Island of Dragons (28 page)

Mr. Appleblossom set three empty buckets near Florence and took the full ones from her.

Florence went on. “I guess it could have happened that Karkinos took an unexpected turn for the worse and Henry had to stay back. But that seems so unlikely—the crab was steadily improving and actually doing quite well earlier that day. So based on that, I can only assume Spike and Henry are trapped on the other side of the line of ships and unable to pass them without being detected.”

“Or maybe the eel found them,” Alex said, his throat tight.

“Spike can outrun the eel,” Florence said. “The only way she'd be in trouble is if the eel surprised her from the side or head-on. The eel would have to see Spike coming. But I'm sure Spike's intuition is on high alert—she'd most likely be able to detect the presence of the eel in time. I hope so, anyway.”

Alex blew out a breath. “It's making me sick to think about it,” he said.

Another round of flaming tar balls lit up the sky around the island. It was almost beautiful to watch them, so synchronized. Alex didn't have time to watch, though, as the one aimed at the mansion struck the side of the building near the top, right next to the existing hole. The tar ball vanished inside it.

Alex ran to the edge of the roof, lay on his stomach, and peered down at the gaping hole in his bedroom wall. He scooted back up to his feet and ran back to Florence. “There's a fire in my bedroom,” he said. “Can you get me down from here?”

Alex grabbed two full buckets of water from the edge of the roof and Florence lowered him to the ground. He raced inside the mansion with them, trying to keep them from sloshing everywhere, and ran up the stairs. Florence thundered behind him with more water.

They turned at the balcony and ran down the not-a-secret hallway to Alex's living quarters. He set down a bucket to open the door, and then picked it up and rushed inside. Smoke billowed all around, and flames licked at the bedding. Alex threw the water on it from one bucket, then tossed the other bucketful on the tar ball, hoping to stop the fire from catching on.

Florence dumped her buckets of water over the fire as well, and stomped out stray embers with her feet. Steam rose up with an angry sizzle, which soon died down. The fire was out.

“Whew,” said Alex, fanning the air. He set his buckets on the floor and climbed over the rubble to the hole in the wall. It was no less than six feet wide and taller than him. He peered out. He could barely make out Queen Eagala's ship and one other outlined by the dawn.

“That was a close one,” Alex said. The thinning darkness played tricks on his eyes. He squinted toward the ships as moment by moment the sky gave off a fraction more light. “What the . . . ?” he muttered, and then beckoned Florence to come over and look. “Do you see something? Look alongside the ships.”

Florence strode over and bent down to look out. “I don't have eyes like Simber,” she said, “but I see something moving.” She looked closer. “It looks like smaller boats being lowered to the water.” She peered more closely. “And they're filling up with people.”

Fear struck Alex's heart. He gripped the ragged edge of the opening. “This is it,” he said. “They're coming ashore!” Immediately he whirled around. “Clive!” he barked. “Alert Earl in the lounge and all the other blackboards on the property to advise all nonfighters to stay hidden in the lounge! The enemy is approaching land!”

Clive didn't answer.

“Clive?” Alex frowned and turned around to look at the blackboard, but he couldn't see it in the dim light. He lit a highlighter and peered at the space where the blackboard normally stood, and then he gasped. “Oh no!”

Florence gasped too, and they rushed over to the pile of rubble that was topped with the second tar ball. Florence and Alex began dragging pieces of the wall away and flinging them out of the way, and then they shoved the dresser off to one side, and finally, at the bottom of everything, they uncovered the broken remains of the blackboard.

Clive's eyes were closed. He looked peaceful. But his face was deathly still.

“Clive!” cried Alex. He brushed some silt and mortar from the blackboard. Alongside Clive's face was scrawled one final message to the mage.

Don't die.

A
lex dropped down next to the blackboard pieces, ignoring the crunch of broken glass under his knees. “Clive!” he shouted again. “Clive?”

Florence put a hand on Alex's shoulder. “Leave him,” she said softly. “He's gone. There's nothing you can do.”

Alex looked up at her, his face anguished. “But—”

“We'll take care of his remains later. Right now we need to get the word to the teams about the enemies coming ashore.”

They heard what sounded like a stampede in the hallway. Alex immediately stood and pulled spell components from his pocket. A moment later, Simber skidded past the doorway. “The pirrrates arrre coming ashorrre,” he said, coming back and poking his head in. “Have you alerrrted the squirrrelicorns, Alex?”

Florence gave him a stressful glance.

Simber peered past the rubble. His stern look softened. “Oh,” he said, and looked closer. “I'm sorrry. Who can take his place?”

Alex wrung his hands, distraught over Clive's death. “I can't even think about that! I mean . . . I didn't know this would happen. If only I'd thought to put him on the other side of the room when the tar balls began . . .”

“It's not your fault. I'll take care of him,” said Florence. “Alex, go with Simber and handle the attack. Do it now.”

Alex nodded, numb, and with one last look back, followed Simber out the door.

Simber regarded Alex carefully as they jogged through the mansion to get outside. “Sometimes you have to keep going,” said the statue gently.

Alex nodded. He'd done it before, and he would do it again. Forcefully he pushed Clive's tragic ending to the back of his mind. “I'm okay,” he said, feeling anything but. They went outside.

There were multiple tenders coming from each ship, and as the day brightened moment by moment, Alex could see they were packed full of pirates.

“Squirrelicorns!” Alex called out, his voice thick and a bit ragged. “Alert the west and north teams to the pirates' approach on land! Quickly!”

The squirrelicorns flew off immediately with their orders.

“Teams!” cried Alex next, to those on the south shore. “Fire at will as soon as they get within range!”

Alex's, Simber's, and Mr. Appleblossom's teams rushed to the shore and lined up, components in hand.

As two tenders left Eagala's ship and passed alongside Artimé's ship, the Artiméans on board rained spell components down on them, causing a flurry of confusion and a pileup of stricken pirates. “That's the way,” Alex muttered.

Alex looked along the shore to the west, spotting Lani and her team doing the same thing his team was doing—protecting the shore and standing ready to take down as many of the pirates as they could before the boats had the chance to land. Alex raised a hand to Lani, and she signaled back. He hoped the other teams were doing something similar. The fewer pirates making it onshore, the better.

The boats that had come alongside Artimé's ship now veered wildly away from it. Instead of coming straight toward the mansion, they headed for the shore where Lani's and Samheed's teams were stationed. That meant two additional tenders full of pirates for those teams to defend against.

Alex frowned, and then ordered six members of his team to go up the shore to assist Lani and Samheed, worried that they were going to get the brunt of the attack. Simber and Florence would have to pick up the slack in front of the mansion. They were about to get very busy.

Before the first tenders made it to shore, more boats were lowered to the water alongside the ships. The pirates climbed into them and soon began rowing ashore. The waters were filled with them. Alex hadn't seen anything like it in his life.

Finally the first wave of boats came within spell-casting range. Alex, along with his team, began firing upon them.

Immediately the men and women seated in the front of the boats held their shields up. Most of the components bounced off them into the water. Alex remembered what Ms. Octavia had said the previous day about the protective spell.

“Try to get around their shields!” Alex shouted as the nearest boat struck the sandy bottom and stopped moving. “Or use spells that don't require components!” The pirates climbed out of the boat with amazing speed and agility, and ran the boat farther up the sand.

“None of those are lethal!” shouted one of Alex's frustrated fighters.

“Just do what you can!” replied Alex, flinging spells one after another.

The pirates rushed through the water toward the Artiméans at an alarming speed, holding their shields in front of them. Alex and his warriors continued pelting the pirates with spells, but only a few met their mark. As they reached land, the pirates drew their swords and ran at the Artiméans, and it was then that Alex finally realized just how big these enemies were, and how long and sharp their swords were, and how unprotected he and his people were. The Artiméans were forced back, casting spells as quickly as they could, but the pirates were too many, too fast, and too strong.

Rather than killing the pirates, which now seemed like an impossible task, Alex began casting glass spells between the two parties, trying to slow the enemy down and keep his team safer.

That definitely helped, as the pirates weren't expecting such a thing. Several of them smashed into the walls of glass, their weapons clanging against them. But each glass wall Alex put up took several seconds and a good amount of energy and concentration, and Alex wasn't nearly fast enough. Some pirates began to slam their shields against the glass, while others simply went around the panels and began swinging their swords wildly. Alex's team had nothing with which to protect themselves, and with only a small percentage of their spells causing any harm, they began to panic.

Some of them ran to the fountain in the middle of the lawn for cover, while others hid behind the mansion and cast spells from there, trying to find a better angle. Mr. Appleblossom on the roof was the most successful, for he could strike pirates on the head, but the pirates soon discovered him and moved out of range.

Alex, finding himself backed up against a shattered mansion window by a pirate twice his size, had no choice but to flip backward through the frame and scramble to his feet again in time to send a freeze spell at the pirate's ankles. It hit its mark, and the pirate froze in place. Alex jumped back out through the mansion window and finished off the brute from behind with a triple dose of heart attack spells, and soon the pirate fell over on his back, both frozen and dead. Alex grabbed the man's shield.

More boats arrived on shore. Alex looked up just in time to see thirty or more pirates with shields and swords running toward him, with none of his team around to help fight them off. Desperate, Alex began casting spells with all his might, but there was nothing he could do to stop them all.

Just then, Simber came swooping down from above and plowed into the line of pirates, knocking them flat. Swords and shields went flying. “Grab the shields to protect yourselves!” Alex screamed to his team. “Swords too, if you know how to use them!” The team descended on the items and armed themselves.

The next boat reached the shore, and the pirates piled out as before. Simber knocked them down as well, but the first row of flattened pirates was getting back up again.

“Into the mansion!” one of the pirates cried out.

Alex felt his heart throbbing, and his throat was parched. “No!” he yelled, and ran to pick up a sword. He brandished it awkwardly, then ran at the pirates. They knocked him aside like a feather. As they broke down the door, Alex, still prone, dropped the sword and found his extra stash of heart attack spells. He rolled to his side and pelted the pirates' backs with them one by one, and they toppled over, but it wasn't enough, and soon they were storming into the mansion.

Alex flopped back, exhausted, and then he struggled and scrambled to his feet and ran after them until he'd stopped every last one of them. He raced back past the hospital ward, shouting to the nurses, “Use the magic lock to protect yourselves—this is going to get very ugly!”