The Merchant of Death (13 page)

I could feel the mood of the crowd beginning to turn. They were going to do it. They had mined more than enough glaze that day, just as Saint Dane had demanded. With the last few small stones, the scale rose until it was perfectly level. It took every last one they had, but they made it. If this had been a World Series game, the crowd would have erupted into a cheer. But this was no game. Even though I could sense their joy and relief, no one made a peep. I saw them secretly exchanging little smiles of joy. There were even a few quick, secret hugs. It was a good moment. Even Rellin looked relieved, though he tried not to show it. Throwing victory back in Saint Dane's face would not have been a smart thing to do.

Saint Dane didn't react. I couldn't tell if he was happy they had mined so much extra glaze, or ticked that the Milago had met his unfair challenge. He swung his leg over and jumped down from his horse. He climbed up onto the platform and
looked at the level scale with a slight smile. Suddenly the mood of the crowd grew tense again. What was Saint Dane doing? He looked to the heavyset man who was swaying on the end of the scale. The man looked down, afraid to make eye contact. Saint Dane then walked to the end of the scale where the glaze stones were piled into the basket.

“Well done, Rellin,” he said. “You have mined quite a large amount of—” He suddenly stopped talking, and leaned in closer to the basket of glaze stones. Throughout the crowd people started holding one another's hands for strength.

Saint Dane gazed into the basket of stones and said, “Rellin! I am surprised at you. There is a stone in here that is not pure glaze!”

Uh-oh. Rellin made a move to run to the basket, but two of the knights held him back. Rellin yelled something at Saint Dane, but it didn't matter what he said. Saint Dane reached into the basket, grabbed the largest glaze stone, and picked it up. Instantly, the scale tipped and the heavyset man slammed down onto the platform, hard. Saint Dane carried the stone over to Rellin and held it up to his face.

“You know that Kagan only accepts stones of pure glaze,” he said through smug, clenched teeth.

Not that I'm a geology expert or anything, but that stone looked just like every other stone in the batch. Saint Dane was changing the rules again.

“You know what must happen now,” he said with mock sadness.

Apparently the heavyset men knew it too. He scrambled to his feet and jumped down off the platform. He wanted out of there, fast. But the knights grabbed him and held him tight.

“What's happening?” I asked Osa.

Osa didn't answer. She kept staring at the scene with sad
eyes. I figured I was going to find the answer soon anyway and turned back to watch the last act of this drama.

One of the other knights quickly grabbed a heavy chain that was attached to one end of the wooden platform. He pulled on it and half of the platform top lifted up like a trapdoor. Underneath there looked like . . . nothing. The platform was built over a huge hole.

“It is the first mine shaft that was dug here in the Milago village,” Osa said without taking her sad eyes off the scene. “It is a pit that reaches down farther than the eye can see. I am afraid there are many lonely bones resting on the bottom.”

My mind was racing. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. They were going to toss this guy down the mine shaft!

“Why don't the Milago do something?” I said. “There are hundreds of them! Why don't they stop it?”

The knights dragged the heavyset man closer to the open pit.

“Bagga! Bagga va por da pey!” he cried. It was horrible.

No one in the crowd moved. No one tried to help the poor guy. Even Rellin. It was like they knew it was futile. I noticed that next to me, Loor reached to her back and grabbed hold of her wooden weapon. But Osa put her hand over her daughter's.

“You know it is not the time,” she said softly.

Loor didn't release her weapon at first. I could feel her tension. One push, and she would be down there, swinging away. But today was not that day. She kept her eyes on the scene and released her grip on the weapon.

The knights dragged the screaming heavy man up to Saint Dane, who looked at the poor guy without a trace of sympathy and said, “If you weren't such a glutton, you may have lived to see another day.” Saint Dane then nodded at the knights, and
they dragged the poor, screaming man toward the open pit.

“Ca . . . ca!” he pleaded. “Maga con dada pey! Maga con dada! Moy fol wife, and two children! Please! I must take care of them! They will be alone!”

The scene was so horrifying that it wasn't until later that it hit me . . . I could understand him. It sure sounded like English, but it didn't make sense that he suddenly would have switched languages. Osa said that the Travelers had the ability to understand all languages, and since I was suddenly able to understand this man, maybe I was a Traveler after all.

But I didn't think about that until later. Right now I was witnessing the most gut-wrenching moment I could imagine. The two knights dragged the heavy man closer to the open pit. Suddenly a woman jumped out of the crowd and tried to pull him away from his executioners. She was in tears and begging for mercy. She must have been the man's wife, but her brave effort didn't help. She was quickly grabbed by another knight and thrown to the ground. She lay there in the grass, sobbing.

The knights finally got the man to the edge of the pit and were about to push him in, when the man suddenly stopped wailing. Up until this point he had been crying and begging for his life. But now he stopped fighting and stood up straight. I swear, there was a look on his face that was almost calm. The knights didn't know how to react. They weren't used to someone being calm during the worst moment of their life.

The heavy man turned and faced Saint Dane, and in a distinct, strong voice he said, “My only regret is that I will not live long enough to see Kagan suffer the way we have all suffered.”

Saint Dane chuckled and said, “None of you will live that long, for that day will never come.” He then gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod and the two knights pushed the doomed man backward into the pit. His wife screamed, but the
guy didn't let out a sound. One second he was there, the next he was just. . . gone. Hopefully his death would be quick and he'd now be in a better place than this horrible village.

The knight holding the chain let it go and the wooden platform fell down with a boom. Saint Dane walked up to Rellin, who looked him right in the eye. Saint Dane then pointed to the man's sobbing wife.

“We will use her for tomorrow's Transfer,” he said with pleasure. “She seems quite light. It should make for an easy day. Please thank me for being so considerate.”

Rellin looked at Saint Dane and for a second I thought he was going to spit in his face. But he didn't. Instead, he gritted his teeth and said, “Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” Saint Dane said with a smile. With that he strode to his horse, jumped into the saddle and was just about to ride off when he once again looked back toward us. Actually, it was more like he was looking right at me. I could feel it. He knew I was there. Was all of this a show for me? Saint Dane laughed, kicked his horse and rode off through the stunned crowd back toward the Bedoowan palace.

The knights pushed a few of the miners toward the basket of glaze with their spears. The valuable stones had to be delivered to Kagan and it was clear that they weren't the ones who were going to carry them. That was a job for their slaves. The miners picked up the basket from the seesaw and started the long walk toward the palace. The rest of the villagers slowly started to disperse. Not a word was spoken. A few people went up to console the poor woman who had just lost her husband, but most simply headed back toward their homes. They had been through this horror before, and they probably would go through it again.

But I hadn't. I was frantic. I had just witnessed a man
murdered in cold blood. It was even more horrible than the poor homeless guy who Saint Dane hypnotized into running into the subway train back in New York. That was awful, but it didn't seem real. This was very, very real and I didn't understand it. My emotions were all over the place. And yes, I'm not ashamed to admit it, I was crying. They were tears of anger, and fear, and sadness for a man I didn't even know. And for his family. I didn't care that I was crying in front of Loor or anybody else. I was out of control.

“Why didn't they do something?” I shouted at Osa. “They could have ganged up on the knights. They could have pulled the guy away. Why didn't they stop it?”

Osa was as calm as I was upset. She said, “If they had done anything, Kagan would have sent an army to punish them. They had no choice.”

I looked to Loor and was surprised to see that she too looked upset. She may not have been ranting the way I was, but her icy calm was cracked. I even thought I could see a tear in her eye. Maybe there was a heart beneath that tough exterior after all.

Still, I didn't buy what Osa was saying. “So what? They should have done something,” I cried. “If they don't do something, it'll never stop.”

Osa put a hand on my shoulder, and I could feel myself starting to calm down. But what she said next was the last thing I wanted to hear.

“They are going to do something, Pendragon. They are going to take destiny into their own hands and rise up against Kagan. That is why we are here. We are going to help them.
You
are going to help them.”

These words hit me like a bolt from the blue. Uncle Press had told me there were people who needed our help, but I had
no idea he was talking about an entire village of people who were at the mercy of a vicious army that didn't think twice about killing people in cold blood. This was crazy. I felt bad for these people, but there was nothing I could do to help them. I didn't care how tough this Loor person was, those knights were killers. And there were only three of us . . . four if you counted Uncle Press. What good could we do against an army? No, this was crazy. I made up my mind right there that the first chance I got, I'd get away from these nutburgers and get back to that flume thing. If it brought me here, then there had to be a way for it to get me back home. Yes, that was the answer. I was going to get myself out of here and kiss this place good-bye—with or without Uncle Press.

SECOND EARTH

“Hey, you kids!”

Mark and Courtney looked up from their reading to see Sergeant D'Angelo calling to them from the front of the building. The two had been sitting there the whole time, reading the pages from Bobby.

“Run!” yelled Mark. He started to get up, but Courtney grabbed him by the seat of the pants and pulled him back down.

“Why?” she asked him calmly. “We're not doing anything wrong.”

Mark had to think about that for a second. She was right, all they were doing was sitting in the alley, reading. Nothing illegal about that. So then why was this policeman yelling at them? Courtney looked to the cop, but didn't budge.

“What do you want?” she yelled.

“I want to talk to you,” came the reply.

“Then you come to us,” Courtney yelled.

Ouch. Mark winced. Courtney was being pretty disrespectful. Okay, so maybe the guy dissed them before, but he was still a cop. Mark was sure he was going to arrest them.

D'Angelo took a few steps toward them with his hands on his hips, and said in a downright civil tone, “I want to talk to you about the Pendragons.”

“Why?” asked Courtney, oozing skepticism.

“Because I believe you,” answered D'Angelo.

Mark and Courtney shot each other a look. Victory! He must have found Mr. and Mrs. Pendragon. They both jumped up to go to the cop. Mark made sure that Bobby's half-read journal was tucked securely in his pack, and the two followed D'Angelo back into the station house.

Once inside the sergeant led them past the lobby and continued on through the back offices. Mark thought this was kind of cool. He had never been behind the scenes at a real police station. The experience wasn't exactly what he had expected. On TV, police stations had a lot of activity. There were always cops leading handcuffed perps toward interrogation rooms, and detectives taking statements and SWAT teams hurrying to some mission and generally a ton of cop-type hubbub. But not here in Stony Brook. Here a guy was making a phone call to Domino's for pizza, and another guy looked bored while playing FreeCell on an old computer. Not exactly a beehive of electrifying police activity. Very disappointing.