From the earth just below our feet came a thunderous noise.
“This,” I said. “This is … it!”
Kem whimpered softly, “Oh, dear!”
All of a sudden, the ground burst open before us, and roots — what I knew were the roots of a tree in the Bangledorn Forest thousands of miles away — exploded up from below. Curling, heaving, grasping like fingers yearning to touch the sky, the roots tore up through the ground, then stopped. But before they stopped, two giant roots parted in the form of an arch.
Between them, we could see a hole in the ground, a vast bottomless pit.
Breathless with wonder and excitement, I turned to Kem. “We’re here.”
“Pull back to the summit!” I heard Galen yell. Ko’s terrible war drums grew louder and more insistent.
Beasts were tearing up through the jungle, getting nearer. Gethwing’s wingsnakes circled closer, too.
Standing under the arch of roots, wobbling in a wind rising from the pit below, I couldn’t help but close my eyes.
“Oh, not another memory!” I heard Kem say. “Sparr, shouldn’t we think about saving ourselves? Besides, there’s no one left to listen but me, and I was there!”
“Not this time,” I said. “Not for all of it.”
“Sparr, please, they’re coming —”
I heard Ko’s voice booming, but that was all I heard. My mind was already traveling backward in time … back … back … to the night … when it all began.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
I was pacing in a passage deep in the heart of Ko’s palace, right outside the very chamber that would soon be forbidden to me.
She was inside.
Queen Zara was in there … dying.
Guarding her door was a trio of sniveling, ugly goblins. Kem? There was no Kem. He came later. And what was I? Five years old?
From inside the chamber came the sound of my mother’s coughing. I paused to listen. She coughed, gagged, coughed again, went silent.
“I need to go in,” I demanded.
The goblins looked at one another, then grinned coldly.
“Emperor says no,” muttered the fattest of the three, a green-skinned creature with pointy ears and arms nearly as long as its legs. I went on pacing before the chamber.
If I was five years old, then for five years, my mother had lingered near death. For five years she had endured the dark, creeping poison in her veins. For five years she had been drawing away from me, even as Ko had drawn nearer.
It would be only hours now. I felt her final pull away from this life, from me. Soon I would be alone.
But young or not, I was Zara’s son. Which meant that I was clever.
“Well,” I said to the goblins, “if you won’t let me in, I guess I’ll just go away.”
The goblins laughed. “There’s a good boy. Go to your room. Take a sleep. Emperor see you later.”
I pretended to go away down the hall. But when I reached the corner, I stole down a narrow passage and, using a chair, climbed to the top of a column. Then I slid sideways into a narrow space between the floors of the palace. Edging along in the tiny space, I was soon looking down between the ceiling stones into my mother’s chamber. She was lying in her bed, draped in silken scarves the color of the morning sky. Ko was nowhere to be seen.
Creeping past the chimney stones, I found a way down from the crawl space and jumped into the room.
“Mother!” I said, running to her bed.
She opened her eyes and tried to sit up, although I could see how it pained her. She smiled and spoke my name. “Sparr, my little prince, my boy!”
I hugged her. Even as I did, I felt the strength leave her again, and she fell back to the pillow. The oily whispering of the goblins outside and the stomping of hoofed feet along the hall told me that Ko was on his way.
“Him!” I said. “I think you would be well if it wasn’t for him —”
Even in sickness, my mother’s eyes flamed up. “Sparr, be brave and listen. Far from here — so far, I wonder if I shall ever see it again — there is a place of wondrous things. Among them are secret stones, stones full of magic. I gave one to each of your brothers. I had hoped to give one to you, too….”
She paused, coughing and trembling all over. “If there is any magic, any life, left in me, I will see that you get your stone. With the pure good in you, you can fashion your stone into something truly beautiful. Now … look!”
She slipped from her bed and stood on the floor, nearly stumbled, but raised her hands overhead as if protecting me from everything.
Even as the chamber door rang with the clumsy sounds of Ko opening it, I saw tiny white flakes, no more than flashes of silver, dart and dance around us. In seconds we were covered with the flakes, her face was wet, dappled with ice and snow, her skin as pale as the midnight moon.
“When you find your stone, here is where you must go!” She waved her hand, and I began to see … black sea … and mist on a mountaintop … an arch of quivering black roots calling me … and snow … lots of snow. “I will meet you here —”
There was a sudden noise as the final bolt shot back, and the door squealed open.
The vision vanished when Ko stormed into the room. “Boy! What are you doing here?”
Pushing me gently behind her, my mother twirled suddenly among the flakes, and the air sang with the sound of chimes.
When she thrust her hands at Ko, silver light sprang at him, striking his horns. The beast howled and drew back.
“You will never take my boy!” she said. “You may try, you may curse him as you cursed me! But you will never know the power of light as he does, you dark thing! He will survive your curse! He will be free of you!”
My mother leaped at Ko again, driving him back to the door with blades of silver light, when the goblins burst in. I rushed at Ko, but he threw me down.
Suddenly, my mother fell to her knees, and I cried out. Looking at me, she breathed her last few breaths. From them a sort of wind rose, and out of that came more snow. Flakes spun in little storms all around the room. Snow fell in the chamber in wonderful flashing designs.
The flakes hissed on the emperor’s ashen skin now. He shrieked in pain and squirmed to avoid them. More and more spinning flakes drove him and his howling goblins from her room.
“Son!” she cried suddenly, her voice nearly gone. “You shall never be alone —”
With that, her last breath rushed out, cool and sweet on my neck.
“Mother! Mother!”
The snow still swirling softly around me, I saw something move in the shadows, and a strange creature stepped timidly toward me. It was a puppy. A puppy with two heads.
My eyes swam with hot tears. “She said I wouldn’t be alone. Did she … send you?”
Both furry heads nodded.
Even in death I knew she would be with me. All mothers love their children, whether they can be with them or not. She would protect me!
The flakes cooled my forehead. They smelled of the piney forest depths and the beauty of the Upper World she had so often told me about.
Hearing Ko in the passage again, I scooped up my dog and fled the room.
But now the beasts were crowding toward the island summit in greater numbers than ever. Staring into the pit, I thought I saw a white speck glisten, then vanish in the air. Was it snow? Or were my eyes playing tricks?
Then there came more, flashing here and there in the air around us. Soon flakes were spinning white and silver everywhere.
“Snow,” said Kem. “Like in her chamber. I remember, too.”
Soon everyone was there, Ko on one side, Gethwing on the other, King Zello, Queen Relna, and my wizard brother and his band of brave heroes taking position behind him.
Looking into the pit, I saw what I had hoped to find. Long, gnarly roots were coiled around the inside the hole, as if the fingers of an enormous tree planted on the far side of the world were reaching up toward me.
I knew
for certain what the droomar had meant: that “a spirit lives as a tree grows.” If this island was exactly opposite the Bangledorn Forest where my mother’s tomb lay, then the tree of her spirit had grown through the entire world of Droon and right up to me.
She was calling me.
I turned to Galen and the children and tried to smile. “Four centuries of evil can make quite a mess. I’m so sorry.”
Swift currents of snowy air were spinning and rushing among the roots now like silken scarves dancing wildly in the wind.
I turned to my faithful friend. “Kem?”
“Rooooo!” he howled. He didn’t hesitate, leaping quickly through the arch and into the pit. “Ayeeee!”
The snow swept around Kem and drew him down.
I held the little stone to my heart. With a single leap, I fell, fell, fell into the pit below. As I did, the roots began to twine together above my head, sealing me away from the world.
“Mother, I’ve found you at last!” I called.
“Sparr!” cried Galen, his voice echoing into the earth after me. “Your fins are … gone!”
Finally! I thought. I am home!
“Salamandra, no!” Eric Hinkle shouted as he tumbled head over heels into the roaring time tunnel known as the Portal of Ages. “Stop the Portal now!”
But the thorn queen wouldn’t stop it. “Sorry, Eric. No can do. You’re all on quests now. Two of you in the past, two in the future. Have fun!”
“No more riddles!” Eric shouted. “No more puzzles!”
“That’s it!” said Salamandra. “Pretend it’s a really big puzzle. Then put it all together. You just may save Droon!”
“But what does that mean?”
“Buh-bye!” she said, smiling crookedly. With a twist of her magic staff, Eric and his friends Julie, Keeah, and Neal went hurtling into the coiling, whirling storm of darkness.
“Hey, hey, whoaaaa!” Neal shouted, zooming past Eric in one direction while Julie flew by in another.
Laughing at the top of her lungs, Salamandra flicked her wrist, and Eric was sucked toward a side tunnel. Bracing himself for an instant, he thought back to five minutes earlier.
Five crazy minutes earlier …
They had all been on a mountaintop in the magical world of Droon. He, Princess Keeah, Julie, and Neal had just battled Gethwing, the terrifying four-winged dragon, when Salamandra conjured her magical Portal of Ages.
The Portal’s spinning storm connected times and places in Droon and in Eric’s home, the Upper World.
With a simple turn of her magic staff, Salamandra could have thrown Gethwing far into the past with no chance of ever returning.
Instead, she stood by as the dragon heaved the children one by one into the Portal. Then she stirred them around the whirling time-storm, laughing and laughing.
Had she betrayed them?
At first, Eric thought so.
But at the last second, Salamandra let Eric drag Gethwing into the Portal with him. Then she told him a magic word he did not understand.
Reki-ur-set.
Eric pleaded that he no longer understood ancient words. But Salamandra said the word wasn’t in an ancient language.
It was in his own language.
Reki-ur-set?
What did it mean? Was it a riddle?
Of course it was a riddle. Salamandra was the queen of riddles. She had sent Eric visions and clues for a long time. He barely understood any of them. One thing he did understand, however, was that Salamandra had taken his wizard powers away. On a recent adventure, he had used her magic staff to save his friends. The price he paid was losing every single power he had.
Now, as he struggled not to get hurled away to some distant time and place, Eric stared into Salamandra’s eyes.
They were cold and cruel.
They were mysterious.
And yet … she had told him things.
You’re all on quests now… .
“Eric, watch out!” Keeah cried suddenly. “Gethwing’s right behind you!”
Eric jerked his head and saw the giant moon dragon lunging through the time tunnel straight at him. “Nooo —”
“Enough!” shouted Salamandra. She stirred her magic staff, and three quick blasts of wind tore Keeah, Gethwing, and Eric in different directions.
Before Eric could think of what to do — whoosh! — darkness engulfed him, and he fell, fell, fell, until he couldn’t fall anymore.
PLOP!
Eric landed on solid ground, quickly but softly, as if he had fallen out of bed.
“Oh … whoa …”
Opening his eyes, he saw a spiral of thorns whirl briefly in the dark sky above him, then fade to nothing. The Portal of Ages — Salamandra’s magical time tunnel — had disappeared.
Eric sat up.
Everything around him was gray, as if bathed in the last stages of twilight. The landscape reminded him of an old black-and-white photograph. It looked like the surface of the moon.
Focusing as best as he could, Eric determined that he was on a low ridge over a plain of dark earth that stretched for miles in every direction. In the far distance he could see a range of tall black peaks arching up toward the sky.
Nearby lay a large swamp filled with water the color of oil. Its shore was thick with reeds.
“Nice,” he commented. “Where am I? Nowhere?”
He tried to remember all the remote places he had ever learned about in school. The deserts in China. The southern tip of South America. The North Pole.
This didn’t look like any of them.
Eric struggled to his feet and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Hey! Neal? Keeah? Julie? Anyone? Answer me!”
He paused and listened.
There was no response.
Eric wandered over to the swamp and peered in. All he saw was his face surrounded by nothing. He felt like burying his head in his hands. He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to be anywhere except at the gates of Jaffa City.
He knew that at that very moment Emperor Ko, the foul leader of the beasts, was leading his armies to the royal capital to burn it down.
Eric wanted to help defend Keeah’s beautiful city. Even though he’d lost his powers, he could still fight the beasts. And he would fight them, until he breathed his last.
“Fine,” he said aloud. “I’m on my own —”
Whooooo …
He heard a faraway sound. At first it was low, then it grew louder, as if it were coming closer.
“I don’t like that sound,” Eric said, staring into the distance. “I think I’d better —”
“I think you’d better shhhh!” hissed a voice.
Eric whirled around to face the swamp again. A head was sticking up out of the black water.
“Get in here, Eric!”
He looked closer. The head had a crown on it. “Keeah? Is that you? Why are you in —”
“Get in here!” Keeah said. She jumped out of the water, slapped her hand over his mouth, and dragged him back into the swamp with her.
“Now breathe through this reed and hide under the surface,” she ordered. “He’s coming!”
“What? Who’s coming —”
Keeah stuck a reed in Eric’s mouth and — splash! — pushed his head under the water.
As Eric tried to suck air through the reed and not get water up his nose, Keeah sank down next to him. She pointed up through the water at the black sky above them.
And there he was.
Gethwing. The moon dragon.
In the same place and time as him and Keeah!
The dragon’s four black wings moved slowly through the heavy air. Gethwing’s fiery red eyes scoured the land below as if searching for something. He circled the swamp twice, then flew on over the plains.
Not able to last another second underwater, Eric shot through the surface and breathed out. “Pah! That is so gross!”
“Believe me,” said Keeah, bobbing up next to him, “if there was another way, I’d hav
e done it. But from the moment the Portal dropped me here, I felt him nearby. He’s looking for something … or someone —”
Another sound broke the quiet.
Ah-roo … ah-roo …
It sounded like a wolf howling from the distant mountain peaks. The howl faded as quickly as it had begun.
“I’ve decided,” said Eric. “I don’t like it here.”
“This is no part of Droon I’ve ever seen,” Keeah said, twirling on her heels to dry her clothes and hair. “I hate not knowing where we are.”
Eric felt the same. “Maybe there are clues we’re not seeing. I’ll climb the ridge and try to get a better view.”
As he clambered up the top of the nearby ridge, Eric couldn’t get the image of Ko’s army out of his mind. It was the largest force of torch-wielding beasts he had ever seen.
He knew that while he and the other kids were falling into the Portal, Galen was flying to defend Jaffa City. But he doubted that even the wizard had magic enough to stop Ko’s vicious attack.
As Eric scanned from the ridge, Keeah took a closer look at the strange, hard earth all around them. Her fall from the stormy Portal had been fast, but she wasn’t hurt. She remembered seeing Eric look so small and helpless amid the giant stones.
She knew he hurt without his powers.
Powers!
Keeah’s heart quaked to remember how her parents, King Zello and Queen Relna, rode swiftly to defend their home. Did they have any chance of defeating Ko? Would they be hurt in the battle to come? What would she find when she returned to the present?
“Nothing,” said Eric, returning from the ridge. “Nothing, that is, except for that tiny blue light. Over there. On the tip of that mountain.” He pointed to a dark, jagged mountaintop far away. “Can you see it?”
Keeah stood in front of him, scanning the distance. “Uh … no …”
Eric put his hands on her shoulders and moved her slightly. “There. It looks like it’s in a cave.”
Keeah looked and looked, squinting with all her might, but she didn’t see anything. “You must have really good eyesight.”
Eric breathed deeply. “Maybe. Anyway, Salamandra said we’re on a quest. If we’re supposed to go somewhere and find something, maybe we should go toward that light.”