Numinae was standing guard at Kynder’s stone. Thumb, Lance, and Qwon were with him, and Erik was close by, still in full berserker mode.
The dragon sprayed her hot oil breath at this gathering of knights.
Numinae raised his hands, and the air shimmered with a green light all around. The oil hit the light and evaporated into a dense cloud of smoke. The dragon brayed and breathed again. Numinae fell to his knees as he put up another shield. They went one more round, but the third shield was clearly smaller and weaker. Oil seeped through here and there. Lance was splashed on the thigh and fell to one knee, screaming in pain.
The dragon had just started another attack aimed at Numinae and company when Sami tossed a bear right at her. “Chew on this, you dumb snake!”
“Bors!” Lance called, his teeth clenched against the scalding pain. “You’ve got one arrow left!”
Bors looked in the quiver. Actually, there were two, but he knew what Lance had in mind.
Artie ran toward Sami, and Dred and Kay joined him. The dragon shifted her attention to this group and prepared to shoot oil on them.
Bors let an arrow fly.
The dragon’s oily breath was in midair when the arrow hit it. The oil lit up like a fuse as fire traveled up and toward the dragon’s head. Bors had shot a fireballer!
The conflagration traveled into the dragon’s mouth and out of her nose. For a second Scarm looked like she was choking on something—then her head blew up.
“Take that!” Kay yelled as the rest hooted and hollered.
When the excitement died down, Dred nodded in the direction of his unconscious mother and said, “Brother, we need to leave here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Artie said.
That was when it hit him. It was why he’d felt so weird when she called him “child.” Morgaine wasn’t his biological mom, but he knew that she was the one who had made him. She was the person who had brought him into the world.
“Let’s go, guys,” Artie yelled. Everyone gathered by Kynder’s stone and shared a quick round of hugs and handshakes. Numinae was weak but on his feet. Qwon had big embraces for both Artie and Dred—maybe even a bigger hug for Dred, which kind of ticked Artie off. But he wasn’t going to let that spoil their victory. It felt a little hollow anyway, what with Tiberius dead and Kynder frozen in a huge chunk of black rock.
Dred put his arm around Artie, and Kay shook her head at seeing them together. “Man. Two of you! This is just too darn freaky!”
“All right, here we go. New Knights of the Round Table, get out the Seven Swords,” Artie ordered softly.
Then he held Excalibur straight out in front of him. It was glowing slightly.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Bors?” Qwon asked as Bors ran toward them across the sand.
“He’ll make it,” Artie said. “We need to open the gate to Avalon.”
Cleomede was next. Kay laid it across Excalibur, which got brighter. Then came The Anguish and the Peace Sword. Excalibur got a lot brighter.
Erik added Gram, and Lance pulled Orgulus from his belt. He put it in, and Excalibur hummed.
Artie looked at Qwon. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
“What—what’s happening?” Qwon asked, overwhelmed by the day’s—the week’s—events.
“We’re all about to level up, like, big-time,” Kay said decisively.
Artie smiled at his sister. This had all started with a video game, after all.
Bors was only a hundred feet away.
Qwon shrugged and got ready to slap Kusanagi onto the array of legendary swords.
But then Bors was picked up midstride and torn in half! Shallot cried out and clutched her chest. The halves of his body turned into fairy dust as they flew through the air. Lance’s bow and quiver twirled over the sand noiselessly.
But there was no time to mourn. Rising on a black column of air was Morgaine. On the other side of her, the sea grew in a wall of gray foam. The witch was swirled with wisps of smoke. Her dark, mismatched eyes burned out of their sockets, and her rust-colored hair stood on end.
Qwon brought Kusanagi down on the fan of swords. They began to vibrate violently, and the sword bearers had to hold on tight with both hands.
“Now, lad!” Thumb screamed.
“Do it!” Numinae said at the same moment.
The witch held her hands—which had become freakishly large, with fingers as long as walking canes—in front of her. Manic flames and lightning laced her digits.
The swords became blazing hot, but none of the knights could relinquish them. They were joined as one—the knights to their swords, the swords to each other. They cried out as Morgaine unleashed her spell. King Artie Kingfisher shut his eyes and forced his quaking body to say the words: “Lunae lumen!”
There was a blinding orange flash as Morgaine’s fire and lightning exploded into the sand. As the sand and smoke and ozone cleared, the witch stared feverishly at the ground, her zealous eyes darting in their sockets.
But all that was left on the beach was a crater, and the bodies of three dead dragons, and the remains of her defeated army.
Fury consumed Morgaine’s every fiber.
Because Arthur Pendragon and his noble knights were gone.
Gone to Avalon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NILS JOHNSON-SHELTON is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller NO ANGEL: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels. He is also the author of OTHERWORLD CHRONICLES: THE INVISIBLE TOWER. Nils lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2013 by Brian Thompson
Cover design by Ray Shappell
COPYRIGHT
Otherworld Chronicles: The Seven Swords
Copyright © 2013 by Full Fathom Five, LLC
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson-Shelton, Nils.
The seven swords / Nils Johnson-Shelton. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Otherworld chronicles ; bk. 2)
Summary: “Twelve-year-old Artie Kingfisher has only ten days to gather a team of knights to wield the mythical seven swords, or his mission to save the Otherworld and claim his throne as King Arthur will be lost”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-207094-4
1. Arthur, King—Juvenile fiction. [1. Arthur, King—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.J6398Sev
20132012019088
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
Epub Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062070968
12 13 14 15 16 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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