The Pilgrims of Rayne (41 page)

“I'm sorry, Alder,” I said, softening. “I'm glad you're going to help us. I just don't want anything to happen to you.”

Alder stood and put a hand on my shoulder, saying, “From what you tell me, the best way to make sure nothing happens to any of us is to beat Saint Dane on Ibara.”

It was getting late. We needed rest. Alder found us comfortable beds in the knights' quarters in the castle ruins. It kind of creeped me out to be back in that castle, considering I was the one who blew it up in the first place. Sleeping was tough. The task ahead was going to be difficult and dangerous. I'm not talking about the battle with Saint Dane. I'm talking about the task on Denduron.

Alder got up early the next morning to make preparations. By the time Siry and I woke up and got something to eat, Alder had already gathered a group of twenty volunteers from the Milago village. We met them in the clearing between the village and the castle ruins. I recognized some of the men. The biggest difference from when I was there before was that they looked healthy now. Back then, all the men had the same gray
look of death, from working in the mines and breathing the poisonous fumes that were emitted when glaze was torn from the rock. Now they looked strong and well fed. I felt bad for what I was about to ask them to do.

Leading these volunteers was a man I remembered well. It was Rellin, the chief miner and leader of the revolution against the Bedoowan. He was now the leader of the Milago. He was as powerful and confident a leader as I remembered. The one thing missing was the anger he once held. He was now at peace with his world. I hoped I wasn't going to disrupt that too much.

“You've grown up, Pendragon,” he said while giving me a warm hug.

“I can't believe what I see here,” I said to the man. “It's a whole new village.”

“It is, in great part thanks to you and Press. I was sorry to hear of his passing.”

I nodded in appreciation.

“In his memory, and because of the part you played in creating a new world for us, we are willing to do what you ask,” Rellin said. “There will be danger. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “I wouldn't be asking for help if it weren't so incredibly important.”

“And what makes it so?” he asked.

I knew I'd have to answer that question at some point. I couldn't tell Rellin the whole truth, of course. But he deserved to know some form of it.

“There is a village a long way from here that needs my help. Like the Milago, they are in danger of being destroyed by a powerful, evil force. I am trying my best to help them.”

“You are quite the adventurer, Pendragon,” Rellin said. “It
is a noble but dangerous calling to become involved in such conflicts.”

He pretty much nailed that one square on the freakin' head.

“Yes, but it's the right thing to do,” I said.

“Then for you and your noble calling, I will send my men back down into the mines in search of tak.”

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

These were brave guys. I wished I could tell them how they would be mining the tak to protect their own future as well.

Rellin said, “You understand the veins of tak were buried deep below the ground. It will take much effort to uncover them.”

“Not as much as you think,” I declared.

I led Rellin and the miners to the dygo. Siry walked alongside me.

“What's so special about tak?” he whispered.

“It's a natural substance they discovered while mining for glaze. It's a soft, red dirt you can roll into balls, like clay.”

“What is it, poison?”

“It's an incredibly powerful explosive. A tiny dot could blow one of those huts off the face of Denduron. The miners were going to use it against the Bedoowan, but it would have changed the evolution of the society. With tak, the Milago would have become warriors. After defeating the Bedoowan, Rellin was going to try and conquer other areas of Denduron. This peaceful village would have become a city of warriors. They never got the chance. After the explosion the tak mines were buried too deep for them to get to.”

“Except with a dygo,” Siry said.

“Exactly. I want to blow Saint Dane back to wherever it
was he came from. With a weapon like tak, we've got a chance against his army. Without it…” I didn't finish the sentence.

Siry said, “But once we dig a tunnel, won't the Milago be able to keep mining it?”

“No, this is a different place,” I said quickly. “They aren't at war anymore.”

Siry looked troubled. “I just hope we don't blow the people of Denduron back to where they came from too.”

“We won't,” I snapped.

Siry didn't say another word.

Rellin and the twenty miners were in absolute awe of the dygo. No big surprise. I gave them a story about how it came from a city on the far side of the mountains. I knew they had plenty of questions, but I didn't give them the chance to ask. Siry and I boarded the sphere and rolled toward the castle. There was no way of knowing where a vein of tak might be located. I stopped the machine at a remote spot that wouldn't interfere with the normal routine of the village. As the miners watched in awe, I engaged the drill and dipped it toward the ground. With a push on the foot pedals, the drill bit into the ground. We were under way.

Digging the mine was simple. Finding tak wasn't. My plan was to dig several shallow tunnels and have the miners inspect them for tak. If we came up empty, we'd dig a new tunnel. And another and another until we found what we came for. It was a laborious process. We spent several days on Denduron with no luck. We found small deposits of glaze, but the miners didn't dare dig it out. They had seen enough of the blue gem to last a few hundred lifetimes.

While we dug, other miners constructed crates for us to transport the explosive. The crates were critical. Tak dissolved
when mixed with water. Since our entry to Ibara was through a pool of water, the crates needed to be watertight. The miners also built a large, flat sled we could use to drag the tak up and over the mountain. Of course, they didn't know we were only going halfway.

I was really touched by how hard everyone worked. More and more volunteers joined when they heard who they were working for. Some even volunteered to come with us and help in the fight, but there was no way I could accept that. Eventually there were enough miners to split into shifts, so there was always someone working during the daylight hours. I felt sure that if there was tak to be found, we would find it.

It was great being with Alder. He gave Siry pointers on fighting. He demonstrated the art of using the long, wooden stave that he and Loor were such experts with. Siry was an eager student, but there was no way to turn him into a fighter in such a short time. It was more for fun, which was almost as important. It had been a long time since we had done anything that was even close to fun.

Watching those two spar with the long staves gave me an idea. After digging a new mine shaft with the dygo, I drove the vehicle back up the mountain to the flume. I didn't tell the others I was going, because I wasn't planning on being gone long. I parked outside the cave, entered, and stepped into the flume.

“Quillan,”
I announced, and was quickly pulled toward a territory that held nothing but dark memories for me.

I arrived at the gate and quickly changed into the gray, nondescript clothing near the flume. I didn't run into any of the mechanical spider-quigs. No surprise there. This territory was done. I left the vast warehouse that held the gate to the flume, and climbed up to the incredible gaming arcade that
had been my first taste of Quillan. I'm sorry to say that the arcade was rocking. The Quillan games were back, and busier than ever. It hurt to watch.

On the street nothing had changed. I didn't know how much time had passed by Quillan standards, but the territory looked the same as when I had first seen it. The city streets were jammed with people moving like lifeless zombies. The huge screens on the buildings above showed the same geometric patterns, broken up by the occasional announcement given by a nameless reporter. It killed me. Blok had won. Saint Dane had won. I had failed miserably on Quillan.

My destination was the abandoned underground mall where I spent time with the members of the small resistance that called themselves “revivers.” I knew the route well. I found the building that was built over the forgotten mall, descended through ancient stairways, walked through a twisting series of corridors, and finally came to the break in the cement wall that was the entrance the revivers had created.

I never saw a reviver. Or Elli, the Traveler. It didn't matter. I wasn't there to learn about Quillan. I came for weapons. I found them in a long-forgotten store deep within the mall. It hurts me to say that no revivers were there to guard them. It was another sign that the revival had failed. They no longer needed their weapons.

But I did. I found a stack of the six-foot-long, black metal rods. Dado killers. I didn't know what they were made out of, or why they worked. All I knew was that when you impaled a dado with one of those rods, it neutralized its power source. The result? Dead dado.

I stood looking at the pile of weapons, wondering why I had bothered to come. We were about to fight a war against thousands of dados. If it came down to using those rods, the
war would be lost. Still, using weapons like those was all I knew. Seeing Alder instructing Siry made me realize that. I guess you could say that having them was a confidence builder. I needed all the confidence I could get. I grabbed a dozen of the lightweight weapons and headed back for the flume.

I knew getting them back to the flume would be risky. If a security dado spotted me, I'd be done. I camouflaged the rods as best I could with a rotten old blanket that had been tossed aside by a reviver. With luck, people would think I was carrying lengths of wood. Or brooms. Or skis. (Yeah, right.) Or anything besides dado-killing weapons. When I got to the surface, I kept close to the buildings, trying to be invisible. At one point I saw two security dados marching toward me. My stomach fell. It suddenly felt like a very stupid idea to have gone to Quillan. I had risked the entire battle just to give myself an ounce of comfort. I held my breath.

The dados walked right past me.

My trip back to Denduron was uneventful. I changed back into my leather clothing at the gate and jumped into the flume. In the cave on Denduron I placed the pile of weapons at the side of the flume, got right back into the dygo, and made my way down the mountain. In all, I was gone for only a few hours. Nobody knew I had left. Not even Alder and Siry. I had taken a big risk going to Quillan, but I was glad I did it.

I didn't know how to measure time exactly on Denduron. If I were to guess, I'd say we were on that territory for about three weeks. I was beginning to think it was going to be for nothing. If the tak was deeper than the shallow tunnels we had been digging, it meant we had to create a much more complex mining operation to get the miners down deep. It would also mean spending lots of time down there, and I didn't want
to risk poisoning these hard-working guys. After weeks of coming up empty, I started to face the possibility that we would have to battle the dados without tak…

When we saw the first telltale streak of red. The miners gathered to inspect the possible find. Rellin dug out a piece of the red dirt with his fingers and rolled it into a small ball. He walked back to the mouth of the tunnel, and with everyone watching, he flung it at a rock ledge.
Boom!
The rock disintegrated, creating a small avalanche of stones. It was so loud, my ears rang. When the air cleared, Rellin turned to me and smiled. I in turn looked to Siry.

“That,” I said, “is tak.”

Siry looked stunned. “Maybe we really do have a chance.”

The process of mining the mineral was even more dangerous. If hit the wrong way, it could explode. The miners took their time, which was fine with me. They only had the crude tools they hadn't used since the days of mining glaze. The vein turned out to be the mother lode. They dug cautiously, filling rough bags with the mineral and hauling it out of the tunnel. It took several days, but every wooden crate was eventually filled. We could have filled more, but I wasn't sure how much the dygo would be able to pull. The crates were then sealed with wax to make them watertight.

Finally the job was complete. The dygo was fitted with heavy ropes that were attached to the sled and the crates were loaded aboard.

“You sure this won't blow up on the way up the mountain?” Siry asked.

“No” was my honest answer. “I don't know what'll happen when we go through the flume, either.”

“I didn't need to hear that,” Siry said soberly.

After many thank-yous and good-byes, we were ready to
go. I told Rellin that he and his men had done an important thing that would hopefully ensure peace to Siry's home for a long time to come.

“I do not doubt you, Pendragon,” Rellin said. “Tak helped bring peace to the Milago. I trust it will be as useful again.”

Alder, Siry, and I climbed into the dygo. It wasn't built for three people, and we had to avoid one another's elbows and knees. Siry was the smallest of the three, so he sat in the middle, wedged between the two seats. We were all happy that it wasn't a very long trip…for a lot of reasons.

“Slowly,” Alder cautioned. “Avoid the bumps.”

Yeah, no kidding. I engaged the dygo. With only a slight strain from the weight of the tak, we moved forward. The trip was nerve-racking. We were hauling enough explosives to level the entire mountain. One rough jostle and we'd be vapor. I wondered how protected we were inside the steel sphere of the dygo. That thing was built to withstand some pretty intense pressure. I guess I don't have to say that I hoped we wouldn't find out.

I picked a path that seemed to be the one with the fewest bumps. Every time the dygo bounced, I slowed down even more, so the tak wouldn't be knocked around. We were all sweating so much, it got pretty steamy and rank inside. We had to stop a couple of times to open the hatch and air the sphere out.