Secrets of the Deep (51 page)

“Aha, then they’re large,” Sir Peter said, his politeness sounding a bit strained as the shape raced toward them.

“Huge,” Aleeyah shot back. “So just…stay still and don’t make any noise.” She looked toward team two. “I have to warn the others, then I’ll try to draw it away. Once it’s distracted, run for the crater. It can’t break through the layers of stone down there and will avoid the flames.”

With all of them holding stock-still, the Cyclopean sandworm failed to home in on their party. They gasped as it swept by, a portion of its segmented body humping up out of the sand. The giant sandworm had thick, pale, leathery skin, and Aleeyah was right—its horrid, segmented body was as big around as a train. It barreled through the sand nearly as fast as one, too, leaving a wake of powdery sand spraying up after it.

Then it disappeared below again, but no one dared to hope that it had gone away. It seemed to be just circling around, trying to sense their vibrations. Ramona blanched to realize it was hunting them.

“Go,” Finnderool ordered the djinni. Aleeyah nodded then vanished in a puff of smoke, reappearing a few seconds later near the other group far off to their left.

Ramona scanned the surrounding desert from her higher vantage point, trying to track the creature. She cursed Zolond once again for his cunning. He always knew how to take advantage of any situation or environment by working with what was already there.

Aleeyah must have given Ranjit’s team her warning, for they stopped in their tracks at once. Immediately, the djinni whisked away again, reappearing at the base of a far-off sand dune.

In the distance, she began stamping her bare feet, clapping her hands, and shouting to draw the beast’s attention. Unfortunately, one of the centaurs had cantered ahead of Ranjit’s group to scout out the way and mustn’t have heard the warning to hold still.

As the centaur went galloping back toward his team, the sand shifted behind him; a monstrous hump of pale, segmented body slithered into view before disappearing again a few yards behind him.

The healer shrieked to warn the centaur, but it was too late. No one could’ve stopped what happened next.

The worm reared up from beneath the sand and swallowed the centaur whole.

It plunged back under the surface as several people screamed in shock, and was gone again in the blink of an eye.

Everyone stood staring, absolutely stunned.

In the distance, Aleeyah kept shouting and pounding her feet, too far away to see what had just happened.

“Come on,” Sir Peter urged the others grimly. “We have to make it to the crater like she said.”

“Run!” said Janos.

They raced across the open sand, running for their lives, humans and animals alike.

Suddenly, another sandworm—somewhat smaller than the first—burst up out of the desert floor ahead of them, showering them with sand, its one baleful eye glowering at them, its round, jagged mouth screeching.

The minotaur was nearest, and reacted automatically. Lifting his club, he bashed it in the head. The worm’s unearthly shriek turned to a whimper, and it immediately vanished back under the sand.

“How many of these things are out here?” Finnderool exclaimed, sweeping the landscape with his penetrating gaze.

“How should I know?” Sir Peter retorted. “Keep moving, everyone! We have to reach the crater!”

In the distance, they could see the larger sandworm speeding toward Aleeyah, making no effort to conceal itself anymore as it narrowed the distance between them.

Visible now in the moonlight, its ghastly form was as wide as a carriage and shockingly long. It left a giant worm trail behind it in the sand as it raced toward the djinni.

Aleeyah waited, steely-nerved, until it was almost upon her. At the last moment, she transported herself off to yet another safe vantage point to lure it even farther away.

Meanwhile, Ramona saw the elvish healer starting to fall behind the rest of her fleeing team.

Hurry,
she thought, but she could only watch in helpless horror as a ring of sand suddenly exploded around the she-elf, who then simply vanished, her short scream cut off as the beast pulled her under.

There was nothing to be done for her, so the two teams continued racing across the sand, desperate to reach the crater, still about half a mile away.

Even the shapeshifters in animal form labored to run in the deep sand. Ramona was surprised Janos didn’t take his bat form, but it seemed he was honorable enough to stay on the ground to help protect his teammates.

And they would need all the help they could get, Ramona saw, for a few minutes later, the larger worm that had gone after Aleeyah must’ve realized it was moving away from the food. After lunging up out of the ground a few times and finding nothing to bite but empty air, the beast apparently had enough intelligence to abandon the game, slithering back into the desert to return to where it had hunted successfully before.

It seemed one centaur hadn’t quite satisfied its hunger.

This mission was not off to a good start, Ramona thought grimly as she saw the hump in the sand speeding back in their direction.

Fortunately, Sir Peter’s team had regrouped in time for the next attack. They saw it coming—it would have been difficult to miss the surge of sand plowing toward them—and this time, they were ready for it.

The creature suddenly blasted into view behind them, rearing up out of the sand, its round mouth churning with rows of razor-sharp teeth.

“Keep going! We’ll handle this!” Janos shouted, waving the rest on toward the crater.

“I’ll help you!” Ravyn shouted.

“No! Get on the Gryphon and get off the sand.”

“Don’t be daft!” She turned to the minotaur. “Guard the Lightrider!” she ordered. “I’ll be right there.”

Finnderool shot an arrow at the towering beast before the minotaur hurriedly pulled him away by the arm, then he ran with Sir Peter and the shapeshifters.

“Escape on the Gryphon,” Ravyn muttered, shaking her head at Janos in disgust.

Aleeyah reappeared in a puff of smoke. “Sorry! I guess it got bored of the game.”

Janos drew a second blade. “Guess he wants to play a little rougher.”

Then he and Ravyn began harrying the monster, taking stabs at it, hurling weapons, leaping onto it and then springing away before it could catch them. Red helped distract it, flying past its head and shrieking at it, raking it with his claws as he passed.

Roused to fury, the sandworm stretched up even higher out of the desert floor, writhing and gyrating and roaring in the most peculiar fashion.

“Aleeyah! Take it!” Janos shouted, pointing at the creature’s head.

Understanding his idea, the djinni whooshed up to stand precariously on the crown of the sandworm’s head while the Guardians kept it distracted on the ground.

With a great heave, she plunged her scimitar into its brain, then dissolved into thin air as the huge sandworm crashed to the desert floor with a dying groan.

“Nicely done, ladies,” Janos congratulated them afterward as they all stood panting. Red landed nearby. “Shall we?”

They all nodded and left, running again after Sir Peter’s team. The Gryphon galloped after them.

In the meantime, unfortunately, team two had been hit by another surprise attack. The smaller sandworm—which the minotaur had bashed—struck again, this time going after Ebrahim.

The massive warrior was not the easy prey the creature had apparently expected. It grabbed him by the leg, but he fought. As it struggled to pull him under, he scrabbled waist-deep in the sand, punching the beast repeatedly, since the upper half of his body was still free.

“Don’t let it take me!” he bellowed, and Ranjit shouldered his rifle.

“I don’t have a clear shot!” the Sikh yelled.

“Just shoot it!” Ebrahim roared, stabbing the thing with his knife.

Ranjit pulled the trigger and hit the beast. When it squealed in pain, it lost a firm grip on Ebrahim. Urso in his bear form leaped on the sandworm and began tearing into it with his claws and teeth. Even so, it still managed to pull Ebrahim under, though the big Guardian went down fighting.

Ramona wanted to help but could not bring herself to leave the twins in this moment of danger, not when they meant so much to the children.

In the distance she could see Ranjit and the wizard, Fletcher, on their knees, frantically digging in the sand with their bare hands, shouting Ebrahim’s name.

“I’ve got him!” Fletcher suddenly shouted.

“Pull!” Ranjit must have grabbed Ebrahim’s other arm somewhere under the sand.

“Help me! He’s heavy!”

Even if he had struggled free of the sandworm’s jaws, Ebrahim could still drown in that sea of sand and suffocate if they didn’t get him out of there fast.

“Come on, Eb,” Janos murmured, watching tensely from the distance as team one continued speeding toward the crater’s rim.

“I’ll go see if there’s anything that I can do.” Aleeyah whooshed away to go to team two’s aid.

Finally, the combined efforts of Ranjit’s team succeeded in pulling Ebrahim up out of the sand like a drowning man.

He came up covered in sand, coughing in between gasps for air. “Something’s down there!” he shouted, his deep, booming voice carrying easily across the sand. “Do those freaks lay eggs? I felt something under my foot!”

“What’s he on about?” Sir Peter asked, panting as he jogged after Finnderool.

“I think it buried its eggs down there or something,” Ebrahim told his team in the distance, sounding shaken. “Is that why it attacked us? I’m tellin’ you, there’s something down there—”

His team quieted him and helped him hurry on toward the crater, since he was limping.

Ramona floated closer and saw that his leg was bleeding and badly lacerated where the sandworm had grabbed it.

He was lucky he hadn’t lost it, she thought.

“Too bad it ate the healer. Looks like Eb’s hurt,” said Janos as the Guardians, the djinni, and the Gryphon caught up to the rest of the team at the edge of the crater.

Finnderool gestured to the Gryphon. “We’ve still got Crafanc’s healing feathers.”

“Caw!” His fierce eyes gleaming gold in the night, Red flew off at once to give Ranjit one of his scarlet feathers with which to heal Ebrahim.

Ramona was fairly sure the Lightrider knew how to use them. At least, she hoped so. Ebrahim was one of their best fighters, and they would need him at full strength for what they faced ahead. For, in truth, the real fight hadn’t even started yet.

“Steady, people,” Sir Peter ordered as they came barreling up to the edge of the crater at last.

The sandworm that had failed to eat Ebrahim was still out there. They were eager to get off the sand before it returned.

The way ahead, however, was anything but safe.

“Peter: flames!” Finnderool said while Janos and Ravyn wiped worm blood off their blades.

“Allow me.” The wizard stepped to the fore and raised his wand, using a spell to clear a path for them through the waist-high bonfires burning all about the crater.

Being almost impervious to fire, Janos, fully masked again, was the first to jump down onto the still-hot boulders strewn about the slopes of the crater. He turned to keep an eye on Sir Peter, who followed and then stepped ahead of the vampire to deal with any more fires, magically extinguishing them.

The nimble wood elf bounded down lightly, with his Guardian a step behind. Helena and Henry padded down into the crater with ease in their animal forms, though both shapeshifters seemed a little pained by the heat of the rocks beneath their paws. Still, it was better than being swallowed by a Cyclopean sandworm up there on the crater’s edge.

The minotaur brought up the rear, ready to club the beast if it tried to lunge at them again.

In the distance, Red remained with Ranjit’s team after Ebrahim was healed to help round out their number, since they had suffered two casualties. Aleeyah stayed with them for now, as well.

As team one picked their way carefully down the rugged, rocky slope, the bonfires still burning around them filled the air with sulfurous smoke.

Amid those swirling clouds of smoke, the Black Fortress waited, ominous and inscrutable, black as funeral jewelry.

Its outer walls stood a hundred feet high, its four spiky towers even higher.

Just looking at the castle filled Ramona with doom. Its overall shape was a hulking square. Crenellated battlements topped the curtain walls, and on each corner, its four sharp spires rose up to claw at the sky.

The fortress was made of polished black granite, so the wicked orange flames around the crater danced, mirrored, off its shiny walls. The flickering reflections of the fires made the castle seem to move, to breathe like some ghastly living thing—a menacing presence eager to devour whatever came too near its horrid yawning mouth.

Thankfully, the front entrance was sealed at the moment. Beneath the massive arched gatehouse, the drawbridge was up, but not for long.

They would have to get in there somehow to rescue their friends, Ramona thought grimly. The Council would hardly hand their captives over without a bitter fight.

Unfortunately, their approach brought them into range of the next line of the castle’s defenses. Finnderool squinted at the battlements, then shouted a warning to Sir Peter: “Archers!”

The word had no sooner left his lips than a wave of arrows arced across from the sky. The wizard reacted at once, lifting his wand to cast up an energetic shield over his whole team, much like the one Ramona had created around Jake.

“Everybody, gather together as much as you can,” Finnderool ordered. “The force field will be stronger the less space it has to cover.”

Across the crater, Hanley Fletcher was doing the same thing to protect his team from the arrows raining down on them. Their tips bounced harmlessly off the two wizards’ force fields, their wooden shafts breaking with the impact, but the attack had stopped both teams’ progress toward their goal.

Janos stared at the battlements from which the waves of arrows continued flying. “Blast it, are these villains still using Noxu tribesmen as their castle guard?”