The Lost City of Faar (41 page)

“Saint Dane, I mean Roder, escaped. He's got a skimmer.”

Spader was already submerging in the hauler. Uncle Press watched him sink below the surface, his mind turning. He then looked to the deck, grabbed an air globe, and threw it to me. We were going after him.

“I know where he's going,” he said.

“How? Where?” asked Yenza.

I wanted to ask the same thing, but I figured Uncle Press would tell me on the way. He grabbed his own air globe and one of the water sleds. I grabbed the other.

Yenza said, “I'll send a team of aquaneers with you.”

“No!” commanded Uncle Press quickly. “We can handle it.”

Something about the way Uncle Press snapped at Yenza made me realize where we were going. It all made sense. I should have figured it out myself. We were headed for the gate. Saint Dane was going to try and escape through the flume. It was the only option left to him. The aquaneers didn't need to see this. It was a Traveler thing.

“Ready?” asked Uncle Press.

“Close enough,” I answered.

We both splashed down and plunged below the surface.

“You know which way?” I asked.

Uncle Press looked around and said, “There!”

I looked and saw a thin trail of bubbles left by the hauler. We both triggered our water sleds and followed the trail like breadcrumbs in the forest.

“This could take hours,” I said to Uncle Press as we shot along side by side.

“Maybe,” he answered. “Or maybe Saint Dane knows about another gate.”

I hadn't thought of that. On Denduron there were two gates. Who's to say Cloral had only one? But neither of us knew for certain, so all we could do was follow the trail of bubbles.

“Spader is going to be an important ally to you, Bobby,” Uncle Press said. “But he's got to learn how to control his emotions.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” I said.

“Killing Saint Dane isn't the answer,” he continued. “I wish it were that simple, but it's not.”

“You mean . . . he can't die?” I asked.

“His body can die,” Uncle Press explained. “But he would just come back in another form.”

“What is he? Some kind of . . . ghost?”

“Not like you're thinking. His spirit is evil, Bobby. Killing his body won't stop him from his quest.”

“Okay,” I said, not really understanding. “What
will
stop his quest?”

Uncle Press didn't answer at first. I wasn't sure if he didn't want to tell me, or he didn't know. Finally he said:

“It won't end until he thinks he's won. That's when he'll fail.”

O-kay. That meant almost nothing to me. But I was used to that. The truth was, things were actually getting less confusing . . . sort of. When I thought back to how clueless I was the first time I hit the flume, I was amazed at how far I had come. But there was still a long way to go and much to learn. I had to accept that. So I didn't push Uncle Press anymore. Besides, getting too much information just freaked me out.

We traveled for a long time and my arms were getting tired from holding the water sled out in front of me. I kept having to change my grip, sometimes holding on with only one hand to rest my other arm. I didn't think it was going to be possible to keep going at this pace and hang on for the hours it would take to get back to the flume near Grallion.

And that's when my ring started to twitch. We were nowhere near the rock shelf where we had first arrived, so that could only mean one thing: There was another gate.

The bubble trail from Spader's hauler led us deeper. It was getting darker too. And cold. Up ahead I saw a rock formation rising up from the bottom. It looked kind of like a mesa you'd see in a Western movie, but of course it was underwater. It rose up to a flat top, with steep cliffs on either side. My glowing ring told me the gate must be hidden in this formation somewhere.

Something else made me think we were almost there. On
the far side of the rock formation I saw a fat stream of air bubbles rising toward the surface. Whatever was causing this was on the other side of the formation, out of our sight. It could have been Spader's hauler, but I didn't know why it would be spewing so much air. Uncle Press and I directed our water sleds toward the bubbles, and as soon as we passed over the top of the formation, we had the answer.

It was Spader's hauler all right, but Spader wasn't in it. The hatch was open and it was now filled with water. Jets of air spewed up from inside. But that wasn't the most dramatic part. There had been an accident. Okay, maybe accident wasn't the right word because it looked like Spader had meant to do what he did.

It was an unbelievable sight. Jammed between the bubble of the hauler and the rock wall was a dead quig. It wasn't as big as the others, but it looked plenty nasty just the same. Spader had no weapons to protect himself, so he rammed it with the hauler. The shark had fallen onto a ledge, with the hauler right on top of it.

“Nice shot,” said Uncle Press.

The quig's tail twitched. Maybe it wasn't dead after all. We kept our distance.

“So where's the gate?” I asked.

We had to be in the right place. Not only was my ring going nuts, but the quig was a dead giveaway. I hoped that it was close because Spader didn't have an air globe. Once he got out of the hauler, he was going to have to hold his breath. The two of us scanned the steep wall of the rock formation, but saw no opening.

Then I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It was a bubble no bigger than a golfball that rose up near one section of the wall.

“There!” I announced, and drove my water sled toward it.

When we got close to the wall I saw that the whole rocky face was draped with a curtain of red sea kelp. I tried to remember the exact spot where I saw the bubble rising and started pushing the kelp aside, looking for an opening. But there was nothing behind the kelp but rock. No opening, no tunnel, no gate. The whole time I was looking, I kept glancing over at the quig that was pinned by Spader's hauler. If that thing suddenly sprang to life, I was out of there.

Finally I grabbed a handful of kelp and pushed it aside to reveal a star dug into the rock.

“Got it!” I shouted.

Uncle Press joined me and we dug through the vines until we found a narrow opening. It wasn't much wider than a human body, but it had to be the gate. I don't know why I was feeling so brave all of a sudden, but I went first. I entered the dark crevice and pulled myself along by grabbing on to the rock walls. It only took a few seconds before I saw a shaft of light streaking down through the water ahead of me. A second later I surfaced into another underwater cavern. Uncle Press surfaced right behind me and we both pulled off our air globes.

I didn't know what to expect. What I really hoped was to find Spader there alone and safe, with no Saint Dane to deal with.

The cavern itself was much smaller than the one near Grallion. The pool of water that we now floated in was barely big enough for the two of us. Directly across from us was the flume. We were definitely in the right place. None of this was a surprise. What was hard to believe were the two people inside the cavern.

One was Spader. He was sitting on the rocky floor to our left, crying. And it was pretty obvious why. The other person
in the cavern . . . was his father. I had only seen the guy once, and he was dead at the time, but I remembered him. Dead guys tend to leave an impression. The question was, how could he possibly be here? Alive?

When Uncle Press and I threw off our air globes, Spader's father turned to us and said, “Look, your friends have arrived.”

The two sat together looking like they were having a quiet, father-son heart-to-heart. There must have been a hundred emotions fighting for Spader's brain time.

He looked at us through his tears and cried, “Hobey, Pendragon! He's alive! Saint Dane kept him here, like a prisoner! Can you believe it?”

The truth was, I couldn't. But my mind wasn't firing on all cylinders at that point either. It was Uncle Press who kept a clear head and gave Spader the bad news.

“It's not him, Spader,” he said. “Your father is dead. You saw him on Magorran. He was poisoned.”

Spader looked at Uncle Press in confusion. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have realized the truth on his own. But seeing his father alive again had done a number on his head. It sure messed with me for a second, but I soon understood the truth as well. It made me hate Saint Dane even more, if that were possible. He was truly an evil being to have done this to Spader.

“Oh, Press, you are such a killjoy,” Spader's father said. “And I thought you were dead.”

He turned to Spader and said with a sigh, “Your daddy
is
dead, Spader. And you will be too if you don't back off.”

Spader's brain wasn't computing. He watched with wide eyes as his father stood up, walked to the mouth of the flume, and announced,
“Veelox!”

Instantly the flume sprang to life with light and sound.
Spader's father then looked back to Spader and said, “Who knows? Maybe I'll find your mother along the way and kill her, too!”

Spader fell back against the wall like he had just been punched in the stomach. Spader's father then made a quick transformation back into Saint Dane. He then looked right at me and stared into my brain with such an intense look, I wanted to sink back under the water to escape it.

“Until next time . . .,” he said with an evil grin. Then with a slight bow, he was enveloped by the light and sucked into the flume. I looked at Spader. His eyes were huge. He was only now starting to realize what had happened.

Uncle Press and I pulled ourselves out of the pool of water and went to him.

“His evil reaches out in a lot of ways,” said Uncle Press. “He takes as much pleasure in causing you this kind of anguish as wiping out a territory or murdering hundreds of people. It's all the same to him.”

I could see Spader's anger growing. His look went from one of confusion, to realization, to rage.

“I'll kill him,” he seethed, and went toward the flume.

Uncle Press held him back. “Don't,” he said firmly. “This isn't about your own vendetta. This is about protecting the territories, and Halla.”

Spader shoved Uncle Press aside. He pushed him with such force that Uncle Press slammed into the rock wall and fell to the ground.

“I don't care about the territories, or Halla, or whatever it is you say I'm supposed to be fighting for. He killed my father and he will die for that.”

He strode toward the flume. That's when I heard the faint sound of the musical notes coming back.

“
Veelox
!” called Spader.

The light began glowing from the flume and the notes got louder. But something was wrong. I had heard them coming
before
he said “Veelox.” The flume had already been activated. Something was coming our way.

Uh-oh. I thought back to the mine tunnel on Denduron when Saint Dane had sent back a quig shark through the flume that nearly ate Loor and me. Spader stood in the mouth of the flume, expecting to be taken away, oblivious to the danger. The musical notes grew louder and light blew out from deep inside.

“No!” I shouted. “Something's coming back!”

I started to run for Spader, but Uncle Press grabbed me from behind and pulled me back so hard I tripped and fell on my butt.

“Spader, get out of there!” he yelled, and ran for the flume.

Spader wasn't moving. There was only one thing on his mind, and that was revenge. I scrambled back to my feet in time to see Uncle Press headed for Spader. The light was so bright now that whatever was coming would be here in a second. Spader stood at the mouth of the flume, waiting for a ride that wasn't coming.

What happened next took only a few seconds, but they were the longest seconds of my life. I will never forget them. They were seared into my brain forever. Uncle Press dove at Spader and knocked him out of the way. Spader crashed against the far wall, out of the light, away from the flume, and safe from whatever was coming back. But now Uncle Press stood there alone. He had saved Spader, but whatever was coming through the flume was going to hit him.

I heard a whistling sound, then a scream, and an instant later the rock wall opposite the tunnel exploded. At first I thought it was some kind of bomb that had come through, but there wasn't one big boom; there were several smaller, sharp cracks. Bits of rock were blasted off the wall and rained down on me. There was no mistaking what it was—these were bullets. It was like someone had fired a machine gun into the flume and the bullets traveled all the way through, only to be spit out here.

Another second went by and it was over. The lights stopped, the musical notes stopped, and the storm of bullets ended.

“Uncle Press!”

He was lying on the ground, right at the mouth of the flume. I ran to him to see if he had been hit, but I already knew the worst. There was no way that many bullets could come flying out of the flume and miss him completely. It would have to be a miracle. But since my life had been one miracle after another lately, that's what I was hoping for.

When I knelt down next to my uncle, I saw that my miracles had run out. Uncle Press had been hit. More than once. His eyes were unfocused, but they still had life. I looked quickly to Spader, who was crouched in the corner where he had fallen. He, too, looked at Uncle Press in shock. He had no idea what could have happened.

“Get the hauler,” I screamed at him. “We've got to get him back to Grallion.”

“Bobby, no,” Uncle Press said, grabbing my arm.

“You are
not
going to die!” I shouted. My uncle was lying in front of me, mortally wounded. My invincible uncle. The uncle I loved and who took me on more adventures than any kid deserved . . . and that was
before
I became a Traveler.