The Lost City of Faar (18 page)

But we had done something else, too.

A few seconds later I saw four splashes next to the ship. Four divers had just hit the water, and they were coming after us. Yeah, you guessed it. The raiders saw our flare.

“Uh-oh,” said Spader. “Hadn't thought of that.”

“We can't get back to Grallion,” I said. “They'll get us for sure.”

“Then let's give 'em a chase,” said Spader as he grabbed his water sled.

We both powered up and sped off along the ocean floor headed for . . . I didn't know where. We flew over the bottom, inches from the coral, looking for a place to hide. It was a good thing that Spader and I had played all those games underwater, because my skills at handling the water sled were pretty good. Without slowing down, I looked back and saw the four raiders were right after us. They had water sleds too. I wondered if one of them was Saint Dane.

As we flew along the ocean bottom something caught my eye off to our right. Something was swimming alongside us, shadowing us. I only caught a quick glimpse because whatever it was, it darted below the coral. But what I saw didn't make sense. It couldn't have been a person because it was moving too fast. It might have been a big fish, maybe even a quig, but quigs were gray and black. This thing was green, like the water. Weird.

“The kelp!” shouted Spader.

I forgot about my strange vision and looked ahead to see the beginnings of the tangle of red sea kelp that grew from the coral reef and stretched up to the surface. If we could get into that dense jungle, we might have a chance of losing the raiders.

“Stay close,” commanded Spader. “Don't want to get separated in there.”

We hit the dense kelp but didn't slow down. The slimy leaves whipped at us as we sped by. Imagine running full tilt through a wet field of corn. That's what it was like. For a moment I thought we were home free, but it didn't last long because a second later, we popped out of the far side. Bad news. The kelp forest wasn't anywhere big enough to hide us. We had to keep going.

And that's when it happened. It was just a slight movement. I wasn't even sure what it was at first, but a moment later it hit me. It was my ring. It was getting warm and the gray stone was starting to glow. That meant that we were getting near the gate. I looked up ahead and saw the shelf of rock where the quig had nearly gotten us. It was the rock formation that held the gate to the flume. I knew instantly that it was our best and only hope. Spader was going to have to learn about being a Traveler sometime. I couldn't think of a better way to do it and save our butts at the same time.

“Follow me!” I shouted to Spader and changed my direction toward the rock overhang. Spader didn't question. He followed. The thought of running into a quig flashed through my head, but right now it was the least of our worries. When we were just about to shoot under the rock ledge, Spader yelled, “Stop!”

I did. He glided up to me and said, “Don't want to get trapped under there, mate. They'll have us for sure.”

I looked back toward the kelp forest in time to see the four raiders break out of the vegetation and spot us.

“Do you trust me?” I asked.

“Well sure, mate, but—”

“Then c'mon!”

I hit the throttle and shot under the rock ledge. I did a quick look back to see if Spader was following. He was. For a
change I could take the lead and he believed in me enough to follow. Now all I had to do was deliver.

The rock ceiling looked different, but only because the last time I was here I was going the other way. But that wasn't a good excuse for being lost. I had to find the gate. The raiders had already gotten to the rock ledge and were still coming fast. All they had to do was follow our bubbles and they'd have us. I could only hope that I'd find the gate before I hit the dead end of rock.

I started to panic. I was lost. I didn't know where the gate was. This rock ledge was huge. We could swim around here for hours without finding it. What was I thinking? I had led us into a trap. I had to calm down and think. Where was it?

The answer hit me instantly. I had been in such a rush to get in here that I wasn't thinking straight. There was an easy way to find the gate. It was my ring. I swept my hand out in front of me and saw that the stone would dim or grow brighter, depending on the direction I pointed. I carefully judged when the ring was shining brightest and that told me our course. It was like following a compass. I took off in that direction and seconds later, I saw it. The round hole in the ceiling was only yards ahead. I aimed my water sled toward it and gunned the engine.

A quick thought went through my mind. Maybe I shouldn't be leading the raiders to the gate and the flume. But I reasoned that it didn't make a difference. If it was Saint Dane behind us, he already knew about the gate. If it wasn't Saint Dane, then it wouldn't matter if the raiders found it. The flume didn't work for non-Travelers. No, this was the right move for all sorts of reasons.

I broke the surface inside the cavern and looked around quickly. It was exactly the same as we had left it. A moment
later, Spader broke the surface next to me and looked around in wonder.

“Hobey, mate! How did you know about this?”

I pulled off my air globe and tossed it onto the ledge. I threw my water sled there too. There was no time to explain things to Spader. The raiders would be here in a second. So I yanked off his air globe and threw it and his water sled to the side. The two of us floated in the middle of the pool, treading water.

“I hope there's another way out of here,” he said.

I laughed at that. I actually laughed.

“Spader,” I said. “You have no idea . . . but you soon will.”

I glanced up at the opening to the flume. I counted on the fact that we didn't have to climb up the sheer rock face to get there. We didn't have time.

“I'll ask you again,” I said. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course, mate, but you better come up with something quick or we're going to have our own natty-do right here and—”

“Zadaa!”
I shouted.

The flume came to life. The familiar bright light shot from the opening. The jumble of musical notes grew closer. Spader looked up in awe.

“Hobey, Pendragon,” he said softly. “Where did you say you were from again?”

The water around us started to swirl. The light from the flume grew bright and the two of us were pulled up, together, out of the waters of Cloral.

A second later, we were on our way to see Loor.

END OF JOURNAL #6

SECOND EARTH

“Why did he go to Zadaa?”
huffed Courtney. “Why didn't he bring Spader here to Second Earth? This is his home!”

Mark knew the answer. Loor was a Traveler. She would be able to help Bobby explain things to Spader. Things were getting hairy on Cloral and Loor was the kind of person you went to when things got hairy. Mark felt that Courtney should have realized this, but her jealousy toward Loor was clouding her thinking. Not that he'd point that out to her. No way.

Courtney stood up angrily and shoved the pages back at Mark.

“Well, if Bobby Pendragon thinks his new friend can help him better than we can, then
good luck
is all I have to say!”

“C'mon, Courtney,” said Mark softly. “You know he did the right thing.”

Courtney looked as if she wanted to argue, but backed off. She knew.

“Yeah, well, whatever,” she said with a pout.

Mark now faced a dilemma. He had to tell Courtney about Andy Mitchell. He made a dumb mistake by leaving the page in
the boys' bathroom and because of it, Mitchell knew about the journals.

“I'm sorry, Mark,” added Courtney. She had calmed down. “You're right. You've been right about everything from the beginning. It's good that one of us thinks straight. At least now we know why these pages are different than the last ones. He wrote this journal on Zadaa, not Cloral, right?”

Mark wanted to scream. Courtney Chetwynde relied on him to be the brains of this duo and right now he was feeling like anything but. She trusted him and listened to his advice, which is more than anybody else ever did, except for Bobby sometimes. It killed him to have to admit he had screwed up royally.

“You okay?” asked Courtney, sensing that something was wrong.

“Yeah, sure, I'm f-fine,” answered Mark quickly. “Just worried about Bobby is all.”

“You'd better get those pages back to your house before anything else happens.”

Mark looked at Courtney, saw the trust in her amazing gray eyes and made a decision. He couldn't tell her about Andy Mitchell. At least not yet. He wanted to work this out on his own rather than risk losing Courtney's faith. This was his problem and he was going to have to deal with it.

So he gathered the pages of Journal #6 together, put them in his pack, and left for home. Normally, once they finished reading a journal, Mark would stash it in the safest place he knew—an ancient rolltop desk in his attic. His parents hadn't gone up there in years and Mark had the only key. He wore it on a chain around his neck just to be safe. Every precaution had been taken. As soon as a journal was finished, it went into the desk.

Tonight was a little different though. Mark crept up to the attic and unlocked the desk drawer. He placed Journal #6 inside next
to the brown rolls of parchment that were Bobby's journals from Denduron. But rather than lock them up, he took out Journal #5—the journal Andy Mitchell had seen the first page of. This was the journal he would show Mitchell. He hoped that maybe this would be enough. Maybe Mitchell would think it was all a crazy joke and get bored after reading these pages. It was the best Mark could hope for.

He spent a sleepless night, wondering how he was going to get out of this predicament. Sharing the journals with Courtney made sense. Courtney was Bobby's friend. Courtney could be trusted. But Andy Mitchell was different. He was an idiot. Worse, he was a bully-idiot. There was no telling what Mitchell would do with the information about Bobby once he got it. But as hard as he tried to figure a way out, he just couldn't find it. He had no choice but to show Mitchell the pages tomorrow.

At school the next day Mark did his best to avoid Mitchell. He held out the desperate hope that Mitchell had forgotten all about the journal page he'd found in the boys' bathroom. Mark got through the entire day without even seeing his nemesis. His hopes started to rise. He told himself that Mitchell didn't care enough to even show up for school! Maybe this would all blow over.

Wrong. No sooner had Mark stepped out of his last class than he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

“Time for a little homework, aye, Dimond?” chuckled Andy Mitchell.

Mark's heart sank. The guy hadn't forgotten at all. It was time to deal with the devil. Mark shrugged Mitchell's hand off his shoulder and said, “Let's go.”

Mitchell snorted and chuckled. He made Mark's skin crawl, but there was no way out of this. So Mark led him up to the boys'
bathroom on the third floor. No one would bother them there, especially not Courtney. After her run-in with Mr. Dorrico, they decided not to read the journals there anymore. This was the best place Mark could think of to get some privacy, and to avoid Courtney. He felt guilty as hell about it, but there was no other way.

When they got inside Mitchell stood with his hand out. Mark stared at him. Mitchell snorted back a good one and hawked a lougie into a urinal. Mark nearly retched. He had a fleeting thought of barging past Mitchell and running away, but that would have been useless. No, this was the only way. So reluctantly he reached into his pack and pulled out the roll of green, slick paper that was Journal #5.

Mitchell reached out to grab it, but Mark pulled it away.

“You gotta read it here and you gotta give it right back when you're done,” Mark said. Mitchell wasn't used to being ordered around like this, especially not from a geek like Mark Dimond. But Mark was intense. He was not fooling around. Mitchell snorted and chuckled, again.