Suddenly the sole object floating in front of her was an unadorned wooden wand. The dark brown wood tapered at each end, and a slight kink kept it from being perfectly straight. Although it appeared to be as inconsequential as an average stick lying on a forest floor, Mayberry recognized it at once as Merlin’s wand. She reached her hand out, then felt a tremendous surge of adrenaline as her fingers made contact. Ancient druidic runes outlined in yellow light began to glow on its base. The wand told her that it could multiply the power of the wielder’s spells, teach her new spells, or even be used to suck the life force from its target.
Suddenly she knew she’d be able to return to Nith. Time unfroze. The room sprang back to life.
CHAPTER 41
MONGA BOLTED FORWARD, reaching his upper hands toward the object of his desire, but his knuckles rebounded off the rock-hard crystal. The interior of the obelisk was empty. He turned to find Mayberry behind him, and the realization that another was holding the stick he had yearned to possess for so many years made him rear up on his hind legs and expel a deafening roar of anger and frustration. His two upper hands drew his swords, and his lower ones grabbed his daggers.
“Giv steeck!” he roared, his dark volcanic expression making it clear he was prepared to kill Mayberry if she didn’t instantly comply.
Mayberry instinctively knew that the wand’s extra power gave her the opportunity they’d been waiting for—a chance to defeat Monga. She had only seconds to strike, not enough time to let the wand teach her new spells, so she decided to keep it simple by allowing it to magnify the power of the spells she already knew. The wand’s energy coursed through her body, making her feel invincible.
“I am going to give you exactly what you deserve, slave master,” she snarled at Monga.
Game on.
Mayberry cast the first spell that popped into her mind, a power spell. The twisting pulse of bright, magnified power erupted from the tip of the wand and struck a hammer blow to the center of Monga’s chest, blowing him backward. Flailing wildly for purchase, he careened headfirst into a stone column with a force so great that his swords flew from his hands.
“Awesome, Mayberry!” Marshall croaked, elated.
Urrn, following the plan they had agreed to around the campfire, separated from the two of them and shuffled over to the far wall, way out of Monga’s line of sight.
Before Monga could recover, Mayberry’s violent gray wind spell created a tornado that picked him up, whirled him in circles, then slammed his body into another stone column. When the wind spell finally released him, Monga crashed to the ground, groaning and madly bicycling his hooves.
Although clearly in pain, Monga still managed to regain his footing. His nose was broken, and his body was covered with quickly swelling bruises and wounds. Ignoring serious injuries that would have crippled or killed a human, Monga hurled a powerful white counterspell at Mayberry.
Marshall, who had been waiting for the right time to jump in, now cast a dark blue water spell, to pummel Monga with the force of a waterfall. This delayed Monga’s oncoming white miasma just long enough to give Mayberry time to conjure another power spell. Her spell melted into Marshall’s, creating a funnel of water so fast and strong that it pierced Monga’s green miasma and blasted into his body. The water swept him off his feet and sent him pinwheeling across the floor. He didn’t stop until his face slammed into a stone column, hard enough for them to hear the sound of his bones breaking.
Fractures formed at the base of the column and rippled upward. It collapsed from the strain. Spinning sideways like a bowling pin, it smashed into another column, shearing it off at the base. The section of roof above the broken columns sagged; the wooden support beams moaned, then split.
Stunned, Monga stumbled out of the atrium and onto the temple’s gray stone steps. He turned and faced Mayberry. His left eye had gone milky white and was bulging from its socket. He looked . . . almost . . . helpless.
“This is it!” Marshall croaked. “Let’s finish him together.”
“Leave, Monga. You can’t defeat us now,” Mayberry barked, ignoring Marshall’s plea.
A strong eddy of deadly energy entered the hand brandishing the wand; she felt it urging her to kill Monga. But Mayberry had never deliberately killed any living creature. She forced her trembling hand to aim the wand’s business end at the polished wood floor and waited.
Monga crouched on unsteady legs, rapidly plucking various powders from the leather pouches on his belt, which he used to weave patterns in the air in front of him. In the center of the delicate mosaic of patterns, two jawbreaker-size mint green balls appeared. With a flick of his finger, the balls broke from the mosaic and raced toward Mayberry and Marshall.
Mayberry cast a power spell to deflect the innocuous-looking green balls. Marshall’s power spell melded with hers, creating a bright white force field. But Monga’s balls sailed straight through the white light, like steel bullets punching through cardboard. The balls separated, raced behind Mayberry and Marshall, then punched into the center of their marks.
Mayberry felt like her body had been doused in gasoline and tossed into a bonfire. The wand spun from her burning hand as she collapsed to her knees. Beside her, she heard Marshall scream, gag, and fall to the ground. Her mind was wiped blank by the intensity of the pain. Moments later, through her tears, she glimpsed Monga’s black silhouette looming over her and the metallic flash of his daggers rising to strike as she took her final breath. Death would be a welcome relief from this pain. But just before the fatal blows fell, his enormous shadow vanished.
Mayberry’s pain ebbed. The wand skidded toward her on its own and bounced back into her hand. As it touched her fingers, a bath of warm energy cleared the pain away.
She vaulted to her feet and touched the mark on Marshall’s back, sharing the wand’s power with him. Marshall sighed as the pain lifted, then scrambled up, ready to resume the battle.
Mayberry spotted Monga at the other end of the temple, lying on his side and desperately trying to prop himself up, using a broken stone column for support.
Without remorse, Mayberry fired off a pulse of power that drove Monga into the column with crushing force. Two other power spells joined hers, spinning him around and making it impossible for him to keep still long enough to weave another green pain spell. Monga flopped over and managed to wobble unsteadily to his feet, then groaned and stumbled toward them. Reaching deep into his warrior soul, Monga cast a magnificent orange defensive spell that deflected the power spells coming at him.
“This isn’t possible!” Marshall howled.
How can he keep coming? Mayberry thought, tasting metallic terror in her mouth as she struggled to pick the spell that would take him down for good. But even as the wand helped her rapidly flip through the options, she couldn’t focus long enough to select and conjure one.
Monga was almost upon them, his upper hands clenched into fists raised to strike, and his lethal daggers flashing in his lower hands.
Urrn suddenly stepped into her field of vision.
“All together this time,” he said, his voice clear and calm, closing his right hand over her wand hand.
Marshall instantly followed suit, placing his left hand on top of Urrn’s.
“Now!” Urrn ordered.
The wand merged three different spells into one—an unstoppable sword of vengeance. Thick streams of rainbow-colored power roared from the wand’s tip, easily puncturing Monga’s orange spell, then blasting into his chest with devastating ferocity.
Crack.
Monga’s body shot into the air like he’d been fired from a cannon, punching a hole through the roof, then continuing to speed upward. When he finally began to plummet back to earth, his body had flown to the distant river. With a loud splash, Monga plunged into the water, then vanished under the surface for a few seconds before popping back up.
As Monga awkwardly attempted to swim back to the riverbank, a murky shadow rippled beneath him. A huge black head shot up out of the water and struck Monga like a rattlesnake. The primitive water beast’s teeth slashed into Monga’s left arms, then the hideous creature torqued its body over, dragging Monga down.
Just a faint trail of bubbles on the river’s otherwise placid surface remained to mark Monga’s last stand.
CHAPTER 42
YES!” MARSHALL SCREAMED.
The wooden supports surrounding the large hole Monga’s body had made in the domed roof had started to creak and splinter. Some of the remaining stone support columns were also cracking, rivulets of dust spilling from their spreading fault lines.
“We need to get out of here,” Urrn bellowed.
Mayberry glanced up at the unstable ceiling. “First I need to put this back where it belongs,” she replied, holding up the wand.
Incredulous, Marshall stared at her. “Are you crazy? We need that.”
“No, Marshall,” Mayberry replied. “It’s too powerful and too dangerous. I felt it trying to coerce me to kill Monga.”
“And that was bad because . . . ?”
“Because it wasn’t me deciding to do it,” she said as she ran to the obelisk. “It needs to stay hidden.”
Bits of debris were raining from the hole in the roof, scattering rubble over the temple’s floor. Mayberry heard Marshall in the background, babbling about all the logical reasons she needed to keep the wand. She ignored him, pushed it back into the obelisk, and released it. For a second, she sensed that it didn’t want her to let go and thought it might shoot out of the obelisk and back into her hand. But then an invisible force gripped it, turned it over, and left it hovering obediently in its rightful place.
The temple was collapsing.
Huge chunks of roof fell off like calving glaciers as more columns swayed and snapped. Mayberry sprinted for the steps, and Marshall stopped, waiting for her to catch up. When she did, he seized her hand, pulling her along so fast her feet virtually skipped across the hardwood floor.
Urrn was already hurtling across the rocks on the pond. Thankfully, none of the ammonites stirred to stop him. They were clearly designed to keep intruders out of the temple, not in.
While jumping from stone to stone, Mayberry heard loud cracks and booms as the structure collapsed behind her. When her feet touched shore, she whipped her head around just in time to watch the beautiful dome cave inward with a tremendous crash. Fragments of broken wood and stone tumbled into the pond, making waves that rocked the silent ammonites, which sank under the water and vanished.
Instead of the once magnificent temple, there was only a mountain of rubble, with a barely visible crystal lump, the top of the obelisk, poking out of the wreckage.
“You think the wand is safe there?” Marshall asked.
“I hope so,” Mayberry replied.
He nudged her shoulder and smiled. “Still looked like Excalibur to me.”
Mayberry smiled. “It is Excalibur. Or maybe the better way to say it is that everyone sees the object that—they think—makes them the most powerful.”
“Weird. I still think you should have kept it. It would probably come in handy while we’re hiking back to the Wishing Tree.”
Sudden seeds of doubt rushed into her mind. Maybe it had been her own subconscious, not the wand, telling her to kill Monga. Oh, well, too late now.
CHAPTER 43
THEY RETURNED to their waiting familiars and scooped up their gear.
Co-Co jumped onto Mayberry’s shoulder and nuzzled her face; Mirrt positioned himself next to Marshall, who squatted down to receive a friendly face rub followed by a lick; Uuth waddled over to assume his usual station, trailing Urrn.
“Thanks, Urrn,” Marshall said earnestly. “Our plan worked. Monga forgot you were even there, and you picked the perfect time to attack to help us win the battle. Without you, we would have been toast.”
“I may have waited a bit too long, let you suffer too much,” Urrn said, shaking his head regretfully.
Mayberry walked over to Urrn and gave him a hug. “You may have cut it close, but our plan worked, so who cares?” she said. “I thought I was dead when Monga leaned over me with those daggers raised, then—boom—your power spell sent him flying.”
Urrn blushed pink, and his usually somber face broke into a grin. “I know a shortcut to the aspen grove.”
“Great,” Mayberry exclaimed, smiling. “We can’t get back fast enough.”
They hit the trail with the wind at their backs and happy hearts. The temple’s forlorn ruins quickly faded behind them.
As they hiked along, Urrn became chatty. “I think Monga must have been really old. Maybe even thousands of years. Think about all the centuries that different people on Earth used the power object before now—he must have somehow found out about it, then studied travelers to the Temple like Thor and Merlin until he figured out all the secrets he needed to break in.”
“That makes sense,” Mayberry said. “I wonder if ancients from Earth discovered the portal, then came through to build the temple. And they left it on Nith—whatever it was at the time—because they knew how dangerous it could be if it fell into the wrong hands on Earth. Then only those few who knew about the secret portal and earned the right to use it could bring it back in times of need.”
“Not a bad theory,” said Marshall. “A bunch of creatures from Earth’s mythology were painted on the ceiling. Who knows, maybe those creatures were real once, and the wand or sword or whatever was used to destroy them.” Marshall smiled and flexed his hands.
“Maybes on top of other bigger maybes. The truth is we have no idea who built the temple or where the original implement of power came from or what it originally looked like. Plus, when I was inside the obelisk, I saw the wand turn into objects that didn’t seem to come from Earth. What do you think about all this, Urrn?” Mayberry said as she grabbed a thin tree trunk to help pull her up the next steep bit of the ridge they were hiking on.
Urrn reached a hand down to help her keep her balance, then changed the subject. “Well, you came through the portal by accident, not to do penance like me. That’s why I decided that it wouldn’t be right to let Monga keep you.”
“Whatever you did wrong on Earth must have happened decades ago,” Mayberry replied in a choppy cadence as she struggled to keep her balance on the sharp ridge. “Don’t you think you’ve atoned by now? Plus, you’ve saved two lives—mine and Marshall’s.”
“What did you do that makes you think you deserve punishment?” Marshall asked, completely baffled.
Annoyed by the question, Urrn suddenly frowned, fell silent, and continued tramping. For a while they walked silently too, but they couldn’t stay quiet for long, and were soon reliving and dissecting their harrowing experiences.
At the end of the day, they used Monga’s supplies to pitch camp. Guarded by their familiars, they all slept like babies that night.
The next morning, Marshall opened his eyes when Mirrt’s tongue licked his face. He gave his pet a hug and looked around. Although the jungle hadn’t changed much, the air smelled different today. He had a good feeling. He roused the others and soon they were all back on the trail.
After a few hours, they topped a bushy rise. Urrn pointed at the valley below. “That’s what we’re looking for.”
Marshall tented a hand over his eyes and looked out. Sure enough, there was the aspen grove in the distance, its leaves a blur of shimmering gold.
“That’s it,” Mayberry cried in delight. “That’s our grove.”
He could see by her open face and broad smile that she hadn’t been this happy in . . . well, he couldn’t remember when. Mayberry enthusiastically grabbed Marshall and Urrn and hugged them, patted Uuth, squeezed Co-Co, and let Mirrt lick her face. Then she grabbed Marshall’s hand, and he jogged down
the hill with her, overflowing with excitement.
“Urrn,” Marshall hollered, seeing him hanging back, “we’re almost there. You’re free. It’s time for you to come home.”
“I’m going to stay,” Urrn said. He pointed to a large dark hole at the corner of the big rocky hill in the distance. “There. That was my home before I met the Sleviccs. And before Monga captured me.”
Marshall and Mayberry started walking back uphill toward Urrn. “You’re going to stay here and live in a cave?”
It was hard for them to understand, but Urrn seemed relieved to have found the cave. “Yes.”
Marshall took a few steps closer and held out a hand. “If you come back to Earth with us, you’ll have a house to live in. Remember? Your parents, cookies, snow, all that stuff?”
“Nith is my home now,” Urrn said, shaking his head at Marshall’s outstretched hand. “My parents might not even be alive. And even if they were, they wouldn’t want me anymore. The Sleviccs are my friends—I can find them again. And I can’t go back until I know that my punishment is over.”
Mayberry and Marshall looked at each other, and Mayberry shook her head. The reality was that they knew very little about Urrn’s previous life. Maybe he’d committed a serious crime on Earth, and going back would mean trading one kind of prison for another.
“Go,” Urrn said, smiling weakly and waving them on. “It’s time for you to go home.” He turned toward the cave and began to walk away, with Uuth shuffling faithfully along behind him.
“We made it back to the portal, Mayberry,” Marshall declared with a rush of unfettered joy.
He threw his arms open to invite her in. She wrapped her arms snugly around him. As she tilted her head back to look into his eyes, he couldn’t help himself; he pressed his lips against hers.
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