“It is, in great part thanks to you and Press. I was sorry to hear of his passing.”
I nodded in appreciation.
“In his memory, and because of the part you played in creating a new world for us, we are willing to do what you ask,” Rellin said. “There will be danger. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I wouldn’t be asking for help if it weren’t so incredibly important.”
“And what makes it so?” he asked.
I knew I’d have to answer that question at some point. I couldn’t tell Rellin the whole truth, of course. But he deserved to know some form of it.
“There is a village a long way from here that needs my help. Like the Milago, they are in danger of being destroyed by a powerful, evil force. I am trying my best to help them.”
“You are quite the adventurer, Pendragon,” Rellin said. “It is a noble but dangerous calling to become involved in such conflicts.”
He pretty much nailed that one square on the freakin’ head.
“Yes, but it’s the right thing to do,” I said. “Then for you and your noble calling, I will send my men back down into the mines in search of tak.” “Thank you,” I said sincerely.
These were brave guys. I wished I could tell them how they would be mining the tak to protect their own future as well.
Rellin said, “You understand the veins of tak were buried deep below the ground. It will take much effort to uncover them.”
“Not as much as you think,” I declared. I led Rellin and the miners to the dygo. Siry walked alongside me.
“What’s so special about tak?” he whispered. “It’s a natural substance they discovered while mining for glaze. It’s a soft, red dirt you can roll into balls, like clay.” “What is it, poison?”
“It’s an incredibly powerful explosive. A tiny dot could blow one of those huts off the face of Denduron. The miners were going to use it against the Bedoowan, but it would have changed the evolution of the society. With tak, the Milago would have become warriors. After defeating the Bedoowan, Rellin was going to try and conquer other areas of Denduron. This peaceful village would have become a city of warriors. They never got the chance. After the explosion the tak mines were buried too deep for them to get to.”
“Except with a dygo,” Siry said.
“Exactly. I want to blow Saint Dane back to wherever it was he came from. With a weapon like tak, we’ve got a chance against his army. Without it…” I didn’t finish the sentence.
Siry said, “But once we dig a tunnel, won’t the Milago be able to keep mining it?”
“No, this is a different place,” I said quickly. “They aren’t at war anymore.”
Siry looked troubled. “I just hope we don’t blow the people of Denduron back to where they came from too.”
“We won’t,” I snapped.
Siry didn’t say another word.
Rellin and the twenty miners were in absolute awe of the dygo. No big surprise. I gave them a story about how it came from a city on the far side of the mountains. I knew they had plenty of questions, but I didn’t give them the chance to ask. Siry and I boarded the sphere and rolled toward the castle. There was no way of knowing where a vein of tak might be located. I stopped the machine at a remote spot that wouldn’t interfere with the normal routine of the village. As the miners watched in awe, I engaged the drill and dipped it toward the ground. With a push on the foot pedals, the drill bit into the ground. We were under way.
Digging the mine was simple. Finding tak wasn’t. My plan was to dig several shallow tunnels and have the miners inspect them for tak. If we came up empty, we’d dig a new tunnel. And another and another until we found what we came for. It was a laborious process. We spent several days on Denduron with no luck. We found small deposits of glaze, but the miners didn’t dare dig it out. They had seen enough of the blue gem to last a few hundred lifetimes.
While we dug, other miners constructed crates for us to transport the explosive. The crates were critical. Tak dissolved when mixed with water. Since our entry to Ibara was through a pool of water, the crates needed to be watertight. The miners also built a large, flat sled we could use to drag the tak up and over the mountain. Of course, they didn’t know we were only going halfway.
I was really touched by how hard everyone worked. More and more volunteers joined when they heard who they were working for. Some even volunteered to come with us and help in the fight, but there was no way I could accept that. Eventually there were enough miners to split into shifts, so there was always someone working during the daylight hours. I felt sure that if there was tak to be found, we would find it.
It was great being with Alder. He gave Siry pointers on fighting. He demonstrated the art of using the long, wooden stave that he and Loor were such experts with. Siry was an eager student, but there was no way to turn him into a fighter in such a short time. It was more for fun, which was almost as important. It had been a long time since we had done anything that was even close to fun.
Watching those two spar with the long staves gave me an idea. After digging a new mine shaft with the dygo, I drove the vehicle back up the mountain to the flume. I didn’t tell the others I was going, because I wasn’t planning on being gone long. I parked outside the cave, entered, and stepped into the flume.
“Quillan,” I announced, and was quickly pulled toward a territory that held nothing but dark memories for me.
I arrived at the gate and quickly changed into the gray, nondescript clothing near the flume. I didn’t run into any of the mechanical spider-quigs. No surprise there. This territory was done. I left the vast warehouse that held the gate to the flume, and climbed up to the incredible gaming arcade that had been my first taste of Quillan. I’m sorry to say that the arcade was rocking. The Quillan games were back, and busier than ever. It hurt to watch.
On the street nothing had changed. I didn’t know how much time had passed by Quillan standards, but the territory looked the same as when I had first seen it. The city streets were jammed with people moving like lifeless zombies. The huge screens on the buildings above showed the same geometric patterns, broken up by the occasional announcement given by a nameless reporter. It killed me. Blok had won. Saint Dane had won. I had failed miserably on Quillan.
My destination was the abandoned underground mall where I spent time with the members of the small resistance that called themselves “revivers.” I knew the route well. I found the building that was built over the forgotten mall, descended through ancient stairways, walked through a twisting series of corridors, and finally came to the break in the cement wall that was the entrance the revivers had created.
I never saw a reviver. Or Elli, the Traveler. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t there to learn about Quillan. I came for weapons. I found them in a long-forgotten store deep within the mall. It hurts me to say that no revivers were there to guard them. It was another sign that the revival had failed. They no longer needed their weapons.
But I did. I found a stack of the six-foot-long, black metal rods. Dado killers. I didn’t know what they were made out of, or why they worked. All I knew was that when you impaled a dado with one of those rods, it neutralized its power source. The result? Dead dado.
I stood looking at the pile of weapons, wondering why I had bothered to come. We were about to fight a war against thousands of dados. If it came down to using those rods, the war would be lost. Still, using weapons like those was all I knew. Seeing Alder instructing Siry made me realize that. I guess you could say that having them was a confidence builder. I needed all the confidence I could get. I grabbed a dozen of the lightweight weapons and headed back for the flume.
I knew getting them back to the flume would be risky. If a security dado spotted me, I’d be done. I camouflaged the rods as best I could with a rotten old blanket that had been tossed aside by a reviver. With luck, people would think I was carrying lengths of wood. Or brooms. Or skis. (Yeah, right.) Or anything besides dado-killi
ng weapons. When I got to the surface, I kept close to the buildings, trying to be invisible. At one point I saw two security dados marching toward me. My stomach fell. It suddenly felt like a very stupid idea to have gone to Quillan. I had risked the entire battle just to give myself an ounce of comfort. I held my breath.
The dados walked right past me.
My trip back to Denduron was uneventful. I changed back into my leather clothing at the gate and jumped into the flume. In the cave on Denduron I placed the pile of weapons at the side of the flume, got right back into the dygo, and made my way down the mountain. In all, I was gone for only a few hours. Nobody knew I had left. Not even Alder and Siry. I had taken a big risk going to Quillan, but I was glad I did it.
I didn’t know how to measure time exactly on Denduron. If I were to guess, I’d say we were on that territory for about three weeks. I was beginning to think it was going to be for nothing. If the tak was deeper than the shallow tunnels we had been digging, it meant we had to create a much more complex mining operation to get the miners down deep. It would also mean spending lots of time down there, and I didn’t want to risk poisoning these hard-working guys. After weeks of coming up empty, I started to face the possibility that we would have to battle the dados without tak…
When we saw the first telltale streak of red. The miners gathered to inspect the possible find. Rellin dug out a piece of the red dirt with his fingers and rolled it into a small ball. He walked back to the mouth of the tunnel, and with everyone watching, he flung it at a rock ledge. Boom! The rock disintegrated, creating a small avalanche of stones. It was so loud, my ears rang. When the air cleared, Rellin turned to me and smiled. I in turn looked to Siry.
“That,” I said, “is tak.”
Siry looked stunned. “Maybe we really do have a chance.”
The process of mining the mineral was even more dangerous. If hit the wrong way, it could explode. The miners took their time, which was fine with me. They only had the crude tools they hadn’t used since the days of mining glaze. The vein turned out to be the mother lode. They dug cautiously, filling rough bags with the mineral and hauling it out of the tunnel. It took several days, but every wooden crate was eventually filled. We could have filled more, but I wasn’t sure how much the dygo would be able to pull. The crates were then sealed with wax to make them watertight.
Finally the job was complete. The dygo was fitted with heavy ropes that were attached to the sled and the crates were loaded aboard.
“You sure this won’t blow up on the way up the mountain?” Siry asked.
“No” was my honest answer. “I don’t know what’ll happen when we go through the flume, either.”
“I didn’t need to hear that,” Siry said soberly.
After many thank-yous and good-byes, we were ready to go. I told Rellin that he and his men had done an important thing that would hopefully ensure peace to Siry’s home for a long time to come.
“I do not doubt you, Pendragon,” Rellin said. “Tak helped bring peace to the Milago. I trust it will be as useful again.”
Alder, Siry, and I climbed into the dygo. It wasn’t built for three people, and we had to avoid one another’s elbows and knees. Siry was the smallest of the three, so he sat in the middle, wedged between the two seats. We were all happy that it wasn’t a very long trip… for a lot of reasons.
“Slowly,” Alder cautioned. “Avoid the bumps.”
Yeah, no kidding. I engaged the dygo. With only a slight strain from the weight of the tak, we moved forward. The trip was nerve-racking. We were hauling enough explosives to level the entire mountain. One rough jostle and we’d be vapor. I wondered how protected we were inside the steel sphere of the dygo. That thing was built to withstand some pretty intense pressure. I guess I don’t have to say that I hoped we wouldn’t find out.
I picked a path that seemed to be the one with the fewest bumps. Every time the dygo bounced, I slowed down even more, so the tak wouldn’t be knocked around. We were all sweating so much, it got pretty steamy and rank inside. We had to stop a couple of times to open the hatch and air the sphere out.
We all felt a little better when we reached the snow. Rolling across packed snow was much smoother than grass and rocks. Finally the terrain leveled out, and I saw the mouth of the gate. It had been a grueling journey, but we’d made it.
“How do we do this?” Alder asked. “Do we drive right into the flume and out the other side in Ibara?”
“No,” I answered. “We’ll have to make several trips. I’ll go with the dygo first and clear out the gate area. You guys stack the crates near the flume and wait for me.”
We unhooked the sled, and I drove the sphere into the cave. I rolled right into the flume and called out, “Ibaral”
Moments later I was swept up and away. I had to trust that the flume would continue to send me where I needed to be, when I needed to be there. If it started messing with me now, well, I didn’t want to think about that. There was nothing I could do about it, so I focused on the task ahead. It was a moving job, nothing more. Okay, a dangerous moving job, but still a moving job.
When the dygo reached Ibara, I engaged the drill. The moment the sphere bobbed to the water’s surface I started digging. I blasted up and out of the stone pool that was the mouth of the flume, destroying a section of the circle and spewing water all over the floor of the cavern. I didn’t stop to worry about it and kept moving across the wet sand. The next step was to bore a new tunnel through the rocky wall of the cavern. We needed to get thirty heavy containers of tak out of there. Dragging them through the winding labyrinth of tunnels would take weeks. We didn’t have weeks. The time for being secretive was over. I drilled straight through the rock, and didn’t stop until I saw sunlight on the beach of Ibara.
Spinning the dygo around, I saw that I had created a tunnel that led straight back to the flume. It was a hundred yards long. No twists, no turns, no subtlety. If anybody wandered by, they’d find the flume. I didn’t care. After the battle, there was no telling what this area was going to look like anyway. All bets were off. I rolled back through the tunnel to the shattered pool, got out of the dygo, and stepped up to the edge of the flume.
“Denduron!” I shouted, and dove in headfirst. As I traveled along, I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see the images of Halla staring back at me. In no time I was back in Denduron, where Alder and Siry were waiting. I shouldn’t have worried. The flume did its job. The crates were stacked high, ready for transport.
Alder held one of the metal weapons I’d brought from Quillan. “What is this?”
I took it from him, spun it expertly, and jabbed at Siry. “Dado killers. From Quillan.”
“How did they get here?” Siry asked.
“I went there a few days ago. Is that a problem?”
Alder said, “Not if mixing the territories is no longer a concern.”
I dropped the weapon on the pile with the others. “It isn’t. Not anymore. We’re playing by Saint Dane’s rules now, remember? It wasn’t my choice.”
Alder gave me a grave look. He touched one of the crates of tak. “I remember. But you should remember that we always have a choice.”
“And we made it,” I snapped at him. “We’ll take one crate each and travel to Ibara. Taking more would be too awkward, and we don’t want to go dropping these things. After we’ve moved them all, I’ll come back for the weapons.”
Alder nodded. Siry shrugged. I went first. I grabbed a heavy crate and backed into the flume. “Ibara!” I called, and was on my way.
The tricky part came on the other side. The crate floated, but it was difficult pushing it up and out of the break in the stone circle I’d made with the dygo. The crate was heavy, and it was hard getting enough leverage to lift it out while treading water. But I did it, and placed it a safe distance from the flume.
The others arrived shortly after. I helped them take their crates out of the water and placed them near the first. After that the three of us dove
into the water with a shout of “Denduron!” and started back the other way.
It was a tiring, grueling, boring process. None of us let down our guard though. There was always the possibility of a slip and a drop and a boom. It took us a couple of hours, but all went well. When we were done, thirty crates of tak were stacked up on the territory of Ibara.
Alder, Siry, and I sat on the edge of the flume to get a much-needed rest. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last.
“We’re back on the clock,” I announced.
“What does that mean?” Siry asked.
“It means we’re on Ibara time again. There’s an invasion coming, remember?”
I’ll end this journal here, Courtney. I’m getting too antsy to write any more. I’ll tell you about our preparations in my next journal. Assuming there is a next journal. Alder is here with us, and I’m glad. He’s already proved to be an incredible help, and knowing he’ll be by my side during the battle gives me confidence that we actually have a chance. How good a chance? I don’t know. At least I can say that we’ve done all that we can.
I’m scared and I’m excited. Now that we can look back on all that’s happened, it’s pretty clear that Saint Dane’s plan has been leading to this all along. He thinks Ibara is going to be the first domino to fall in the toppling of Halla. I say he’s got a very big surprise coming. I wish I could see his face when we blow his army to oblivion. Even if we lose, I’m going to make sure we take as many of those dados with us as possible. I’m playing by his rules now. He’s
455 461 mixed the territories to try and crush Halla. I’ve mixed the territories to try and stop him.
Only one of us will prove to be right.
And so we go.
END OF JOURNAL # 31
Courtney crumpled the pages of Bobby’s journal and tossed them against the wall. She was frightened and angry. Angry at herself. She had let Bobby down. Because of her failure, the final boundaries between territories were about to come crashing down… on Bobby’s head.
Making it all the more dire was the fact that the more she learned about the situation with Mark, the less she understood. How could his parents be alive? She left Second Earth after history was altered. She knew how the changes that Mark made on First Earth would affect Second Earth. They did not include his parents being saved from dying in that plane crash.
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