Sorcerer

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1: To the Ends of the Earth

  2: A Man and His Dog

  3: The Forbidden Room

  4: Pretty in Pink

  5: By Candle Glow

  6: The Big Black Iron Gate

  7: Under the Mountain

  8: The Air Battle

  9: Monster!

  10: At Bangledorn’s Edge

  11: The Tree of Life

  12: All Bad Things …

  The Adventure Continues …

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Call me Sparr. I am a sorcerer. An enchanter. A conjuror. Dark magic sings in my veins. My powers are nearly limitless. Spells, charms, curses — I’ve used them all to achieve my goals.

  My enemies call me “pure evil.”

  Still, I didn’t start out that way, did I?

  I like to think I was a friendly little child, very much like you. I loved to run and play and climb and jump. I even had a cute puppy who followed me everywhere.

  What could make me turn so bad? Why do I use dark powers? Most important, how did I really become Lord Sparr?

  Hold on tight, my friend, and I’ll tell you. It’s a bumpy ride. A thrilling adventure. There are some funny parts. Perhaps you’ll even shed a tear or two.

  Most of all, look closely and you’ll see … everything. Let’s begin with this morning. Look there. There. In the sky!

  Whoosh-shoosh! Rough winds stung my weathered face. Waves crashed and spat icy water into my piercing eyes. Arrows, flaming and deadly, whizzed swiftly past my head.

  “Faster!” I cried. “Into the clouds! Fly!”

  I dug in my heels and — zzzt-zzzt-whoooosh! — the great shiny wings of my Golden Wasp blurred with speed. Up we swept over the stormy waves.

  “Excuse me, but they’re catching up, you know,” grumbled a voice at my shoulder. “I can smell their bad breath.”

  That was Kem, my two-headed pet dog. Nearly as old as me, Kem had been my companion almost from the beginning. We had been through a lot together.

  We were about to go through more.

  Fwing — clang! A flaming stinger struck the Wasp’s tail and shot off into the clouds.

  Sneaking a look behind me, I spied a sky nearly black with tangled swarms of fiery wingsnakes. The fearsome, four-winged moon dragon called Gethwing led them through the air.

  Down below, slicing across the dark waves of the Serpent Sea in his ship, was the twin-horned, three-eyed beast ruler himself, Emperor Ko. Behind him swam a vast force of beasts.

  They were all after me.

  “You shall never escape me and my army, you traitor!” the emperor’s thunderous voice boomed.

  “Unless my wingsnakes and I destroy you first!” cried Gethwing.

  Kem held on more tightly. “Hmm. You and me against a million bad guys. Nice odds. Too bad we don’t have many friends.”

  “Many friends?” I snorted. “Try any friends!” In the far distance, I saw the royal fleet of King Zello and Queen Relna, sailing away across the dark seas. I had battled them and their daughter, Keeah, for many years. I’d fought the master wizard Galen and the children from the Upper World — Eric Hinkle, Julie Rubin, and Neal Kroger — for a long time, too. None of them were about to help me.

  My thoughts and feelings stormed inside me as I watched the fleet fade into the distance. For a time — a brief time — I had been a boy again and had become their good friend.

  I would lie if I said that meant nothing.

  But while they were leaving, my enemies were gaining on me, closing in faster, faster.

  “Sparr, I will find you!” shouted Ko. “I will stop you! I will have my Coiled Viper back!”

  Ah, yes, the Coiled Viper.

  Perhaps the most dangerous of my Three Powers, the Viper was a large gold crown in the shape of a snake twined upon itself.

  I had used the Viper to bring Ko back from his four-century sleep. It was the Viper that gave him his awesome power. It was the Viper that transformed me from a sorcerer into the ten-year-old boy who became the children’s friend. And it was the Viper that finally turned me back into my bad old self again.

  Right now, the magical crown was hooked safely on my belt.

  “I’d get rid of that thing,” yelled Kem. “Maybe Ko will even let us go. Maybe?”

  I grimaced at the dog. We both knew that wasn’t true. I had betrayed Ko by stealing the Viper from him. Now he would pursue me to the ends of the earth.

  And the ends of the earth, it seemed, was just where we were going.

  “Faster, Wasp!” I cried. “And take a left!”

  Whoosh! We made a vast loop away from the sea, soared over a mountaintop, then dived out of the clouds and over the rugged land below. In the distance lay the hollow of a deep valley.

  Ah! I thought. The Valley of Pits!

  The ruins of a great old palace lay almost hidden under the sands of the valley. They were the remains of Ko’s old empire of Goll. Ko needed the Viper to help him bring his dark empire back.

  “Look there,” said Kem, craning his necks as we swept over the ruins. “The Ninns. They’re waiting for you to return to them.”

  I glanced down. Camped out in an oasis among the palace ruins was a small troop of plump red-faced warriors called Ninns. The Ninns are a tribe that goes back to the very beginning of Goll.

  “Never mind them,” I said, as we headed out to sea again. “I have the Skorth now.”

  Kem snorted. “Oh, yeah. Fun guys, the Skorth. Always a riot.”

  The Warriors of the Skorth were not fun. They were a ruthless race of soulless skeleton soldiers. Right now they sailed below us in their fleet of ghostly ships. Nearly unconquerable, they had agreed to help me fight Ko. Their numbers were in the thousands.

  I swept low and hailed them. “Skorth! Turn your ships. Stop Ko from coming any farther until I escape!”

  The ghost ships slowed, turned, and formed an unwavering wall against Ko’s advancing serpents. A fierce battle began.

  This didn’t stop Gethwing, however. The moon dragon’s flock of wingsnakes banked suddenly behind us and swooped like a tattered, windblown scarf across the air.

  “Faster, Wasp!” I cried.

  My buzzing creature redoubled its speed while I swung around, flicked my fingers, and sent off several powerful blasts at our pursuers.

  Blam-blam-blam! The wingsnakes arched up to avoid my blasts, then responded with an attack of flaming stingers.

  “Dive, quickly!” I yelled.

  The Wasp spun violently out of the way, and my hand clutched instinctively at my cloak pocket. When we righted again, I pulled out a little stone and held it tight in my fist.

  The stone was black and sprinkled with silver ore in some places, veined with blue and violet streaks in others.

  Earlier that morning, as I changed back into my adult form, Eric Hinkle had risked his own life to give me the stone.

  “The young wizard gave me this,” I said to Kem.

  “And I wish it were a life preserver,” my dog replied, glancing back over his shoulder with one head. “Gethwing’s coming even faster now —”

  “My history of four hundred years of evil has nearly erased the image of this stone from my mind, and yet … I have seen it before, haven’t I? Once, long ago, when I was young …”

  “Try thinking about right now!” cried Kem. “There’s a storm dead ahead! Fly north! Or south! Or anywhere else —Sparr!”

  I stared into a broadening funnel of black wind swirling up from the sea not five miles in front of us. It grew more monstrous by the second. Grinning to myself, I kicked the Wasp for more speed. “Yes, yes, faster!”

  “Sparr, don’t even think about it —”

  “Kem, don’t b
e such a puppy!” I said. “If we can fly through the storm, perhaps we can lose our enemies!”

  “If? Perhaps?” yelped Kem. “Lose our lives, you mean! Sparr, you’re not going to fly into that storm. You absolutely are not —”

  “And — here — we — go!”

  Digging the Wasp sharply with my heels, I aimed us toward the storm and — whoom! — we crashed straight into its wall of black wind. The Wasp faltered. We began to fall.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “Wrong move —”

  Howling a terrifying laugh, Gethwing dived toward us, his wingsnakes close behind.

  “Get us out of here!” I cried. But the storm winds drew us right to them, battering us from every direction. The Wasp couldn’t pull away. All of a sudden, a bolt of silver light sliced through the storm and cut across the air in front of us.

  “Veer away, Wasp!” I yelled, yanking up on the golden reins. “Fly!” The buzzing beast tried to pull away from the bolt of light but could not. The light descended over us like a falling sword.

  “Ahh!” I screamed as the bolt struck my forehead, knocking me from the Wasp’s back.

  I fell … fell … fell … toward the heaving black sea. Kem plummeted into the water first. I dropped right behind him. The sea was as hard as iron when I struck its surface.

  The Viper broke off my belt.

  I tried to reach it but couldn’t. The cold water hissed and boiled around it, and the blazing golden crown vanished into a spinning funnel of darkness. It was gone.

  Flailing in the freezing water, I reached for Kem, but he fell deeper and deeper below me, and everything turned as black as night.

  My head burned. My body twisted in pain, then went limp. My lungs filled with icy water.

  I sank.

  Darkness closed over me.

  I drowned.

  Almost.

  My lungs burned like fire. I wanted air, but when I gasped for it, my lips burst apart and all that poured into my mouth was the icy black water of the Serpent Sea.

  No, no! I thought. Is this how it ends?

  All of a sudden — splash! slursh! slud-d-d! — I was out of the water, being dragged facedown on dry land.

  “S-s-s-stop!” I gagged, spitting water and sand from my mouth. “I’m choking —”

  “Should I stop saving you, then?” grumbled a familiar voice. “Fine.”

  Kem let go of my feet, and they hit the ground. Thunk. Thunk. I rolled over and sat up, gulping air as if trying to swallow the sky.

  My eyes stung with foul seawater. I rubbed them for what seemed like forever. When I finally opened them, I was nearly blinded by a bright white light.

  Sunlight?

  Sunlight!

  Kem slumped down next to me, panting. “You’re heavy.”

  “But alive,” I replied.

  “Mmm, barely.”

  We rested in silence for a few minutes, trying to get our bearings. A beach of soft silver sand spread out all around us. The sun was bright overhead, but a giant wall of spinning black wind surrounded the land in every direction like a cloak.

  A thick jungle of strange, gnarly plants made up most of the island beyond the beach. The odd tendrils looked like the roots of some upside-down tree, pointed and stark against the blue sky, yet beautiful in their own way. The whole jungle coiled up in an ever-twisting mass until it was lost in a fog-shrouded summit.

  “How odd,” I said.

  “Odd, is it?” said Kem, following my gaze. “You mean landing on a deserted island paradise smack in the middle of a hurricane? I think it’s our lucky day.”

  I wobbled to my feet and shook the sand from my cloak. My hands were clenched in fists. Only when I went to open them did I realize that I was holding something. Miraculously, after my fall and near drowning, the stone had not fallen out of my hand.

  “So … what is this place?” I wondered, carefully dropping the stone into my cloak pocket.

  “Well,” said Kem, shaking the water from his fur and spraying me, “judging by the sky full of no wingsnakes and the sea full of no Ko, I’d say we’re somewhere safe. For now.”

  I smiled. “You see, my furry friend, my plan did work. We are safe. And warm! And drying by the minute. It’s almost too good to be —” I gasped. “Kem! This isn’t … I mean … we’re not … dead … are we?”

  I should say that Kem usually spoke with his right head, but grumbled with both.

  He grumbled with both heads now. “Dead? Probably not. When you die, there’s supposed to be food everywhere. At least for dogs, there is. I don’t see any food.”

  Trying to walk, I found that I ached all over. My forehead stung. When I put my hand up to it, I pulled it away with a cry. “Oww — I must have hit my head!”

  “Ooh, an improvement,” Kem grumbled.

  I glared at the dog. “Do you speak only to torment me?”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook both heads. “No. That’s just a bonus. Come on. Let’s snoop around. Ever since I mentioned food, it’s all I can think about.”

  I breathed in the warm air. “Lead the way.”

  We started walking down the beach. The island, as it turned out, was not very big. It took no longer than an hour to walk around the entire shore and back to where we started.

  The island bore a crescent shape, like a quarter moon. Long arms of land curved out on either end to a pair of points, creating a natural bay between them.

  What is this place? I wondered. Are we really saved? Was it simply luck that brought us here? Or was it something else?

  “Kem, as far as I know, there aren’t any islands this far east in the Serpent Sea. And this storm? Isn’t it strange how it keeps our enemies away?”

  “Our enemies?” he said. “Your enemies.”

  “Yet keeps the island itself basking in the warmth of the morning sun?”

  “‘Basking in the warmth of the morning sun,’” he repeated dryly. “What have I told you about your words? You’re an evil sorcerer, Sparr, not a poet.”

  No, not a poet. And yet as we trod the silvery sands, I felt … different. I was a sorcerer, feared and hated across Droon for four hundred years. But not two days before, I had been a boy whom Galen, Max, and the children were beginning to trust.

  To trust!

  “Kem?” I said. “Having been a boy again has left me with odd thoughts. Misty memories of the long past. Images. Feelings. Things are different, Kem. I think I am different.”

  The dog stopped sniffing, sighed, sat, and raised his heads to me. “Different, are you? All right. Here’s a test. You say the first thing that pops into your head. Ready? An ugly moon dragon comes up to you. What do you do?”

  I didn’t even think about it. “Blast him with sparks!”

  “Very good. But suppose he’s got a steaming gizzleberry pie?”

  “I’d still blast him. The pie is probably poisoned.”

  “Of course. Now suppose a little spider troll charges at you with a very big knife?”

  “I look for a very big fork and spoon and join him for supper?”

  The dog stared at me with a frown. “Well. That’s not very evil, is it? Maybe you really are different — holy smoke, look at that!”

  Turning, I saw a line of footprints in the sand. The prints were shallow but wide and short. They wove along the shore for a distance, then vanished into the jungle.

  “Sparr, this deserted island is not so deserted,” said Kem. “Someone else is here.”

  “But not a large person, if it is a person at all,” I said. “Let’s be careful. I fear danger may lurk among the oddly twisting roots and vines of this jungle.”

  The dog snorted. “‘Danger may lurk,’” he said. “You and your words. Come on.”

  Together we pressed into the thick jumble of growth, and almost at once I began to hear sounds jingling in the branches, strange musical clatterings like chimes in the wind.

  Wait. Chimes in the wind?

  I closed my eyes. Do I remember som
ething about chimes? What was it?

  “Kem —”

  “Soup!” he said suddenly. “I smell soup!”

  I crept up next to him. Bending to his level, I sniffed. “It does smell like soup. Good nose … noses.”

  “Yeah, well, smells are my thing.”

  Easing quietly through the undergrowth, we saw a small stack of logs set between two stout trees. At first, I thought it was simply a pile of wood. But as we got closer, I saw a faint coil of smoke rising from it. A door was cleverly hidden under the vines and roots clinging to the logs.

  Putting my finger to my lips, I set my hand on the latch and lifted it. The door opened a crack. A fog of soupy smells wafted out.

  “Ohhhh!” Kem gasped softly. “Lunch!”

  When the steam cleared, we peeked in to see someone moving around inside a tiny room. It was a short blue-skinned creature with a large head and wiry body.

  “A troll!” I whispered. “An island troll!”

  Bushy blue whiskers nearly hid a great bulbous nose. The troll was very old, with wrinkles all over his face and hands nearly purple with age. But he was very active! Unaware of us, the troll sprang about the tiny room, pulling bottles down from a high shelf, then spinning around and spooning cups of this and that from barrels on the floor.

  All these ingredients went into a giant pot that bubbled over a fire. Standing on a stool and stirring the pot was a tiny green monkey.

  Catching sight of me, the monkey jumped. “Eeep!”

  Without turning from his pot, the troll said, “Hold on, hold on, friends! The soup’s not quite ready!”

  The monkey eeeped again. When the troll glanced over his shoulder, he gasped. “Oh! You aren’t my friends! That is, I don’t mean that you are my enemies. It’s just that, excuse me — we haven’t been properly introduced!” He bowed politely and said, “I am Beffo, King of the Island Trolls! Well, really, the only island troll at the moment. Who are you?”

  I blinked at the blue face, frowned, and cleared my throat. “I do understand we’re miles from everywhere, little person, but are you saying you don’t know who I am?”

  The troll beamed suddenly. “Santa?”

  I frowned. “No, no. Think dark. Think evil. Then multiply it! I’m worse!”