a glance at the mage and nodded. “It feels terrribly helpless, doesn’t it?”
Alex let out a deep sigh. “Yeah,” he said. He patted Simber’s neck.
“We’rrre moments away.” He began his descent and circled, then called out, “Coming in frrrom east to west. Lining them up forrr you—no extrrra charrrge.”
Alex heard nervous laughs behind him. You could count on Simber to lighten the mood during the intense times. It made Alex feel more relaxed. Mentally he planned out his spell lineup and grabbed the first two components.
Simber swooped in, almost unnoticed by anyone on the ground because they were all concentrated on their battles, and one by one, the four excellent spell casters on Simber’s back released their components and rendered four soldiers useless. A second later, four more went down.
When the Artiméans on the lawn realized what was happening, a cheer rose up. Their mage had returned.
Alex, Lani, Samheed, and Henry didn’t stop. They shot off another round, and another, all the way along the southern shore into Quill, until they were almost out of components.
“Back to the mansion,” Alex called out. “Samheed, be ready to run!”
“Got it!” Samheed slid to the end of Simber’s wing as the statue swooped down, and he jumped off, hitting the ground running.
Simber lifted off again, and the three remaining on his back continued firing components until they ran out. Once Alex’s supply was depleted, he was able to sit back and look out over the island, trying to spot areas of trouble. He spied Meghan near the mansion, but she was too busy fighting to notice them.
After a minute, Samheed burst out of the mansion, his pockets bulging and a burlap sack in one hand. He fought off the Quillitary with spell after spell from his free hand, waiting for Simber to find an open spot to swoop in. Unable to get through the crowd to hop onto Simber’s back, Samheed finally gave up.
“Here!” he shouted, and tossed the sack of components to Lani so they could continue fighting from the air. “Go on without me—I’ll stay down here!”
Lani caught the sack, and Simber flew up and away to take on soldiers farther inland.
Samheed reloaded and glanced around, trying to figure out where his allies were. He spotted Meghan and shouted to her.
She looked up, surprised and pleased, though there wasn’t time for niceties at the moment, seeing as she was nearly surrounded and a trickle of blood was blocking her vision in one eye. She took out the nearest soldiers and glanced back at Samheed, who was moving toward her.
“Are you okay?” Samheed asked, seeing the blood. He took out two more soldiers and muscled through the throng of fighters, narrowly avoiding a crack to the head with a rusty iron rod. Once through, he raced to her side.
“I’m fine. Feel like giving me a hand?” She shot him a wry grin. It was good to see her friend after so long.
“I suppose,” Samheed said. He reached out to give her shoulder a squeeze and gave her a kiss on the cheek while simultaneously tossing a pin cushion spell at a soldier nearby. The soldier convulsed in pain from hundreds of pinpricks. “You didn’t have to go through all this trouble just to welcome us home, you know.”
“We do things right here in Artimé,” she replied. “It’s incredibly good to see you.”
“You too. Is Sean all right?” Samheed whirled around to toss scatterclips at a soldier running toward him, sending the chap flying backward toward Quill. He faced Meghan now, and hastily froze two young Quillitary soldiers heading toward Mr. Appleblossom, who left his tree and was fighting on the grounds nearby.
“He’s better than when he got here,” Meghan said over the din of clashing metal. “Still in the hospital wing.”
An attacker sliced into Meghan’s arm, which made her furious. She sent her to the ground with a dagger spell to make her regret it. When Meghan turned back tow
ard Samheed to express her disgust, she gasped. Looking over Samheed’s shoulder, she saw a stealthy figure coming up in the distance behind him. And when she caught sight of the man’s face, she grabbed Samheed by the shirt. “Samheed!” she screamed. “Look out!”
The General’s Vendetta
Samheed whirled around, components drawn and ready to cast, and then he gasped too. Not twenty feet away was a small group of soldiers advancing on him and Meghan, weapons poised. And behind them stood a man, a head taller than the rest. The man’s eyes bulged and his nostrils flared.
“General Blair,” Samheed whispered.
Meghan gulped and whispered back. “I see him. I thought he was dead.” She came to her senses and pulled some components from her pocket. “I’ll take the left guards, you take the right, and I’ll leave you the honors of handling the general.”
“I appreciate that,” Samheed said. He looked at the components in his hands and then shoved them into his pocket, opting for a different arsenal. He chose the components he wanted. “Ready?” he said under his breath. “Go.”
One after another, he and Meghan sent four guards flying backward, pinning them to the nearest trees, and four guards running screaming into the sea. And all the while, General Blair, a wild look in his eye, advanced as if nothing were happening to his group of protectors. Finally Samheed reloaded and pulled his arm back to take out the general, but the general was quicker. He held a circular piece of jagged metal in one hand and a pistol in the other.
“Don’t move or you’re dead,” the general said, his voice thundering loud enough for people all around them to hear. The angry scar on his neck pulsed with each word.
Samheed froze.
“You see this weapon here? It has your initials on it, Burkesh. I found it imbedded deep inside my neck.”
The general held Samheed’s throwing star.
“I’ve come to return it. Now put your weapons down and take what you deserve!”
“He’s gone mad,” Samheed muttered.
“Stay still,” Meghan whispered. “Can you put up a glass shield without moving?”
“Good idea.” Samheed concentrated and whispered, “Glass.” A shield appeared in front of him. Immediately Meghan moved to the edge of it and without hesitating, fired off a heart attack spell.
A nearby soldier jumped in its path, took the hit, and fell to the ground. She shuddered and was silent.
“Don’t make me angry!” the general roared. And before anyone could figure out what was happening, there was an earsplitting blast. The glass exploded and shattered at Samheed’s feet.
Meghan screamed and moved to Samheed’s side, fumbling with her pockets.
General Blair fired the gun again, but there was only a click.
Samheed saw his chance and searched his pockets for the spell he needed to finish the general off. But he’d shoved components in his pockets so quickly and without any planning that he couldn’t find what he needed. At last his fingers landed on the familiar heart shapes. He snatched them up.
Fuming, General Blair tossed the pistol aside. He switched the throwing star to his right hand, reared back, and let it fly. At the same time, Samheed wound up and sent two heart attack spells soaring.
Meghan looked up just in time. “No!” she yelled. She leaped into the air, shoving Samheed aside as his heart attack spells hit the general square in the chest.
The man’s eyes widened, and his shaking hands gripped his shirt. At the very same moment, the throwing star found its mark, sticking fast into Meghan’s chest. Without a sound, she tumbled to the ground in a heap.
The shuddering General Blair dropped to his knees, gasping for breath, and fell forward, his face in the lawn. The onlookers from both sides began shouting. They burst into an intense battle, fighting for their lives and their honor.
“Meg!” Samheed cried. He staggered to his feet, fell, and crawled toward her, but the enemy was quickly closing in around him and he couldn’t reach her. He lunged for more components, sending a round of heart attack spells at every soldier in range, and planted two more in the general’s back to make sure the job was done.
A cry went up from a Quillitary soldier. “They’ve killed the general! Fight to the finish!”
“Simber!” screamed Samheed in a horrible voice no one had ever heard before. Finally he was able to stand. A new wave of soldiers approached, slashing the air, trying to get a piece of him. He ducked and darted away from their lashings, and began shooting off lethal versions of scatterclips. “Die a thousand deaths!” he cried with every throw, and one by one each scatterclip caused the fall of another Quillitary soldier. Yet behind each fallen soldier was another to take his place.
From the roof of the mansion, Carina heard Samheed’s cry for help. She shouted for Simber and began pelting the soldiers from her spot up high. Heart attack spell after heart attack spell went soaring, and lethal scatterclips went flying as fast as Carina and Samheed could send them.
“Somebody please get Meghan out of here!” Samheed begged, his voice hoarse, but the battle was so fierce that no one could pause for a moment to help any of the wounded. He was sure she’d been trampled, and there was nothing he could do but fight to stay alive.
Finally Simber swooped in, and Alex, Lani, and Henry all jumped to the ground and began casting lethal spells alongside a bruised, broken, and bloody Samheed. The fight continued to rage with wave after wave of soldiers running to attack the person who had killed their general, until there were only a handful of Quillitary soldiers left alive.
As their components dwindled along with the enemy’s numbers, Ms. Morning and Mr. Appleblossom finished off the remaining Quillitary near the former gate area and ran toward Samheed and the others to assist. There they helped finish the battle. The last soldier went down with a deathly poem from Mr. Appleblossom.
And then the world was silent.
Heaving and gasping for breath that wouldn’t come, Samheed sought out Lani, and then his eyes rolled back into his head and he crumpled to the ground next to Meghan. Neither of them moved.
And then, in the very moment that all the friends rushed in to help Meghan and Samheed, the land beneath their feet turned slick. Not with the blood of their enemies or friends, but with a thick layer of blinding white ice—ice from the veins of the most evil one of all. Gondoleery Rattrapp.
Artiméans everywhere slipped off their feet and went sprawling, landing hard. Quillens, too, apart from the fighting, were frozen inside their homes or fell while doing their jobs. The few Quillitary soldiers who had survived the battle now watched in horror as their vehicles slid off the road and skidded down the embankments to the frozen shoreline. And the pirate ship nearing the lagoon in Artimé stopped short, its hull encased in a sea of ice.
Aaron in Trouble
It was midday before Aaron gained consciousness. When he could pry his swollen eyelids open, he found himself flung out across a bench in a little fishing boat, alone, bouncing and churning and lurching against the waves. His stomach lurched too, but there was nothing more than bile inside it to expel.
His face throbbed. Gingerly he reached up to touch it. His skin was on fire. It was more pain than he’d ever known. Every rise and fall of the boat caused his sight to waver and his nose to feel like it was going to explode. He pushed himself up and peered fearfully over the lip of the vessel’s side, and then he sat up and gripped the bench. The sea swam before his eyes, and briny water sloshed about at his feet. The only solid thing in sight was the pirate ship, to which his little fishing boat was attached by a heavy gold chain.
He could hear voices coming from above him, on board the ship, but he couldn’t make out any words. “Hey,” Aaron said, but little sound came from his parched throat. His bottom lip was split, he could feel it. “I’m the . . . I’m the high priest. . . .”
Every effort to remain conscious took more out of him, and eventually Aaron gave up. He sank back to the floor of the boat and closed his eyes.
>
The Queen of Ice
Almost no one on the island of Quill had ever seen ice before. It felt cold before it stung, and with little warning it became awful to touch. Alex, who went down hard on his back, caught his breath and scrambled to his feet, and promptly slipped and fell again. “What’s going on?” he whispered to Simber, who was splayed out, legs in all directions.
“I don’t know,” Simber said under his breath. He flapped his wings to help him get to his feet.
From somewhere in Quill, a dark, magical, thunderous voice rang out above all other sound on the island, and spread beyond to the icy circle of the sea around it.
“Greetings, my people,” boomed the voice.
Claire Morning froze. “Who is that?”
Mr. Appleblossom shook his head.
“I am your new high priest,” the voice said. “I want to take a moment to thank Artimé for destroying the Quillitary. I didn’t care which side won, I just wanted one of you out of the way. So it’s Artimé I welcome back into the fold—you are a part of Quill once more. We are a complete nation again.”
She paused. No one moved.
“Enjoy the ice,” she said. “It’s my little way to keep you all safe until I get my kingdom sorted out. It’s only temporary. Probably. Or maybe not.”
Alex and Sky exchanged horrified glances.
“I’ll keep you informed. Try not to freeze to death in your little ice desert.” With that, the booming voice faded away.
Those near Alex turned their frightened eyes to him. He stared back, rapidly trying to figure out what was happening.
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t know who that was. We’ll figure it out. But first we need to take care of our injured. I need a team to somehow get to the mansion door and wait for Simber and the squirrelicorns to airlift our wounded and deliver them to you.”
A few able volunteers raised their hands and began sliding on hands and knees toward the mansion.
Alex looked around at all the injured, his heart filling with dread. Artimé was a disaster. Swiftly he sought out the friends he knew he could count on. “Henry, Carina, pick an additional team to take inside so they can help treat the incoming patients.”