by Trevor Pryce
Darel closed his inner eyelids. Harsh breathing, gritty scrapes, and sudden screams sounded around him. Stingers slashed suddenly through the dust, and fangs glinted. He dodged and leaped and struck, fighting to get closer to the spot where Ponto had struck Marmoo . . . until a strand of silk caught his arm and tugged him backward.
“Gah!” he croaked.
“Darel?” Gee yelled from somewhere in the dust cloud. “Croako!”
Darel slashed the strand of spider silk, but two more strands caught his leg and threw him off balance. “Polo!”
“Croako!” Gee yelled.
Darel slammed his toe pads down, anchoring him to the ground. “Polo!”
The strands tugged harder and harder, trying to drag him to the spider who’d thrown the webs—and Darel tugged back harder and harder, until he suddenly leaped toward his attacker. A pair of shocked spider eyes appeared in the dust a second before Darel lashed out with both feet. The spider hurtled off and Darel hit the ground on his butt.
Gee hopped beside him. “Not too shabby.”
“I’ve got to work on my landing.” A sharp edge blurred through the dust, and Darel shouted, “Down!”
Gee dropped, and a spider blade sliced the air where he’d been.
Darel leapfrogged Gee, cut the spider down, and then found himself in a blinding, dust-filled brawl against what must have been every spider in the outback. Surrounded by grunts and screams and webs and fangs and legs and legs and legs, he battled closer to where he’d last seen Marmoo . . . until a glowing web slapped his side and his legs went limp.
Oh, no. He fell to his knees, his nostrils slitting in fear.
An elegant spider nightcaster crawled toward him through the dust cloud, flanked by brawny guards. “Blue Sky King,” she murmured. “Marmoo will reward me well for bringing you to him.”
“Then he’ll sting you,” Darel said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Just like he stung Jarrah.”
The lady raised her hand and webbing cocooned Darel. She smiled coldly—then a thud sounded, and one of her spider guards disappeared into the dust.
“What is the—” she started.
Another thud sounded, and Gee said, “And stay down!”
Darel felt a surge of hope. Ha! Gee to the rescue!
The spider lady fired a dozen strands of silk into the dust cloud. They writhed in the air, like they were searching for Gee. The strands suddenly went taut, trying to yank Gee closer, but he copied Darel’s trick, and came shooting from the dust like a brown cannonball.
Gee slammed the spider lady to the ground and shouted, “Nobody move, or the arachnid gets it!”
“Web him,” the spider lady gasped.
Silken strands wrapped Gee, who struggled and kicked . . . until the strands glowed green around him. Then he went limp, and his breathing grew shallow and weak.
“Wait!” The spider lady peered at Gee’s wrist. “What is that?”
Gee’s unsteady gaze shifted toward his silken bracelet. “A . . . gift.”
“From who?”
“Friend of . . . mine.” Gee gasped a breath. “A trapdoor spider.”
Her lip curled. “I know them.”
“Good friends . . . of yours?” Gee asked hopefully.
“Not friends at all, but I’m not Jarrah. I honor all the spider tribes.” The spider lady gestured, and the webs fell away from Gee and Darel. “And that bracelet means you’re a member of their tribe.”
“So now I’m a . . . spider?” Gee grinned weakly.
“Hide under this cart. We won’t harm you.” The spider lady showed her fangs. “But if Marmoo asks, you never saw me.”
“Marmoo’s finished,” Gee gasped. “Ponto fell on him like a . . . boulder.”
“Nothing can crack Marmoo’s carapace,” the spider lady said grimly. “Not even that.”
HE SPIDER LADY’S WORDS ECHOED IN Darel’s mind as he crept through the settling dust.
“Hope she’s wrong,” he murmured, tightening his grip on his dagger.
When he’d met the Rainbow Serpent, bright colors had shimmered along his dagger’s blade, and he hoped—he prayed—that it was the one thing that could stop Marmoo. That the Serpent had touched his dagger with enough magic to finish this.
If it wasn’t, he didn’t know what else to try.
He flicked his inner eyelids as the dust cleared. The sight of the wreckage sickened him. The marketplace was gone. The front wall of the fly shop—Darel’s home—had buckled, and the smoldering roof sagged to the ground. The town hall was a tangle of debris, and the tree frogs’ branches were shredded. Flames flickered everywhere, and black smoke blocked the sun, casting the Amphibilands into gloom.
Across the battlefield, squads of scorpions and spiders drove the surviving frogs toward the central pond, which was already crammed with tadpoles and wounded warriors. Darel looked toward the crater where Ponto had landed on Marmoo, and the cracked edges were barely visible inside the thick cloud of dust.
Darel took two hops, and a handful of scorps scuttled between him and the crater. The squad leader barked, “Take him down!”
“The blue-faced one?” another scorp said, his side eyes shifting uneasily.
“Chase him!” the leader barked. “Sting him!”
“You don’t need to chase me,” Darel snarled, and leaped at the leader.
The world became a blur of lashing stingers and snapping pincers as Darel dodged and jabbed. A gash of fire opened on his side, but he barely noticed. His dagger slashed and his feet kicked, and when he finally paused for breath, scorps lay on the ground around him.
But more came. Always more. Dozens more—too many—scuttling from around the dust cloud that concealed the crater. Then a wart-raising scream cut through the clamor—“Aiiiiiiiiiii!”—and a red-banded scorpion staggered from a burning market stall, broken and limp.
A second later, Coorah lunged into sight, smashed the red-band one last time, and leaped beside Darel.
Her eyes widened at the sight of him. “Whoa.”
“What?”
“The blue clay on your face is cracked and smeared like—like war paint. You look feral. Wild. You look like a nightmare.”
Darel touched his face. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Coorah told him with a sudden wild smile of her own. “You look like a scorpion’s nightmare. And a frog’s last hope. Although . . .” She eyed the oncoming horde. “I see you left a few for me.”
“You take the hundred on the left.” He pivoted onto one leg and smashed a smallish scorp. “I’ve got the hundred on the right.”
She tossed powder from her pouch at an oncoming scorpion, who reeled and screamed. “Where’s Marmoo?”
“In there, I hope,” Darel said, nodding toward the crater.
“Blue Sky King!” Arabanoo yelled, flinging through the air from one of the broken branches.
“Arabanoo!” Darel almost laughed. “You’re okay!”
“’Course I am.” Arabanoo landed in a crouch, a bloody bandage wrapped around his shoulder, and smiled at Coorah. “How come you don’t have a cool title like ‘Blue Sky King’?”
Coorah grinned. “What do you suggest?”
“Green Leaf Lady.”
“Hey, that’s not too”—she flicked a scorpion with her tongue, then smashed it with her stick—“bad.”
Arabanoo eyed Darel. “You’re still a mud-belly, though.”
“Sap-licker.” Darel snorted. Then he looked at Arabanoo’s bandage. “Are you really okay?”
“Nope,” Arabanoo admitted. “I got stung by a scorp and had to sneak away from Coorah’s dad.” Three more wounded white-lipped tree frogs landed beside him. “Well, we had to sneak away.”
“What?” Coorah glared at Arabanoo. “You hop back there this instant! Maybe the poison didn’t get into your bloodstream yet, but—”
“I didn’t know you cared so much,” he interrupted with a mischievous grin.
“Well, I do,” she told
him, completely serious.
His grin faded. “This is where I belong, Coorah. On the front lines. With you.” He looked at her for a long moment, then turned to Darel. “Just tell me what you need.”
Darel wanted to yell at him to get back to the medical tent, but he knew Arabanoo wouldn’t listen. He knew he would’ve done the same.
“I need to find Marmoo,” Darel said.
“We’ve got your back,” Arabanoo told him, flicking a blue-banded bee from the air.
Coorah looked resigned. “Warts and all.”
EBS ARCED ACROSS THE battlefield, and Darel shouted, “Jump!”
The frogs sprang apart. Arabanoo and Coorah headed for the spiders, while Darel leaped past a mass of scorpions. He gulped when a taipan snake slithered closer, and glanced to the sky, hoping the hawks might help.
Strands of webbing drifted above the treetops, and the hawks were gone. Probably driven away by the nightcast magic.
Darel adjusted his grip on his dagger and eyed the snake warily. Suddenly, a squad of burrowing frogs burst from the earth and struck at the snake with long hooks, dragging it underground.
“Thanks,” Darel said, but they were already gone.
By the time he reached the crater, the dust cloud had settled. He hopped to the edge of the massive hole and almost landed on Dingo, who sprawled bleeding at his feet, her eyes half-closed and her legs twitching.
“Dingo!” he said, kneeling beside her.
“I’m out of poison,” she gasped, her eyes closing fully. “We’re all out of poison . . .”
A harsh crack sounded from the crater and Darel spun from Dingo and peered inside. Ponto lay unmoving in the bottom of the crater, and Burnu and Quoba looked barely able to stand, their colors faded and pale, as they faced Marmoo.
Two of the scorpion lord’s legs dangled limply beneath him, and two more jutted out at sharp, painful-looking angles. But as Darel watched, the dangling legs shimmered faintly, growing visibly stronger, and the other two legs snapped back into place.
“If you tap your poison any longer,” Marmoo crowed, “you’ll kill yourselves and save me the trouble! But look at me. I’m only getting stronger.”
Horror rose in Darel’s stomach: Marmoo was right. Burnu and Quoba were about to burn themselves out, while Marmoo looked fiercer than ever.
Marmoo slashed Burnu with a pincer, then whip-cracked Quoba with his tail. He cornered them against the crater wall and pounded them over and over until neither moved. He lifted his stinger and—
“No!” Darel shouted.
In a flash, Marmoo leaped out of the crater and stood over Darel. “You,” he growled, his ruined face triumphant. “You’re the one I want.”
Marmoo’s stinger jabbed at Darel, and he desperately parried with his dagger—but the scorpion lord was too strong. The dagger was flung from Darel’s grip and clattered to the cobblestones beside the smoldering ruins of a home.
Terror rose in Darel’s chest: Not my dagger! Not my father’s dagger. Not my only hope! Not that!
Marmoo’s pincer closed around Darel’s throat. “Do you know what I want with you?”
“I could—” Darel swallowed his fear. “I could probably guess.”
“I don’t want to kill you,” Marmoo said with a mean smile. “At least not quickly. First, I want to thank you.” He released Darel and gestured. “For all this. You lowered the Veil?”
Darel nodded, keeping his eyes on Marmoo’s scarred face instead of looking toward the place where his dagger had landed.
“You handed me the Amphibilands on a platter,” Marmoo said.
Darel braced his toe pads against the rubbled earth. Marmoo was right; he’d done exactly that. But this wasn’t over yet.
“All your water, all your land. The worm farms, the snail fields, the flies and bugs and beetles. Your homes.” Marmoo inhaled sharply. “Even the air smells wet. So much water, and I will control every drop. Enough to rule the outback forev—”
Darel vaulted backward. He flipped in the air, landed in a crouch, and lunged for his dagger as scorpion feet charged toward him.
His finger pads closed on the dagger’s hilt, but he didn’t move. Not yet, not yet. Marmoo’s tail lashed the air and Darel’s heart clenched in his chest as he waited . . . then leaped directly toward Marmoo, low and fast, skimming just above the ground.
Perfect aim! He shot between Marmoo’s legs, directly beneath his underbelly, and with all his might jammed his blade upward. Colors flickered, and Darel almost wept in relief: It was working!
Except the colors weren’t from the Rainbow Serpent. They were sparks from his dagger scraping along Marmoo’s carapace . . . but not stabbing through. His dagger—this last hope—hadn’t been enough.
A biting pain flared in Darel’s leg, and he found himself tossed into the air by Marmoo’s pincer. For a moment, it was as if time stood still. Tumbling high above the battleground, he saw the defeated Kulipari, the destroyed town hall. He saw his mother hugging the triplets in the central pond and a weakened Gee fending off a scorpion from under a cart. He saw dozens of spiders surrounding Coorah, who was kneeling beside the still form of Arabanoo.
All the violence made Darel sick. All the fighting, all the anger. All the bloodshed.
Then he fell, directly toward Marmoo’s stinger . . . but Marmoo whipped his tail away at the last instant, and Darel slammed to the ground.
“I won’t finish you that easily,” Marmoo snapped.
Pain flared in Darel’s leg, but he managed to stand. And with the images of wreckage and violence still flickering in his mind, he knew what he needed to do. He finally knew.
He jammed his dagger into his belt. “I surrender.”
“What’s that?” Marmoo barked at him.
“I surrender,” he said louder.
“Shout it out, frogling!”
“We surrender!” Darel shouted. “The frogs surrender!”
Cries of surprise and dismay sounded from the frog army.
“I thought we could stop the bloodshed by shedding more blood!” Darel croaked. “But that can’t work. That can never work. We have to surrender!”
Slowly, haltingly, the fighting quieted as the frogs laid down their weapons.
“We surrender!” Darel took a shaky breath and turned to Marmoo. “The Amphibilands is yours.”
“It already was.” Marmoo touched his stinger to Darel’s throat. “It’s mine because I took it. Do you expect mercy?”
Darel lowered his head to hide the fear in his eyes. “Sting me if you want. But let the others live.”
Marmoo’s tail whipped at Darel, clubbing him to the ground.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Marmoo said, kicking Darel. “You’ll suffer like we suffered. All who opposed me! Not just frogs! Not just turtles! Everyone who followed the Rainbow Serpent instead of the scorpion king!”
“Help him!” someone shouted. “Help the Blue Sky—”
“No!” Darel called. “No more fighting!”
“We’ll march on the possums when we’re done here!” Marmoo kicked Darel again and again. “The birds of prey and wallabies and every lizard tribe who didn’t obey me! Trapdoor spiders, swamp crayfish, burrowing cockroaches—”
Darel curled into a ball as Marmoo ranted, taking the blows without fighting back, trying not to cry, trying not to moan.
Finally, Marmoo stopped. He raised his pincers and bellowed, “Everyone weak will suffer, everyone unworthy. The sun will burn you, the sand will whip you to tatters! Round them up, every last weakling, and drive them into the wastelands.”
N THE FAR SIDE OF THE BILLABONG, two legions of scorpions flanked a path of destruction where the underbrush had been trampled flat. They threw rocks and insults at the defeated frog nation, who walked between them.
Behind Darel, the weeping of frogs and the peeping cries of tadpoles mixed with the moans of the wounded carried on makeshift leaf stretchers. Darel’s little sister didn’t make a sound in his arms, thoug
h he felt her crying silently as he stroked her head. The other two triplets rode on Pirra’s tail, while Darel’s mom—injured in the fighting—limped alongside, leaning on a crutch.
Gee held Miro’s hand and pretended he didn’t see the tears streaking his brother’s face.
Coorah followed behind, hopping among the stretchers. Darel hadn’t seen a single tear from her, but her voice had been hollow with grief when she’d told him the news.
“Arabanoo took a stinger for me,” she’d said. “He . . . he didn’t make it.”
Now she was treating the wounded with her father as the frog refugees trudged from the Amphibilands. Into exile. Into the certain death of the outback, jeered by scorpions and spiders.
Darel kept his head down, ignoring the pain in his leg that burned with every step. He didn’t know if the other frogs blamed him for all the death, all the destruction. He didn’t know if they hated him for lost family, for lost friends—for throwing away the only home they’d ever known.
He blamed himself, though. He hated himself.
After the scorpion jeers faded in the distance, Darel lost himself in a haze of pain and self-pity, sweating from the effort of pulling Dingo’s stretcher. She still hadn’t woken up. Neither had Ponto or Orani, who lay feverish and murmuring on their stretchers. Burnu and Quoba limped behind the other Kulipari, silent and faded and hunched over. They looked bad. Worse than Darel had ever seen. Because Marmoo hadn’t simply beaten them—he’d stung them, and his poison still burned in their veins.
After endless hours, Old Jir put a hand on Darel’s shoulder and said, “You did your best. We all did.”
Darel just kept hopping, his eyes on the ground. He didn’t want anyone to see his face.
Smoke clotted the morning air over the river and ash filled Pippi’s nostrils every time she surfaced. At least the smoke hid her from the scorps grunting and feeding on the riverbanks.
After dragging Yabber from the wreckage of the town hall, she’d managed to shove him into a muddy channel without being spotted. Well, she’d managed to roll him into a muddy channel. But even that hadn’t awakened him.