Queen of Shadowthorn

  “We found this all by itself in a secret chamber,” she said. “Something about it attracted me. Maybe it can tell us where Ko is planning his terrible attack.”

  Galen held the stone to his ear, shook it, then sniffed it. “It is curiously heavy. A magic ball of some sort. If it was in Ko’s chamber, it may indeed give us a clue as to where he is.”

  “So what happened in Pesh?” asked Neal.

  Eric wanted to forget what happened in Pesh, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he couldn’t stop. “I totally messed up, that’s what happened!” he said. “I got Galen captured. I led Ko right to Zara’s tent. She was kidnapped because of me. I have no powers. No magic. Salamandra took it all!”

  He pointed at the thorn queen.

  She looked up at him, her eyes flashing, then bent over her silver thorn again.

  Eric felt like crying, but he held it in.

  “Anyway …” he said. “Now you know. That’s the secret I’ve been keeping from you.”

  “Eric, it’s terrible to lose your magic,” said Keeah, putting her hand on his arm. “But I’m sure you’ll get it back. More importantly, you found the thorn.”

  “We needed it,” said Julie. “You did good.”

  “Totally,” said Neal. “Thanks to you, we’ll stop Ko.”

  Galen spoke. “Eric found the silver thorn. A nearly impossible task, but that was our mission, and that’s what Eric did. And he did it all on his own.”

  “Well, good job,” said Neal, folding his turban into his pocket.

  “Ah, that reminds me,” said Galen. “Neal, speaking of a good job, I think you’ll have to do a good job in school for a while.”

  Neal turned pale. “What happened?”

  “Galen had to think of a disguise,” said Eric, almost smiling despite himself. “And he chose to be you. He talked to your mother.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Neal nervously. “Did Mom believe it was me?”

  Galen nodded. “Certainly. But … she is expecting A work from you.”

  “No way,” said Neal. “You told her not to expect an A, right?”

  “I told her to expect three!” said Galen.

  Neal groaned. “Talk about doing the impossible!”

  The thorn queen turned to face them. “Enough jibber-jabber! Get ready to take a trip, folks! The silver thorn may be old, but watch what it can do!”

  With a loud explosion and a puff of green smoke, the tiny silver thorn began to grow and grow. Soon it was as large as a boat. Its top flattened into a deck, and with a wrenching sound, a mast sprouted from its center. A sail fluttered down from its top. The hull was lifted from the ground by six giant, wooden-spoked wheels, three on each side.

  A big flat rudder jutted off the back, and a figurehead emerged from the front. It was a carving of Salamandra’s own head. Its eyes were bright emeralds that shone in the dark. Its mane was a thorny, tangle of eel-like tresses. The small silver thorn had become an enormous, wheeled boat.

  “Behold the Landboat of Pesh!” Salamandra said. “It’s our way to the Portal of Ages!”

  “Not bad,” said Galen softly.

  “Coming from you, that’s a compliment,” Salamandra said with a toothy grin. She stood beside the Landboat and began to stroke its silver hull. “According to an ancient legend, the Landboat will take us to the place where the Portal of Ages lies hidden. Landboat, do your stuff!”

  The giant masted thorn stirred suddenly. Its sail billowed, and it moved slowly across the stony ground, first one way, then the other.

  At the same time, Julie gasped. “Oh!”

  The black orb jumped in her hands, pulling one way, then the other.

  “What’s happening?” asked Keeah.

  Julie closed her eyes as if in a trance. “This orb,” she said. “It’s telling me something…. I think it knows where Ko is….”

  At the same instant, the Landboat jerked to a stop, and Julie froze where she stood.

  “The boat points south toward …” Salamandra blurted. Her voice sounded strange, as if she were possessed.

  “This orb is pointing toward …” said Julie.

  “The Dust …” Salamandra continued.

  “… Hills …” Julie breathed.

  “… of Panjibarrh!” they said together.

  Before anyone had time to think — krrrrkkk! — the Landboat began to roll across the ground away from the pink mountains.

  “It’s going to the Dust Hills!” cried Max. “Everyone in the Landboat. All aboard!”

  At a word from Salamandra, wind blew up from nowhere and filled the sail. The Landboat took off, bouncing and bumping over the plains like a giant wagon.

  “Ahhhh!” cried Neal, clinging to the mast. “And I mean — ahhhhh!”

  “At this speed, we’ll be seeing the Hills soon!” said Max, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “I hope King Batamogi and his people are safe.”

  Batamogi and his nine brothers were kings of the Oobja mole people, a tribe of furry hill dwellers with old customs and peaceful ways.

  Salamandra laughed as the wind whipped her tangled mop of hair every which way. She aimed her magic staff behind the craft. Thorns shot from it like rocket thrusters, propelling the Landboat ever faster across the plains.

  Eric had thought that after he told everyone about the loss of his powers, he would feel better.

  Instead, he felt worse.

  Keeah, Julie, and Neal were crowded together on the bow, gazing into the distance. Eric knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t help imagining that they were growing closer to one another and leaving him out.

  He edged nearer to them and listened.

  “Something’s happening in the hills,” Julie was telling the others. “I can sense it. I hear scratching and clawing. Someone is talking. A lot of people are talking, chattering. And running. There are echoes. I think the Oobja people are … hiding … underground.”

  “Hiding? How do you know?” asked Keeah.

  “This is going to sound like Neal,” said Julie. “I don’t know how I know, but I know I know. You know what I mean?”

  I do! Eric reflected bitterly.

  “Cool,” said Neal, grinning. “Maybe when Salamandra helped you with her staff, some of her magic rubbed off on you.”

  Or some of my magic! thought Eric.

  Keeah nodded. “I’m sure it will help us.”

  Because I can’t? Eric thought.

  All of a sudden, there came a terrible cracking noise, and darkness dropped on them as heavily as a stone.

  “What’s happening?” cried Max, waving at the black air. “Galen —”

  The wizard thrust his staff into the air, but its brilliant colors were not enough to penetrate the darkness. “This is some sort of magic shroud. Salamandra?”

  The thorn queen shot a fireball from her thorn staff, but it, too, vanished. At the same time, they heard the sound of heavy wings thundering overhead in the darkness.

  “Gethwing?” shouted Keeah. “Is it the moon dragon? Is it? Is he helping Ko?”

  But they couldn’t see. As fog shrouded the ship, stinging their eyes, claws flashed out of the darkness and struck the mast as if trying to pluck it out.

  “Beast, show yourself!” cried Galen.

  Eric took cover near Keeah as she braced herself against the hull and fired sparks into the air.

  Blam! Blam!

  Salamandra thrust her magic staff here and there, and fiery thorns shot into the sky. Galen kept whacking at the air with his staff.

  There was a yowl of pain, a loud flapping of wings, then nothing.

  The Landboat rolled to a stop, and the fog cleared. No one was hurt, but shards of the black orb were scattered across the deck.

  “Whatever it was tried to steal the orb,” said Max. “When it couldn’t, it destroyed it!”

  Galen stooped to the deck and collected the ball’s fragments. “Which means this object was important enough to destroy. Perhaps time will tell us what it means.”


  “Time tells me one thing already!” said Salamandra, looking to the skies. “It’s passing. We must launch the Landboat once more!”

  Thrust by another magical wind, the boat took off again. It arrived in Panjibarrh just as night fell and the moon rose on the horizon.

  As Julie had predicted, the Oobja village was deserted. The dust-covered hills rolled away in every direction, but they were barren of the mole people who normally lived there.

  Salamandra stopped the Landboat, scooped up the starfox, and led the small crew into the empty village. “Ko’s dark plans are hatching even now. My Portal of Ages is close. Already I see a hapless soul drawn into it, a prisoner of the past unable to escape!”

  Eric glanced at Galen, who shared his look.

  “Perhaps we should send Ko back all the way to the Shadow Time,” Max suggested. “It’s when he was born, after all.”

  “Perhaps,” said Salamandra. “The Portal of Ages goes anywhere and any time.”

  Turning, she chanted over the Landboat, and it shrank to a thorn again. The moment she picked it up, it jerked in her hand, then pointed upward.

  The lumpy mounds in Panjibarrh were called hills, and most of them were. Except for one. A tall shelf of dusty red stone, a ragged crag, overhung the tiny village.

  On every previous visit to Panjibarrh, Eric had always thought the giant summit a comforting, sheltering rock. Not this time. The crag now looked ominous and almost frightening.

  “My Portal is up there!” said Salamandra.

  “And the Oobja are under the hills,” said Julie, her eyes closed tightly. “I’m sensing a system of passages running beneath the ground. They are hiding there. I hear them!”

  Salamandra stepped away from the others. “My way goes on alone. The little folk will tell you where Ko is. I’ll find my Portal of Ages. You find Ko. Together we’ll send the beast emperor away for good!”

  As Salamandra and her starfox strode away through the foothills, the friends searched for and found a small opening in the earth.

  Led by Julie’s sense of where the hill dwellers were, the little band crawled deeper and deeper under the crag. At last, they found the hiding place of Batamogi and his people.

  The moment the Oobja king saw his friends in the passageway, he jumped for joy. “Oh, my, my! Our heroes! You have come at our moment of greatest need!”

  “Why are you all hiding?” asked Keeah.

  The king drew his brother kings around him. “We were touring our kingdom as usual,” he began. “We felt the hills shake as if something terrible was happening on the highest peak. An evil invader has come to our peaceful hills. We drew our people together and fled here.”

  “We believe Ko is planning a terrible attack on Jaffa City,” said Keeah. “From what you have told us, he may be right above us, amassing his beasts.”

  “We call the summit of the Dust Hills the crown,” said one of Batamogi’s brothers, who introduced himself as Magibota. “Since that is where we were all crowned.”

  “All right, then,” said Galen. “All clues point up. We must get up that mountain to its crown. And we’ll need your help.”

  “A dusty dust storm!” said Tigomaba, another of Batamogi’s brothers. “Gabitamo and I shall turn the storm wheel!”

  “We shall help, too,” said Mibotaga and Tomigaba in unison. “The storm we make will carry you to the top in a flash!”

  “Awesome!” said Julie. “Thank you!”

  “It is our pleasure!” said the kings, linking arms and bowing together.

  The whole journey took no more than a few minutes. The six friends — Galen, Max, Keeah, Julie, Neal, and Eric — mounted the great wooden storm wheel in the center of the Oobja village and braced themselves.

  At Batamogi’s signal, the kings and the people turned the storm wheel faster and faster.

  “And — up — you — go!” called Batamogi.

  In a flash, the little band went flying in a coil of swiftly spinning dust. They zoomed straight up to the high crown of the hills.

  The dust storm vanished as quickly as it arose, and the friends tumbled onto the summit.

  As they jumped to their feet, they saw that like the rest of the landscape, the summit lay in darkness. But it was a darkness tinted with a bluish-red glow.

  When their eyes adjusted to the strange light, what they saw shocked them into silence.

  Dust coiled here and there on the mountain like black water stirred by an invisible finger. The peaks jutted overhead like the jagged sides of a cracked bowl.

  But it was the center of the summit that the friends could not take their eyes from, for there lay hundreds, thousands of black orbs, glowing with red and blue light.

  “Guys,” said Neal, “I think we’ve stumbled on Ko’s stash of weird stone balls. Maybe he’s planning to bomb Droon with them.”

  Galen wobbled on his feet. “These are not stone balls, weird or otherwise,” he said. “They are eggs! Why it has taken me so long to understand it, I do not know. They are moon dragon eggs! It is from one of these that the terrible Gethwing hatched so long ago. And here are thousands more!”

  A shudder of movement rippled through the eggs, as if they all sought to roll toward the friends at the same time.

  “My gosh!” said Keeah, stepping back. “Then that ball — that egg! — we found in Saleef was a baby moon dragon. It hatched on the Landboat and attacked us. And these are its brothers and sisters waiting to be born!”

  Galen nodded grimly. “These dark, dust-filled hills are most like the gray mountains of the moon’s far side. That is where moon dragons come from. This is some evil of Gethwing’s, not of Ko’s. Now I doubt if Ko is even here —”

  At first, Eric didn’t understand what was going on. He was drowning in a haze of confusion and anger. “Did Salamandra know this?” he asked. “How could she not know?”

  A blast of lightning crashed overhead.

  All of a sudden, the great dragon himself crossed in front of the moon. Gethwing alighted on a tall crag, his black shape hovering over them, larger than ever. “And I was going to surprise you, too!” he howled. “Ah, well. Maybe next time. Oh, wait. There won’t be a next time!”

  “Gethwing, you fiend!” cried Keeah.

  “Fiend, schmiend!” snarled the moon dragon. “Arise, my sons! Arise! Seek the darkness of your calling. Come, my sons, my army, my future, my throne!”

  A ripple of movement stirred the black eggs, and they began to wobble. One egg cracked, and a terrifying shriek burst out from within. The tip of a scaly black wing jerked into the air. Another cry, another wing tip. Another. Another. Another.

  “Arise!” Gethwing howled.

  As the friends watched, too astonished to move, the creatures emerged from their shells. They lifted into the sky in a mass of thwacking wings. Together, the dragons let out an ear-piercing shriek — eeeeeee! — and their cry rocked the mountains.

  To Gethwing, the terrifying sound was music. “Arise, my winged sons of the moon! Arise!”

  “I don’t think so,” said Galen. “These beasts are born and shall perish in a single moment!” In one hand he held his staff high, while his other hand, sparking and sizzling with power, was aimed at the moon dragon.

  “Yeah,” said Neal, jamming his turban low. “Prepare to become egg salad, you creepies!”

  “Save your silly talk for someone who cares,” said Gethwing. “We’re simple folk. All we really want to do is … attack!”

  With astounding speed, Gethwing launched himself at the children, letting loose a firestorm upon them.

  Galen fired. Keeah fired. Julie and Neal flew around as quickly as possible, hurling stones at the diving dragons. While Max spun a stout web and threw it at the attackers, Eric cast about for some kind of weapon, then skittered for cover when a dragon swooped at him.

  A half-dozen beasts dived at Neal. He floated up swiftly, but more were waiting for him and tossed him to the ground.

  Julie flew at two dragons,
hurtling stones at them, while Keeah blasted three others who swooped at her from behind.

  Galen threw bolts of sizzling fire at Gethwing, but the dragon absorbed each shot in his clawed hands until they formed a huge single fireball. He heaved it back.

  In the explosion, Galen was thrown one way, and his staff skidded across the crag in the other direction. Max darted through the rocks and ran breathlessly for the staff.

  Eric pulled Keeah to safety behind a boulder. Her fingers were raw from fighting.

  “This is impossible!” she cried. “Where is Salamandra?”

  “No kidding!” said Neal, crawling to them, holding his shoulder in pain. “Why is she taking so long with the Portal?”

  Julie cupped her ear, then turned her head. “She’s coming. There!”

  All at once, Salamandra, Queen of Shadowthorn, rose up above the highest peak. A ring of thorns, a hundred feet from rim to rim, spun like a hurricane behind her. The great, moving, jet-black wheel nearly blocked out the entire sky.

  “Hi, everyone!” she said. “Look what I brought!”

  “Dragons, behind me!” Gethwing yelled. The army of newborn dragons pulled back behind their master, hovering in a moving mass of black wings.

  “Salamandra, send the dragon to the past!” Galen called out as he stepped forward, Max trembling at his side. “Send his dark sons with him. Send them away — now!”

  For a moment, a brief moment, all was still on the mountaintop. Gethwing stared icily at Salamandra and she at him. Eric felt his heart racing. With a flick of her thorn staff, Salamandra could draw even the powerful Gethwing into the Portal and suck the dragons away in time, never to return.

  Then Gethwing spoke.

  “Sister,” he said. “What took you so long?”

  A cold wave of despair washed over Eric. “What?” he said softly. “What?”

  Everyone turned to the queen of thorns.

  Her lips, as cold and dark as ever, curved into a cruel smile. “Sorry, Gethie! Better late than never!”

  “What?” cried Eric. “Salamandra? How could you? You … tricked us?”