The Shaktra (17 page)

South of Tutor was all sand, and the desert appeared to stretch far into the east, along the edge of Elnar. But on the north side of the great river was normal brown earth, and not too far north she saw a low stretch of hills that was cut in half with the southward plunge of Lestre. The softly sculpted hills, along with the river Elnar, appeared as natural barriers between the desert and the lands of the leprechauns and the elves. Paddy agreed with her observation.

“None of us come this far south unless we have to,” he told Ali.

“When Lord Vak was assembling his forces to invade Earth, did he drive his army up here?” she asked.

“Aye. We came over the bridge you see crossing Elnar, then hiked up here, along a path.”

The stone bridge he referred to was an imposing feat of engineering, for Elnar was three hundred yards across—three football fields set length to length. It was when Elnar joined with Lestre that the river swelled dramatically. But the sight of the bridge caused her to reflect on what type of tools the elementals possessed. For all she knew, the bridge had been built by magic alone. She questioned Paddy but he had no idea who had made it, only that it was very old.

“It was there when Paddy was a boy, and his pa was a boy,” he said.

The path Paddy had spoken of wound back and forth up the mountain, without actually circling it. It was broad, made up of well-worn marble stones, and Ali could easily see an army marching up it to the top of Tutor. She assumed that was where Lord Vak had positioned his force, just before he had opened the Yanti and materialized on Earth. It scared her to think how bitter their retreat from Tutor must have been, after she had sent them back. The last thing Lord Vak had promised her was that the next time they met, he was going to show no mercy. She had to either join him or die. . . .

Yet Ali did not feel that was the choice that had to be made.

The Shaktra was their common enemy.

She did not see any road between the base of Tutor and the bridge.

“It was there a month ago,” Paddy said when she questioned him. “The sand must have covered it. I told you, the desert has grown.”

“How could it have grown so quickly?” she asked.

Paddy shuddered. “The scabs.”

“What exactly are the scabs?”

“Best not to talk about them.”

“What if we ran into them? I need to know if they’re dangerous.”

“Very dangerous, Missy,” Paddy said in his most unhelpful manner.

“Not good enough. I need to know ahead of time how to handle them.”

“Use your fairy powers.”

“To do what?” she asked.

Paddy shrugged. “Kill them.”

“Is there any way to detect them before they attack?”

“We won’t see them until they come out of the ground.”

“Can they fly? Do they have weapons? Is their bite poisonous? Are there lots of them?”

“Yes,” Paddy said, nodding. “All those things.”

“Oh brother,” she groaned.

Ali turned to Ra, who stood in silent awe. She understood the glow in his eyes. Since exiting the cave, she had almost forgotten about the pain in her hand. Farble, for his part, also seemed happy to be back. But he kept clawing at his backpack, trying to sneak steaks when he thought she was not looking. She suspected that he had already finished off half his food. It did not matter, the meat would have spoiled anyway. She had to assume there was food to be had, at least when they got beyond the hills.

“I bet when you woke up this morning, you didn’t think you’d end up in a place like this,” she said to Ra.

He turned to her. “I have you to thank.”

“Don’t be silly. You have earned your keep already. But now that you’ve seen this place, you might want to head back. There’s no predicting what we’re going to run into on the road.”

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“North, into a land called Karolee, where the fairies live. There’s an island there called Uleestar, where I think I can get some answers.”

“What kind of answers are you looking for?” Ra asked.

Ali shook her head. “It’s a long story, I don’t have time to tell it all now. Just know that my mother has been kidnapped, and that I’m pretty sure she’s being held hostage in this dimension.”

“Did the fairies kidnap her?”

“It’s complicated,” she said, thinking of Karl Tanner, Drugle, who used to serve on her high court, before joining forces with the dark fairies and the Shaktra.

Ra was sympathetic. “I would be honored to help you find your mother.”

His comment touched her. She pointed to the two miles of sand that separated Tutor from Elnar and the stone bridge. “Paddy says creatures called scabs live in that sand, and that we need to avoid them at all costs. We’ll climb down and cross as fast as we can. But I think you had better be ready with your bow and arrow at all times.”

“Understood,” Ra said.

She grinned. “I think you’re getting used to taking orders from a girl.”

“As you like to say in America, don’t push it.”

Ali patted Farble on the back. “You all right?”

He nodded. “Hungry.”

“Hungry? I just saw you eating!”

The troll bowed his head, embarrassed. “Not hungry.”

They climbed onto the stony road, started down the mountain. Although the path wound vigorously—in an obvious attempt to take the sting out of the decline—Ali still found the way steep. It reminded her how tough elementals were compared
to humans, and how badly it might go for humanity if they ever invaded Earth. Despite mankind’s high-tech weapons, the elves, the dwarves, and their partners were a determined foe. When she had spoken to Lord Vak, he had acted like they had no choice but to take over the Earth.

The climate was warm and humid; there were odors in the air that reminded her of candy stores and flower shops rolled together. The air was richer in oxygen—each breath seemed to satisfy the lungs more. The descent was jarring to the bottom of her feet, but she felt herself carried along by the dual forces of gravity and a wonderful sense of adventure. What Ra had said in Africa was true. This journey was the chance of a lifetime. She just hoped that at the end of it she would find her mother.

Halfway down the road, she felt the ground move, a minor tremor. Indeed, it was identical to the quake she had felt in the cave in Pete’s Peak. It made her wonder if Tutor had the potential of transforming itself into an active volcano.

They took three miles to descend one mile, to reach the flat sandy plain. The latter started suddenly, the road just disappeared. Ali asked Paddy about wind and sandstorms. The leprechaun looked worried and shook his head.

“The scabs spread the desert,” he repeated.

“So they’ve always been here?”

His answered surprised her. “They came a few years ago.”

“Where did they come from?”

“Some say the sea, Missy.”

“That makes no sense. They come out of the sea and they spread desert?”

Paddy eyed the sand nervously. He made Ali feel as if the three miles to the water and bridge was a hundred miles. “Some say they were
made
, Missy,” he said.

Ali paused. “On the Isle of Greesh?”

Paddy nodded. “Must keep them off our heads. Important.”

“What do they do if they get on your head?”

The leprechaun shuddered. “Eat your brains.”

Ali turned to Ra. “What do you think?” she asked.

Holding his bow ready, Ra peered in the direction of the bridge. “This sand might not be deep. If we stay on the road, it’s possible we might avoid these creatures.”

“What road? I can’t see any road,” she said.

“It must be there, buried beneath the sand. It should run straight across, between here and the bridge.”

Ali took out the fire stones, balanced them in her left palm. If she could’ve erected a force field around them, they wouldn’t have had to face such danger. Radrine’s shot had cost them dearly. As it was, she was not sure how much power she could generate in the stones. Her initial excitement was cooling, she felt exhausted. It had been ages since she had slept.

Yet Ali drew herself up, tried to look confident in front of her friends.

“We’ll run across the sand,” she said. “We’ll stay close together, keep our eyes open. Anyone see anything, they shout out. Ready?”

Paddy and Farble hemmed and hawed at the edge of the sand. Farble must have known about the scabs, too. The troll kept trying to grab her hand. She had to explain that she had to keep her hands free to use the fire stones. In the end, she decided to put them between her and Ra. The move pacified the elementals only slightly.

“Now, on the count of three, we go,” Ali said.

“The troll can’t count up to three,” Paddy muttered.

“He’ll get the idea. One . . . Two . . . Three!” she shouted.

They ran, or more accurately, they
tried
to. The sand was extremely fine, plenty deep. It slipped beneath their feet like coarse
liquid. They could have been attempting to sprint through mud, and in fact pushing too hard caused them to slip more. Ali discovered a medium pace was best, but even that was exhausting. The sand seemed alive, hungry; it did not want them to leave before it was sated. She felt as if she were trying to climb a wall, and falling off a cliff, at the same time.

They were halfway to the river when the scabs attacked.

The first one came out of the sand on her right, thirty feet away. At first she was not impressed. It looked like a lump of jellyfish with a burnt top. Then its lower portion began to spin quickly—the tentacle part—while the top inflated with air, vigorously sucking it in, making a farting sound, growing in size until it was as large as a basketball. Ali could not figure out how the bottom could spin while the top remained still.

She was not an engineer, but she knew that such a combination of moves would require spokes and an axis—things nature did not make. Then she remembered Paddy’s remark. The scabs had probably been
designed
and bred on the Isle of Greesh. They were not natural at all.

The spinning tentacles gave the creature a hovercraft capability. Slowly, the thing began to lift off the sand, spreading dust all around. The latter was a problem. The single creature stirred up enough sand to sting their eyes as it began to move toward them.

Ali told Ra to shoot it.

Ra let fly an arrow.

The
slow
-moving scab suddenly jerked to the side.

The arrow missed. Once more the scab started in their direction, but not all of its lower portion spun. It still dangled long tentacles. These were covered with red suction cups that oozed a slimy green fluid.

Behind them, two more scabs poked out of the sand and began to inflate.

Ali turned to Paddy. “Can we outrun these things?”

For a leprechaun, he was awfully white. “Don’t think so, Missy.”

They tried anyway. The scab seemed to respond to their running. It accelerated toward them. Ali felt they had to stop and face it. As choking dust spread around them, the creature made a diving swoop over their heads. Its purpose was obvious: to drop down on top of their skulls, to get its tentacles into their mouths and nostrils and ears. But it missed on its initial pass, and Ali took aim with her fire stones. Off to her left, she could see the two other scabs rising off the ground, while another three stuck their gross bodies out of the sand.

Ali fired. She was happy just to get off a shot, but the beam was feeble. It hit the scab; the creature seemed to recoil, to lose elevation. Unfortunately, it did not fall, it did not die. Ali went to shoot at it again when Ra called out.

“Behind you!” he cried.

Ali whirled, discovered a scab she didn’t even know about swooping toward her head. She barely managed to get off a shot. It was almost straight above her, three feet from her hair. It was possible the creature’s underbelly was sensitive. Her blast was as weak as her first, but the scab convulsed in midair—a gory pink balloon touched by a match—and it dropped to the ground, just missing her.

“Can you hit any of them?” she cried to Ra.

“Trying!” he shouted back. She saw him miss again, just as she turned to face two more swooping scabs. Yet these guys seemed to have taken note of their comrade’s fall. They did not try for her, but for Farble and Paddy. The troll and leprechaun did the worst thing possible. They panicked and ran from her side, toward the bridge. As a result, she had to shoot at the scabs from behind, and at a greater distance. She had to hit each one three
times before they went down. But by then there were over
twenty
scabs crawling out of the sand.

“Stop!” she yelled at Farble and Paddy, and there was power in her voice. They froze in midstride. Ali and Ra hastened to them, and put their hands over their eyes as a miniature dust storm rose around them. The scabs must have had intelligence, or else profound instincts. Ali had killed three, and they were clearly not used to that. Now it appeared they wanted to act as a group. With cunning they surrounded them in a broad circle, then—as more of their partners emerged from the sand and rose up, spinning dust and farting the air they swallowed—they began to tighten their circle. Ali counted thirty. It might as well have been three hundred. Farble whimpered and Paddy started to weep.

“Missy!” he cried.

“Don’t be afraid!” she said.

Farble moaned. “Geea . . . Geea.”

“It will be all right!” she snapped.

The scabs’ circle went from sixty feet across to thirty, while another ten of the creatures joined the fray. The scabs angled their bottoms in their direction, hitting them with more wind, more dust. Their odor was nauseating: moldy meat soaked in boiling vinegar. They chirped as they closed, making an odd clicking sound, probably gloating over how tasty the four bipeds looked. Ali could not imagine what it would feel like to have one drop on her head and begin to eat her brains.

“What do we do?” Ra asked, his back to her.

Ali focused her gaze hard on her side of the enveloping circle. The scabs seemed to feel her, they slowed their approach, yet they did not back off. Even at full power, she realized, she was not going to be able to shoot all of them.