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The Wormling IV: The Minions of Time
Copyright © 2008 by Jerry B. Jenkins. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration copyright © 2007 by Tim Jessell. All rights reserved.
Designed by Ron Kaufmann
Edited by Lorie Popp
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the authors or publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jenkins, Jerry B.
The Wormling IV : minions of time. / Jerry B. Jenkins, Chris Fabry.
p. cm.
Summary: Having discovered that he is the King’s Son, Owen contemplates his future with trepidation as he must fulfill his destiny to lead the battle with the Dragon, unite the worlds of the Highlands and the Lowlands, and marry a princess.
ISBN 978-1-4143-0158-7 (sc)
[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Good and evil—Fiction. 4. Fantasy.] I. Fabry, Chris, date. II. Title. III. Wormling four.
IV. Title: Minions of time.
PZ7.J4138Wou 2008
[Fic]—dc22 2007030032
For Jeremy
“You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.”
General Douglas MacArthur
“To hope is to risk despair,
to try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. . . .
Only a person who risks is free.”
William Arthur Ward
“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”
J. R. R. Tolkien
Table of Contents
1: Fear
2: Old Enemy
3: The Least of These
4: Whirlpool
5: On the Skiff
6: Belly of the Beast
7: Upset Stomach
8: On the Beach
9: King and Queen
10: Recruits
11: Gurgling
12: Watcher’s Morning
13: On Shoulders
14: The Storm
15: A New Song
16: The Nestor
17: Rogers
18: Rockslide
19: Planting
20: Ghost Town
21: To the Death
22: Diamondhead
23: The Changeling
24: Inner Bees
25: The Conversation
26: Near the Castle
27: The Story
28: Surface Disturbance
29: Changing Direction
30: Underwater
31: Peril
32: News
33: Landing
34: Convincing Machree
35: Return to Yodom
36: The Plunge
37: The Plan
38: Still and Broken
39: Flight
40: The Report
41: Highland Find
42: Pursued
43: Confession
44: The Release
45: The Task
46: Deadly Mission
47: Words and Fire
48: Confrontation
49: Death of the Wormling
50: Poisoned
51: Nicodemus
52: Not Growing Weary
53: Inspectors
54: The Chamber
55: In Custody
56: Interrogation
57: Escape
58: Down the Hall
59: Her
60: Talking
61: Twin Identities
62: Search
63: The Meeting
64: Quite an Entrance
65: Mr. Page
66: On Its Way
67: Spellbound
68: Obliterated
Epilogue
About the Authors
The greatest fear of the human heart is not a monster under your bed or losing all your money or being left stranded in a foreign country or being eaten by snakes or drowning.
Do not misunderstand—those are all dreadful predicaments. But be sure of this: the greatest fear of the human heart runs much deeper than these. Our greatest fear concerns who we really are. In that search for truth about our souls, we are most afraid of discovering not that we are nothing but that there is something wonderful and glorious about us. Something regal and noble and majestic. Something amazing.
If we are nothing, if we simply crawled upon the shore of human existence and stretched our fins until fingers appeared, no expectation of goodness rests upon us. We can simply live as we please, make decisions based upon the wants of our stomachs or our minds. We live and we die with no purpose other than to satisfy our cravings.
However—and let us pause here to mention what a wonderful word however is—if we were instead placed here, our lives have purpose and meaning. We do not have to make that up, for it is given to us by the someone who placed us here.
By chance, we are nothing. By design, our lives connect to each other and to the one who made us.
It was to these thoughts that our hero, Owen Reeder, put his mind. Small Owen—of low estate, the son of a bookstore owner, once perusing pages daily—has been thrust into a search for royalty and found it in himself. In reading The Book of the King, Owen discovered that he had been chosen to be a Wormling, entrusted with not only the book but also a special worm named Mucker, who was the transport between the Highlands (earth) and the Lowlands—a place Owen did not even know existed.
It is above these Lowlands that Owen currently flies, locked in a cage borne by a winged beast who smells vile and seems to have unending stamina. Other flyers are far ahead, Owen’s group taking up the rear of the prisoner train.
And it is in this cage that Owen ponders his own station: namely, that he is the King’s Son, the very one he had been searching for since first he arrived.
To say this frightened him would be the same as saying that falling a thousand feet onto concrete would hurt. Owen was terrified. He couldn’t comprehend all this. What would it mean for his family, his mission, his destiny?
The Book of the King said the Son would lead forces to battle the Dragon. He would help unite the two worlds—the Highlands and Lowlands. But chief among Owen’s concerns was that he was also prophesied to wed the princess Onora. He had never held a girl’s hand, let alone kissed one—not that he hadn’t thought about it.
Owen had learned that along with great fear comes a certain comfort. If all he had discovered was really true, he had a history. He had a family. Not just a father but also a mother who loved him. A sister who had been taken captive. And a bride waiting.
Not comforting was the prospect of the Dragon’s talons sinking into his chest, not to mention the beast’s thousands upon thousands of followers who would comprise a gigantic force against him.
Such is curious about despair: each time comfort seeped into Owen’s soul, the thought of the enemy and the task soon overwhelmed him. He had seen the Dragon up close, but that was as the Wormling, a seeker, an ant scurrying from the footsteps of giants. Now Owe
n knew he was this beast’s mortal enemy.
All this thinking was, of course, moot—pointless. Owen was high above the ground, smushed into the corner of a cage with people from the Castle on the Moor, including the king of the west. Most of these were servants trying in vain to keep their soiled garments from touching the king and queen. The people treated Owen as less than human, sneering and jeering at him for speaking to some unseen visitor. They thought he had been talking to himself, studying the underside of the great flying beast.
A child yelled, getting everyone’s attention and pointing to water over the horizon, waves against the shore, and beyond that, an island.
Owen sat thinking of his friends Watcher and Humphrey. He’d told them to meet him in a secret place, and he imagined them waiting, pacing, wondering.
Owen suddenly sat up. The island looked familiar. There was more than one. Yes, it was true. The islands of Mirantha. He had been here before—he had met Mordecai, a man still on the island as far as Owen knew. He picked up a pebble and threw it as hard as he could at the flying animal, trying to get it to change direction and fly toward the island.
“What are you doing?” a young boy said. “He can’t even feel that.”
Another prisoner yelled, “There’s someone on that rock!”
They were flying along the path Owen and Watcher had taken to Erol’s clan. Huge rock formations loomed, and as the creature passed close to them, a lone figure stood on a precipice eyeing them.
Erol! Owen stood and shouted and waved.
“What do you think he’s going to do?” an older woman said. “Rescue you? From down there? You’re crazy.”
Owen kept yelling. As they drew nearer, several others from Erol’s group climbed out on top of the rocks.
“Are these friends of yours?” a man wearing the king’s coat of arms said.
“Very good friends,” Owen said.
“Then you might want to call off their archers. They’re amassing on the ledge. If they bring this beast down, we’ll all be killed.”
A dozen of Erol’s men had bows drawn and at the ready. The beast seemed not to notice and flew straight for the rock.
“Erol! It’s me! The Wormling! Lower your weapons! Don’t shoot!”
But the leader raised an arm and dropped it. Arrows flew.
“Get down!” Coat of Arms yelled. “Everybody on the floor!”
The arrows overflew the cage, and some lodged in the animal’s neck. One hit him in the mouth and stuck through a lip. The rest pierced his wings and passed through. The beast swerved toward the rocks, scattering Erol and his men.
“Hang on!” Coat of Arms hollered.
The cage smacked the top of a rock, sending people flying around inside. Owen grabbed the bars and held on as the flyer listed left, then right. Blood trickled from a wound in the animal’s neck.
Erol gave the fire signal again.
“No!” Owen shouted, but arrows whistled through the air and pierced the leathery skin with a pfft.
The flyer dipped toward a large rock, and at the last second Owen grabbed the young boy who had alerted them and pulled him close as the cage crashed again. The group pitched like toys in a box, banging the front of the cage as the flyer recovered and haltingly changed direction.
“Erol!” Owen screamed. “Help us!”
The archers grew tiny in the distance as the beast continued. Owen could tell it was laboring, its breathing erratic. Blood coursed from the wounds.
As they slowly descended, Coat of Arms rose from the floor and hobbled to the front, inspecting the bars. He pulled, but they were too strong. “There’s room enough for the young ones to crawl through,” he said.
“They’ll die from the fall,” a woman shrieked.
“It’s their only chance!”
Several rushed to the front, and Owen gasped. No one else saw what lay ahead of them, and he could only hope the flyer had enough energy left not to crash.
Given the choice between crashing full force into a rock or water, Owen would have chosen the obvious. But he had been in these waters before and knew the Kerrol—a slimy, underwater beast that ate anything in its path—lived here. Owen and Watcher had barely escaped its clutches.
The flying beast was losing steam as it passed over the sandy beach. Wobbling and diving, then pulling up, it was like a roller-coaster ride with no rails. Women screamed and men turned white.
The king of the west struggled to gain his footing, and Owen moved closer. “Thank you for helping me back at the castle.”
“Why didn’t you use the horse and get away?” the king said as the cage splashed into the water, then shot back into the air.
“I wanted to help you.”
“You fool! Now you’ll die with us.”
“Perhaps,” Owen said. “But there may be a way out of this.”
A young girl screamed and pointed at the water, where a long, slithering body passed in an arc.
“Does anyone have jargid skins?” Owen yelled.
“Who do you think you are?” Coat of Arms said. “Get away from the king!”
“Hurry!” Owen said.
“I have a skin,” a maid said, pulling off her hat.
“I do as well,” a man said, tossing one from his back toward Owen, who stuffed them into his shirt and hung on.
With a last gasp, the flyer tried to flap and lift. The force of the wind on the arrow holes in the animal’s wings made them stretch, and the creature gave a high-pitched shriek and a mournful cry that echoed off the islands.
“He calls to the Dragon,” Coat of Arms said.
“It is his last call,” the king said.
A wing collapsed in on itself with a sickening crunch, and the creature began a whirling free fall toward the water. The prisoner-filled basket lurched.
“Perhaps the beast will float!” Owen yelled. “Or the bottom of the cage will!”
“Brace yourselves!” the king shouted.
Spiraling, winding, and weaving, the creature’s back hit the water first, its wings tucked behind it, a wave engulfing it.
The flyer wobbled in the water, flailing, scratching, and clawing at the cage until it had a firm grip.
“Does anyone have a knife?” Owen said.
“They took our weapons.”
People dangled through the bars, feet and arms in the water, grasping for footing, splashing, sucking in the salty liquid. Owen landed on top of the pile, three deep, and he sprang up, clothes and hair wet, grabbing the cage and hanging on. They were trapped.
The cage tipped left and came to rest on the creature’s outstretched wing, floating on the surface as thin as a kite. The people clapped and smiled.
“Try to get the cage tipped over,” the king said. “It will float, and the tide will take us to shore.”
But the flyer gurgled and descended into the dark water, pulling the cage after it.
It is like children to spot something unusual, something askew on the horizon. And while everyone else in the cage was staring into the brackish depths, the young boy who had pointed out the water in the first place stared at Owen. His face was not filled with fear, like everyone else’s, but as a child will focus on a flower while others move toward a picnic, this boy seemed enamored with Owen’s appearance.
As they plunged beneath the surface, the child could not, of course, hold this stare, for by the way he thrashed and clawed, the fear of being trapped surely overtook him as well. They weren’t just sinking; they were also descending at a rapid pace—dragged by something.
Owen held his breath, staring into the murky darkness. The speed threw people back toward him, and he had to move them out of the way to reach the front of the cage, desperately feeling for mangled bars until he could pull himself through.
The descent stopped suddenly. Owen quickly found the top of the cage and grabbed the leather bindings securing the flyer to the hitch. He discovered slack in the leather and pulled with all his might.
Bubbles gush
ed, and people fought to hold their breath. Owen felt something pass him and instinctively closed his eyes, remembering Mordecai’s training. The man had made him catch fish blindfolded, sensing movement in the water with only his hands. “Become part of the world you are in,” he had said. “Immerse yourself in every movement and molecule, and you will discover what you seek.”
They had been underwater more than half a minute when Owen sensed movement to his left. A tail? A decoy? He quickly turned right and held out the leather bands as far as he could, clenching his teeth.
He peeked to find a pair of piercing, reptilian eyes on him. Jagged, sharp teeth lunged, and Owen let go of the bands. He darted down, grabbing onto the cage, now a whirlwind as the Kerrol finally chewed through the bands.
When the cage released, the Kerrol rose slightly in the stirring water. Owen swam underneath and pushed the cage toward the dim light of the surface.
Objects in water are always lighter due to the buoyancy, of course, but raising a cage full of people required more strength than Owen had. Something else was at work here. Someone else.
Owen’s lungs were bursting, but he dared not gasp underwater. And if he felt this way, what of the people inside the cage? And the children? Had they already taken the deadly water into their lungs?
When the cage finally broke the surface with a great splash, Owen scrambled atop it, gasping, as heads, lips, and noses popped out through the bars to do the same. He jostled the bobbing cage up as far as he could, but there was only enough room for the people to get their heads out. Were they all there?
“Help the younger ones out!” Coat of Arms said. “At least save them!”
The people gasped and whimpered, splashing. Owen knew this would attract the Kerrol.
“Stay where you are!” Owen said. “I’ll get you out!”
But how?
Indecision often makes the difference between life and death. Owen had to act immediately, especially when he espied a small craft in the distance. Owen waved frantically. “Over here! Help!”
But then he felt water swirl beneath him again and had to dive and push the cage up far enough so the people could get air. All the splashing and screaming and choking had attracted their enemy. Owen floated under the cage, waiting, gauging his timing until the last second when the fierce beast appeared.
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