Kendra Kandlestar and the Shard From Greeve (10 page)

ALL TOO OFTEN WE TELL OURSELVES small falsehoods to make ourselves feel better about our behavior. I can have another piece of chocolate—we might say—for I ate most of my supper. Or, I’ve worked on my homework long enough—now I can watch TV. And all the while we know that we really shouldn’t have another piece of chocolate or watch any more TV, but those are the things we really want to do, and so we happily tell ourselves little lies to justify our actions.

And so it was with Kendra now. She told herself that she had kept Greeve’s shard because she needed to protect her friends from its dark power. The truth, of course, was that Kendra wanted to keep the shard to herself. She liked the feeling of power it granted her, and she was not about to share it.

For the first few days of their quest, the Eens traveled at a hard and heavy pace, for Jinx wanted to put as much distance as possible between them and Captain Rinkle. They did not see the vile Een, but even so, they kept their pace up. After two days, they reached a river that served as the border to the mighty Fengir, that great stretch of forest that stood between them and the Seas of Ire. Search as they might, they could find no crossing, so at last, Jinx built a small makeshift raft with sticks of wood and a bit of twine. By the time they reached the opposite bank, the raft had crumbled apart, but it had served its purpose, and so they continued on their way, trudging with trepidation beneath the somber shadows of the Fengir.

The way was cold and dark, and they suffered for supplies. After all, they had not prepared for a journey of such length, especially in the late autumn. At night, they slept in the hollows of trees or in small rock crevices, huddling together for warmth. For food, they subsisted on the meager Een cake that Professor Bumblebean had provisioned, along with wild roots and nuts.

“What do you think they’re doing back home right now?” Oki asked one miserable, chilly night as he nibbled on a bit of Een cake.

“Sitting round a warm fire, sipping tea, and telling tales of old,” Jinx mused.

“I wish I had a cup of tea,” Oki said. “Something to warm my whiskers at least. As for the tales—well, I have my own
tail.
”

“Your puns are growing less inventive by the day,” Jinx told the mouse. “I think your brain is starting to freeze.”

“Everything is freezing here,” Kendra declared.

“We’re headed south,” Jinx said. “Maybe we’ll leave the frost behind us.”

But the next morning, they awoke to a skiff of snow on the ground.

The forest, of course, harbored many perils. One night, several days into their journey, a hungry fox decided the Eens would make a quick and easy snack, but he soon found himself on the wrong end of Jinx’s poker. With a few well-placed jabs, she sent the poor creature yelping and scampering back to its den to lick its wounds and face nightmares of insects wielding weapons of steel.

Then, a few days after the fox incident, the company stumbled upon a ragtag camp of Goojun warriors. The small, toadlike beasts were perhaps more surprised at this encounter than our Een adventurers, but it was Goojun instinct to attack, and attack they did. They had little fight in them, however; it was obvious that they had recently suffered in some terrible battle, for they sported all manner of cuts and bruises. As such, Jinx made quick work of the creatures, swinging her poker and beating them so soundly that, in the end, it was all the slurping Goojuns could do to flee.

There was one more troubling problem that the three companions encountered as they journeyed through the Fengir: They could not shake the feeling that they were being followed. It was Oki who sensed it first; Jinx was quick to dismiss it as jitters, but she came to believe Oki after being awoken one night by the snapping of a twig. To the grasshopper’s trained ear it sounded like a footstep, but a quick search of the area revealed no one.

“It might be Captain Rinkle,” Kendra suggested.

“He wouldn’t sneak about,” Jinx countered. “He’d just come storming in, swords a-swinging.”

They started keeping watch that night, but found no further evidence of a tracker. If someone was following them, he was now using greater stealth.

During the first weeks of the journey, Kendra committed to practicing magic with her Eenwood. Each night, after they had taken a humble meal, she would sit quietly and try to tune her mind to the wand. This met with little success, for she continued to struggle with settling her mind. It did not help to feel the shard pulsing from within her pouch, so close and ever-present; it gnawed at her mind, like a termite feasting on wood. Kendra simply could not focus.

Finally, one night after Oki and Jinx had fallen asleep, Kendra set aside her wand and reached into her pouch. Using an edge of her cloak, she pulled out the shard and gazed upon its dark wonder. Just the sight of it brought back the thrilling sensation of using it. How easily the shard had yielded its power! It was so unlike her wand.

If I could learn to harness the shard’s magic, nothing would stop me
, Kendra told herself.
I’d be a sorceress to reckon with.

There was another voice in her mind, of course, one that said:
This is a darker magic, Kendra. Do not fool with it! Give the shard to Oki, like you said you would.

Kendra frowned at this thought. The second voice was right, of course. But the shard, with all its virulent power, was somehow just too enticing to ignore.
I may need it to rescue Kiro, she finally told herself. That’s the only reason I’m keeping it.

But, of course, this too was a lie—and so the battle inside her tiny Een heart continued to simmer.

Six weeks after they had begun their journey, the Eens found themselves witnesses to the war that Effryn had spoken of. They broke through the last of the Fengir to find themselves on a high and rocky ridge; down below was a wide-open plain where two great armies of monsters had amassed, Izzards on one side, Orrids on the other.

Even from such a distance, Kendra and her companions could feel the tension of impending combat. They could hear the booming war drums, smell the smoke of torches, and see the glint of swords and spears and other fierce weapons. In the late autumn light, it was like gazing upon a sea of claws and horns that murmured with snarls, grunts, and groans.

“This will be a messy battle,” Jinx murmured. “And to think, Oki, all of this over the shattered remains of an ancient cauldron. If only those beasties knew you were carrying one of the fragments!”

“EEK!” Oki cried. Even though there was no way that the monsters could spot him high up on the rocks, the little mouse quickly scampered to take cover behind Kendra’s cloak. “Don’t think of pickles! Don’t think of pickles!” he squeaked. “Oh, Kendra, do you think those monsters know the shard is so near?”

“No,” Kendra replied. “We’re safe up here.”

“All the same, we don’t need to linger,” Jinx declared. “We’ll stick to the ridge here and skirt the battlefield. Hopefully we’ll leave these Orrids and Izzards behind before the fighting starts.”

They found a narrow path along the ridge and set off again, three tiny dots against the rocks. As Jinx had hoped, they had left the battlefield behind by sunset, and which side was to emerge victorious in the terrible clash of monsters, they never knew.

The next morning, they trudged onward towards the sea. By noon they could taste the salt in the air, and they knew they were nearing the coast, for even though the three companions had never been to the sea themselves, they had all heard tales of it, mostly from Professor Bumblebean, who had studied about such things in his many books.

By late afternoon the great sea came into view. Kendra had never imagined a body of water so wide and vast. It made her dizzy just to look at it.

“We have to cross
that?
” Oki asked. “It will take a thousand years!”

In the distance they could see a narrow peninsula of rock that jutted out into the sea like a long and crooked fishing hook. Even though it was so far away, they could see that the peninsula was dotted with buildings and squat towers.

“That must be Ireshook,” Kendra declared. “We’re not far at all now!”

They set off at a more vigorous pace, hoping to reach the town before nightfall. But it seemed it was not meant to be, for only a few moments later, they turned a bend in the path and found themselves confronted by a thick wall of rock. On one side of their path was a sheer cliff, dropping down into a gorge; on the other was a mountain wall, shooting straight upward. They were stuck; it seemed their only option was to turn and go back the way they had come.