Shadows on the Stars (24 page)

“What did you say?” demanded Elli. “
Who
was guarding it?”

Seth blinked at her innocently. “The lout with the pale hands? Bad tomato, rotten to the core.” His brow and bald head wrinkled as he tried to remember something. “Name was . . . um, Kul, or Kil, or—”

“Kulwych!” Elli, like the others, caught her breath. This fellow Seth, fool that he was, might have actually happened across the crystal! In that instant, her hopes rekindled.

“Well?” The jester rubbed his hands together and danced another little jig. “What would you like me to do? Juggle some fish, perhaps?”

“No,” answered Elli breathlessly. “We need you to tell us where you saw this evil crystal.”

“That thing?” He waved in the direction of the dragon guards. “As I said, you wouldn’t want to go there.”

“Where?”

He smiled meekly. “Shadowroot.”

Elli blanched. She looked over at Brionna, who seemed no happier. Then, her voice resolute, she declared, “It makes sense that the sorcerer would go there to hide. Well, if that’s where he is, then that’s where we must go.”

“Wait a second.” Lleu studied the jester suspiciously. “There aren’t any portals in Shadowroot, at least none that I know about. How did you get there? And how long ago?”

Seth spun his cane nonchalantly. “Oh, just a couple of weeks ago. And I got there by the portal in the upper reaches of Fireroot, the one that overlooks Shadowroot as well. Small matter of a gobsken fortress to avoid, but they haven’t the humor to appreciate a good jester anyway.”

“Is that so?” asked Lleu, his gaze boring into the jester’s head. He turned to Elli. “Something about this doesn’t seem right to me.”

“What?”

The priest scratched his head. “I don’t know, but . . . I’m just not sure if we should listen to anything this jester says.”

“Very sensible,” commented Seth. “Even
I
wouldn’t listen to anything I have to say.”

Elli frowned and said to Lleu, “What choice do we really have? He may be wrong, or crazy, or both—but he could also be right.” She looked down at Nuic. “What do you think?”

“Hmmmpff,” the sprite said, frowning. “I think it’s complete lunacy to follow this madman anywhere! Which is why it appeals to you, I should add.” He peered at her with his liquid purple eyes. “But the truth is, you’re right. We have no choice.”

She bent down and picked him up from the ledge. Wet though he was, she pulled him close to her chest. “Let’s hope we survive this day.”

“I’ll just settle for this hour, Elliryanna.”

She turned to Lleu and Brionna. “Any ideas how we can get ourselves over to that portal without getting caught?”

The tall priest nodded thoughtfully. “What we need is some sort of distraction.” He looked at the silver-winged falcon perched on his shoulder. “Wouldn’t you agree, Catha?”

In answer, the bird screeched loudly. Then she leaped into the air and took flight.

21
•
Swallowed

Catha went right to work. Screeching wildly, the silver-winged falcon flew down the side tunnel and around the central cavern, diving at waterbirds and surprised dragon guards, causing a considerable stir. The excitement really picked up when she clawed the eye of one dragon, who nearly leaped out of the water and slapped the face of another guard with his great tail. An all-out brawl ensued. Dragons mauled each other with their teeth, smashed ribs and skulls with their tails, knocked huge holes in the cavern walls with their bodies—and sprayed each other with freezing blasts of ice.

Before long, gulls, cranes, cormorants, egrets, kingfishers, flying crabs, and several huge albatrosses joined in the fray, shrieking as they attacked anything that moved. Roars and cries echoed in the tunnels, along with the resounding crunch of icebergs colliding. Soon it was so noisy that no one could possibly hear Elli and her companions, including the jester, swimming to the portal.

Even so, their plan almost failed. Not because of their captors, but because of Shim. It was no easy feat to get him to end his nap and plunge right into the cold seawater. Or to get him to swim over to the place where underwater flames flickered so strangely, throwing bizarre shadows on the tunnel walls. Then came the challenge of getting him—as well as everyone else—to dive down to the shimmering green fire.

Finally, they succeeded. Following Seth, all of them made the dive. Even as Hargol’s roars of absolute outrage echoed around his lair, the water rippled with the kicks of Lleu, last to leave the surface. Holding Catha in his arms, he swam out of the dragons’ lair—and down to the portal.

A large air pocket, smelling as resinous as a grove of evergreen trees, separated the flames below from the water above. On a ledge of black rock within the pocket, the companions gathered, dripping like freshly caught fish. Elli glanced anxiously up into the water, knowing that a dragon’s body could appear at any moment.

“Quick now,” declared Brionna, as green firelight danced along her braid. “Bend your thoughts toward the place we want to go. And think of nothing else.”

Nuic, riding in Elli’s arm, looked over at Shim and turned his most sardonic orange. “For some of us, thinking of nothing is easy. It’s thinking of
something
that’s hard.”

Shim shook his mop of white hair, spraying everyone else with drops. “I knows you is making funs of me,” he grumbled. “I just knows it! If I was still bigly, you wouldn’t dare treat me so disrespootably. Certainly, wetly, absolutely.”

Nuic shifted to steely gray, with flickers of green from the portal. “Body size and brain size are different, you bone-headed fool! If you—”

“Stop,” commanded Lleu. “We’re wasting time.” He checked the water of the tunnel above their heads. Seeing no sign yet of dragons, he turned to Seth. “All right, jester. Give us a clear picture of this place where we’re going. And no rhymes, now.”

The jester tensed ever so slightly, though no one else noticed. He didn’t like the way the tall priest ordered him around. Not at all. And yet, a jester’s lot was to be abused. So he’d just grin and endure it . . . at least for now.

Bobbing his head on his hunched shoulders, he said agreeably, “But of course, kind sir. Imagine the highest portal in Fireroot, so high it’s starward of the tallest peak in the realm.”

He scanned the anxious faces surrounding him, all tinted by the magical green fire. “No other portal will do, now. Not in Fireroot, nor any other realm. That’s the only portal that leads to your crystal.”

Elli listened carefully. For her, the need to concentrate clearly on her destination held extra urgency. The last time she had ridden a portal, with Tamwyn, they’d been carried to Mudroot—the very last place she’d wanted to go. The place where gnomes had brutally killed both her parents, taken her prisoner, and kept her in slavery for six long years, before she finally escaped. And even though it was also the place where Tamwyn had saved her life—and she had been moved to save the life of a murderous gnome—Mudroot remained the source of her darkest memories, her fiercest nightmares.

“Remember, now,” the jester cautioned. “To Fireroot’s highest portal. Nowhere else.”

“Snow hare pelts?” asked Shim, his nose scrunched in confusion.

“Fireroot!” shouted Nuic. “Concentrate, you dolt.”

At that instant, an enormous leg, covered in shiny blue scales, swept through the air pocket. There was a loud roar from above, and several shouts from the companions, as everyone threw themselves into the flames. The green fire crackled, wavering just a bit more than usual.

And then they were gone—swallowed by the flames.

But not yet safe. Portals, after all, were notoriously dangerous. Some would say they had a mind of their own, occasionally taking people to unexpected places. Serella, the elf queen who was the first to master the art of portalseeking, would have gone even further, having lost many of her people in the paths of green fire. She once declared, “When I ride the portals, death rides with me.”

Through the innermost heart of the Great Tree the companions traveled, down radiant rivers of pulsing green light. Resinous aromas washed over them; the breath of Avalon filled them. No longer creatures of body, they flowed like sap and flashed like fire. Small wonder, indeed, that they ever survived.

But survive they did. Moments later, they shot out from another portal, far away from Waterroot. They landed in a twisted heap of arms and legs, cushioned by a soft bed of leaves. All of them were amazed to be alive. And even more amazed, as it happened, to be in . . .

“Mudroot!” snapped Nuic, spitting a mass of leaves and twigs out of his mouth. “How the
harshnazegth
did we get here?”

Lleu, lying underneath the sprite, peered up at him. “I didn’t know you could speak dragon.”

“I can when I’m furious!” Veins of scarlet raced across Nuic’s skin. His very breath seemed tinted with red. Then, as he turned to Elli, his colors softened slightly.

She sat at the edge of the heap, her head sagging between her folded legs. “Not Mudroot,” she moaned under her breath. “Not again.”

Lleu sat up, which sent the little sprite spinning down into more leaves. “Are you sure that’s where we are?” asked the priest. “Seems awfully green here—a jungle, really.”

He paused to look at the thick mesh of vines, leaves, mossbarked trees, and huge ferns that surrounded them. Catching his eye, Catha fluttered her wings from her perch on a leafy branch. “If this is Mudroot, where’s the mud?”

“Under all the leaves,” muttered Elli. She raised her glum face. “We’re in the northern part of the realm, the jungles of Africqua.”

“She’s right,” said Brionna, extracting her leg from her longbow. “I recognize it—all these smells. Catch that hint of guavas? And cinnamon? And vanilla?” She sniffed the air. “It’s the only place in the Seven Realms with as many smells as the Forest Fairlyn.”

“And it positively stinks!” With a spray of leaves, Nuic finally righted himself. He spat out a shred of bark. Just as he started to speak again, though, Shim rolled over and stretched his twisted arm—swatting Nuic hard in the back. The sprite went tumbling into the leaves once more.

If Nuic had been furious before, he was doubly so now. Scarlet blotches covered his body, pulsing with rage. He was so angry he couldn’t speak, only sputter.

But there was one person even more angry. The jester leaped up from the bed of leaves, shaking a wormy clump of dirt from his bald spot. “Mudroot?” he shouted, his face contorted in a most unjesterly expression. “
Mudroot
?”

Grabbing the cherry wood cane by his feet, he started beating the ground violently. Each blow sent up a small fountain of leaves, bark, and broken twigs. He then slashed a vine in two, which sent a pair of monkeys, who were clinging higher up, into a tizzy of their own. As their angry chattering rose from the branches, the jester exploded in curses as he battered the ground.

“Skull slime! Fried fairies! Troll wipes and bog bottoms!”

The others turned to watch his uncontrolled outburst. Just then, he swung his cane at a thin, bumpy stick that was leaning against the trunk of a tree. The stick, almost as tall as Seth himself, seemed certain to burst into bits from the force of his blow. But a split second before contact, the entire stick twisted sideways. Seth’s cane smacked the tree instead, jarring his bones and showering him with nuts, twigs, and loose chips of bark.

Out of the dozen or so bumps on the stick, gangly legs popped into view. A single red eye opened wide near the top end, above a jagged mouth, while a triple forked tongue flitted over the bark of the tree. With an ear-piercing squeal, the stick creature’s legs started churning. It shot up the tree trunk and vanished in the greenery.

Caught by surprise, Seth suddenly remembered how he was acting. And how unjesterly he must have appeared.
You fool!
he raged at himself.
Lose control like that again, and you’ll ruin everything.

He tittered nervously, twirling his cane in his hand. “Eh-heh, eh-heh,” he chuckled with some effort. “Plenty of good props for a jester here in the jungle.”

“So you knew that stick was alive?” asked Elli. She pulled some twigs out of her curls.

“But of course,” he replied, taking a deep bow. “Always a crowd pleaser, those stick beasties.”

Above his head, Catha whistled doubtfully. Lleu, who was also eyeing the jester skeptically, rose to his feet. He nodded to the falcon. She took off from her branch and drifted down to his shoulder. Brionna stood as well, then gave Shim a hand. Meanwhile, Elli picked up Nuic and brushed the leaves off his skin, which helped his remaining scarlet blotches fade away.

“So,” demanded the sprite, “what do we do now?”

Uncertainly, Elli fingered the amulet around her neck. She waved at the portal, whose green flames rose into the air between two gigantic ferns, licking some tangled vines. “We don’t go back in there again, that’s for sure! We might never get out alive.” She turned to Brionna. “Do you know of any other portals—reliable ones, that is—around here?”

The elf maiden tossed her braid over her shoulder. “None. When Granda brought me here, we arrived in southern Mudroot, then walked all the way to this jungle. But that took two weeks, since we wanted to avoid any gnomes.”

Elli’s jaw clenched at the word. “Always a good idea.” She glanced over at Lleu. “Papa once traveled from here to Airroot over the Misty Bridge.”

The priest raised his thick eyebrows. “Brave man, your father. The Misty Bridge, from what I’ve heard, is not for the frail-hearted.”

“A whale farted?” asked Shim, shaking his head. “Howly disgusting!”

Lleu paid no attention. “Still, it could be our quickest way out of here.”

“And away from the gnomes,” added Elli.

“Once we cross the bridge,” Lleu cautioned, “we’ll still need to travel through the northern part of Airroot to reach the nearest portal, which could take us to upper Fireroot.”

Elli nodded. “And from there, we can walk down into Shadowroot.” Grim determination filled her face. “To find the corrupted crystal.”

“An excellent plan,” declared the jester. He bobbed his head eagerly. “Quite excellent.”