Dormia (35 page)

The smell of the cave was overpowering—a mixture of wet underbrush and rotten meat. Long-dead rabbits and mice lay
everywhere, their insides smeared across the dirt and rock. Alfonso could sense that the mother falcon was somewhere nearby in the darkness. He could hear her rustling her feathers and cooing gently. She didn't sound angry. Alfonso crept still farther into the cave. Then he saw it. On the floor in front of him sat a thick bramble of twigs and branches, carefully smoothed down in the middle. It was the falcons' nest. In the center, barely visible in the dim light, was a large egg.

Alfonso inched his way toward the nest. The mother falcon didn't seem to react. Alfonso drew closer still, until he was less than a foot away from the nest. He stared at the egg. It was, without a doubt, the strangest-looking egg that Alfonso had ever seen. Its shell was rough, almost like the bark on a tree, and it was carved with lines that curved and squiggled. Very cautiously, Alfonso reached out and touched it. Immediately, he knew it wasn't a real egg. It was far too heavy, as if perhaps it were made out of metal or even steel. Alfonso glanced back over his shoulder again. The mother falcon was still cooing peacefully. He returned his attention to the egg, and this time he picked it up and inspected it very closely.

The egg was split across the middle by a thick black line. Alfonso soon discovered that the egg could be twisted so that the top part of the egg rotated to the right and the bottom part of the egg rotated to the left. For a moment, Alfonso thought he could simply unscrew the top of the egg, but this wasn't the case. Whoever made this egg, and Alfonso suspected that he or she was a Dormian, had designed it far more cleverly than this. In some fashion or another, the egg was locked.
So how did it open?
Alfonso suspected that the answer had something to do with the intricate bark that covered the shell. Suddenly, it hit him. He
had to align the bark on the top half of the egg with that on the bottom so that all the lines and squiggles matched up perfectly.

Alfonso took hold of the egg and began twisting it very slowly in an attempt to make both sides match up. He twisted, and twisted, and twisted. Nothing. He couldn't find a position where it all came together. There had to be such a position, but Alfonso couldn't find it. The problem was that the pattern on the egg was so finely detailed that it would take a microscope or a high-powered computer to find the exact point where all the lines matched.

The only solution was for him to enter hypnogogia.

Alfonso swiveled his head so that he was looking back toward the mouth of the cave. A shaft of light was pouring inward and it was illuminating thousands of small dust particles that were hanging in the air. Alfonso locked his attention onto one of these particles. He watched it flutter for a few seconds. He studied the way that it collided with other particles and he almost felt as if he knew which way it was going to bounce and swirl ahead of time. Moments later, Alfonso was firmly in hypnogogia.

Alfonso immediately turned his attention back to the egg. His hyperaware eyes examined all the different lines and squiggles that covered the barklike outer layer of the egg. There were thousands of these markings—perhaps tens of thousands—and Alfonso focused on all of them. He slowly rotated the top of the egg a quarter turn to the right. Then, very delicately, he moved it another sixteenth of an inch. He tried moving it just a little bit more, but his fingers were too big and clumsy to make the final adjustments needed to line up both halves of the egg. He needed a very small tool.

What could he use? Time was of the essence—he could feel himself quickly tiring of the hypnogogic state. Quickly, he plucked a solitary hair from his eyebrow. He then used the thicker end of the hair to nudge the top half of the egg ever so slightly into position. Perfect! The two halves of the egg blended together seamlessly. Alfonso pulled on the two halves, and they came apart. Something metallic fell out and clattered against the floor of the cave. It was a brass skeleton key.

Alfonso left hypnogogia and grabbed the key. Now he had to find the keyhole. He glanced around the cave. It could be anywhere! He sat down and thought about this.

If the key was in the bird's nest, the keyhole would probably be nearby. Alfonso inspected the bird's nest and discovered that it moved around easily. He lifted one end off the ground and found a small, circular trapdoor with a keyhole on top. The brass skeleton key fit into the keyhole. Alfonso opened the trapdoor. There was just enough light to reveal a ladder descending into a narrow hole.

He sighed. The whole thing reminded him of the catacombs.

Very wearily, Alfonso grabbed hold of the rickety wooden ladder and started down. The ladder was only about ten feet long. Alfonso found himself standing in a dark and narrow space, no more than three feet across. He was standing on something slippery and crunchy. It was probably ice, but he wanted to make sure. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a book of matches.

He struck the match, and in the flare of the light he saw an ice-covered floor beneath him. Just before the match went out, he noticed what appeared to be a wall painting directly in front
of him. He lit another match and stared at the strange image: it was an old key, but the handle was a tree:

Alfonso lit another match. It lasted a few seconds and, during this time, he got another good look at the strange image.
What did it mean?
He thought about this for a few seconds, and then his eyes lit up in excitement.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "That must be it!"

He scrambled back up the ladder and into the cave. He looked about cautiously. The mother falcon was still cooing in her corner. Alfonso darted over to the mouth of the cave and stared down to the landscape below. He could see Hill, Bilblox, and Spack.

"HEY!" yelled Alfonso as loudly as he could. "Hey, down there!"

His three friends looked up.

"Bilblox!" he yelled. "Climb up with the bloom!"

"What? Why?" yelled Bilblox.

"Because," yelled Alfonso, "the bloom is a key!"

T
HOUGH BLIND
, Bilblox had lost none of his famed agility. It took him a bit longer to find holds on the rock face, but still, he made it up to the cave in just over a half-hour. Climbing while blind actually wasn't that tough. At least he knew that he was going in the right direction—up. There was only one tricky moment when he almost slipped off the rock, but as he dangled precariously he remembered the ash in the breast pocket of his jacket. Knowing that he had it—just in case—helped him climb with confidence. By the time he arrived, twilight had turned to evening, and the sky was dark.

On the ledge, Alfonso thanked Bilblox and told him to wait outside so he wouldn't interfere with the falcons. He then took the bloom inside. The plant was heavy—very heavy. It now
weighed so much that Alfonso really had to grunt and strain himself whenever he picked it up. As carefully as he could, Alfonso lugged the Dormian bloom into the cave and then down the ladder. He placed the bloom onto the small icy floor at the bottom.

Suddenly, the entire cave shook and pieces of rock dislodged from the ceiling. Small rocks hit Alfonso on the head. In his weakened, post-hypnogogia state, they were enough to knock him out. He slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Down below, Hill and Spack were running for their lives away from the cliff and toward the middle of the plateau. As soon as the rumbling began, boulder-size chunks of snow had begun falling all around them.

Boom! Smash! Kaboom!

When the rumbling stopped, and the cloud of snow had cleared, they discovered a gaping hole in the cliff face about thirty feet high and twenty feet wide directly beneath the falcon's nest. The hole revealed a simple but massive stone gate that looked quite different from the cliff. It was blue-gray and very smooth, as if polished. The only marking of any kind on the gate was the carving of a serpent whose body formed a giant
S.

"What just happened?" yelled Spack frantically.

"I'm not sure," mumbled Hill. "Some kind of avalanche..." His voice tapered off—his mind was elsewhere. In a tired panic, he scanned the cliff for the falcons' nest. He could think of only one thing: Alfonso.

"Well, well," said Spack in a gleeful tone. "This has to be it—that serpent is the insignia of Somnos. We've made it—we'll be sipping tea in Somnos in no time!"

"No," replied Hill. "First we find Alfonso and Bilblox."

Moments later, a deep grinding noise rose above the sound of the howling wind. The gate was opening. The massive stone door swung wide and a lone horse-drawn sled emerged. The sled was entirely black and pulled by a team of eight dazzling black stallions. The horses and sled stood out brilliantly against the backdrop of snow and ice.

Hill and Spack were speechless. They strained to see past the gates for a glimpse of Somnos, but it was too dark. In fact, it looked like a tunnel.

As the sled drew nearer, hundreds of soldiers poured out the stone gate. They were dressed in brown fur pants and matching fur coats. They marched in a strange formation—like an arrowhead, with only a few soldiers at the front. The rest were bunched tightly behind them. After an initial burst out of the gate, the formation smoothly pivoted and followed the path that the black sled had taken through the snow and rock-strewn plateau. In no time at all, the sled came to a stop directly in front of Hill and Spack. The soldiers encircled Hill, Spack, and the sled. A frigid wind gusted down off the mountains. The soldiers stood totally still. In fact, the only body parts that the soldiers moved were their eyelids. In unison, all of them opened and then closed their eyes every several seconds. It appeared as if they were all taking short, two-second naps together. They jumped back and forth between waking and sleeping, waking and sleeping, waking and sleeping—and their weird sleep cycle was perfectly synchronized.

"Dormian knights," Spack whispered in amazement. "The elite. Well, it's time to introduce ourselves."

She stood as tall as she could and coolly examined the hundreds of soldiers who surrounded them. She began speaking in a strange-sounding tongue. It was a mix of low, guttural sounds followed by high-pitched noises that sounded like the yelps of puppies when their ears are pulled. At first, Hill found Spack's speech to be totally foreign-sounding.

He closed his eyes to concentrate on the individual words. Gradually, they began to sound more and more familiar. Suddenly, Hill was overcome with memories of his mother. He could see her standing in the kitchen of their old home in Somnos talking to him in this very language. The language was Dormian. He had not spoken it, nor heard it spoken, in many decades—and he no longer understood what any of the words meant—but he felt certain that this was his native tongue.

Spack spoke for several minutes and ended with a burst of yelps so high-pitched that the others had to block their ears. In response, one of the soldiers stepped forward, uttered several quick yelps, and then bowed. This soldier was the same height as the others but his heavy fur coat was entirely white and he wore a bright green cap with the feather of a falcon sticking out of it.

"This is General Loxoc," explained Spack. "He's the leader of the Dormian knights, and he welcomes us. He says to follow his orders completely and without question."

"We'll do nothing until Alfonso is safely down from those cliffs," said Hill sternly. "This man may be a general, but we carry the Dormian bloom. I am far more concerned with my nephew's safety than I am in following orders."

The soldiers obviously understood English, because in reaction to Hill's declaration, they drew long, glitteringly sharp daggers from sheaths around their waists.

"That was
not
a good answer," replied General Loxoc in an icy-cold voice. His dark eyes stared intently at Hill. He spoke English with a strange Dormian accent. His words squeaked harshly, as if they were rusty and in need of oil. "Find the two in the cave and search the plateau and cliffs for any others," he loudly ordered. "We shall remain here and observe the foreigners." The soldiers broke apart like a light bulb smashed to the floor. They formed into groups of three and scattered across the plateau, running across the snow as easily as deer. Several groups began to scale the cliff that Alfonso and Bilblox had climbed. They were obviously experienced, because they climbed swiftly and soon disappeared from view.

"Now listen carefully, General," Hill said. "If your soldiers so much as harm a hair on Alfonso's head—"

"Don't be an imbecile," said General Loxoc coolly. "If he is the Great Sleeper, I am bound by sacred honor to protect him with my life."

***

When Alfonso finally came to, he found himself sitting in the backseat of the elegant black sled. Next to him was his uncle Hill. Across from him were Bilblox and Spack. Instinctively, Alfonso glanced around in search of the Dormian bloom.

"Don't worry," said Hill reassuringly. "It's tied to the back of the sled. But the soldiers searched you and found a dagger with a Dormian symbol on it. Where on earth did you get that?" He paused. "Did Kiril give it to you?"

Alfonso nodded, a bit embarrassed.

"I'm sorry—I should have told you .. " began Alfonso.

"Never mind," said Hill. "We're all safe and that's what matters. The soldiers carried you down from the cave. They carried Bilblox too, as if he were a small child. What a sight that was!"

"I think they know I'm blind," whispered Bilblox nervously. "The soldiers were mutterin' to each other when they carried me. I know they saw my white eyes!"

"Don't worry about that now," said Hill.

"Where are we?" asked Alfonso.

"In a tunnel of some sorts," said Hill. "They're taking us through the mountains to Somnos."

Alfonso looked around. The sled was making its way through a large passage with high vaulted ceilings and a stone floor covered in ice. The sled was surrounded on all sides by Dormian soldiers. There were no lights, other than the torches that some of the Dormian soldiers carried, and so it was nearly impossible to see much more than this.