Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1

by Peter Speakman

  “Yes.”

  “Then that means that Xaru can do the same thing to you. That’s how he found you.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Theo blurted, “Parker, who cares? We’re under attack here!”

  “Look, Fon-Rahm, you haven’t done any real magic since you fought Xaru. Nothing big or dramatic, right? Which means that he doesn’t know where you are. He thinks you’re gone! If he knew you were here, he would be here himself to take you on. If you destroy that jet, he’ll feel the burst of power and he’ll know you’re free and working with the professor. We’ll lose the element of surprise.”

  “Parker’s right.” The professor was as surprised as anyone to be saying it. “Fon-Rahm should stay out of this. Leave this one to me.”

  She reached into her bag.

  In the cockpit, the pilot was steering the G650 into a cloud bank for cover while trying unsuccessfully to call in a Mayday. He couldn’t get a signal at all. Impossible, he thought. The only way the radio wouldn’t work is if someone had tampered with it, and the only person that could have done that was the new copilot. The pilot turned to confront him. The last thing he ever saw was the gleam of the copilot’s knife as it flashed in the moonlight.

  As the professor dug around in her bag for a suitable amulet to destroy the MiG, the G650 suddenly lurched. Everyone in the cabin slid back as the plane headed straight down.

  Reese grabbed an armrest to steady herself. “What’s happening?”

  Then the door to the cockpit burst open and the copilot stepped out, his knife dripping blood. Theo could see the pilot’s body slumped over the plane’s controls.

  “He killed the pilot!” cried Theo.

  “Then who’s flying the plane?” asked Reese. She knew the answer. She just didn’t want it to be true. No one was flying the plane.

  His knife at the ready, the copilot walked deliberately toward Reese, who suddenly missed her mother. At a time like this, math tutoring and sculpting lessons didn’t seem quite so bad.

  Fon-Rahm stepped in to intercept the copilot. Without his magic, the genie was no stronger than any human man. “Perhaps,” he said, “you would prefer to fight with me.”

  The copilot slashed at Fon-Rahm but missed. The genie grabbed him. As they fought over the knife, the jet entered a death spiral. Everything in the cabin went flying. Parker snagged onto the door of the cockpit.

  “Fon-Rahm, I wish I could fly this plane!” he said. Fon-Rahm paused in his battle with the copilot to nod at him, and Parker felt a stream of information flood into his brain. He learned principles of fluid mechanics, the use of avionics, and the operations of every gauge, button, and lever in a Gulfstream jet in less time than it took him to take a breath.

  “Hey, Reese, could you help me out for a second, please?” Parker said as he made his way into the cockpit. Reese didn’t have anything better to do besides cowering for her life, so she joined him.

  The view out of the plane’s windshield was terrifying. The G650 was spinning, plunging lower and lower with every passing second. Parker unbelted the dead pilot’s body and pushed it aside before he sat behind the yoke. With new knowledge and skill he flipped switches and checked lights as he leveled out the jet.

  “I’m going to need you to watch our altitude and airspeed. These gauges right here,” he said. “Reese?”

  Reese was staring at the dead pilot.

  “Reese. You can do it.”

  Reese snapped out of it. She stepped over the pilot’s body and sat next to Parker.

  “Okay, good,” said Parker with a determined look on his face. He searched the sky and found the Russian jet. It was heading right at the Gulfstream, its machine guns spitting fire.

  “Hang on,” said Parker, grinning as he expertly slid the G650 away. “We’re going to have a little dogfight.”

  Parker’s maneuver caused havoc in the back of the plane. Fon-Rahm and the copilot, locked in an epic struggle for the knife, smashed into the wall next to Theo. Professor Ellison’s bag flew out of her hands. When it landed, its contents were thrown all over the cabin.

  The copilot got his knife hand free. He pulled back to stab Fon-Rahm. The genie, for the first time in his existence, felt a flicker of self-doubt.

  Theo, thinking fast, groped around for something to hit the copilot with. He came up with a golden statue of a monkey that had fallen out of the professor’s bag, and swung it at the copilot’s head. The copilot simply ducked out of the way. He sneered at Theo, but then the monkey came to life and sank its metal teeth into the copilot’s hand. The copilot let out a yelp and rolled himself and Fon-Rahm away. When Theo dropped the monkey, it hit the floor and became a statue once more.

  Making himself useful, Theo helped Professor Ellison gather up the things from her bag. There was a quill pen, a lump of misshapen metal, what looked like a voodoo doll, a dried snake, and an assortment of other amulets, talismans, charms, and trinkets.

  “What is all this stuff?”

  The professor searched the floor. “Just a few things I’ve collected over the years. If you see a small glass globe, please hand it to me.”

  Theo found the globe under a seat and handed it to the professor.

  “Thank you,” she said, before throwing it against the wall. The globe shattered with a muted pop, blowing a huge hole in the side of the G650. The plane dipped and oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. Professor Ellison was ready for it, but Theo scrambled just to hold on. He was almost sucked right out of the plane.

  “Are you crazy?” he yelled. “I could have been killed!”

  “And what would we have done without you?” She looked out the hole. “Now we have someplace to fight them.” She caught Theo’s eye. “We need to find the Bow of Qartem.”

  “What’s a Bow of Qartem?”

  “It’s a bow, like an archery bow, but smaller.”

  Great, thought Theo, looking at the disaster that the cabin had become. That shouldn’t be too hard to find at all.

  Despite the danger, or maybe because of the danger, Parker felt alive and confident. He compensated for the sudden drop in the cabin’s pressure with the ease of a seasoned pilot and craned his neck searching for any sign of the MiG-17. He found it, marked starkly against the night sky. The Russian jet banked high, rolled, and made another pass, firing off two more missiles before diving away.

  Reese watched the missiles streak toward the G650.

  “Parker?”

  “Not yet,” Parker said, his nerves made of metal.

  “Parker?” Reese was getting very nervous now. The missiles were so close.

  “Wait for it.”

  The missiles were right on them. Reese could read the Russian letters on their fins.

  “Parker!” she cried, and, at the last second, Parker screamed “Yee-haw!” pushed the stick down, and rolled the Gulfstream away.

  Theo was on all fours, searching for the Bow of Qartem. His eyes were drawn to a small object rolling around. He picked it up and saw that it was a small glass vial sealed with red wax. It held some kind of bright green liquid.

  “Did you find the bow?” asked Professor Ellison.

  “I don’t see any bow,” he said, holding the vial up. “But I found this.”

  The professor saw what Theo had and reached out to him.

  “Don’t touch that!” she yelled.

  And then the plane rolled, Theo, Professor Ellison, Fon-Rahm, and the deadly copilot found themselves shoved onto the ceiling of the G650, and the vial slipped out of Theo’s hands.

  The missiles shot right by and exploded close enough to shake the Gulfstream. Reese was surprised to find herself gripping on to Parker’s arm as hard as she could. She let go.

  Parker brought the jet out of its roll and watched the MiG speed up and away.

  “He’s only got one missile left,” he said.

  When the Gulfstream righted itself, Theo, Fon-Rahm, the copilot, and Professor Ellison thudded to the floor of the cabin. Theo st
retched out his hand to catch the vial, but it brushed his fingertips, landed with a crash, and broke. On contact with the air, the green liquid started to bubble.

  That’s probably not good, thought Theo. He was right. Theo was eye level with the carpet, so he got a great view of the tiny flaming skeletons dressed in armor that rose out of the spilled liquid. He tried to stand up, but fell backward as the skeletons grew in size until they were as tall as professional point guards.

  The skeletons looked at Theo, their eye sockets empty but for green flame, and raised their burning swords. Theo screamed and buried his head in his hands. No more baseball. No more go-karts. This was it.

  The ghostly warriors didn’t kill Theo. Instead, they whirled and charged out the hole in the side of the jet in an ill-fated attack on the MiG. It might have worked, too, except for the fact that they couldn’t fly. The flaming skeletons just dropped harmlessly into the ocean below.

  Professor Ellison kept looking for the bow. “You might want to be careful,” she said. “Those are some of the most powerful talismans in history.”

  Theo agreed. He also noticed that, on top of everything else, the inside of the G650 was now on fire. He watched as a line of flame sped toward Fon-Rahm and the copilot as they wrestled on the floor, locked in their fight to the death. The copilot smiled and forced Fon-Rahm’s head to the ground. The fire was racing right toward them.

  “Uh-oh.”

  Parker tugged at the yoke. Something was wrong with the controls. The plane was not responding.

  “I don’t mean to alarm you,” he said, looking out Reese’s side window, “but we seem to be having a problem with the starboard wing.”

  “What kind of problem?” Reese asked.

  “Part of it no longer exists.”

  Reese planted her hands on the glass and looked for herself. Smoke was pouring out of the wing, and a chunk of it was indeed missing. The missiles must have exploded even closer than she had thought.

  “Can you still fly the plane?” she said.

  “Sure, I can fly it. I can even probably land it, but we’re not making any more fancy moves.”

  He looked out the window and saw the MiG as it looped overhead, preparing to make one more fatal run at the G650.

  “It’s up to Professor Ellison now.”

  Theo saw an object by his feet. It was a small bow, maybe four inches long, made out of a knotty twig and strung with a wire of silver. A small metal arrow was already mounted. It looked like a harmless toy.

  “Um, I think I found your bow,” he told Professor Ellison. He nudged it with his foot, afraid to touch it.

  The professor stood at the hole and reached back for the bow.

  “Give it to me! Only a sorcerer can wield the Bow of Qartem!”

  Theo reached for the bow but stopped. Beyond Professor Ellison he could see the MiG. It was right on them.

  “Theo! Throw me the bow!”

  Theo couldn’t move. He was frozen with fear.

  Fon-Rahm knew that they were in trouble. He gathered all the energy he could and flipped the copilot over, pushing his face into the path of the fire. Right before the flames reached the copilot, Fon-Rahm head-butted him and tossed him screaming out of the plane. Fon-Rahm jumped to his feet. Element of surprise or no, he had to act.

  “Enough!” he cried. He pushed the professor aside and stood in the middle of the hole, smoke pooling in his eyes, as the MiG headed straight at them in a last-ditch attack. The genie raised his hands, but before he could unleash his terrible magic, the MiG exploded in a burst of bright flame and shattered metal.

  Fon-Rahm and Professor Ellison looked behind them to see Theo, holding the Bow of Qartem. It was full-size in his hands, but its arrow was gone. Theo had shot the MiG out of the sky. He lowered the bow, awed at his own ability. When he placed it on the ground, it shrank back down to its toy size.

  Professor Ellison attacked the flames with a fire extinguisher. “It appears you have an affinity for magic,” she told Theo. “Go figure.”

  In the cockpit, Parker cleared his throat and grabbed the mic. He grinned at Reese and put on his best Midwestern pilot drawl.

  “Ah, attention, passengers. Please fasten your seat belts and put your trays in their upright, locked positions as we make our, ah, final descent. We hope you have had a, ah, pleasant flight, and thank you for flying Parker Air.”

  Theo collapsed into his seat, as far away from the hole as he could get. Fon-Rahm sat next to Professor Ellison.

  “The Path grows more brazen by the hour,” he said. “And I will not be able to find Xaru unless he uses his magic. I fear we may be in for a long and fruitless search.”

  “I know someone who might be able to help us,” said the professor.

  “Is he human?”

  Professor Ellison mulled it over. “Sort of,” she said.

  31

  DESPERATE. THAT’S WHAT ELLISON thought of herself. She could not believe that she had agreed to work alongside the Jinn. She could not believe that her companions were children. It was pathetic. She would only resort to this kind of behavior if she were desperate.

  But she couldn’t help it. As she led them to their meeting place in one of the seedier parts of Utena, Ellison couldn’t stop herself from worrying. Not about the dangers of the city, of course; she could protect herself with any number of simple spells. No, she was worried about herself. Maybe she was slipping. She had known that one of the Jinn was hidden near Cahill. That’s why she lived there in the first place, so she would be close by. She had known that the lamps would start to make themselves more visible. There was nothing she could do about the stars. They were aligned now, just as they had been three thousand years ago, just as they would be in another three thousand years.

  Three thousand long years of waiting. Time that moved slowly. Until now.

  And she had known. She should have been able to do something.

  Now two of the Jinn were out, and that meant that two more sources of Vesiroth’s power were in play. This was what had made her worry more than anything over the millennia, and now it was happening. No matter how much she had tried, no matter how much she had studied, there was one thing the Nexus refused to divulge: she could never see the future. Ellison could, however, maintain a relatively close control over the present. That is, until the Jinn started to return in number.

  All this to say, Professor Ellison was a bit distracted as she walked into one of the least-friendly bars in Lithuania with a genie and three middle-schoolers.

  Maksimilian was fat and greasy, with sweat stains under his arms and brown gunk under his fingernails. His eyes were bloodshot. He hadn’t shaved in days. He needed a haircut. He needed a shower.

  He was at a scarred table in the back of the bar, surrounded by a crowd of cheering, jeering bar patrons, and locked in an epic arm-wrestling match with a shirtless Lithuanian strongman. His fans cheered him on, but Maksimilian was overmatched. His opponent was made entirely of muscle, and it looked like Maks was done for. Just as his arm was going down, however, Maksimilian reached deep inside himself, leaned in, and let out a massive belch into his opponent’s face. The he-man, stunned by the evil stench, lost his focus. Maks forced his arm down with a satisfying thud. Victory.

  While the strongman complained about what he saw as cheating, Maksimilian stood and acknowledged the cheers of the crowd. He raised one arm to the sky and with the other he drained a glass of cheap vodka.

  “He’s like a garbage dump brought to life,” said Parker, entranced.

  Parker, Theo, Reese, Fon-Rahm, and Professor Ellison tried their hardest to fit in. If they weren’t standing in the single scariest bar in the world, Parker didn’t want to know what was at the top of the list. The place was filled with shady characters with darting eyes and unkind faces. It reeked of body odor and old beer. It was dark and it was nasty. Plus, despite Parker’s lies, this was the first time he had ever set foot in a bar. It was maybe not a great place to start.

 
“He may not look like much now, but Maksimilian was once one of the most powerful magicians alive,” Professor Ellison said. “There is not much that happens in this part of the world without him knowing about it.”

  “Um, do you think it would be okay if I waited outside?” asked Reese as she took a step behind Fon-Rahm. There was a strange man leering at her.

  Theo shifted the weight of the bag the professor had given him when they got off the plane. It contained two empty metal canisters.

  “I would rather be with everybody in here than outside alone,” he said. Reese weighed her options and decided he was right.

  When Maksimilian caught sight of Professor Ellison, he broke into a wide grin that showed off one black tooth. “Julia!” he cried, embracing her in a sweaty bear hug. “As beautiful as always.”

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Maks. Keeping busy, I see.”

  Maks shrugged. “It keeps me in vodka. There is only one reason you could possibly be here. You have finally come to your senses and accepted my proposal of marriage!”

  Reese felt a shudder rack her body.

  “Long-distance relationships never work, Maks,” said the professor. Parker could have sworn he heard a smile in her voice. This is what a three-thousand-year-old woman is like with old friends, he thought.

  “I would like you to meet some friends of mine,” she said, pointing to Reese, Parker, and Theo. “These are some children. I forget their names.”

  Theo rolled his eyes.

  “And this...” she continued, gesturing to Fon-Rahm.

  “Wait. Don’t tell me,” said Maksimilian, looking Fon-Rahm up and down. “One of the Jinn, isn’t he? I never thought I would live long enough to actually see one in the flesh.” He peered at Fon-Rahm as if the genie was on display. “Fascinating. He can almost pass, can’t he?”

  “I would prefer it if you spoke to me directly,” said Fon-Rahm.

  “Of course, of course,” said Maks. Then he turned to the professor. “Touchy, isn’t he?”