The Curse of the King (29 page)

“I thought he was supposed to hold and protect it,” Aly replied. “He killed that guy centuries ago who tried to take it. He tried to kill us.”

I thought about the dream. About how the king blamed Massarym for the island's destruction. Uhla'ar wanted one thing only—to undo what his son had done. To return the Loculi to Atlantis.

“He's no dumb statue, Aly,” I said. “He's Uhla'ar. He was protecting the Loculus for himself—so that one day he could bring it back to his homeland.”

“Jack, this is amazing,” Aly said. “He's helping us. We've been going after all these Wonders to fight for the Loculi. Now one of the Wonders is bringing a Loculus to us!”

Aly, Cass, Marco, Nirvana, and I followed Uhla'ar. Could it be? Not long ago we were as good as dead. Now we had a chance of being more than halfway to our goal.

Four Loculi.

My heart was pounding so hard, I wasn't even thinking about the Song. Uhla'ar stopped at the edge of the
Heptakiklos. The rift light surrounded him in an amber-green halo, flickering in the mist.

He set the bag down and bent over the Heptakiklos. Then, wrapping his fingers around the broken blade, he began to pull.

Marco was the first to run forward. He grabbed the king's shoulder. “Whoa, that's a nasty mistake. Trust us.”

The king whirled on Marco. With his free hand, he grabbed Marco by the collar and lifted him clear off the ground.
“MAKE MY DAY
.
”

T
ORQUIN RAN FORWARD
to help, but Marco managed to shake himself loose from the king's grip. “Stay back, Red Beard! I can handle this guy.”

“We need backup!” Nirvana cried out to the other rebels.

As Uhla'ar turned back to the rift, Marco grabbed him in a headlock. The king roared, but Marco held tight, pulling him back . . .

Back . . .

They were clear of the mist now, clear of the light. With a powerful thrust, Marco threw the king away from the Heptakiklos, toward the middle of the caldera.
“Just stay away!”
Marco yelled.
“What is wrong with you?”

The king landed hard and rolled, then sprang to his feet.

Nirvana was holding a crankshaft now, Fritz a rusted metal pipe. The rebels were all armed with the detritus of the old headquarters.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“We need that Loculus,” Nirvana replied. “We've worked hard. Our ancestors have worked hard. We don't need him to ruin everything for us.”

“He's the king!” I replied.

“Not anymore,” she said.

Uhla'ar's eyes scanned across the line of Karai. Marco stood solidly between the king and the Heptakiklos.
“AT . . . LANTIS . . .”
the king growled, unsheathing the dagger from his belt.

Its hilt was huge, weirdly large for a knife that size. It housed a jagged blade, twisted and sharp like a broken bottle.

“What the—?” Marco sputtered.

“Watch out!”
Aly shouted.

Marco darted over toward the Karai pile and pulled out a long, hooked crowbar. Leaping between the Karai and the king, he thrust it toward Uhla'ar's head like a sword.

The king's free arm seemed to vanish for a moment as it moved to block the attack. With a sharp clank, the dagger stopped the thrust and sent Marco sprawling.

“COWABUNNNNGAAAAA!”
King Uhla'ar said, charging toward Marco again.

Marco spun around, took two steps toward the wall, then leaped. His head snapped backward as he took three gravity-defying steps up the wall. With a powerful thrust, he backflipped over the head of Uhla'ar.

The king's jagged blade jammed into the dirt wall.

“Enough!” Torquin grumbled. As Marco landed, the big guy lunged for the king. He wrapped his thick arms around Uhla'ar and threw him to the ground. The king landed with a loud thud, inches from the sack he had carried here on his shoulders.

The Loculus.

I dived for it at the same time Marco did. He managed to grab the fabric first, pulling the Loculus out of the sack.

“ARRRGGGHHH!”
The king's cry echoed in the caldera as he sprang to his feet, pulled his stuck dagger from the wall, and started for Marco.

Marco tucked the Loculus of Strength under his left arm. Wheeling around, he twisted away from Uhla'ar's thrust. The blade flashed. Blood sprayed from Marco's leg. Now Torquin was coming at the king again, holding aloft a long mallet with a thick metal head.

Uhla'ar turned calmly to face the big man. As Torquin's powerful blow flashed downward, the king ducked. With a swift, continuous move, he grabbed Torquin's arm and threw him against the wall. His head hit the stone with a dull thud, and he fell limply to the ground.

No.

I picked up a rock, reared back with my arm, and threw it at Uhla'ar. It connected with his shoulder, and he stumbled.

“Steee-rike, Brother Jack!” Marco said. Holding the crowbar aloft with his right hand, his leg red with blood, he lunged at the king and swung hard. With a loud clank, Marco knocked the dagger out of the king's hand.

Uhla'ar was weaponless now. His eyes were fixed in the direction of the Heptakiklos. “He's not going to cooperate,” Marco said, clutching and unclutching the crowbar. “He's
obsessed
with that thing . . .”

“Please, Marco, you're losing a lot of blood!” Dr. Bones called out.

Marco blinked hard, as if trying to maintain his balance. A pool of blood gathered below his foot. “I've got the Loculus of Strength, baby, I'm good.”

As the king leaped toward the Heptakiklos again, Marco blocked him. Both thumped to the ground. The crowbar went flying, but Marco held tight to the Loculus. With his right hand now free, he pinned the king by the neck to the ground. “Sorry, dude,” he said. “If you're not going to cooperate, we have to take you out.”

“Marco, you're choking him!”
Aly yelled.
“Have you gone crazy? He was the king of Atlantis!”

I raced toward him. As Marco pressed harder on the
neck, Uhla'ar's legs kicked like beached fish. The king began to raise his arm as if to strike out, but instead it fell to the side.

I wrapped my fingers around the Loculus. Marco wouldn't let go, but the orb's power jolted through me, too. I yanked him upward by the collar and he flew backward, tumbling toward the shadows.

“Jack . . . ?” he said in disbelief.

The king's body was slack. His chest was still.

Marco groaned, clutching his injured leg. Dr. Bones raced to his side, quickly wrapping the injury with a tourniquet.

Cass stared at the king. “Is he . . . ?”

Racing over to Uhla'ar, the doctor placed her fingers against his neck. “No pulse.”

“I—I didn't know he could die . . .” Aly said.

I set the Loculus down against the wall, not far from Marco. We had it in our possession now, and that was good. But I didn't feel any sense of triumph. “He was
there
, when it happened to Atlantis,” I said. “He could have told us so much. Answered so many questions.”

“Professor Bhegad . . . Fiddle . . . now the king of Atlantis,” Aly said. “All dead. When does it stop?”

Eloise was whimpering, standing with her fists clutched to her sides. “My second dead person ever.”

All of our eyes were locked on Marco. Slumped against
the wall, he seemed to fold into himself. I wasn't sure who I was looking at anymore. He'd been a protector and friend. He'd been a braggart, a traitor, and a deserter.

But he'd never been a killer.

“I—I had to do it . . .” Marco stood slowly, backing away from the body along the wall. As he glanced at us, from face to face, we turned away. No one knew what to say.

I kept my glance focused on the body of the king. In death, the anger was gone from his face. He looked handsome, wise, and weirdly familiar.

It took awhile for me to realize he actually resembled my dad.

Behind me, the grave digging had begun again. There would be two bodies now. I figured I'd have to help.

As I got up to go, I finally turned away from the fallen king.

But not before I saw his fingers twitch.

“H
E'S FAKING!”

My shout rang through the caldera.

But it was too late. King Uhla'ar was on his feet, with a clear path to the Heptakiklos.

“No-o-o-o!”
Aly was the closest. Screaming, she ran to block his way.

We all converged toward him. But Uhla'ar grabbed her by the neck, holding his dagger high.
“I . . . will . . . kill . . .”
he said.

My feet dug into the ground. All of us stopped. “Let her go,” I said.

The king didn't reply. Instead, he dragged Aly with him, toward the rift. She was trying to say something, but
Uhla'ar had her tight around the neck. Her face was reddening by the second.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Fritz the mechanic lifting a gun. “Don't do it!” I called out. “It won't affect him, and you might hit Aly.”

“We have to do something,” Nirvana said.

I stepped toward Uhla'ar, reaching toward Aly. “Give her back to us, Uhla'ar. Release her and go ahead. Open the rift.”

Uhla'ar smiled.

“Jack, no!”
Nirvana cried out.

With a rough shove, the king threw Aly toward me. As she stumbled into my arms, he leaped toward the rift, his snaggletoothed dagger in hand. From the center rift, the mist rose like coiled fingers. The piece in the middle, the broken blade I'd idiotically pulled out when I first got here, was glowing brightly.

Slowly the king turned, pointing his broken dagger toward the blade at the center of the Heptakiklos. Two arched lines of white, like evil smiles, leaped upward from the edge of the blade. I could see now that the jagged edge of his dagger had not been designed that way. It matched exactly the pattern of the blade in the ground.

It wasn't a dagger at all. It was the missing half of a sword that had long ago been split in two.

A flare of bright white engulfed the space between the
blades. Uhla'ar lurched forward, nearly losing his balance. He cried out with pain but held tight to the hilt. The whiteness dissipated around him like an exploding snowball, and he stood in a blue glow.

The broken blade had pulled the dagger toward it. Now the two were fused into one long, sleek sword still stuck in the rift.

“ISCHIS
. . .
”
Uhla'ar said.

Through the rift, the Song of the Heptakiklos poured out, transforming into a noise of screams and chitters and flapping wings.

I stepped toward him. “No!” I yelled.
“Whatever you do, don't pull that out!”

Uhla'ar gave the sword a powerful yank. With a
sssshhhhiiiiick
that echoed sharply, it came out clean.

KEEEAAAHHHH!

I knew the griffin's call. I'd hoped never to hear it again. I could smell its fetid, garbage-dump odor as it swept overhead on a gust of hot wind. As I covered my head with my arms, I heard the panicked snuffling of a hose-beaked vromaski, speeding past me for the safety of the labyrinth path.

The ground shook, knocking me off my feet. A snake with the head of a fanged rat slithered past, and a winged spider with talons climbed onto my head and launched itself upward.

“Eeeewww! Ew! Ew! Ew!”
Eloise cried.

Though the chaos of mist and flying beasts, I saw her flinging a dark, thin, furry creature to the ground. As it landed with a screech, it spit a glob of yellow liquid straight upward.

A vizzeet.
We'd had way too much experience with those nasty things.