by Richard Due
If the symbols were letters, they were in a language Lily didn’t know. And yet, as she drew them, as she concentrated on them, they began to look familiar. There were ten little worlds, all the same size, and the crab-claw pincers pinched right down on top of one of them, making it impossible for Lily to see its surface.
The very center of the coin showed a fruit, something like a pear, which took her no time to draw. The back of the coin was completely filled with the silhouette of a tree. Around it was a wide circular walk on which stood nine thick pillars, evenly spaced, and between the pillars stood people who looked so tall and rigid that they might have been statues.
Lily tripped the fob with her thumb and the pincers popped open. She pondered again why Uncle Ebb would need both the pincers and the tines to hold the coin in place within the pendant. Did the pincers double as a pointer?
Then Lily noticed something odd. The little worlds on the coin were changing to a silver white. Lily sat upright and pushed the lamp away. The circles were giving off their own soft light.
Using her pencil’s eraser, Lily tentatively touched one of the glowing circles. Something moved. Lily drew away the pencil and examined the coin closely. The pattern of vine and leaf were the same, as was the piece of fruit in the center. But now the inner ring of little worlds was slightly off center. A quick comparison to her drawing convinced Lily that the entire ring had moved, just a tiny bit, clockwise. Lily put down the pencil, and with her index finger, she slowly spun the inner ring around. As each little world passed under the pincer—or pointer—a tiny click sounded. She turned it several times around, then flipped the fob closed with her thumb. Immediately, the little lights winked out, the surface of the coin once again gold. With the pincers back in place, Lily tried to spin the inner ring, but it held fast.
Well, she thought, mystery solved.
Chapter Four
To Barreth
The lamp on Lily’s desk flickered twice before plunging her room into darkness. A sound like ocean waves rushed around her, and she sensed herself being buoyed upwards. She filled her lungs to scream, but before she could take a full breath, she felt herself torn from her room like a small piece of paper whisked away in a storm. The air felt thick, like water, and she was afraid to breathe. She tumbled over and over with increasing speed, rocketing faster than she could have imagined.
How many minutes passed this way Lily could not guess. Time and again she tried to right herself against the currents and regain some control. She was just beginning to think she was having some effect on her spinning—by pulling in her arms and legs—when it ended as abruptly as it had started. She tumbled and bounced on what felt like soft earth, taking a hard kick to the chest. Her own knees, maybe?
Lily rolled onto her stomach, dizzy and unable to breathe. Her fingers found earth and dug in. She tried to fill her lungs, but they would not cooperate. When she finally did inhale, the air was smoky and acrid, irritating her throat.
Slowly, the world around Lily revealed itself. There were sounds: something like birds, and something far off—something low, hoarse, and rumbling. Lily rubbed her eyes, but they refused to clear. She tried to sit up, but the woozy feeling churned into something worse and forced her to fall back again.
As she concentrated on her breathing, the coughing fits settled. The light grew brighter, and the scene gained shape and focus. She was in tall grass, maybe wheat, only the heads were short and thick like barley. It was a variety she was sure she’d never seen. Without even thinking, she pulled down a piece, broke off the head, and stuffed it in her pants pocket. More carefully this time, she pulled herself to a sitting position. The grain was tall enough that she would have to at least kneel before she could get some idea of where she was.
A blurred bit of movement passed overhead. As Lily stared into the sky, her distance vision resolved. It was a strange sensation, like someone was playing with a focus knob behind her eyes. The blotchy shapes streaming above became wings and tails, but the sky behind them remained gray and indistinct. With great concentration, Lily willed her eyes to focus. Colors emerged, and she saw that some of the birds were quite large, or perhaps some were just much closer. Dozens of them streamed by above, but something about the sky still seemed wrong. A slight breeze stirred the grass, and the terrible acrid smell worsened.
Trying to stand, Lily fell forward onto her hands, the necklace slipping down her arm and dropping away. She probed the earth where she thought it should have been, but found only loose dirt. Frantically, Lily widened her search, digging her fingers into the roots of the tall grass. Then, far off, she heard the sound of voices, and froze.
Her vision had cleared, but when she looked up again, the scene made very little sense. It was as if someone had replaced the entire sky with an upside down forest of dead trees. A sickening wave of vertigo passed through her. Digging her fingers into the loose soil, she fought off an irrational fear of plunging down into it. Once the feeling passed, she dared to look again. The forest floor was suspended above like a high ceiling. Mist swirled around the trees’ roots and boles, flowing over crags of rock and disappearing into dark canyons. Lily tried to pry her eyes away, but she found she could not stop staring. It was all dead.
The ground shook, and the grass swayed around her. Then she heard more sounds, disturbingly animal-like, mixed with the striking of metal on metal.
She crouched on all fours and renewed her frantic search for the necklace. How could it have gotten so far? Lily raked her fingers through the grass in places she was sure it couldn’t be. At last, her hand brushed the cool links of the gold chain. She snatched it up and quickly put it on. Seizing the coin, she gave the little worlds a hard look. The glow had left them. Lily tripped the fob and gave the inner ring a quick spin; it made soft clicking sounds as each world passed the pointer. She closed and opened the pincers. Nothing. She spun the ring again. Again, nothing.
Lily tucked the pendant under her shirt, poked her head above the grass, and surveyed her immediate surroundings. Not ten feet from her hiding place ran a wide footpath. To her left, it traveled up a short but steep hill, sparsely covered with short-limbed, scraggly trees. Lily stood, resisting a bout of dizziness. She took deep, calming breaths, trying not to look directly above, where the strange world filled every bit of the open sky.
The ground rumbled again. Instinctively turning to discover the source, she confronted a scene very difficult to take in all at once.
In this direction the land fell away into a great valley that traveled to the horizon, rimmed on either side by distant mountains. Maybe a mile distant, Lily judged, stood a tall stone tower, standing in stark, defiant contrast to the flat valley floor. The tower rose to such a height, and the world above hung so low, that at first it looked as though the two were in danger of colliding.
Then Lily noticed something chilling. Dangling down in great arcs from the dead forest above were thin black lines that connected to the pinnacle of the tower. Dark forms emerged from the trees, crawling across the thin webs like spiders to their prey. Their numbers seemed endless. The top of the tower was black with them, and they trickled down the sides in dark ropy lines, like black wax dripping down a white candlestick. They climbed over themselves and clung to one another in a way that made Lily think of bugs—very large bugs.
Past the tower, deeper in the valley, the dead world arced downward until, perhaps a dozen miles distant, the two worlds came so close that—at first—they appeared to touch. There, thick black masses oozed and spilled down from the world above to the world below, like great clingy globs of molasses. In the valley, the dark masses spilled over themselves like swarming ants. Whatever they were, there were thousands upon thousands of them.
A large bird broke from the others and swooped down, veering rapidly toward Lily. Had it seen her? Her first impulse was to hide, but where?
Close
by, a hail of arrows launched upward toward the descending bird, barely missing their mark. Lily gasped. The arrows made a terrible whizzing sound, and out of instinct, she ducked, but they arced far away from where she stood. Meanwhile, the bird continued its perilous descent. It was larger than she had first thought, and bright green. As it flashed overhead, she saw it angling its great head in her direction.
Lily tried to think of something to do but found herself rooted to the spot. The bird beat its powerful wings and banked sharply, making a second, even closer pass. Lily bent her knees as if to run, but instead locked eyes with the bird’s, which flashed pale blue. It shrieked a strangely muffled cry, and the moon coin pulsed against her chest. In her mind a voice screamed, “Run!” Another volley of arrows whizzed across the field, close enough this time for Lily to see their yellow fletching.
Abruptly, the air split with a terrifying roar, and Lily felt all the blood drain out of her face and limbs, leaving her shaking and numb. Doubled over by a fear she didn’t understand, fingers shaking, Lily fumbled for the moon coin and closed the fob. Quickly, she gave the moons a spin and closed the fob with a snap. Nothing happened. She would have to find her own way out of this place.
“Think!” Lily muttered aloud.
The coin pulsed again, this time both in her hand and her head. “Little one!” she heard in her mind.
Lily spun around until she saw it: the green bird, now perched on a low limb of one of the hillside trees.
“This way!” it cried, leaping from the limb and beating its great wings. “Now!” Again, Lily’s ears perceived the bird’s muffled squawk, and even the direction it came from, but it was only in her head that she understood the squawks as words.
She sprang out onto the road and ran up the hill, whether from panic or bravery she didn’t know or care. The only thing she knew for certain was that she had no desire to meet whatever had produced that fearsome roar.
Ahead of her, the bird gathered speed slowly, then shot up and over the hill. Lily, following closely, crested the hill but lost her footing in the loose dirt and stumbled, falling hard on her chest. In her head, she heard the bird screaming, “Run! Run! No time to waste!”
The cacophony issuing from the valley grew louder. Lifting her head, she licked dirt off her lips and teeth, and spat. The hill she was on continued around in both directions, curving like the lip of a massive crater. Thirty feet in height, maybe a hundred feet thick, the strange hill had no ramparts or stairs, and its circumference was vast, stretching many miles around in a great circle.
Lily scrambled to her feet. From the center of the vast crater rose a tall mesa, crowned with a fortified city. The dead world hovered over everything, yawning into the distance, casting dark and angry shadows over the land and a distant sea. Between the two curving horizons, the sky was black as night, filled with glittering stars.
Lily’s eyes widened in recognition.
“Sea Denn. City of the Rinn!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I’m in the Moon Realm?” But how could that be? The Moon Realm, as Lily knew full well, was a dreamland—summoned from her uncle’s imagination . . . a place out of tales, bedtime tales.
Just then, a dark line of helmeted men crested the rim of the hill not more than a few hundred yards from where Lily stood. They wore a beetle-green armor that shimmered eerily in the odd light. Carrying glinting spears and crossbows, each one bore multiple quivers strapped to its shiny armored back.
Fearing discovery, Lily squatted down, looking back into the valley. The Valley of the Rinn, she reminded herself. The undulating mass continued to drip from the world above. The globs in the valley had ordered themselves into rank-and-file formations.
Dusty clouds hung at the edge of these formations, where horse-sized animals struggled against their helmeted attackers. Lily watched helplessly as one of the great beasts, which she now suspected were Rinn, was overrun by an engulfing mass of the armored men, their ghastly beetle-green armor shimmering through the haze. A group of Rinn reversed their retreat and galloped back to help, only to be overrun themselves. Lily watched in horror as, one by one, they went down under the surging weight of the swarming army, not to rise again. Lily placed a hand over her mouth and felt tears well up. Moving quickly and strangely on their long, thin limbs, the Rinn’s attackers flowed outward like a great warring mass of man-sized ants.
A sudden noise from inside the crater made Lily spin around, her heart nearly leaping out of her throat. A patch of scrubby brush exploded, and out shot two strange beasts, one riding the other. The mount was the size of a large boarhound. It leaped into the clear, trailing bits of brush and leaf matter, its six taloned claws raking air. Its large bridled head snapped wildly from side to side, showing off row upon row of pointed teeth. The rider, though short-legged, was a long-bodied creature covered with fur, looking very much like a child-sized otter or weasel. As the pair descended, the rider’s evident excitement turned to panic.
The mount pinwheeled its legs right up to the moment of impact. When its sharp claws dug into the hillside, the two animals shot off, the poor rider on top bouncing like a limp doll tied to a paint shaker. Beast and rider bounded up the remainder of the hillside and, before Lily could do much more than cringe, scrambled to a dusty halt so close she could have reached out and touched the beast’s bridled snout. The small rider pulled savagely on the reins. The six-legged beast shuffled and strained at the bit, refusing to remain still, wagging its thick neck, opening and snapping shut its powerful jaws. Its breath was putrid.
The little rider’s eyes were were small, black, and deeply burrowed in its furry face. It regarded Lily with shock and surprise, as though she were something it had never seen before. Lily stared likewise. Its pelt was dusty-brown and thick under its clothes, and it wore a small metal cap on its head, looped under the chin by a leather strap. A jerkin of stiff leather completed its armor. Tied at its neck, flapping like a cape in the breeze, was a small cloak, which Lily thought made it look like some kind of otter superhero.
A rumbling from the valley interrupted their meeting, and the little rider’s head spun to face it. When its eyes flicked to the engulfed tower and the many black lines dripping down from the forest canopy hanging above, it let out a loud, alarmed yelp.
“The tower is lost!” it shrieked. The coin pulsed on Lily’s chest, and she heard the creature’s barking and hissing translated in her head, just as with the green bird.
Lily also turned to the tower. This time she recognized it.
“Fangdelve!” she said in alarm, and then turned to look again at Sea Denn. “I must be dreaming.”
“Would that we were all dreaming,” said the rider softly, staring into the valley.
Lily tried to place the rider or his mount in one of Uncle Ebb’s tales, but couldn’t. “What are you? What is that thing you’re riding on?” As she said this, Lily placed a hand to her throat, realizing that she had just spoken in hisses and barks that pained her.
The small rider whipped around to consider her.
“We are overrun!” it squeaked, speaking very quickly and visibly quaking with fear. “We must attempt to reach the city, young Dain cub. I will go for help, but by the rate of their advancement, I see, quite frankly, very little hope for any of us. Quickly, we must be on—” and then it yelped anew, nearly popping out of its saddle. It pointed a twitching finger, leaning forward, gaping at the necklace and gulping noticeably.
“By the moons!” it cried. “We are doomed! He will have a great prize this day! There will be no stopping him! Quickly, cub, hand it over to me before all is lost!” And it reached out its little leather-gauntleted paw for the necklace.
Lily clasped the pendant protectively.
“No. It’s mine!” she hissed loudly.
Stung, it pulled back its hand. “No. Of course,” it said. The creature scanned the valley, the
tower, and then Lily, as though searching for something. And then, with no more than a twitch of its whiskers, its countenance flashed from fear and awe to determination and, Lily thought, bravery.
“Allow me to introduce myself: Witcoil Lightfoot, Lancespeed First Class, Royal Guard to Her Majesty the Queen,” he said, with an air of calm command. “You have been sent? He gave you this?” he asked, nodding to the necklace.
Lily fingered the pendant. “Not exactly. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”
Witcoil bowed his head. “That is most unfortunate, but if we are to gain your safety, we must act swiftly!” Witcoil pointed down the hill in the direction of Sea Denn. “You see the break in the brush.” It wasn’t a question. “Keep to the right whenever possible, but don’t lose sight of Sea Denn. That will give you the best chance to evade the scaramann advancing toward the city.”
“Scaramann?” repeated Lily, and she pointed to a group of armored men cresting lip of the crater less than three hundred feet from where they stood. “Is that what they’re called?”
Witcoil gave the advancing men a look of contempt. Pulling himself high in the saddle, he squared his small shoulders and addressed her.
“I will summon aid. Now be off! Keep to the brush—stay low.”
And with a click of his tongue he wheeled his mount and vanished back into the brush, cutting a line straight for the city—and dangerously close to the advancing men.
Lily set off faster than she meant to, but as she became more used to the terrain, she allowed herself to scan for any evidence of scaramann.
She knew Sea Denn would be her only chance for safety. This much was obvious. But the city was on top of the mesa. First, she would have to climb the zigzagging switchbacks to reach the Ridgegate, halfway up, where a fortified rampart circled the entire mesa. From there, she would need to climb the palace tower up to the city.