The Invisible Tower (20 page)

At the mention of her title and name, two deafening sounds came at once: the roars of the saber-toothed cats, and a fierce howl of wind tearing through the forest around the little building.

Thumb said, “Artie, sire, I have a bad feeling. I think we ought to go. Now.”

Thumb was right, but Artie felt that he owed his sister a big favor where Cassie was concerned; it was crazy, but he didn't think it would be right to hightail it out of there without her. He was about to say as much when Kay yelled over the din, “I think Thumb's right, Artie! We've got to leave her for now. It'll be okay!”

But they weren't so sure of that last point because the underground booming intensified, and then the map house simply disintegrated in a poof of black dust. One minute it and all its contents—including the map and the table that stood in front of Bedevere—were there, and the next minute everything was gone.

Artie's back was turned to where the cottage's door had been. Kay unsheathed Cleomede and lunged at her beloved brother with blinding quickness as if she was going to run him through to the hilt.

And she would have if Artie hadn't pivoted at the last split second; Cleomede whisked past his neck, touching it like a feather, before continuing on into the space behind him.

Which was suddenly occupied by the silent and gaping mouth of Mrs. Tibbins. In the same instant that the walls had disappeared, this cat jumped from where the door had been, landing catlike—which is to say, freakishly quietly—just a few feet behind Artie.

Cleomede slid between the cat's knifelike teeth and into its mouth. The blade effortlessly ran through everything that made up the head and neck of the feline. Cleomede sang for blood in Kay's fingers, and it was terrifying.

The cat died instantly. It was very gruesome. Cleomede's bloody tip extended at an angle into the air above the cat's scruff. The animal collapsed and whip-lashed Kay's arm, forcing her to release her sword. She had to turn around to extract Cleomede and that was when she saw her mom.

Cassie had her back to the darkened forest. Suddenly a thick and gnarled oak, draped in Spanish moss, came to life. A pair of boughs surged forward like giant arms, wrapping up the old woman in a tangle of wavering flora.

Cassie screamed. Kay ran to her mother, intent on hacking this plant creature to pieces, but the woods were too powerful. Kay's eyes locked on her mother's, and for a moment they could read each other's thoughts as if they were written in the air between them. Cassie's eyes said, I'm so sorry. And Kay's eyes said, I forgive you, Mama!

And then the tree creature retreated into the deep forest in a blur, and Cassie was gone.

Kay fell to one knee.

Artie, standing next to Mrs. Tibbins's corpse, wanted to run to his sister and comfort her, but other stuff was going on behind him.

“Artie!” Thumb and Bedevere yelled in unison.

Artie spun.

Schrödinger reared several feet away. He looked pretty angry that his kitty friend had been killed so easily. So did Lavery, who was on Schrödinger's back. The elf was still dressed in his jeans and D&D T-shirt, but he was no longer unarmed.

He had chosen his weapon, and it wasn't some stupid gaming die. Instead it was a really odd-looking silver rifle with a sword on the end of it, and he spun it over his head like a spear.

Turned out Lavery wasn't so geeky after all. In fact, he looked pretty darn tough.

Vorpal initiated the fight. Taking a massive leap, he walloped the tiger's cheek with his hind legs. He bounced again and landed near the cat's rear, where he took a deep bite out of one of its legs.

Following Vorpal, Thumb leaped on top of the cat so he could pester the elf at close range. In seconds Lavery was covered in cuts and lashes. Thumb took some lumps too, but the little knight was possessed. After one impressive, Yoda-like flurry of twists and turns, Artie swore that Lavery lost a finger. Then the elf screamed as Thumb did him the disservice of lopping off his long red ponytail in one blazing swipe.

Meanwhile, Bedevere was busy making huge, loping swings at the cat's face. As Vorpal tormented Schrödinger's hind legs, Bedevere brought down the claymore cleanly through the cat's right forepaw.

The cat roared just as Lavery's disembodied lock of hair fell to the ground next to Bedevere.

Bedevere smiled. It was obvious that he loved to fight.

But he smiled too soon, because at that exact moment Lavery fired his rifle at Bedevere's arm, which suddenly lay on the ground, quite separated from Bedevere.

The wounded knight howled. The sound tore Kay from the forest that her mom had disappeared into. When she saw the arm, she nearly fainted.

But not Artie. He bounded forward to join the battle. As Artie arrived, Lavery fell from the wounded feline, Thumb following. Vorpal occupied the cat while Artie stood next to Thumb so they could take on the elf.

Lavery fought hard. He made several deep gashes in Artie that instantly healed. He also managed to thump Artie in the ribs so violently that Artie felt them snap. These too healed instantly.

Still, it all hurt wicked bad.

But Artie and Thumb were too much for Lavery, and in a desperate flurry the elf was laid on the ground and disarmed. The young king lorded over him; the little man was at his head, the Welsh
wakizashi
's edge drawn tight over the skin of his neck.

Artie breathed hard as he demanded, “Witch-elf, bring Cassie back!”

Lavery's eyes were closed. His chest heaved.

He shook his head slightly. “I didn't take her!”

Thumb, wild with anger, said, “Let me kill this thing, sire.”

Artie seriously considered it. But something about Cassie and Kay—something about being even slightly-kinda-theoretically related to this wood elf—turned him off from this idea.

He looked over his shoulder at Kay, who comforted Bedevere, and turned back to Thumb.

“No. Enough killing and hurt for one day. We need to take care of Bedevere.”

Artie began to turn to his fallen knight, hoping that his sword's sheath and his healing skill might mend him like they had the wolf. Thumb continued to hold Lavery with his sword.

It was then that they all became very aware of something that didn't sound good at all.

And it was then that Lavery, his mouth full of blood-stained teeth, began to laugh.

“What is that sound?” Artie demanded of the elf.

The elflaughed more. Thumb pressed on his neck ever so slightly with his blade. The elf said nothing.

He didn't need to. An explosion went off somewhere under their feet as a section of grass about fifty feet away lifted up like a big trapdoor. Smoke rose from the scar in the ground. Somewhere from within the smoke came a series of deep, rabid chokes and burps.

Thumb moved away from the elf as he rushed to Artie.

Artie was momentarily dumbstruck.

“I think we're in trouble,” Thumb said ominously.

The smoke cleared. What remained, aside from a mound of upturned earth, was an elephant-sized wild boar.

“Yes. We're in trouble,” Thumb confirmed.

The animal's hair was wiry and shiny, his feet were completely bloodstained, and his nasty tusks were way longer than they should have been. He was an honest-to-goodness hellion.

Except that, for some reason, he had a dainty silver comb tied into the hair on the very top of his head, like a bow affixed to the head of a cute little lapdog.

“I have a bad feeling, guys,” Kay said from somewhere behind them.

“What
is
that?” Artie demanded as he and Thumb began to backpedal.

Thumb cleared his throat and said quietly, “That's Twrch Trwyth.”

Lavery continued to laugh quietly.

“It's Welsh for ‘divine boar,'” Thumb explained.

And then, before Artie could say anything, the boar charged.

Charged
isn't really the right word, though. It was more like he teleported in a blurry zipping motion.

Before any of them could react, the creature had passed Artie and Thumb and was standing over Kay and Bedevere, rearing his hideous head.

Except that Kay wasn't on the ground next to Bedevere anymore—she was up in the air, in the boar's teeth, screaming.

More quickly than he thought possible, Artie ran to

Kay, dragging Thumb with him.

The boar was wildly happy with the prospect of gobbling down Kay and didn't really notice Artie as he moved in under his chin.

A drop of his sister's blood hit Artie on the head.

They really,
really
had to go.

Artie hoisted Excalibur, drove it to the hilt into the ground and screamed, “
Lunae lumen!
”

Thumb grabbed Artie's leg, Artie touched his sister's foot, and Bedevere reached out with his remaining arm and grabbed Artie's hip.

Vorpal, still guarding the cat, wasn't going to make it.

The moongate crackled open and took them away, an express train to Merlin, where Artie hoped his knights would be healed.

The last thing he saw, past the electric glow of the moongate and the dripping jowls of the evil pig, was the slender form of a great green dragon, high above them, turning wheels in a purplish Otherworld sky.

The moongate snapped shut, its
light running over their bodies like a dissipating electrical current.

They'd been transported to a plain stone chamber, Excalibur driven to the hilt in the earthen floor. Next to its crossbar was the stone the wizard had kept as a marker for their safe return.

But of course, with a bloodied sister and a delirious, one-armed knight, Artie didn't feel all that safe.

He screamed, “Merlin!”

The wizard immediately whisked in. Artie noticed that he had a new tattoo, right in the middle of his forehead: a solid black circle about two inches across.

“Where have you been?” the wizard barked, but then, when he saw Kay's blood and the maimed Bedevere, he yelped, “Oh my!”

Merlin sprang into action. He unbuckled Excalibur's sheath from Artie's belt and floated into the air, holding the scabbard in front of him. He began to spin like a top, moving so fast that he blurred into a featureless gray column. Then he began to glow—blue, green, yellow. Suddenly everything went white. Artie felt disoriented and woozy. As the light began to fall away, things were completely rearranged.

Artie and Thumb were on one side of the room, separated from Kay and Bedevere by a glass partition. The wounded knights were strapped to beds that were raised past a forty-five-degree angle. Both Kay and Bedevere were fast asleep and hooked up to IVs.

Bedevere was shirtless and had a massive bandage wrapped around his torso, but his skin had a healthy hue. For having just been relieved of an entire arm, he looked pretty good.

Kay wore a hospital gown and was covered to the waist with a white sheet. Artie couldn't be sure, but he thought her gown was printed with a pattern of little baby-blue pointed wizard's caps. She appeared totally peaceful, as if nothing had happened to her.

Apparently they'd been transported to Saint Merlin's General Hospital.

Most striking, though, was the wizard. Merlin looked nothing like a doctor—or he looked exactly like one if you counted high priest witch doctors as doctors. He stood with his back to Artie and Thumb, still clutching Excalibur's healing sheath in both hands. His exposed skin was sheened with sweat, and some of his tattoos appeared to be rising and falling, as if parts of his skin were like a movie screen projected with a nest of writhing snakes.

Artie took a deep breath. Adrenaline still coursed through his system. He had a hard time not banging on the glass and demanding to know how Kay and his friend were doing.

As if he could read his mind, Thumb, back to his old miniature size, scrambled onto Artie's shoulder and said, “They're going to be fine, lad. Kay especially. She looks radiant, doesn't she?”

“Yeah, she does,” Artie said with a shiver. Then he turned to Thumb and said, “I'm so sorry about Vorpal.”

The little man smiled sadly. “I am too. No doubt that blackguard of an elf will be dining on him tonight.”

“Jeez, I hope not,” Artie said, a little shocked. Thumb didn't reply.

Eventually Artie stepped from the glass and looked around. Excalibur was at his feet, still pushed into the ground. Artie reached down and pulled it up. He bent again to pick up the stone, rose, and dropped it into a pocket.

The next room had some comfy chairs in it and a table set with water and snacks. A fire crackled in a big stonework hearth. Artie went into the room, Thumb still on his shoulder, and collapsed into one of the chairs.

After a while Artie took a deep breath and asked, “What just happened, Tom?”

Thumb jumped from Artie's shoulder and settled on the flat side of Excalibur, which lay in Artie's lap. “You saved our backsides, that's what just happened, lad. And now Merlin is fixing our comrades.”

“I know, but I'm talking about that pig thing, Lavery, the tigers… I just saw a dragon in the sky—maybe it was Tiberius? I mean, what the holy hand grenades is going on?”

Thumb sighed. “What's going on is you're the king of the two lands, and you are destined to see some strange things. I'm sorry if it's too much.”

“Yeah, I am too,” Artie said wistfully.

They sat in silence for a while. As Artie started to ask more about the boar, Merlin glided into the room wearing a long linen cloak.

Artie stood, and Thumb slid to the floor. The wizard returned Excalibur's magical scabbard and the boy-king strapped it on.

“Well, how are they?”

The wizard made a so-so kind of face, and Artie's heart skipped a beat. “Kay will be fine,” he said “Her wounds were superficial, and you got her here so quickly that by tomorrow she'll barely show any physical signs of damage. The Black Knight, however…”