The Rivers of Zadaa (8 page)

Loor stood up. This was making her uncomfortable.

“It is not that,” she said. “I believe you are the most courageous person I have ever met.”

She did?

“Then what's the problem?” I asked. “I'm strong. I'm athletic. I may not be physically back up to speed yet, but it won't be long before—”

“If you die, what will we do?” Loor barked. “I do not doubt that you would make a fine warrior,” she continued. “But without you, I do not believe we have any hope of defeating Saint Dane.”

This is a weird thing to say, but Loor was scared. I had never, ever seen her frightened before. The idea of going it alone against Saint Dane, without me, terrified her. I actually saw tears forming in her eyes.

“I hear you,” I said. “But I'm not asking this because I want to start running around picking fights. You know me better than that. I need you to give me the skills to defend myself. This war is going to decide the future of all territories, all time, all everything. How stupid would it be to lose that war because I didn't know how to stand up for myself in a simple fight?”

Loor stood staring at the ground.

“Give me the tools to protect myself, Loor. That's all I'm asking.”

I said all I wanted to say. The next move was hers. Whatever decision she made, I was prepared to accept it. After a long moment she reached up and wiped a tear from her eye and looked straight at me. Her fear was gone. Her indecision was gone. The Loor I knew was back.

“I will teach you, Pendragon. But I will need help.”

 

I'm writing this journal the night that Loor and I came to that agreement. Tomorrow, my recovery and my life will enter a new phase. I am going to learn the skills I'll need to survive. The skills of a warrior. I have no big illusions. I don't expect to come out of this like some kind of fighting machine. I'm still me. But at the very least, I want to be able to push some of the fear away, and have the confidence that when backed into a corner, I'll stand as good a chance of escaping alive as my opponent.

If that opponent happens to be Saint Dane, so be it.

Try not to worry about me, guys. I've dropped a lot on you in this journal. Please know that my thoughts are always with you. I want to come home. I want to see you both again. But that can't happen until the final play is made in this drama. To make sure I'm around to see that happen, I've got to step it up.

I've got to fight.

Wish me luck.

END JOURNAL #20

Wish me luck.

Mark Dimond dropped the light brown, crusty pages of Bobby's journal from Zadaa onto the floor of his bedroom. He looked around the room. He was alone. Courtney Chetwynde was not there to read with him. It was the first time that this had happened since Bobby's very first journal had arrived. A profound sense of loneliness closed in on him. He had no one to share this latest news with. No one to help him analyze what was happening. No one to keep him from spiraling into a full-on panic attack. He was going to have to suck it up and deal with it on his own.

He really wished that Courtney were there.

In spite of all he had just read about Bobby, his mind went back to Bobby's previous journal. Journal #19. The last one he read with Courtney. It was the journal that explained how badly he and Courtney had messed things up by using the flume to go to Cloral, and Eelong. As acolytes, their job was to protect Bobby's journals and to stay on their home territory and help the Travelers if they visited Second Earth. Their job wasn't to jump into the flume and join in the fight against Saint Dane.

But they had.

They knew it was wrong, but at the time it seemed as if they had no choice. They were the only ones who knew of Saint Dane's plan to use a killer poison from Cloral on the territory of Eelong. If they hadn't gone to Cloral to get the antidote and bring it to Eelong, Saint Dane might have destroyed the territory. Bobby might have died. But by doing it, they weakened the flumes. Acolytes weren't supposed to use the flumes. When they left Eelong for the final time, the flume there collapsed. Not only did it trap Spader and Gunny on Eelong, but it killed the Traveler Kasha. It was all because he and Courtney chose to travel. Things would never be the same.

All these thoughts came rushing back at Mark as he sat in his bedroom, alone, remembering the moment when he and Courtney read the devastating news about Kasha and Spader and Gunny. They had returned from Eelong only an hour before, flush with excitement. They had helped save Eelong. They were heroes who finally got the chance to help Bobby, instead of simply reading his journals. And as a final bonus, they had returned home to find that no time had passed since they had left, so they didn't even have to explain to anyone why they had been gone for over a month. Everything was perfect.

And then Journal #19 had arrived. The journal that would change everything for them. They had taken the journal to the basement of Courtney's house, which is where they read most of Bobby's journals. When they finished reading Journal #19, Mark and Courtney stood staring at nothing for a long time.

Courtney started to cry. Mark had never seen Courtney cry before. It was almost as shocking as the news Bobby had sent. Almost. Mark wanted to comfort her, but he didn't feel all that hot himself.

“I'm sorry,” Courtney finally said. “This was all my fault. I talked you into it.”

“It w-wasn't,” Mark said instantly. “Sure, I didn't want to go at first, but everything you said I agreed with. W-We knew about the poison. We knew Seegen was dead. If we didn't do something, the klees would have destroyed Black Water and Saint Dane would have won Eelong—”

“And Kasha would still be alive,” Courtney shouted. “And Spader and Gunny would be helping Bobby on Zadaa right now. Saint Dane played us, Mark. He gave up Eelong to help him win the bigger war, and we made it easy for him.”

“N-No!” Mark shouted back, pacing. “We don't know that for sure. Things might have been worse if we didn't help.”

Both wanted to believe that, but there was no way to know if it was true or not. Bobby wrote that they shouldn't blame themselves, but Mark and Courtney were having trouble following that advice.

Courtney wiped her eyes and stood up, saying, “You should go home, Mark. Bring the journal to the bank in the morning.”

Mark rolled up the parchment paper and tied it with the leather twine.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Courtney nodded. “Let's let this sink in and talk about it later, okay?”

“Sure,” Mark said as he climbed the basement stairs. “I'll see you tomorrow at school, okay?”

Courtney didn't answer.

Mark went to school the next day as usual, though it wasn't easy. He was a very different guy than the day before. That's because in between the two days, he had spent an entire month on Eelong, matching wits with Saint Dane. To everyone at Davis Gregory High, Mark was wallpaper. His claim to fame had always been that he was the best friend of the popular Bobby Pendragon, but it had been two years since Bobby and his family disappeared. People forgot. The disappearance of the Pendragon family was yesterday's news, and without Bobby around, nobody thought twice about Mark Dimond. They had no idea that Mark was taking part in a battle to save everything that ever was or ever will exist. To them, he was a quiet little guy with long, black hair, who ate carrots to improve his vision. He was a member of the prestigious Sci-Clops science club, but that was his only nonschool activity…other than fluming to another territory to save a race of cat people from extermination. The most anybody ever spoke about Mark was when they saw him hanging around with Courtney Chetwynde. That's because Courtney was beautiful, smart, athletic, and not even close to being the kind of girl people expected to hang out with a dweeb like Mark. People would whisper. What did she see in him? Of course nobody could know that they were joined by a common bond—their friendship with Bobby and their knowledge that the universe was in danger.

Most of all, Mark and Courtney needed each other to stay sane.

Going to school that next day was one of the toughest things Mark had ever done. He had just taken part in a grand adventure that none of these kids at school could possibly even imagine. Now he had to go to school and act like nothing had happened. But it had. He was a different guy.

And Courtney didn't show up.

He didn't call her at first, figuring she needed time to decompress. But after a few days, she still hadn't come to school. Mark called her cell phone. It was turned off. He went by her house when he knew her parents were at work. Nobody answered the door. He didn't want to have to talk to her parents, but the scary thought started creeping into his head that the Chetwynde's might have disappeared the same way the Pendragons did, so he took the chance and called her at home. He was relieved when Courtney's father answered the phone. Mr. Chetwynde said that Courtney wasn't feeling well and didn't want to talk with anyone. Mark thought the guy sounded tense. He was glad to hear that nothing bizarro had happened, but he was getting more worried about Courtney by the second. Was she okay? He knew she had been having a tough time of it, even before they hit the flumes. He feared that the realization of how badly they had messed up on Eelong might have pushed her over the edge. Courtney was incredibly proud, maybe too much so, Mark thought. He knew that one of the reasons she had so badly wanted them to jump into the flume was that she was scrambling to prove something to herself, and what better way to do that than save an entire territory?

Mark didn't blame her for convincing him to use the flume. She may have been the one driving the bus, but he was a willing passenger. She didn't twist his arm. Much. Now he feared that after having salvaged her self-confidence by saving Eelong, finding out that it was the wrong thing to do would crush her. He desperately wanted to talk to her, but her parents wouldn't let him. No calls, no visits, no letters. It was like she was a prisoner in her own house. Or a patient.

Courtney hadn't come back to school for the rest of the semester. He asked around and found out that she was having her school work sent to her house. There were lots of rumors that she was sick, but Mark didn't believe them. He knew that her problems were more psychological than physical, not that that was much better. After a while he stopped calling. He figured that he'd wait until he got Bobby's next journal, then he'd somehow get a message to her that it had arrived. He knew that there was no way she could resist finding out what was happening to Bobby.

But no more journals had arrived.

Mark did his best to put Bobby out of his mind and get on with his life. He tried not to think of what a mess they had made of things by jumping into the flume, though he often sat in bed late at night, wide awake, trying to decide what they could have done differently. He never found the answer, which in some ways was comforting. They may have seriously messed up, but after going over every fact, it didn't seem as if they'd had any choice but to do what they'd done. It gave him a small bit of comfort. Very small.

Mark immersed himself in the Sci-Clops science club. But that was difficult too, since his archnemesis, Andy Mitchell, was now a member. Mitchell was an idiot. A thug. A guy who had bullied Mark his whole life. Yet there Mitchell was, a member of the most prestigious science club in the state. At first Mark thought it was a mistake, but the more he saw Mitchell at work, the more he reluctantly had to admit that the goon did have an aptitude for science. Math, in particular. He may have barely been able to write his name with a crayon, or read a stop sign, but Mark saw that Andy Mitchell had an incredible ability to see mathematics on a 3-D level. It was uncanny. Mark figured he was one of those idiot savant types. Heavy on the “idiot.” On the one hand he was actually creating chemical compounds that might revolutionize manufacturing, on the other hand he'd go out and extort money from the geeks at school to buy cigarettes.

The only real solace Mark took from this twisted situation was that Andy Mitchell didn't target him for abuse anymore. It was the first time in the history of dorkdom that being the member of a science club actually
saved
someone from getting beaten up.

The rest of the semester passed uneventfully. Meaning, there were no journals from Bobby. However, with only a few weeks left of school before summer vacation, Mark received a letter that changed things once again. It was from Courtney.

Moments after Mark found this letter in his mailbox and took it to his room to read, his ring began to twitch. He jumped in surprise. Bobby's next journal was on the way in. Mark didn't even have time to process Courtney's message before having to think about news from Bobby.

“Perfect,” Mark said to himself sarcastically. “Why does everything always happen at the same time?”

The gray stone in the center of the ring he had received from Loor's mother, Osa, transformed into a brilliant, clear crystal. He took the ring off, placed it on his floor and watched as the familiar delivery process took place. The ring grew to the size of a Frisbee, opening up a conduit to the territories. Light flashed from the hole, bringing with it the haunting musical notes that carried the cargo along.

Mark closed his eyes and waited until the music stopped. Seconds later the ring returned to normal. Lying next to it on the rug was Bobby's next delivery. Journal #20. It was a scroll of parchment paper, tied with a leather twine…exactly like #19. In the past Mark would have immediately called Courtney so the two could read the journal together. It was their pact. They would never read the journals alone. The note from Courtney changed all that. Courtney didn't want to read this journal. Mark was on his own. It was an odd feeling. Even scary. As different as Mark and Courtney were, they were always able to bounce ideas off each other to help understand what Bobby's pages contained. Now Mark would have to do it on his own. He would be the only one to know of Bobby's latest adventure. So he read.