All of a sudden — blam! — I was hurled backward into the snow as a blast of red fire shot from my fingertips at the knights. They tumbled into a moaning, groaning heap!
“Grompus, trap them!” I found myself saying, and at once, the worm coiled around the three knights. It trapped them in its tightening grasp before they could move.
“Boy, inside, now!” boomed Ko, clutching his bleeding forehead. “You know the words that will allow you to enter!”
I did know the words, though I didn’t know how I knew them. Squeezing my eyes shut, falling deep into my memory, I spoke.
“Kemah-drakoni-ayra!”
Once again, a burst of red sparks shot from my fingers. This time, the sparks shattered a waterfall of ice from the face of the stone.
And the door creaked open.
Kem jumped back in fear, both mouths hanging open in amazement. “That’s new.”
What is this new power? I wondered.
“Inside!” Ko cried again.
I took the massive latch in my hands. With a great pull, I yanked the doors fully open onto darkness. I put my shoulder under one of Ko’s arms and helped him in. As soon as we entered the mountain, the doors closed behind us with a boom. We were sealed inside.
“Oh, I don’t like it here!” Kem growled.
“What is this place?” I asked.
Ko didn’t answer but stared ahead into the darkness. Breathing heavily, he spoke a word.
“Besh-na.”
The instant he said it, light showered us.
Walls of ice, nearly as high as the sky, rose up, sheer and frosty and silver all around us. In the center of the icy room stood a large, black-hulled ship. It was the airship Ko had spoken of. It bore the shape of a dragon, with spiked wings curving off the stern. Curling up from the front was a frightening head with fangs bared and twin eyes glowing red.
On either side of the ship, half guarding it, half bowing before it, were six blue beasts like tigers. They were completely still.
“Help me to the deck!” Ko grunted. “And you shall learn the secret of your mother —”
Even before he finished, there came a terrifying sound, and the giant door burst inward. Daggers of ice flew across the room. The knights were back. And this time, still mounted on their pilkas, Galen and the Ninns were with them.
“Sparr!” my brother shouted from his saddle, his eyes wild, his staff shimmering in the silver light. “Don’t let him escape. His empire is falling. Don’t help him flee!”
I gasped. “Galen … I …”
Ko’s eyes raged. “Only you can see her, Sparr! But time is nearly gone! Fly us from here! Fly us!”
Then the emperor bellowed a single word. “Ganath!” The blue tigers that had silently guarded the ship now came to life. They roared and leaped to defend us.
Before I could do anything — vrrrt! — a door opened on the opposite side of the cavern. It led back outside into the snows.
As the door slid away, the flat hull of the dragon ship began to move across the icy floor.
The moment the tigers set upon the knights, Galen leaped from his pilka to help. He waded into the battle with his staff spinning.
Thwonk! Flang! Thud!
“Ship, fly!” shouted the emperor.
Ko’s grip on my arm was like a vise. I couldn’t break away. My other hand was on the rudder. I felt myself steering the dragon ship right into the storming snows.
Charging past the tigers, the Ninns hurled ropes over the sides of the ship to hold it back.
“Kem!” I shouted. Without hesitating, he charged from one rope to the other, biting through them. They dangled loosely for a moment, then fell to the frozen ground.
“No!” Galen cried, swinging his staff once more at the blue tigers, sending them howling into the cavern’s shadows. “Sparr, do not leave here!”
“Tigers, regroup! Defend us!” I shouted. At once, the blue tigers gathered like a wall between the ship and the attackers. They roared at the top of their lungs, distracting Galen and the attackers, giving the ship time to leave the cavern. The snowstorm outside was a spinning wall of white. Icy wind and flakes surrounded us as the ship lifted into the air.
Up, up we flew, coiling around the outside of the mountain toward its jagged peak. Kem trembled at my feet as I steered us upward through the icy sky.
“Where did you learn how to drive this thing?” he whimpered.
“I don’t know!” I said. It was true, but somehow I did know how to do it. Around and around the great mountain we circled until we reached the craggy summit.
“Touch down here!” Ko commanded, and I did. Then, hoisting himself up by the mast, he waved a weak hand at the highest peak and whispered a word.
All at once, the peak shed its covering of ice and there appeared a stairway of black stone, reaching up into the white sky.
“Behold the Dark Stair!” said Ko.
At the very foot of the bottom step, the earth opened up and ice and rocks slid away from a hole six feet long.
I trembled. A glass box sat in the hole. Inside, almost completely frosted over, lay … a body.
“Oh, don’t tell me!” said Kem, with a shiver that ran through his entire body.
I trembled as I stumbled from the deck to the ground, and trembled more as I approached the box. When my feet stopped moving, my heart did, too.
Inside the box was the lifeless figure of a woman. She wore a silver crown and silver robes. Her face remained hidden behind a sweep of frosted glass. But I already knew.
My knees gave out from under me. I fell to the ground. “Mother … Mother … Mother!”
With a massive effort, the wounded emperor slid from the ship and drew the box up out of the ground. He laid it on the ship’s cold deck.
“Fly us to the Isle of Mists!” Ko growled.
Before I could make a move, I heard pilka hooves clattering over the snow behind the ship. Whirling around, I saw the great blue pilka and on his back my brother, relentless as ever, his eyes wide with amazement, his staff held high.
“Galen, do not come near us!” I shouted at him. “Ko said only I can see her!”
Without thinking, I sent a blast at the ground near the pilka’s hooves. It reared, and Galen fell at the foot of the Dark Stair, tumbling into the hole with a cry.
“Fly us from here!” cried Ko.
I grabbed the rudder with one swift move, and the ship lifted from the summit. But Galen would not stop.
He clambered out of the hole and ran across the summit. Digging his staff into the ice, he vaulted high into the air and grabbed hold of the last Ninn rope still attached to the dragon ship. He swung up and landed on the deck next to me.
Then, turning to Ko, Galen raised his staff over his head. It sizzled with light. “You will fall, Ko!”
The emperor roared. I watched his terrible hands heave open the glass box and paw my mother’s folded fingers.
“What are you doing?” I cried.
But Ko pushed me aside. “Away, boy!”
Rising to a great height now, he pointed one hand at Galen. I saw a silvery light flow from my mother’s hands into the beast’s as if — impossible! — he were drawing some kind of power from her lifeless form!
“This is why I need her!” he bellowed as the clear, silvery light from her hands became in him like filth running through a sewer.
“Lies! Lies!” I screamed. Ko had deceived me again. And I had fallen for it.
My mother’s pure magic had become a coil of fiery black air, bursting out the tip of his horns now. It curled up like a snake ready to pounce.
“Zara’s magic,” he boomed, turning to face Galen, “deathless even in death, gives me great power! Destroyer, suffer the curse that killed your mother!”
“What? No!” I cried.
Why I did what I did then, I have wondered a thousand times, regretted a thousand times, and known a thousand times I would do again!
But I did not think then. I threw my
self between Ko and Galen. Before either one could make a move, some instinct took over and … I blasted Galen. I blasted him right off the ship. Its ancient railing splintered into a hundred fragments, and Galen tumbled to the snowy summit below.
Then I heard Ko shout, “Sparr! No!”
The moment I began to turn, I felt the blow of his curse on my neck as if I were being attacked by ravaging fangs, as if an arrow, fiery and poisonous, were penetrating my skull.
I fell forward. Black air spun around me like a swarm of crows, shrieking in my ears, until I could no longer hear anything else.
The last thing I saw was Galen thrashing on the ground, his face twisted in a howl of amazement as he stared up at me.
The next moment, I saw nothing but black — black everywhere! — and I collapsed on the deck of the rising dragon ship.
“You collapsed,” said Kem, peering out the door of Beffo’s hut and sniffing the air. “But you weren’t dead.”
“No?” I said, feeling so very tired all of a sudden. “I sometimes wonder.”
I reached up and ran my fingers over the winglike fins behind my ears. Behind each was the rough scar where it met the skin of my scalp.
“But wait,” said the troll suddenly. His little face was rapt with wonder, his mouth hanging open in amazement. “Why did you blast that wizard, Galen? Did you blow him overboard to … save him?”
I paced the tiny hut, halfway between rage and remorse.
“I … I … I …” I stammered.
But I could not find the words to answer. My mind had already gone back to that moment so many, many years ago.
Whooosh! The dragon ship lifted away from Silversnow, away from Galen lying on the summit and the Ninns and the knights on the ground below.
Coming to, I bolted up from the deck, holding my hands out to steady myself.
“What happened?” I said. “What —”
I stopped. The sound of my voice was different. My words came out in a low rumble. Looking down, I saw Kem backing slowly across the deck away from me, baring his teeth and growling.
“Kem? What’s wrong?”
Then — slishhh! Out of the corner of my eye I saw a tail, long and thick and covered with scales, slide across the deck behind me. It whipped around my cloak and curled at my feet. I jumped in horror at the sight of it.
And the tail jumped, too!
“What?” I screamed. I turned. The tail turned with me! In my mind, I imagined the tail curving up from the deck to hover above me — and it did!
Its forked tip grazed a forest of spikes that were sticking out of the top of my head. Trembling, I ran my fingers over them, only to find that my head was huge and I had a horrible pair of jagged fins growing up behind my ears.
“What? What! No!” I shouted. “What am I?”
But when I shouted, a sudden lick of flame spilled into the frosty air in front of me. Smoke coiled up after it.
Kem ran and hid, quivering like the puppy he was. First one head then the other peeked over the top of the glass box and gazed at me. “Sparr? What are you?”
“Ko!” I cried, feeling sick. “Change me back! Change me back!”
The emperor gasped for air, his own eyes wide in wonderment as he stared at me. Then I saw a faint yet horrible smile flick across his face. Finally, he fell back with a groan, laying his head on the deck. “I cannot, my boy. I am too weak.”
My boy? My boy!
I winced at the sound of his words.
“The dragon ship,” he said, “will take us to my secret lair. There … I shall be healed….”
“You will be healed? What about me?” I cried. “How will I be healed?”
He did not answer. He said nothing.
I howled at the top of my lungs.
And yet … and yet … the longer I stayed in this terrible body, the more I felt something else, too. My feet planted themselves sturdily on the deck, their claws biting into the wooden planks. Breathing in the icy air, I felt my chest expand to a massive size. I raised myself to full height and loomed over the stricken emperor. The look on his face was one of pain mingled with a kind of horror.
I was no longer a boy.
I was a monster!
I glanced at my mother. The box had frosted over again, obscuring the face beneath.
Good! I thought. If she were alive, she wouldn’t even know me!
Icy wind swirled around me, and I wrapped my cloak tighter around my new form. The dragon ship rose ever higher through the sky.
Standing there, looking down upon the snowy world, with Ko’s poison coursing through my veins, I began to assemble pieces of the truth. It came to me then that this curse, intended for Galen, was the same one that killed my mother. Maybe Ko hoped she would become both beast and wizard. Maybe he knew she would never give in. Either way, she died of it. Perhaps Galen would have died of it, too. But I did not die. I lived.
I became this … thing.
Why?
Why did I live?
The dragon ship soared south over the wastes of Goll. I despised Ko, hated him, and yet there was something growing in me. A power I had never known.
“Where are we going?” I demanded.
Ko moaned. “To the Isle of Mists. Together with you, the spirit of your mother will heal me! I shall return!”
I stared at the emperor. As my veins went cold with hatred and Ko’s dark magic, I felt more powerful than ever.
So was it true?
Was I the most powerful being in Droon now? Was I truly … the Prince of Goll?
The snowy land moved below the gliding ship and I roared like a beast. Next to the glass box, Kem trembled. The panting breath of both his heads thawed the frost on the box’s surface. Inside lay the lifeless form of my mother, her face as pale as morning.
It was then that I saw something.
Nestled in my mother’s pale hands was a small black stone. A memory worked its way to the surface of my mind.
A stone? A secret stone?
Was this the secret stone that girl told Gethwing about? Was it?
Gently I opened the box’s glass lid and took up the stone. My mother’s hands were so cold, yet my own horrible claws tingled when I touched them, and a second explosion, as powerful as Ko’s curse, seared my brain. I heard her words in my mind.
Sparr … my little love. Take this gift. Someday we will meet in a new home. This stone will help you find me!
Trembling, I held the stone to my chest. Find you? Where? Your body is here!
A place of warm sun, and yet of showering snow. Of gentle quiet amid the baying of beasts. Of wondrous trees, yet not of branch or leaf or trunk. I will be waiting, my dearest, littlest boy!
My heart nearly burst then. Even as a horrible beast, a monster on the outside, I was still Zara’s son. I knew then what I had to do.
Turning, I wrenched the rudder from Ko’s icy grasp and veered off his terrible course.
“No! What are you doing?” he gargled.
But I held my sparking hands over him. “You may have taken me, made me one of you. But you shall never take my mother!”
Against his oaths and raging, I drove the dragon ship to the ground.
We landed on a vast plain of purple earth, somewhere south — far south — of Silversnow. Pushing Ko away, I lifted my mother out of the box and eased her body from the deck to the ground. Kem, astonished by every action I took, jumped down next to us.
Then, using a charm that came to me in a flash, I sent the dreaded ship up again.
Ko lifted his wounded head over the side and fixed his blood-colored eyes on me. “My beasts will come for you. They will find you!”
“Let them try,” I said.
“Now that your mother is dead, there is no magic strong enough to reverse my curse. Whatever you do, wherever you go, you have no choice but to bring me back! You will bring me back — my Son of Darkness!”
Hearing his words, a black pall fell over me. I felt as if I were being ripped a
part.
“If I must, I will bring you back!” I yelled, my head already filled with the image of a snake-shaped crown I would someday make and call the Coiled Viper.
Then, just before the ship disappeared into the clouds, I swallowed my pain and said, “I will bring you back, Ko, when it suits me.”
Then the dragon ship — and Ko — soared up and out of sight.
For a day and a night I did not move, could not move. Then I began my journey, dragging my mother’s body on a stretcher of branches I made.
As cold as the north was, the plains we crossed were hazy and hot. Two days later, I made out the dark mass of trees in the distance. I recognized it as the Bangledorn Forest. Beasts were forbidden to go inside.
“There,” I said. “I will bring my mother there.”
The hut was silent for a long while after I stopped talking. The whirling storm outside seemed to calm for a moment. Even the fire’s bright crackle seemed to hush in the minutes that followed.
Finally, Kem lifted one head. “That’s the way it happened,” he said.
Beffo breathed out heavily. The pot bubbled, and he ladled some soup into a bowl and set it on the floor. The monkeys scrambled for it. The troll whistled then, and a little bird flew into the hut. Beffo whispered soft words to the bird, then offered it soup from his ladle. It soon flew away.
“Was that the moment?” asked the troll.
I turned to him. “What moment?”
“The moment you decided to take Droon for yourself?”
Closing my eyes, I thought back to that day. “There was one thing yet to happen.”
Kem snuffled. “It happened very quickly.”
“It did,” I said.
“And I didn’t leave, you know,” said Kem. “I was there every step of the way. No matter how … terrible you looked, you were never really alone. I never strayed.”
I petted both of his upturned heads. “No, my friend, you never did.”
True, true. Kem was there. He never left my side for an instant as I moved on again, pulling my mother behind me, walking, walking, walking toward the darkness of the trees.